IRFU Green Channel

                                                                                                             24 Nov 2011

A 'green channel' has been opened in the Interdisciplinary Research
Facilitation Unit (IRFU) at NCSI. This channel will facilitate students
and staff, especially those involved in interdisciplinary research, to
put forward their problems and suggestions. This is also in keeping with
the NCSI philosophy of close interaction with researchers and research
users to better gauge their needs.

The first input has come from Mr. K.Ravi, a PhD student in the Civil Engg.
dept. He is involved in interdisciplinary research: he is a civil engineer
while his guide is a doctorate in Chemistry. Appended below is his
statement (in his own words):

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I was in need to do the Freeze-Drying of the soil specimens for preparing
the samples for some experiments. The general procedure for doing the Freeze
drying is to put the soil specimens in liquid Nitrogen, which is at -210oC,
to freeze the moisture content in the pores of the soil and to apply high
pressure to remove the frozen moisture so that the soil specimens become
free of moisture at the same time maintaining a constant volume. We had
equipment in our lab which does the freeze drying of soils which had not
been used for past 5 to 10 years. Thus I asked some of my colleagues
regarding this and they told me that this is normally done in the labs of
biological sciences. But the students of the biological sciences were not
able to understand my need and thus they were not able to tell me which
equipment I should use for this. After struggling for some weeks I could
understand that I should go for the equipment called "Lyophiliser" which is
regularly used to freeze-dry proteins. If the details of the equipments in
each lab and a brief description about the working of the equipments are
given in the website of respective labs, it would be helpful for the
students of other streams.

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Manu Rajan
National Centre for Science Information
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012



email: manu.rajan134@gmail.com
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