Links for 2010-10-08

"Unlike the graphene discovery, frog levitation hasn't begotten a vast worldwide research effort whose fruits include thousands of research papers and scores of patents. Nevertheless, as Novoselov recounted in an interview with ScienceWatch, the two projects have something in common:

'The style of Geim's lab (which I'm keeping and supporting up to now) is that we devote ten percent of our time to so-called "Friday evening" experiments. I just do all kinds of crazy things that probably won't pan out at all, but if they do, it would be really surprising. Geim did frog levitation as one of these experiments, and then we did gecko tape together. There are many more that were unsuccessful and never went anywhere (though I still had a good time thinking about and doing those experiments, so I love them no less than the successful ones).'"

"The recent economic downturn has set back these efforts at a critical moment. The panel notes in 2010 that even as federal action is trapped in partisan, election-year bickering, state governments are mimicking President Hoover's failed response to the Great Depression, cutting funding for education and research grants. We are eating our nation's seed corn.
Some might say that we should devote what resources we can to creating more scientists and engineers, elite researchers who will win the Nobel Prizes late into the 21st century. The better investment, if we must choose, is ensuring that every American can understand the new discoveries being made around the world, and can apply that knowledge in their doctor's office and in boardrooms."