We report a simple, low-cost and detachable microfluidic chip incorporating easily accessible paper, glass slides or other polymer films as the chip materials along with adhesive wax as the recycling bonding material. We use a laser to cut through the paper or film to form patterns and then sandwich the paper and film between glass sheets or polymer membranes. The hot-melt adhesive wax can real...

The art of wax modelling has an ancient origin but rose to prominence in 14th century Italy with the cult of votive artefacts. With the advent of Neoclassicism this art, now deemed repulsive, continued to survive in a scientific environment, where it flourished in the study of normal and pathological anatomy, obstetrics, zoology and botany. The achievement of having originated the creation of a...

The symbiotic ant partners of glaucous Macaranga ant-plants show an exceptional capacity to run on the slippery epicuticular wax crystals covering the plant stem without any difficulty. We test the hypothesis that these specialised 'wax-runners' have a general, superior attachment capacity. We compared attachment on a smooth surface for 11 ant species with different wax-running capacities. The ...

For plant pathogenic fungi, such as powdery mildews, that survive only on a limited number of host plant species, it is a matter of vital importance that their spores sense that they landed on the right spot to initiate germination as quickly as possible. We investigated a barley (Hordeum vulgare) mutant with reduced epicuticular leaf waxes on which spores of adapted and nonadapted powdery mild...

Carnuba wax consists chiefly of myricyl cerotate (MW 817.4) and small quantities of free cerotic acid (C26H52O2, Mw 396.7) and myricyl alcohol (C30H62O, mp 90 ̊C). Of the two common extraction solvents, ethyl ether or petroleum ether, Lewkowitsch prefers the former. Concerning separation of phases, he advocates addition of small amounts of alcohol or caustic, and he also states that formation of...

Plant surfaces showing hierarchical structuring are frequently found in plant organs such as leaves, petals, fruits and stems. In our study we focus on the level of cell shape and on the level of superimposed microstructuring, leading to hierarchical surfaces if both levels are present. While it has been shown that epicuticular wax crystals and cuticular folds strongly reduce insect attachment,...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, acquire nest-mate recognition cues from wax, the predominant material used in nest construction. Exposure of a newly emerged worker bee to wax-comb substrate significantly reduced the acceptability of that worker to sister bees. Cues acquired from the comb provided colony-specific information about the identity of worker bees; moreover, the effect of comb exposure ha...

To date limited work has focused on assessing the economic viability of scCO2 extraction to obtain waxes as part of a biorefinery. This work estimates the economic costs for wax extraction from maize stover. The cost of manufacture (COM) for maize stover wax extraction was found to be € 88.89 per kg of wax, with the fixed capital investment (FCI) and utility costs (CUT) contributing significant...

Beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga Lindinger) (Hemiptera: Eriococcidae) is an invasive forest insect established in the eastern United States and Canada. It predisposes American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrhart) trees to infection by Neonectria spp. Fungi causing beech bark disease. White wax secreted by the diminutive scales obscures individual insects, making it difficult to accurately quanti...

Microbial degradation of 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDT) is the most promising way to clean up DDT residues found in the environment. In this paper, a bacterium designated as wax, which was capable of co-metabolizing DDT with other carbon sources, was isolated from a long-term DDT-contaminated soil sample by an enrichment culture technique. The new isolate was identified as ...