When is a Lake a Mountain?

R. and I were talking yesterday about how, to us, Crater Lake is a mountain as much as it is a lake. :-} We were talking about our computer desktop picture theme - all stuff from around Central Oregon. Since I was in college, my computers have been South Sister (that's a mountain), Broken Top (that's another mountain), Mt. Hood, and Crater Lake. R.'s computer is now Crater Lake, and her old laptop was Suttle Lake (that's the right spelling). Ok, so we first began by observing that all of our computers are Central Oregon mountains. Then she pointed out that her laptop was the exception, it being a lake. It took us a while to figure out that Crater Lake is also a lake! If you want to talk about tall mountains in southern Oregon, you can talk about Mt. McLaughlin, Mt. Scott, Crater Lake, Mt. Thielson... Yep, Crater Lake is one of them. Actually it's Mt. Mazama, but that's neither here nor there. The simply amusing fact of the matter is that Crater Lake is as much a mountain as it is a lake. :-}

Words, on Good Friday

'Twas words that gave the heav'ns their light,
On Earth dispelled her darkened void;
The truth enlightened, unalloyed
With lies, fall'n speech's darker blight;
Commanded moon to rule the night
As sun the day, until the time
When majesty of God sublime
Shall be for us the only Light.
But in the fullness of the times
The Word that pierc'd the darkness through,
As He was pierced for our crimes,
All charges 'gainst ourselves withdrew.
Yet seven gentle words He spoke,
While with rude speech His heart we broke.

Ideas for Vibrating Cell Culture Surfaces at High Frequency

Since the vocal folds vibrate at frequencies upwards of 100 Hz, and since we know that cell and tissue mechanical properties depend on the frequency at which stresses are applied and relaxed, it makes sense to ask just how those properties look at high frequencies (most systems test frequencies much closer to 1 Hz). XT in my lab has a system where he can stretch cells on a flexible membrane at low frequency, and we are trying to figure out a way to modify the apparatus to work at higher frequencies. I have an idea...and I've just put a bid on a set of tuning forks on eBay (don't anybody out-bid me in the next 19 hours!!). There are three tuning forks and a mallet in this set. Two of the tuning forks are attached to wood resonating boxes, and seem to be the same size, hence probably the same frequency (they are listed as "used" and the owner doesn't seem to have checked what the frequencies are). The third tuning fork *might* also be of the same frequency. Anyway..... I wonder if we can't rig up a system where we can hit one of the tuning forks and bring it close the other one to induce sympathetic vibrations. The sympathetic tuning fork could be somehow connected to the system where the cells are growing (maybe simply placing it on the microscope stage next to the system would work?) and cause the membrane to vibrate. Now, we might have to get the membrane's resonant frequency close to that of the tuning fork, but perhaps we could do that by stretching it a certain amount. At the moment I have *no* idea what the resting resonant frequency of the membrane is. I may have to get a different set of tuning forks with different frequencies. But anyway, I'll enjoy having this set (if nobody out-bids me!!) even if it doesn't work for this experiment. We'll see. First things first: Win the auction, *then* play around to see what we can make work. :-)

Experiments Coming My Way (Hopefully)

Today I learned how to make gels of different stiffnesses that cells can be cultured on. I hope to put this technique to work for me within the next couple of weeks and see what effects on cell mechanics these different stiffnesses have. Today was a good day - finally am figuring out what experiments I want to do and why I want to do them. Now I just need to coax my cells into growing a bit better...

Whizzing Through Data

Today I spent several hours using my new program to run through a bunch of sound files and correct old measurements and make new ones. It has taken me several months to collect the first wave of data manually, but today I breezed through more than a third of it! My pitch estimator definitely needs some work, and the resulting pitch and harmonic data that I recorded (after throwing out a lot of it) is going to be rather noisy. We'll see if I can do a whole lot with it.