klisemfg Chapter 331 Era: XCMG's Simple-minded Wife 35
Chapter 331 Era: XCMG's Simple-minded Wife 35
The thesis issue can't just be left like this!
"boom!"
Xu Weidong slammed his fist on the factory director's desk, causing a few drops of tea to splash out of the enamel mug.
The old factory manager raised his bloodshot eyes, his gaze shooting out from above his reading glasses: "What? You want to take some men to the US to snatch it back?"
"I'm going!"
Xu Weidong pulled a stack of documents out of his briefcase. "Look," he said, "the data curves in this paper from the Acta Metallurgica Sinica are exactly the same as ours, even the error fluctuations! They just re-painted our charts!"
The old factory director took the data, his fingers moving back and forth between the two sets of data, his brows furrowing more and more deeply.
The announcement of the end of the workday came from outside the window, and the setting sun cast long shadows of the two people.
"The ministry just approved the funding for my trip to City B in Country M to attend the International Materials Society meeting."
The old factory manager suddenly said, "Originally, there were only two spots available..."
Xu Weidong's eyes lit up: "I'll take Shen Hongying with me! She speaks good English and is the main designer of the spectrometer."
"And bring Zhao Bo along too." The old factory director took an envelope out of his drawer. "He's dismantled imported equipment in the oil field and can tell the difference between real and fake."
*
Three days later, in the early morning, Ji Xiaosong's fingers trembled slightly as she straightened Xu Weidong's tie.
This was the husband's second trip abroad, but to a country that was meant to humiliate them.
"Don't worry." Xu Weidong held her hand. "Professor Lin has agreed to meet us in City B."
"Yes, I'm not worried."
As Ji Xiaosong spoke, she handed Xu Weidong a piece of paper.
"This contains the contact information of some reliable people. If you encounter any danger, you can contact them."
Ji Dan carried Nian An, who had just woken up, over and said, "Remember, the more arrogant they are, the more it shows they have a guilty conscience."
The little girl suddenly grabbed her father's tie: "Hit the bad guy!"
Zhigang and Zhitie ran over barefoot. One handed over a homemade "talisman," which was a formula model made of twisted wire, and the other stuffed a small wooden airplane into his hands: "Daddy's bomber!"
Xu Weidong squatted down and hugged the three children in his arms, smelling their faint milky scent.
Ji Xiaosong turned her face away, and the green ivy on the windowsill moved without any wind, quietly wrapping around her wrist.
*
The B City Convention and Exhibition Center was bustling with people.
Shen Hongying nervously clutched the hem of her suit jacket, a "battle robe" she had specially bought with the factory's bonus.
Zhao Bo kept wiping his glasses, the lenses reflecting the glaring lights of the exhibition hall.
"There!" Xu Weidong suddenly pointed to a booth.
Beneath a giant poster from the Materials Science Society of Country M, Dr. Karl is speaking eloquently to the camera, while the electronic screen behind him displays the familiar set of data curves.
Shen Hongying rushed forward: "Excuse me, this data is from our research!"
Carl turned his head, a flicker of panic crossing his blue eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses, before a mocking smile appeared: "You? Do you have any evidence?"
Xu Weidong took out his yellowed lab notebook, the pages still bearing traces of rust from the steel mill.
The crowd gradually gathered, and some people began to take pictures.
"Interesting."
Carl flipped through a few pages and suddenly closed the notebook. "These handwritten formulas don't even have standardized units of measurement."
He deliberately raised his voice, "Gentlemen, how could the people of China possibly make nanoscale observations when we don't even have a decent spectrometer?"
A few scattered laughs rang out from the crowd.
Zhao Bo blushed and pulled out a photo of their homemade spectrometer from his bag: "We built it ourselves!"
"A toy cobbled together from scrap metal?" Karl shrugged dramatically. "Gentlemen, this is like calculating a spacecraft orbit with an abacus..."
"What's wrong with an abacus?" Xu Weidong suddenly roared in Chinese, "We built our atomic bomb with an abacus!"
The room fell silent instantly.
An Asian scholar squeezed to the front row; it was Professor Zhiyuan Lin from MIT.
He picked up Xu Weidong's experimental records and examined them carefully. Suddenly, he pointed to a certain page and said, "The rare earth ratios marked here are exactly the same as those in Karl's paper, but the Chinese used yttrium oxide, while Karl used lanthanum oxide. If it were plagiarism, why would they deliberately change the key parameters?"
Karl's expression changed drastically.
At this point, security guards from the exhibition came over to disperse the crowd: "No disturbance, please."
In the chaos, a man in a suit stopped Xu Weidong: "I am the technical director of Locke Corporation. Are you interested in having a chat? Your spectrometer design is very... unique."
Before Xu Weidong could answer, Professor Lin hurriedly pulled him away: "Ignore him, he's just a front for arms dealers."
Upon first meeting, I was hastily pulled away.
Lin Zhiyuan led the three to a coffee shop outside the convention center. After looking around warily, he lowered his voice and said, "I am Lin Zhiyuan from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. My ancestral home is in the Southern Province."
He pulled out a yellowed photograph. “Look, this is the spectrometer my father made at the Southwest Associated University in 1943. It was even more rudimentary than what you have now.”
Xu Weidong's eyes widened. The device in the photo, made from a modified artillery shell, bore a striking resemblance to their homemade spectrometer.
“Karl is backed by a military-funded project team.”
Professor Lin quickly wrote down a few phone numbers. "The academic society has scheduled a presentation time for me at 10 a.m. tomorrow. You can have 20 minutes. But you must prepare a more detailed chain of evidence."
Shen Hongying hurriedly opened her notebook: "We have daily temperature and humidity records, and..."
"not enough."
Professor Lin interrupted her, taking out a stack of documents from his briefcase. "These are all the papers on nanomaterials published in the Acta Metallurgica Sinica in the past three years. The red marks are the suspicious data mutation points of Karl's team."
He gave Xu Weidong a meaningful look and said, "Science knows no borders, but scientists have a homeland."
Zhao Bo suddenly pointed to one of the pages: "This diffraction peak shape! And the data we had stolen..."
"Shh..." Professor Lin pressed his hand down, "Tomorrow, let the whole world see what true academic justice is."
*
The team was in low spirits at the hotel that night.
Shen Hongying translated the protest letter while biting the pen cap, while Zhao Bo practiced his English delivery repeatedly in front of the tape recorder.
Xu Weidong gazed at the unfamiliar city lights outside the window, recalling the expectant looks in his children's eyes when he left home.
The phone rang suddenly. It was Professor Lin: "I have a presentation slot tomorrow. You'll have twenty minutes to go on stage. But be careful, Carl has contacted the media."
The lecture hall was packed the following day.
When Xu Weidong demonstrated the working principle of his self-made spectrometer, whispers arose from the audience.
Carl suddenly stood up and interrupted, "Gentlemen, the Chinese have clearly been spying on our lab logs. The failure modes they described are exactly the same as our internal report from last year!"
"Bullshit!" Zhao Bo couldn't help but curse, causing an uproar.
Shen Hongying quickly switched the slides to show photos of steel mill workers modifying equipment in the warehouse: "This optical path system is our own creation!"
"Where's the evidence?" Karl sneered. "Who can prove it wasn't staged?"
An elderly man with white hair suddenly stood up from the back of the hall: "I can testify."
The room fell silent. This was Professor Lederman, a recipient of one of the world's top physics prizes.
"Thirty years ago, I made a great discovery at the Southwest Associated University in China, where I saw even more rudimentary equipment."
He walked over to the booth, picked up Xu Weidong's notebook, and said, "Look at the marks on the page corners where molten steel was burned. Would a forger pay attention to such details?"
Karl's face turned ashen: "Professor, did you take the money?"
"Enough!" Lederman slammed his fist on the table. "Science knows no borders! If the data is true, it should be acknowledged!"
The media's flashbulbs went off wildly at the scene.
Xu Weidong took a deep breath and said in broken English, "We don't want honors, we just want the truth. Scientists from China are not afraid of falling behind, but we refuse to be slandered!"