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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."
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 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