A recent article in Physical Review Letters reports on “self-propelled droplet removal” from fibers — the authors designed hydrophobic fibers with the property that when water droplets grow and coalesce on them, the energy released by the coalescence flings the drops off the fibers. The underlying phenomenon is one we’ve all seen: two water droplets, … Continue reading On fungi and fabrics
There’s an interesting question about peer-review of journal articles that I’ve never seen addressed: How long does it take to review a paper? I don’t mean the three weeks or so between getting a request and submitting a review, but rather the time spent actually reviewing. In other words, how many hours does a reviewer … Continue reading In the future, my reviews will consist solely of one carefully picked emoji
In my last post, I wrote about a remarkable recent paper reporting that C. elegans, the well-studied nematode worm, can sense magnetic fields. In a series of elegant experiments, researchers at UT Austin showed that C. elegans moves at a particular preferred angle to an applied field. Moreover, that angle matches the angle between the … Continue reading On second thought, don’t ask worms for directions
The Eighteenth Elephant 