"The *real* question is what about companies that do business here but are based in other countries?"

No, this is not the right question.

It does not matter where you do business or where you are based at. What matters is what your offence or crime is! Meaning, the reason why you are in court.

Depending on what you did can your status have all different kinds of influence on the outcome or none at all.

Of course, you also have to define what you understand by "being based at" and "doing business in". It often will make little difference. For example when you have to pay your taxes then the difference may only make a difference in which taxes you have to pay, but you will have to pay one or the other tax for sure.

What a nonsense. It is as dumb as trying to claim your dog carried off your homework to Mexico.

When you are obligated by law to produce the required information then this is how it is. If you have placed the information out of reach for you to get it, or only refuse to get it, then it has got a fair chance to turn into an obstruction of justice and you will find yourself in even more trouble. It is you who is the American citizen and who is standing in front of an American court and it is you who will be judged and sentenced by the court. The information however is free to travel or to stay wherever "it" wants. Only you may not like where your own ass will be travelling soon, but you are free to find out the hard way of course.

The only way to fight this is to fight the court order, which binds you to produce the information in the first place. If this has failed then try to go for an appeal or cut your losses. Of course, if you do not have a single decent bone in your body then you can certainly try to claim your homework was abducted by aliens. Who knows? Maybe you make everyone laugh and they will all forgive you for your sins ...

Penis implants, medical devices, search & rescue robots, etc. are all high and noble visions. It seems, however, to be a rather flimsy and unstable material, which will have its future in the making of toys, where it will it end up being a mass product pnly to find its way into a trash bin eventually. Thus will it will not give many old men back their sexuality, nor will it save countless lifes, and the research will have to settle for a less noble vision ... the one which is going to put smiles onto the faces of countless of kids.

You mean such as building a space port in Scotland?

Its properties come from it being a "forest of nano-tubes". This makes it rather fragile when used in direct contact with other materials, which is also why it is so difficult to produce and needs to be coated onto a surface with a complicated process.

One really wants to have less layers of conductivity than more layers when conducting heat. Coating a heat sink with the material would only add an additional layer onto it, though it would be one that conducts heat very efficiently, but it would still be an additional layer when one could possibly just leave it away.

So the main application of this material for now seems to be with light, but who knows what is really possible?!

They say it is several times stronger than steel ... Perhaps it could be used to create high-durable, heat-conducting brake discs for cars and trucks. Simply coat a lot of the material onto a steel disc and see what it does!

I disagree.

Surely, it will help with optical systems, but blackness is not a primary problem. The bigger problems are with the sensitivity of sensors and internal heat. The biggest advances can still be made by increasing sensor/cell sensitivity, by lowering signal-to-noise ratios of electronics and by cooling interiors to reduce infra-red emissions. Earth-bound optical systems then have the additional problem of light coming from the surrounding atmosphere as well as atmospheric refractions. While in space do you have the problem of much larger heat built-ups plus you need to shield against the sun's thermal and electromagnetic radiation. The need for blackness inside optical systems is a peripheral problem. The new material will certainly not lead to a 28-fold improvement in imagining. Such a claim is ludicrous.

With thermal solar power plants does it have many areas (main areas as well as peripheral areas) where small improvements lead to an overall improvement. However, the new material can be used in the centre of the energy conversion where its properties will have a direct impact. Its extreme blackness and its thermal conductivity will both take a direct impact on a plant's efficiency. These plants require large surface areas and a lot of direct sunlight to be feasible, but with no foreseeable end to our energy demand, will even the smallest improvements find their way into the next generations even when it means it takes a redesign of the plants.

Speaking of redesigns, if you take a look at the next generation of space telescopes like the upcoming James Web space telescope, which has a unique design, will you see that its main advances come from its shielding and positioning in space. This will provide its optical system with more blackness and less heat, because instead of only wrapping the telescope into more and more layers did they simply reduce the need for layers, which is a major break from all the existing designs currently in orbit.

So I stand by my statement that the new material will have its uses on "insides" as well as "outsides". The new material, while currently being complicated to produce, is simple enough and it only depends on what you make of it.

A quick check of today's date and it's not April 1st. It would have helped explain a lot ...

I cannot believe this is seriously being considered. Not only for efficiency reasons, but for the fact that each rocket launch into high atmosphere always punches a huge hole into the ozone layer, consuming massive amounts of energy and resources, and is an all-round hazard for life on Earth. Why some people keep holding onto the idea of creating this kind of "fair ride", which in the end is exactly what it is, is beyond me.

How about getting the England football team beyond the first round for the next world cup? This I see as a much better plan for 2018.

I do not see it as a problem at all. I find it is rather a positive sign and one should focus less on the names on a paper, but more on the content of it. When the bosses are listed as co-authors then because there was a cooperation that benefited all. If bosses are being reduced to "admin" then this can be a sign of too little or no involvement into the research that is going on. So it is rather good to see it happening.

You get this kind of problem with many social networks. If this is a network of scientists where some people count only the sheer number of publications, or a teenage forum where trolls count "likes", "up votes" or their post count, makes little difference. It is a superficial attitude, where people refuse to look deeper.

It really is (or should be) a non-issue.

"Why should further advancements in pixel densities start helping now?"

Because every bit helps.

Probably every student will have the name of their professor on their paper. And almost every researcher will have the name of their manager or even the name of the director of their research institute on their paper. At least this is how it was while I was working at a research institute. The bosses will almost every time end up getting named as co-authors on every publication.

On the other hand, the bosses will have to study and approve so many research papers that they will be short on time to write their own papers. Getting named as co-author will be their consolation in return.

I am saying that the new technology will lead to advancements. Hence it is interesting for making (future) projectors.

Sadly, it will not. Displays could certainly profit from this material if the blackness could be turned on and off, which it cannot.

It is possible to use it as the background for an LED display, but these do not suffer from a lack of blackness, but the reflectivity of the LED layer and the top protective layer are the bigger problem. This new and super-black material would not help much, but only drive the production cost of the displays high up.

It is useful not only for insides. It will also help with cooling in a vacuum system. For instance to get rid of the heat, which builds up inside satellites and to radiate the heat out into empty space.

It could prove useful in a thermal solar power plant to produce even higher temperatures.

It is possible the absorption spectrum of the material goes beyond the visible spectrum, or, that it can be modified to work in a different spectrum, and thereby be used for more than just optical systems.

But it does not have to be used for high-tech applications only. Just put some pipes onto your roof, coat the pipes with this material and run water through them. You will get a lot more warm and hot water in your house without paying extra for it.

Welcome, we have arrived in the 21st century, where fast food meets rocket science!

This should be very interesting for making tiny projectors.