 |
Monday, August 29, 2005 |
|
› S N A P ‹ High clouds wisp'd and wafted eastward yesterday in malevolent shreds. I knew what was coming. I interrupted the person who was speaking to me on the telephone. "The sky!" I cried. "It's all cirrus! You should see it. There's a front on the way." He paused a beat, said "Uh-huh," and then continued with what he was saying. I shouldn't interrupt people. But sure enough the wind is up today. People are going around in jackets and hoodies. I raised the window blinds for the first time in months. I got a frost advisory in an email. Hallelujah. We survived summer. Gunter and Ranger went home this afternoon. Then we made for town. Mailed seven books. Visited banks. Dropped off boxes of Unwanted Things at the junk store. And picked up someone else's Unwanted Things (two old wooden desks) from a storefront downtown.
A large storefront. That will become available to lease Oct 1. for $100 less than the other place I was considering, and with twice the floorspace. It's around the corner from the Calico Cow, and right on the way to the dollar store. An attorney's office just opened on one side, and a storefront tabernacle on the other. Only 50 feet off Main Street. I think we'll try for this. We may yet lay the Golden Egg.
P.S. The bath was fannntastic. |
|
For immediate release from the American Chemical Society: NEW CHEMISTRY METHOD USES 'TEST TUBES' FAR SMALLER THAN THE WIDTH OF A HAIR Using a water droplet 1 trillion times smaller than a liter of club soda as a sort of nanoscale test tube, a University of Washington scientist is conducting chemical analysis and experimentation at unprecedented tiny scales. ... The new method, employing a process called microfluidics, allows researchers to perform chemical analysis and to study structure and form at the same time. The tiny droplet is contained in a microfluidic device, which is far too small to be seen with the naked eye and is mounted on a platform about the size of a dime so researchers can carry it from one place to another. The device has water in one channel and oil in an adjoining channel. The target - a cell, an organelle or just a few molecules - is placed at the interface between the oil and water using a laser beam, so the target is encapsulated as the water droplet is formed. Once the droplet captures its target, it is held fast while researchers use lasers to manipulate it and conduct analysis and experimentation. "If you have 10 molecules that you're interested in, you can combine those with other molecules to make new molecules," Chiu said. "You can control their reactivity, move them and combine them if they are confined in a droplet. As soon as you put them in a test tube, they're diffused and you lose the ability to see them."... The new method allows researchers to address specific biological questions that cannot be answered by testing in large quantities in the test tube, such as how organelles within a cell differ from each other, or how different proteins are expressed within the same cell, Chiu said. ... "We're still trying to develop the process and to understand the chemistry at this small scale, which could be very different from chemistry at the macro scale," he said. ...
[I'd direct you to a Web site but no URL was included with the release.] |
