Years of research die with specially bred lab mice:
When a power failure triggered the death of nearly 600 mice at Ohio State University last week, a group of researchers lost more than their lab rodents. Mary Cheng lost years of insight into the human brain. Caroline Whitacre lost a better understanding of multiple sclerosis. Most of the mice were specially bred for research.
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University officials are still trying to determine what happened last Wednesday when one of two main electric lines was taken offline for a few hours for a construction project. When the remaining line developed a short, there was no backup, and most of the electricity to Graves Hall and several other buildings was cut off.For some reason, when the power was restored, the heat came on instead of the air conditioning. In some areas, temperatures rose to 105 degrees. Of the more than 5,000 lab animals in the basement in Graves, 689 succumbed to the heat. Most were mice.
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Bad, bad timing. What do you think I was struggling with most of today? Our crappy water system sent a surge of contaminants into our DI system, and when I added the water to my tanks, I got to watch my entire fish colony go belly up, within 5 minutes.
All I've got left is an incubator full of embryos. It's going to take 6 months to raise them to adulthood.
At least I can console myself now with the fact that it isn't just us small liberal arts universities that have clueless physical plant people.
Yikes. Horrible!
I was once tending some Macdonald jars loaded with Kootney River White Sturgeon (Fed listed endangered) eggs which must be laboriously coaxed from wild females injected with Carp pituitary hormone. Someone threw a switch, the power failed and the Macdonald Jars which had no check-valves, flushed the eggs away. We installed check-valves the next time. Lots of anger and chagrin to go around.