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A comment on Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in the water too long.

Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by jtsylve on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @08:57PM (#43979590) 

  “A student asked, ‘Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?’ And I thought: I haven’t the foggiest clue!” said German, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “So it led to this research to find out.”
I wish the authors would have mentioned the kid by name in the acknowledgement section of the paper. I bet the kid would have felt very proud and inspired to having their name published in a scientific journal.
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Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by jaoane on Wednesday May 14, 2025 @03:28AM (#43981844)
And then we wonder why research budget is being cut. And before you ask, yes, this was paid for by the American public; it says so in the paper.
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Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by Robin_Message on Wednesday May 14, 2025 @04:25AM (#43982209)
It's because such research has no obvious initial use that the public must pay for it; no private enterprise will fund it, and often it will be useless knowledge, but occasionally someone will figure something out that unlocks a whole new understanding of the world.

It's publicly-funded venture capital for ideas.

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Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by ashildr on Wednesday May 14, 2025 @04:37AM (#43982280)
IIRC even LASER was seen as a novely demonstration of quite an obscure effect…
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Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by moomin on Wednesday May 14, 2025 @05:37AM (#43982615)
Gladstone once asked Faraday about the usefulness of electricity, just saying.

Faraday's response: "Why sir, there is every possibility that you will soon be able to tax it!"

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Re:Your fingers wrinkle the same way every time you're in th... by Qem on Thursday May 15, 2025 @11:33AM (#43996115)
That makes me wonder how many important results actually came from inquiries from curious students whose name was forgotten or purposefully ommited, lost from history. Any other similar examples? Student from Student's t-distribution was actually an engineer that had to adopt a pseudonym because of his employer, so I think it doesn't count.
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