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The Works in...
The entrepreneurial state How state competition – through war – can drive institutional progress
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
By treating DNA as a language, Brian Hie’s “ChatGPT for genomes” could pick up patterns that humans can’t see, accelerating biological design. The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
End of Life on Earth Let’s talk about climate change and life on Earth. Not anthropogenic climate change – but long term...
a month ago
21
a month ago
Let’s talk about climate change and life on Earth. Not anthropogenic climate change – but long term natural changes in the Earth’s environment due to stellar evolution. Eventually, as our sun burns through its fuel, it will go through changes. It will begin to grow, becoming a...
IEEE Spectrum
The Pioneer Behind Electromagnetism Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would not have been possible to invent motors, telecommunications equipment, kitchen appliances and more. A key part of our understanding of that relationship, known as classical...
IEEE Spectrum
Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances...
8 months ago
49
8 months ago
Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels. With this...
Yale E360
Uncertain Future for Clean Tech Boom Underway in Republican Strongholds Government support for clean energy has spurred new projects across the U.S., with more than 80...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
Government support for clean energy has spurred new projects across the U.S., with more than 80 percent of the spending flowing to Republican districts. But since President Trump took office, new project announcements have seen a precipitous drop. Read more on E360 →
Asterisk
How Not To Predict The Future Good forecasting thrives on a delicate balance of math, expertise, and…vibes.
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Physical Process That Powers a New Type of Generative AI Some modern image generators rely on the principles of diffusion to create images. Alternatives...
a year ago
50
a year ago
Some modern image generators rely on the principles of diffusion to create images. Alternatives based on the process behind the distribution of charged particles may yield even better results. The post The Physical Process That Powers a New Type of Generative AI first...
IEEE Spectrum
Freddy the Robot Was the Fall Guy for British AI FREDERICK Mark 2, the Friendly Robot for Education, Discussion and Entertainment, the Retrieval of...
2 months ago
11
2 months ago
FREDERICK Mark 2, the Friendly Robot for Education, Discussion and Entertainment, the Retrieval of Information, and the Collation of Knowledge, better known as Freddy II. This remarkable robot could put together a simple model car from an assortment of parts dumped in its...
Blog - Practical...
Do Droughts Make Floods Worse? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Do you remember the summer of...
a year ago
139
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Do you remember the summer of 2022 when a record drought had gripped not only a large part of the United States, but most of Europe too? Reservoirs were empty, wildfires spread, crop yields dropped, and rivers...
Yale E360
U.S. Aid Cuts Are Hitting Global Conservation Projects Hard The Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID has done more than cut off life-saving humanitarian...
2 months ago
5
2 months ago
The Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID has done more than cut off life-saving humanitarian assistance. It has also eliminated funding for environmental protection and conservation work in dozens of countries, with many programs now being forced to shut down. Read more on...
NeuroLogica Blog
Living with Predators For much of human history, wolves and other large carnivores were considered pests. Wolves were...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
For much of human history, wolves and other large carnivores were considered pests. Wolves were actively exterminated on the British Isles, with the last wolf killed in 1680. It is more difficulty to deliberately wipe out a species on a continent than an island, but across Europe...
Quanta Magazine
The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light —...
a year ago
26
a year ago
To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light — Cynthia Chiang builds her own equipment. Then she deploys it at the ends of the Earth. The post The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise first...
Yale E360
Imperiled in the Wild, Many Plants May Survive Only in Gardens As the impacts of climate change and other threats mount, conservationists are racing to preserve...
3 months ago
3
3 months ago
As the impacts of climate change and other threats mount, conservationists are racing to preserve endangered plant species in botanical garden “metacollections” in the hope of eventually returning them to the wild. But what happens when there is no suitable habitat to return them...
Yale E360
In Uganda, Deadly Landslides Force an Agricultural Reckoning As growing populations denude its slopes and heavy rain intensifies, Mount Elgon has become...
5 days ago
5
5 days ago
As growing populations denude its slopes and heavy rain intensifies, Mount Elgon has become increasingly vulnerable to landslides. In response, Ugandan farmers are planting native trees and changing the crops they plant in efforts to build resilience against future...
brr
Redeployment Part Three Off-continent after 446 days!
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
Before the Undo Command, There Was the Electric Eraser hot combs—they all obviously benefited from the jolt of electrification. But the eraser? What was so...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
hot combs—they all obviously benefited from the jolt of electrification. But the eraser? What was so problematic about the humble eraser that it needed electrifying? 1935 patent application for an apparatus for erasing, “Hand held rubbers are clumsy and cover a greater area than...
symmetry magazine
Muon g-2 doubles down with latest measurement, explores uncharted territory Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment brings particle physics closer to a showdown between theory and...
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Ciitizen And The Patient Data Marketplace | Out-Of-Pocket The path to our personal health record
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Exits & Outcomes Is Good | Out-Of-Pocket moar newsletters
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
A New Agenda for Low-Dimensional Topology This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of...
a year ago
94
a year ago
This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of “Kirby’s list” — a compendium of the most important unsolved problems in the field. The post A New Agenda for Low-Dimensional Topology first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Apoorva Srinivasan
a review on protein language models Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been...
a year ago
32
a year ago
Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been building and training language models on protein sequence data, replicating the success seen in other domains, with profound implications. In this post, I will explore how transformer...
Quantum Frontiers
A peek inside Northrop Grumman’s subatomic endeavors As the weather turns colder and we trade outdoor pools for pumpkin spice and then Christmas carols,...
over a year ago
47
over a year ago
As the weather turns colder and we trade outdoor pools for pumpkin spice and then Christmas carols, perhaps you’re longing for summer’s warmth. For me, it is not just warmth I yearn for: This past summer, I worked as a … Continue reading →
wadertales
Juvenile settlement in Black-tailed Godwits Adult waders tend to be exceptionally consistent in their use of time and space, with marked...
10 months ago
74
10 months ago
Adult waders tend to be exceptionally consistent in their use of time and space, with marked individuals turning up on the same estuaries at the same time year after year, as discussed in the Whimbrel blog ‘Whimbrel: time to leave’. How do these patterns become established? Do...
Uncharted...
10 Interesting Updates on Why a World with More Humans Is Better Including solar energy, nuclear, geoengineering, reforestation, vertical farming, oceans, and more
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Can Quantum Gravity Be Created in the Lab? Quantum gravity could help physicists unite the currently incompatible worlds of quantum mechanics...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
Quantum gravity could help physicists unite the currently incompatible worlds of quantum mechanics and gravity. In this episode, Monika Schleier-Smith discusses her pioneering experimental approach, using laser-cooled atoms to explore whether gravity could emerge from quantum...
Yale E360
Warming Doubled the Odds of Record Fires in South Korea Warming fueled the hot, dry, windy weather that gave rise to a spate of record-breaking fires in...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Warming fueled the hot, dry, windy weather that gave rise to a spate of record-breaking fires in South Korea in March, an analysis finds. Read more on E360 →
Blog - Practical...
What Happens When a Reservoir Goes Dry? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2022, the level in...
over a year ago
60
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2022, the level in Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the United States formed by the Hoover Dam, reached yet another all-time low of 175 feet or 53 meters below full, a level that hasn’t been...
Quanta Magazine
Celebrated Cryptography Algorithm Gets an Upgrade Two researchers have improved a well-known technique for lattice basis reduction, opening up new...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Two researchers have improved a well-known technique for lattice basis reduction, opening up new avenues for practical experiments in cryptography and mathematics. The post Celebrated Cryptography Algorithm Gets an Upgrade first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Casey Handmer's blog
SLS is still a national disgrace Four years ago, unable to find a comprehensive summary of the ongoing abject failure known as the...
9 months ago
40
9 months ago
Four years ago, unable to find a comprehensive summary of the ongoing abject failure known as the NASA SLS (Space Launch System), I wrote one. If you’re unfamiliar with the topic, you should read it first.  It is hard to …
pcloadletter
Generative AI will probably make blogs better Generative AI will probably make blogs better. Have you ever searched for something on Google and...
a month ago
10
a month ago
Generative AI will probably make blogs better. Have you ever searched for something on Google and found the first one, two, or three blog posts to be utter nonsense? That's because these blog posts have been optimized not for human consumption, but rather to entertain the search...
Drew Ex Machina
NASA’s Explorer 18: The First Interplanetary Monitoring Platform Among the greatest scientific achievements of the opening years of the Space Age was the...
a year ago
40
a year ago
Among the greatest scientific achievements of the opening years of the Space Age was the characterization of Earth’s magnetic field and the discovery of what became […]
The Works in...
One simple deregulation that would save thousands of lives What we’ve been reading: urbanism, medicine, science, tech, AI, housing, energy, economics, culture,...
a month ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Is vision insurance a scam? | Out-Of-Pocket the weird, verticalized world of vision "insurance"
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
The Data Reveals Top Patent Portfolios Eight years is a long time in the world of patents. When we last published what we then called the...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Eight years is a long time in the world of patents. When we last published what we then called the Patent Power Scorecard, in 2017, it was a different technological and social landscape—Google had just filed a patent application on the transformer architecture, a momentous...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Discover New Way for Spheres to ‘Kiss’ A new proof marks the first progress in decades on important cases of the so-called kissing problem....
5 months ago
74
5 months ago
A new proof marks the first progress in decades on important cases of the so-called kissing problem. Getting there meant doing away with traditional approaches. The post Mathematicians Discover New Way for Spheres to ‘Kiss’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Actually good 2024 healthcare predictions | Out-Of-Pocket I know, enough predictions. But these are good!
a year ago
Yale E360
Cambodian Forest Defenders at Risk for Exposing Illegal Logging The lush forests that have long sustained Cambodia’s Indigenous people have steadily fallen to...
a month ago
14
a month ago
The lush forests that have long sustained Cambodia’s Indigenous people have steadily fallen to illicit logging. Now, community members face intimidation and risk arrest as they patrol their forests to document the losses and try to push the government to stop the cutting. Read...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Lunar Cycle and Suicide Does the lunar cycle affect human behavior? This seems to be a question that refuses to die, no...
over a year ago
101
over a year ago
Does the lunar cycle affect human behavior? This seems to be a question that refuses to die, no matter how hard it is to confirm any actual effect. It’s now a cultural idea, deeply embedded and not going anywhere. A recent study, however, seems to show a correlation between...
Quanta Magazine
Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
A new proof represents the culmination of a 65-year-old story about anomalous shapes in special dimensions. The post Dimension 126 Contains Strangely Twisted Shapes, Mathematicians Prove first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
Why Japan Succeeds Despite Stagnation Demographics & lending vs housing, culture & immigration
4 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Licensing and Credentialing Nonsense with Assured | Out-Of-Pocket
8 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look. A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one...
4 weeks ago
22
4 weeks ago
A new argument explores how the growth of disorder could cause massive objects to move toward one another. Physicists are both interested and skeptical. The post Is Gravity Just Entropy Rising? Long-Shot Idea Gets Another Look. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
The Players of the Syrian Chessboard What will Israel, Russia, Turkey, the Kurds, Europe, and Lebanon do?
7 months ago
Casey Handmer's blog
Part 7 Senzeni Na Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier...
6 months ago
73
6 months ago
Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier chapters. Google Mars .kml. Literary commentary podcast. [Edit: If you enjoy this kind of thing, you may find a career at my company, Terraform Industries, rewarding. We’re hiring...
NeuroLogica Blog
De-extincting the Dire Wolf This really is just a coincidence – I posted yesterday about using AI and modern genetic engineering...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
This really is just a coincidence – I posted yesterday about using AI and modern genetic engineering technology, with one application being the de-extinction of species. I had not seen the news from yesterday about a company that just announced it has cloned three dire wolves...
Eukaryote Writes...
Book review: Air-borne by Carl Zimmer Man, it’s embarrassing to be part of a field of study (biosecurity, in this case) that had such a...
4 weeks ago
17
4 weeks ago
Man, it’s embarrassing to be part of a field of study (biosecurity, in this case) that had such a public moment of unambiguously whiffing it.
Asterisk
Read This, Not That: The Hidden Cost of Nutrition Misinformation Our daily lives are inundated with misleading claims about nutrition. That’s not just distracting —...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Our daily lives are inundated with misleading claims about nutrition. That’s not just distracting — it’s also harming our health.
The Works in...
A writing fellowship on scientific progress Works in Progress and Asimov Press are launching a paid six-month fellowship.
5 months ago
Cremieux Recueil
Workers For Robots Want to give blue collar workers the sorts of jobs they can raise a family on and revive American...
8 months ago
34
8 months ago
Want to give blue collar workers the sorts of jobs they can raise a family on and revive American manufacturing? Then you should support automation
IEEE Spectrum
Granville T. Woods: Smartest Guy in the Room Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe,...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe, things don’t always turn out the way you envisioned. Such was the life of inventor extraordinaire Granville T. Woods. Who was Granville T. Woods? Woods was endowed with...
Quanta Magazine
A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of...
a year ago
60
a year ago
The discovery earlier this year of the “hat” tile marked the culmination of hundreds of years of work into tiles and their symmetries. The post A Brief History of Tricky Mathematical Tiling first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Ins and Outs of Fundraising Today | Out-Of-Pocket Some stuff I’ve learned doing a little healthcare startup investing
a year ago
Apoorva Srinivasan
on edward jenner and creativity One common question that’s on everyone’s minds as we fiercely scrub our hands, pool our resources,...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
One common question that’s on everyone’s minds as we fiercely scrub our hands, pool our resources, conserve our consumption, stock up (but not hoard), invent calculus or write King Lear is: when will this end? Nobody knows what the answer to that question is but we
Blog - Practical...
Is the World Really Running Out of Sand? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer...
9 months ago
113
9 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and...
wadertales
Will head-starting work for Curlew? 83 captive-reared Curlew were released successfully in 2019, over 130 in 2021 and a similar number...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
83 captive-reared Curlew were released successfully in 2019, over 130 in 2021 and a similar number in 2022 but this does not mean that head-starting is a solution to England’s Curlew problems. We don’t yet know the proportion of youngsters that survive the difficult ‘teenage...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Jersey Drones Are Likely Drones The latest flap over drone sightings in New Jersey and other states in the North East appears to be...
6 months ago
64
6 months ago
The latest flap over drone sightings in New Jersey and other states in the North East appears to be – essentially nothing. Or rather, it’s a classic example of a mass panic. There are reports of “unusual” drone activity, which prompts people to look for drones, which results in...
Quanta Magazine
To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional...
a year ago
99
a year ago
Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional spheres. The post To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part IV Part 4 This will be the final installment of this mini-debate about climate change and health...
over a year ago
73
over a year ago
Part 4 This will be the final installment of this mini-debate about climate change and health effects, following a typical format of each person getting to make a statement and a response. Scott makes a lot of complaints about tone, format and fairness while simultaneously trying...
Asterisk
The Death and Life of Prediction Markets at Google Over the past two decades, Google has hosted two different internal platforms for predictions. Why...
8 months ago
27
8 months ago
Over the past two decades, Google has hosted two different internal platforms for predictions. Why did the first one fail — and will the other endure?
Casey Handmer's blog
Why do we need a Department of Government Efficiency? President Trump’s recent sweeping electoral victory is a clear mandate for change. There is some...
7 months ago
45
7 months ago
President Trump’s recent sweeping electoral victory is a clear mandate for change. There is some urgency, and Trump has assembled the early stages of a team and coalition that can deliver it. It’s not exactly a mystery what Elon and Vivek plan for The Department of Government...
Quanta Magazine
How Is Flocking Like Computing? Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz interviews the evolutionary ecologist Iain Couzin about how and why collective behaviors arise. The post How Is Flocking Like...
IEEE Spectrum
How Engineers at Digital Equipment Corp. Saved Ethernet I’ve enjoyed reading magazine articles about Ethernet’s 50th anniversary, including one in the The...
a year ago
98
a year ago
I’ve enjoyed reading magazine articles about Ethernet’s 50th anniversary, including one in the The Institute. Invented by computer scientists Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs, Ethernet has been extraordinarily impactful. Metcalfe, an IEEE Fellow, received the 1996 IEEE Medal of...
NeuroLogica Blog
England Allows Gene-Edited Crops This has been somewhat of a quiet revolution, but a new law in England may bring it to the...
over a year ago
72
over a year ago
This has been somewhat of a quiet revolution, but a new law in England may bring it to the foreground. The Precision Breeding Act will now allow gene-edited plants to be developed and marketed in England (not Northern Ireland, Wales, or Scotland). The innovation is that the law...
nanoscale views
CHIPS and Science - the reality vs the aspiration I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement...
9 months ago
12
9 months ago
I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement that I wrote with colleagues as part of Rice's Baker Institute's Election 2024: Policy Playbook, which "delivers nonpartisan, expert insights into key issues at stake on the 2024...
Quanta Magazine
Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Black hole and Big Bang singularities break our best theory of gravity. A trilogy of theorems hints that physicists will need to go to the ends of space and time to find a fix. The post Singularities in Space-Time Prove Hard to Kill first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
Franklin’s Franklins Were Freakishly Un-Fakeable To make something hard to fake, you can use exotic materials or clever tricks. Benjamin Franklin, a...
a year ago
33
a year ago
To make something hard to fake, you can use exotic materials or clever tricks. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by vocation, a scientist by avocation, leaned on cleverness, developing measures that are still in use. Those black arts have now yielded to the latest analytical...
Sean Carroll
George B. Field, 1929-2024 George Field, brilliant theoretical astrophysicist and truly great human being, passed away on the...
11 months ago
83
11 months ago
George Field, brilliant theoretical astrophysicist and truly great human being, passed away on the morning of July 31. He was my Ph.D. thesis advisor and one of my favorite people in the world. I often tell my own students that the two most important people in your life who you...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Circular CO2 Economy Big picture time – as I have discussed before, we have just passed 8 billion people on this planet...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
Big picture time – as I have discussed before, we have just passed 8 billion people on this planet and will likely top 10 billion before populations stabilize (which is quite possible, but that’s another story).  What this means is that anything we collectively do is big. It...
Drew Ex Machina
An ISS Success Story: CyMISS (Tropical Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS) to the Hurricane... The team at Tropical Weather Analytics (TWA), where this author is the Chief Scientist, had the...
11 months ago
Breck's Blog
Movement
3 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Robots and a Sense of Self Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption)...
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption) have a sense of self. This sense has several components – we feel as if we occupy our physical bodies, that our bodies are distinct entities separate from the rest of the universe,...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Drone Madness: Here is the Antidote For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and...
6 months ago
81
6 months ago
For those of us who, through the years, have been through wave after wave of uncritical and sensational UFO stories in the media, the current obsession with (and jumping to unwarranted conclusions about) mysterious drones seems all too familiar.  As before, untrained observers,...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Application reminder, new virtual discussion, new course | Out-Of-Pocket quick housekeeping things
a year ago
The Works in...
Issue 18: Urbanism with Chinese characteristics Plus: Reducing the motherhood penalty by extending fertility, the steam networks of New York City,...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
Plus: Reducing the motherhood penalty by extending fertility, the steam networks of New York City, and the rise and fall of the Hanseatic league.
IEEE Spectrum
The Saga of AD-X2, the Battery Additive That Roiled the NBS Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of...
11 months ago
81
11 months ago
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and his reinstatement after more than 400 scientists threatened to resign. Who knew a little box of salt could stir up such drama? What was AD-X2? It all started in 1947 when...
NeuroLogica Blog
ChatGPT Performs At University Level We are still sorting out the strengths and weaknesses of the new crop of artificial intelligence...
a year ago
25
a year ago
We are still sorting out the strengths and weaknesses of the new crop of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, the poster-child of which is ChatGPT. This is a so-called large language model application using a “generative pre-trained transformer”. Essentially these types of...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Pitching to payers, pilots, and what makes Blue Cross distinct with Tricia Garland | Out-Of-Pocket so you want to know what health insurers are looking for?
a year ago
Melting Asphalt
2015 Meta Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I published a paltry six full essays this year. Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of them. But still, six. It would be… Read more ›
nanoscale views
Lots to read, including fab for quantum and "Immaterial Science" Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A...
9 months ago
10
9 months ago
Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A Nature paper has been published by a group of authors predominantly from IMEC in Belgium, in which they demonstrate CMOS-compatible manufacturing of superconducting qubit hardware...
Yale E360
World Likely to Breach 1.5-Degree Target, Research Finds The world is set to blow past its goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, new research shows. Read...
5 months ago
The Works in...
Works in Progress: 2023 Wrapped Our most read work of the year
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
The Social Media Dilemma Australia is planning a total ban on social media for children under 16 years old. Prime Minister...
8 months ago
53
8 months ago
Australia is planning a total ban on social media for children under 16 years old. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese argues that it is the only way to protect vulnerable children from the demonstrable harm that social media can do. This has sparked another round of debates about...
NeuroLogica Blog
Woman with Catatonia for Years Wakes After Treatment The story of a woman, in a severe state of catatonia for years and “waking up” after being treated...
over a year ago
69
over a year ago
The story of a woman, in a severe state of catatonia for years and “waking up” after being treated for an autoimmune disease, is making the rounds and deserves a little bit of context. April Burrell was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia resulting in catatonia, and has...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New Era Of Digital Therapeutics | Out-Of-Pocket Guess it's time to start defining the term again
a year ago
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, September 2023 A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them...
a year ago
300
a year ago
A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. I’ve been busy helping to choose the first cohort of our blogging fellowship, so my reading has been relatively light. All emphasis in bold in the quotes...
Uncharted...
100,000 Gifts What happened in 2024 and what will happen in 2025
6 months ago
Yale E360
Wildlife Returns to Site of Devastating Southern California Wildfire Four months after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, California, wildlife is making a...
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Animal Mutation Rates Reveal Traits That Speed Evolution The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can...
over a year ago
66
over a year ago
The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can evolve. The post Animal Mutation Rates Reveal Traits That Speed Evolution first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Harvesting Energy from Water Vapor I did not plan to write yet another post about energy, but this popped up and I had to write about...
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
I did not plan to write yet another post about energy, but this popped up and I had to write about it. UMASS researchers have produced a device that generates electricity by harvesting charge from water vapor. They write: The common feature of these materials is that they are...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Brain Size Deep thought is what distinguishes humans from other animals. The brain is the medium for thought;...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
Deep thought is what distinguishes humans from other animals. The brain is the medium for thought; so, there's the idea that brain size is important, with larger brains allowing more profound thought. Larger brains in hominids appears to have an evolutionary advantage, but the...
Quanta Magazine
Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The prize-winning geometer feels most fulfilled when exploring the fertile ground where constraint meets creation. The post Emmy Murphy Is a Mathematician Who Finds Beauty in Flexibility first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Will Better Superconductors Transform the World? Scientists are pursuing materials that can conduct electricity with perfect efficiency under ambient...
a year ago
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a year ago
Scientists are pursuing materials that can conduct electricity with perfect efficiency under ambient conditions. In this episode, the physicist Siddharth Shanker Saxena tells co-host Janna Levin about what makes this hunt so difficult and consequential. The post Will...
Asterisk
Can You Trust An AI Press Release? Of course not. Here’s how leading AI labs mislead consumers, journalists, and each other.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Plants as Biofactories When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are powered by the sun, extract raw material from the air and soil, and make all sorts of useful molecules. Mostly we use them to make edible molecules (food), but also to make textiles,...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part III Part 3 Hi Steve, and thank you for your timely response, and for even considering hosting this...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Part 3 Hi Steve, and thank you for your timely response, and for even considering hosting this debate. There has been, and continues to be a “blackout” on almost all discussion regarding the science behind climate change. If “The science” is truly “settled”, it is a pretty shaky...
Yale E360
Can Toxic Mining Waste Help Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere? On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of...
4 months ago
6
4 months ago
On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of contamination for decades. Now, a company plans to process the waste to draw CO2 from the air — one of several projects worldwide that aim to turn this liability into an asset. Read...
NeuroLogica Blog
Roleplaying Games May Help Autistic People Gotta love the title of this paper: “A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Gotta love the title of this paper: “A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic people“. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop roleplaying game where a small group of people each play characters adventuring in an imaginary world run by the dungeon master (DM)....
Quanta Magazine
The Colorful Problem That Has Long Frustrated Mathematicians The four-color problem is simple to explain, but its complex proof continues to be both celebrated...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The four-color problem is simple to explain, but its complex proof continues to be both celebrated and despised. The post The Colorful Problem That Has Long Frustrated Mathematicians first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
Biotech Firm Unveils ‘Woolly Mice,’ a Step Toward Recreating Woolly Mammoths A U.S. biotech firm working to bring back extinct animals said it had reached a milestone in its...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
A U.S. biotech firm working to bring back extinct animals said it had reached a milestone in its quest to recreate woolly mammoths. This week it unveiled “woolly mice” — mice that had been genetically engineered to sport woolly coats reminiscent of long-dead mammoths. Read more...
Uncharted...
Rise Up, Europe! The Five Beliefs That Cripple a Continent
3 months ago
The Works in...
The fewer the merrier The merits of unified land ownership
2 months ago
Yale E360
Wildlife Returns to Site of Devastating Southern California Wildfire Four months after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, California, wildlife is making a...
2 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
The Race Question As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
As a scientific concept – does race exist? Is it a useful construct, or is it more misleading than useful? I wrote about this question in 2016, and my thinking has evolved a bit since then. My bottom line conclusion has not changed – the answer is, it depends. There is no fully...
Stephen Wolfram...
What Can We Learn about Engineering and Innovation from Half a Century of the Game of Life Cellular... Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow...
3 months ago
51
3 months ago
Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow there’s an arc of progress that’s formed. But are there what amount to “laws of innovation” that govern that arc of progress? There are some exponential and other laws that purport to...
The Works in...
How to write for Works in Progress We're looking for new authors and article pitches.
11 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Luminescent Solar Concentrators for Solar Power Solar power is on the upswing. In 2023, 407–446 GW of solar power was installed globally, bringing...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Solar power is on the upswing. In 2023, 407–446 GW of solar power was installed globally, bringing the total to 1.6 TWdc. To put this into perspective, this was 55% of new power capacity added to energy production. For the first time, a renewable energy source contributed the...
The Works in...
Anemia and Malaria In malaria endemic regions, being anemic could be keeping children safe
8 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Is The Boring Company Useful? Elon Musk has a complicated legacy. Most people I encounter who bother to express an opinion tend to...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Elon Musk has a complicated legacy. Most people I encounter who bother to express an opinion tend to be either a fan or hater. I am neither. He’s a complicated and flawed person who has accomplished some interesting things, but also has had some epic failures. People like a clean...
Uncharted...
Reaction to Your Comments on German Elections Election results, german nuclear, slower maps, and more
4 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Math That Goes On Forever but Never Repeats Simple math can help explain the complexities of the newly discovered aperiodic monotile. ...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Simple math can help explain the complexities of the newly discovered aperiodic monotile. The post Math That Goes On Forever but Never Repeats first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Canvas: A Bet On New EMRs | Out-Of-Pocket what if EMRs didn't totally suck?
a year ago
Beautiful Public...
The Mirror Fusion Test Facility A decade-long effort to build a machine to unlock the promise of nuclear fusion fell victim to...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
A decade-long effort to build a machine to unlock the promise of nuclear fusion fell victim to budget constraints and competing science, and was shut down the day it was dedicated. It was never turned on.
Cremieux Recueil
Evaluating a Sitting Senator's Healthcare Claims If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to...
6 months ago
79
6 months ago
If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to speculate, try not so speculate wildly, lest you end up telling brazen lies to the American people
NeuroLogica Blog
Hybrid Biopolymer Transistors – Implications for Brain Machine Interface There are several technologies which seem likely to be transformative in the coming decades. Genetic...
a year ago
26
a year ago
There are several technologies which seem likely to be transformative in the coming decades. Genetic bioengineering gives us the ability to control the basic machinery of life, including ourselves. Artificial intelligence is a suite of active, learning, information tools....
NeuroLogica Blog
What Happened to the Atmosphere on Mars Of every world known to humans outside the Earth, Mars is likely the most habitable. We have not...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Of every world known to humans outside the Earth, Mars is likely the most habitable. We have not found any genuinely Earth-like exoplanets. They are almost sure to exist, but we just haven’t found any yet. The closest so far is Kepler 452-b, which is a super Earth, specifically...
Yale E360
Cuts to U.S. Climate Aid Will Leave Large Gap in Global Funding The U.S. provides nearly a tenth of all climate finance globally, a well of funding that is at risk...
4 months ago
1
4 months ago
The U.S. provides nearly a tenth of all climate finance globally, a well of funding that is at risk of drying up as the Trump administration takes aim at overseas spending. Read more on E360 →
Asterisk
Why We Shut Down In international development, it’s not enough to try to do good. We need the tools to tell if a...
a year ago
16
a year ago
In international development, it’s not enough to try to do good. We need the tools to tell if a project is really working — and the incentive to end it if it’s not.
Cremieux Recueil
The Demise of the Flynn Effect Massive changes in IQ scores over time are much less meaningful than people think
3 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Finally Find a Problem That Only Quantum Computers Can Do Researchers have shown that a problem relating to the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum...
a year ago
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a year ago
Researchers have shown that a problem relating to the energy of a quantum system is easy for quantum computers but hard for classical ones. The post Physicists Finally Find a Problem That Only Quantum Computers Can Do first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings America’s HVAC labor force is plagued by dishonesty and frequently incapable of meeting industry...
a year ago
19
a year ago
America’s HVAC labor force is plagued by dishonesty and frequently incapable of meeting industry standards. Interventions in indoor air quality are the next frontier in pandemic prevention — but are they up to the task?
Yale E360
Push to Rewild in Wealthy Countries Fueling Destruction in Poorer Ones A new study details how, as wealthy countries rewild farmland, they are driving the destruction of...
4 months ago
8
4 months ago
A new study details how, as wealthy countries rewild farmland, they are driving the destruction of forests in poorer countries that are more abundant in wildlife. Read more on E360 →
Uncharted...
Deserts, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Snow, Paradises, Swamps: Why Do People Live Where They Live in the... Deserts, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Snow, Paradises, Swamps
6 months ago
Quanta Magazine
How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold Number theorist Ken Ono is teaching Olympians to swim more efficiently. The post How...
a year ago
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a year ago
Number theorist Ken Ono is teaching Olympians to swim more efficiently. The post How America’s Fastest Swimmers Use Math to Win Gold first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Michael Lewis’s Blind Side In Going Infinite, the famed chronicler of American finance proves he’s more interested in myths...
a year ago
20
a year ago
In Going Infinite, the famed chronicler of American finance proves he’s more interested in myths than morals — or even math.
NeuroLogica Blog
What to Make of Havana Syndrome I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any...
a year ago
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a year ago
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any strong conclusions about it. In 2016 there was a cluster of strange neurological symptoms among people working at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. They would suddenly experience...
The Works in...
How ships escaped the great stagnation Agglomeration unmoored
2 months ago
The Works in...
What did Henry George think about cities? Solving the terrible urban conditions of the 1800s by abolishing cities
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Some Climate Change Trends and Thoughts Climate change is a challenging issue on multiple levels – it’s challenging for scientists to...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
Climate change is a challenging issue on multiple levels – it’s challenging for scientists to understand all of the complexities of a changing climate, it’s difficult to know how to optimally communicate to the public about climate change, and of course we face an enormous...
Quanta Magazine
Invisible ‘Demon’ Discovered in Odd Superconductor Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all...
a year ago
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a year ago
Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all but invisible. Now physicists have spotted these “demon modes.” The post Invisible ‘Demon’ Discovered in Odd Superconductor first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
What We Owe The Future William MacAskill’s latest book presents itself as an introduction to the burgeoning longtermist...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
William MacAskill’s latest book presents itself as an introduction to the burgeoning longtermist movement. But his views are eccentric – even within the movement he founded.
Quanta Magazine
Fossilized Molecules Reveal a Lost World of Ancient Life A new analysis of ancient sediments fills a gap in the fossil record — revealing a massive dynasty...
a year ago
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a year ago
A new analysis of ancient sediments fills a gap in the fossil record — revealing a massive dynasty of ancient eukaryotes, which may have reigned for 800 million years and shaped the history of life of Earth. The post Fossilized Molecules Reveal a Lost World of Ancient...
Quanta Magazine
He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If...
8 months ago
75
8 months ago
Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If he succeeds, the resulting cell will be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date. The post He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It first...
Quanta Magazine
What Makes for ‘Good’ Mathematics? Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the...
a year ago
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a year ago
Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the common ingredients in “good” mathematical research. In this episode, the Fields Medalist joins Steven Strogatz to revisit the topic. The post What Makes for ‘Good’...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Designed Drugs On a recent SGU live streaming discussion someone in the chat asked – aren’t frivolous AI...
a year ago
51
a year ago
On a recent SGU live streaming discussion someone in the chat asked – aren’t frivolous AI applications just toys without any useful output? The question was meant to downplay recent advances in generative AI. I pointed out that the question is a bit circular – aren’t frivolous...
The Works in...
Should you infect yourself with Zika? What life is like in a challenge trial
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally...
over a year ago
47
over a year ago
A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally stuffed with noncoding sequences. The post How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Decarbonizing Aviation and Agriculture When we talk about reducing carbon release in order to slow down and hopefully stop anthropogenic...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
When we talk about reducing carbon release in order to slow down and hopefully stop anthropogenic global warming much of the focus is on the energy and transportation sectors. There is a good reason for this – the energy sector is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas (GHG)...
Quanta Magazine
The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers. The post The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
Caltech’s Ginsburg Center Editor’s Note: On 10 August 2023, Caltech celebrated the groundbreaking for the Dr. Allen and...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Editor’s Note: On 10 August 2023, Caltech celebrated the groundbreaking for the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement, which will open in 2025. At a lunch following the ceremony, John Preskill made these remarks. Hello everyone. … Continue...
Many Worlds
The Familiar, Yet So Different, Hydrocarbon Rivers of Titan There are three planets or moons in our solar system known to now have, or once had, surface rivers,...
a year ago
31
a year ago
There are three planets or moons in our solar system known to now have, or once had, surface rivers, lakes, deltas and a hydrologic system.  There’s Earth, of course, Mars long ago when it was warmer and wetter, and the so different yet so similar rivers of hydrocarbons on...
Yale E360
Carnivorous Squirrels Discovered in California Scientists have discovered that in addition to seeds and nuts, some California ground squirrels also...
6 months ago
8
6 months ago
Scientists have discovered that in addition to seeds and nuts, some California ground squirrels also eat voles. Read more on E360 →
Blog - Practical...
How This Bridge Was Rebuilt in 15 Days After Hurricane Ian [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On September 28, 2022,...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall on the western coast of Florida as a Category 4 storm, bringing enormous volumes of rainfall and extreme winds to the state. Ian was the deadliest hurricane to...
symmetry magazine
Celebrating Dark Matter Day in Latin America Scientists, artists, communicators and physics fans find creative ways to mark the unofficial...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Scientists, artists, communicators and physics fans find creative ways to mark the unofficial holiday devoted to dark matter.
Quanta Magazine
Tiny Jets on the Sun Power the Colossal Solar Wind A new analysis argues that ubiquitous eruptions in the sun’s corona explain the vast flow of charged...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
A new analysis argues that ubiquitous eruptions in the sun’s corona explain the vast flow of charged particles seen streaming out through the solar system. The post Tiny Jets on the Sun Power the Colossal Solar Wind first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to...
a year ago
79
a year ago
The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to learn from it. The post How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Running Tests on Generative AI with Autoblocks | Out-Of-Pocket How can we keep these bots in check??
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated...
a year ago
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a year ago
After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get. The post With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wanderingspace
Neptune from the James Webb Space Telescope Webb’s latest image is the clearest look at Neptune's rings in 30+ years, and our first time seeing...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
Webb’s latest image is the clearest look at Neptune's rings in 30+ years, and our first time seeing them in infrared light. Take in Webb's ghostly, ethereal views of the planet and its dust bands, rings and moons: https://go.nasa.gov/3RXxoGq #IAC2022
Quanta Magazine
The Molecular Bond That Helps Secure Your Memories How do memories last a lifetime when the molecules that form them turn over within days, weeks or...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
How do memories last a lifetime when the molecules that form them turn over within days, weeks or months? An interaction between two proteins points to a molecular basis for memory. The post The Molecular Bond That Helps Secure Your Memories first appeared on Quanta...
nanoscale views
Brief items - fresh perspectives, some news bits As usual, I hope to write more about particular physics topics soon, but in the meantime I wanted to...
3 weeks ago
14
3 weeks ago
As usual, I hope to write more about particular physics topics soon, but in the meantime I wanted to share a sampling of news items: First, it's a pleasure to see new long-form writing about condensed matter subjects, in an era where science blogging has unquestionably shrunk...
Breck's Blog
Does 3D exist?
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless Possibilities Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra...
a year ago
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a year ago
Using machine learning, string theorists are finally showing how microscopic configurations of extra dimensions translate into sets of elementary particles — though not yet those of our universe. The post AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless...
NeuroLogica Blog
Making Computers More Efficient An analysis in 2021 found that 10% of the world’s electricity production is used by computers,...
a year ago
22
a year ago
An analysis in 2021 found that 10% of the world’s electricity production is used by computers, including personal use, data centers, the internet and communication centers. The same analysis projected that this was likely to increase to 20% by 2025. This may have been an...
Cremieux Recueil
Ozempic and Muscle Mass Are GLP-1 drugs causing excess muscle loss compared to non-pharmacological weight loss?
2 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
A Brief History of the Office Cubicle Robert Propst, a designer at the Herman Miller furniture company. Four years earlier, he had...
a year ago
99
a year ago
Robert Propst, a designer at the Herman Miller furniture company. Four years earlier, he had proposed a radical alternative to the office bullpen: the Action Office. He envisioned it as a holistic and integrated system designed to increase worker efficiency while providing an...
Marine Madness
Book Club: ‘The Island of Sea Women’ by Lisa See Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and ’40s, later liberated by US forces and turned over to the even more barbarous Korean regime whose wrongdoings were overlooked by both American and U.N. occupiers. Lisa See travels...
SubAnima
You've Been Lied To About Genetics Should we give Mendel's peas a chance? Nah, we've moved on.
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How Did Geometry Create Modern Physics? Geometry may have its origins thousands of years ago in ancient land surveying, but it has also had...
a month ago
24
a month ago
Geometry may have its origins thousands of years ago in ancient land surveying, but it has also had a surprising impact on modern physics. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Yang-Hui He explores geometry’s evolution and its future potential through AI. The post...
The Roots of...
The Commission for Stopping Further Improvements On May 24, 1847, a bridge over the Dee River in Chester, England, collapsed. A passenger train...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
On May 24, 1847, a bridge over the Dee River in Chester, England, collapsed. A passenger train plunged into the river; five people were killed and nine seriously injured. The subsequent investigation blamed the bridge’s cast iron girders. Cast iron, like concrete but unlike...
Yale E360
Dust from Car Brakes More Harmful than Exhaust, Study Finds In cars, pollution doesn't come from exhaust alone. It also comes from wear and tear on roads,...
4 months ago
7
4 months ago
In cars, pollution doesn't come from exhaust alone. It also comes from wear and tear on roads, tires, and brakes. According to new research, tiny bits of dust cast off by brake pads may inflict more harm than car exhaust. Read more on E360 →
Chris Grossack's...
An Empty Product of Nonempty Sets A few days ago I saw a cute question on mse asking about a particularly non-intuitive failing of...
a month ago
15
a month ago
A few days ago I saw a cute question on mse asking about a particularly non-intuitive failing of the axiom of choice. I remember when I was an undergrad talking to a friend of mine about various statements equivalent to choice, and being particularly hung up on the same...
Quanta Magazine
Quantum Complexity Shows How to Escape Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a group of young physicists think they have resolved the conflict by appealing to the central pillar of the new century — the physics of quantum information. The post...
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE Recognizes Itaipu Dam’s Engineering Achievements Technology should benefit humanity. One of the most remarkable examples of technology’s potential to...
3 months ago
54
3 months ago
Technology should benefit humanity. One of the most remarkable examples of technology’s potential to provide enduring benefits is the Itaipu Hydroelectric Dam, a massive binational energy project between Brazil and Paraguay. Built on the Paraná River, which forms part of the...
nanoscale views
Talk about "The Direct Democracy of Matter" The Scientia Institute at Rice sponsors series of public lectures annually, centered around a...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
The Scientia Institute at Rice sponsors series of public lectures annually, centered around a theme.  The intent is to get a wide variety of perspectives spanning across the humanities, social sciences, arts, sciences, and engineering, presented in an accessible way.  The youtube...
Breck's Blog
Mind Changers
3 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Solution Aversion Fallacy I like to think deeply about informal logical fallacies. I write about them a lot, and even have an...
a year ago
63
a year ago
I like to think deeply about informal logical fallacies. I write about them a lot, and even have an occasional segment of the SGU dedicated to them. They are a great way to crystalize our thinking about the many ways in which logic can go wrong. Formal logic deals with arguments...
Quanta Magazine
The Usefulness of a Memory Guides Where the Brain Saves It New research finds that the memories useful for future generalizations are held in the brain...
a year ago
62
a year ago
New research finds that the memories useful for future generalizations are held in the brain separately from those recording unusual events. The post The Usefulness of a Memory Guides Where the Brain Saves It first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
Why We Dress the Way We Dress The Four Layers of Fashion
2 months ago
Yale E360
How a Former Herder Protected Mongolia's Vast Grasslands Batmunkh Luvsandash has fought to protect more than a million acres of steppe lands in his native...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Batmunkh Luvsandash has fought to protect more than a million acres of steppe lands in his native Mongolia. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he explains how, by drawing on the knowledge of local herders, he was able to take on the powerful mining industry and win. Read...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
A few more thoughts on Medical Aid in Dying | Out-Of-Pocket Readers sent in their experiences and thoughts - let the morality fight begin
3 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Number of Distances Separating Points Has a New Bound Mathematicians have struggled to prove Falconer’s Conjecture, a simple, but far-reaching, hypothesis...
a year ago
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a year ago
Mathematicians have struggled to prove Falconer’s Conjecture, a simple, but far-reaching, hypothesis about the distances between points. They’re finally getting close. The post Number of Distances Separating Points Has a New Bound first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Light from Space
The Fossil Footprint Nebula A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total...
a year ago
57
a year ago
A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total exposure time: 52h 40' Image resolution: 4,490 × 4,552px (0.96″/px) Shot from my driveway near Tucson, AZ in late 2023 Telescope: William Optics RedCat
NeuroLogica Blog
Fruit Fly Connectome Completed Scientists have just published in Nature that they have completed the entire connectome of a fruit...
9 months ago
68
9 months ago
Scientists have just published in Nature that they have completed the entire connectome of a fruit fly: Network statistics of the whole-brain connectome of Drosophila. The map includes 140,000 neurons and more than 50 million connections. This is an incredible achievement that...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Patient Messaging Conundrum pt. 2 | Out-Of-Pocket Some thoughts from an academic, a behavioral scientist, a patient, and more
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
New Proof Finds the ‘Ultimate Instability’ in a Solar System Model For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always...
over a year ago
99
over a year ago
For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always be unstable. The post New Proof Finds the ‘Ultimate Instability’ in a Solar System Model first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Clinical Pharmacists, Generative AI, and InpharmD | Out-Of-Pocket Going under the hood of a generative AI product
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Should more people be using urgent care? | Out-Of-Pocket is the rise of urgent care a good or bad thing?
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah Animation has come a long way since 1900, when J. Stuart Blackton created The Enchanted Drawing, the...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Animation has come a long way since 1900, when J. Stuart Blackton created The Enchanted Drawing, the earliest known animated film. The 90-second movie was created using stop-motion techniques, as flat characters, props, and backgrounds were drawn on an easel or made from...
Uncharted...
What Are My Politics? And my unrefined thoughts on US politics
3 months ago
Blog - Practical...
When Infrastructure Gets Hacked [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is a water tower, or as...
9 months ago
92
9 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is a water tower, or as the pros would say, an elevated storage tank. Pretty common here in the US, especially in flatter areas where there’s no nearby hillside to build a ground-level tank. I have a whole...
The Works in...
How America Made Machines Make Machines A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark...
a year ago
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a year ago
Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery. The post In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness first appeared on Quanta Magazine
pcloadletter
Write code that you can understand when you get paged at 2am The older I get, the more I dislike clever code. This is not a controversial take; it is pretty-well...
a year ago
106
a year ago
The older I get, the more I dislike clever code. This is not a controversial take; it is pretty-well agreed upon that clever code is bad. But I particularly like the on-call responsiblity framing: write code that you can understand when you get paged at 2am. If you have never...
Yale E360
Renewables Supplied Two-Thirds of Germany's Power Last Year Germany, the largest economy in Europe, got nearly two-thirds of its power from renewables last...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
Germany, the largest economy in Europe, got nearly two-thirds of its power from renewables last year, an analysis shows. Read more on E360 →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Should we charge for patient messaging? | Out-Of-Pocket guess I'm texting my resident friends
a year ago
Uncharted...
16 Most Surprising Facts About Korea As I research the country, these are the most interesting and surprising facts I gathered—and some...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
As I research the country, these are the most interesting and surprising facts I gathered—and some beautiful images along the way.
Quanta Magazine
Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a...
a year ago
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a year ago
Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle. The post Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI An exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing what it means to do science and math, and...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
An exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing what it means to do science and math, and what it means to be a scientist. The post Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge. The post Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
How To Keep AIs From Lying We had a fascinating discussion on this week’s SGU that I wanted to bring here – the subject of...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
We had a fascinating discussion on this week’s SGU that I wanted to bring here – the subject of artificial intelligence programs (AI), specifically large language models (LLMs), lying. The starting point for the discussion was this study, which looked at punishing LLMs as a...
brr
The Last Egg Five more months until freshies...
over a year ago
nanoscale views
US science funding - now time to push on the House appropriators Some not-actively-discouraging news out of Washington DC yesterday:  The Senate appropriations...
2 days ago
3
2 days ago
Some not-actively-discouraging news out of Washington DC yesterday:  The Senate appropriations committee is doing its markups of the various funding bills (which all technically originated in the House), and it appears that they have pushed to keep the funding for NASA and NSF...
Blog - Practical...
Why Are Texas Interchanges Texas So Tall? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Dallas High Five,...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Dallas High Five, one of the tallest highway interchanges in the world. It gets its name from the fact that there are five different levels of roadways crossing each other in this one spot. In some...
Yale E360
In Test, A.I. Weather Model Fails to Predict Freak Storm Artificial intelligence is powering weather forecasts that are generally more accurate than...
a month ago
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a month ago
Artificial intelligence is powering weather forecasts that are generally more accurate than conventional forecasts and are faster and cheaper to produce. But new research shows A.I. may fail to predict unprecedented weather events, a troubling finding as warming fuels new...
Yale E360
U.S. Solar and Batteries Headed for Record Year Solar panels and batteries will account for more than 80 percent of new power capacity installed in...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
Solar panels and batteries will account for more than 80 percent of new power capacity installed in the U.S. this year, officials say. Both technologies are set for record growth, helping to hasten the decline of coal power. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
Individual cells in the brain light up for specific ideas. These concept neurons, once known as “Jennifer Aniston cells,” help us think, imagine and remember episodes from our lives. The post Concept Cells Help Your Brain Abstract Information and Build Memories first...
Quanta Magazine
Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start. The post Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized first...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Getting Healthcare Data To Train An AI Model - with Protege | Out-Of-Pocket And all the different ways you can “train” a model
4 months ago
Beautiful Public...
Highway Photologs Highway departments all around the country had "photolog" programs, some dating back as early as...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Highway departments all around the country had "photolog" programs, some dating back as early as 1961. Each year, specially tricked out vans would drive each mile of state road snapping photos to document the status of roadways.
Blog - Practical...
Why Are Rails Shaped Like That? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Maybe more than any other type...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Maybe more than any other type of infrastructure, railways have a contingent of devoted enthusiasts. “Railfans” as they call themselves; Or should say “ourselves”? Maybe it's the nostalgia of an earlier era or...
NeuroLogica Blog
Should Japan Release Radioactive Water Into The Pacific? Japan is planning on releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into...
a year ago
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a year ago
Japan is planning on releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into the ocean. They claim this will be completely safe, but there are protests going on in both Japan and South Korea, and China has just placed a ban on seafood from Japan. In a perfect...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GPT healthcare startup ideas | Out-Of-Pocket and a call for some of yours
a year ago
Beautiful Public...
Nuclear Weapon Test Films Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear...
a year ago
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a year ago
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear weapons tests from the 1940's - 1960's.
Yale E360
To Help Growers and the Grid, Build Solar on Farmland, Research Says Two new studies suggest that devoting a small fraction of U.S. farmland to solar power would be a...
2 months ago
4
2 months ago
Two new studies suggest that devoting a small fraction of U.S. farmland to solar power would be a boon both for the energy system and for farmers themselves. Read more on E360 →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Secret Research Techniques | Out-Of-Pocket A magician always reveals his tricks for the purposes of engagement
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
When Natural Gas Had No Smell [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Excitement and hope permeated...
12 months ago
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12 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Excitement and hope permeated the crowds gathered in a dusty farm carved from the piney woods in east Texas. The rumor was that Columbus Joiner had struck oil. At 70 years old, Joiner had already won and lost...
Quanta Magazine
The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI By training machine learning models with enough examples of basic science, Miles Cranmer hopes to...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
By training machine learning models with enough examples of basic science, Miles Cranmer hopes to push the pace of scientific discovery forward. The post The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates Electrons have been seen uniting into entities with fractions of electric charge, this time without...
a year ago
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a year ago
Electrons have been seen uniting into entities with fractions of electric charge, this time without a magnetic field coaxing them into it. The post Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
How New Zealand invented inflation targeting The political gamble that made modern central banking
2 weeks ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Using AI for Teaching A recent BBC article reminded me of one of my enduring technology disappointments over the last 40...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
A recent BBC article reminded me of one of my enduring technology disappointments over the last 40 years – the failure of the educational system to reasonably (let alone fully) leverage multimedia and computer technology to enhance learning. The article is about a symposium in...
Cremieux Recueil
Sometimes Papers Contain Obvious Lies What you read in an abstract, a title, or even in the body of a paper might be the opposite of what...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
What you read in an abstract, a title, or even in the body of a paper might be the opposite of what papers actually show, and sometimes result are just made up
Asterisk
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because...
a year ago
18
a year ago
The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because we refuse to learn from experts, other countries, and our own history.
The Works in...
Animals as chemical factories The price of purple
a month ago
Quanta Magazine
How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
When pigeons outnumber pigeonholes, some birds must double up. This obvious statement — and its inverse — have deep connections to many areas of math and computer science. The post How a Problem About Pigeons Powers Complexity Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
City Lights Extend Growing Season for Urban Trees From New York to Paris to Beijing, urban trees are enjoying an extra-long growing season, a new...
2 weeks ago
2
2 weeks ago
From New York to Paris to Beijing, urban trees are enjoying an extra-long growing season, a new study finds. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a...
a year ago
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a year ago
Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a bounty that could help write the first chapter of life's story on Earth. The post Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins first appeared on Quanta...
Damn Interesting
Much Ado About Adenoids Edmund Lawall must have felt cursed. He’d brought his family to New York in the late 1800s to carry...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
Edmund Lawall must have felt cursed. He’d brought his family to New York in the late 1800s to carry on his father’s business as a pharmacist, but fate—or perhaps the city itself—seemed determined to drive him back out again. Lawall’s health had been in decline since their...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Digital health needs more creative financing options | Out-Of-Pocket And does venture actually work for healthcare services?
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in...
a year ago
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a year ago
Three years ago, Google’s AlphaFold pulled off the biggest artificial intelligence breakthrough in science to date, accelerating molecular research and kindling deep questions about why we do science. The post How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Ice Formation In today's bigger is better world, you don't order a large coffee, you order a 20 fluid ounce Venti...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
In today's bigger is better world, you don't order a large coffee, you order a 20 fluid ounce Venti coffee. From 1987 through 2004, McDonald's restaurants had a supersize option for larger than large portions of its French fries and soft drinks. The prefix, super, has been used...
Articles - Chris...
Moved to tears 20 years ago, on January 15 2004, a little before 2 AM Pacific time, was the payoff. It was...
a year ago
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a year ago
20 years ago, on January 15 2004, a little before 2 AM Pacific time, was the payoff. It was cause for celebration. But first, I wept.
Quanta Magazine
These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons. For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons....
a year ago
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a year ago
For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation. The post These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain....
Apoorva Srinivasan
diffusion models for protein generation Introduction Proteins are nature's versatile nanomachines— they have evolved to perform virtually...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Introduction Proteins are nature's versatile nanomachines— they have evolved to perform virtually every important task in living systems. While nature has produced an incredible range of protein functions, these represent only a tiny fraction of what's possible in the protein...
nanoscale views
Cryogenic CMOS - a key need for solid state quantum information processing The basis for much of modern electronics is a set of silicon technologies called CMOS, which stands...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
The basis for much of modern electronics is a set of silicon technologies called CMOS, which stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices and processes.  "Complementary" means using semiconductors (typically silicon) that is locally chemically doped so that you can...
Light from Space
The Rosette Nebula Next to the Orion Nebula, the Rosette Nebula is definitely a must-do on the list of every aspiring...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Next to the Orion Nebula, the Rosette Nebula is definitely a must-do on the list of every aspiring astrophotographer. Located not too far from Orion in Monoceros, this large H II region has spectacular features, centered around a star cluster. Click or tap to...
Uncharted...
The Most Important Time in History Is Now AGI Is Coming Sooner Due to o3, DeepSeek, and Other Cutting-Edge AI Developments
5 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To Self-Publish A Children's Book and How Much You Can Expect To Make | Out-Of-Pocket spoiler: you will make very little lol
a year ago
Quantum Frontiers
My favorite rocket scientist Whenever someone protests, “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I think of my friend Jamie Rankin. Jamie is...
a year ago
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a year ago
Whenever someone protests, “I’m not a rocket scientist,” I think of my friend Jamie Rankin. Jamie is a researcher at Princeton University, and she showed me her lab this June. When I first met Jamie, she was testing instruments to … Continue reading →
Quanta Magazine
The Key to Species Diversity May Be in Their Similarities New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts. ...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts. The post The Key to Species Diversity May Be in Their Similarities first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Focusing on Healthcare’s Administrative Costs Is Misguided Substantial thinking about healthcare reform starts with acknowledging that administrative bloat...
7 months ago
Blog - Practical...
How Do Fish Ladders Work? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Building a dam imparts a...
a year ago
150
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Building a dam imparts a stupendous change to the environment, and as with any change, there are winners and losers. The winners are usually us, people, through hydropower generation, protection from flooding,...
Yale E360
Facing High Tariffs in U.S., Chinese Solar Flows to Poorer Countries Facing high tariffs in the U.S. and Europe, Chinese solar and battery companies have been selling a...
2 months ago
2
2 months ago
Facing high tariffs in the U.S. and Europe, Chinese solar and battery companies have been selling a growing share of their products to poorer countries, a new analysis finds. Read more on E360 →
Uncharted...
Wind and Solar, a Perfect Match Also, why solar will beat wind, why they are so complementary, the nuclear renaissance, the poor...
8 months ago
36
8 months ago
Also, why solar will beat wind, why they are so complementary, the nuclear renaissance, the poor state of German energy, and more.
Asterisk
How Long Til We’re All on Ozempic? Over 100 million Americans, and possibly many more, could benefit from GLP-1 drugs. When can they...
a year ago
21
a year ago
Over 100 million Americans, and possibly many more, could benefit from GLP-1 drugs. When can they expect to get them?
Yale E360
Renewables Did Not Cause Spanish Blackout, Investigations Find In the aftermath of a massive blackout that hit Spain and Portugal in April, some pundits were quick...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
In the aftermath of a massive blackout that hit Spain and Portugal in April, some pundits were quick to blame wind and solar for the loss of power. But official inquiries have found that a shortfall in conventional power led to the outages. Read more on E360 →
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
US Independence Day Tikalon is on a short holiday in celebration of US Independence Day, July 4, 2024. Our next article...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Tikalon is on a short holiday in celebration of US Independence Day, July 4, 2024. Our next article will be posted on Monday, July 15, 2024. View my version of the iconic image of George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River in which he encounters some unusually large...
Uncharted...
Why Is Canada’s Population so Concentrated? In three spots that are disconnected?
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
‘Embryo Models’ Challenge Legal, Ethical and Biological Concepts With embryolike constructs built entirely from stem cells, researchers can revolutionize our...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
With embryolike constructs built entirely from stem cells, researchers can revolutionize our understanding of development. But how close to an embryo is too close? The post ‘Embryo Models’ Challenge Legal, Ethical and Biological Concepts first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
GMOs and Butterflies Are attitudes towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our agriculture softening? Back in...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Are attitudes towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our agriculture softening? Back in 2015 a Pew survey found that the gap between public opinion and that of scientists was greatest on acceptance of GMOs (more than any other topic surveyed), with a 51% gap. But more...
Wanderingspace
URANUS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters...
a year ago
28
a year ago
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters which are shown in blue and orange,. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image which is similar to the planet’s actual color. But in reality Uranus...
Asterisk
It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs...
a year ago
16
a year ago
In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs through the West, ushering in an era of unparalleled dominion over water. Today, California once again struggles with water scarcity — but solar energy could change all that.
Damn Interesting
Hunting For Kobyla On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He parked himself at a table on the terrace of Tel Aviv’s Café Roval, soaking up the sunshine as if he wished to bottle it. The friend he’d come to meet was late, but Wiesenthal had...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Discover New Shapes to Solve Decades-Old Geometry Problem Mathematicians have long wondered how “shapes of constant width” behave in higher dimensions. A...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Mathematicians have long wondered how “shapes of constant width” behave in higher dimensions. A surprisingly simple construction has given them an answer. The post Mathematicians Discover New Shapes to Solve Decades-Old Geometry Problem first appeared on Quanta...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Copper and Green Energy The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The...
a year ago
21
a year ago
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The current list of 54 materials includes elements that are presently critical to a transition to green energy, such as the rare earth elements important to turbine generators, and...
NeuroLogica Blog
Spotting Misinformation There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they...
a year ago
106
a year ago
There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they verify information they encounter in the news and on social media, and 96% of Americans say that we need to limit the spread of misinformation online. And yet, the spread of...
Uncharted...
What Asian Development Can Teach the World The Magic Development of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China, and What That Tells Us about US...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
The Magic Development of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China, and What That Tells Us about US Tariffs, China’s Future, EU Protectionism, Japan’s Zombie Debt, Argentina’s Arrested Development, and more
Asterisk
Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning? Across the world, more students than ever are in school. But it’s not clear that they're learning...
7 months ago
41
7 months ago
Across the world, more students than ever are in school. But it’s not clear that they're learning more while there — or if that’s even the goal.
Yale E360
Amid Devastation in Gaza, a Deepening Environmental Wound The ongoing war in the Gaza Strip has obliterated crops and trees, according to a new assessment of...
a month ago
16
a month ago
The ongoing war in the Gaza Strip has obliterated crops and trees, according to a new assessment of the impact. Read more on E360 →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Structuring the Unstructured and ScienceIO | Out-Of-Pocket how to train your model, the animated movie
a year ago
Chris Grossack's...
An Explicit Computation in Derived Algebraic Geoemtry Earlier this week my friend Shane and I took a day and just did a bunch of computations. In the...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
Earlier this week my friend Shane and I took a day and just did a bunch of computations. In the morning we did some differential geometry, where he told me some things about what he’s doing with symplectic lie algebroids. We went to get lunch, and then in the afternoon we did...
Cremieux Recueil
Eliminating Distractions in Longevity Research Longevity maximizers should invest in biotechnology, not modifiable lifestyle factors
9 months ago
Quantum Frontiers
Building a Visceral Understanding of Quantum Phenomena A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the...
11 months ago
92
11 months ago
A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the early 90’s. For those not in the know, this is a physics-based puzzle game about building Rube Goldberg style contraptions to achieve … Continue reading →
Quanta Magazine
Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities. The post Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 18: Wattled Curassows at Muyuna Lodge (February 26, 2024) February 26, 2024 As dawn broke, Laura, Moises and I slowly cruised along a quiet watercourse. The...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
February 26, 2024 As dawn broke, Laura, Moises and I slowly cruised along a quiet watercourse. The dawn chorus was active and included species like Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl, Zimmer's Woodcreeper and Black-tailed Antbird, but I stayed focused on the treeline, hoping that a...
IEEE Spectrum
This 1945 TV Console Showed Two Programs at Once As I try to write this article, my friend and I have six different screens attached to three types...
a week ago
15
a week ago
As I try to write this article, my friend and I have six different screens attached to three types of devices. We’re working in the same room but on our own projects—separate yet together, a comfortable companionship. I had never really thought of the proliferation of screens as...
Quanta Magazine
What Is the Nature of Consciousness? Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon. The post What Is the Nature of...
Quanta Magazine
Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart? Abnormal waves of electrical activity can cause a heart’s muscle cells to beat out of sync. In this...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
Abnormal waves of electrical activity can cause a heart’s muscle cells to beat out of sync. In this episode, Flavio Fenton, an expert in cardiac dynamics, talks with Steve Strogatz about ways to treat heart arrhythmias without resorting to painful defibrillators. The...
IEEE Spectrum
Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies including the Alto—the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface—and the first laser printer. The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a...
NeuroLogica Blog
Subjective Neurological Experience On the SGU we recently talked about aphantasia, the condition in which some people have a decreased...
9 months ago
67
9 months ago
On the SGU we recently talked about aphantasia, the condition in which some people have a decreased or entirely absent ability to imagine things. The term was coined recently, in 2015, by neurologist Adam Zeman, who described the condition of “congenital aphantasia,” that he...
The Works in...
Chinese towers and American blocks The difference comes down to regulation, not culture.
3 months ago
Quanta Magazine
The Year in Computer Science Researchers got a better look at chatbots’ thoughts, amateurs learned just how complicated simple...
6 months ago
97
6 months ago
Researchers got a better look at chatbots’ thoughts, amateurs learned just how complicated simple systems can be, and codes became expert self-fixers. The post The Year in Computer Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Deros and the Ur-Abduction What do Atlantean dwarves, witch trials, and tractor beams have in common?
6 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Research papers and the patient perspective | Out-Of-Pocket we can make improvements with some better studies
a year ago
The Works in...
How Poor Maintenance Loses Wars - 2022, Ukraine Maintains A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 17: White-sand Birding At RN Allpahuayo-Mishana and Muyuna Lodge... February 24, 2024 Just outside of the city of Iquitos lies an expansive area containing white-sand...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
February 24, 2024 Just outside of the city of Iquitos lies an expansive area containing white-sand forest. The particular forest types that grow on white sand are somewhat uncommon in the Amazon, yet the stunted tree growth provides quite the contrast to "typical" Amazonian...
The Works in...
Join our events in your city Sydney, Washington DC, Madrid, and more – sign up now
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Can Psychedelics Improve Mental Health? Research suggests that psychedelic drugs can reopen critical periods of brain development to create...
a year ago
72
a year ago
Research suggests that psychedelic drugs can reopen critical periods of brain development to create opportunities for re-learning and psychological healing. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist studying the therapeutic potential of...
Yale E360
Russia's War Is Driving Up Emissions by Forcing Planes to Reroute Since war broke out in Ukraine, Western airlines have been charting longer routes to avoid flying...
5 months ago
6
5 months ago
Since war broke out in Ukraine, Western airlines have been charting longer routes to avoid flying over Russia, with a discernible impact on emissions. Read more on E360 →
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Diophantine Equations Piebald is an unusual word that appears in the Archimedes' cattle problem, a Diophantine problem...
11 months ago
20
11 months ago
Piebald is an unusual word that appears in the Archimedes' cattle problem, a Diophantine problem supposedly communicated by Archimedes to his friend, Eratosthenes. It's a Diophantine equation system of seven equations in eight unknowns, but it can be solved with the requirement...
Quanta Magazine
Can Information Escape a Black Hole? Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions....
a year ago
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a year ago
Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics. The post Can...
Yale E360
U.S. Solar and Batteries Headed for Record Year Solar panels and batteries will account for more than 80 percent of new power capacity installed in...
4 months ago
5
4 months ago
Solar panels and batteries will account for more than 80 percent of new power capacity installed in the U.S. this year, officials say. Both technologies are set for record growth, helping to hasten the decline of coal power. Read more on E360 →
The Works in...
Unending World A foretaste of Ch. 11 of Stewart Brand’s Maintenance on Books in Progress
8 months ago
Quanta Magazine
The Question of What’s Fair Illuminates the Question of What’s Hard Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes...
a year ago
46
a year ago
Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard. The post The Question of What’s Fair Illuminates the Question of What’s Hard first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
The duplication crisis: the other replication crisis How bad publishing incentives hinder long-term thinking in computational biology research
9 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Engineering Behind Healthcare LLMs with Abridge | Out-Of-Pocket What kinds of challenges come up with creating a speech-to-text gen AI product?
10 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
The Cold War Arms Race Over Prosthetic Arms In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts...
a year ago
43
a year ago
In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts General Hospital. Wiener’s bad luck turned into fruitful conversations with his orthopedic surgeon, Melvin Glimcher. Those talks in turn led to a collaboration and an invention: the...
Casey Handmer's blog
Salton Sea statistics I wanted to gain better insights into the Salton Sea level, evaporation, inflows and outflows. Step...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
I wanted to gain better insights into the Salton Sea level, evaporation, inflows and outflows. Step one was to gather publicly available data about its level, and collate it into a single graph. Here we see that despite the continual formation of Salton Sea advisory committees,...
Uncharted...
Why Could Lebanon Be Rich, but Is so Chaotic? Mountains, seas, and a shitty region
9 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
Why the Art of Invention Is Always Being Reinvented Every invention begins with a problem—and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might...
8 months ago
68
8 months ago
Every invention begins with a problem—and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might just see unchangeable reality. For one 5-year-old, the problem was simple: She liked to have her tummy rubbed as she fell asleep. But her mom, exhausted from working two jobs, often...
Quanta Magazine
A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene...
a year ago
57
a year ago
Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene regulation. The post A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
Exposure to Air Pollution Can Make It Harder to Focus, Study Finds A person’s ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a...
5 months ago
3
5 months ago
A person’s ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a study has found. Read more on E360 →
ToughSF
Permanent and Perfect Stealth in Space Despite the commonly accepted truth in Hard Science Fiction, spacecraft are able to evade detection...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Despite the commonly accepted truth in Hard Science Fiction, spacecraft are able to evade detection in space in many circumstances. The Hydrogen Steamer was a design that used liquid hydrogen evaporative cooling to keep a non-reflective surface practically invisible.  However,...
IEEE Spectrum
A Brief History of the World’s First Planetarium In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea:...
a year ago
103
a year ago
In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea: Could you project an artificial starry sky onto a dome, as a way of demonstrating astronomical principles to the public? It was such a novel concept that when von Miller approached...
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional wisdom, but I’m not so sure. In a recent interview, Elon Musk predicted that AI would “make paid work redundant.” I encountered the same opinion watching the latest season of...
Asterisk
The Art of Asking Questions Everyone seems to agree that self-report questions are fraught with lies, biases, errors, and other...
7 months ago
34
7 months ago
Everyone seems to agree that self-report questions are fraught with lies, biases, errors, and other inaccuracies. We all use them anyway. How can we ask them better?
Quantum Frontiers
It from Qubit: The Last Hurrah Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a group of scientists drawing on ideas from quantum information theory to address deep issues in fundamental physics. The collaboration held its “Last Hurrah” event at … Continue...
Damn Interesting
This is Dang Interesting Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year. We at this website know, reluctantly, that...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year. We at this website know, reluctantly, that “d*mn” is not always a welcome word. Additionally, we are aware that we have a few articles sporting even saltier vocabularies (settle down, Colonel Sanders!). Countless school...
pcloadletter
Agile is a tainted term Oh no, not another agile article. But at least this one isn't attempting to teach or reconcile. I'm...
a year ago
40
a year ago
Oh no, not another agile article. But at least this one isn't attempting to teach or reconcile. I'm not going to talk about the difference between agile and Agile™ nor will I try to convince you of my favorite flavor of Agile™. Instead, I'm here to assert that agile is a tainted...
Light from Space
Iris Nebula and the Ghost of Cepheus The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula in Cepheus. A popular target with amateur astronomers, the...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula in Cepheus. A popular target with amateur astronomers, the sourrounding flux nebulas are harder to photograph and require long integration times. Also visible in this wide-field image, near the bottom left, is the Ghost Nebula. Click or...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To (Properly) Text Patients | Out-Of-Pocket Do’s and don’ts + tactical tips from an actual doctor
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Some Battery News I have been following battery technology pretty closely, as this is a key technology for the...
over a year ago
85
over a year ago
I have been following battery technology pretty closely, as this is a key technology for the transition to green energy. The most obvious application is in battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The second most obvious application is in grid storage. But also there are all the...
Inverted Passion
Review of 2023 Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember...
a year ago
49
a year ago
Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember recently writing my 2022 review, and it was long because I ended up packing a lot of stuff into it. ✅ Train 5 days a week (including Mixed Martial Arts) I did manage to train 5...
Quanta Magazine
With ‘Digital Twins,’ The Doctor Will See You Now By creating digital twins of patients, Amanda Randles wants to bring unprecedented precision to...
11 months ago
70
11 months ago
By creating digital twins of patients, Amanda Randles wants to bring unprecedented precision to medical forecasts. The post With ‘Digital Twins,’ The Doctor Will See You Now first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Game Transfer Phenomenon Have you ever been into a video game that you played for hours a day for a while? Did you ever...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
Have you ever been into a video game that you played for hours a day for a while? Did you ever experience elements of game play bleeding over into the real world? If you have, then you have experienced what psychologists call “game transfer phenomenon” or GTP.  This can be...
IEEE Spectrum
The Cheesy Charm of the Clapper “Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget...
a year ago
158
a year ago
“Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget to turn your lights, your TV, or any other electrical device on or off with the clap of your hands. If you watched any amount of American television back then, you probably saw the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Starship Explodes in Successful Launch A common joke in the medical world is, “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” The...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
A common joke in the medical world is, “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” The irony comes from how we might define “success”. On April 20th SpaceX conducted the maiden launch of the fully assembled Starship, including a Starship rocket on top of a super heavy...
Quanta Magazine
New Proof Threads the Needle on a Sticky Geometry Problem A new proof marks major progress toward solving the Kakeya conjecture, a deceptively simple question...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
A new proof marks major progress toward solving the Kakeya conjecture, a deceptively simple question that underpins a tower of conjectures. The post New Proof Threads the Needle on a Sticky Geometry Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Marine Madness
Culture Club: Time to let the cetaceans in? Up until recently, culture has been thought of as a primarily human characteristic. However, recent...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
Up until recently, culture has been thought of as a primarily human characteristic. However, recent studies shine a light on the fact that non-human animals including Cetaceans (dolphins and whales), may also possess it. They live in tightly-knit social communities, exhibit...
Yale E360
In War Zones, a Race to Save Key Seeds Needed to Feed the World In conflict areas from Ukraine to Palestine, storage facilities holding seeds vital for future plant...
3 weeks ago
3
3 weeks ago
In conflict areas from Ukraine to Palestine, storage facilities holding seeds vital for future plant breeding are being lost. Scientists are rushing to send some remaining seeds to a “doomsday” vault in Norway so they can be available to provide food crops in a warming...