Word: borax
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...Using the ashes of minute wood samples, Nagyvary analyzed the chemical makeup of violins made by Stradivari and a contemporary Cremonese maker Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, whose violins are thought to be near equals to Strads. The ashes of the Strad's wood contained numerous chemicals - most notably borax and chromium - that suggest it had been aggressively treated with a varnish designed to protect against infestation. The analysis also found that the organic matrix of Stradivari's wood was damaged and weakened, almost certainly by the application of the mineral preservative, leading Nagyvary to speculate that the wood...
...largest employer, with more than 800 workers. Salaries start at $16.50 an hour, and the benefits at this German company are, well, positively European. In one of its factories along the Blue River, a row of mammoth 2400° furnaces spin the plant's secret recipe of sand, soda ash, borax and limestone into billions of billowy glass fibers, which will be cooled, packed and cut into battens of fiber-glass insulation. The workers running the furnaces are the last of a dying breed: people holding good jobs who never earned a high school diploma. Thirty years ago, the men came...
...region was eventually developed by miners, but not the Forty-Niners. You can still find remains of a few short-lived gold, silver and copper mines in the mountains, but the real fortunes in Death Valley were made with "white gold": borax. The first big operation, the Harmony Borax Works (1883-88), led to the settlement of Furnace Creek. Borates were scraped off yellow badlands in nearby Mustard Canyon, refined by Chinese laborers and pulled 165 miles to market in Mojave on the famous 20-mule-team wagons. Remnants of the original wagons, with their giant, 7-ft.-high wheels...
...week for DaimlerChrysler to introduce a new fuel-efficient minivan called the Natrium. It runs on a common compound called sodium borohydride. A chemical reaction inside the engine produces hydrogen to power the car's fuel cell, leaving behind not carbon dioxide (the primary culprit in global warming) but borax, a standard ingredient in many household soaps...
...discos are strobe light-years removed from the borax boites of the '60s--most of which died a well-deserved death. In place of the tacky, bare-wall closets wired for din, push and crush, the best new places project sensuality, exclusivity and luxury. And they are booming: there are some 15,000 discos in the U.S. today, v. 3,000 only two years ago. Many of the night places are for members only, with fees and dues ranging as high as $1,000 a year. Many have good restaurants and pool, pinball and backgammon rooms. In many, the furnishings...