water & insect repellant surfaces.

I was just listening to a BBC program about research-labs: GE &
Phillips; where they develop extreme water repelant sufaces,
originally based on the observation of lotus leaves' effect on water
drops.

Which seems related to my other recent post below ?
---------
Newsgroups: sci.bio.entomology.misc
Subject: Somebody should publish proper cockroach research

Recently I did a googSearch on 'cockroach+trap'.
And ignoring the commercial ads, I selected 2 US university
publications, which both seems to be cribs of some 1920 's old
farmers ideas. Eg. about putting a 2-inch smear of vaseline
petroleum jelly on the inner-neck of the jar.

This only works for a few days !
Apparently dust...etc. settles which the cockroaches use as
stepping stones ?

I discovered a remarkable few days effective trap.
A 2 liter icecream tub, when newly emptied is left open overnight,
with 1 cm of water inside. Wow !! the next morning 20 ccs are found
floating in the tub. And more the next day.

After a few days I can see that the ccs can climb out.
Apparently there's some microscopic effect on the tub's inner surface,
which disappears after a few days usage. And strong washing doesn't
restore it.

Why can't some researcher build on this observation ?

==crg.

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