Getting really, really, close.....

We are getting really close to having a functional ionomics lab. Yesterday, the last major piece of equipment, the fan for the top of the exhaust system was installed on the roof. As you can see, it was quite a production....

Almost all the internal construction is finished and we are on schedule for the ICPs to be installed at the beginning of March.

In other news, the weighing robot is almost finished. This week I visited Paul Armstrong at the USDAs Engineering and Wind Erosion Research Unit in Manhattan Kansas. Paul has built a robot that can take single corn and soybean seeds from a 48 well plate, weigh them and then put them in a specified digestion tube. This turns out to be one of the bottleneck steps in our sample prep, so the robot will save us hours every day. Here is a photo of the robot with Paul in the background....

and here is a front view......

Before you know it, we will be cranking through samples.