Vapor

Oh crap - it happened. Somebody noticed I was blogging again. Now I'm going to feel obligated to write them. Well, maybe a little.

I thought about maybe starting to write a story and seeing how that works out.

Also thought about writing about various experiences here at work, but there are always questions about what I can and can't share, information-wise ... plus then I'll start speaking lab language and no-one will be able to read it.

I did nto know that vapor can be a verb meaning to indulge in bragging, blustering, or idle talk
Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/#BiSCuwzQbSLEod5s.99 

also didn't know that link would pop up with the copied text of the definition... 

now my font shrank!! Help me!!! I'm meltinnnnnggg!!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

overcompensating. 

Ahhh. what was I saying? forget it. this is potentially better (and maybe potentially vaporing):

There is an epic to be told. And I use the word epic loosely. Bossman was away on a remote desert island laboratory (I think it was a mad scientist convention) and an old mentor (possibly his mad scientist idol) who is losing funding (not going to turn this into a rant about government not funding the NIH) and needs a place to grow cells for his research. Now, most EVERYONE in biomedical research grows cells. Skin cells, cancer cells, kidney cells, blood cells, blood cancer cells, Henrietta Lax's illegally obtained cancer cells, mouse cells, cat cells, monkey cells. Cells are great for when you want to try something in a living system that's not actually a living organism (get that distinction? alive but less likely to upset PETA). Mammalian cells, as a rule, grow at body temperature, which is fairly constant among mammals at about 37 celsius, or 98-100 farenheit. So you have incubators set to 37 degrees with humidification and controlled gas (5% carbon dioxide, because it works). We have a room full of incubators full of cells, and freezers full of frozen cells that we can thaw out and grow again later. Again, this is normal if you work in a lab. 

What is not normal are the cells that mad scientist mentor/idol needs us to grow. They aren't from a mammal, they are from a shark. I'm not even going to try and go into why bossman wants to grow his mad scientist mentor/idol's shark cells, because the reason involves ion channels, and I am totally over ion channels (actually I just thought that sentence sounded good). 

For the centigrade-impaired, room temperature is 23-25 celsius, freezing is 0, boiling is 100, and as mentioned above, mammalian body temp is 37. Shark cells want to grow at 18, which makes all sorts of sense when you consider their environment, but do you sense the major problem yet? We use incubators to keep cells warm, and shark cells are below room temperature. Suddenly we don't need an incubator with humidity and controlled CO2 levels, we need a refrigerator. I look into this problem and the friendly folks who want to sell me incubators for thousands of dollars have a solution - an incubator that can be cooled by a separate unit that is also ridiculously expensive. But this would contradict Mad Science Law #2: don't buy new equipment. Dr. Frankenstein didn't buy a monster, he MADE one. He didn't even pay an electric bill - he harnessed lightning instead. So how do you make a heating unit keep something cooler than room temp? Seriously, I'll wait - see if you can work it out. It's going to seem so obvious once I tell you. 

You put the incubator in a walk-in cooler. 

I know, right? 

The cooler is set to 4 degrees - its basically a refrigerated room. If we were a restaurant, we'd keep food there. We're a lab, so we keep - well, that's not important - the point is its at 4 degrees. The incubator is heating itself to 18, 14 degrees above ambient temp. In a normal room at 24, the incubator heats itself to 37, 13 degrees above ambient. The incubator shouldn't be doing any more work than normal. Full of win. Just set the incubator to 18, attach the CO2 line, and  .... shit, there is no CO2 line piped into the coldroom. Why would there be? Who would need a CO2 line in a cold room?

Mad scientists, that's who. 

Luckily, I work at a big institution with a whole department full of engineers. I call them, and someone comes to look at the issue. There is a CO2 line in the larger room that contains the coldroom, good. It actually runs right next to the coldroom -- even better. Just put a hole through the wall and seal it well, and  ... hold on, that codl room doesn't have ventilation. It just recirculates the same air to keep itself cold effectively. It doesn't vent air out, and it only gets fresh air when the door opens. Regulations state that any area with closed ventilation cannot have any gas line run into it unless we also install an O2 sensor, to make sure we don't accidentally create a deathtrap. They didn't get the memo - we're mad scientists, deathtraps are sort of our thing. That argument doesn't convince her. So maybe ...

this post is enormous. to be continued. I need to actually go DO some mad science.