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IEEE Spectrum
Lewis H. Latimer: A Life of Lightbulb Moments James Weldon Johnson’s hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” adopted by African Americans as the...
a year ago
9
a year ago
James Weldon Johnson’s hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” adopted by African Americans as the unofficial “Negro National Anthem,” includes the line, “We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,” which sums up how Black Americans have found ways to thrive under...
Asterisk
Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning? Across the world, more students than ever are in school. But it’s not clear that they're learning...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Across the world, more students than ever are in school. But it’s not clear that they're learning more while there — or if that’s even the goal.
nanoscale views
Meetings this week This week is the 2023 DOE experimental condensed matter physics PI meeting - in the past I’ve...
a year ago
27
a year ago
This week is the 2023 DOE experimental condensed matter physics PI meeting - in the past I’ve written up highlights of these here (2021), here (2019), here (2017), here (2015), and here (2013).  This year, I am going to have to present remotely, however, because I am giving a...
nanoscale views
Interesting reading - resonators, quantum geometry w/ phonons, and fractional quantum anomalous Hall Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found...
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found interesting: Mechanical resonators are a topic with a long history, going back to the first bells and the tuning fork.  I've written about micromachined resonators before, and the quest...
Asterisk
The Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic Are we really living through a uniquely lonely moment in American history? When it comes to...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Are we really living through a uniquely lonely moment in American history? When it comes to friendship, this isn’t the first time that authorities have cried wolf.
Math Is Still...
How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally...
a year ago
26
a year ago
A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of complex cells aren’t all equally stuffed with noncoding sequences. The post How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
May I have this dance? This July, I came upon a museum called the Haus der Musik in one of Vienna’s former palaces. The...
a year ago
28
a year ago
This July, I came upon a museum called the Haus der Musik in one of Vienna’s former palaces. The museum contains a room dedicated to Johann Strauss II, king of the waltz. The room, dimly lit, resembles a twilit gazebo. … Continue reading →
Math Is Still...
Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame...
a year ago
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a year ago
The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame movement of electrons. The post Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
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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
Confessions of a...
Marine Ecology or Marine Biology….what’s the difference!?!?!? A few of you may be wondering why the blog is called ‘Confessions of a Marine Ecologist” and not...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
A few of you may be wondering why the blog is called ‘Confessions of a Marine Ecologist” and not ‘Confessions of a Marine Biologist”.  After all, if you ask a group of school kids what they want to be when they grow up, more than a handful would happily answer “marine biologist”,...
nanoscale views
Molecular electronics in 2023 This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series...
a year ago
30
a year ago
This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series that brings together a group of researchers interested in electronic transport in molecular systems.  This brings together physicists and chemists, and this was the first one I've...
Asterisk
Rat Traps Does the rationalist blogosphere need to update?
2 months ago
Math Is Still...
How Our Longest Nerve Orchestrates the Mind-Body Connection Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to...
4 months ago
48
4 months ago
Like a highway system, the vagus nerve branches profusely from your brain through your organs to marshal bodily functions, including aspects of mind such as mood, pleasure and fear. The post How Our Longest Nerve Orchestrates the Mind-Body Connection first appeared on...
ToughSF
Riding Sunbeams with Solar Sails Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the Solar System, as many times as you want, any time of the year. Solar sails can carry passengers and they have a nearly unlimited number of uses. You just have to... think...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Six Healthcare Startup Ideas | Out-Of-Pocket In collaboration with The Generalist
a year ago
Math Is Still...
The Mathematician Who Finds the Poetry in Math and the Math in Poetry The links between math, music and art have been explored for thousands of years. Sarah Hart is now...
12 months ago
16
12 months ago
The links between math, music and art have been explored for thousands of years. Sarah Hart is now turning a mathematical eye to literature. The post The Mathematician Who Finds the Poetry in Math and the Math in Poetry first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 2 I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my...
a year ago
26
a year ago
I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my session ended, but here are a couple of highlights: There was an invited session about the metal halide perovskites, and there were some interesting talks.  My faculty colleague...
NeuroLogica Blog
Choosing our Representatives As we are in an election year in the US, there seems to be only one thing on which there is broad...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
As we are in an election year in the US, there seems to be only one thing on which there is broad agreement – this upcoming election will be consequential. So allow me to share some of my musings about the process of electing our political representatives. Let me start by laying...
The Roots of...
Neither EA nor e/acc is what we need to build the future Over the last few years, effective altruism has gone through a rise-and-fall story arc worthy of any...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Over the last few years, effective altruism has gone through a rise-and-fall story arc worthy of any dramatic tragedy. The pandemic made them look prescient for warning about global catastrophic risks, including biosafety. A masterful book launch put them on the cover of TIME....
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...
Explorations of an...
Uruguay Part 2: The Saffron-cowled Blackbird Search February 26, 2023 Laura and I left the hacienda behind and and headed southeast towards the coast....
a year ago
26
a year ago
February 26, 2023 Laura and I left the hacienda behind and and headed southeast towards the coast. Our route was a meandering one and we took our time on the potholed roads. The countryside was birdy and we didn't mind the relaxed pace.  We had booked an AirBnB property in the...
Probably...
Should divorce be more difficult? “The Christian right is coming for divorce next,” according to this recent Vox article, and “Some...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
“The Christian right is coming for divorce next,” according to this recent Vox article, and “Some conservatives want to make it a lot harder to dissolve a marriage.” As always when I read an article like this, I want to see data — and the General Social Survey has just the data I...
NeuroLogica Blog
GMOs – Ask a Farmer The topic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is a great target for science communication...
5 months ago
52
5 months ago
The topic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is a great target for science communication because public attitudes have largely been shaped by deliberate misinformation, and the research suggests that those attitudes can change in response to more accurate information. It is...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Plants as Biofactories When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are...
a year ago
33
a year ago
When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are powered by the sun, extract raw material from the air and soil, and make all sorts of useful molecules. Mostly we use them to make edible molecules (food), but also to make textiles,...
Probably...
Political Alignment, Affiliation, and Attitudes Is there a growing gender gap in the U.S? Alignment A recent article in the Financial Times suggests...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Is there a growing gender gap in the U.S? Alignment A recent article in the Financial Times suggests that among young people there is a growing gender gap in political alignment on a spectrum from liberal to conservative. In last week’s post, I tried to replicate this result...
Math Is Still...
A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal Stability. Now the Idea May Be Falling Apart. A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would...
10 months ago
33
10 months ago
A series of advances seemed to promise the impossible: the existence of quantum states that would never, ever fall into disarray. But physicists are now discovering that the pull of disorder may not be so easily overcome. The post A Quantum Trick Implied Eternal...
Chris Grossack's...
Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 3 -- Bonus Axioms In the first post of the series, we talked about what the topological topos is, and how we can...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
In the first post of the series, we talked about what the topological topos is, and how we can think about its objects (and, importantly, how we can relate computations in the topos $\mathcal{T}$ to computations with topological spaces in “the real world”). In part two, we...
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
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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
Math Is Still...
Animal Mutation Rates Reveal Traits That Speed Evolution The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can...
a year ago
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a year ago
The first large-scale comparison of mutation rates gives insights into how quickly species can evolve. The post Animal Mutation Rates Reveal Traits That Speed Evolution first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
The End Of An Era - Reflections On Our Travels (Written on April 23, 2023) In just a few days time, Laura and I will board a jet bound for another...
a year ago
19
a year ago
(Written on April 23, 2023) In just a few days time, Laura and I will board a jet bound for another international destination. Our flight home to Toronto isn't that unique of a scenario, as we have flown on plenty of planes headed home since we began our international travels...
Eukaryote Writes...
Web-surfing tips for strange times Meditations on what's bad about the internet lately and how to use it anyhow.
7 months ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Perseid Meteor Shower Aug 12-13, 2023 We make suggestions for how best to see the 2023 Perseid meteor shower. The post Perseid Meteor...
a year ago
9
a year ago
We make suggestions for how best to see the 2023 Perseid meteor shower. The post Perseid Meteor Shower Aug 12-13, 2023 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Asterisk
The Depths of Wikipedians A conversation about yogurt wars, German hymns, tropical cyclones, and the people who make Wikipedia...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
A conversation about yogurt wars, German hymns, tropical cyclones, and the people who make Wikipedia function.
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Adornment "Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by...
4 months ago
12
4 months ago
"Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by its purpose or function. A quick perusal of any antique shop will show that this maxim is generally ignored. Humans (Homo sapiens) have been called "naked apes," but we and our...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Caves on Mars Recently, in social media posts, Dr. Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute discussed the intriguing caves...
a month ago
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a month ago
Recently, in social media posts, Dr. Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute discussed the intriguing caves on the side of the giant martian volcano called Arsia Mons as interesting places for future exploration and even human residences. As it happens, my very first published...
Math Is Still...
How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills? A new study suggests that so-called emergent abilities actually develop gradually and predictably,...
11 months ago
29
11 months ago
A new study suggests that so-called emergent abilities actually develop gradually and predictably, depending on how you measure them. The post How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Three high schoolers and their mentor revisited a century-old theorem to prove that all knots can be found in a fractal called the Menger sponge. The post Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More 2022 predictions | Out-Of-Pocket A curation of your 2022 predictions
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Quantum Complexity Shows How to Escape Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Inside of a black hole, the two theoretical pillars of 20th-century physics appear to clash. Now a group of young physicists think they have resolved the conflict by appealing to the central pillar of the new century — the physics of quantum information. The post...
Asterisk
Why Isn’t Solar Scaling in Africa? The World Bank designed the Scaling Solar program to set Africa on a course to sustainable energy....
11 months ago
7
11 months ago
The World Bank designed the Scaling Solar program to set Africa on a course to sustainable energy. Instead, it shed light on how a lack of transparency in the climate and development industry hampers progress.
Beautiful Public...
A Rover's First 590 Days* on Mars I downloaded 60,000 images to experience what NASA's Perseverance rover has been seeing since...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I downloaded 60,000 images to experience what NASA's Perseverance rover has been seeing since landing there in Feb. 2021.
Quantum Frontiers
To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question. If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this…...
8 months ago
64
8 months ago
If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this… To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question:Whether ’tis more natural for the system to sufferThe large entanglement of thermalizing dynamics,Or … Continue reading →
Quantum Frontiers
A (quantum) complex legacy Early in the fourth year of my PhD, I received a most John-ish email from John Preskill, my PhD...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Early in the fourth year of my PhD, I received a most John-ish email from John Preskill, my PhD advisor. The title read, “thermodynamics of complexity,” and the message was concise the way that the Amazon River is damp: “Might … Continue reading →
symmetry magazine
LHC experiments see four top quarks The ATLAS and CMS experiments have observed a process 4,000 times rarer than the production of Higgs...
a year ago
27
a year ago
The ATLAS and CMS experiments have observed a process 4,000 times rarer than the production of Higgs bosons. The ATLAS and CMS experiments have successfully detected the production of a quartet of top quarks during high-energy proton collisions inside the Large...
Asterisk
The Art of Asking Questions Everyone seems to agree that self-report questions are fraught with lies, biases, errors, and other...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Everyone seems to agree that self-report questions are fraught with lies, biases, errors, and other inaccuracies. We all use them anyway. How can we ask them better?
Quantum Frontiers
Let the great world spin I first heard the song “Fireflies,” by Owl City, shortly after my junior year of college. During the...
a year ago
33
a year ago
I first heard the song “Fireflies,” by Owl City, shortly after my junior year of college. During the refrain, singer Adam Young almost whispers, “I’d like to make myself believe / that planet Earth turns slowly.” Goosebumps prickled along my … Continue reading →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Pitching to payers, pilots, and what makes Blue Cross distinct with Tricia Garland | Out-Of-Pocket so you want to know what health insurers are looking for?
9 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Dwarf Planet Ring Mystery Scientists love mysteries, because that is where new discoveries lay. It is nice to find evidence...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Scientists love mysteries, because that is where new discoveries lay. It is nice to find evidence consistent with existing theories, providing further confirmation, but it’s exciting to find evidence that cannot be explained with existing theories. Astronomers may have found such...
nanoscale views
This week in the arXiv: quantum geometry, fluid momentum "tunneling", and pasta sauce Three papers caught my eye the other day on the arXiv at the start of the new year: arXiv:2501.00098...
6 days ago
23
6 days ago
Three papers caught my eye the other day on the arXiv at the start of the new year: arXiv:2501.00098 - J. Yu et al., "Quantum geometry in quantum materials" - I hope to write up something about quantum geometry soon, but I wanted to point out this nice review even if I haven't...
IEEE Spectrum
RCA’s Lucite Phantom Teleceiver Introduced the Idea of TV addressed a small crowd outside the RCA pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. “Today we are on the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
addressed a small crowd outside the RCA pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. “Today we are on the eve of launching a new industry, based on imagination, on scientific research and accomplishment,” he proclaimed. That industry was television. RCA president David Sarnoff’s...
Quantum Frontiers
Announcing the quantum-steampunk creative-writing course! Why not run a quantum-steampunk creative-writing course? Quantum steampunk, as Quantum Frontiers...
3 months ago
51
3 months ago
Why not run a quantum-steampunk creative-writing course? Quantum steampunk, as Quantum Frontiers regulars know, is the aesthetic and spirit of a growing scientific field. Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction. In it, futuristic technologies invade Victorian-era settings:...
Probably...
Estimation with Small Samples Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
8 months ago
78
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. gauss_bayes Estimation with Small Samples¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Hey, so imagine I only have 6...
Wanderingspace
Venus from Earth (with Stacking) Image taken by @TheVastReaches. According to the photographer, “It takes just a few minutes to...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
Image taken by @TheVastReaches. According to the photographer, “It takes just a few minutes to collect all the frames. This started as 6 video files, 45,000 frames total. Then they are stacked and combined.”
The Works in...
Anemia and Malaria In malaria endemic regions, being anemic could be keeping children safe
2 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
"AI sucks", Quantifying EMR burden, and Loneliness | Out-Of-Pocket 3 interesting papers I like
a year ago
Uncharted...
The Earth Is Better with More People A world with 2 billion people would be decaying, poor, brutal, violent, hopeless. With 100B, it...
a month ago
14
a month ago
A world with 2 billion people would be decaying, poor, brutal, violent, hopeless. With 100B, it would be rich, beautiful, vibrant, peaceful, hopeful.
Damn Interesting
From Where the Sun Now Stands An American Indian man on horseback stood outlined against a steely sky past midday on 05 October...
a year ago
9
a year ago
An American Indian man on horseback stood outlined against a steely sky past midday on 05 October 1877. Winter was already settling into the prairies of what would soon become the state of Montana. Five white men stood in the swaying grass on the other side of the field,...
Inverted Passion
Why time seems to pass faster as we age 1/ I’ve been mega-obsessed with this feeling. A year as a 36-year-old seems so much shorter as...
10 months ago
80
10 months ago
1/ I’ve been mega-obsessed with this feeling. A year as a 36-year-old seems so much shorter as compared to when I was a kid or even as a teen. It seems cosmically unfair – we have fewer years to live, and each year flies by faster. 2/ But, why is that happening? My tentative...
The Works in...
The San Diego infinite housing glitch How a bonus ADU program allows 'granny towers' in gardens
3 months ago
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Airfoil The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many...
10 months ago
64
10 months ago
The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling. In this article we’ll...
Math Is Still...
How to Guarantee the Safety of Autonomous Vehicles As computer-driven cars and planes become more common, the key to preventing accidents, researchers...
11 months ago
40
11 months ago
As computer-driven cars and planes become more common, the key to preventing accidents, researchers show, is to know what you don’t know. The post How to Guarantee the Safety of Autonomous Vehicles first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Redox and The Future Of Integrations | Out-Of-Pocket Actually...what is an integration lol
a year ago
Math Is Still...
The Year in Biology Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and...
3 weeks ago
28
3 weeks ago
Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA. The post The Year in Biology first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum...
a year ago
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a year ago
Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future. The post The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Do Droughts Make Floods Worse? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Do you remember the summer of...
a year ago
93
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Do you remember the summer of 2022 when a record drought had gripped not only a large part of the United States, but most of Europe too? Reservoirs were empty, wildfires spread, crop yields dropped, and rivers...
Stephen Wolfram...
Computing the Eclipse: Astronomy in the Wolfram Language Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately...
9 months ago
37
9 months ago
Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately compute eclipses. But now—as a tiny part of making “everything in the world” computable—computation about eclipses is just a built-in feature of the Wolfram Language. The core...
nanoscale views
Brief items A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close,...
a month ago
25
a month ago
A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close, as described by the Wall Street Journal.  It took quite some time for this to propagate through their system.  This is after multiple internal investigations that somehow were...
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
42
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
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
61
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
Deep Sea Mining for Minerals Could Harm Environment It is an unfortunate reality that with over 8 billion people on the planet almost anything we...
a year ago
30
a year ago
It is an unfortunate reality that with over 8 billion people on the planet almost anything we collectively do has the potential to have huge environmental impacts. When the human population was in the mere millions we could treat the planet as an essentially unlimited resource....
Asterisk
Growing Up Overnight A look at the past few years of LLM progress.
a year ago
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...
Wanderingspace
URANUS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters...
a year ago
13
a year ago
This is not natural light, nothing is from Webb. The infrared image combines data from two filters which are shown in blue and orange,. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image which is similar to the planet’s actual color. But in reality Uranus...
Math Is Still...
The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension,...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something. The post The Webb Telescope Further Deepens the Biggest Controversy in Cosmology first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
CHIPS and Science - the reality vs the aspiration I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement that I wrote with colleagues as part of Rice's Baker Institute's Election 2024: Policy Playbook, which "delivers nonpartisan, expert insights into key issues at stake on the 2024...
Probably...
Small percentiles and missing data Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
8 months ago
29
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. low_percentile Bootstrapping percentiles¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. I’m trying to figure out how to...
ToughSF
Permanent and Perfect Stealth in Space Despite the commonly accepted truth in Hard Science Fiction, spacecraft are able to evade detection...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
Despite the commonly accepted truth in Hard Science Fiction, spacecraft are able to evade detection in space in many circumstances. The Hydrogen Steamer was a design that used liquid hydrogen evaporative cooling to keep a non-reflective surface practically invisible.  However,...
NeuroLogica Blog
Wood Vaulting for Carbon Sequestration I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our climate in the face of anthropogenic global warming. This one is a fun story and an interesting, and potentially useful, idea. As we map out potential carbon pathways into the...
Many Worlds
All Six Element Needed For Life as We Know It Have Now Been Found in The Watery Plumes of Enceladus The elements needed for life as we know it are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulfur and...
a year ago
8
a year ago
The elements needed for life as we know it are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulfur and phosphorus. Before today, planetary scientists could say that five of those crucial elements had been found in the watery spray that spurts out of the Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.  All that...
Beautiful Public...
Nuclear Weapon Test Films Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear...
a year ago
35
a year ago
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear weapons tests from the 1940's - 1960's.
Probably...
Migration and Population Growth On a recent run I was talking with a friend from Spain about immigration in Europe. We speculated...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
On a recent run I was talking with a friend from Spain about immigration in Europe. We speculated about whether the population of Spain would be growing or shrinking if there were no international migration. I thought it might be shrinking, but we were not sure. Fortunately, Our...
Beautiful Public...
Visualizing Rivers and Floodplains with USGS Data Using USGS elevation data to visualize stunning views of the flow of water through rivers and...
over a year ago
Math Is Still...
Mathematicians Identify the Best Versions of Iconic Shapes Researchers are discovering the shortest knots and fattest Möbius strips, among other “optimal...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Researchers are discovering the shortest knots and fattest Möbius strips, among other “optimal shapes.” The post Mathematicians Identify the Best Versions of Iconic Shapes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Deepfake Doctor Endorsements This kind of abuse of deepfake endorsements was entirely predictable, so it’s not surprising that a...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
This kind of abuse of deepfake endorsements was entirely predictable, so it’s not surprising that a recent BMJ study documents the scale of this fraud. The study focused on the UK, detailing instances of deepfakes of celebrity doctors endorsing dubious products. For example,...
Drew Ex Machina
Memories of Project RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellites) 1991 – 2004 During the course of my professional career, one of the more important projects I had the pleasure...
a year ago
31
a year ago
During the course of my professional career, one of the more important projects I had the pleasure to work on was the joint US/Russian Federation (RF) […]
NeuroLogica Blog
Luminescent Solar Concentrators for Solar Power Solar power is on the upswing. In 2023, 407–446 GW of solar power was installed globally, bringing...
4 months ago
51
4 months ago
Solar power is on the upswing. In 2023, 407–446 GW of solar power was installed globally, bringing the total to 1.6 TWdc. To put this into perspective, this was 55% of new power capacity added to energy production. For the first time, a renewable energy source contributed the...
Wanderingspace
Uranus is not as boring as we thought “An animation of three near-infrared images of Uranus captured by the JWST Space Telescope with...
a month ago
36
a month ago
“An animation of three near-infrared images of Uranus captured by the JWST Space Telescope with assigned representative colors. During processing, I aligned the rings separately to reduce the bubbling effect caused by different inclinations, making the planet appear to rotate on...
Math Is Still...
Computer Scientists Combine Two ‘Beautiful’ Proof Methods Three researchers have figured out how to craft a proof that spreads out information while keeping...
3 months ago
52
3 months ago
Three researchers have figured out how to craft a proof that spreads out information while keeping it perfectly secret. The post Computer Scientists Combine Two ‘Beautiful’ Proof Methods first appeared on Quanta Magazine
brr
The Last Egg Five more months until freshies...
a year ago
Interaction Magic -...
Life beyond the screen Since early 2020, I've been teaching courses in Interaction Technologies and Prototyping. Switches,...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Since early 2020, I've been teaching courses in Interaction Technologies and Prototyping. Switches, light, gesture, motion, sound, haptics: this is all about exploring life beyond the screen.
Asterisk
How We Can Regulate AI The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving...
a year ago
5
a year ago
The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving regulators a path forward.
Math Is Still...
What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientist to wonder what governed their...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Every species develops at its own unique tempo, leaving scientist to wonder what governed their timing. A suite of new findings suggests that cells use basic metabolic processes as clocks. The post What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells first...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Jersey Drones Are Likely Drones The latest flap over drone sightings in New Jersey and other states in the North East appears to be...
2 weeks ago
32
2 weeks ago
The latest flap over drone sightings in New Jersey and other states in the North East appears to be – essentially nothing. Or rather, it’s a classic example of a mass panic. There are reports of “unusual” drone activity, which prompts people to look for drones, which results in...
Asterisk
The Devil in the Details: Matthew Desmond’s Poverty by America Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America is one of the most celebrated books on the subject....
a year ago
5
a year ago
Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America is one of the most celebrated books on the subject. Unfortunately, carelessness about the ways we measure poverty undercuts its main argument.
Articles - Chris...
Moved to tears 20 years ago, on January 15 2004, a little before 2 AM Pacific time, was the payoff. It was...
11 months ago
66
11 months ago
20 years ago, on January 15 2004, a little before 2 AM Pacific time, was the payoff. It was cause for celebration. But first, I wept.
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 1 There is no question that the meeting venue in Minneapolis is superior in multiple ways to last...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
There is no question that the meeting venue in Minneapolis is superior in multiple ways to last year's meeting in Las Vegas.  The convention center doesn't feel scarily confining, and it also doesn't smell like a combination of cigarettes and desperation. Here are a few...
NeuroLogica Blog
SpaceX Tests Super Heavy Booster Last Thursday SpaceX successfully conducted the most significant test firing of its Heavy Booster...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Last Thursday SpaceX successfully conducted the most significant test firing of its Heavy Booster rocket to date. The rocket sports 33 Raptor 2 engines. During the test, 31 of them fired. One engine failed, and one was shut down. According to SpaceX, even with 31 engines the...
Explorations of an...
Parque Nacional Calilegua Parque Nacional Calilegua protects around 76,000 hectares of east-slope yungas forest, making it the...
a year ago
19
a year ago
Parque Nacional Calilegua protects around 76,000 hectares of east-slope yungas forest, making it the largest national park in northwestern Argentina. It would, therefore, feature prominently on our trip. Laura and I arrived in the general area during the afternoon of January 25,...
Uncharted...
The Players of the Syrian Chessboard What will Israel, Russia, Turkey, the Kurds, Europe, and Lebanon do?
4 weeks ago
Asterisk
What We Get Wrong About AI & China Everyone’s afraid of what China can and will do with AI. On the ground, the picture looks a lot more...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Everyone’s afraid of what China can and will do with AI. On the ground, the picture looks a lot more complicated.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Retail and community pharmacies are changing | Out-Of-Pocket COVID tailwinds are changing the role of the pharmacy and pharmacist
a year ago
Uncharted...
The Top 50 US Cities: Why Are They Where They Are? The geographic and historical reasons that have made some spots in the country the most populated...
2 days ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More weird rules in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket 3 liters of blood, sequential billing, COBRA, and more
7 months ago
Math Is Still...
Bats Use the Same Brain Cells to Map Physical and Social Worlds New research in social bats raises the intriguing possibility that evolution can reprogram the...
a year ago
14
a year ago
New research in social bats raises the intriguing possibility that evolution can reprogram the brain’s “place cells,” which are typically associated with location, to encode all kinds of environmental information. The post Bats Use the Same Brain Cells to Map Physical...
ToughSF
Thermal Decomposition of CO2 with Nuclear Heat A lot of effort must and will be put into combating climate change. We can however directly attack...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
A lot of effort must and will be put into combating climate change. We can however directly attack the root cause of it by reducing the amount of CO2 that we have released into the atmosphere. We can enlist the help of ultra-high-temperature nuclear reactors to do this rapidly...
IEEE Spectrum
What It Takes To Let People Play With the Past Media Archaeology Lab is one of the largest public collections in the world of obsolete, yet...
3 months ago
51
3 months ago
Media Archaeology Lab is one of the largest public collections in the world of obsolete, yet functional, technology. Located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, the MAL is where you can watch a magic lantern show, play Star Castle on a Vectrex games console, or check...
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...
Ecologists Struggle to Get a Grip on ‘Keystone Species’ More than 50 years after Bob Paine’s experiment with starfish, hundreds of species have been...
8 months ago
44
8 months ago
More than 50 years after Bob Paine’s experiment with starfish, hundreds of species have been pronounced “keystones” in their ecosystems. Has the powerful metaphor lost its mathematical meaning? The post Ecologists Struggle to Get a Grip on ‘Keystone Species’ first...
Damn Interesting
This is Dang Interesting Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year. We at this website know, reluctantly, that...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Happy New Year! This has nothing to do with the new year. We at this website know, reluctantly, that “d*mn” is not always a welcome word. Additionally, we are aware that we have a few articles sporting even saltier vocabularies (settle down, Colonel Sanders!). Countless school...
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
25
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...
Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
All modern multicellular life — all life that any of us regularly see — is made of cells with a knack for compartmentalization. Recent discoveries are revealing how the first eukaryote got its start. The post Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized first...
Drew Ex Machina
Recollections of NASA’s Apollo 11 Mission Like a lot of kids who grew up during the ‘60s and ‘70s, I had a fascination with spaceflight. This...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
Like a lot of kids who grew up during the ‘60s and ‘70s, I had a fascination with spaceflight. This interest started honestly enough back around […]
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Six Stages Of Health Tech Grief Pt. 1 | Out-Of-Pocket we should pay people to be healthy + building a new EMR
a year ago
nanoscale views
Large magnetic fields as a scientific tool When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to...
11 months ago
60
11 months ago
When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to overlap with their departmental physics colloquium by Greg Boebinger, an accomplished scientist who is also an extremely engaging and funny speaker.  Since 2004 he has been the...
Math Is Still...
Can Math and Physics Save an Arrhythmic Heart? Abnormal waves of electrical activity can cause a heart’s muscle cells to beat out of sync. In this...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Abnormal waves of electrical activity can cause a heart’s muscle cells to beat out of sync. In this episode, Flavio Fenton, an expert in cardiac dynamics, talks with Steve Strogatz about ways to treat heart arrhythmias without resorting to painful defibrillators. The...
symmetry magazine
A call to cite Black women and gender minorities Theoretical astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein recently unveiled the Cite Black Women+ in...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Theoretical astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein recently unveiled the Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography.
Math Is Still...
Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues...
a year ago
44
a year ago
After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move. The post Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Moon Race is On Back in the 1960 there was a race to land people on the Moon between the US and the Soviet Union....
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
Back in the 1960 there was a race to land people on the Moon between the US and the Soviet Union. This was very much a part of the cold war, with each country interested in showing off its technical prowess to the world with a technology closely related to that needed to deliver...
Math Is Still...
Math Proof Draws New Boundaries Around Black Hole Formation For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black...
a year ago
9
a year ago
For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black hole is destined to exist. A new proof shows how a cube can help answer the question. The post Math Proof Draws New Boundaries Around Black Hole Formation first...
NeuroLogica Blog
How Much Carbon do Living Things Store? Since we are in a “all hands on deck” situation when it comes to climate change, we need to take a...
a year ago
42
a year ago
Since we are in a “all hands on deck” situation when it comes to climate change, we need to take a look at all potential strategies for delaying and blunting global warming. The game at this point is all about peak warming – how much will the Earth warm before temperatures peak...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using AI and Social Media to Measure Climate Change Denial A recent study finds that 14.8% of Americans do not believe in global climate change. This number is...
10 months ago
33
10 months ago
A recent study finds that 14.8% of Americans do not believe in global climate change. This number is roughly in line with what recent survey have found, such as this 2024 Yale study which put the figure at 16%. In 2009, by comparison, the figure was at 33% (although this was a...
NeuroLogica Blog
Tong Test for Artificial General Intelligence Most readers are probably familiar with the Turing Test – a concept proposed by early computing...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Most readers are probably familiar with the Turing Test – a concept proposed by early computing expert Alan Turing in 1950, and originally called “The Imitation Game”. The original paper is enlightening to read. Turing was not trying to answer the question “can machines think”....
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Baseball Mud A manufactured baseball has a smooth surface with very little friction, and this makes it hard for a...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
A manufactured baseball has a smooth surface with very little friction, and this makes it hard for a baseball pitcher to throw with great accuracy. Pitchers in the early days of baseball enhanced the friction by several ad hoc techniques that included rubbing with tobacco juice...
Math Is Still...
Can Information Escape a Black Hole? Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions....
9 months ago
66
9 months ago
Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics. The post Can...
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...
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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Healthcare, but funny | Out-Of-Pocket US healthcare is a joke. Let's make it funny.
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How Data Transformed Small Group Underwriting | Out-Of-Pocket Paper forms be gone, now we anonymize and risk it all (literally).
5 months ago
Blog - Practical...
What Really Happened at the New Harbor Bridge Project? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 2022, the Texas...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 2022, the Texas Department of Transportation issued an emergency suspension of work on the half-finished Harbor Bridge project in Corpus Christi, citing serious design flaws that could cause the main...
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
29
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Smalltalk Blew Steve Jobs’s Mind Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There they were introduced to the experimental Alto computer and the Smalltalk language and computing environment, developed by Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group....
IEEE Spectrum
Smellovision Gets a Refresh This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
a year ago
9
a year ago
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Modern virtual reality is a feast for the eyes and ears—but coming in a distant fourth (behind haptic touch technologies), smell has been nearly completely ignored. Earlier this...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How do hospitals spend money? | Out-Of-Pocket it's time to look at a financial statement
6 months ago
Drew Ex Machina
Top Ten Posts of 2023 Now that we are at the end of 2023, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Now that we are at the end of 2023, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on Drew Ex Machina and see […]
Blog - Practical...
The Hidden Engineering Behind Texas's Top Tourist Attraction [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I am on location in downtown...
3 days ago
23
3 days ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I am on location in downtown San Antonio, Texas, where crews have just finished setting up this massive 650-ton crane. The counterweights are on. The outriggers are down. And the jib, an extension for 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
46
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...
Explorations of an...
El Valle Encantado (The Enchanted Valley), And A Bump In The Road January 19, 2023 It is not always easy to find trails worth exploring in the Andes, and the reason...
a year ago
17
a year ago
January 19, 2023 It is not always easy to find trails worth exploring in the Andes, and the reason for this is simple. The extreme topographical changes in the mountains, combined with frequent rainfall and thick vegetation do not lend themselves to the construction and regular...
symmetry magazine
Will AI make MC the MVP of particle physics? Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo simulations with the power of AI.
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 2 A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high points of scientific talks: The DMP prize session was excellent.  The first talk was by Harold Hwang, this year's awardee of the McGroddy Prize.  He gave a very compelling...
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
29
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...
symmetry magazine
Encouraging a new community Physicists advocate for getting community college students involved in research.
a year ago
The Works in...
Fermenting revolution The Victorian fight against bad bread and its role in women’s liberation
a year ago
Probably...
Elements of Data Science I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle...
5 months ago
52
5 months ago
I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle suggests, it is about “Getting started with Data Science and Python”. Order now from Lulu.com and get 20% off! I am publishing this book myself, which has one big advantage: I can...
nanoscale views
New paper - plasmons, excitons, and steering energy We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it...
a year ago
15
a year ago
We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it and why I think it's a really cool result.    I've written before about the Purcell Effect.  When we study quantum mechanics, we learn that the rates of processes, like the...
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...
Explorations of an...
A Tour Of The Western Galápagos Archipelago The Galápagos archipelago is one of those must-visit destinations for anyone with an interest in...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The Galápagos archipelago is one of those must-visit destinations for anyone with an interest in ecology, evolution, or biogeography. The islands are located in the eastern Pacific where a “hotspot” deep within the earth has been spewing magma for millions of years. The oldest...
ToughSF
Cold, Laser-Coupled Particle Beams This is a follow-up to the Particle Beams in Space post. This time, we look at two concepts that...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
This is a follow-up to the Particle Beams in Space post. This time, we look at two concepts that can massively increase the effective range of particle beam: one is being applied every day in modern accelerators, and the other is an outgrowth of a tool used in...
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence Suggests Lunar Cave Astronomers have discovered multiple “pits” on the surface of the moon – these look superficially...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
Astronomers have discovered multiple “pits” on the surface of the moon – these look superficially like craters, but on closer inspection are actually vertical pits. There has been considerable speculation that these pits might be cave openings. Now, an analysis of data from the...
Chris Grossack's...
Proving Another "Real Theorem" with Topos Theory Another day, another post that starts with “So I was on mse…”, lol. Somebody asked whether...
9 months ago
32
9 months ago
Another day, another post that starts with “So I was on mse…”, lol. Somebody asked whether maximizing over a compact set is a continuous thing to do. That is, given a continuous function $f : K \times X \to \mathbb{R}$ is the function $x \mapsto \max_{k \in K} f(k,x)$...
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
a year ago
26
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...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Black Hole Has Daily Meals Worthy of Thanksgiving You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another...
a month ago
26
a month ago
You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another celebratory meal), it’s nothing compared to Quasar J0529-4351, which astronomers observed earlier this year to be consuming the mass of our entire Sun EACH and every day!  They called it...
Willem Pennings
Fixing my heating system The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm...
8 months ago
41
8 months ago
The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm water to the underfloor heating system of about a dozen apartments, including mine. During the warm summer months, the system supplies cool water instead. The heat pumps figure out...
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...
Explorations of an...
Río Bigal Biological Reserve - Pristine Foothill Forest In Eastern Ecuador "What has been your favourite country that you have visited?"  People often ask me various...
a year ago
11
a year ago
"What has been your favourite country that you have visited?"  People often ask me various iterations of this question when they hear about the traveling that Laura and I have been fortunate to have done. Sometimes I say Colombia, sometimes I say Peru, but usually I don't name a...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Thirty Madison and Condition-Specific Care | Out-Of-Pocket I wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk a little bit about scalable telemedicine + specialist...
a year ago
Drew Ex Machina
Drew Ex Machina 10th Anniversary: Top Ten Posts I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my...
9 months ago
70
9 months ago
I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my then-new website, Drew Ex Machina. […]
Math Is Still...
Invisible ‘Demon’ Discovered in Odd Superconductor Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Physicists have long suspected that hunks of metal could vibrate in a peculiar way that would be all but invisible. Now physicists have spotted these “demon modes.” The post Invisible ‘Demon’ Discovered in Odd Superconductor first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Artificial intelligence, extrapolation, and physical constraints Disclaimer and disclosure:  The "arrogant physicist declaims about some topic far outside their...
6 months ago
70
6 months ago
Disclaimer and disclosure:  The "arrogant physicist declaims about some topic far outside their domain expertise (like climate change or epidemiology or economics or geopolitics or....) like everyone actually in the field is clueless" trope is very overplayed at this point, and...
IEEE Spectrum
Jean Sammet: An Accidental Computer Programmer Jean Sammet rarely let anything get in the way of her professional goals. As a young student, she...
3 weeks ago
37
3 weeks ago
Jean Sammet rarely let anything get in the way of her professional goals. As a young student, she was barred from attending prestigious all-boys schools, so she pursued her love of mathematics at the best institutions she could find that were open to girls and women. Following...
nanoscale views
The wormhole kerfuffle, ER=EPR, and all that I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the time to react in realtime to the PR onslaught surrounding the recent Nature paper by a team from Harvard, MIT, Fermilab, and Google.  There are many places to get caught up on this,...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How MainStreet gets you government $ | Out-Of-Pocket Get government tax credits for your health startup
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Structuring the Unstructured and ScienceIO | Out-Of-Pocket how to train your model, the animated movie
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Is AI Sentient Revisited On the SGU this week we interviewed Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google employee who believes that Google’s...
a year ago
35
a year ago
On the SGU this week we interviewed Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google employee who believes that Google’s LaMDA may be sentient, based on his interactions with it. This was a fascinating discussion, and even though I think we did a pretty deep dive in the time we had, it also felt...
Eukaryote Writes...
COVID-19 FAQ A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my informal capacity as “local biodefense person”.
Probably...
Comparing Distributions This is the second is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from...
a month ago
40
a month ago
This is the second is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 8, which is about representing distribution using PMFs and CDFs. This section explains why I think CDFs are often better for plotting...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Thinking beyond value-based care | Out-Of-Pocket Maybe there’s more to life than shared savings
3 months ago
Beautiful Public...
Special Database 18: 3,248 Mugshots Used for Training Image Recognition Systems The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos...
a year ago
32
a year ago
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos of 1,573 people for decades, including 175 minors, until we asked about them.
Math Is Still...
The Year in Physics From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises this...
a year ago
12
a year ago
From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises this year. The post The Year in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better Neuroscientists recently discovered that small numbers have a different neural signature than larger...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Neuroscientists recently discovered that small numbers have a different neural signature than larger ones, offering a new look into the brain’s number system and its connections to memory and mathematics. The post Why the Human Brain Perceives Small Numbers Better...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Speed of Gravity I recently received an e-mail question from an SGU listener about the speed of gravity. They were...
a year ago
42
a year ago
I recently received an e-mail question from an SGU listener about the speed of gravity. They were questioning a statement they heard by Neil DeGrasse Tyson that if the sun were magically plucked from existence, the Earth would not feel the effects for 8 minutes and 20 seconds –...
IEEE Spectrum
In 1926, TV Was Mechanical John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an early attempt at video recording, with the signals preserved on phonograph records. His noctovision used infrared light to see objects in the dark, which some experts claim was a...
wadertales
Why count shorebirds? A tale from Portugal The Sado Estuary is one of Portugal’s most important wetlands – a key link in the chain of sites...
a year ago
27
a year ago
The Sado Estuary is one of Portugal’s most important wetlands – a key link in the chain of sites connecting Africa and the Arctic, on the East Atlantic Flyway. In a paper in Waterbirds, João Belo and colleagues analyse changes in numbers of waders wintering in this estuary over...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 5: The Marañón Valley (February 7, 2024) February 7, 2024 The Marañón Valley is one of the most important biogeographical boundaries in the...
9 months ago
41
9 months ago
February 7, 2024 The Marañón Valley is one of the most important biogeographical boundaries in the Andes. Situated in northwestern Peru, the valley follows the Marañón River which flows northward across plateaus in the Andes. After cutting through a very deep, heavily eroded...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Malpractice, Expert Witnesses, and Lawsuits with Dr. Eric Funk | Out-Of-Pocket Suits and White Coats
a year ago
Inverted Passion
Review of 2023 Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember...
a year ago
32
a year ago
Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember recently writing my 2022 review, and it was long because I ended up packing a lot of stuff into it. ✅ Train 5 days a week (including Mixed Martial Arts) I did manage to train 5...
Confessions of a...
Shark Bay: a pristine template for marine ecosystems worldwide Here in Western Australia, we are lucky to be in the global centre of seagrass diversity.  As such,...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
Here in Western Australia, we are lucky to be in the global centre of seagrass diversity.  As such, we have a coastline dominated by many different species of seagrasses – from large, temperate seagrasses like Posidonia australis to small, tropical species like Halodule...
NeuroLogica Blog
Moon Spacesuit Prototype Unveiled Good spacesuits are deceptively difficult to design, even with today’s technology. NASA is planning...
a year ago
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a year ago
Good spacesuits are deceptively difficult to design, even with today’s technology. NASA is planning to return to the moon in 2025 (if all goes well) but the spacesuit the astronauts will wear is one piece to the puzzle they have not completed yet (the other being the lunar...
Math Is Still...
A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene...
11 months ago
33
11 months ago
Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene regulation. The post A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do first appeared on Quanta Magazine
symmetry magazine
Vera C. Rubin Observatory brings the universe to everyone The Rubin Observatory is making education and outreach a top priority.
a year ago
Asterisk
Golden States
9 months ago
Cremieux Recueil
Preregistration Is No Panacea Stopping scientific cheaters requires setting up systems that can't be gamed
a month ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Update on AI Art It’s been a while since I discussed artificial intelligence (AI) generated art here. What I have...
a month ago
22
a month ago
It’s been a while since I discussed artificial intelligence (AI) generated art here. What I have said in the past is that AI art appears a bit soulless and there are details it has difficulty creating without bizarre distortions (hands are particularly difficult). But I also...
The Works in...
Three Maintenance Philosophies Fought for Control of the Auto Industry A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
The Roots of...
Do we get better or worse at adapting to change? Verner Vinge, in a classic 1993 essay, described “the Singularity” as an era where progress becomes...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Verner Vinge, in a classic 1993 essay, described “the Singularity” as an era where progress becomes “an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.” The idea that technological change might accelerate to a pace faster than we can keep up with is a common concern. Almost three...
NeuroLogica Blog
Power-To-X and Climate Change Policy What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy,...
a month ago
32
a month ago
What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy, like wind, solar, nuclear, or hydroelectric, to make hydrogen from water. This process does not release any CO2, just oxygen, and when the hydrogen is burned back with that oxygen...
Blog - Practical...
How Engineers Straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Long ago, maybe upwards of 1-2...
a year ago
67
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Long ago, maybe upwards of 1-2 million years ago, a river in the central part of what’s now Italy, emptied into what’s now the Ligurian Sea. It still does, by the way, but it did back then too. As the sea rose...
Asterisk
Making Sense of Moral Change A conversation about abolitionism, moral progress, and the pitfalls of historical counterfactuals.
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
A conversation about abolitionism, moral progress, and the pitfalls of historical counterfactuals.
NeuroLogica Blog
Tandem Perovskite Silicon Solar Panels Are Coming It’s pretty clear that we are at an inflection point with adoption of solar power. For the last 18...
a year ago
10
a year ago
It’s pretty clear that we are at an inflection point with adoption of solar power. For the last 18 years in a row, solar PV electricity capacity has increased more (as a percentage increase) than any power source. Solar now accounts for 4.5% of global power generation. Wind...
Quantum Frontiers
Finding Ed Jaynes’s ghost You might have heard of the conundrum “What do you give the man who has everything?” I discovered a...
2 weeks ago
30
2 weeks ago
You might have heard of the conundrum “What do you give the man who has everything?” I discovered a variation on it last October: how do you celebrate the man who studied (nearly) everything? Physicist Edwin Thompson Jaynes impacted disciplines from quantum information theory to...
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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Should Physicians Create Lifestyle Plans? | Out-Of-Pocket or should it be its own specialized skillset?
9 months ago
The Roots of...
What is progress? In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another...
10 months ago
76
10 months ago
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview. The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more...
nanoscale views
Things I learned at the Packard Foundation meeting Early in my career, I was incredibly fortunate to be awarded a David and Lucille Packard Foundation...
a year ago
40
a year ago
Early in my career, I was incredibly fortunate to be awarded a David and Lucille Packard Foundation fellowship, and this week I attended the meeting in honor of the 35th anniversary of the fellowship program.  Packard fellowships are amazing, with awardees spanning the sciences...
Math Is Still...
The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians. The post The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part II Yesterday’s post was the first in an exchange about the effects of climate change on public health....
a year ago
32
a year ago
Yesterday’s post was the first in an exchange about the effects of climate change on public health. Today’s post is my response. Part II Climate change is a critically important topic for society today, and it’s important that the public have a working knowledge of the facts,...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How much is “too much” when it comes to overpromising as a startup? | Out-Of-Pocket navigating the gray area
a year ago
brr
Last Flight Out Good-byes, and the beginning of winter isolation.
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
The Cheesy Charm of the Clapper “Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget...
a year ago
89
a year ago
“Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget to turn your lights, your TV, or any other electrical device on or off with the clap of your hands. If you watched any amount of American television back then, you probably saw the...
Explorations of an...
Final Argentina Post - Hudson's Canasteros, Shorebirds and Jaegers at Punta Rasa February 20, 2023 As we traveled south from Buenos Aires, the landscape opened up. The small towns...
a year ago
8
a year ago
February 20, 2023 As we traveled south from Buenos Aires, the landscape opened up. The small towns and communities became less frequent, giving way to vast expanses of pasture and agriculture with nary a tree in sight, other than the occasional hedgerow. Several hours later, and...
Uncharted...
🪐 How Will We Ride to Mars? Do we need a station on the Moon? How hard is it to get to Mars? What are the main challenges?
2 months ago
Sean Carroll
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 24. Science For the triumphant final video in the Biggest Ideas series, we look at a big idea indeed: Science....
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
For the triumphant final video in the Biggest Ideas series, we look at a big idea indeed: Science. What is science, and why is it so great? And I also take the opportunity to dip a toe into the current state of fundamental physics — are predictions that unobservable universes...
Math Is Still...
Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program. The post Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Sean Carroll
George B. Field, 1929-2024 George Field, brilliant theoretical astrophysicist and truly great human being, passed away on the...
5 months ago
49
5 months ago
George Field, brilliant theoretical astrophysicist and truly great human being, passed away on the morning of July 31. He was my Ph.D. thesis advisor and one of my favorite people in the world. I often tell my own students that the two most important people in your life who you...
Cremieux Recueil
High-Frequency Trading Is Good Sichuan Mala has written a guest post on one of the most unfairly maligned parts of the financial...
4 months ago
12
4 months ago
Sichuan Mala has written a guest post on one of the most unfairly maligned parts of the financial industry
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
44
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...
Uncharted...
GeoHistory News | Q3 2024 Longshoremen strike, Mexico – Spain conflict, how Islam propelled Europe more than Protestantism,...
3 months ago
10
3 months ago
Longshoremen strike, Mexico – Spain conflict, how Islam propelled Europe more than Protestantism, and more
Out-of-Pocket Blog
“Mission-driven” should be more specific | Out-Of-Pocket everything is a set of tradeoffs, let's be honest about that
8 months ago
Asterisk
America Doesn’t Know Tofu China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely...
a year ago
4
a year ago
China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely scratched the surface.
Uncharted...
6 Questions You Asked Yourself about Solar How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will it birth, how much surface will it take up, where will it appear first?
Probably...
The mean of a Likert scale? Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
8 months ago
58
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. likert_mean Likert scale analysis¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. I have collected data regarding how...
wadertales
A Whimbrel’s year There’s a lot to fit into twelve months if you’re a Whimbrel. In the last paper from his PhD, Camilo...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
There’s a lot to fit into twelve months if you’re a Whimbrel. In the last paper from his PhD, Camilo Carneiro assesses whether Icelandic Whimbrel can always manage to complete the annual cycle of migrate-breed-fatten-migrate-moult-fatten in just 365 days. What happens if a pair...
nanoscale views
Neutrality and experimental detective work One of the remarkable aspects of condensed matter physics is the idea of emergent quasiparticles,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
One of the remarkable aspects of condensed matter physics is the idea of emergent quasiparticles, where through the interactions of many underlying degrees of freedom, new excitations emerge that are long-lived and often can propagate around in ways very different than their...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Copper and Green Energy The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The...
6 months ago
7
6 months ago
The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The current list of 54 materials includes elements that are presently critical to a transition to green energy, such as the rare earth elements important to turbine generators, and...
Interaction Magic -...
Units: the forgotten half of the statistic From the millihelen to the microcentury, via jerk, pirate-ninjas and the Mongolian vowel separator.
over 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
11
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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How Healthcare Payments Work with Candid Health | Out-Of-Pocket A walkthrough of how money flows between payers and providers
a year ago
Eukaryote Writes...
Learn to write well BEFORE you have something worth saying Lessons learned from trip reports and journal articles.
a week ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Reconductoring our Electrical Grid Over the weekend when I was in Dallas for the eclipse, I ran into a local businessman who works in...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
Over the weekend when I was in Dallas for the eclipse, I ran into a local businessman who works in the energy sector, mainly involved in new solar projects. This is not surprising as Texas is second only to California in solar installation. I asked him if he is experiencing a...
Math Is Still...
Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. ...
a year ago
11
a year ago
New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. The post Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: Should Physicians Create Lifestyle Plans? | Out-Of-Pocket some real-world stories from people dealing with this
9 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Managing Plastic Waste The world produces 350-400 million metric tons of plastic waste. Less than 10% of this waste is...
a month ago
30
a month ago
The world produces 350-400 million metric tons of plastic waste. Less than 10% of this waste is recycled, while 25% is mismanaged or littered. About 1.7 million tons ends up in the ocean. This is not sustainable, but whose responsibility is it to deal with this issue? The debate...
Sean Carroll
New Course: The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics In past years I’ve done several courses for The Great Courses/Wondrium (formerly The Teaching...
a year ago
8
a year ago
In past years I’ve done several courses for The Great Courses/Wondrium (formerly The Teaching Company): Dark Matter and Dark Energy, Mysteries of Modern Physics:Time, and The Higgs Boson and Beyond. Now I’m happy to announce a new one, The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics....
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
42
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
NeuroLogica Blog
Should You Get a Heat Pump? Starting around 1550 and lasting through the 1600s, England had an energy crisis. They were running...
a year ago
58
a year ago
Starting around 1550 and lasting through the 1600s, England had an energy crisis. They were running out of wood, which was the main source of fuel for residential and commercial heating. England also needed a lot of wood for their massive navy – it took about 2,000 trees to build...
Math Is Still...
How Math Achieved Transcendence Transcendental numbers include famous examples like e and π, but it took mathematicians centuries to...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Transcendental numbers include famous examples like e and π, but it took mathematicians centuries to understand them. The post How Math Achieved Transcendence first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
The Power of the Earth On the future of geothermal energy
11 months ago
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Ice Formation In today's bigger is better world, you don't order a large coffee, you order a 20 fluid ounce Venti...
4 months ago
3
4 months ago
In today's bigger is better world, you don't order a large coffee, you order a 20 fluid ounce Venti coffee. From 1987 through 2004, McDonald's restaurants had a supersize option for larger than large portions of its French fries and soft drinks. The prefix, super, has been used...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Patient Communities Should Change | Out-Of-Pocket Evolving from ads to outcomes
a year ago
Wanderingspace
Enter Prometheus “Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera...
a month ago
35
a month ago
“Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera on Cassini on December 6, 2015. Cassini was about 37,400 km from Prometheus when the images were acquired. Part of the F ring is visible in the background at the top.” — Jason Major
NeuroLogica Blog
England Allows Gene-Edited Crops This has been somewhat of a quiet revolution, but a new law in England may bring it to the...
a year ago
54
a year ago
This has been somewhat of a quiet revolution, but a new law in England may bring it to the foreground. The Precision Breeding Act will now allow gene-edited plants to be developed and marketed in England (not Northern Ireland, Wales, or Scotland). The innovation is that the law...
Casey Handmer's blog
Entrepreneurship changed the way I think A quick note with some self reflection on the eve of my 37th year and after nearly three years of...
4 months ago
11
4 months ago
A quick note with some self reflection on the eve of my 37th year and after nearly three years of running a hardware start up. I never saw myself as a founder. At some point a few years ago I realized nearly all my friends were founders or managers of their own business, but I...
Blog - Practical...
Engineering The Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is my friend Jade,...
a year ago
28
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is my friend Jade, creator of the Up and Atom channel. She makes these incredible math and physics explainers that I absolutely love, and she recently got the opportunity to visit ITER (eater) in France....
The Works in...
Issue 10: One word—plastics. Plus: France's baby bust, why we empathise with animals, building infrastructure faster, and more.
a year ago
Math Is Still...
How ‘Embeddings’ Encode What Words Mean — Sort Of Machines work with words by embedding their relationships with other words in a string of numbers. ...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
Machines work with words by embedding their relationships with other words in a string of numbers. The post How ‘Embeddings’ Encode What Words Mean — Sort Of first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Reading The Mind with fMRI and AI This is pretty exciting neuroscience news – Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from...
a year ago
49
a year ago
This is pretty exciting neuroscience news – Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings. What this means is that researchers have been able to, sort of, decode the words that subjects were thinking of simply by reading their fMRI scan. They...
Math Is Still...
Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Explain Value of Shock Therapy Electroconvulsive therapy is highly effective in treating major depressive disorder, but no one...
9 months ago
31
9 months ago
Electroconvulsive therapy is highly effective in treating major depressive disorder, but no one knows why it works. New research suggests it may restore balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain. The post Brain’s ‘Background Noise’ May Explain Value of...
Math Is Still...
Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle. The post Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Video Games x Healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket Video games should be our models for engagement
a year ago
ToughSF
Lasers, Mirrors and Star Pyramids Lasers can hit targets at extreme ranges, at the fastest speed possible. They are ideal weapons for...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
Lasers can hit targets at extreme ranges, at the fastest speed possible. They are ideal weapons for space warfare.  However, everyone knows that lasers bounce off mirrors... does this make lasers useless? The post is inspired by the discussion that arose from the conclusions...
NeuroLogica Blog
Serial Dependence Bias As I have discussed numerous times on this blog, our brains did not evolve to be optimal precise...
a year ago
29
a year ago
As I have discussed numerous times on this blog, our brains did not evolve to be optimal precise perceivers and processors of information. Here is an infographic showing 188 documents cognitive biases. These biases are not all bad – they are tradeoffs. Evolutionary forces care...
The Roots of...
Four lenses on AI risks All powerful new technologies create both benefits and risks: cars, planes, drugs, radiation. AI is...
a year ago
27
a year ago
All powerful new technologies create both benefits and risks: cars, planes, drugs, radiation. AI is on a trajectory to become one of the most powerful technologies we possess; in some scenarios, it becomes by far the most powerful. It therefore will create both extraordinary...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, April 2023 A monthly feature. Note that I generally don’t include very recent writing here, such as the latest...
a year ago
26
a year ago
A monthly feature. Note that I generally don’t include very recent writing here, such as the latest blog posts (for those, see my Twitter digests); this is for my deeper research. AI First, various historical perspectives on AI, many of which were quite prescient: Alan Turing,...
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
47
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...
Beautiful Public...
The Mirror Fusion Test Facility A decade-long effort to build a machine to unlock the promise of nuclear fusion fell victim to...
a year ago
64
a year ago
A decade-long effort to build a machine to unlock the promise of nuclear fusion fell victim to budget constraints and competing science, and was shut down the day it was dedicated. It was never turned on.
Math Is Still...
Ninth Dedekind Number Found by Two Independent Groups The numbers count a variety of seemingly unrelated mathematical structures. The post...
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Can patients be good healthcare shoppers? | Out-Of-Pocket Should their be limits to patient agency?
5 months ago
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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
“There Are Too Many Entrenched Interests” | Out-Of-Pocket The Six Stages Of Health Tech Grief Part 3
a year ago
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for something we’ve all heard of, but maybe don’t appreciate as much as we...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
This year we give thanks for something we’ve all heard of, but maybe don’t appreciate as much as we should: electromagnetism. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field...
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...
Math Is Still...
What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front...
a year ago
15
a year ago
A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front of an audience. It crowned no winners — but it can still claim progress. The post What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved first appeared on Quanta...
Quantum Frontiers
The Book of Mark, Chapter 2 Late in the summer of 2021, I visited a physics paradise in a physical paradise: the Kavli Institute...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Late in the summer of 2021, I visited a physics paradise in a physical paradise: the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). The KITP sits at the edge of the University of California, Santa Barbara like a bougainvillea bush at … Continue reading →
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
Math Is Still...
How Math Has Changed the Shape of Gerrymandering New tools make it possible to detect hidden manipulation of maps. The post How Math Has...
a year ago
Inverted Passion
How to be a messy thinker I love thinking about thinking. Give me a research paper on rationality, cognitive biases or mental...
8 months ago
88
8 months ago
I love thinking about thinking. Give me a research paper on rationality, cognitive biases or mental models, and I’ll gobble it up. Given the amount of knowledge I’ve ingested on these topics, I had always assumed that I’m a clear thinker. Recently, though, it hit me like a...
ToughSF
Actively Cooled Armor: from Helium to Liquid Tin. We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all,...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all, be-all of space warfare? Not if we fend off their destructive power with actively cooled armor. Let's have a look at the different cooling solutions, from high pressure gas to...
Asterisk
Shutting the California Prison System’s Revolving Door Between 2009 and 2014, California passed a series of laws to reduce the population in its prison...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
Between 2009 and 2014, California passed a series of laws to reduce the population in its prison system, which for years had operated over capacity. Determining whether those laws worked was not a straightforward task.
Uncharted...
Wind and Solar, a Perfect Match Also, why solar will beat wind, why they are so complementary, the nuclear renaissance, the poor...
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
Also, why solar will beat wind, why they are so complementary, the nuclear renaissance, the poor state of German energy, and more.
Eukaryote Writes...
Eukaryote writes for Asterisk Magazine See my piece on the history of microbiology and the vast, invisible worlds that come into focus...
2 months ago
44
2 months ago
See my piece on the history of microbiology and the vast, invisible worlds that come into focus every time we figure out how to look closer: Through the Looking Glass, and What Zheludev et al. (2024) Found There at Asterisk Magazine I’ve written for Asterisk before: What I won’t...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
A Movie about a Galaxy Far, Far Away & Long, Long Ago (from Webb Telescope) Explains a new movie of distant galaxies and remote time from the Webb Telescope. The post A Movie...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Explains a new movie of distant galaxies and remote time from the Webb Telescope. The post A Movie about a Galaxy Far, Far Away & Long, Long Ago (from Webb Telescope) appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Explorations of an...
Otamendi Reserve and Laguna Chiquita Mar January 11, 2023 Laura and I picked up our rental car from Enterprise in Buenos Aires as soon as...
a year ago
17
a year ago
January 11, 2023 Laura and I picked up our rental car from Enterprise in Buenos Aires as soon as they opened. The 9 AM start time meant that it was after 10 AM by the time that we had finally hit the open road. For the next six weeks, we are completing a big loop with the car,...
Probably...
Political Alignment and Outlook This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from...
2 weeks ago
38
2 weeks ago
This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 15, which is part of the political alignment case study. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab....
nanoscale views
Items for discussion, including google's latest quantum computing result As we head toward the end of the calendar year, a few items: Google published a new result in...
3 weeks ago
42
3 weeks ago
As we head toward the end of the calendar year, a few items: Google published a new result in Nature a few days ago.  This made a big news splash, including this accompanying press piece from google themselves, this nice article in Quanta, and the always thoughtful blog post by...
Math Is Still...
He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If he succeeds, the resulting cell will be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date. The post He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It first...
Sean Carroll
Proposed Closure of the Dianoia Institute at Australian Catholic University Just a few years ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU) established a new Dianoia Institute of...
a year ago
32
a year ago
Just a few years ago, Australian Catholic University (ACU) established a new Dianoia Institute of Philosophy. They recruited a number of researchers and made something of a splash, leading to a noticeable leap in ACU’s rankings in philosophy — all the way to second among Catholic...
The Works in...
The concept of sustainment A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
wadertales
When mates behave differently Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an ideal system in which to study the costs and benefits of the two options, and to try to work out what influences whether an individual becomes a ‘resident’ or a ‘migrant’. I’ve...
Drew Ex Machina
The Dream: The First Probe to the Moon The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as...
a year ago
18
a year ago
The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as well as the potential exploitation of its […]
Asterisk
Better Living Through Group Chemistry Inside the San Francisco group house scene.
6 months ago
Math Is Still...
New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes...
a year ago
18
a year ago
In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align. The post New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
19
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...
The Works in...
How America Made Machines Make Machines A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Underground Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light In some deep subterranean aquifers, cells have a chemical trick for making oxygen that could sustain...
a year ago
18
a year ago
In some deep subterranean aquifers, cells have a chemical trick for making oxygen that could sustain whole underground ecosystems. The post Underground Cells Make ‘Dark Oxygen’ Without Light first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain. They’re Not Neurons. For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons....
a year ago
10
a year ago
For decades, researchers have debated whether brain cells called astrocytes can signal like neurons. Researchers recently published the best evidence yet that some astrocytes are part of the electrical conversation. The post These Cells Spark Electricity in the Brain....
NeuroLogica Blog
Hybrid Biopolymer Transistors – Implications for Brain Machine Interface There are several technologies which seem likely to be transformative in the coming decades. Genetic...
a year ago
26
a year ago
There are several technologies which seem likely to be transformative in the coming decades. Genetic bioengineering gives us the ability to control the basic machinery of life, including ourselves. Artificial intelligence is a suite of active, learning, information tools....
Explorations of an...
Birding Near The Bolivia Border January 22, 2023 (continued) Laura and I left the humid east slope of the Andes behind and worked...
a year ago
16
a year ago
January 22, 2023 (continued) Laura and I left the humid east slope of the Andes behind and worked our way north along the paved highway through the incredible Quebrada de Humahuaca. This valley is famous for its scenery and it was easy to see why. The contrasts, textures and...
Asterisk
It’s 2024 and Drought is Optional In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs...
8 months ago
5
8 months ago
In the early 20th century, the United States diverted and dammed nearly every major river that runs through the West, ushering in an era of unparalleled dominion over water. Today, California once again struggles with water scarcity — but solar energy could change all that.
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
50
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.
brr
Showering at the South Pole Potable water, and not much of it.
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Is healthcare private equity that bad? | Out-Of-Pocket they're a product of their environment
9 months ago
Math Is Still...
A New Idea for How to Assemble Life If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must...
a year ago
51
a year ago
If we want to understand complex constructions, such as ourselves, assembly theory says we must account for the entire history of how such entities came to be. The post A New Idea for How to Assemble Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
The eye of the tiger What makes tigers different from one another?
a year ago
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...
Across a Continent, Trees Sync Their Fruiting to the Sun European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a...
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a grand synchronization event now linked to the summer solstice. The post Across a Continent, Trees Sync Their Fruiting to the Sun first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
A User’s Guide to Building a Subculture First, you’re going to need something to care about.
2 months ago
brr
Brr Wants A Job 8 months post-ice, it's time for something new!
5 months ago
Inverted Passion
Not everything is physics The first book I ever read was The Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I liked it so much that...
4 months ago
56
4 months ago
The first book I ever read was The Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I liked it so much that I re-read it 8 times. As a young boy, the book had made a lasting impression on me, making me fall in love with ideas such as the arrow of time, black holes, entropy,… Read...
Quantum Frontiers
What is the logical gate speed of a photonic quantum computer? Terry Rudolph, PsiQuantum & Imperial College London During a recent visit to the wild western town...
a year ago
45
a year ago
Terry Rudolph, PsiQuantum & Imperial College London During a recent visit to the wild western town of Pasadena I got into a shootout at high-noon trying to explain the nuances of this question to a colleague. Here is a more … Continue reading →
Wanderingspace
Saturn Vortex “This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in...
a month ago
27
a month ago
“This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in polarized light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on November 27, 2012. I've processed the original monochrome image to approximate the color of the area at the time.” — Jason...
Cremieux Recueil
China's Upside-Down Meritocracy New evidence suggests China systematically misallocates its human capital
2 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some cool AI healthcare projects | Out-Of-Pocket What was built at the OOP hackathon?
5 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
The First Virtual Meeting Was in 1916 At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in...
a month ago
38
a month ago
At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting...
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
The Roots of...
Quote quiz answer Here’s the answer to the recent quote quiz: The author was Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. The...
a year ago
44
a year ago
Here’s the answer to the recent quote quiz: The author was Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. The quote was taken from his manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” Here’s a slightly longer, and unaltered, quote: First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in...
nanoscale views
Items of interest For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were...
a year ago
47
a year ago
For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were interesting: Here is a feature article in Science that talks about the experimental quest for detecting Majorana fermions in solid state systems, bookended by the story of Majorana's...
Math Is Still...
How Is Flocking Like Computing? Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In...
9 months ago
26
9 months ago
Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz interviews the evolutionary ecologist Iain Couzin about how and why collective behaviors arise. The post How Is Flocking Like...
Math Is Still...
Novel Architecture Makes Neural Networks More Understandable By tapping into a decades-old mathematical principle, researchers are hoping that Kolmogorov-Arnold...
4 months ago
32
4 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
Marine Madness
Farming Fiasco: The world’s first commercial octopus breeding programme It seems ironic that shortly after an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill stating...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
It seems ironic that shortly after an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill stating octopuses to be ‘sentient beings’ capable of a range of human-like emotions such as joy, pleasure, excitement, as well as pain, distress, and harm, plans of the word’s first commercial...
NeuroLogica Blog
Spotting Misinformation There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they...
8 months ago
79
8 months ago
There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they verify information they encounter in the news and on social media, and 96% of Americans say that we need to limit the spread of misinformation online. And yet, the spread of...
Asterisk
Silicon Valley’s Gold Rush Roots Silicon Valley, purveyor of disruptive technologies, likes to think of itself as sui generis. But...
9 months ago
5
9 months ago
Silicon Valley, purveyor of disruptive technologies, likes to think of itself as sui generis. But there’s a clear line from tech’s knowledge economy to the Bay Area’s first economy: gold mining.