The question is about propulsion, not weight-to-surface tension ratios sufficient for flotation. This research gives a better explanation of the mechanism by which the water skimmers move with such great efficiency (namely by created subsurface vortices with their middle pair of legs) and puts to rest the notion that it is attributable to the waves themselves created by a rowing action.

We've already applied this technology - they're called oars. The key differnce is that the water strider has almost zero displacement, hence is able generate a large velocity compared to a displacement hull.

Why the apostrophe in "nazi's"?

Which is also wrong. You don't need an apostrophe before a plural s unless there is some chance of confusion. There isn't when adding an s to a figure, so you don't need one there.

Finally, the apostrophe is used in one other way. Although the apostrophe is never used to make a word plural, it is used to make letters and numerals plural: Although I received C's and D's in many of my college classes, I always received A's in my business classes. My sister received straight A's throughout her college career. My score sheet showed that I had six 5's and three 4's.

Okay; perhaps I'm going a bit the other way just because I get annoyed at the more common [ab]use of apostrophes in word plurals. So my policy (and I'm an editor, so I get to enforce it in my books) is to use it only when necessary, not just in case. I don't think it is necessary for plurals of figures, but I'll accept that as not wrong.

Do not use the apostrophe when creating plurals. This includes names, abbreviations (with or without full points)...

No it shouldn't, as what I'm quoting does not include the question mark. This is called the "logical quoting style". I know many Americans migrate punctuation inside quotes regardless of context, but I don't, and in British style it is standard.

I'd never heard of them (I'm not American). Looking at their site, I see they seem to be proclaiming styles for academic works; if so deliberately messing around with quotes for aesthetic reasons at the expense of logic seems perverse. I go with the Chicago Manual mostly, or Oxford, depending on context (British author, British style, etc).

That was my point. (Though I'll happily join a discussion on the finer points of punctuation should the subject come up.)
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

I think some of your facts are wrong..

If I remember correctly Minsky showed that a two layer linear neural network is not very capapable recognizer (and two 2-layer linear networks == one 2-layer linear neural network,(matrices: AB = C)). From which he made the wrong assumption that neural networks with non-linear neural responses wouldn't be very good either.

The research/reward system discriminates against those who debunk myths. If you prove something to be false you can't patent it and make a pot of money off it. Meanwhile, your hard work has eliminated 'red herrings' allowing others to advance more quickly. Those 'successful' people then take out patents, arrived at more quickly as a consequence of your results, and prevent you from reaping the fruits of your own labour.

To add insult to injury, other (small minded?) people then denigrate you for being 'unsuccessful'.

You see, science is not about only making big breakthoughs on things in you direct field of interest. A lot of it is small discoveries, that are used down the road in ways that people didn't think of when they made the discovery.

How the fuck is splitting an atom going to help anyone?

When Rutherford split the atom, he said that the amount of energy that you'd get out of it would be so little, that it wouldn't be worth it. Plus I don't think the idea of X-ray machines popped into his head straight after he split it either.
Both X-rays and nuclear energy came after, by differnt people. At the time the atom was split, it probably didn't mean much to anyone, there were no immediate benifits, some people probably saw it as pointless research.

Sure it does; robots and AI go together like ... chaw-gee and poe-gee.

How would you teach a striderbot to stride? Top-down minksy style? Or bottom-up adaptive genetic-alg style?

--

Understanding how brain works at the signal processing/mathematical level and how emergent features such as self-organizing and learning etc. happens is very important.

• Human brain is the best AI which we know
• Imporved medical treatments
• Brain implants: for medical purposes and extending limits of brain
• Because of the evolution the way the computation is done in brain is probably: highly error tolerant, effiecient both in terms of computational resources and used energy.
• Advances in the theory (mathematical models) and practice (measuring how brain works) have been promising during 90s

If the water's polluted enough, anyone can walk on it.

Yeah, like after pouring a decent amount of concrete mix in it...