Word: friction
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Increasingly, nanoengineers are working to develop medical devices, batteries, electrical switches and more made up of microscopic parts that float above one another on thin films of other materials. This increases efficiency, reduces friction and allows the hardware to be built to finer tolerances and tinier sizes. Design them small enough, and you can put them in microscopically tiny places machinery could never go before. "When you understand the forces you're manipulating," says Parsegian, "you can design efficiently at the nanometer scale...
Space dust, magnetic storms, solar winds and the Earth's atmosphere all create drag, which slows down the planet. Even the amount of snow covering the polar ice caps adds to the rotational lag. But one of the main obstacles is tidal friction. Because the gravitational pull between the moon and the Earth is not uniform, the tidal force stretches the Earth - core, mantle, crust, oceans and all - producing bulges. The Earth's rotation pushes the tidal bulge slightly ahead of the Earth-moon alignment; the moon's gravity, however, yanks the bulges back to keep them in line. This...
Alas, even though they both cover current events, there is a modicum of friction between reporters and bloggers. That no doubt explains the book's occasionally snarky tone towards the mainstream media ("Blogs are turning this notion of an elite, degreed priesthood of journalists on its head"), a tone that blogs do particularly well. But this book is so useful that this card-carrying member of the "dinosaur media" is not going to take the bait. The HuffPosters capture all of the excitement of the blogosphere, enabling the would-be blogger to take a confident step online. It does...
...mere fact that the story is making the rounds reflects the very real friction between NASA and the transition team - which has sparked a groundswell of support among space agency employees to keep the boss. Within NASA, there is a real concern that while the Obama campaign rode the call for change to a thumping victory in November, change is precisely what the space agency does not need. (See photos of different countries' space programs here...
...University, uses research gathered over the past 20 years to show that the relationship between female in-laws can be far more tense than the one between a man and his wife's mom. After speaking with 163 people, Apter discovered that more than 60% of women felt that friction with their husband's mother had caused them long-term stress. Despite all the gags, only 15% of men complained that their mothers-in-law caused them headaches. (See the best and worst moms of all time...