The National Science Foundation NSF-funded scientist is exploring ways to manipulate and modify this liquid metal in order to mold it into functional structures, in electronics, for example, that result in soft, flexible and stretchable and reconfigurable components, such as antennas.

za nsf.gov – National Science Foundation NSF Discoveries – Changing the shape and function of liquid metal – US National Science Foundation NSF.

W jaki sposób naukowcy wykorzystują Social Media? Interesujący artykuł w Nature.

Ijad Madisch, a Berlin-based former physician and virologist, tells this story as just one example of the successes of ResearchGate, which he founded with two friends six years ago. Essentially a scholarly version of Facebook or LinkedIn, the site gives members a place to create profile pages, share papers, track views and downloads, and discuss research. Nnadi has uploaded all his papers to the site, for instance, and Romeo uses it to keep in touch with hundreds of scientists, some of whom helped him to assemble his first fungal genome.

More than 4.5 million researchers have signed up for ResearchGate, and another 10,000 arrive every day, says Madisch. That is a pittance compared with Facebook’s 1.3 billion active users, but astonishing for a network that only researchers can join. And Madisch has grand goals for the site: he hopes that it will become a key venue for scientists wanting to engage in collaborative discussion, peer review papers, share negative results that might never otherwise be published, and even upload raw data sets. “With ResearchGate we’re changing science in a way that’s not entirely foreseeable,” he says, telling investors and the media that his aim for the site is to win a Nobel prize.

z Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network : Nature News & Comment.

Trochę na temat modelu i teorii. Nie zawsze sobie dobrze zdajemy sprawę ze wszystkich implikacji używania tych pojęć…

The word “theory” has a common root with “theater” and originally seems to have meant “contemplation” or generally a “way to look at something,” which is quite close to the use of the word in today’s common language. Scientists adopted the word, but not in any regular way. It’s not like we vote on what gets called a theory and what doesn’t. So I’ll not attempt to give you a definition that nobody uses in practice, but just try an explanation that I think comes close to practice.

za Backreaction: What is a theory, What is a model?.