the role of defects—or imperfections in crystals—is critical to the advancement of emerging technologies that aim to use organic crystalline materials.

Scientists in the Molecular Design Institute in the NYU Department of Chemistry have been examining defects in crystals called screw dislocations—features on the surface of a crystal that resemble a spiraled ham.

Dislocations were first posed by William Keith Burton, Nicolás Cabrera, and Sir Frederick Charles Frank in the late 1940s as essential for crystal growth. The so-called BCF theory posited that crystals with one screw dislocation would form hillocks that resembled a spiral staircase while those with two screw dislocations would merge and form a structure similar to a Mayan pyramid—a series of stacked "island" surfaces that are closed off from each other.

Using atomic force microscopy, the Molecularof that are. Yet I blog it, hopefully not in vain.

Asian American young women, many of whom are born without
"double eyelids," often have plastic surgery to "Caucasianize"
their eyes. Is it a cosmetic boost or a product of racist culture?
(on WireTap, AlterNet's zine for socially conscious youth)

March 25, 2001

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a modern day Lillian Smith and my new hero. She is a poet, essayist, speaker, activist, a white woman born and raised in the South, and partner of transgender author activist Leslie Feinberg. She tells me not to place her in the role of the speaker, the poet and remove myself from that possibility; that I should tell my truth, and tell it and tell it and not hold her above me but