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Motor Made From Liquid Film
KentuckyFC writes "Last year, a group of Iranian physicists made a puzzling discovery. They placed a thin film of water in a small cell and bathed it in two perpendicular electric fields. To their surprise this caused the water to rotate. They called their device a liquid film motor and posted on the web a cool set of movies showing the phenomenon. The puzzle is this: the electric fields are static, so what's driving the motor? Now another group of physicists has the answer: a complex interaction between the electric field, the cell container and the liquid causes water to move along the cell wall. Crucially, it moves in opposite directions on opposite sides of the cell and so sets up a circular flow. The phenomenon works only when friction and surface tension are significant forces so the effect is entirely scale dependent. That's probably why we haven't seen it before and also why it could have important implications for microfluidic devices such as lab-on-a-chip."
Aside from the actual scientific content of the article, I found this lead quote to be interesting with many subtle and not so subtle implications. Discuss.
It is nice to see something that isn't negative about Iran getting into western news. Iran has a population around that of the United Kingdom so I have no doubt that numerous beneficial scientific discoveries are made there.
what is not ok is to be so blinded by your hatred of america that you give other countries, some a lot worse, a free pass. iran is a fundamentalist theocracy which is building nuclear bombs and censors its press, jails and tortures political dissidents, and enforces an ultrastrict fundamentalist religious pov, especially on its women. they have actual police brigades in tehran that fine women for wearing clothing that are too risque. you want to defend this as somehow not as bad as what the usa does? please note something i am saying here: the problem is NOT islam, the problem is fundamentalism
again, it is ok to be anti-american. but why do you think that means you have to be pro-iranian? here's a suggestion: why don't you be anti-american AND anti-iranian, at the same time? why would you want to do that?
so that you can say you oppose the usa based on principles, rahter than just blind dumb prejudice. because if you applied your principles, the principles you say you have according to which you say you hate the usa, if you applied those principles uniformly across all world governments, you would find yourself hating a lot more than just the usa
grow a brain. blind america bashing is tired and dull
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What is worse? N1AK suggesting that out of a population of X size, you might get Y innovations (where X:Y has a common ration across various countries), or your post that suggests N1AK is an unscientific proponent of religious zealots?
I'm left wondering if you would make the same claim if we were talking about a (say..) South American country rather than Iran.
you SHOULD earn a pittance as a university researcher [...] however, when you DO find something of value, guess what: you cash out and become a millionaire
No. That will lead to people only working in fields where they can 'make it big' and leave all the rest which, as history has taught us again and again, is where the discoveries of tomorrow are to be made. Basically it would push technology and drop fundamental research. You think like a bean counter.
Disclaimer, I work in research. And not everybody who does 'discovers' things. I design instrumentation; as such I'll never 'discover' anything and I'm rarely associated in publications. So for you it means I should earn a pittance with no hope of anything better.
Well, if that's any consolation for you, I do earn a pittance already.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
pride has an upside and a downside, and one downside of pride is you would rather retain your identity even though it also means being in a weaker position
the muslim world sees elements of the west that alternately repel and attract. unfortunately, some of those elements of the west aren't things unique to the west, but are actually more accurately described as elements of simple humanity. such that a lot of the fighting of westernization that goes on in the name of pride in the middle east are actually wars against humanization
for example: women's rights. when you fight that, because it's "western", you are actually retarding the development of your own societies on a human level. if the west never existed, one can imagine the fight for women's rights continuing in the middle east, because such a fight does not depend upon the west as some sort of example, but is a fight valid within itself in islamic societies. that is, the fight for women's rights is not some sort of decadent western influence betraying traditional identity, but is instead a humanist, organic struggle native to the middle east. but humanist struggles always entail a bit of the strange and unknown, to breakway from traditional ways, and so it is easy to confuse two sources of conflict: westernization and humanization. and so, in the name of fighting the west, muslim societies subjugate their own women, and wind up hobbling the development of half their societies. for doing that, the middle east can never hope to be as powerful and as influential as the west, with half their population treated like cattle
there's plenty of things the islamic world says it hates about the west that are shared by the west and, for example, the far east. such that to describe these concepts they say threatens the middle east as some sort of western thing is false: they are human concepts. the islamic world, in the name of retaining an identity distinct from the west, are embracing agendas that are not really anti-western, but are actually anti-human
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This invariably means the person has no evidence for the following statement, isn't looking for evidence and doesn't want to hear any evidence and is sticking his fingers in his ears and going "LALALALALA" against anyone trying to argue his point.
Not always. It could also mean that the person does have 'no doubt' but doesn't feel the need to provide immediate evidence for every single statement in a post on a very informal internet forum.
How about this, Iran is a country which is actively seeking to establish a successful nuclear program. Since they do not have immediate access to all the information and technology to accomplish this, it would not be unreasonable to suspect that they are attempting to recreate that information independently. In such an environment, the fact that they would be conducting experiments in non-identical conditions, they may come to different conclusions, or observe the results from a different light. Because of the limitations on information transfer to Iran, this situation is not limited to nuclear technology.
Or he could keep that paragraph to himself, proving TO HIMSELF that he really does 'have no doubts' that Iran would be making discoveries, and that it would be interesting to hear about them in the West.
This is Slashdot, not a science journal.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Unfortunately, I think your premise is flawed. You assume that scientific discovery is always associated with a sellable quantity but more often it is not. You assume that when you find the gold nugget, you either get to keep it or have the option of selling it - but this is often not the case. Sure if you discover some new drug or how to harness energy, but how about some new galactic object, or a new rock ... let's say you are in the health research and discover that 1 beer a day makes you live longer, how do you cash-in? The discovery could benefit the whole world but wouldn't make a dollar for the discoverer. While I agree that it's their own fault for choosing to try and improve the world rather than get rich, I think Ash Vince may have been trying to point out that often, it is a fast talking salesman who has risked little and produced nothing that profits the most. This is not the way to encourage innovation. So how do you encourage people become prospectors of ideas that may advance society but have no monetary value?
Naturally, Wired spins it into the context of bunkers and nuclear weapons, like we do with everything that comes out of Iran. How long until this thin-film motor gets portrayed as something nefarious?
Naturally? I think sensibly. Scientific research in a slightly insane and violent theocracy should probably always be looked at with a bit of cynicism. There's not a lot of scientific research that is independent of the government going on in Iran; therefore, the Iranian government's motives come into play. Just as when you see a study about Alcohol funded by a major brewery, and so on.
There's cynicism, and then there's outright paranoia. It's safe to say that this type of concrete invariably WILL be used in bunkers, but there are also a multitude of other uses for it. Unless the Iranian government specifically created this project in order to create hardened bunkers (which they didn't) there's no reason to immediately get paranoid about it. Let the boys in the pentagon worry about possible military implications - the rest of us should be thinking about ways in which it could be used to improve civilian infrastructure.
Besides which, chunks of ultra-hard concrete aren't exactly a threatening concept, even coming from a violent and slightly insane theocracy :) Now, if they start making really big trebuchets, THEN we can start to worry ...