Our article (1) provided a rationale for the vast volume of biological data (20 species of birds, bats, and insects) on optimal nectar concentrations measured in a laboratory setting. The comment of Rico-Guevara and Rubega (2) bears on our footnote, where the relative importance of nectar transport via trapping and capillary rise in the specific case of hummingbird feeding is briefly touched on...

Ladies and Gentlemen of Sigma Xi: I look upon it as a special honor to be invited to address you, not alone because of your traditions of scholarship and scientific attainment, but in particular because you are a body of men and women who desire to increase natural knowledge by means of experiment. I am in sympathy with those who believe this to be the highest of human aims, and, when taken col...

The neglect of inertia terms and assumption of Poiseuille's flow approximations in describing the motion of a liquid with a free surface in narrow passages are inappropriate for certain motions. This is demonstrated with experiments in which the rates of spontaneous rise of a meniscus in an empty capillary tube, when one end is suddenly contacted with a pool of water, were determined with the a...

Telephone-cord patterns have been recently observed in smectic liquid-crystal capillaries. We analyze the effects that may induce them. As long as the capillary keeps its linear shape, we show that a nonzero chiral cholesteric pitch favors the Sm-A*-Sm-C* transition. However, neither the cholesteric pitch nor the presence of an intrinsic bending stress is able to give rise to a curved capillary...

The open architecture of cathodes in Li–air batteries implies the need for porosity with adequate pore size distribution and surface energy optimization regard to electrolyte. interaction liquid cathode material, especially wetting properties, which depend on roughness porosity, electrolyte needs be understood properly avoid flooding assure high active areas. In this work, contact angle goniome...