Buzz the Loony!: Time when Hell descends upon us..

I have been studying like crazy the last week which explains the lack of posts. I have another week or so of this stressful ordeal and then I'm free! I have 4 finals with most being comprehensive. Finals are crazy times. Tempers flaring, head aching, panicking, sweating profusely, lack of sleep, tensions right before the exams.. Ahh!! Shit, five more years of this! Thank God for the little break at home to recuperate, and revitalize and getting excited about graduate school, and work, and lack of life in general.. I have to keep sane. Being a bum in the summer never looked so inviting ;).

I also have to deal with moving out of Coe for the first time ever (sigh..), make plans to get across the country to DC before I leave for Nigeria (road trip with Jessi and her family!), figure out immigration details for graduate school (Beauracracy is taxing on my patience), and other such critical details.

On a positive note, my paper Structural studies of solution-made high alkali content borate glasses (PDF) got published in the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, which is the most prestigious journal for glass science. So, I'm a published first author along with my advisor Dr. Feller. This was the culmination of three summers of research using a novel technique making glasses no one had ever made before. I have journal entries describing my summer research days if anyone is interested ;). Exciting, eh?

Here is the abstract for those curious:

The glass forming range of alkali borates has been extended to R = 5.0 (83 mol% alkali oxide) using a solution method. This method involves the reaction between solutions of boric acid (H3BO3) and alkali hydroxide (MOH). Physical properties and NMR studies were performed on the intermediate and final glass products of this method. We have obtained results for the entire alkali borate system including lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium and cesium. The structure of these invert glasses remains enigmatic.

Keywords: Glass formation; Glass transition; Glasses; Raman spectroscopy; Oxide glasses; Borates; NMR, MAS-NMR and NQR; Structure; Short-range order; Glass transition; Water

Keeping with PhDcomics humor, this strip is pertinent to the subject of me being published. This strip is not necessarily accurate in my case ;).