<div dir="ltr">Hi Carrie,<div><br></div><div>I shipped SEM stubs to Italy and they arrived fine. There are a couple of things you can do to make sure things are safe:</div><div><br></div><div>- use better stub boxes. If your stubs come off easily, then look for better boxes in which they're more snug (we had to do this). You can also get individual stub holders.</div><div>- if you don't have dissociation issues (meaning the box says outside what it contains), you can remove some stubs and ship each box with less stubs in it, and carve ethafoam circles out, so each stub is further contained. This is harder to do when all the stubs are there because carving the ethafoam can be too hard</div><div>- do not put anything on top of the stubs, because the material may rub against them and detach the fossil/sample from the stub. If you're worried about detachment, the ethafoam carvings are a good idea, because they should be as tall as the lid, and prevent anything from getting mixed with the rest (this doesn't prevent detachment, but dissociation in case detachment occurs).</div><div>-finally, we did cavity mounts on thick ethafoam for the stub boxes, so they couldn't move around in the box.</div><div><br></div><div>If you want to discuss this further, we can talk and I can ever show you some of the photos I took. Let me know.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Mariana</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><font color="#351c75" style="font-size:12.8px"><b>MSc. Mariana Di Giacomo</b></font><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font color="#351c75">PhD candidate University of Delaware</font></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font color="#351c75">SI Conservation Fellow - Smithsonian NMNH</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">El vie., 27 jul. 2018 a las 14:13, Carrie A. Eaton (<<a href="mailto:carrie@geology.wisc.edu">carrie@geology.wisc.edu</a>>) escribió:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">Thank you, Doug! It’s absolutely the SEM plugs that I’m imagining popping loose (while squealing “freedom!”) in shipment. But I really like the idea of using a small piece of ethafoam or maybe even something
like Teflon tape to get them to stick in their cases a bit better. Your 100 year old mosquito analogy gave me brow sweats just thinking about it – clearly we fossil folks are spoiled by durability. ;)<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">Cheers,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">C<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">Carrie Eaton, Museum Curator<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">UW Geology Museum<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">1215 West Dayton Street<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">Madison, WI 53706<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d">608.262.4912<br>
</span><b><i><span style="color:#0070c0">twitter @uwgeologymuseum<br>
<a href="http://facebook.com/uwgeologymuseum" target="_blank">facebook.com/uwgeologymuseum</a></span></i></b><span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext"> Nhcoll-l [mailto:<a href="mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces@mailman.yale.edu" target="_blank">nhcoll-l-bounces@mailman.yale.edu</a>]
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Doug Yanega<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, July 27, 2018 11:51 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:nhcoll-l@mailman.yale.edu" target="_blank">nhcoll-l@mailman.yale.edu</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Nhcoll-l] the shipping of wee tiny microfossils<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On 7/27/18 8:50 AM, Carrie A. Eaton wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Hi all,<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Does anyone have a good protocol or a standard policy (part of your CMP) regarding the shipping of very tiny microfossil mounts? Think small things mounted to SEM plugs, conodont slides, little bits that could decide to make a break for
it while being shipped via FedEx, etc. Feel free to email me off list – I’m all ears for suggestions, standard policies/stances on this, etc.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
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<p>Entomological specimens are - arguably, at least - among the most fragile objects one can ship, and we do it all the time. Think about shipping a 100-year old mosquito back and forth in the mail without losing any legs. It mostly comes down to shock absorption.
A box with pinned specimens will normally have about 6 inches of packing material on all sides, like packing peanuts and/or bubble wrap. We use enormous outer boxes, but they weigh next to nothing. The inner packaging details are dependent upon the weight
of the specimens; a box of mosquitoes is just specimens on pins, but a box of grasshoppers or scarab beetles will involve using numerous extra pins to "brace" each specimen from rotating or having their pins pop out of the foam substrate. One loose specimen
becomes a miniature wrecking ball, so there needs to be <b>no possibility of anything moving around freely</b>. A really secure box won't even have more than a few mm of clearance between the heads of the pins and the inner closure, to prevent pins coming
out of the substrate. Parts or whole specimens are often mounted in small glass vials, or on microscope slides, and the same basic rules apply; each vial or slide is in its own compartment in an inner package, with a lot of outer packing material.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p>For SEM stubs, if you can't contain each stub separately (which is what I'd be tempted to do, myself), then you'd need some way to prevent the stubs from popping free; from what I recall of the plastic holders for SEM stubs, there's a significant gap between
the stubs and the lid, and you'd need to put something resilient into that gap, like a small piece of thin bubble wrap, to restrain the stubs. It may not be so much a matter of established protocol, but improvisation.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p>Hope this helps,<u></u><u></u></p>
<pre>-- <u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre>phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre> <a href="http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html" target="_blank">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a><u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre> "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness<u></u><u></u></pre>
<pre> is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82<u></u><u></u></pre>
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