Uni. of Alberta researchers solve puzzle that baffled scientists for decades | Hacker News Reader

Uni. of Alberta researchers solve puzzle that baffled scientists for decades

edmontonjournal.com

53 pointsriphay25 comments

Additional comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13337252

>> ... it was post-doctoral fellow Moe Rashidi, who immigrated from Iran, who deserves the credit.

>> "He really did all the brilliant work,” Wolkow said. “Tremendous people are drawn here … and become fantastic new members of Canada.”

That was one of the key takeaways here, a reminder of how important skilled immigration is to any country. That patent is owned by Canadians now.

Skilled being the key word

Unskilled immigrants of today are parents of the skilled natural-born citizens of tomorrow.

It's quite difficult to immigrate to Canada as an unskilled immigrant.

Unless you're in need of a country to safely live in and qualify as a refugee, in which case Canada actually tries to do its part to house you.

Skilled parents are more likely to have skilled children. Even ignoring any possible hereditary intelligence correlation that might exist, having good job prospects will naturally heighten the chance of their children doing well.

There are also more than enough skilled people waiting to come here. With a backlog of skilled works the west has the opportunity to be selective (refugees are another subject). I personally support the idea that they should be more open to skilled workers. Although Canada already does a pretty good job compared to the US. Apparently the UK is looking into copying Canada's policies following Brexit.

But even here in Canada skilled immigrants often get associated with unskilled or illegal immigrants, or just generally misunderstood in terms of the value they bring, which (unfairly) puts pressure on reducing numbers.

Not necessarily. They could just be stuck in a cycle of poverty and be a drain on the system.

Well, there are no guarantees but Canada's education system increases the probability of skilled offspring.

[citation needed]

I went to school both in the United States and Ukraine and while the United States educational system was way more funded, it was not any better. So what if we have a TV in every classroom? Is watching educational movies a better use of time than getting a lecture from the teacher about it?

US is not Canada, education works very differently, especially funding.

Again, I don't see any evidence why funding education more would lead to better outcomes. Is there any evidence of this?

I'm sure schools in better founded areas have better students. This doesn't mean that the funding is the cause, those students also come from wealthier families.

The US also has a lot of under-performing minority groups like African-American and Latino students. So comparing US to Canada directly won't work either. Besides, each state in the US and each province in Canada actually administers public education, no the federal government. This makes it harder to compare.

But anyway, is there any evidence that public education improves the outcomes of people who immigrate into the country? For example, compare someone who immigrates with their parents at 17 or later vs. someone who immigrates at 7 years or younger. Do the younger immigrants have better outcomes?

Not sure why you are being down-voted. I thought down-voting on HN is not for disagreement, but for bad behaviour. You bring up a valid opinion. It's like the arrogant crowd of HN is in favor of eugenics.

My parents came over to Canada as unskilled and my bro and I have masters level education and high salaries.

Also another HN thread a few weeks ago was on a Globe and Mail article titled "Chop Suey Nation". Article was about all the low-skilled chinese immigrants who start up restaurants in small towns - general theme is to get their children a better future.

I guess we are in the Trump era now.

There's a surprisingly large number of Iranians doing great work in Canadian universities. I'm not particularly well-versed in why, but it seems that smart people have both means and motive to emigrate.

Iran is a pretty highly-developed country with a population of 83 million people, so I don't think that's too surprising.

There's a perception gap due to the western world's treatment of Iran. Maybe we shouldn't have overthrown their government and installed a dictator in the 1950s.

Can confirm this, and this spans all fields of study. They are doing great work. Canadian universities are choke full of immigrants of all kinds though (I'm one).

Iran's brain drain is the reason

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/02/02/why_does_iran_ha...

Actually Canada is a weird one when it comes to immigration. Work based skilled immigration to Canada is certainly easier than the US. But if you want to marry a Canadian and want to move to Canada as an American citizen, you have to wait 2 years for the visa to get approved, and there is no fiance visa or anything to speed up the process.

Working on a spouse visa right now for me spouse, so I've got a slight clarification. As the non-citizen spouse of a Canadian you can VISIT (possibly by applying for a visitor visa like a normal tourist) and probably get that visitor visa extended as many time as you like while you wait for the Permanent Residency application to finish (average 2 year processing time). But you may not be able to work in Canada while you wait (there was some news about temporary work permits being issued to spouses who were inside of Canada while waiting for their PR).

Also a key takeaway that brain drain is real and incredibly destructive for any underdeveloped country.

Here's a blog post with a little more technical information: http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=822...

Link to the paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.11...

Also, A less click-baity title might be "Uni. of Alberta researchers discover the physical process behind negative differential resistance."

pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06344

from https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/bobwolkow/publication...

As per usual for mainstream scientific articles... shallow, lot's of hyperbole, very little info...

Does anyone have a better source for this? Maybe a link to the paper?

I believe this is part of it https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.06344v4.pdf

what's the puzzle? mods, can you fix the title?

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