Perhaps these are the last lines are written from our laboratory. Years of research come to an end, the most unexpected way: no budget cuts or pollution disasters, or corporate sabotage could end this once flourishing group of scientists, now reduced to a group of people without hope to continue their work . Begin the story from the beginning.
all started when the tabletop centrifuge failed first time. I had just started to turn the rotor, the screen showed a cryptic error message. Not remember who was the first that happened, but no one was alarmed too, because turning it off and then on solved the problem without more. However, soon the same happened to another colleague, and another, and so on, until you give a simple spin four tubes became a task that could last for several minutes. Unthinkable for the pace of work of a research laboratory in molecular biology. I remember one of the last times I bother to calculate that, throughout the purification process protein, had spent 12 hours just to centrifuge samples, which normally would have cost a total of approximately 1 hour, maximum. I also remember another time a friend, desperate, finished spinning their samples by pressing the rack against his belly while another classmate spinning wildly in a chair with wheels in the laboratory. At the time did not call too much attention, we even laugh a lot watching the poor return to the last resulting slurry by dizziness. For us they were simply things that happen in laboratories. The devices will occasionally do strange things.
But then the problem seemed to get it. A few days after the funny story of spinning chair, another of our colleagues opened the head when the agitator where incubábamos membranes and western blot gels Coomassiee rose from 110 rpm to 14500, without anyone touch. The lunchboxes were blasted in all directions, and anyone familiar with the kinetic energy and its devastating effects it will be understood that the blow dealt to the cause fainting companion immediately. Another of us had more luck, as only splashed the Coomassie other lunchbox. Was simply dyed blue from head to toe, which fortunately eased the tension, such as body image-avatareño pitufil aspect could not but provoke a general laugh. Well, except our friend who lay unconscious on the floor after the coup of the lunchbox. In any case, the anecdotes began to seem somewhat tiresome. And then everything crashed.
gradual failures in all units have accelerated exponentially. The sterility of crops booths left to function efficiently, and a host of undesirable microorganisms populated cell culture plates. We try to disinfect the entire crop room, so we went to thaw aliquots stored in liquid nitrogen: another futile effort, because the nitrogen tank had been leaking. It was scary to find a predoctoral researcher completely frozen. At first it was funny, it looked like the T1000 in the film, but we soon realized that the thing was getting serious, all cells had died, and indeed if he had no solution.
could not tell, if I wanted, one by one all the disasters that were happening. We decided to do an emergency meeting about our chief group, because seniority is a degree when there are problems of this nature in the laboratory. That was when we realized that for several days had gone. The last thing he knew was that it started out of town to participate in a dissertation, but apparently never reached its destination. We went down to talk to the security guard - who was busy trying to repair damaged security cameras (all) - and he said he had no record that our boss had left the building. Spare the reader the tedium of our investigations until we discovered that the lift stopped working with our head inside, we could understand him shouting for a while, but several hours ago and no answer. This was the straw that broke the camel: confused, like sheep without a shepherd to guide you, we've come to the lab, fearful of taking any initiative. Some have been better than others ... few minutes ago I went through the little room of trainees, where more young people have gathered around the coffee machine in the vain hope of it working again as if by magic. For several hours they were entertained with the facebook, until all the computers in the room stopped working. Under one of the tables, one of the youngest fellows clinging knees and rocks back and forth, whispering something about a scholarship that never charged for a computer failure.
do not know how to endure it. Many have left the building for days, but the rest of us are reaching the limits of our strength, as is evident from the last lines. Even has spread panic and superstition ... one of our technicians has jumped out the window, uttering cries about the end of the digital age and the apocalypse. Fortunately, with the broken window has cooled the atmosphere that was being stuffy air conditioning since collapsed.
Now that virtually
nothing we can do is when we start to think about what happened. Nothing in this laboratory that can be done only with our hands, without relying on machines. But more laps than we give the matter more strange looks. Some talk of sabotage ... that might explain the incident of the lift (the doctoral about to read his thesis would be the main suspect), but it seems unlikely that a laboratory of competition, working on the same topic, I had to take these steps to move forward in the publication of the result set. For this and have to referees. A possible government conspiracy is also ridiculous: the Ministry is simply cut funding as it has done in recent years. No, the reason should be beyond. Without resorting to superstition or pseudoscience (as I have told, was what led to our poor technical jump out the window), there is only one plausible explanation: obsolescence. A colleague recently saw a documentary speaking this concept, and apparently the theory that all devices have a limited life deliberately calculated accurately is something amply contrasted. But then to understand why all the devices have "expired" almost at the same time ... That is something that will require an arduous investigation. The question is, how can we find out, if we have no machines? "Without even an Internet connection? Because, although the computer from which I write is still responding, how much longer we ignore aguan
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