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NeuroLogica Blog
Subjective Neurological Experience On the SGU we recently talked about aphantasia, the condition in which some people have a decreased...
3 months ago
43
3 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...
Probably...
The Overton Paradox in Three Graphs Older people are more likely to say they are conservative. And older people believe more...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Older people are more likely to say they are conservative. And older people believe more conservative things. But if you group people by decade of birth, most groups get more liberal as they get older. So if people get more liberal, on average, why are they more likely to say...
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
a year ago
11
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...
Math Is Still...
Why Insect Memories May Not Survive Metamorphosis The reshuffling of neurons during fruit fly metamorphosis suggests that larval memories don’t...
a year ago
6
a year ago
The reshuffling of neurons during fruit fly metamorphosis suggests that larval memories don’t persist in adults. The post Why Insect Memories May Not Survive Metamorphosis first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Cool Facts About Health Insurance Enrollment with Aleka Gurel | Out-Of-Pocket Tis the season
a year ago
Probably...
Destructive Testing Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
8 months ago
75
8 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. sample_size Sample Size Selection¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Hi Redditors, I am a civil engineer trying...
Math Is Still...
What Causes Alzheimer’s? Scientists Are Rethinking the Answer. (Pt 2) If plaques of amyloid protein in the brain aren’t the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease, what is?...
a year ago
43
a year ago
If plaques of amyloid protein in the brain aren’t the root cause of Alzheimer’s disease, what is? Researchers investigating alternative possibilities have faced resistance from the biomedical establishment for decades, but intriguing theories about the role of defects in protein...
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...
a year ago
35
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...
Math Is Still...
Mathematicians Uncover a New Way to Count Prime Numbers To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to...
3 weeks ago
23
3 weeks ago
To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to an unlikely source. The post Mathematicians Uncover a New Way to Count Prime Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to...
a year ago
20
a year ago
New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to boost their yield from photosynthesis. The post Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
Day Three at Río Bigal: A Rainout, Another Snake, And More Mothing Adventures Part of the reason why I gave myself five nights to spend at Río Bigal was to mitigate in case I had...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Part of the reason why I gave myself five nights to spend at Río Bigal was to mitigate in case I had a couple of days washed out by heavy rain. The eastern Andes of Ecuador receive a high amount of precipitation. Moisture-laden air from the Amazon basin drifts westwards to the...
Asterisk
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because...
11 months ago
5
11 months 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.
Math Is Still...
Can Space-Time Be Saved? Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the jump to the next theory of reality. The post Can Space-Time Be Saved? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
New Generation of Electric Robots Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These...
8 months ago
65
8 months ago
Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These robot videos always look impressive, but at the very least we know that we are seeing the best take. We don’t know how many times the robot failed to get the one great video. There...
Math Is Still...
Overexposure Distorted the Science of Mirror Neurons After a decade out of the spotlight, the brain cells once alleged to explain empathy, autism and...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
After a decade out of the spotlight, the brain cells once alleged to explain empathy, autism and theory of mind are being refined and redefined. The post Overexposure Distorted the Science of Mirror Neurons first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Chris Grossack's...
Preprint -- The RAAG Functor as a Categorical Embedding After almost a year of sitting on my hard drive, I finally had time in August to finish revising my...
a year ago
7
a year ago
After almost a year of sitting on my hard drive, I finally had time in August to finish revising my new preprint on Right Angled Artin Groups (Raags). And in September I had time to put it on the arxiv for people to see! Within 24 hours I had an email from somebody who had...
IEEE Spectrum
How Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century In the summer of 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer and other key members of the Manhattan Project gathered...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
In the summer of 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer and other key members of the Manhattan Project gathered in New Mexico to witness the first atomic bomb test. Among the observers was Vannevar Bush, who had overseen the Manhattan Project and served as the sole liaison to U.S. President...
Quantum Frontiers
Happy 200th birthday, Carnot’s theorem! In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a...
a month ago
25
a month ago
In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a River. The Rat explains how the River permeates his life: “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, … Continue reading →
NeuroLogica Blog
Anxiety Biomarkers Psychiatry, psychology, and all aspects of mental health are a challenging area because the clinical...
a year ago
34
a year ago
Psychiatry, psychology, and all aspects of mental health are a challenging area because the clinical entities we are dealing with are complex and mostly subjective. Diagnoses are perhaps best understood as clinical constructs – a way of identifying and understanding a mental...
Math Is Still...
The Physicist Who Glues Together Universes Renate Loll has helped pioneer a radically new approach to quantum gravity. She assumes that the...
a year ago
38
a year ago
Renate Loll has helped pioneer a radically new approach to quantum gravity. She assumes that the fabric of space-time is a blend of all possible fabrics, and she has developed the computational tools needed to calculate the far-reaching implications of that assumption. ...
The Works in...
Issue 12: Houston, we have a solution Plus: How Mexico built its state, the causes of the Baby Boom, and the 141-year quest for a malaria...
a year ago
Math Is Still...
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
10
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...
Asterisk
The Puzzle of Non-Proliferation Today, only nine countries have nuclear weapons. That outcome was hardly inevitable, and the story...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Today, only nine countries have nuclear weapons. That outcome was hardly inevitable, and the story of how we arrived there holds important lessons for AI.
Math Is Still...
The Biggest Smallest Triangle Just Got Smaller A new proof breaks a decades-long drought of progress on the problem of estimating the size of...
a year ago
10
a year ago
A new proof breaks a decades-long drought of progress on the problem of estimating the size of triangles created by cramming points into a square. The post The Biggest Smallest Triangle Just Got Smaller first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
How Do You Steer a Drill Below The Earth? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In December 2019, the City of...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In December 2019, the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida experienced a series of catastrophic ruptures in a critical wastewater transmission line, releasing raw sewage into local waterways and neighborhoods....
brr
Redeployment Part Two Station opening, and my flight out of Pole!
11 months ago
Inverted Passion
What bootstraps intelligence? A musing on how intelligence comes to be. The bedrock of intelligence is abstractions – the thing we...
3 months ago
58
3 months ago
A musing on how intelligence comes to be. The bedrock of intelligence is abstractions – the thing we do when we throw away a lot of information and just emphasise on a subset of it (e.g. calling that thing an apple instead of describing all its atoms and their x, y, z positions)....
Probably...
Young Americans are Marrying Later or Never I’ve written before about changes in marriage patterns in the U.S., and it’s one of the examples in...
3 weeks ago
37
3 weeks ago
I’ve written before about changes in marriage patterns in the U.S., and it’s one of the examples in Chapter 13 of the new third edition of Think Stats. My analysis uses data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Today they released the most recent data, from surveys...
Math Is Still...
A Close-Up View Reveals the ‘Melting’ Point of an Infinite Graph Just as ice melts to water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Two mathematicians showed that they...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Just as ice melts to water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Two mathematicians showed that they can pinpoint such transitions by examining only local structure. The post A Close-Up View Reveals the ‘Melting’ Point of an Infinite Graph first appeared on Quanta...
The Works in...
Issue 11: Nuclear sandboxes Plus: Why Britain can’t seem to fix its housing market, gene-edited super-rice, and one weird trick...
a year ago
69
a year ago
Plus: Why Britain can’t seem to fix its housing market, gene-edited super-rice, and one weird trick to reverse climate change.
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 5: Portal Back To Phoenix September 4, 2024 Our day began with coffee and breakfast on the deck, watching the bird feeders hum...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
September 4, 2024 Our day began with coffee and breakfast on the deck, watching the bird feeders hum with activity. It was, sadly, our final morning in this region and we packed up and headed out. It would have been nice to have an extra night or two here, though you could say...
Beautiful Public...
Wild Horses The Bureau of Land Management wants to pay you $1,000 to adopt a wild horse. But the program has...
a year ago
79
a year ago
The Bureau of Land Management wants to pay you $1,000 to adopt a wild horse. But the program has been criticized by animal rights advocates and subject to scrutiny by Congress.
The Roots of...
Cellular reprogramming, pneumatic launch systems, and terraforming Mars In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot of fun talking to a bunch of weird and ambitious geeks about the glorious abundant technological future. Here are few things I learned about (with the caveat that this is mostly...
NeuroLogica Blog
Hunger Circuitry One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature...
a year ago
22
a year ago
One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature of being alive – maintaining homeostatic equilibrium both internally and externally. Homeostatic systems usually involve multiple feedback loops that maintain some physiological...
Explorations of an...
Uruguay Part 1: Relaxed Birding In The Countryside Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in South America and the only one that is entirely situated...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in South America and the only one that is entirely situated south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Uruguay was first settled by hunter-gatherers around 13,000 years ago, while the predominate tribe when Europeans arrived was the Charrúa people....
Explorations of an...
Borneo: Tour Extension To Peninsular Malaysia After the main Borneo tour had finished, eight of the travellers joined Laura and I on a tour...
a year ago
15
a year ago
After the main Borneo tour had finished, eight of the travellers joined Laura and I on a tour extension to peninsular Malaysia. We split our time between two distinct regions: the foothill forests at Fraser’s Hill, and the steamy lowlands of Taman Negara.  Dusky Leaf Monkey -...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Malpractice, Expert Witnesses, and Lawsuits with Dr. Eric Funk | Out-Of-Pocket Suits and White Coats
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On The Joy of Why podcast returns for a third season, with two co-hosts, 24 brilliant guests and 24...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
The Joy of Why podcast returns for a third season, with two co-hosts, 24 brilliant guests and 24 all-new episodes. The post Why Locusts Swarm, Humans Do Good and Time Marches On first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
The Hidden Engineering of Landfills [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills...
4 months ago
49
4 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills Landfill outside of Los Angeles, California. The first truckload of trash was dumped here in 1957, and the trucks just kept coming. For more than five decades, if you threw something...
Asterisk
The Ruin of Mumbai Mumbai’s land use regulations are designed to keep population density low. Instead, they force...
10 months ago
4
10 months ago
Mumbai’s land use regulations are designed to keep population density low. Instead, they force Mumbaikars into slums, while all of India pays the price.
Drew Ex Machina
Top Ten Posts of 2022 Now that we are at the end of 2022, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
Now that we are at the end of 2022, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on Drew Ex Machina and see […]
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Humor It’s been less than two years (November 2022) since ChatGPT launched. In some ways the new large...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
It’s been less than two years (November 2022) since ChatGPT launched. In some ways the new large language model (LLM) type of artificial intelligence (AI) applications have been on the steep part of the improvement curve. And yet, they are still LLMs with the same limitations. In...
wadertales
Counting breeding shorebirds using listening devices With more demands upon the space that is currently occupied by breeding waders, from developments...
a month ago
30
a month ago
With more demands upon the space that is currently occupied by breeding waders, from developments such as wind turbines and monoculture forestry, conservationists are often asked to assess the potential effects of landscape change. Do passive acoustic devices have a role to play...
Math Is Still...
Game Theory Can Make AI More Correct and Efficient Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them...
8 months ago
45
8 months ago
Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them more consistent. The post Game Theory Can Make AI More Correct and Efficient first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Drew Ex Machina
Apollo A-002: Testing the Limits of the Launch Escape System One of the more dangerous parts of a space mission is launch which is why almost all crewed...
4 weeks ago
31
4 weeks ago
One of the more dangerous parts of a space mission is launch which is why almost all crewed spacecraft have had launch abort options to cover […]
NeuroLogica Blog
AI As Legal Entities Should an artificial intelligence (AI) be treated like a legal “subject” or agent? That is the...
a year ago
37
a year ago
Should an artificial intelligence (AI) be treated like a legal “subject” or agent? That is the question discussed in a new paper by legal scholars. They recognize that this question is a bit ahead of the technology, but argue that we should work out the legal ramifications before...
Uncharted...
How to Beat Cancer with Viruses: An Interview with Beata Halassy How viruses kill cancers, which viruses to use, how many injections, at what stage of the cancer,...
3 months ago
brr
Mud Murdo The beautiful ambiance of a McMurdo summer.
over a year ago
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 —...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Our daily lives are inundated with misleading claims about nutrition. That’s not just distracting — it’s also harming our health.
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
43
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Trust in Science How much does the public trust in science and scientists? Well, there’s some good news and some bad...
a year ago
8
a year ago
How much does the public trust in science and scientists? Well, there’s some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the bad news – a recent Pew survey finds that trust in scientist has been in decline for the last few years. From its recent peak in 2019, those who answered...
NeuroLogica Blog
Finding Small Primordial Black Holes Astrophysicists come up with a lot of whacky ideas, some of which actually turn out to be possibly...
a month ago
33
a month ago
Astrophysicists come up with a lot of whacky ideas, some of which actually turn out to be possibly true (like the Big Bang, black holes, accelerating cosmic expansion, dark matter). Of course, all of these conclusions are provisional, but some are now backed by compelling...
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...
7 months ago
68
7 months 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...
Math Is Still...
The Unraveling of Space-Time This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality. The post The Unraveling of Space-Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
How I didn’t become a philosopher (but wound up presenting a named philosophy lecture anyway) Many people ask why I became a theoretical physicist. The answer runs through philosophy—which I...
8 months ago
100
8 months ago
Many people ask why I became a theoretical physicist. The answer runs through philosophy—which I thought, for years, I’d left behind in college. My formal relationship with philosophy originated with Mr. Bohrer. My high school classified him as a religion … Continue reading →
nanoscale views
Moiré and making superlattices One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and...
8 months ago
71
8 months ago
One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and the development of moiré lattices.  The idea is, take a layer of 2D material and stack it either (1) on itself but with a twist angle, or (2) on another material with a slightly...
IEEE Spectrum
False Starts: The Story of Vehicle-to-Grid Power In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a...
a year ago
9
a year ago
In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a groundbreaking experiment. They wanted to see whether an electric vehicle could feed electricity back to the grid. The experiment seemed to prove the feasibility of the technology. The...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some more thoughts on telemedicine | Out-Of-Pocket a collection of the best audience responses
a year ago
Wanderingspace
Triton Image from Voyager Colored Nice update to an old Voyager image with colors added based on actual colors captured in other...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
Nice update to an old Voyager image with colors added based on actual colors captured in other images. See original post here by Jason Major.
The Works in...
Youtube Rules A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Probably...
The Gender Gap in Political Beliefs Is Small In previous articles (here, here, and here) I’ve looked at evidence of a gender gap in political...
10 months ago
38
10 months ago
In previous articles (here, here, and here) I’ve looked at evidence of a gender gap in political alignment (liberal or conservative), party affiliation (Democrat or Republican), and policy preferences. Using data from the GSS, I found that women are more likely to say they are...
Math Is Still...
What Is Quantum Teleportation? Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically...
9 months ago
33
9 months ago
Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically different and entirely real. In this episode, Janna Levin interviews the theoretical physicist John Preskill about teleporting bits and the promise of quantum technology. ...
Uncharted...
Should You Be Able to Experiment on Your Own Cancer? A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the treatments weren’t working. She decided to treat it herself.
The Roots of...
Accelerating science through evolvable institutions This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on...
a year ago
26
a year ago
This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on “Accelerating Science.” We’re here to discuss “accelerating science.” I like to start on topics like this by taking the historical view: When (if ever) has science accelerated in the...
Probably...
Standard deviation of a count This post is part of a new project with the working title Data Q&A: Answering the real questions...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
This post is part of a new project with the working title Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. In each installment, I’ll take a question from Reddit’s statistics forum and answer it, using Python code to demonstrate. My answer is in a Jupyter notebook — see the...
Math Is Still...
Physicists Discover ‘Unobservable’ Phase Transition in Quantum Entanglement Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are harnessing that nonlocality to probe the spread of quantum information and control it. The post Physicists Discover ‘Unobservable’ Phase Transition in Quantum Entanglement...
Casey Handmer's blog
Anti-aging tech fixes demographic collapse With the latest studies on GLP-1 drugs showing not just a drop in all-cause mortality but also an...
4 months ago
10
4 months ago
With the latest studies on GLP-1 drugs showing not just a drop in all-cause mortality but also an apparent slowing of aging, I thought I’d write a quick note on how I think this technology, if it replicates, can drastically improve our lives. It’s hard to believe I’m writing...
Math Is Still...
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
13
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...
Stephen Wolfram...
What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine...
4 months ago
47
4 months ago
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost...
Math Is Still...
Physicists Create Elusive Particles That Remember Their Pasts In two landmark experiments, researchers used quantum processors to engineer exotic particles that...
a year ago
69
a year ago
In two landmark experiments, researchers used quantum processors to engineer exotic particles that have captivated physicists for decades. The work is a step toward crash-proof quantum computers. The post Physicists Create Elusive Particles That Remember Their Pasts...
Blog - Practical...
How French Drains Work [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February of 2017, one of...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February of 2017, one of the largest spillways in the world, the one at Oroville Dam in northern California, was severely damaged during releases from heavy rain. You might remember this. I made a video...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Air Quality, Breathing, and Health | Out-Of-Pocket What we inhale is a public health issue
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Rebuttal The climate change discussion would benefit most from good-faith evidence and science-based...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The climate change discussion would benefit most from good-faith evidence and science-based discussion. Unfortunately, humans tend to prefer emotion, ideology, motivated reasoning, and confirmation bias. As an example, I was sent an excerpt from a climate change podcast as a...
Asterisk
California vs. Big Soda Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes work. But during the time it took to figure this out, enacting them...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes work. But during the time it took to figure this out, enacting them became much harder.
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime:...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime: black hole entropy. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory,...
Math Is Still...
She Tracks the DNA of Elusive Species That Hide in Harsh Places On Mount Everest and in the Peruvian Andes, Tracie Seimon uses DNA to study how species and...
a year ago
32
a year ago
On Mount Everest and in the Peruvian Andes, Tracie Seimon uses DNA to study how species and ecosystems respond to climate change, pathogens and other influences. The post She Tracks the DNA of Elusive Species That Hide in Harsh Places first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Big Advance on Simple-Sounding Math Problem Was a Century in the Making A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
A new proof about prime numbers illuminates the subtle relationship between addition and multiplication — and raises hopes for progress on the famous abc conjecture. The post Big Advance on Simple-Sounding Math Problem Was a Century in the Making first appeared on...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI-Fueled Scams Digital life is getting more dangerous.  Literally every day I have to fend off attempts at scamming...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
Digital life is getting more dangerous.  Literally every day I have to fend off attempts at scamming me in one way or another. I get texts trying to lure me into responding. I get e-mails hoping I will click a malicious link on a reflex. I get phone calls from people warning me...
Math Is Still...
AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With ‘Artificial Brainstorming’ By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative...
a year ago
28
a year ago
By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative problem-solving. The post AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With ‘Artificial Brainstorming’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
How Scientists Are Tackling the Tricky Task of Solar Cycle Prediction Scientists have struggled to accurately forecast the strength of the sun’s 11-year cycle — even...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Scientists have struggled to accurately forecast the strength of the sun’s 11-year cycle — even after centuries of solar observations. The post How Scientists Are Tackling the Tricky Task of Solar Cycle Prediction first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Roots of...
A plea for solutionism on AI safety Will AI kill us all? This question has rapidly gone mainstream. A few months ago, it wasn’t...
a year ago
37
a year ago
Will AI kill us all? This question has rapidly gone mainstream. A few months ago, it wasn’t seriously debated very far outside the rationalist community of LessWrong; now it’s reported in major media outlets including the NY Times, The Guardian, the Times of London, BBC, WIRED,...
Probably...
What’s a Chartist? Recently I heard the word “chartist” for the first time in my life (that I recall). And then later...
a month ago
32
a month ago
Recently I heard the word “chartist” for the first time in my life (that I recall). And then later the same day, I heard it again. So that raises two questions: To answer the second question first, it’s someone who supported chartism, which was “a working-class movement for...
Probably...
PMFs and PDFs It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. If you get this post by email, the formatting is not good — you might want to read it on the site. pmf_and_pdf PMFs and PDFs¶ Here’s...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Good Meteor Shower Coming August 11-12 The Perseid Meteor Shower is one of the best of the year for the untrained observer The post Good...
5 months ago
58
5 months ago
The Perseid Meteor Shower is one of the best of the year for the untrained observer The post Good Meteor Shower Coming August 11-12 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
brr
Last Flight Out Good-byes, and the beginning of winter isolation.
a year ago
The Works in...
Issue 09: Cheap shots and killer bots Plus: Why scientific writing is so bad, how to stop snakebites from killing 100,000 people every...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
Plus: Why scientific writing is so bad, how to stop snakebites from killing 100,000 people every year, and what science can learn from the fight against global poverty.
Probably...
Superbolts Probably Overthinking It is available to predorder now. You can get a 30% discount if you order from...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Probably Overthinking It is available to predorder now. You can get a 30% discount if you order from the publisher and use the code UCPNEW. You can also order from Amazon or, if you want to support independent bookstores, from Bookshop.org. Recently I read a Scientific American...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 3 My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with...
10 months ago
31
10 months ago
My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with collaborators and old friends, but here goes: Pedram Roushan from Google gave an interesting talk about noisy intermediate-scale quantum experiments for simulation.  He showed some...
Math Is Still...
What Is Analog Computing? You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them. ...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them. The post What Is Analog Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wanderingspace
The First Ever Real-Time Video from Another Planet When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why:...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why: this is the first real-time video taken from another world since 1972, and this is the first ever taken on another planet. Most “video” you see from other planetary missions are...
Math Is Still...
Flow Proof Helps Mathematicians Find Stability in Chaos A series of new papers describes how to fully characterize key dynamical systems with relatively...
a year ago
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a year ago
A series of new papers describes how to fully characterize key dynamical systems with relatively little data. The post Flow Proof Helps Mathematicians Find Stability in Chaos first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
2023 Part 3: Spring And Summer In Ontario April (continued) Laura and I returned to Ontario in late April and I immediately jumped back into...
a year ago
16
a year ago
April (continued) Laura and I returned to Ontario in late April and I immediately jumped back into the local birding/naturalist scene. Spring is such a dynamic time of year and I tried to maximize every opportunity. In late April I spent a couple of days on Manitoulin Island,...
Math Is Still...
Geometers Engineer New Tools to Wrangle Spacecraft Orbits Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
Mathematicians think abstract tools from a field called symplectic geometry might help with planning missions to far-off moons and planets. The post Geometers Engineer New Tools to Wrangle Spacecraft Orbits first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
The Quest to Quantify Quantumness What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle...
a year ago
9
a year ago
What makes a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer? It’s a surprisingly subtle question that physicists are still grappling with, decades into the quantum age. The post The Quest to Quantify Quantumness first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The College Health Opportunity | Out-Of-Pocket We can make college healthcare better! And honestly we have to
a year ago
Damn Interesting
Lofty Ambitions One summer day in 1933, in a brief pocket of time between the two World Wars, a British man named...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
One summer day in 1933, in a brief pocket of time between the two World Wars, a British man named Maurice Wilson clutched the stick of his tiny, open air biplane and watched his fuel gauge dwindle. He had only learned to fly two months earlier, but inexperience was not his...
nanoscale views
Some interesting links - useful lecture notes, videos Proposal writing, paper writing, and course prep are eating a lot of my bandwidth right now, but I...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Proposal writing, paper writing, and course prep are eating a lot of my bandwidth right now, but I wanted to share a few things: David Tong at Cambridge is a gifted educator and communicator who has written lecture notes that span a wide swath of the physics curriculum, from...
IEEE Spectrum
The Marimba Virtuoso’s Desktop Planetarium The United States was at the time approaching “peak space.” The previous year, cosmonaut Yuri...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The United States was at the time approaching “peak space.” The previous year, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to reach outer space, and on 12 September 1962 President Kennedy would announce the United States’ intention to put a man on the moon before the...
wadertales
Juvenile settlement in Black-tailed Godwits Adult waders tend to be exceptionally consistent in their use of time and space, with marked...
3 months ago
44
3 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...
Math Is Still...
The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms In the search for the most scalable hardware to use for quantum computers, qubits made of individual...
9 months ago
40
9 months ago
In the search for the most scalable hardware to use for quantum computers, qubits made of individual atoms are having a breakout moment. The post The Best Qubits for Quantum Computing Might Just Be Atoms first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Intuitive and Analytical Thinking Here is a relatively simple math problem:  A bat and a ball cost $1.10 combined. The bat costs $1...
a year ago
62
a year ago
Here is a relatively simple math problem:  A bat and a ball cost $1.10 combined. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? (I will provide the answer below the fold.) This problem is the basis of a large psychological literature on thinking systems in the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Oxygen As A Technosignature This is one of the biggest thought experiments in science today – as we look for life elsewhere in...
a year ago
18
a year ago
This is one of the biggest thought experiments in science today – as we look for life elsewhere in the universe, what should we be looking for, exactly? Other stellar systems are too far away to examine directly, and even our most powerful telescopes can only resolve points of...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More thoughts consumerization in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket tales from other countries, industries, and more
4 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
The Unlikely Inventor of the Automatic Rice Cooker How the automatic rice cooker was invented It isn’t often that housewives get credit in the annals...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
How the automatic rice cooker was invented It isn’t often that housewives get credit in the annals of invention, but in the story of the automatic rice cooker, a woman takes center stage. That happened only after the first attempts at electrifying rice cooking, starting in the...
Eukaryote Writes...
There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From 'dendro', the ancient Greek root for tree.
The Works in...
Links in Progress: What are children for? And how the UN’s birth rate forecasts keep getting it wrong
a month 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?
4 months ago
Math Is Still...
The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool to probe the forces that bind the universe. The post The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Every Kind of Bridge Explained in 15 Minutes [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The Earth is pretty cool and...
7 months ago
84
7 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The Earth is pretty cool and all, but many of its most magnificent features make it tough for us to get around. When the topography is too wet, steep, treacherous, or prone to disaster, sometimes the only way...
NeuroLogica Blog
Podcast Pseudoscience A recent BBC article highlights some of the risk of the new age of social media we have crafted for...
3 weeks ago
31
3 weeks ago
A recent BBC article highlights some of the risk of the new age of social media we have crafted for ourselves. The BBC investigated the number one ranked UK podcast, Diary of a CEO with host Steven Bartlett, for the accuracy of the medical claims recently made on the show. While...
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...
12 months ago
31
12 months 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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: How should physicians get paid? | Out-Of-Pocket What is a "fair amount" for a physician to get paid?
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Citizen fraud detection, self-experimentation, and OOP Updates | Out-Of-Pocket Some random musings and OOP announcements before the holiday
a month ago
Probably...
Testing Percentiles Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
8 months ago
68
8 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. test_percentile Testing percentiles¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. I have two different samples (about 100...
Math Is Still...
Do We Need a New Theory of Gravity? Since Newton had his initial revelation about gravity, our understanding of this fundamental concept...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
Since Newton had his initial revelation about gravity, our understanding of this fundamental concept has evolved in unexpected ways. In this week’s episode, theoretical physicist Claudia de Rham and co-host Janna Levin discuss the ways our current understanding of gravity needs...
Math Is Still...
Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure....
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model. The post Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
Fake Fossils In 1931 a fossil lizard was recovered from the Italian Alps, believed to be a 280 million year old...
10 months ago
29
10 months ago
In 1931 a fossil lizard was recovered from the Italian Alps, believed to be a 280 million year old specimen. The fossil was also rare in that it appeared to have some preserved soft tissue. It was given the species designation Tridentinosaurus antiquus and was thought to be part...
nanoscale views
The physics of squeaky shoes In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing in my professional life: super squeaky shoes.  When I wear a particularly comfortable pair of shoes at work, when I walk in some hallways in my building (but not all), my shoes...
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
Drew Ex Machina
NASA’s Viking Mission & The Search for Life on Mars: The Experiments For young space enthusiasts like myself growing up in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking mission to Mars was...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
For young space enthusiasts like myself growing up in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking mission to Mars was one of the more exciting and memorable. The Viking […]
Math Is Still...
Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon) One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised...
5 months ago
60
5 months ago
One of the quantum fields that fills the universe is special because its default value seems poised to eventually change, changing everything. The post Vacuum of Space to Decay Sooner Than Expected (but Still Not Soon) first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17 August of 1956, is widely considered the event that kicked off AI as a research discipline. Organized by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and Nathaniel Rochester, it...
NeuroLogica Blog
Non-Invasive Deep Brain Stimulation We are rapidly entering the era of neuromodulation – using electrical and magnetic fields in order...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
We are rapidly entering the era of neuromodulation – using electrical and magnetic fields in order to increase or decrease the activity of specific regions and circuits in the brain. Such treatments are already shown to be effective in treating some Parkinson’s symptoms,...
ToughSF
NTER: Nuclear Thermal-Electric Rocket There is a type of nuclear propulsion that can have most of the acceleration of a nuclear thermal...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
There is a type of nuclear propulsion that can have most of the acceleration of a nuclear thermal rocket but also the high Isp of an electric thruster.  Let’s have a look at nuclear ‘thermal-electric’ engines and their advantages. The title image is from 'dV: Rings of...
Math Is Still...
A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force...
a year ago
60
a year ago
By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force that binds protons and neutrons. The post A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wanderingspace
Europa Seen by Juno Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson processed the image to enhance the color and contrast.
over a year ago
Math Is Still...
An Explorer of Abyssal Depths Looks to Oceans on Other Worlds The marine geochemist Chris German brings decades of experience studying seafloor hydrothermal vents...
a year ago
43
a year ago
The marine geochemist Chris German brings decades of experience studying seafloor hydrothermal vents to NASA’s preparations for visits to other ocean worlds in our solar system. The post An Explorer of Abyssal Depths Looks to Oceans on Other Worlds first appeared on...
The Roots of...
The origins of the steam engine This is a guest post written by Anton Howes and animated by Matt Brown of Extraordinary Facility....
a year ago
8
a year ago
This is a guest post written by Anton Howes and animated by Matt Brown of Extraordinary Facility. This project was sponsored by The Roots of Progress, with funding generously provided by The Institute. Steam power did not begin with the steam engine. Long before...
Math Is Still...
An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that...
a year ago
19
a year ago
The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that it has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded. The post An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated first appeared on Quanta Magazine
pcloadletter
Quality is a hard sell in big tech I have noticed a trend in a handful of products I've worked on at big tech companies. I have friends...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
I have noticed a trend in a handful of products I've worked on at big tech companies. I have friends at other big tech companies that have noticed a similar trend: The products are kind of crummy. Here are some experiences that I have often encountered: the UI is flakey and/or...
NeuroLogica Blog
Microbes Aboard the ISS As I have written many times, including in yesterday’s post, people occupying space is hard. The...
11 months ago
20
11 months ago
As I have written many times, including in yesterday’s post, people occupying space is hard. The environment of space, or really anywhere not on Earth, is harsh and unforgiving. One of the issues, for example, rarely addressed in science fiction or even discussions of space...
Math Is Still...
Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like...
a year ago
24
a year ago
How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers. The post Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Moving Past Environmental Proceduralism The foundations of modern environmental legislation were laid in the early ‘70s. Some of these laws...
9 months ago
5
9 months ago
The foundations of modern environmental legislation were laid in the early ‘70s. Some of these laws helped fix the ozone layer, clean up DDT, and fight lead pollution — while others are delaying the necessary transition to green energy. If the activists of fifty years ago had...
Math Is Still...
Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem involving imperfect information. The post Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 4 and wrap-up Because of the timing of my flight back to Houston, I really only went to one session today, in...
10 months ago
23
10 months ago
Because of the timing of my flight back to Houston, I really only went to one session today, in which my student spoke as did some collaborators.  It was a pretty interesting collection of contributed talks.   The work that's been done on spin transport in multiferroic...
Casey Handmer's blog
Part 7 Senzeni Na Part of the Mars Trilogy Technical Commentary Series. Contains spoilers for this chapter and earlier...
a week ago
24
a week 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...
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...
5 months ago
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...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
Over 100 million Americans, and possibly many more, could benefit from GLP-1 drugs. When can they expect to get them?
nanoscale views
ARPA-E Roadshow Today, Rice hosted the ARPA-E Roadshow, a series of presentations by ARPA-E program officers, MC-ed...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Today, Rice hosted the ARPA-E Roadshow, a series of presentations by ARPA-E program officers, MC-ed by the director, Prof. Evelyn Wang.   It was all about the energy transition, and it was pretty fascinating, particularly hearing from leaders of startups who were making...
Math Is Still...
Simple Equation Predicts the Shapes of Carbon-Capturing Wetlands To calculate the amount of carbon stored inside peatlands, researchers developed a unified theory of...
7 months ago
72
7 months ago
To calculate the amount of carbon stored inside peatlands, researchers developed a unified theory of “bog physics” applicable around the world. The post Simple Equation Predicts the Shapes of Carbon-Capturing Wetlands first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Eliminating Distractions in Longevity Research Longevity maximizers should invest in biotechnology, not modifiable lifestyle factors
2 months ago
The Works in...
Introducing Gentle Density A new series from Works in Progress
a year ago
Wanderingspace
ISS Looks Like a Toy These animated gifs of The International Space Station look just like metal toys — but they are...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
These animated gifs of The International Space Station look just like metal toys — but they are real. Each frame is taken with ground based amateur telescopes and then pieced together with common image software like Adobe Photoshop. It is incredible to me that there are people...
Blog - Practical...
How Different Spillway Gates Work [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In the heart of Minneapolis,...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In the heart of Minneapolis, Minnesota on the Mississippi River is the picturesque Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam, which originally made it possible to travel upstream on the river past the falls...
Quantum Frontiers
Identical twins and quantum entanglement “If I had a nickel for every unsolicited and very personal health question I’ve gotten at parties,...
a year ago
57
a year ago
“If I had a nickel for every unsolicited and very personal health question I’ve gotten at parties, I’d have paid off my medical school loans by now,” my doctor friend complained. As a physicist, I can somewhat relate. I occasionally … Continue reading →
NeuroLogica Blog
Frozen Embryos Are Not People Amid much controversy, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children. They...
10 months ago
51
10 months ago
Amid much controversy, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children. They did not support their decision with compelling logic, with cited precedence (their decision is literally unprecedented), with practical considerations, or with sound ethical...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Canvas: A Bet On New EMRs | Out-Of-Pocket what if EMRs didn't totally suck?
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
How the Hawaiian Power Grid Works [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In January of 2024, right on...
9 months ago
71
9 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In January of 2024, right on the heels of a serious drought across the state, a major storm slammed into the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai. Severe winds caused damage to buildings, and heavy rain flooded...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Thinking like a dog How dog brains could save us from dementia
over a year ago
Many Worlds
The Moon Rush Is On. Are We on Earth Ready For That? An Indian spacecraft landed on the moon this month and a pioneering Japanese lunar  lander is...
a year ago
10
a year ago
An Indian spacecraft landed on the moon this month and a pioneering Japanese lunar  lander is awaiting an imminent launch.  A Russian craft trying to land in the same area — the southern polar region — recently crashed, as did a private effort by a joint Japanese-United Arab...
Math Is Still...
Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of...
11 months ago
52
11 months ago
John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length. The post Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
100 Billion Humans The world can carry them!
a month ago
Chris Grossack's...
Talk -- What is Algebraic Geometry and Why Should You Care? So an embarrassing amount of time ago (Feburary 17?) I gave a talk for the undergraduate math club...
a year ago
14
a year ago
So an embarrassing amount of time ago (Feburary 17?) I gave a talk for the undergraduate math club titled “What is Algebraic Geometry, and Why Should You Care?”. I think it went quite well, and the audience seemed like they had a good time. I really wanted to have the talk...
Chris Grossack's...
$\mathsf{B}\text{Diff}(\Sigma)$ Classifies $\Sigma$-bundles I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the cobordism hypothesis,...
2 weeks ago
30
2 weeks ago
I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the cobordism hypothesis, and how to use $(\infty,n)$-categories. This is all in service of some stuff I’m doing with skein algebras (which are part of a “$3+1$ TQFT” often named after Crane–Yetter, but...
Asterisk
Oops
11 months ago
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
25
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
Accusation of Mental Illness as a Political Strategy I am not the first to say this but it bears repeating – it is wrong to use the accusation of a...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
I am not the first to say this but it bears repeating – it is wrong to use the accusation of a mental illness as a political strategy. It is unfair, stigmatizing, and dismissive. Thomas Szasz (let me say straight up – I am not a Szaszian) was a psychiatrist who made it his...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Medical Tourism: A Tarpit Idea | Out-Of-Pocket trust me, you're not the first to look into this
9 months ago
nanoscale views
AI/ML and condensed matter + materials science Materials define the way we live.  That may sound like an exaggeration that I like to spout because...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Materials define the way we live.  That may sound like an exaggeration that I like to spout because I'm a condensed matter physicist, but it's demonstrably true.  Remember, past historians have given us terms like "Stone Age", "Bronze Age", and "Iron Age", and the "Information...
Interaction Magic -...
Plastic archeology The history, science and engineering of Lego bricks, on the cusp between trash and treasure.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Hunger Circuitry One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature...
a year ago
7
a year ago
One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature of being alive – maintaining homeostatic equilibrium both internally and externally. Homeostatic systems usually involve multiple feedback loops that maintain some physiological...
The Roots of...
Who regulates the regulators? IRBs Scott Alexander reviews a book about institutional review boards (IRBs), the panels that review...
a year ago
58
a year ago
IRBs Scott Alexander reviews a book about institutional review boards (IRBs), the panels that review the ethics of medical trials: From Oversight to Overkill, by Dr. Simon Whitney. From the title alone, you can see where this is going. IRBs are supposed to (among other things)...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How to analyze public healthcare datasets (even if you're non-technical) | Out-Of-Pocket Plus: using ChatGPT to analyze datasets?
a year ago
nanoscale views
Very brief end of the year round-up It's hard to believe that it's already the end of 2023.  It's been a busy year for condensed matter;...
a year ago
32
a year ago
It's hard to believe that it's already the end of 2023.  It's been a busy year for condensed matter; it's unfortunate that two of the biggest stories (problems with high pressure superconductivity papers; the brief excitement about LK99, the not-actually-a-superconductor) were...
Drew Ex Machina
Top Ten Posts of 2024 Now that we are at the end of 2024, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on...
a week ago
26
a week ago
Now that we are at the end of 2024, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on Drew Ex Machina and see […]
NeuroLogica Blog
Is Mars the New Frontier? In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future,...
11 months ago
24
11 months ago
In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future, Mars has been settled and is an independent self-sustaining society. In fact, Mars is presented as the most scientifically and technologically advanced society of humans in the...
Blog - Practical...
Which Power Plant Does My Electricity Come From? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2000, the power...
a month ago
43
a month ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2000, the power shut off across much of the San Francisco Bay area. There simply wasn’t enough electricity to meet demands, so more than a million customers were disconnected in California's largest...
Math Is Still...
‘Embryo Models’ Challenge Legal, Ethical and Biological Concepts With embryolike constructs built entirely from stem cells, researchers can revolutionize our...
a year ago
25
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...
Sean Carroll
Johns Hopkins As far as I remember, the first time I stepped onto a university campus was in junior high school,...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
As far as I remember, the first time I stepped onto a university campus was in junior high school, when I visited Johns Hopkins for an awards ceremony for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. (I grew up in an environment that didn’t involve spending a lot of time on...
NeuroLogica Blog
How We Determine What to Believe as True Psychologists have been studying a very basic cognitive function that appears to be of increasing...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Psychologists have been studying a very basic cognitive function that appears to be of increasing importance – how do we choose what to believe as true or false? We live in a world awash in information, and access to essentially the world’s store of knowledge is now a trivial...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
"AI sucks", Quantifying EMR burden, and Loneliness | Out-Of-Pocket 3 interesting papers I like
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Fruit Fly Connectome Completed Scientists have just published in Nature that they have completed the entire connectome of a fruit...
3 months ago
38
3 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...
Math Is Still...
Novel Architecture Makes Neural Networks More Understandable By tapping into a decades-old mathematical principle, researchers are hoping that Kolmogorov-Arnold...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
By tapping into a decades-old mathematical principle, researchers are hoping that Kolmogorov-Arnold networks will facilitate scientific discovery. The post Novel Architecture Makes Neural Networks More Understandable first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
The Political Gender Gap is Not Growing In a previous article, I used data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to see if there is a growing...
11 months ago
53
11 months ago
In a previous article, I used data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to see if there is a growing gender gap among young people in political alignment, party affiliation, or political attitudes. So far, the answer is no. Ryan Burge has done a similar analysis with data from...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Six (More) Healthcare Startup Ideas | Out-Of-Pocket In collaboration with The Generalist, one of the few newsletters I read end-to-end every time
a year ago
nanoscale views
A few quick highlights It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to...
a year ago
29
a year ago
It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to attend both the KITP conference and the morning sessions of the DOE experimental condensed matter PI meeting (pdf of agenda here).  A few quick highlights that I thought were...
Math Is Still...
Nobel Prize Honors Inventors of ‘Quantum Dot’ Nanoparticles The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to three researchers who harnessed the quantum...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to three researchers who harnessed the quantum behaviors of semiconductor nanocrystals. The post Nobel Prize Honors Inventors of ‘Quantum Dot’ Nanoparticles first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
7
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...
Asterisk
Fracking Eyeballs How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers at the turn of the 20th century taught us how...
a year ago
5
a year ago
How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers at the turn of the 20th century taught us how to measure (and monetize) human attention.
Math Is Still...
JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts. The post JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe first appeared on...
The Works in...
The entrepreneurial state How state competition – through war – can drive institutional progress
11 months ago
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
22
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...
Blog - Practical...
The Wild Story of the Taum Sauk Dam Failure [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Early in the morning of...
2 months ago
45
2 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Early in the morning of December 14, 2005, pumps were nearly finished filling the upper reservoir at the Taum Sauk power station, marking the end of the daily cycle. Water rose to the top of the rockfill...
Math Is Still...
What Causes Giant Rogue Waves? Once dismissed as myths, monstrous rogue waves that tower over ships and appear without warning are...
a year ago
44
a year ago
Once dismissed as myths, monstrous rogue waves that tower over ships and appear without warning are real. Wave-science researcher Ton van den Bremer and Steven Strogatz discuss how rogue waves can form in relatively calm seas and whether their threat can be predicted. ...
Math Is Still...
Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient essential for life. The pair are in the process of merging into a single organism. The post Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient first appeared on Quanta...
Probably...
Probably the Book Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is available, I will post it here. In the meantime, you can read the slides, if you don’t mind spoilers. For people at the conference who don’t know me, this might be a good time to...
Interaction Magic -...
Interaction20 Round-up Summary of all the amazing, curious and challenging ideas from last week's IXDA Interaction 20...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Summary of all the amazing, curious and challenging ideas from last week's IXDA Interaction 20 conference.
Math Is Still...
The Computer Scientist Who Builds Big Pictures From Small Details To better understand machine learning algorithms, Lenka Zdeborová treats them like physical...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
To better understand machine learning algorithms, Lenka Zdeborová treats them like physical materials. The post The Computer Scientist Who Builds Big Pictures From Small Details first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Uncharted...
Why Could Lebanon Be Rich, but Is so Chaotic? Mountains, seas, and a shitty region
3 months ago
Blog - Practical...
How Long Would Society Last During a Total Grid Collapse? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February 2021, a winter...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February 2021, a winter storm that swept through Texas caused one of the most severe power crises in American history. The cold weather created shockingly high electricity demands as people tried to keep...
NeuroLogica Blog
Everything Will Evaporate What will be the ultimate fate of our universe? There are a number of theories and possibilities,...
a year ago
61
a year ago
What will be the ultimate fate of our universe? There are a number of theories and possibilities, but at present the most likely scenario seems to be that the universe will continue to expand, most mass will eventually find its way into a black hole, and those black holes will...
Quantum Frontiers
Memories of things past My best friend—who’s held the title of best friend since kindergarten—calls me the keeper of her...
a year ago
28
a year ago
My best friend—who’s held the title of best friend since kindergarten—calls me the keeper of her childhood memories. I recall which toys we played with, the first time I visited her house,1 and which beverages our classmates drank during snack … Continue reading →
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 4 + wrapup My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a...
a year ago
25
a year ago
My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a session about spin transport, the opening invited talk by Jiaming He was a clear discussion of recent experimental results on spin Seebeck effects in the magnetic insulator LuFeO3. The...
Math Is Still...
To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA Under a microscope, cells in a worm embryo deliberately eliminated one-third of their genome — an...
a year ago
33
a year ago
Under a microscope, cells in a worm embryo deliberately eliminated one-third of their genome — an uncompromising tactic that may combat harmful genetic parasites. The post To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
The Lawlessness of Large Numbers Mathematicians can often figure out what happens as quantities grow infinitely large. What about...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Mathematicians can often figure out what happens as quantities grow infinitely large. What about when they are just a little big? The post The Lawlessness of Large Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
What Does Milk Do for Babies? Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with molecular nutritionist Elizabeth Johnson about her research into the impact of human milk on a healthy microbiome. The...
ToughSF
Nuclear Photon Rockets: Flashlights to the Stars In this post, we will have a look at the concept of using a nuclear photon rocket for interstellar...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
In this post, we will have a look at the concept of using a nuclear photon rocket for interstellar travel. They are an old concept that should theoretically be the ultimate form of relativistic propulsion. However, today they are unknown or unpopular. Why might that be the...
ToughSF
How to Live on Other Planets: Uranus The weirdest of the planets. A blue giant, resting on its side. Could we find a home in...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
The weirdest of the planets. A blue giant, resting on its side. Could we find a home in the Uranian system? Description Uranus is the fourth-largest planet and the first ‘ice giant’. It orbits between 18.3 and 20.1 AU from the Sun, making it four times more distant than...
Uncharted...
What Is the Earth’s Carrying Capacity? Most "experts" don't understand technology or economics
a month ago
NeuroLogica Blog
MOBE – A New Gene Editing System Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic...
7 months ago
45
7 months ago
Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats? Well, now you can add MOBE to the list – multiplexed orthogonal base editor. Base editors are not new, they are basically enzymes that will change one base – C (cytosine), T...
The Roots of...
Why no Roman Industrial Revolution? Why didn’t the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Why didn’t the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing that question, which multiple people have pointed me to at various times. In brief, Devereaux says that Britain industrialized through a very specific path, involving coal mines,...
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
24
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
NeuroLogica Blog
A Bit of Energy Pseudoscience Remember the 1980 film, The Formula? Probably not, because it was a mediocre film that did not age...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Remember the 1980 film, The Formula? Probably not, because it was a mediocre film that did not age well. The basic plot is that Nazi chemists during WWII developed a formula for synthetic gasoline. A detective investigating a murder gets embroiled in a conspiracy to cover up the...
Wanderingspace
New View of IO from JUNO! From processor Ted Styrk, “The Juno Jupiter orbiter flew by Io, Jupiter's super-volcanic moon, on...
a year ago
60
a year ago
From processor Ted Styrk, “The Juno Jupiter orbiter flew by Io, Jupiter's super-volcanic moon, on May 16, returning arguably the best imagery of the moon since the Galileo Orbiter around the beginning of this century. Definitely the best since New Horizons in 2006.”
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: A winter's tale Melting snow can make the season easier
a year ago
Beautiful Public...
Mapping the Sea Floor USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of the sea floor off Cape Ann, MA.
The Roots of...
Developing a technology with safety in mind If a technology may introduce catastrophic risks, how do you develop it? It occurred to me that the...
a year ago
57
a year ago
If a technology may introduce catastrophic risks, how do you develop it? It occurred to me that the Wright Brothers’ approach to inventing the airplane might make a good case study. The catastrophic risk for them, of course, was dying in a crash. This is exactly what happened...
NeuroLogica Blog
Are Electric Vehicles Worth It One of the key components of the plan to get our civilization to net zero by 2050 is to transform...
a year ago
12
a year ago
One of the key components of the plan to get our civilization to net zero by 2050 is to transform the motor vehicle fleet into all electric vehicles (EVs). This is a worthy goal, as it would eliminate burning gasoline for transportation. In fact it’s necessary if we want to get...
Probably...
Where’s My Train? Yesterday I presented a webinar for PyMC Labs where I solved one of the exercises from Think Bayes,...
5 months ago
67
5 months ago
Yesterday I presented a webinar for PyMC Labs where I solved one of the exercises from Think Bayes, called “The Red Line Problem”. Here’s the scenario: The Red Line is a subway that connects Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. When I was working in Cambridge I took the Red Line...
Probably...
Confidence In the Press This is the fifth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from Lulu.com...
3 days ago
19
3 days ago
This is the fifth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s based on Chapter 16, which is part of the political alignment case study. You can read the complete example here, or run the Jupyter notebook on...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Race And Healthcare: Recognizing And Addressing the Issues Facing Black Patients | Out-Of-Pocket The systemic issues that plague black communities are extremely prevalent in healthcare, and we...
a year ago
Chris Grossack's...
Internal Group Actions as Enriched Functors Earlier today this month on the Category Theory Zulip, Bernd Losert asked an extremely natural...
10 months ago
29
10 months ago
Earlier today this month on the Category Theory Zulip, Bernd Losert asked an extremely natural question about how we might study topological group actions via the functorial approach beloved by category theorists. The usual story is to treat a group $G$ as a one-object...
Math Is Still...
How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface....
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface. The hidden culprit? Magnetic activity. The post How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang By studying the geometry of model space-times, researchers offer alternative views of the universe’s...
7 months ago
73
7 months ago
By studying the geometry of model space-times, researchers offer alternative views of the universe’s first moments. The post Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Guide to faculty searches, 2024 edition As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing about more condensed matter and nano science soon.   In the meantime, I realized that I have not re-posted or updated my primer on how tenure-track faculty searches work in physics...
Math Is Still...
Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems....
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
Researchers have proved that secure quantum encryption is possible in a world without hard problems. The post Cryptographers Discover a New Foundation for Quantum Secrecy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth’s Oscillating Weather Patterns By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a...
a year ago
11
a year ago
By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a powerful explanation for the movements of the planet’s air and seas. The post How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth’s Oscillating Weather Patterns first appeared on Quanta...
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...
5 months ago
51
5 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...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Good Meteor Shower This Week Wednesday evening and Thursday morning (Dec. 13-14) is the peak time for one of the best meteor...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Wednesday evening and Thursday morning (Dec. 13-14) is the peak time for one of the best meteor showers of the year – the Geminids.  The post Good Meteor Shower This Week appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
The Works in...
Growing Forests As countries develop, deforestation drops
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other...
9 months ago
18
9 months ago
New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community. The post Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, October 2023 A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots...
a year ago
68
a year ago
A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots of Progress as a nonprofit organization, so I haven’t had as much time as I prefer for research and writing. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find...
Beautiful Public...
Trademark Design Codes The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes"...
9 months ago
80
9 months ago
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a system of 1,400 descriptive "design codes" allowing you to search for trademarks with “Rickshaws”, “Centaurs” or “Mechanical women”.
Blog - Practical...
Why Bridges Need Sensors (and other structures too) [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Almost immediately after I...
a year ago
68
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Almost immediately after I started making videos about engineering, people started asking me to play video games on the channel. Apparently there’s roughly a billion people who watch online gaming these days,...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GPT-3 x Healthcare: Democratizing AI | Out-Of-Pocket ICD-10 vs. GPT-3, who will win?
a year ago
Asterisk
Growing Up Overnight A look at the past few years of LLM progress.
a year ago
Math Is Still...
A New Agenda for Low-Dimensional Topology This past October, dozens of mathematicians gathered in Pasadena to create the third version of...
10 months ago
59
10 months 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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Ciitizen And The Patient Data Marketplace | Out-Of-Pocket The path to our personal health record
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence of Ancient Solar Flares From time to time the Earth gets hit by a wave of energetic particles from the sun – solar flares or...
a year ago
47
a year ago
From time to time the Earth gets hit by a wave of energetic particles from the sun – solar flares or even coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In 1859 a large CME hit Earth (known as the Carrington Event), shorting out telegraphs, brightening the sky, and causing aurora deep into...
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...
a year ago
51
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...
The Roots of...
Highlights from The Industrial Revolution, by T. S. Ashton The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in...
a year ago
26
a year ago
The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in 1948. Here are some of my highlights from it. (Emphasis in bold added by me.) The role of chance What was the role of chance in the inventions of the Industrial Revolution? It is true...
symmetry magazine
Seeing the full picture with line-intensity mapping Astronomers are championing a relatively new technique as a method to understand the structure of...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Astronomers are championing a relatively new technique as a method to understand the structure of the early universe in three dimensions.
NeuroLogica Blog
Spider-Man’s Web Shooter I have to admit that my favorite superhero as a kid, and still today, is Spider-Man (and yes, that’s...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
I have to admit that my favorite superhero as a kid, and still today, is Spider-Man (and yes, that’s the correct spelling). There are a number of narrative reasons for this that I grew to appreciate more as I aged. First, Spider-Man is in the sweet spot of super abilities – he is...
ToughSF
Hypervelocity Macron Accelerators We look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity (10-10,000...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
We look at the various ways of accelerating micro-scale projectiles up to hypervelocity (10-10,000 km/s) and their use in space. Going small to go fast Macrons or macroscopic particles are tiny projectiles that sit on the border between the complex structures we see under a...
Math Is Still...
‘Quantum Memory’ Proves Exponentially Powerful Researchers are exploring new ways that quantum computers will be able to reveal the secrets of...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
Researchers are exploring new ways that quantum computers will be able to reveal the secrets of complex quantum systems. The post ‘Quantum Memory’ Proves Exponentially Powerful 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
3 months ago
Explorations of an...
Borneo 2024: Introduction And Pre-Tour Birding About a month ago, I returned to Sabah in east Malaysia for my fourth tour of duty as a guide for...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
About a month ago, I returned to Sabah in east Malaysia for my fourth tour of duty as a guide for Quest Nature Tours. I've always said that Borneo is one of my favourite tours that I run and even after three previous trips I was looking forward to returning. One of the main...
brr
Sunset Hunkering down for the winter!
a year ago
Inverted Passion
Getting things done by not trying I recently finished a very short book with an intriguing title: Why Greatness Cannot be Planned....
2 months ago
49
2 months ago
I recently finished a very short book with an intriguing title: Why Greatness Cannot be Planned. It’s an unconventional self-help book disguised as a computer science research exposition (that’s why the publisher is Springer). I strongly recommend reading it. Here is a taste of...
Blog - Practical...
When Natural Gas Had No Smell [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Excitement and hope permeated...
5 months ago
65
5 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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Out-Of-Pocket Game plan | Out-Of-Pocket How to build the on-boarding system for healthcare
a year ago
The Works in...
The road from serfdom Using opt-ins to reform Russia's backwards tsarist agricultural sector
10 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
The Gender Boxing Hubub Both Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria earned medals in female boxing competition at...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Both Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria earned medals in female boxing competition at the 2024 Olympics. This has caused a controversy because both boxers, according to reports, have some form of DSD – difference of sex development. This means they have been caught...
The Works in...
To change a norm How the war on drunk driving was won
6 months ago
Light from Space
The Dense & Dusty Orion Nebula Next to the Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula (also referred to as “Great Nebula in Orion” in older...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Next to the Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula (also referred to as “Great Nebula in Orion” in older texts) is likely the first target for any fledgling amateur astrophotographer in the Northern Hemisphere. It's so bright it actually appears to the naked eye essentially like a
Math Is Still...
A Rosetta Stone for Mathematics In 1940 André Weil wrote a letter to his sister, Simone, outlining his vision for translating...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
In 1940 André Weil wrote a letter to his sister, Simone, outlining his vision for translating between three distinct areas of mathematics. Eighty years later, it still animates many of the most exciting developments in the field. The post A Rosetta Stone for...
Math Is Still...
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...
8 months ago
38
8 months 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
Diamond Batteries Again Why does news reporting of science and technology have to be so terrible at baseline? I know the...
3 weeks ago
28
3 weeks ago
Why does news reporting of science and technology have to be so terrible at baseline? I know the answers to this question – lack of expertise, lack of a business model to support dedicated science news infrastructure, the desire for click-bait and sensationalism – but it is still...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Plant Sounds My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past...
5 months ago
5
5 months ago
My early adulthood coincided with the New Age movement and its belief in many discredited past ideas, such as astrology. One New Age idea that seemed strange at the time was that talking to plants helped them to grow. What could be more New Age than a hippie chick talking to a...
Math Is Still...
Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA Cells across the tree of life can swap short-lived messages encoded by RNA — missives that resemble...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
Cells across the tree of life can swap short-lived messages encoded by RNA — missives that resemble a quick text rather than a formal memo on letterhead. The post Cells Across the Tree of Life Exchange ‘Text Messages’ Using RNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Antarctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low For decades scientists were confused by Antarctic sea ice. Climate models predict that it should be...
7 months ago
85
7 months ago
For decades scientists were confused by Antarctic sea ice. Climate models predict that it should be decreasing, and yet it has been steadily and slowly increasing. It also made for a great talking point for climate change deniers – superficially it seems like counter evidence to...
brr
South Pole Signage Please close doors quietly!
a year ago
Math Is Still...
The Brain Region That Controls Movement Also Guides Feelings The cerebellum is responsible for far more than coordinating movement. New techniques reveal that it...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
The cerebellum is responsible for far more than coordinating movement. New techniques reveal that it is, in fact, a hub of sensory and emotional processing in the brain. The post The Brain Region That Controls Movement Also Guides Feelings first appeared on Quanta...
The Works in...
Links in Progress: All the single people And how China will lose 51 million people in 10 years
2 weeks ago
Math Is Still...
Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move. The post Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time first appeared on...
Damn Interesting
The Kingpin of Shanghai Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters. But in April 1927, about...
over a year ago
9
over a year ago
Respectable heads of state rarely admit to keeping company with gangsters. But in April 1927, about 15 years after the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, Chiang Kai-shek and China were at a crossroads. Chiang had followed a murky path to leadership of the Chinese Nationalist...
Math Is Still...
The Two Faces of Space-Time A mysterious phenomenon known as duality often leads to new discoveries in physics. This time,...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
A mysterious phenomenon known as duality often leads to new discoveries in physics. This time, space-time itself can sometimes be two things at once. The post The Two Faces of Space-Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
The Invention That Let Fiber Optics Span the Globe Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten:...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten: New Coke, “We Are the World,” the rise of desktop publishing. But one at-the-time obscure invention from that year has long eclipsed the frothy headlines of its time, because it...
Math Is Still...
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. ...
a year ago
23
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
Marine Madness
Fear factor: How sensationalised shark documentaries undermine conservation efforts Experts explain why misleading documentaries about sharks can be problematic. When Brendon Sing...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Experts explain why misleading documentaries about sharks can be problematic. When Brendon Sing first encountered sharks he was as a young boy behind the safety of aquarium glass in his native South Africa. Like many children of his generation, Brendon’s limited knowledge about...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Special Edition - WoW | Out-Of-Pocket World Of Warcraft vs. COVID-19
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates Electrons have been seen uniting into entities with fractions of electric charge, this time without...
7 months ago
78
7 months 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
NeuroLogica Blog
Gene Editing Chickens to Resist Bird Flu There are 33 billion chickens in the world, mostly domestic species raised for egg-laying or meat....
a year ago
9
a year ago
There are 33 billion chickens in the world, mostly domestic species raised for egg-laying or meat. They are a high efficiency source of high quality protein. It’s the kind of thing we need to do if we want to feed 8 billion people. Similarly we have planted 4.62 billion acres of...
Probably...
Combining Risks Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. combine_risk Combining Risks¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Bit of a weird one but I’m hoping you’re the...
Interaction Magic -...
Hacking the terrorist timepiece The hardest part of building hardware interfaces is not having the right tools to prototype, test...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
The hardest part of building hardware interfaces is not having the right tools to prototype, test and validate ideas. A behind the scenes look at my prototyping process, on a project to re-invent the famous Casio F-91W watch.
Math Is Still...
A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies...
a year ago
41
a year ago
On its surface, the Kakeya conjecture is a simple statement about rotating needles. But it underlies a wealth of mathematics. The post A Tower of Conjectures That Rests Upon a Needle first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Issue 17: No great stagnation in cruise ships Plus: animals as chemical factories, how progress lost its glamour, and how Madrid built 120 miles...
a month ago
Quantum Frontiers
Watch out for geese! My summer in Waterloo It’s the beginning of another summer, and I’m looking forward to outdoor barbecues, swimming in...
7 months ago
75
7 months ago
It’s the beginning of another summer, and I’m looking forward to outdoor barbecues, swimming in lakes and pools, and sharing my home-made ice cream with friends and family. One thing that I won’t encounter this summer, but I did last … Continue reading →
NeuroLogica Blog
Do We Have Free Will? Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free will? This comes up not infrequently whenever I write here about neuroscience, most recently when I wrote about hunger circuitry, because the notion of the brain as a physical...
NeuroLogica Blog
New Asteroid Probably Won’t Hit Earth NASA recently discovered a 50 meter wide asteroid whose orbit will come close to Earth. They...
a year ago
31
a year ago
NASA recently discovered a 50 meter wide asteroid whose orbit will come close to Earth. They estimate a close approach in 2046, which will likely bring the asteroid within 1.1 million miles of the Earth, about four times the distance of the moon. However, there is always...
Beautiful Public...
Here’s All the Rocks We Hauled Back From the Moon The 12 human beings who walked on the Moon collected, catalogued and returned 842 pounds of lunar...
a year ago
67
a year ago
The 12 human beings who walked on the Moon collected, catalogued and returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil. Each sample has been meticulously documented in NASA's Lunar Sample Catalog.
NeuroLogica Blog
Did They Find Amelia Earhart’s Plane Is this sonar image taken at 16,000 feet below the surface about 100 miles from Howland island, that...
11 months ago
23
11 months ago
Is this sonar image taken at 16,000 feet below the surface about 100 miles from Howland island, that of a downed Lockheed Model 10-E Electra plane? Tony Romeo hopes it is. He spent $9 million to purchase an underwater drone, the Hugan 6000, then hired a crew and scoured 5,200...
Math Is Still...
New Codes Could Make Quantum Computing 10 Times More Efficient Quantum computing is still really, really hard. But the rise of a powerful class of error-correcting...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Quantum computing is still really, really hard. But the rise of a powerful class of error-correcting codes suggests that the task might be slightly more feasible than many feared. The post New Codes Could Make Quantum Computing 10 Times More Efficient first appeared...
The Works in...
The eye of the tiger What makes tigers different from one another?
a year ago
Beautiful Public...
The United States Frequency Allocation Chart This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s...
a year ago
27
a year ago
This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s most crucial – and invisible – national assets: the radio spectrum.
Math Is Still...
The Year in Math Landmark results in geometry and number theory marked an exciting year for mathematics, at a time...
3 weeks ago
39
3 weeks ago
Landmark results in geometry and number theory marked an exciting year for mathematics, at a time when advances in artificial intelligence are starting to transform the subject’s future. The post The Year in Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
A Galaxy Without Dark Matter Dark matter is one of the greatest current scientific mysteries. It’s a fascinating story playing...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Dark matter is one of the greatest current scientific mysteries. It’s a fascinating story playing out in real time, although over years, so you have to be patient. Future generations might be able to binge the dark matter show, but not us. We have to wait for each episode to...
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence and the Nanny State Part II In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should...
a year ago
10
a year ago
In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should impose regulations on people and institutions in order to engineer positive outcomes. In the end the best approach, it seems to me, is a balanced one, where we consider the burden of...
Blog - Practical...
HEAVY CONSTRUCTION of a Sewage Pump Station - Ep 3 This is the third episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's...
a year ago
53
a year ago
This is the third episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's Made"-esque heavy construction videos. Drop a comment or send me an email to let me know what you think! Watch on YouTube above or ad-free on Nebula here.
Uncharted...
10 Other Places Where Geniuses Hide Groups, networks, the Internet, IQ, state sponsorship, and many more
3 weeks ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some Common Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching Angels | Out-Of-Pocket With some real decks and emails!
10 months ago
pcloadletter
My articles don't belong on certain social networks I write this blog because I enjoy writing. Some people enjoy reading what I write, which makes me...
7 months ago
71
7 months ago
I write this blog because I enjoy writing. Some people enjoy reading what I write, which makes me feel really great! Recently, I took down a post and stopped writing for a few months because I didn't love the reaction I was getting on social media sites like Reddit and Hacker...
NeuroLogica Blog
New Theory Unites Gravity and Quantum Mechanics One of the greatest mysteries of modern science is how to unite the two overarching theories of...
a year ago
12
a year ago
One of the greatest mysteries of modern science is how to unite the two overarching theories of physics – quantum mechanics and general relativity. If physicists could somehow unite these two theories, which currently do not play well together, then we might get to a deeper “one...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Fitbits, Bundled Payments, and Rollercoasters | Out-Of-Pocket some papers I think are cool
a year ago
Explorations of an...
2024 (Part 2 of 2) June and July I always sound like a broken record each year when discussing June and July. I was...
6 days ago
7
6 days ago
June and July I always sound like a broken record each year when discussing June and July. I was fortunate to have a lot of field work in 2024 which kept me occupied for most of these two months. But it's one of the best jobs in the world as I spend each and every day outside,...
Math Is Still...
New Proof Shows That ‘Expander’ Graphs Synchronize The proof establishes new conditions that cause connected oscillators to sway in sync. ...
a year ago
13
a year ago
The proof establishes new conditions that cause connected oscillators to sway in sync. The post New Proof Shows That ‘Expander’ Graphs Synchronize first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
Chasing Endemics in Córdoba Córdoba is the second most populated city in Argentina, located in the Punilla Valley around 600 km...
a year ago
19
a year ago
Córdoba is the second most populated city in Argentina, located in the Punilla Valley around 600 km northwest of Buenos Aires. Laura and I spent one night in the city before our morning's birding. Our destination: the beautiful Sierras de Córdoba to the west of the city and...
Beautiful Public...
1,000 Photos of Dolphin Fins Scars, scratches and wounds abound in these photos as encounters with unknown creatures and boat...
a year ago
77
a year ago
Scars, scratches and wounds abound in these photos as encounters with unknown creatures and boat propellers leave their marks, imprinting a story of close escapes and cheating death.
Willem Pennings
Balancing cube This cube manages to balance itself on a corner, and can simultaneously rotate around its axis in a...
11 months ago
20
11 months ago
This cube manages to balance itself on a corner, and can simultaneously rotate around its axis in a controlled manner. It does so using clever controls and a set of three reaction wheels. The original idea for this device comes from researchers at ETH Zürich, who demonstrate...
The Works in...
Britain’s interwar apartment boom A decade of Art Deco densification
10 months ago
Melting Asphalt
Here Be Sermons I've long turned up my nose at sermons and related forms of mass moralizing. One reason, quite...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
I've long turned up my nose at sermons and related forms of mass moralizing. One reason, quite simply, is that they bore me. Honesty good. Violence bad. My eyes glaze over. Empathy, rah! Racism, boo! Please, don't we know this… Read more ›
Stephen Wolfram...
Yet More New Ideas and New Functions: Launching Version 14.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector...
5 months ago
46
5 months ago
For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector Databases and Semantic Search RAGs and Dynamic Prompting for LLMs Connect to Your Favorite LLM Symbolic Arrays and Their Calculus Binomials and Pitchforks: Navigating Mathematical...
NeuroLogica Blog
Magnetohydrodynamic Drive – Silent Water Propulsion DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now working on developing a...
a year ago
30
a year ago
DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now working on developing a magnet-driven silent water propulsion system – the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) drive. The primary reason is to develop silent military naval craft. Imagine a nuclear submarine with an MHD drive,...
Many Worlds
Getting To Know Rogue Planets In our Earthling minds, planets exist in solar systems with a Sun in the middle and objects large...
a year ago
10
a year ago
In our Earthling minds, planets exist in solar systems with a Sun in the middle and objects large and small orbiting around it.   This is hardly surprising since planets are pretty much exclusively illustrated in solar systems and, until the onset of the 21st century, no other...
Math Is Still...
Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire...
a year ago
59
a year ago
Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills. The post Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
Discoveries at the Dibner This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit...
11 months ago
35
11 months ago
This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Dibner Rare Book Library in D.C. Located in a small corner of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, tucked away behind flashier exhibits, the Dibner is … Continue...
Explorations of an...
A Quest Nature Tour Of Jamaica The Caribbean island of Jamaica is a naturalist’s paradise. Situated south of eastern Cuba, east of...
9 months ago
63
9 months ago
The Caribbean island of Jamaica is a naturalist’s paradise. Situated south of eastern Cuba, east of Honduras and north of Colombia, Jamaica has an interesting assemblage of species with different origins. Jamaica was never connected to the mainland throughout its long geological...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Cool Ideas For Dentistry + Medicine With Nisarg Patel | Out-Of-Pocket plus what actually happens in the operating room?
a year ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Two Eclipses of the Sun Coming to North America 2023-24 Two eclipses of the Sun will be visible in North America during the 2023-24 school year. The post...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Two eclipses of the Sun will be visible in North America during the 2023-24 school year. The post Two Eclipses of the Sun Coming to North America 2023-24 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
The Works in...
Apply to come to Invisible College Our new residential seminar for 18 to 22-year-olds, during August 2024
8 months ago