May 03, 2016 at 02:16AM

Today I Learned: 1) Our autoclave has a light that tells you if the water level is too low... and if it's on, the autoclave won't run until the light has been dealt with and manually reset. Doh! 2) This is very much secondhand, and I don't claim to be an expert in Chinese mythology by any stretch of the imagination, but today I learned of a common pattern in Chinese mythology. You know how in Greek mythology (and, come to think of it, some other Western mythology too...) there's this common pattern where Zeus or another god (but let's be real, it's usually Zeus) gets the hots for some mortal woman and decides to come down and impregnate her before taking off and leaving her with a semi-dietic child? In Chinese mythology, the pattern is more like this: spirit/god falls in love with a mortal. Spirit/god's compatriots disapprove of spirit/god's love. Spirit/god goes into hiding in the mortal world so he/she can be with his/her love. Spirit/god is found out and forcibly separated from his/her love. I feel like stories of god/human love were meant to serve *rather different purposes* in China and in the West.... Thanks to Mengsha Gong for teaching me a little folklore outside my culture! 3) A trick for cleaning up colony PCRs -- dilute the colony in ~20 uL of water before adding it to your reaction. I can't yet speak to the effectiveness of this tip, but it's a tip.