Lots of "tampon"

I found a Western blot protocol on our French postdoc's bench in which the word "tampon" appears a lot. Naturally intrigued, I looked at it for a minute and came to the conclusion that "tampon" in French must mean "buffer".

It looks like I was correct and not only does it mean "buffer" in the chemical sense, but also the computer science sense. (Babelfish is not much help because these are technical jargons. Google Translate, however, gets it right.)

I'm tempted to re-label all the bottles in the lab to make the American guys uncomfortable.

For a while we had Fetal Bovine Serum tubes labeled not only "FBS" but also "SBF" (suero bovino fetal) and "SVF" (sérum fœtal bovin)...the joys of working in a multicultural lab. It's also very cute to hear D (Colombian lab tech) and W (the French guy), who are a couple, talking to each other in broken English.

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You know, I could just go and write 胎牛血清 (tāi níu xuè qīng) on all the tubes...