The Lounge

Zhores I. Alferov is a Soviet and Russian physicist and academic who contributed significantly to the creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics. He is an inventor of the heterotransistor and the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is also a Russian politician and has been a member of the Russian State Parliament, the Duma, since 1995. Lately, he has become one of the most influential members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Russian physicist Zhores I. Alferov conducted breakthrough research into III-V semiconductor heterostructures, including detailed studies of epitaxy processes, injection properties, lasers, LED’s, and…

I'd like to ask what your perception of Germany is and please don't be too optimistic with the typical "hard workers" and "always on time". I personally have the feeling that Germany is perceived not as good from the outside world and it definitely does not belong to the top countries people favor. Germany has as well a lot of emigrants since Germany's population went down about a few millions. What do you think?

Dear all: I'm have a medical condition and would like to give you some information about it. The reason I am posting this message is to help avoid any potential misunderstandings, and assist in open communication about my challenges. I have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (AS). AS is a neurological condition that causes significant impairment in social interactions, attention span, comprehension, data retention, processing speed, reaction time, and executive functions. People with AS perceive the world differently and this can often bring them in conflict with conventional ways of thinking. They have difficulty in reading body language, and interpreting su…

This is probably helpful to everyone... Source: http://www.notquitewrong.com/rosscottinc/2011/08/03/so-youre-mad-about-something-on-the-internet/

I was wondering if anyone knows how to clean in-ear sennheiser headphones (MM70 headset) ?, because their not like apple ones, where you can just unscrew the little speakers and let them dissolve in warm water...

Who came up with the idea that a business suit is the men's fashion in business? I don't so much object wearing the shirt, jacket or pants... I have a problem with cleaning it. You cannot even put your own suit into your own washing machine. It has to go to a dry cleaners! Come on! How stupid is that? And the shirt is the only piece of clothing that I have that requires ironing. A century ago it may not have been a problem to wear some clothes which take a massive effort to clean. People who wore suits over a century ago had personnel to do that for them. But they had the income to be able to afford such personnel too. I don't, but etiquettes still say I have to …

Okay, increasing in the Western World we've been seeing higher divorce rates and more middle-aged men and women remaining single unable to search for a partner who is in search of commitment/responsiblities etc. My question is, how does the scientific community interprete this new recent development? I think it's really sad... What can society/governments do to fix this problem?

So, for fun, I put together a program to make computer-generated poetry. It uses a rhyming dictionary and Markov chains to throw together words in a way that works. Brief summary of how it works: I take some source text (the Bible, the novels of Mark Twain, whatever) and have the program go through and observe what word often comes after what three words. So if there's "the quick brown fox," the program will observe that "fox" can come after "the quick brown." It also does this in reverse, which will come in handy later. For the lines that don't have to rhyme, I just pick a random three words and choose any random word that can come after them, and work my way dow…

I absolutely love the Khan Academy. I use it whenever I can, and I love watching Sal's videos. On the website, there is a fairly extensive collection of math problems, starting with basic addition and continuing on from there. Are there any websites where I can find a bunch of practice problems for the sciences? I'm just looking for Biology, Chemistry, and some Physics problems. Thanks, Joe

I've given a small number of presentations before, and they've all gone pretty well. The catch is that they have all been to my class mates, a whole lot of parents at my valediction when I graduated, and the board that currently funds my research... i.e. the sort of people who aren't really interested in details, and are easily impressed with pretty graphs and flashy videos. So I know the basics, i.e. keep it simple, lots of pictures and little writing to keep attention, speak loudly and clearly, and practice and all that. The tricky bit is that my school has quite kindly agreed to fly me half way around the world in July to give a presentation at the most important c…

When her 15-year-oldson Rajneeth declared that he wants to become a pet-trainer, Radhika becamevery upset. She thought that even the disciplined training at a renowned schooland the proper care from parents failed to motivate the boy and make him ambitious. But living in aglobalised world, which offers enough job opportunities to cater to yourinterests, she should not have panicked. The offbeat jobs nowadays are asrewarding as the mainstream ones in terms of both payment and job satisfaction. It is a fact thatonly those who have a passion for work,can excel in their respective jobs. So, if you can choose a career thatinterests you or if you can convert your hobb…

Hello! I hope you can help me. My father has some old (without doubt antique, potentially valuable) scientific and laboratory equipment that he wishes to get rid of. This ranges from handblown glassware to bound copies of New Scientist from the 1970s. Other such things are benches, power supplies and an agate pestle and mortar (£900 new). I'm also sure he's got some 'vintage' computer equipment too. I will be able to get photos of these things at some point soon. He wants to sell it on Ebay but I'm not sure he'll be that successful. Any ideas on who to contact, I've got an email for the Science Museum and plan to contact the computer museum. I was wondering…

The rain is absolutely pouring in Eugene, Oregon. Yesterday I was glad for the rain because I didn't have time to water my garden, but today I am wondering if my garden will be destroyed? This is very heavy rain that is really pouring and it could rip all the tender flowers off the plants before they fruit. That is besides the seriously lack of sun shine. I wish we could send some of this rain to Texas. How well do we understand weather, and do we really have to remain so helpless to control it? Might it possible to move these clouds to a place that needs rain?

I notice in America there are lots of Mormons. Say, if an American family who were in a polygamous relationship were to move somewhere else, perhaps another state or to another country, say Canada for example where it is illegal in most (if not all) places. My question is could they be punished there if they only went to Canada for holidays and initiated their plural marriages in a state in America where it is not illegal? Hope somebody has the answer! I'm not from Canada/US by the way.

First off let me introduce myself, I'm an undergrad from India, I'm doing engineering in biotechnology(I have one more year left to graduate) and I've dreamed of being a scientist for as long as I remember(I'm interested in doing research in the field of Neuroscience). Too make the long story short, let's just say I haven't achieved anything even remotely impressive academically. I won't say I 'wasted' the past few student years, because I've learned a lot and I think I've grown as a person to a great extent. But like I said, academically I'm very weak. I've flunked a couple of subjects, my basics are poor and I have no research experience whatsoever. Clearly, I…

If people were playing high-stakes poker, making the kind of bets that could cause a whole family's home, college education savings, cars, etc., to be lost on a single hand, most of us would refuse to participate because we would prefer to avoid that sort of stress. Even if there was an even chance of winning that much money, we simply would not want to have to endure the tension and dread of something that bad going wrong. But then what about life itself? Even if you believe that there is a good chance that your fortune in life will bring as many entertaining and rewarding experiences as negative ones, having human physical existence means that you constantly have …

I'd like to create my own secret language for making notes, similar to how Davinci used to write in mirror handwriting. In this sense I'd like to ask you are there any known and easy ways to do just that? Writing in mirror writing is a bit too much of a hassle to me and people still can read it it just takes longer. I thought of the idea of simply switching the alphabet with my own letters. The alphabet has only 20+ letters, so it would be easy to just switch them up with my own symbols and then I'd just have to train which symbol stands for which letter. Any other good ideas you'd like to contribute?

Hello, My name is Tyler. I had been a Cook all my professional life, last year my girlfriend got pregnant, and I decided to get a real education, and attempt leading a legitimate life in society. So I started taking classes at my local community college. Initially I thought Civil Engineering sounded good, So I did a shadow day with my local water bureau and I took a term of "Engineering Technology." It was the hardest thing I've ever done, I was ill prepared, but I survived with a C that I am actually very proud of. I had only taken a basic pre-alegbra class before attempting these monstrous 3 dimensional statics problems that really blew my hair back. What I've…

Does anybody think that there is an inverse relationship between how many sexual partners one has in their lifetime prior to marriage and how long their first marriage will last prior to divorce? (i.e. the more sexual partners one has before meeting the right one will likely find their relationship with the one they marry a bit more boring as they would have already had the boyfriend/girlfriend experience from previous relationships and hence are more likely to not commit in the long run and vice versa)? What does everyone think? Also, could this be the reason why America has such a high rate of divorce? And what does everyone think is the ideal number of rom…

as people have probably become increasingly aware, China will be expected to become a superpower nation soon. Despite this however, we in the West countinue send out billions of dollars to China, which in some areas is actually more prosperous than a lot of places in the developed world. Should we, people of from the developed world stop donating billions of dollars every single day to China? When should we stop sending out money to china? ...they will overtake us soon.

Hi guys, I'm about to make a "life changing decision" and I wanted some advice from an outside perspective of people who aren't my family or friends. I've always been someone who is very indecisive about what they want to do in life, possibly because I take naturally to most things. I get interested in something easily, but get bored of it quite quickly. I've been doing website development for 5 years, but less and less until this year when I got a job doing it to make some money. I applied to do computer science at uni because I saw it as a broad field which I couldn't easily tire of as it has many different branches. I also chose it as it has good job prospects,…

I think people within our society are becoming increasing malevolent and unsympathetic. Share us your stories. Have you ever felt as though one of your friends or co-workers at work were happy that something painful or unfortunate happened to you or to one of your relatives? What should you do if you know they are being malevolent? I've also heard of the notion that good people always see the good in others. However, does this mean that they have to be blind to the evilness in others?

Two guys almost caught by a dinosaur!

Being a spiritual person, who loves to muse on the beauty of nature, and can quite happily watch grass grow with a sense of peace and tranquility, I am fascinated by Fibonacci Numbers, especially when these occur in nature. http://www.fibonacci.name/images/sunflower2.jpg The above sequence occurs in flower petals, seed cones, leaf arrangements, honeybee genealogy and also rabbit breeding. Link However, aware that I am in a Science Forum where rationality is normally the order of the day (no pun intended). I want to throw this out to people. Is it a significant thing or is it just humans recognising…

Hi. I used to ask questions on this forum maybe 6-8 years ago back in high school. Now I'm about to graduate college, and I feel like I've wasted not only much of my college career, but also much of life in general. You ever felt like that? I'm studying math at the university I'm at. But I'm not really engaged in it. I feel like I wasted my opportunities here and really haven't pursued any research opportunities that were available. I'm just having regrets I guess. What do you do when you're at that point where you don't know where to go? And you feel like you've wasted what was one of your best opportunities in life, potentially destroyed any career plans you have in…