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Campus Digest
7/9/2003

Campus Q&A: Tom Stefanek,
Glass Technology Services Manager

New Jersey native Tom Stefanek is Glass Technology Services, a division of the Chemistry Department located in 49 Smith Hall. The large—and surprisingly bright—basement room is dotted with lathes and torches and lined with floor-to-ceiling cabinets of glass tubing and bins of valves and stopcocks. Stefanek, who came to the University in 1986, works at a bench fitted with two small torches and a test-tube rack. About 500 milliliters of tea simmering in a flask over a Bunsen burner gives the setup a homey atmosphere.

Q: What kinds of things do you do here?
A: A lot of repair, some standard pieces, modification, and custom work. I work for University and outside clients, although University people get a discount. That big flask there was a repair job for Valspar—the neck broke off.

Q: Why wouldn't a scientist just order glassware from a supply house?
A: Cost, for one thing. This equipment is pretty expensive, so it makes sense to repair it instead of buying new. Also convenience: I'm right here on campus, so if they break something they can bring it in and I can repair it faster than an outside company. Sometimes they want a modification of an existing piece or they'll come in with a sketch for a custom piece.

Q: So you don't make the glass from scratch?
A: No, I buy basic materials—Pyrex and quartz glass tubing, valves and joints—and modify the shape or combine them in various ways by heating and cutting the glass. I consider myself a mechanic, although there is a certain amount of artistic satisfaction. Sometimes I finish a piece and think, "That's really beautiful, a work of art."

Q: What's the most unusual thing you've ever made?
A: A custom electrochemical cell, from concept to finished piece. Probably the most difficult are pieces like this jacketed bottle or an electrochemical cell. Both are quite involved [a bottle inside a bottle with many different ports] and require about eight hours to make. The hardest part of my job is losing a piece near the end. Not only does it take a lot of time to do over, but the materials are expensive too.

Q: What is your background?
A: It's funny because chemistry was one of my worst subjects in school. I graduated from Keane College in New Jersey with a degree in fine arts and got a job as a glassblower with Scientific Glass Apparatus. I started making thermometers (I didn't handle the mercury) and learned about glassblowing on the job. Working with glass, like any craft, takes time, skill, and practice. I keep trying to improve. Some people are good on the lathe. I'm good on the bench. There's a lot of pride in craftsmanship in glassblowing.

Q: Can we do a common repair right now?
A: Sure. Put on these protective glasses. We'll shorten the neck on this flask. I'll put it in my smallest lathe, score it with a diamond pencil, heat the score with a micro tip, then I'll pour a little water on the score mark, and it will break there. Repeat the process farther up, flare the neck to fit, and melt the two pieces together. Any seal will have stress in it and could break. Placing the piece in an annealing oven at about 560 degrees for an hour removes the stress.

Q: Annealing ovens, diamond blades, torches, and broken glass—seems like a hazardous job.
A: I cut and burn myself regularly. Keeping the injuries minor takes skill and a lot of attention to safety.

Q: Any special perks to the job?
A: I'm a member of the American Scientific Glass Blowers Society. I go to the annual symposium to learn about new techniques. This year it's in Cleveland.
—Sarah Barker

Overheard on Campus
"Science at its roots is what lies between the human ears."
—College of Biological Sciences Dean Robert Elde on why the new Cargill Microbial and Plant Genetics Building on the St. Paul campus has common areas for scientists in different disciplines to gather informally and share ideas.

"He's making much ado about nothing. I wouldn't mind if Shakespeare smoked marijuana, but I don't think he did."
—Christine Gordon, an academic adviser and Shakespeare enthusiast in the College of Liberal Arts, on a guest speaker's speculation that the bard smoked marijuana for inspiration.

"I learned about the power of corporatized media, many of them owned by conservatives. Or they have no ideology, but they get better ratings if they appear conservative."
—Author Judith Levine reflecting on the furor caused by her book on youth sexuality, Harmful to Minors, which was published in 2002 by University of Minnesota Press.

"Many people in the developing world live in conditions that rival what Dickens wrote about hundreds of years ago."
—Michael Osterholm, director of the University's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, on the threat of SARS spreading to densely populated areas of the developing world.

"I certainly don't think that Hooters is an organization that is particularly respectful toward women in terms of who they are as individuals and what they can accomplish as human beings. Hooters is much more interested in women as sex objects, and at least on the surface appears to represent everything we wouldn't want women athletes to associate with.''
—Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University, on Hooters sponsoring a college women's athletics event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Web Hit: Getting Through Tough Times
Web Hit
With a struggling economy, the fear of terrorism, the war on Iraq, and other issues in the headlines, families and individuals can sometimes feel overwhelmed. The College of Human Ecology has gathered resources to help. Getting through Tough Times is a Web site of resources for helping cope with uncertain times. The core of the site is a series of PDF format documents on dealing with stress, stretching family budgets, finding a new job, helping children cope, and more. There are also video presentations on certain topics, experts to contact for more information, lists of helpful community agencies, and links to other sites with helpful background.
Some of the ideas in the documents are common sense and spelled out simply and understandably. To relieve stress, take a walk, garden, try the outlined relaxation techniques, or take a mental vacation (literally imagining yourself in a favorite spot for a few minutes). In "Deciding Which Bills to Pay," readers are taken step-by-step through ways to size up their financial situation and prioritize obligations based on potential consequences. There are also tips on setting up payment plans and finding nonprofit credit counseling services.
"Getting through Tough Times" is part of the College of Human Ecology's outreach efforts to extend faculty knowledge to the community. The information is presented jointly with the University of Minnesota Extension Service. Human Ecology is the study of people and their relationship to the world, and the college has outreach and engagement as part of its mission and sees those efforts as feeding into their scholarly work. Other portions of the college's outreach site include information for working families and items more oriented to working professionals.

Faculty Research

Look Before You Leap
Premarital counseling programs have a rapid and measurable effect on marital strength, according to analysis done at the University of Minnesota. Family social science professor William Doherty and a colleague at Brigham Young University analyzed 23 studies over the past 30 years that compared couples who received counseling before marriage with those who did not. After accounting for many factors, including motivation to have a good marriage, researchers found a 30 percent greater marital strength in those who had received counseling. Among indicators of a strong marriage were ability to resolve problems using effective communication styles, feelings of relationship quality, partnership, and ease of adjustment to married life. Since most studies only tracked couples for six months to a year, the effect of counseling was surprisingly rapid. Pointing to surveys that indicate 93 percent of American adults rate a happy marriage as one of their most important objectives in life, Doherty believes government, families, and other institutions would have an interest in promoting premarital education. The findings were published in the April issue of the journal Family Relations.

Closer to Treating Brain Diseases
Stem cells derived from adult bone marrow continue to show promise for treating numerous diseases, including several degenerative brain diseases. Research led by Dr. Walter Low at the University of Minnesota Stem Cell Institute has now shown that the cells can be driven into all three major types of cells found in mammalian brains. Cells implanted into a mouse embryo developed into various brain cells that conduct electrical impulses, support nerve cells, and enhance nerve cells in conducting impulses. Upon close examination, the stem cells were shown to have produced functioning cells in areas of the brain that degenerate in diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and multiple sclerosis. Within the next year, researchers hope to test the regenerative power of these cells in mice that have neurological disorders. The findings were published in the April 25 edition of the journal Cell Transplantation.

From Disinfectant to Dioxin
A common disinfectant used in antibacterial soaps degrades into the toxic substance dioxin in certain conditions and could account for some of the dioxin being found in the environment. While it has been known that the disinfectant triclosan degrades in sunlight, a University of Minnesota study shows that up to 12 percent of it breaks down first into a relatively benign form of dioxin. However, with exposure to chlorine, a substance used in wastewater treatment, triclosan becomes chlorinated and converts in some cases to a highly toxic form of dioxin. Dioxin has been linked to cancers, reproductive and developmental problems, and immune system damage. Researchers in chemistry and civil engineering made their findings by adding triclosan to Mississippi River water and exposing it to ultraviolet light. The U.S. Geological Survey, which funded the University study, found in 2002 that triclosan was present in 58 percent of natural waters it tested. The findings were published in the May 30 issue of the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemistry.

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