[dba-Tech] OT: Too much time on their hands

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Thu Mar 29 08:54:46 CDT 2012


>From slashdot...

*"Red wine is a popular marinade for meat, but it also may become a popular
treatment for creating iron-based superconductors as
well<http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27664/?p1=blogs>
 (Link to academic paper <http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4503>): 'Last year, a
group of Japanese physicists grabbed headlines around the world by
announcing that they could induce superconductivity in a sample of iron
telluride by soaking it in red wine. They found that other alcoholic drinks
also worked — white wine, beer, sake and so on — but red wine was by far
the best. The question, of course, is why. What is it about red wine that
does the trick? Today, these guys provide an answer — at least in part.
Keita Deguchi at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba,
Japan, and a few buddies, say the mystery ingredient is tartaric acid and
have the experimental data to show that it plays an important role in the
process. ... It turns out the best performer is a wine made from the gamay
grape — for the connoisseurs, that's a 2009 Beajoulais from the Paul
Beaudet winery in central France.'"*

-- 
Arthur
Cell: 647.710.1314

Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
  -- Niels Bohr


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