Dear Abbe,
I am having a lot of trouble while getting my images focused. The image moves dramatically while focusing; it moves quite a bit even at low focus steps and at low magnifications! I am very frustrated and hope you can resolve this problem.
Ravi from Rochester
Dear Ravi,
Ach! I understand your vexation. I hate it when my images jump around regardless of the parameters, usually after several Kalyani Black Labels. I also despise kimchee and butter beans. It sounds as if your microscope has been abusing its computer internet access, watching Fred Astaire movies on YouTube, and is now trying to mimic dance steps. You will eventually catch it auditioning for “Dancing with the Stars” and posting its routine on YouTube. If you let it continue, you may find it doing impersonations and cameos for Sergio Leone westerns. I don't envision a happy ending over this. My suggestion is to unplug the poor microscope from the ether and only allow supervised internet access. Tough love is hard to do, but I know you have the Hodens for it. In the end, you'll have a happier, more productive microscope again.
Dear Abbe,
We have a researcher who would like to see his cultured swine and chicken cells on the TEM. He grew the cells on Thermonox® plastic coverslips. I prepared these cultured cells for transmission electron microscopy and eventually embedded and polymerized them in an epoxy resin. After polymerization I could not separate the coverslip from the resin. I've not had this problem before! Please help if you can.
Andrea from Wooster
Dear Andrea,
I am surprised your colleague could find cultured swine and chickens from which to derive the cells! Most swine and chickens I have encountered have been highly uncouth and boorish. I would like to know how he accomplished this. Was there some societal refinement process he could send them to—something along the lines of “Perfectly Polished for Livestock”? I can just see them now; puckish thugs crashing the cotillion of the more proper farm animals, accosting the feathered debutantes, wearing their knickers too low on their hips, and listening to P. Diddy rather than Mozart. I know it is a general concern: I have friends that routinely deal with nasty, brutish little cells derived from C. elegans and Drosophila with no sense of refinement. I'll bet the little Verbrechers misbehaved and became addicted to the surface of the chemically treated coverslip like trailer park meth heads. I'm sorry, but separation can only be accomplished now by harsh intervention.
Have a vexing dilemma? A troublesome lab mate? Send your problems to Herr Abbe in care of his able assistant at jpshield@uga.edu. He may even come up with a solution!
