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Sooooo satisfying!

Water Drop on Hydrophobic Sand

SUPERSLIPPERY SIDE UP

These two steel balls sit in a pool of octane, a component of petroleum, that has been dyed yellow. Though the ball on the left has picked up streaks of the oily liquid, the ball on the right has repelled the octane thanks to a self-healing, superslippery coating called X-SLIPS. Researchers developed this coating, which repels both water and oil, based on the slippery interiors of Nepenthes pitcher plants and the wax layer on plant leaves. To make the coating, the team applied a 2.5- µm-thick layer of fluorinated silane to the sanded surface of the ball. A spritz of DuPont’s Krytox lubricant, a perfluorinated oil similar to Teflon, adheres tightly to the silane to create a surface that fends off water and oil. After damaging the coating with blasts of oxygen plasma or abuse with 40-grit sandpaper, the researchers could restore it by simply heating it, causing the remaining silane to redistribute across the surface and re-adhere. The coating could be useful on ships or in condiment packaging.

Credit: Tak-Sing Wong/ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.6b00194

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In this video, mixtures of inks (likely printer toners) and fluids move and swirl. Magnetic fields contort the ferrofluidic ink and make it dance, while less viscous fluids spread into their surroundings via finger-like protuberances. (Video credit and submission: Antoine Delach)

At Biotech Party, Gender Diversity Means Cocktail Waitresses

Outside the Exploratorium, an airy event space on San Francisco’s waterfront, a long line of mostly male biotechnology investors and executives waited to get into a party.

The ballrooms of the Westin St. Francis hotel were packed with rows of men in blue and gray suits. Outside the hotel, where attendees gather for coffee, was about the same -- of 47 people sitting on one side of the square outside the conference hotel, two were women. Of those, one was in media relations. There was no line for the women’s bathroom.

LifeSci’s McDonald says it’s just reality that the industry and its investors skew male. That’s why he hired the models.

“When you think about going to a party, when you don’t have any models, it’s going to be 90/10, or even greater, male-to-female,” he said. “Adding in some females changes the dynamic quite a bit.”

We take for granted that drops which impact a solid surface will splash, but, in fact, drops only splash when the surrounding air pressure is high enough. When the air pressure is low enough, drops simply impact and spread, regardless of the fluid, drop height, or surface roughness. Why this is and what role the surrounding air plays remains unclear. Here researchers visualize the air flow around a droplet impact. In (a) we see the approaching drop and the air it pulls with it. Upon impact in (b) and © the drop spreads and flattens while a crown of air rises in its wake. The drop’s spread initiates a vortex ring that is pinned to the drop’s edge. In later times (d)-(f) the vortex ring detaches from the drop and rolls up. (Photo credit: I. Bischofberger et al.)

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