Yes!. You just got the charges backwards. If you look up triboelectric series (example here http://www.siliconfareast.com/tribo_series.htm) you'll see that nylon is half way up the positive scale where as Teflon is the second from the bottom on the negative side of the scale. Positive means that it tends to donate electrons and negative means it wants to accept or 'steal' electrons.

They key though, is the induction created to the water droplets which you can read about it here (http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/emotor/kelvin.html)

What is happening (my guess) is that the nylon when rubbed is positively charged (lost electrons) when placed near the tip of the syringe, the water is positively charged because its electrons are given to the nylon needle, creating a positive charge in the water. The Teflon needle, on the other hand, is a very negatively charged material (gained a lot of electrons through rubbing it with paper) and thus the positively charged water is attracted to the negatively charged teflon needle and the orbit through these opposing fields is achieved in microgravity!

I think he wants to know how much plastic is in 1 kilo of spool. From what I could find, ABS density is roughly 1.05g/cm^3 and PVA is 1.19-1.31g/cm^3 which means that:

1000g is roughly 952.380952cm^3 of ABS plastic

OR

1000g is roughly 800cm^3 of PVA plastic (with 1.25g/cm^3 density)

Now your answer applies where depending on how big a Stephen Colbert design is, it takes more or less of the material: a 1cm^3 Colbert would give you 952 ABS heads or 800 PVA heads. Now THAT'S a lot of Colbert!

Isn't what you're saying the same as a thumbnail of a pic? or 'fit to screen', zoom in/out ? I agree that this algorithm is (unfortunately) patentable but if this is what they're complaining about (I didn't read TFA, just going off from your comment) wouldn't this be considered prior art?

from TFA:
"Only one person can rent a DVD at one time, meaning that if Zediva bought 20 copies of a movie, only 20 people can watch it simultaneously. Still, Zediva saves money because it could serve many more customers with the same physical copy of a DVD than a company that has to mail out a DVD and wait for its return. "

So they're not using a single DVD to broadcast to multiple people simultaneously; they are basically a renting organization that is very similar to RedBox except it is done through streaming and online purchasing but the limitation is still a 1:1 ratio of viewer-to-physical dvd copy. Ask yourself this: if Redbox has 20 copies of a movie and every day 20 people rent it and return it (some the same day, some after a day or two), how is this different than Zediva's business model other than the online factor vs. physical stand?

So I was wondering, since the article mentions:

"The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health."

Does this mean that a drug company can't put a patent on it? what happens when research funded by public tax-payer money is released?

Please note: I'm not sure where the NIH money comes from other than rumors I've heard that it is a public institution in the US.

Sounds like the much hyped over-ventilated commercials on 3 vs. 4 blades, and now 4 vs. 5 blades....

Pretty soon, there will be a commercial for 5 colours and how it's so much clearer than 4 colours!! :)

I agree with what you said. FYI though, I am not a lawyer, but I know that:
You cannot talk about "potential" in legal talk. My favourite way to make a simple argument against the word "potential" is that each sperm has the "potential" to become a human being, therefore, every time a man masturbates, they commit genocide.
What you can talk about, though, is probable foreseeable future based on specific conditions, "Likely" is another term...
If you are driving drunk, you have a probable foreseeable future of killing someone due to the effects of alcohol etc...
If you have a microchip implanted in you, there is no known effect on your reactions/judgments parallel to alcohol to be considered for a probable foreseeable future of killing someone
=====
On the other hand, implanting a chip in someone has the probable foreseeable future of massive invasion of privacy amongst other questionably ethical motives.
I know that someone will come along and say "What if the guy is a pedophile? Shouldn't we know where he is at all times?" which is a clusterfuck of an argument that deals with a person's rights and privileges and how a society distinguishes between the two and how said society wants to remove a right and/or privilege from someone based on criminal acts. Not to mention how the penitentiary system has the responsibility to rehabilitate someone into society.
I don't even know where to start.

Donating my body to the local university.