In one of my internship, I got to befriend a level 2 tech support, so learned a couple thing of how it worked (in that company). Level 1 was out-sourced, and they had a script to go from, regularly updated. From statistics, this took care of 90% of issues. Level 2 was a double handful of tech people, they had basic troubleshooting tools and knowledge and would solve 90% of the remaining issues. Level 3 was the engineering department (where I was), and as a result of level 1 and 2 efficiency less than 1% of issues ever got escalated. The process worked!
- May 2021
-
interpersonal.stackexchange.com interpersonal.stackexchange.com
-
-
OP is referring to letting people know they can speak like proper adults when talking about technical terms, without going through the usual nanny-like discourse that tech support has to provide to non-techies. For instance, it happened to me with Amazon support. The speaker told me exactly where to touch in order to clear the cache of the Android Amazon App Store. Given that I work as an app developer the guy could have just said "please clear the cache". No need to go through "tap here, then here, now you should see this, tap that"...
-
I have tried different tactics of showing the tech support that I am proficient in their field of work (I work as a web developer). Specifically: using accurate terms and technologies to show my knowledge of them and telling the support that I am the "administrator" of the website in question.
-
How to let tech support subtly know that I am proficient without showing off?
-
Unfortunately the tech support people you are speaking to are probably as frustrated as you are at having to go through the basic stuff with you.
-
Large companies especially deal with the massive volume of tech support calls they receive by employing some staff on lower pay as a "buffer," dealing with simple or "known" issues so that they don't need to employ as many higher paid "second line" support staff.
-
Very often the first people you get through to on tech support lines are reading from a script.
Tags
- support: first-level support
- frustrating
- how to show that you are proficient and don't need dumbed-down explanations/hand-holding/first-level support (interpersonal)
- support: second-level support
- interpersonal
- following a script (people/job)
- issue escalation
- support: level-3 support (engineering)
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.nature.com www.nature.com
-
Wellenius, G. A., Vispute, S., Espinosa, V., Fabrikant, A., Tsai, T. C., Hennessy, J., Dai, A., Williams, B., Gadepalli, K., Boulanger, A., Pearce, A., Kamath, C., Schlosberg, A., Bendebury, C., Mandayam, C., Stanton, C., Bavadekar, S., Pluntke, C., Desfontaines, D., … Gabrilovich, E. (2021). Impacts of social distancing policies on mobility and COVID-19 case growth in the US. Nature Communications, 12(1), 3118. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23404-5
-
-
psyarxiv.com psyarxiv.com
-
Young, K. S., Purves, K. L., Huebel, C., Davies, M., Thompson, K. N., Bristow, S., Krebs, G., Danese, A., Hirsch, C., Parsons, C. E., Vassos, E., Adey, B., Bright, S., Hegemann, L., Lee, Y. T., Kalsi, G., Monssen, D., Mundy, J., Peel, A., … Breen, G. (2021). Depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sf7b6
-
-
www.nature.com www.nature.com
-
Sturgis, P., Brunton-Smith, I., & Jackson, J. (2021). Trust in science, social consensus and vaccine confidence. Nature Human Behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01115-7
Tags
- lang:en
- vaccine confidence
- herd immunity
- social consensus
- vaccine
- societal consensus
- vaccine acceptance
- trust
- COVID-19
- vaccine hesitancy
- anti-vaxxer
- immunization
- country-level differences
- is:article
- scepticism
- vaccination uptake
- science
- scientific trust
- epidemiology
- behavioral science
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
twitter.com twitter.com
-
ReconfigBehSci. (2020, November 13). RT @nicebread303: Level up @zotero with these 2 plugins: - @scite: Gives you 3 new cols: Mentioning, Supporting, Disputing (https://t.co/I… [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1328008909299257346
-
-
twitter.com twitter.com
-
ReconfigBehSci. (2021, May 4). RT @CT_Bergstrom: In today’s much-discussed @nytimes story from @apoorva_nyc (https://t.co/WoyAuPyQNt) there is a graph that I find quite p… [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1389740184158183427
-
- Mar 2021
-
www.tandfonline.com www.tandfonline.com
-
Curtius, J., Granzin, M., & Schrod, J. (2021). Testing mobile air purifiers in a school classroom: Reducing the airborne transmission risk for SARS-CoV-2. Aerosol Science and Technology, 55(5), 586–599. https://doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2021.1877257
-
-
tobeagile.com tobeagile.com
-
I’m proposing that writing those tests from the perspective of specifying the behaviors that we want to create is a highly valuable way of writing tests because it drives us to think at the right level of abstraction for creating behavioral tests and that allow us the freedom to refactor our code without breaking it
-
I am a big advocate of having a complete test base and even erring on the side of caution when it comes to quality engineering and software validation but that is not what we’re talking about here. What we’re talking about here are the tests that we write when we’re doing test-first development and I’m proposing that writing those tests from the perspective of specifying the behaviors that we want to create is a highly valuable way of writing tests because it drives us to think at the right level of abstraction for creating behavioral tests and that allow us the freedom to refactor our code without breaking it.
-
-
www.sitepoint.com www.sitepoint.com
-
JavaScript needs to fly from its comfy nest, and learn to survive on its own, on equal terms with other languages and run-times. It’s time to grow up, kid.
Tags
- neutral ground
- JavaScript: as a process VM
- level playing field
- neutral/unbiased/agnostic
- programming languages: choosing the best language for the job
- separation of concerns
- good idea
- competition in open-source software
- avoid giving partiality/advantage/bias to any specific option
Annotators
URL
-
-
trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
-
Having an understanding of higher level abstractions, such as tasks, activities and the historical code path taken, its debugging trace is much closer to how you, as an engineer, think about your code.
-
Admittedly, both the signature and the return values of invoke feel a bit clumsy. That’s becaus we’re currently working with the low-level interfaces.
-
-
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com
-
Vaughan, A. (n.d.). Global CO2 emissions have already rebounded above pre-pandemic levels. New Scientist. Retrieved 3 March 2021, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269628-global-co2-emissions-have-already-rebounded-above-pre-pandemic-levels/
-
-
trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
-
Please note that the I/O DSL is only providing the most-used requirements. Feel free to use the low-level taskWrap API to build your own variable mapping with different scoping techniques.
-
- Feb 2021
-
trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
-
Please note that this is a higher-level debugging tool that does not confront you with a 200-lines stack trace the way Ruby does it, but pinpoints the exceptional code and locates the problem on a task level. This is possible due to you structuring code into higher abstractions, tasks and activities.
-
-
trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
-
They are an abstraction that will save code and bugs, and introduce strong conventions.
-
-
github.com github.com
-
When compiling assets with Sprockets, Sprockets needs to decide which top-level targets to compile, usually application.css, application.js, and images.
-
-
www.morozov.is www.morozov.is
-
The DSL has a weaker control over the program’s flow — we can’t have conditions unless we add a special step
-
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
Each of the programming language generations aims to provide a higher level of abstraction of the internal computer hardware details, making the language more programmer-friendly, powerful, and versatile.
-
-
trailblazer.to trailblazer.to
-
Using a terminus to indicate a certain outcome - in turn - allows for much stronger interfaces across nested activities and less guessing! For example, in the new endpoint gem, the not_found terminus is then wired to a special “404 track” that handles the case of “model not found”. The beautiful thing here is: there is no guessing by inspecting ctx[:model] or the like - the not_found end has only one meaning!
-
-
opensource.stackexchange.com opensource.stackexchange.com
-
But all of these attempts misunderstand why the Open Source ecosystem is successful as a whole. The ecosystem of fairly standard licenses provides a level playing field that allows collaboration with low friction, and produces massive value for everyone involved – both to those that contribute and to those that don't. It is not without problems (there are many essential but unsexy projects that are struggling with funding), but introducing more friction won't improve the success of this ecosystem – it will just lead to some parts of the ecosystem to break off.
-
- Jan 2021
-
sciencing.com sciencing.com
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
Snower. D. J., (2020), The Socio-Economics of Pandemics Policy. Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved from: https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/pp162/
-
-
docs.google.com docs.google.com
-
From morn to night
We started the poem at the beginning of the day and now end at night. Not only does this show the "circle motif" in this poem - what I mean is how "all things come to a close" and then restart anew - but it also parallels the journey of the youth, from being naive and blissful to being to falling victim to that naivety and becoming unaware of their fictitious bliss in the unknown; the journey leads to isolation from reality.
-
folly=inescapable
Blake shows how youth can be unaware that they have been corrupted. When they are brought down a path of ignorance, they become trapped in the dark, unless a light appears to guide them. Youth have few doubts, and when that is fed into, they continue without doubts, content with not having opposing views and nuance - stuck in their own folly.
-
Doubt is fled=stuck to their opinions
Doubt is fled seems very much like a point on the youths lack of internal questioning. They do not think there is room for doubt, as they must be right - a point made from their lack of understanding the nuance of truth and reality.
-
delight=bliss in not understanding?
Does this mean that there is delight in not understanding truth? It is the youths who are delighted, relating to their lack of experience.
p.s This poem is taken from Selected Poetry and Prose of Blake (section Songs of Experience)
-
- Nov 2020
-
advances.sciencemag.org advances.sciencemag.org
-
Charoenwong, B., Kwan, A., & Pursiainen, V. (2020). Social connections with COVID-19–affected areas increase compliance with mobility restrictions. Science Advances, 6(47), eabc3054. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abc3054
-
-
stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
-
The main reason to use these lower-level components is if you need to customize your form input in some way that isn't supported using TextField.
-
- Oct 2020
-
codesandbox.io codesandbox.io
-
codesandbox.io codesandbox.io
-
-
(One can already destructure the loop variable but using a store obtained that way currently throws an error - Stores must be declared at the top level of the component (this may change in a future version of Svelte))
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. ‘COVID-19 and the Labor Market’. Accessed 6 October 2020. https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13737/.
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. ‘COVID-19 and the Labor Market’. Accessed 6 October 2020. https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13641/.
-
- Sep 2020
-
en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
-
UK Threat Levels. (2020). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UK_Threat_Levels&oldid=949256185
-
- Aug 2020
-
www.thelancet.com www.thelancet.com
-
Chaudhry, R., Dranitsaris, G., Mubashir, T., Bartoszko, J., & Riazi, S. (2020). A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes. EClinicalMedicine, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100464
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus Shock: Evidence from Real Time Surveys. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13183/
-
-
www.medrxiv.org www.medrxiv.org
-
Consiglio, C. R., Cotugno, N., Sardh, F., Pou, C., Amodio, D., Zicari, S., Ruggiero, A., Pascucci, G. R., Rodriguez, L., Santilli, V., Tan, Z., Eriksson, D., Wang, J., Lakshmikanth, T., Marchesi, A., Lakshmikanth, T., Campana, A., Villani, A., Rossi, P., … Brodin, P. (2020). The Immunology of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children with COVID-19. MedRxiv, 2020.07.08.20148353. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.08.20148353
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
Bertoli, S., Guichard, L., & Marchetta, F. (2020). Turnout in the Municipal Elections of March 2020 and Excess Mortality during the COVID-19 Epidemic in France. IZA Discussion Paper, 13335.
-
-
www.cdc.gov www.cdc.gov
-
Razzaghi, H. (2020). Estimated County-Level Prevalence of Selected Underlying Medical Conditions Associated with Increased Risk for Severe COVID-19 Illness—United States, 2018. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 69. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6929a1
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to Disease, Remote Work and Government Response. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 8, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13159/
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
Who Can Work from Home?. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 7, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13197/
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
The Short-Term Economic Consequences of COVID-19: Occupation Tasks and Mental Health in Canada. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 5, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13254/
-
-
covid-19.iza.org covid-19.iza.org
-
Lockdown Accounting. COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13397/
-
- Jul 2020
-
walker-data.com walker-data.com
-
Working with Census microdata. (n.d.). Retrieved July 31, 2020, from https://walker-data.com/tidycensus/articles/pums-data.html
-
-
-
Bordalo, P., Coffman, K. B., Gennaioli, N., & Shleifer, A. (2020). Older People are Less Pessimistic about the Health Risks of Covid-19 (Working Paper No. 27494; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27494
-
-
www.nber.org www.nber.org
-
Liu, L., Moon, H. R., & Schorfheide, F. (2020). Panel Forecasts of Country-Level Covid-19 Infections (Working Paper No. 27248; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27248
-
-
www.thelancet.com www.thelancet.com
-
Barlow, Pepita, Rachel Loopstra, Valerie Tarasuk, and Aaron Reeves. “Liberal Trade Policy and Food Insecurity across the Income Distribution: An Observational Analysis in 132 Countries, 2014–17.” The Lancet Global Health 8, no. 8 (August 1, 2020): e1090–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30263-1.
-
-
osf.io osf.io
-
Arpino, B., Bordone, V., & Pasqualini, M. (2020). Are intergenerational relationships responsible for more COVID-19 cases? A cautionary tale of available empirical evidence [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/y8hpr
-
-
wellcomeopenresearch.org wellcomeopenresearch.org
-
Jeffrey, B., Walters, C. E., Ainslie, K. E. C., Eales, O., Ciavarella, C., Bhatia, S., Hayes, S., Baguelin, M., Boonyasiri, A., Brazeau, N. F., Cuomo-Dannenburg, G., FitzJohn, R. G., Gaythorpe, K., Green, W., Imai, N., Mellan, T. A., Mishra, S., Nouvellet, P., Unwin, H. J. T., … Riley, S. (2020). Anonymised and aggregated crowd level mobility data from mobile phones suggests that initial compliance with COVID-19 social distancing interventions was high and geographically consistent across the UK. Wellcome Open Research, 5, 170. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15997.1
-
-
www.medrxiv.org www.medrxiv.org
-
Fonseca, S. C., Rivas, I., Romaguera, D., Quijal-Zamorano, M., Czarlewski, W., Vidal, A., Fonseca, J. A., Ballester, J., Anto, J. M., Basagana, X., Cunha, L. M., & Bousquet, J. (2020). Association between consumption of vegetables and COVID-19 mortality at a country level in Europe. MedRxiv, 2020.07.17.20155846. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.17.20155846
-
-
-
Bosancianu, C. M., Dionne, K. Y., Hilbig, H., Humphreys, M., Kc, S., Lieber, N., & Scacco, A. (2020). Political and Social Correlates of Covid-19 Mortality [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ub3zd
-
-
psyarxiv.com psyarxiv.com
-
Fatfouta, R., & Oganian, Y. (2020). Bargaining under social distancing requirements: Effects of face masks on socio-economic decision-making in the COVID-19 pandemic [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cn7by
-
-
-
Does a non- negligible failure rate affect the security of TLS?
-
- Jun 2020
-
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
-
Henley, J. (2020, June 6). Merkel among winners as Europeans give verdict on anti-Covid battles. The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/06/no-european-leader-is-safe-as-public-lose-faith-in-coronavirus-responses
-
- May 2020
-
gitlab.com gitlab.com
-
I think this goes against the Keep It Simple mentality and the Low Level Of Shame that we should have when we contribute.
-
- Mar 2020
-
tools.ietf.org tools.ietf.org
-
This is acceptable because the standard security levels are primarily driven by much simpler, symmetric primitives where the security level naturally falls on a power of two. For asymmetric primitives, rigidly adhering to a power-of-two security level would require compromises in other parts of the design, which we reject.
-
-
stats.idre.ucla.edu stats.idre.ucla.edu
-
Factors that affect power
Factors that affect power.
-
- Sep 2019
-
link.springer.com link.springer.com
-
Variation in Rates of Fatal Police Shootings across US States:the Role of Firearm Availability
Hello! This article is about the relationship between firearm prevalence (the IV) and the rates of fatal police shootings (the DV). The authors hypothesize that the greater the prevalence of firearms, the grater the rates of fatal police shooting.
This article follows the classical structure of social science research -- abstract, introduction, literature review/theory, research design, findings, and conclusions.
-
- May 2019
-
icandochemistry.com icandochemistry.com
-
ICanDoChemistry provides quality O level Secondary Chemistry Tuition in Singapore, at Bishan and Pasir Ris.
Check out on-the-go revision notes in the website.
-
-
icandochemistry.com icandochemistry.com
-
ICanDoChemistry provides quality O level Secondary Chemistry Tuition in Singapore, at Bishan and Pasir Ris.
-
- Feb 2019
-
www.gutenberg.org www.gutenberg.org
-
Finally, and for the encouragement of people troubled with accents that cut them off from all high employment,
What's wrong with accents?
-
But if the play makes the public aware that there are such people as phoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in England at present, it will serve its turn.
Why are phoneticians the most important in England
-
Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel,
Why does pygmalion need a sequel?
-
-
ia800203.us.archive.org ia800203.us.archive.org
-
PICKERING[zait/?enthusiasm]IcamefromIndiatomeetyou.HIGGINS.IwasgoingtoIndiatomeetyou.
Is this a Coincidence or perhaps being lucky!
-
IammyselfastudentofIndiandia-lects
Is the Gentleman a student of Indian Dialects?
-
ctIPygmalion.11THENOTETAKER.Yousccthiscrcaturcwithherkerb-stoneEnglish:theEnglishthatwillkeepherintheguttertotheendofherdays.Well,sir,inthreemonthsIcouldpassthatgirloffasaduchessatanambassador'sgardenparty.Icouldevengetheraplaceaslady'smaidorshopassistant,whichrequiresbetterEnglish
Did the Note Taker want to Teach the Flower Girl to speak better English?
-
THEMOTHER.Howdoyouknowthatmyson'snameisFreddy,prayrTHEFLOWE
Who is Freddy ?
-
CoventGardenat11.15p.m.
setting?
-
Cabwhistlesblowijigfranticallyinalldirections.Pedes-triansrunningforshelterintothemarketandundertheporticoofSt.Paul'sChurch,wheretherearealreadyseveralpeople,
Why where people going crazy ?
-
CoventGardenat11.15p.m.Torrentsofheavysummerrain
What type of weather and season took placed during Act 1
-
Pygmalion:aRomanceinFiveActs:byBernardShaw
Who is this play by ?
-
Pygmalion:aRomanceinFiveActs:byBernardShaw
What is the name of this Play ?
-
- Oct 2018
-
blog.geosemantik.de blog.geosemantik.de
-
Instead of continuing the millennia old search for the universal ontology, different types of ontologies have been proposed in computer science. [.] [C]lassification of ontologies [is] based on their granularity and [their] thematic scope [differs] into top-level, domain, task, and application ontologies ... (Hitzler, Janowicz, Berg-Cross, Obrst, Sheth, Finin, Cruz 2012)
-
-
chem.libretexts.org chem.libretexts.org
-
In contrast to his concept of a simple circular orbit with a fixed radius, orbitals are mathematically derived regions of space with different probabilities of having an electron.
In this case, the QM model allows for probabilistic radii, not fixed radii, and the quantization is the energy level. An electron with principal quantum number n = 2 will always have quantized energy corresponding to \( E = R(1/n^2) \), but the exact minimal and maximal radial distance from the nucleus is not specified as in the Bohr model of the atom. Similar to the Bohr model though, the most probable radial distance is quantifiable, and that is the radius the electron is most likely to inhabit, however it will be found elsewhere at other times.
-
- Aug 2018
-
www.numbeo.com www.numbeo.com
-
Level of crime24.83
24.83
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
- Jun 2018
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
JC Chemistry tuition anytime, anywhere
the future of education with ChemGuru Online. Learning Chemistry at anywhere with internet access
-
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
good Chemistry tuition teacher
Maverick has the top credentials to give high quality h2 chemistry tuition
-
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
Stellar track record
excellent results with 70 to 80% distinction since 2010
-
- May 2018
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
video lessons
A Level Chemistry Syllabus, H2 Chemistry Syllabus video lessons
-
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
top A Level Chemistry tutor
Maverick Puah is a top A Level Chemistry Tutor and YouTube Educator in Singapore
-
-
chemistryguru.com.sg chemistryguru.com.sg
-
Best H2 Chemistry Tuition
Chemistry Guru provides quality JC / IP Chemistry Tuition in Singapore
-
-
www.makingsense-sg.com www.makingsense-sg.com
-
O Level Tuition Centre - Making Sense
-
-
www.makingsense-sg.com www.makingsense-sg.com
-
Chemistry Tutors A’ Level - Making Sense
-
- Jun 2017
-
cwiki.apache.org cwiki.apache.org
-
the High Level Consumer is provided to abstract most of the details of consuming events from Kafka.
-
- Jun 2016
-
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
-
Title: The dying breed of craftsmen behind the tools that make scientific research possible - LA Times
Keywords: government-funded research opened, snake glass coils, fuse glass beakers, organic chemistry, research hubs, world war, experienced glassblowers, glassblowers remain, church laboratory, befallen glassblowing, glass manufacturer, glass technicians, cost-cutting world, jobs tend, entry-level jobs
Summary: Hunkered down in the sub-basement of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology, underneath a campus humming with quantum teleportation devices, gravity wave detectors and neural prosthetics, Rick Gerhart chipped away at a broken flask.<br>Peering into the dancing flames, he examined his work for wrinkles — imperfections invisible to the untrained eye.<br>“It not only should be functional,” he said, smoothing the rim with a carbon rod, “it has to look good.”<br>Here in Caltech’s one-man glass shop, where Gerhart transforms a researcher’s doodles into intricate laboratory equipment, craftsmanship is king.<br>In a cost-cutting world of machines and assembly plants, few glassblowers remain with the level of mastery needed at research hubs like Caltech.<br>“He’s a somewhat dying breed,” said Sarah Reisman, who relied on Gerhart to create 20 maze-like contraptions for her synthetic organic chemistry lab.<br>Rick Gerhart, scientific glass blower at Caltech, has been helping to make scientific research possible at the campus since 1992.<br>(Dillon Deaton/Los Angeles Times)<br>Similar fates have befallen glassblowing at UCLA and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<br>Across the U.S., those who land such jobs tend to stay until retirement.<br>He chuckled: “Looks like we have to steal somebody.”<br>To master scientific glassblowing, proper training and apprenticeships are key.<br>In addition to the hands-on training, which requires a knack for precision as well as coordination, students must take courses in organic chemistry, math and computer drawing.<br>So it really takes a long time to get to a position like Rick’s.”<br>Gerhart enrolled in the Salem program in 1965, after dropping out of college to give his father’s profession a try.<br>The craft, which dates back to alchemy in the 2nd century, took hold in America by the 1930s and 1940s, after World War I cut off glassware supply from Germany.<br>The profession peaked after World War II, when booms in oil and government-funded research opened up numerous glassblowing jobs in many a lab.<br>At first, Gerhart hopped around a number of firms and worked alongside more experienced glassblowers at TRW Inc. and UCLA.<br>When he settled at Caltech in 1992, the glassblower before him handed over the key to the shop and said, “Good luck.” On his own, Gerhart pieced together his patchwork of experience to twist and fuse glass beakers and snake glass coils over vacuum chambers.<br>“That’s when I really started learning.”<br>Social media videos have sparked new interest in the craft, Briening said.<br>But while his students have no trouble getting entry-level jobs at companies like Chemglass Life Sciences, a glass manufacturer, and General Electric Global Research, rarely are universities willing to budget the overhead costs for more than one glassblower, if any.<br>“Years ago, all the universities had two or three people,” Briening said.<br>One of the few resources left for the next generation is the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, a close-knit group that hosts national workshops and swaps ideas when a researcher’s custom order stumps one of its members.<br>Its members also serve as Caltech’s best — and possibly only — options once Gerhart leaves.<br>“Rick’s one of those glass technicians that I put in the top 5%,” Ponton said.<br>
-