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Introducing Magnet-Responsive Memory Foam 69
Roland Piquepaille writes "The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles."
Pumps with no moving parts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, such pumps do exist - you can pump liquid metals by passing a current through them, and applying a magnetic field at 90 degrees to the current as per high school physics - but I doubt they'll be pumping molten sodium through people any time soon. You could build a diaphragm pump with this approach, presumably using a two-phase magnetic circuit to very the length of the magnetic actuator, and this would probably be a lot better than passing airlines into people to operate conventional diaphragm pumps, as is done at present. But the pump has at least two moving parts, i.e. the actuator and the diaphragm.
I suspect the author meant "no rotating parts".
Re:Pumps with no moving parts? (Score:5, Insightful)
you went to a much better high school than I did
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Sheesh, if that's the case it's not surprising there's a Republican presidential candidate who doesn't accept the idea of Evolution.
Holy specious conclusions, Batman (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Holy specious conclusions, Batman (Score:5, Insightful)
You know... That where you observe facts, formulate hypotheses and try to invalidate them through experiments.
Thanks for expanding my point (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be almost equally happy if future politicians got a really good grounding in history, instead of being told that it is irrelevant.
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Sheesh, if that's the case it's not surprising there's a Republican presidential candidate who doesn't accept the idea of Evolution.
It wasn't a jibe at Republicans.
Uh, yeah it was. Otherwise, you wouldn't have said, Republicans. Let's see what Bush has to say about whether evolution should be taught in schools [washingtonpost.com]:
"Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
I guess if people want to see a view other than your own, then they must be wrong.
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I don't know if I would even go that far. All most Christians want is that the theory of evolution be taught as a theory. As a Christian student, evolution fascinated me. I always felt that a slow evolution of species was much more a miracle than God simply saying "let there be X... and th
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Have you actually seen this "Teaching Darwin as a counter to religion" happen? Because I don't think religion should be brought up at all in science class. Religion exists outside the context of empirical science.
The reality is that high-school science teaching must happen within very tight time and money constraints. We can't present every crackpot notion because there is barely time to present the basics of the scientific consensus. As everything creationists say has been shown to be false time and time
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This is a common misunderstanding. Looked at the same way, the various events you experienced since waking up this morning were all extremely unlikely, when you look at the details and not just the broad patterns. What are the odds, for example, that you would wake up the precise nanosecond that you did? However, none of the alternatives were significantly more
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I can't believe that people are that stupid.
I just can't.
Writing as someone who once did theology (Score:2)
Believing spin merchants? (Score:2)
Unfortunately even National Geographic is far from being impartial and is heavily skewed in favor of pandering to patriotic or other themes. This is nothing new either: they were doing this during WW2 too.
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Honestly, I can't imaging anything about an airline that would be good to put through a person. Not the planes themselves, the baggage handlers, the cleaning crews, pilots, "
snacks and refreshments" or whatever passes for a "meal" on most flights, and not even the pilots. And forget the awful airline debt load.
Flight attendants, maybe. Some of them are ok.
Other than than, nope. I don't want an airline passing through me.
this substance has been around since 1991 (Score:5, Funny)
Space Time Continium (Score:2, Insightful)
Just on track, I believe.
Re:this substance has been around since 1991 (Score:4, Funny)
prior art (Score:1)
That's nothing. I have stacks and stacks of disks with INFORMATION that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field.
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They forgot (Score:3, Interesting)
Fender Benders? (Score:3, Funny)
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How many Boffins died to bring you that information?
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Updated Memory Foam Mattress (Score:1)
Introducing the Magnetic Memory Foam Mattress, molds to your body with adjustable magnetic fields.
Moving parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Moving parts (Score:5, Informative)
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Coder? Want to learn electronics? Microcontroller kits. [nerdkits.com]
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Polycrysta... (Score:2)
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*if you make an anime of that I'll claim intellectual property rights
Just what I always wanted (Score:2)
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Yeah boys we finally cracked iit. (Score:1, Funny)
MIB
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Hmmmm... (Score:4, Funny)
I may just have an idea here...
Nitpick: (Score:2)
It could ... (Score:1)
Transparent Version? (Score:2)