World leaders, 20 years on and sorry

This is really quite interesting.

(Click on link to go to website: once there, click on picture for slideshow)

Greenpeace is running an ad campaign in Copenhagen airport, featuring world leaders who are 20 years older ('though many look much more) and apologising for not having done enough...

Hmmm....

The best of Royal Society publishing - 350 years' worth!

So, this is seriously, seriously cool. 350 years' worth of the Royal Society of London's best published papers.

(click on the picture to visit the site)

To expand, (teehee), it's actually an interactive, explorable timeline. And it's been launched to commemorate the Society's 350th birthday next year. The RS is definitely wearing the age quite well, all in all :)

The timeline's also got a bunch of fantastic images for those of you interested in imagery/design and is, generally, an awesome website.

The first papers are a bit grim, involving bellows and dogs' lungs. The last (most recent) paper was the RS's fascinating paper on geoengineering, and many of the 60 papers available coincide with major historical events, although they aren't necessarily connected. For example, in 2008, the term 'Cubism' was adopted; the same year, a paper was published entitled 'Reflection of alpha particles from thin foil'.

And, of course, people with an interest in language, or at the very least the English bits thereof, will find the changing expression fascinating. Not only in and of itself, but for what it can tell us about attitudes and beliefs at the time (for a great example, have a look at Fabiana's hilarious post on cockroaches).

And, without further ado, I shall leave you all here, as I want to go frolick in all this sciency goodness. I'm sure you do too.

The teapot effect, end of

So apparently, there's something called the teapot effect. Or, rather, there was.



No, it's not what you might first imagine it is. At least, it's not what I first imaged it was. Instead, it's apparently the name used for the phenomenon whereby the spouts of teapots dribble, and even English women who've been pouring tea for posh friends for decades are unable to pour that perfect, immaculate cup of tea.

"Previous studies have shown that dribbling is the result of flow separation where the layer of fluid closest to the boundary becomes detached from it. When that happens, the fluid flows smoothly over the lip. But as the flow rate decreases, the boundary layer re-attaches to the surface causing dribbling."

And here's where fluid dynamicists have stepped up, donned their superhero cloaks, and sorted the problem. Huzzah!

The factors involved?

"Previous studies have shown that a number of factors effect this process such as the radius of curvature of the teapot lip, the speed of the flow and the "wettability" of the teapot material. But a full understanding of what's going on has so far eluded scientists.

"Now Cyril Duez at the University of Lyon in France and a few amis, have identified the single factor at the heart of the problem and shown how to tackle it. They say that the culprit is a "hydro-capillary" effect that keeps the liquid in contact with the material as it leaves the lip. The previously identified factors all determine the strength of this hydro-cappillary effect."

The solution is two-fold: make the lip of the teapot as thin as possible, and and coat it with superhydrophobic materials (materials, in other words, that really, really, really, really don't like water).

Even more fun, apparently there are materials in which the superhydrophobicity can be turned on and off electronically. Meaning that to dribble or not to dribble would no longer be hypothetical...

And, because there's no better way to end things than with wry, physics-based sarcasm, there was this comment, as well:

"(Of course, there are one or two other potential applications in shaping the fluid flow in microfluidic machines but these pale into insignificance compared with the teapot revolution in hand.)"

On another teapot-related note, I had not idea, but apparently teapot-blowing (again, not what you think) is something of an artform!

p.s. Yes, I know the original arXiv post isn't that new - sadly, life has perforce distracted me somewhat of recent.

Moving disembodied voice aids attention

In driving, that is.
(Also, an oops here: I wrote this last week, and forgot to publish it)

Two of the prettiest headsets out the there: the Jawbone and the Ripple (click on pics to be taken to websites)

Eyal Ophir and his colleagues in Stanford University’s CHIMe Lab - the same people who so inflamed interest earlier this year when they revealed that people who mutitask more, are worse at the tasks they do - have been playing with the problem of mobile phone conversations (MPCs) in cars.

I thought their new research was particularly timely, given the fact that NZ has now banned the use of mobile phones in cars unless using a headset/hands-free kit (and some interesting debates can be had on the subject of whether even these should be allowed).

The thing is, even if one is not actually holding a mobile phone, a conversation can be distracting. Very. And Ophir and his colleagues have been trying to find ways to make these conversations less dangerous - after all, we all know that people are not, en masse, suddenly going to pull over for mobile conversations.

They looked, basically, at making the cell phone-originating voice move around the car. Not, as I first thought, in a sort of left-right pan, necessarily, but more having the voice speaking from head level, or from floor level. Reasoning etc below:

"Ophir designed a system that puts the voice up at the driver’s level when road conditions are relatively safe, then drops it down to the driver’s feet when conditions are more hazardous. He says he could have done it the opposite way and it appears that it would have worked equally well, but that research has shown that voices coming from lower than the speaker are less dominant, hence his choice of high and low. He tested the system with drivers in a simulator, and found that drivers quickly learned that a change in position of the voice meant, “Pay attention to the road!” They later rated the cell phone conversation as less distracting when the sound was coming from their feet.

In the real world, Ophir sees this system linked to the driver’s GPS and a database of accidents, to identify potentially treacherous areas of road."

Critically, they were wanting to find a technique that would work for both high and low multitaskers (a small note of glee for us high multitaskers: while we may not be as good at a single task, apparently we might be slightly safer drivers when having a mobile phone conversation).

Apparently, the research is, hopefully, going to be published soon.

The Open Laboratory - the best science blogging around

Now this is a fantastic project. Even better, it's been going since 2006!

Called Open Lab (or The Open Laboratory, in book form), it's a collection of the best science blogging on the net. Each year, some 50-53 posts are selected from the hundreds sent in, and amalgamated into a book.

Not only is this extremely cool, but it actually gets better. The books are available through Lulu - why, you ask? Well, it's simple. Lulu is a print-on-demand service. It's a brilliant idea - no wastage, no huge print runs, customised printing and it means that people who might ordinarily not be able to get a publisher interested, can still get their work out there. Hurrah!

For anyone who's interested, the nominations for Open Lab 2009 can be found here - over 370 so far, and counting.

If you're interesting in purchasing copies of the previous three years' worth of goodness (which we did yesterday in digital format), they can be found simply by clicking on the pictures.

It comes to about US$94/95 for all three, plus normal P&P. Alternatively, buy all three for less than $30 us digitally, and simply print them out.

Enjoy! I'm looking forward to getting stuck into 2008 tonight...

For anyone who's interested in print-on-demand technology, have a look at this: the awe-inspiring Espresso Book Machine®, which is being trialled in a few places in the states. What I would give to have access to one of these in Wellington...

Also, an admission: you can get the 2007 Open Lab book on Fishpond...for$65. And they're available on Amazon but again, you've got to pay postage and packaging, and they're no less expensive.

NZ's increasing academic shortage

I was most interested to read this article in the ODT today.

It talks about the University of Otago's plans to futureproof (what a catchphrase) itself against what, apparently, is a steadily increasing shortage of tertiary academics in New Zealand as we head towards 2020.

The University says it's already seen shortages in areas including medical research/teaching and accountancy.

This to some extent makes sense based on what I've heard anecdotally about academics finding NZ a tough country in which to work. However, speaking with other scientists I've also heard that many other countries are hardly easy, either. The article also says:

"The collaborative planning initiative, which involves all eight New Zealand universities, aimed to prevent a future staffing shortage throughout the country's universities as traditional overseas sources for academic staff dried up at the same time as a large proportion of New Zealand's current academic staff was retiring.

"The universities were all concerned that as New Zealand moved towards 2020, they would face significant difficulties in maintaining an effective and efficient academic workforce."

So I guess my question is: is this something that people are seeing and if so, in which areas have you experienced it?

And what can be done?

And, indeed, is anyone involved in the Academic Workforce Planning - Towards 2020 (8 universities looking into how to combat the problem) project?