And perhaps the biggest expression of architectural choice is a hybrid architecture: rather than using a single database technology, mixing and matching technologies to play to their strengths.

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Beyond starting with a quality product, it may be the single most important factor and often the most abused lever on the mixing machine.

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Mixing it up reduces the chances that you are getting too much of a single contaminant, he says, adding that the lower one eats on the food chain, the less of an impact one has.

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"There are four systems in nature that oscillate, and this is the last one where a single-channel measurement has crossed the five-sigma threshold - we know now about mixing in all four of these systems, " he told BBC News.

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Dr Cooper and Julien Reboud, also from the University of Glasgow, have now developed a way to carry out the entire PCR process mixing, heating and cooling, as well as analysis using a single piezoelectric source, without the need for separate heating elements or detection equipment.

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