I saw your journal entry through the firehose. I have a doctorate in immunology, run a lab at the NIH, and train both doctoral candidates and post-docs; though I have no experience with the computational science field beyond bioinformatics. In my field the question you're asking is an important part of the doctoral education as students are expected to publish. If you believe you have a story, talk with your advisor - which, in my field at least, you'll need to do eventually as s/he will be listed as the senior author on the paper. As your advisor should be very heavily involved in your training and research, this shouldn't be a problem. In addition to reading the literature individually, we all regularly attend weekly journal clubs where we review a current paper. This is a critical component of doctoral training. Not only does reading educate you to new ideas within the field, but it exposes you to how papers should be written and the general theme of each journal (For example, Nature Immunology has a slightly different focus than Immunity). A PhD is not simply about working the bench, or in your case, writing code - undergraduates are highly talented. A PhD candidate should have an acute awareness of the field, how their work impacts it, and how to promote the story.

I prefer two space since I believe it looks better. However, over the past few years I've transitioned to using only one space. Many grant applications / abstracts / scientific writing have character limits. Using one space instead of two can make a significant difference when you're fighting for every word.

Are people really calling up doctors and asking them to perform surgery on them for free?

Yes. I have a PhD in immunology - I'm not a medical doctor, though I do teach second year medical students. If a family member gets sick (especially the children), I get called. If a family doctor suggests a treatment, I get called for a second opinion. Swine flu outbreak? I was receiving dozens of emails a day from concerned family members. So while we (and I use 'we' very loosely as I'm not an MD) aren't asked to 'perform surgery', we are asked to provide free medical services.

While I certaily wasn't at that talk (and I suspect that neither were you), I'm willing to bet that you don't completely understand what the talk was about. I'm on the faculty of a top tier reserch insitution conducting immunological research - I've had several Chinese graduate students, have sat on the international admissions committee, and have given the talk that you describe to our new Chinese students. The problem isn't one of ethics, but one of culture. The Chinese don't regard plagiarism the same way we do - in fact, the educational system encourages it in a way as it is an honor, of sorts, to 'plagiarize' your mentor. Additionally, a lot of these students don't have confidence in their english, so whey they write they occassionally take an idea from another article and copy it verbatim thinking "that's exactly what I was thinking, and I don't have to worry about incorrect english" - in most cases, there is not an intention of deceit. The Chinese certainly have their issues (admitting mistakes and nationalism), but I wouldn't call them unethical.

Here's an example of a similar non-newtonian fluid protecting an egg from breaking after being dropped:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMmhNbj4K68

The protection has less to do with absorption reduction than a distribution of force.