I suspect that the liquid is not actually silicon dioxide, but is a silicone that cures to silicon dioxide. Such flowable oxides (such as hydrogen silsesquioxane or HSQ) are often used in the semiconductor industry for a convienent planarizing layer.

This is the same basic result as a previous article:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/10/26/1856230/New-Optomechanical-Crystal-Allows-Confinement-of-Light-and-Sound

The structure in the current article is a ring resonator in this article. In the previous article the structure was a grating based resonator.

I found an article with better information:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=optical-force-gradient

My guess is it's Michal Lipson's group:

http://nanophotonics.ece.cornell.edu/

This is different than acousto-optics. There is no outside force here; all the movement is generated by the light itself. The miniscule amount of force from the light is enough to excite a resonance in the mechanical structure. The structure is both resonant to light and to acoustics. The two resonances are coupled because as the structure moves, the optical resonance shifts a little bit.

It is really cool work, but I haven't figured out what it'll be useful for.

The standard fixture CFL's (A19 replacements) I've bought have all been pretty good. They start up fast (except in cold weather) with enough light output that I don't mind that it's not 100%. However, I've tried flood light replacements, and they all stink. I might as well light a candle for all the light they output when I turn them on. It takes a good couple minutes before they reach a reasonable light level, and another few minutes before they reach close to the advertised amount of light.

Use the right tool for the job.

I agree -
2-D Platformers and most classic games -> d-pad, joystick, or keyboard (my preference is joystick, but I'm an old-timer)
3-D Platformers -> modern console (except Wii)
First person shooter -> mouse and keyboard
Real time strategy -> mouse and keyboard
Flight simulator -> joystick and keyboard (unless you spring for a more involved setup)
Driving -> steering wheel and pedals.
Rhythm -> unique controllers - here the controller basically is the game, and the games are differentiated primarily by the controller.
Wii -> Motion controllers like these are still in their infancy. Wii Sports, etc., hints at what's to come.

I second another post that comments that modern console controllers (Wii, not withstanding) are jacks of all trades, masters of none. They work reasonable well for a huge gamete of game types, but I think 3-D platformer is the only game type that I think they are the best choice for.

I also think that for most games, simpler controls are better. Fewer buttons, less complicated maneuvers all allow the game to picked up quickly by a large number of people. Some people really enjoy mastering complicated controls, and that's fine. I just don't think that complicated controls make games fun for the majority of people.

"They" say being slightly overweight leads to a longer life than "normal" weight. Perhaps the reality is "they've" defined normal a little too low.

There's definitely some truth to that statement. In addition, there's a natural tendency for people to gain weight as they get older. In our youth obsessed culture thin=young=good, which may not actually be true.

I think the real reason having a little extra weight is beneficial is that it helps if you get seriously ill. If you are very sick, you might not be able to eat for weeks. Having that extra storage of energy is essential to fight off the illness and get better.

If you are seriously overweight, the added complications of carrying that weight outweigh (no pun intended) any benefit.

If you've got the kind of issues described in the article summary, your carriers stink.

Yes, they do. Why do the carriers in .au not stink - is there legislation that stops them getting up to the same kind of crap that the UK ones do? Or is there more room on their backbone networks? Or are they just nicer? :)

The UK has always had ridiculously high bandwidth prices and ridiculously low traffic caps, on all Internet services - I've hosted numerous UK-specific websites on US servers over the last ten years, purely for cost reasons.

My girlfriend has mobile broadband through Vodafone because BT couldn't figure out how to install a line in her property (which didn't stop an engineer claiming he'd done it, and them billing her for most of a year before it all got sorted out - but I digress).

I've been surprised at how good the speed and stability of her connection is, but the traffic cap is crippling. She's a fairly heavy 'net user (she's a freelance web designer, so has to upload new sites and drafts for her clients to see), but she's not a filesharer, and she runs up against her 5GB cap most months. Going over it gets very expensive very quickly.

The worst thing about the cap is that it discourages her from downloading updates for her OS and software... meaning that she's probably more open to virus/worm infections.

Show some evidence even for an effect in the brain which can't possibly be accounted for by everything we currently understand about it, and people might be more willing to believe your ludicrous claims.

Simple. The fact that I (and you, too) am aware of our existence. We can argue about free will, but perhaps more important is the perception of free will, or indeed any will at all.

(Not that I necessarily agree with the grandparent's ludicrous claims, either).