Hi I’m back. Still I have to thank some one for not kicking me out of the NN blogger list. I have been blogging at a high frequency on Sciencenet.cn, a social network for Chinese scientists, these days, in Chinese of course. Yesterday I just design my own template for that blog. You can have a look, omitting the language. (Obviously I have been absence from NN for too long to remember how to add a hyperlink in its grammer…I had to refer to the help! Oh, hey, don’t be scared by the somewhat communistic style; it’s just for fun.) I used to feel that what I blog about is more understood by Chinese. Sometimes I translate the idea into English and post it here and see if someone reacts with the post. But now I want to write whatever I can speak in English here. In the past few years, although what I can understood in English is obviously increasing, I feel I can speak of less in this language which is important globally speaking and vital when one lives in China – ya, China. They’ve been making everyone speak English to prepared for the Olympic Games. Something worse happen for OG 2008 is that they ban any delivery and usage of chemicals, including ACETONE [oh my favorite solvent (and precipitant sometimes)], in Beijing only, fortunately, and I’m in Guangzhou.
In fact I have been quite busy. Now I’m reading papers about water sorption of Nylon. Some factory found my former tutor for their Nylon products which change their shapes during used probably due to water adsorption. And my tutor asked me to review the research and patent about this problem. Everyone knows Nylon adsorbs water. And if you have much money you can use Nylon 12 or Nylon 9T or other good polyamide resins which adsorb only little water. I believe factories in the US have long been away from the trouble of ‘water sorption of Nylon’, e.g. DuPont. However we still have some unlucky plants here around Guangdong or Zhejiang which have money only enough to buy conventional Nylon 6/66 yet still need to overcome rigorously the problem of water sorption. I have to access papers published in 1950s or earlier. Obviously people don’t care this problem now.
Nylon is good because of H-bond; it adsorbs water because of H-bond. If it doesn’t adsorb water it isn’t good or it isn’t Nylon. Maybe things won’t look so weird when I read all the papers and have some insight. But I really hope I can return to the world of supramolecular chemistry and self-assembly as soon as possible.
Hi Andrew – glad you’re still on the ‘list’.
Sorry, but do you mean a*_d_*sorb, or a*_b_*sorb?
Welcome back, Andrew.
When you say “Something worse happen for OG 2008 is that they ban any delivery and usage of chemicals, including ACETONE” – do you mean all chemicals have been banned from Beijing? What for?, and how are local labortatories able to carry on functioning?
Hey there Andrew! Love the retro kitsch .cn style on your Chinese blog. I tried to leave a comment but couldn’t work out what needed to go in one specific field that was throwing up an error, so I gave up.
Is that true about acetone and other solvents being banned from Beijing, what are all those who use nail polish going to do when they need to clean up their fingernails?
Beijing’s banned the transport of chemicals only. But people had prepared enough stock for use or sell before the policy started. Sigma-Aldrich and other chemical companies are affected.