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"Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded [the quantum Hall effect] in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present."
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"[R]esearchers in the US have discovered that some types of buckypaper -- sheets made of woven carbon nanotubes -- increase in width when they are stretched"
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Fun for the whole family!
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"when we give things away for free online just because we want to"
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David Foster Wallace stranded on a desert island (via Bookslut)
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" Expelled is a classic bait-and-switch, presenting itself as a plea for freedom in the scientific marketplace of ideas, while actually delivering a grossly unfair, contradictory, and ultimately repugnant attack on Darwinists"
Gore-Tex valve stem packing also has a large negative Poisson's ratio. You pull on a length of the stuff and it visibly thickens, compress and it thins. It is not a fully connected solid but rather a severely kinked interpenetrating fibril weave at micron scales. When you pull the ends the kinks unfold outward increasing void space.