Nice one, Joelle. Good points.... I thank you for that sophisticated paper!
Yep, wax is not JUST wax. It indeed has a crystalline, sophisticated structure. Yes, cutting good sections depends upon temp/speed of cutting/angle of knife/additives/effectiveness of processing. May be more variables ...( eg: sharpness of blade, humidity) ( Them crystals "slide" over each other, with heat.....thus COLD tends to minimize compression of section: ironically, so does heat: it momentarily expands the crystals....) I recall a paper by Edward Brain...in the 70s....proposing the addition of naphthalene to Pwax to improve penetration/cutting. It worked very well....then we realised that this additive was...NOT an appropriate one;-) Them were the days when we had Tea in the Lab and....smoked an occasional fag, next to the dewaxing xylene ;-) Interestingly, there have been no reports of xylene-related fires/cancers in the ~ 100 years of xylene use. Or, am I wrong ? Respectfully, Carl Carl Hobbs Histology Manager Wolfson CARD School of Biomedical Sciences Kings College London Guys Campus SE1 1UL Tel: 020 78486813 Fax: 020 78486816 020 78486813 _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet
