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Metallic foam is already well understood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.tms.org/pubs/journ...

(see especially Figure 4 on that page which REALLY looks like metallic wood; the stuff in the article doesn't so much)

What makes the the linked article interesting is the novel manufacturing method.

Ugh fuck u slashdot

link for above

Most of the recent advances in metallurgy are coming from amorphous solids. Normally metals form crystalline grains. I know, it's weird to think of metals as crystals, but if you slice them and look at them under a microscope, they're grains of metal crystals of uniform atomic arrangement. These grains give metals a lot of their characteristics. For instance, work tempering (metal getting harder and more brittle the more you bend it) comes from these grains sliding against each other with each bend, until the edges and corners of the grains catch against each other and won't slide anymore. The size, shape, arrangement, and atomic composition of these crystals is what gives each metal and its heat treatment its unique characteristics.

An amorphous solid is cooled from a liquid to a solid so quickly it doesn't have time to form crystalline structures. This gives the material different characteristics from its crystalline form, some better, some worse. From the name, "Flash Bainite," I'm guessing forming this stuff involves rapid cooling of the steel in a controlled manner to produce just the right combination of crystalline structure mixed with amorphous steel to yield the higher strength associated with amorphous solids, without the extreme flexibility and lack of ductility (won't stay in the new shape). This ability to rapidly cool materials in a precise and controlled manner has been a recent development due to advances in computer control. In the theoretical sense, it is easy. But actually doing it in practice on an industrial scale has been very difficult until recently.

"In the United States, there is a duty to disclose to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office any known prior art that is material to the patentability of any claim of a pending U.S. patent application. " from http://www.tms.org/pubs/journa...

Yes, any known prior art. There's no duty on the patent applicant to search for any art. See MPEP 704.01. And accordingly, the statement "the patent office assumes when a patent is filed for that company did the work to see if it was done before" is false. As I said.

You are a lying troll. The examiner examins the prior art, but doesn't search for more, because the duty is on the applicant to disclose.

You're absolutely wrong. Abusive, too, which is hilarious, given how wrong you are.

Even from your own link " then searches the prior art as disclosed in patents"

I find it amusing that you call me a "lying troll", and then two sentences later quote out of context. Here's the full quote: "The examiner, after having obtained a thorough understanding of the invention disclosed and claimed in the nonprovisional application, then searches the prior art as disclosed in patents and other published documents, i.e., nonpatent literature (NPL). Any document used in the rejection of a claim is called a reference."

They search all published documents, including via Google Scholar.

So they "search" for the prior art that's disclosed, and are not instructed to search for new or undisclosed prior art. You are 100% wrong, and have been corrected on this multiple times, so I can only assume you are a lying troll (a genuine error would have been recognized and corected - even your own cite proves you wrong).

The part you clipped out from that quote actually proves you wrong, as it explicitly describes how they search beyond just patents.

But here's the best part of your post:

Posted anonymously because I also modded your lying trolls as such.

Re:I'm not entirely sure how it merited a patent i (Score:2)
by AK Marc (707885)

BWAAHAHAHAAAA!

"In the United States, there is a duty to disclose to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office any known prior art that is material to the patentability of any claim of a pending U.S. patent application. " from http://www.tms.org/pubs/journa...

You are a lying troll. The examiner examins the prior art, but doesn't search for more, because the duty is on the applicant to disclose. Even from your own link " then searches the prior art as disclosed in patents" So they "search" for the prior art that's disclosed, and are not instructed to search for new or undisclosed prior art. You are 100% wrong, and have been corrected on this multiple times, so I can only assume you are a lying troll (a genuine error would have been recognized and corected - even your own cite proves you wrong).

Posted anonymously because I also modded your lying trolls as such.

It is said it could cleanly cut through a falling silk scarf.

I thought at first that the manufacturing process was lost because it was kept a trade secret. However, this paper finds that the superior properties of the steel come from impurities that were present in the original iron mine. When iron from a different mine used used, the steelsmiths were unable to reproduce the original's properties. Within a generation, production was entirely abandoned.

You completely fabricated your statement

Here's the reference:

Even if you had a wootz ingot forging a blade was still a challenge, and in fact 19th and early 20th century smiths failed in spite of numerous attempts. Only quite recently has the process become nearly fully understood.

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html [tms.org]

So much for fabricated statements.

blah blah blah. You're an idiot. The swords were made from the same steel. There was no attempt to duplicate Damascus blades, but rather the Damascus blades and the Ulfberht blades were made from the same steel.

It is funny that you feel the need to start your incorrect statement that "it was all about the steel" with "you are an idiot". Maybe it was your subconscious warning us that BS was about to follow.

the real tricky part was in making the steel ingots which were made exclusively in India,

Even if you had a wootz ingot forging a blade was still a challenge, and in fact 19th and early 20th century smiths failed in spite of numerous attempts. Only quite recently has the process become nearly fully understood.

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html

Quote from the show:

ALAN WILLIAMS: The swords were far better than any other swords made, before or since, in Europe. And these must have been extraordinarily valuable to their contemporaries, because of their properties.

Except for the Damascus sword, which was fabricated in several places in the Muslim empire, including, famously, in Toledo, Spain, where to this date there is a blade making industry.

Not only that, but the Viking sword was merely an attempt to duplicate the quality of the Saracen sword.

Not that it matters, but just to set the record straight, "damascus" steel, just like the "Arabic" numeral system, was neither invented in Damascus nor in Arabia nor in Spain. Both the numeral system and the steel was invented in India. It should be more accurately called Wootz steel. This steel making technique technique was mastered and perfected by ironsmiths in South India around 300BC. The original technique also died with the ironsmiths over time, and has was only recently replicated with success some years ago.

References:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html
http://archaeology.about.com/od/wterms/g/wootz.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647868/wootz-steel

The first article is the most informative and comprehensive of all.

To quote from the articles linked above,
"Wootz is the name given to an exceptional grade of iron ore steel first made in southern and south central India and Sri Lanka perhaps as early as 300 BC. Wootz is formed using a crucible to melt, burn away impurities and add important ingredients, and it contains a high carbon content (nearly 1.5%).

Although iron making was part of Indian culture by as early as 1100 BC (at sites such as Hallur), the earliest evidence for the processing of iron in a crucible has been identified at the site of Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu province, and possibly also at Andhra Pradesh. The term 'wootz' appears in English in the late 18th century, and is probably derived from ukku, the word for crucible steel in the Indian language Kannada, and possibly from 'ekku' in old Tamil.

Wootz steel is the primary component of Damascan steel. Syrian blacksmiths used wootz ingots to produce extraordinary steel weaponry throughout the middle ages. "

For the record, I'm not a steel expert by any stretch, but I do love Japanese cooking knives, especially AS sandwitched core ones, and was really disappointed to learn that my first flashy "Damascus" pattern knife was only chemically etched and not a true damascus pattern.

doesn't mean it is valid. that is what the courts are for. Its like getting a license to drive. you get your license and take the car out for a spin. you get a DUI (lose your patent case) and you lose your license.

  http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9007.html

At one point in history, aluminum was very challenging to get in a pure form, and was more valuable than silver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium

It was once considered a precious metal more valuable than gold. Napoleon III, Emperor of France, is reputed to have given a banquet where the most honoured guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold.[46][47] The Washington Monument was completed, with the 100 ounce (2.8 kg) aluminium capstone being put in place on December 6, 1884, in an elaborate dedication ceremony. It was the largest single piece of aluminium cast at the time, when aluminium was as expensive as silver.[48]

The [48] footnote links to http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9511/Binczewski-9511.html , which has a very in-depth look at the origins of the monument's capstone. It addresses Aluminum's value:

The 1884 price of aluminum was approximately $1 per ounce, the same as the then prevailing market price of silver, which was considered a precious metal. The world production of new mine silver in 1884 was approximately 2,834 tonnes. Best reported estimates for world aluminum production in 1884 were 3.6 tonnes, most of it in France and England and some in Germany....

Aluminum's relatively high price of $1 per ounce ($16 per lb.) was directly related to the high cost and difficult chemical reduction process then in use to produce it.

I think it's fair to say that it was valuable for more than novelty reasons. Its use as the capstone was somewhat of a whim, but its cost was high at the time. (Much higher than expected, in fact.)

Actually, it had nothing to do with aluminum being precious, but rather that most metal manufacturing (until the advent of CNC milling in the 1950s) was done by casting, and pure aluminum doesn't cast well.

It was also a relatively expensive material because the technology to cheaply extract aluminum from aluminum oxide was still in its infancy (the modern Hall-Héroult process having not been invented until two years later, in 1886, with the previous technologies being either extremely expensive, difficult to use in large quantities, or both), but this was in large part due to lack of demand, which was in large part due to the fact that it was historically difficult to cast pure aluminum precisely and get yields comparable to that of other metals or aluminum alloys.

See The Point of a Monument: A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument for details.

Still, the point remains that its cost was largely due to its novelty.

9% of all engineers are female.

http://www.tms.org/students/ProPref/9802/womenEngineers.html

I think you find this trend in other "brainy" fields too, not just IT.

So it may be more to the point that it is easier to get a man
to go do the stressful job and for them to do something else.

Bullshit comes in 31 flavors just like Baskin & Robbins.

"Now imagine the archaeologists sifting through an ancient Roman village and finding an obviously non-naturally-occurring object made out of an advanced alloy in a layer suggesting that it is thousands of years old."

Just because we can't replicate what our ancestors have done doesn't mean our ancestors had help from aliens.

Damasucus steel - "Unfortunately, the technique of producing wootz Damascus steel blades is a lost art. The date of the last blades produced with the highest-quality damascene patterns is uncertain, but is probably around 1750; it is unlikely that blades displaying low-quality damascene patterns were produced later than the early 19th century. Debate has persisted in the metallurgy community over the past 200 years as to how these blades were made and why the surface pattern appeared. Research efforts over the years have claimed the discovery of methods to reproduce wootz Damascus steel blades, but all of these methods suffer from the same problem--modern bladesmiths have been unable to use the methods to reproduce the blades. The successful reproduction of wootz Damascus blades requires that blades be produced that match the chemical composition, possess the characteristic damascene surface pattern, and possess the same internal microstructure that causes the surface pattern."

up yours, dumbass.

so much for your common knowledge. imagine that, a dumb ass who lacks any real legal knowledge. that's why fucktards like you need to put a "ianal" in your posts.

The law restricts what a patent holder may do with his government-granted monopoly. For example, the patentee cannot enter into a licensing deal lasting longer than the remaining term on his patent. Nor can a patentee try to corner a particular market by buying up all the patents necessary to compete in that field. (It would be another story if the patentee innovated all the patents, but not if he just bought all of them.)

If IBM sued Amazon partly because Amazon wouldn't buy IBM hardware, then this is arguably an unlawful extension of IBM's patent power. I cannot license a patent on software, for example, on terms that change depending on how much hardware I buy from you. That would be bundling, which is bad.

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matte rs-9208.html

I think Verhoeven got it right. Read all about it at http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html.

In the article, John Verhoeven is given a small amount of space to relate his experiences with Wootz. As a matter of fact, both he and Al Pendray, a master Bladesmith from Florida, succeeded in rediscovering the methodology for creating Wootz "cakes," or ingots, that are in turn forged into blades. I had the pleasure of talking with Mr Pendray after a demonstration at the ABANA Conference in St Louis a number of years ago. He brought samples of the Wootz cakes and they are nothing like what you'd expect from an Ultra-High carbon steel. The carbon content in these ingots is higher than "cast Iron." Most cast Iron items, such as frying pans, are closer to cast Steel - possessing over a percent of Carbon in it. What was fascinating was seeing the forging process. Mr Pendray demonstrated some of the difficulties he encountered working the materials. He said that he had to unlearn traditional bladesmithing techniques, then create a process for working this stuff. During the demo, it became apparent why. The steel is not completely homogenous - in fact, it looked like wood with worm holes! These created a very entertaining forging challenge, as the material could begin to fall apart around these areas. Ultimately, what he and Verhoeven said was that the "watering" that people had thought was created by laminating steel was the way certain parts of the steel precipitated out. No doubting the cutting ability, though - this stuff makes a wickedly sharp blade. If anyone else is really curious, head on over to Google and search Al Pendray and Wootz together. Here's a sample... http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html It's an amazing eye opener and, I think, one of the most important rediscoveries in modern times.

Gah, the wootz steel was made in India. All the Syrians did was lend their name to it. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html/ is a chemical analysis of various Damascus steel swords and the conclusion by the authors is that the steel used has impurities that show the origin of the metal ingots as coming from India.

You can't use patents to forestall all methods of doing something. So, if Microsoft asserts a patent claim, someone else CAN write new non-infringing code as a matter of law.

The link below shows that there are strict limits on what a patent holder can do. Since Microsoft already has antitrust convictions their ability to kill linux with patents is constrained.

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matte rs-9208.html

"In a case involving hydraulic pumps for use in oil wells, one company purchased 72 dominant patents in the field; the court ruled that it was not possible for someone else to make a competitive product without infringing one of the patents. The court stated that while there was nothing inherently wrong with purchasing a patent and enforcing it against an infringer, the intent and underlying purpose of accumulating such a large number of patents amounted to a violation of antitrust laws and patent misuse." So, you can have a valid patent, but if you're coming to the court with unclean hands, the court will reject your claim.

I was going to talk about how the top of the Washington Monument was made of aluminum because at the time it was nearly as valuable as gold, but it turns out that that's somewhat of an urban myth. Here's a really interesting article about the Monument and the lightning-suppression system they designed for it.

In any case, the price of aluminum and titanium (and for that matter, beryllium, lithium, and other exotic metals) has plummetted as better production systems have come into use.

I've read several essays discussing t-shirts, and how their design echoes manufacturing costs. When the price of a quality t-shirt is maybe double the price of a cheap one, the only way to distinguish a DKNY or Old Navy t-shirt from a cheap Hanes shirt you buy at WalMart is the (copyrighted) image on the front. You're not buying the shirt, you're buying something that bears a copyright which is known to be expensive. So also with diamonds. Wired had an interesting article about synth diamond production a couple of years ago, proposing two to four orders of magnitude cheaper diamonds for fine jewelry usage (meaning: can't be detected as synth by any known tests.) I'd love to have some diamond lenses for some of my projects, so I'm happy with these developments.

You might find this page interesting:

http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/Fire/News/wtc.h tml

Many of the links are broken, but with the titles and the publications in which they appeared you should be able to find those references at a library with a good archive of that publication.

One link that isn't broken is "An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7". That's an interesting letter about the steel from WTC building 7, and it also includes a link to another article about the main towers:

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Ea gar-0112.html

While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse.

Try this for an explanation.

You apparently missed Iglassware, Bill's contribution to measured drinking, and his role in the JunkYard Wars, at http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0310/Byko/Byk o-0310.html

At 9:40 a.m., as workers went about their business in the Catholic War Relief Office on the 79th floor, the B-25 crashed into that office at 322 kilometers per hour. The impact reportedly tore off the bomber's wings, leaving a five meter by six meter hole in the building. One engine was catapulted through the Empire State Building, emerging on the opposite side and crashing through the roof of a neighboring building. The second engine and part of the bomber's landing gear fell through an elevator shaft. When the plane hit, its fuel tanks were reported to have exploded, engulfing the 79th floor in flames.

The 102-story building shook with the initial impact, according to witnesses, but within three months, the damage was repaired at a cost of about $1 million.

I totally agree.

As a structural engineer i have been to too many countries where the education of their engineers leaves a lot to be desired. This shows in the quality of the end product.

Engineering is not meant to be a glamorous job. The money is good, but the reason its good is because lives depend on it. If you fail to engineer something correctly and leave design flaws, then there can be disastrous consequences. If you need to make it difficult at the college or university level, then so be it. If you cant handle the pressure in university, then there will be no way you will be able to handle the pressure when working in the field. I would rather not use the structure some hack from Bovine University created because the course had become easier.

It is not the type of field where you can allow complacency to sift through, because if you do, major disasters can occur.

...does this ruling then mean that if you were selling a program that could read/write or convert the data of a competing program, you can't even tell your prospective customers in an AdWords ad that you offered an easy way to migrate away from your competitor? That is what I read into the original linked article.

If that is true, then wow, what a way to lock in an existing customer base. Just "vigorously enforce" your trademarked name. No need to worry about direct competitors comparing themselves against you. Of course, the direct competitors still have the option to obliquely refer to your business, but this recent ruling seems to open up a grey area to me because it appears to stray from the original intent of trademark protection and start to add levels of indirection to protect. Just how indirect is indirect enough?

This ruling says it is illegal to mention a trademarked name in the ad copy itself if it violates the "likelihood of confusion" test. Initially, you would get slapped down under this doctrine if you infringed the trademark in such a manner that the infringement would mislead consumers. Now, the reports of these rulings (not the opinions themselves, which I'm still trying to find) seem to extend the protection of the trademark from misleading usage to saying protection is granted over any usage in ad copy whatsoever, regardless of context, misleading or not.

So if my grocery business shows an ad with a receipt from your business and right next to it is a receipt from your grocery business, and both show a purchase of the same brand type of soup, that is now illegal in the United States because of the trademark on your business' name?

I'm hoping that Brinkema's phrasing of "solely with regard to those sponsored links that use GEICO's trade marks in their headings or text." limits the expansion of precedent and only rules on the specific ads that used Geico's name in the ad copy. Need to read the court documents to know for sure. If someone knows the PACER case number, please post it up here, because I could not find the GEICO v. Google case in the Eastern Virginia U.S. District Court (there are four cases listed for Google, but none involve Geico).

I suggest you check out this link

The subject of claims must be described somewhere in the specification, including any material "incorporated by reference" but need not be explicit in the abstact.

Why is this useful? For example, what may have been considered to be a minor variation on the original idea and was described in the specification has become valuable. So new claims have been drafted to address that point.

The big advantage of a continuation is that the original early priority date is maintained, making it harder to invalidate with prior art. As others have mentioned, it is the inventors/attorney's duty to present to the PTO any possible prior art they know of, and the patent is stronger if all that material has already been considered by the PTO.

The top of the Washingon Monument in Washington DC was a tiny aluminum pyramind that cost $225.

Same reasoning - at the time, pure aluminum was extraordinarily expensive.

Yes, actually. This isn't just some sand scooped off a beach. Solar panel grade silicon comes from the leftovers after semiconductor grade silicon users have picked through their crystal wafers, which is why there is a shortage in the first place, since there is a narrow range of quality ("almost" good enough for semiconductors). As for titanium, my 30 year old encyclopeda says its one of the 10 most common metals on the planet. Titanium Oxide is cheaply produced and used liberally in paint.

Titanium is malleable when hot (meaning you can flatten it into foil). So producing titanium foil is probably not a difficult task, depending on how hot "hot" is. (Though the article mentions that the titanium foil used is thinner than household aluminum foil. The process looks like it would be easy anyway, but time consuming.)

As for your post on waste products, the most common smelting procedure in use works without catalyst or flux to produce pig-iron and Titanium Oxide, though this process is common because of its use in paint. This process was recently developed for producing metallic titanium, its outputs are salt (NaCl), titanium, and whatever impurities get washed into the liquid sodium stream and removed later.

I think you're stretching it. It's obvious that their compound filters are supposed to contain a variety of possible combinations of filtering rules, not all of them at once.

Kodak has filed a lawsuit against Sony alleging that 10 of its patents have been used without permission.

Again, I can find no information on this on the Net, but I remember that even with the huge settlement that they paid out, they still came out on top. Their customers, of course, were screwed as Kodak was prohibited from selling film for the cameras after the trial.

Does a company that so blatantly disregards other peoples rights deserve any itself? If they are willing to make illicit profits from someone else's patents, why should the government enforce theirs?

So where is all the high value aluminum trinkets not obtained through bauxite processing? Aluminum use to be a precious metal, and now it isn't. I'm sure naturally occurring aluminum has some crystalline properties that processed aluminum doesn't, and yet there is no market for "natural aluminum".

Check out this site for complete details but to lift a few important parts:

a person is not entitled to a patent if the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the date of invention by the applicant for the patent

But later there is a brief comment:

Naturally, if an inventor abandons the invention, he or she cannot obtain a patent.

And finally in support of M$'s patent, and likely the way they got it:

In a fast-changing world, finding a single piece of prior art which discloses the same invention as that claimed in a patent is not the most likely scenario. What is far more likely to occur is that the prior art will be something similar but not identical to the patented invention. The patent statutes also provide for this situation--in a negative manner. Specifically, section 103 of the code provides that a patent may not be obtained "though the invention is not identically disclosed or described [in the prior art] if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." The test which is posed by this section is whether a worker of ordinary skill, knowing the prior art, would have found the patented invention obvious.

"...a person is not entitled to a patent if the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the date of invention by the applicant for the patent. If, for example, an invention is known or is being used by someone in the United States, another person who makes the same invention at a later date may not obtain a patent. Prior knowledge or use in a different country, however, is not a bar to a patent application in the United States. In contrast, a prior patent or a printed publication anywhere in the world will bar an applicant for patent in the United States if it appeared before the date of the applicant's invention."

Woo woo, a conspiracy nut who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Structural steel begins to soften significantly at 500 degrees celsius, and has lost 90% of its strength at 800 degrees celsius.

Estimates of the temperature inside the WTC range from 600 celsius to 800 degrees celsius.

Incidentally, the simplistic "beams melted" is not the probable cause of the structural failure discussed in the FEMA Building Failure Report and in the civil engineer community-- rather, softening of beams and floor joist clips, as well as nonuniform expansion of the structure from the heat, allowed the structure to buckle outwards, and once one floor fell, the floor beneath could never have taken that much of a dynamic load.

Read a summary written for the metals and civil engineering community.

Depends on the person.

We think that we are the only ones who've ever had running septic systemsYou mean like the Romans? who moved mountains You mean the pyramids? , and now, it appears, to use binary [maybe we're the first, maybe not. Base-60 was Babylonian, from which we get our hour. Chinese developed base-5 music, base ten is from our hands. Cultures develop number systems that are useful to them.]

The more we learn, the more we forget. Nice aphorism, but is it true? For example, who can tell me the best mix of Bronze? Start Here, once you know your application. Your "best mix" is always application-dependent. Not many now. No, just most ESMs and metallurgical engineers. There can't be more than 30 of those that graduate from each Tech University each year, so that would be about 120,000 in America. How about what's best to plant after sowing rye for two years? Ummm. That would be Lithuanian farmers. Their biggest crop is rye, possibly after potatoes, so they definitely would know. But it depends on a lot of things -- start here. But I expect most Aggie schools could tell you, depending on where you live.

As we move into a more technological society, there is quite a bit of knowledge we are losing. Not true at all. You just are not aware of it. The knowledge is being maintained and built on every single year. This is largely because of population growth. Get a population crash, and I grant that it is possible for information to be lost, though that information that is *preserved* in books can later be relearned. Books, not computers, since books last a good bit longer, provided that the paper is non-acidic.

Not only that, but information which *was* lost, due to population crashes, is being rediscovered through modern technology.

So we aren't losing information -- far from it. We are keeping the information, and gaining it. But you, yourself, like any other one person, cannot keep abreast of it all, so you *think* we are losing information. And that, really, is my point.

A couple of trivialities:

I learned about "paddy wagon" in Chicago, which is well-known for St. Patrick's Day drunkenness. With that and spades, I figure if I'm going to insult someone, I want to do it intentionally.

On gems -- the aluminum oxide base is called corundum and can be either ruby or sapphire. The tidbit I know about domestic corundum is that it was used to make the finishing touch on the National Monument, a cap made of aluminum, at the time the hot new metal and expensive as heck.

On Al and corrosion. (I'll read most anything.)

I have no doubt that within the next 30 years, you will be able to buy a flawless diamond the size of your head for about the same cost as a lump of coal. The techniques for synthesizing such diamonds would probably be there today if it weren't for the constant efforts of the DeBeers cartel to shut down all research on those fronts. But you can only slow down progress for so long, the state-of-the art is getting better (and cheaper) every day.

Don't believe it? It's happened before. Aluminum used to be a rare and exotic metal, until we discovered better extraction techniques. The top of the Washington Monument was supposed to be made out of aluminum, until it was stolen because the cost of aluminum was about equal to the price of silver! Of course now we throw alumnium cans away when we can't find a recycling bin.

The point is, of course, not that you shouldn't buy a diamond, it's just that you shouldn't expect its value (or rarity, or symbolism of your love, or "specialness", or whatever) to be lasting when we're probably going to be able to crank out diamonds for the same cost as class beads. Buy a small diamond for its (current but temporary) symbolic value, if anything.

Reading and Understanding Patent Claims

How to infringe a patent and get away with it

Patent Claim Interpretation

I don't recall the actual buildings, but I believe some monument has an Al top part

You're thinking of the Washington Monument. Apparently it cost $225 (in 1884) and was actually intended as part of a lightning rod system for the structure, not as a tribute. (Not as good of a story, I admit!)

A submarine's hull is normally constructed of steel, or exceptionally of titanium. Special High Yield [HY] steel alloys have been developed to increase the diving depth of submarines, although the improved depth performance of these alloys imposes a price of increased fabrication challenges. These special steels are denominated by their yield stress in thousands of pounds per square inch -- thus HY-80 steel has a yield stress of 80,000 pounds per square inch [corresponding to a depth of 1,800 feet], HY-100 a a yield stress of 100,000 pounds per square inch [corresponding to a depth of 2,250 feet], and so on.

During World War II, American fleet submarines normally operated at a depth of 200 feet, though in emergencies they would dive to a depth of 400 feet.
Post-War American submarines, both conventional and nuclear, had improved designs and were constructed of improved materials [the equivalent of "HY-42"]. These boats had normal operating depths of some 700 feet, and a crush depth of 1100 feet.
The Thresher, the first American submarine constructed of HY-80 steel, reportedly had a normal operating depth of 1,300 feet, roughly two-thirds the crush depth limit imposed by the HY-80 steel.
The Seawolf, the first American submarine constructed of HY-100 steel, is officially claimed by the Navy to have a normal operating depth of "greater than 800 feet," but based on the reported operating depth of the Thresher, it may be assumed that the normally operating depth of the Seawolf is roughly double the official figure.
The Soviet Alfa submarines, constructed of titanium, reportedly had an operating depth of nearly 4,000 feet
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At 9:40 a.m., as workers went about their business in the Catholic War Relief Office on the 79th floor, the B-25 crashed into that office at 322 kilometers per hour. The impact reportedly tore off the bomber's wings, leaving a five meter by six meter hole in the building. One engine was catapulted through the Empire State Building, emerging on the opposite side and crashing through the roof of a neighboring building. The second engine and part of the bomber's landing gear fell through an elevator shaft. When the plane hit, its fuel tanks were reported to have exploded, engulfing the 79th floor in flames.

The original article is not the SciAm one but one in the Journal of Material Science titled The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades . Don't forget to have a look at the high res pictures, they are great!
Best of all this original article is free (in the HTML version)!

The original article is not the SciAm one but one in the Journal of Material Science titled The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades . Don't forget to have a look at the high res pictures, they are great!
Best of all this original article is free (in the HTML version)!

• The arms and armor section of most large museums display examples of Damascus steel weapons. These steels are of two different types, pattern-welded Damascus and wootz Damascus, both of which were apparently first produced prior to around 500. These steels have in common an attractive surface pattern composed of swirling patterns of light-etched regions on a nearly black background. The pattern-welded steels were produced by forge welding alternating sheets of high- and low-carbon steels. This composite was then folded and forge-welded together, and the fold/forge cycle was repeated until a large number of layers was obtained.

The secret of the Iron Pillar, AFAICR, (been a long time since that JOM article) is that it's made from high-purity wrought iron. Actually, elemental iron is very corrosion-resistant. It's the carbon (and up until 1900, phosphorus) which kills the corrosion resistance. This is because rusting is a diffusion-limited process, and the presence of impurities "opens up" the lattice somewhat, in a matter of speaking.

Here is a very in depth article about this whole thing:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html

Quite the interesting read