For New Scientist

Guide to troubled birds + Fire Emblem?? Troubled emblem?? Idk!!

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How do you prolong the useful life of lubricants?

Wind turbines towering hundreds of feet over many landscapes herald a future of endless, clean energy.

But in a crucial sense, turbines remain rooted in the past: Much like with your car, their engines require lubrication to run smoothly. The question for many chemical engineers is, how do you prolong the useful life of the lubricants?

In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vineeth Chandran Suja, a Stanford graduate student in chemical engineering, explores one of the core problems: foaming oil.

The problem, he says, is that whether it’s in your car or a wind turbine, each time metal gears grind against other metals, oil gets sloshed around and mixed with air. This often results in the formation of tiny bubbles with varying lifespans. If the bubbles don’t immediately burst, they soon collect into a foam, which is one of the primary mechanisms of engine decline.

The foam is harmful in a variety of ways. It degrades the lubricant and allows gears to grind. Oxygen trapped in oil foams causes the metal parts to oxidize, that is, to rust. And the foam acts like a thermal insulator, trapping harmful heat in the system. Hence, lubricant manufacturers are actively looking for ways to mitigate lubricant foaming.

Read more.

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imagine if your fridge did what you do to it everyday, every half hour goes to your room opens the door and stares at you for 5 minutes then leaves

did i ever tell you about that time my mum psychologically conditioned me to stay away from her snacks 

one day, as i was minding my own business, she walked into the room, said hello, handed me a single raspberry, then left. i said thank you, and ate it. i love raspberries! unexpected ones especially!

the next day, at about the same time, she did the same. and again, the day after that. i would be minding my own business, she would walk in, hand my a raspberry, and leave, and eventually i began to look forward to this. 

then it occurred to me 

if she’s giving me one there’s an entire punnet hidden somewhere. and she knew. when she saw me rooting in the cupboards she knew. 

she admitted that she would come in at the same time every day to hand me a raspberry because she knew that it would take a while for me to cotton on to what she was doing. she was training me to expect a single raspberry, while she hid the punnet for herself, because i had come to view it as a nice bonus during the day and didn’t notice that there would be more. she studied psychology and she used this knowledge to keep me away from the raspberries.

i drew a lot of azama tonight ft. things i have said on the discord chat