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NeuroLogica Blog
Germany and Nuclear Power Germany has been thrown around a lot as an example of both what to do and what not to do in terms of...
a year ago
32
a year ago
Germany has been thrown around a lot as an example of both what to do and what not to do in terms of addressing global warming by embracing green energy technology. It’s possible to look back now and review the numbers, to see what the effect was of its decision to embrace...
Light from Space
Elephant Trunk & IC 1396 A beautiful nebula in Cepheus. The middle bottom left of the image shows the “Elephant Trunk”,  but...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
A beautiful nebula in Cepheus. The middle bottom left of the image shows the “Elephant Trunk”,  but the whole nebula IC 1396 shows much impressive detail. A whole layer of dark nebulas overlaps everything, looking like a giant explosion frozen in time. Total exposure time: 18h...
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
43
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,...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: A winter's tale Melting snow can make the season easier
a year ago
nanoscale views
Continuing Studies course, take 2 A year and a half ago, I mentioned that I was going to teach a course through Rice's Glasscock...
10 months ago
44
10 months ago
A year and a half ago, I mentioned that I was going to teach a course through Rice's Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, trying to give a general audience introduction to some central ideas in condensed matter physics.  Starting in mid-March, I'm doing this again.  Here is a...
Sean Carroll
What I Look for in Podcast Guests People often suggest guests to appear on Mindscape — which I very much appreciate! Several of my...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
People often suggest guests to appear on Mindscape — which I very much appreciate! Several of my best conversations were with people I had never heard of before they were effectively suggested by someone. Suggestions could be made here (in comments below), or on the subreddit, or...
IEEE Spectrum
Meet Mr. Internet: Vint Cerf It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a...
a year ago
4
a year ago
It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a problem Kahn had been pondering for some time: how to connect ground-based military computers seamlessly to communications satellites and mobile radios. The two had been...
nanoscale views
Michio Kaku and science popularization in the Age of Shamelessness In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications...
a year ago
43
a year ago
In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications like Quanta doing tremendous work; platforms like YouTube and podcasts have made it possible for both practicing scientists and science communicators to reach enormous audiences;...
Quanta Magazine
How Many Microbes Does It Take to Make You Sick? Exposure to a virus isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The concept of “infectious dose” suggests...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Exposure to a virus isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The concept of “infectious dose” suggests ways to keep ourselves safer from harm. The post How Many Microbes Does It Take to Make You Sick? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos Physicists finally know where at least some of these high-energy particles come from, which helps...
a year ago
22
a year ago
Physicists finally know where at least some of these high-energy particles come from, which helps make the neutrinos useful for exploring fundamental physics. The post A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand. The post In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge first...
Quanta Magazine
An Enormous Gravity ‘Hum’ Moves Through the Universe Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves pervading the cosmos. The post An Enormous Gravity ‘Hum’ Moves Through the Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
How Bridge Engineers Design Against Ship Collisions [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On March 26, 2024 (just a few...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On March 26, 2024 (just a few weeks ago, if you're watching this as it comes out), a large container ship struck one of the main support piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsing...
NeuroLogica Blog
Is AI Sentient – Revisited This happened sooner than I thought. Last June I wrote about Google employee, Blake Lemoine, who...
a year ago
43
a year ago
This happened sooner than I thought. Last June I wrote about Google employee, Blake Lemoine, who claimed that the LaMDA  chatbot he was working on was probably sentient. I didn’t buy it then and I still don’t, but Lemoine is not backing away from his claims. In an interview on H3...
Wanderingspace
The Green Light of Day Image of tire tracks on Mars with an unusual green tone. . Taken by Perseverance on February 4th.
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Image of tire tracks on Mars with an unusual green tone. . Taken by Perseverance on February 4th.
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
8
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....
Confessions of a...
Predation of juvenile reef fish in coral patches at Ningaloo Reef The second research article I have decided to discuss is one I had the pleasure to be involved with!...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
The second research article I have decided to discuss is one I had the pleasure to be involved with!  In fact, it was the first paper I was a co-author on, after linking up with the Department of Environment and Conservation through an ANNiMS internship program.  The paper was...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
AI in healthcare - defensibility, capabilities, and cost reduction | Out-Of-Pocket fine fine I'll write about AI
7 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum? The Industrial Revolution brought us the laws of thermodynamics, and new ideas about work, energy...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
The Industrial Revolution brought us the laws of thermodynamics, and new ideas about work, energy and efficiency. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern about what these concepts might mean in the age of quantum mechanics....
Quanta Magazine
An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Researchers prove that navigating certain systems of vectors is among the most complex computational problems. The post An Easy-Sounding Problem Yields Numbers Too Big for Our Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack? Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding...
5 months ago
65
5 months ago
Two mathematicians have proved a long-standing conjecture that is a step on the way toward finding the worst shape for packing the plane. The post Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
18
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...
Eukaryote Writes...
Defending against hypothetical moon life during Apollo 11 This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at...
11 months ago
54
11 months ago
This is how a completely abstract argument about alien germs was taken seriously and mitigated at great effort and expense during the 1969 Apollo landing.
ToughSF
The Lofstrom Loop: A Bridge to Space Imagine you could take a train ride to space. Tracks that slope up into the sky, higher and higher,...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Imagine you could take a train ride to space. Tracks that slope up into the sky, higher and higher, until you reach a plateau above the planet where it’s a straight line up to orbital velocity. That’s what’s possible with a Lofstrom Loop. But sending you into orbit is just one...
Quanta Magazine
Overexposure Distorted the Science of Mirror Neurons After a decade out of the spotlight, the brain cells once alleged to explain empathy, autism and...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
After a decade out of the spotlight, the brain cells once alleged to explain empathy, autism and theory of mind are being refined and redefined. The post Overexposure Distorted the Science of Mirror Neurons first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Confessions of a...
Marine science, the environment, and the 2013 Australian election I’ve been a bit reluctant to write about the upcoming election in this blog; after all the point of...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
I’ve been a bit reluctant to write about the upcoming election in this blog; after all the point of this blog has never been about anything political!  However, for better or worse the state of our  environment (including our oceans) are inextricably linked to politics, so here...
IEEE Spectrum
Tiny Exploding Houses Promoted 18th-Century Lightning Rods Imagine if engineers were required to build a working model to demonstrate every new technological...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Imagine if engineers were required to build a working model to demonstrate every new technological concept to the general public. Done right, tech literacy might soar! A compelling visual example can really help people understand the applications and implications of new...
Asterisk
How We Can Regulate AI The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving...
a year ago
1
a year ago
The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving regulators a path forward.
Chris Grossack's...
$\mathsf{B}\text{Diff}(\Sigma)$ Classifies $\Sigma$-bundles I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the cobordism hypothesis,...
yesterday
3
yesterday
I’ve been trying to learn all about topological (quantum) field theories, the cobordism hypothesis, and how to use $(\infty,n)$-categories. This is all in service of some stuff I’m doing with skein algebras (which are part of a “$3+1$ TQFT” often named after Crane–Yetter, but...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Introducing The OOP Talent Collective | Out-Of-Pocket if you're hiring, this will help you find the best candidates
a year ago
symmetry magazine
Imagining the future of gravitational-wave research To understand why scientists are excited about detecting a new background, just look to the history...
a year ago
33
a year ago
To understand why scientists are excited about detecting a new background, just look to the history of studies of the CMB.
Quanta Magazine
Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide. The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch. The post Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide. first appeared on...
NeuroLogica Blog
Magnetohydrodynamic Drive – Silent Water Propulsion DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now working on developing a...
a year ago
24
a year ago
DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now working on developing a magnet-driven silent water propulsion system – the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) drive. The primary reason is to develop silent military naval craft. Imagine a nuclear submarine with an MHD drive,...
Explorations of an...
A Quest Nature Tours Adventure To Sulawesi The island of Sulawesi must be on the bucket list for any naturalist with a strong interest in...
a year ago
34
a year ago
The island of Sulawesi must be on the bucket list for any naturalist with a strong interest in biogeography. Though Borneo is situated only a few hundred kilometers to the west, and the Moluccas are not far to the east, the species composition of Sulawesi is significantly...
The Works in...
Youtube Rules A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Surprisingly Simple Math Behind Puzzling Matchups If Anna beats Benji in a game and Benji beats Carl, will Anna beat Carl? The post The...
11 months ago
26
11 months ago
If Anna beats Benji in a game and Benji beats Carl, will Anna beat Carl? The post The Surprisingly Simple Math Behind Puzzling Matchups first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Computation Is All Around Us, and You Can See It if You Try Computer scientist Lance Fortnow writes that by embracing the computations that surround us, we can...
6 months ago
34
6 months ago
Computer scientist Lance Fortnow writes that by embracing the computations that surround us, we can begin to understand and tame our seemingly random world. The post Computation Is All Around Us, and You Can See It if You Try 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...
a month ago
11
a month 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...
Blog - Practical...
Every Type of Railcar Explained in 15 Minutes [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] A train is a simple thing at...
a year ago
25
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] A train is a simple thing at first glance: a locomotive (or several) pull a string of cars along a railroad. But not all those railcars are equal, and there are some fascinating details if you take minute to...
NeuroLogica Blog
For Movies – Animals Don’t Sound Real Enough What does a majestic eagle sound like, or the hoot of a spider monkey, or the roar of a bear? Unless...
a year ago
9
a year ago
What does a majestic eagle sound like, or the hoot of a spider monkey, or the roar of a bear? Unless you have an interest in movie tropes, or listen regularly to the SGU, you may have a complete misconception about the sounds these and many other animals make. Eagles, for...
Light from Space
Sharpless 119 Sharpless 119 (Sh2-119), sometimes referred to as “The Clamshell Nebula” is an emission nebula in...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Sharpless 119 (Sh2-119), sometimes referred to as “The Clamshell Nebula” is an emission nebula in Cygnus. It's rarely photographed as there's other, brighter nebulæ nearby, such as the North America Nebula. Click or tap to enlarge/double-tap to zoom Total exposure time: 23h
NeuroLogica Blog
Tesla Demonstrated its Optimus Robot At a recent event Tesla showcased the capabilities of its humanoid autonomous robot, Optimus. The...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
At a recent event Tesla showcased the capabilities of its humanoid autonomous robot, Optimus. The demonstration has come under some criticism, however, for not being fully transparent about the nature of the demonstration. We interviewed robotics expert, Christian Hubicki, on the...
Quanta Magazine
Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference. New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by...
a year ago
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a year ago
New experiments show that the brain distinguishes between perceived and imagined mental images by checking whether they cross a “reality threshold.” The post Is It Real or Imagined? How Your Brain Tells the Difference. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
The Invention That Let Fiber Optics Span the Globe Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten:...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten: New Coke, “We Are the World,” the rise of desktop publishing. But one at-the-time obscure invention from that year has long eclipsed the frothy headlines of its time, because it...
Light from Space
The Fossil Footprint Nebula A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total exposure time: 52h 40' Image resolution: 4,490 × 4,552px (0.96″/px) Shot from my driveway near Tucson, AZ in late 2023 Telescope: William Optics RedCat
Damn Interesting
A Trail Gone Cold Iceland is known to the rest of the world as the land of Vikings and volcanos, an island caught...
9 months ago
54
9 months ago
Iceland is known to the rest of the world as the land of Vikings and volcanos, an island caught between continents at the extremities of the map. Remote and comparatively inhospitable, it was settled only as long ago as the 9th century, and has seen little additional in-migration...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Musings on CVS, two-way negotiation, and venture studios | Out-Of-Pocket + we're hosting another dinner! and courses ending!
8 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Nadir Crater – A Double Tap for Dinosaurs? It is now generally accepted that 66 million years ago a large asteroid smacked into the Earth,...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
It is now generally accepted that 66 million years ago a large asteroid smacked into the Earth, causing the large Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico. This was a catastrophic event, affecting the entire globe. Fire rained down causing forest fires across much of the globe,...
Asterisk
Read This, Not That: The Hidden Cost of Nutrition Misinformation Our daily lives are inundated with misleading claims about nutrition. That’s not just distracting —...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Our daily lives are inundated with misleading claims about nutrition. That’s not just distracting — it’s also harming our health.
The Works in...
Where inflation comes from How we calculate inflation has always been contested with small changes leading to large differences...
a month ago
17
a month ago
How we calculate inflation has always been contested with small changes leading to large differences in how well-off we think we are.
The Works in...
New York’s long road to congestion pricing The decades of work that went into getting the policy very, very close to the finish line
4 months ago
Quanta Magazine
What Is Machine Learning? Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time. The post What Is Machine Learning? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Inverted Passion
What bootstraps intelligence? A musing on how intelligence comes to be. The bedrock of intelligence is abstractions – the thing we...
3 months ago
45
3 months ago
A musing on how intelligence comes to be. The bedrock of intelligence is abstractions – the thing we do when we throw away a lot of information and just emphasise on a subset of it (e.g. calling that thing an apple instead of describing all its atoms and their x, y, z positions)....
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Yet Another Teladongo Take | Out-Of-Pocket You haven't read enough of them
a year ago
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
4
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Science News in 2023 This is not exactly a “best of” because I don’t know how that applies to science news, but here are...
a year ago
10
a year ago
This is not exactly a “best of” because I don’t know how that applies to science news, but here are what I consider to be the most impactful science news stories of 2023 (or at least the ones that caught by biased attention). This was a big year for medical breakthroughs. We are...
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
48
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 […]
Asterisk
Mysticism & Empiricism The best way to predict if you’ll benefit from psychedelic therapy is a questionnaire asking if...
a year ago
1
a year ago
The best way to predict if you’ll benefit from psychedelic therapy is a questionnaire asking if you’ve met God. Where did it come from, and what is it really measuring?
Quanta Magazine
The ‘Beautiful Confusion’ of the First Billion Years Comes Into View Astronomers are reveling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries about the formative epoch...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Astronomers are reveling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries about the formative epoch of cosmic history. The post The ‘Beautiful Confusion’ of the First Billion Years Comes Into View first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Chris Grossack's...
Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 1 -- Fundamentals I’ve been thinking a lot about the internal logic of topoi again, and I want to have more examples...
5 months ago
31
5 months ago
I’ve been thinking a lot about the internal logic of topoi again, and I want to have more examples of topoi that I understand well enough to externalize some statements. There’s more to life than just a localic $\mathsf{Sh}(B)$, and since I’m starting to feel like I understand...
Probably...
Probably the Book Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is available, I will post it here. In the meantime, you can read the slides, if you don’t mind spoilers. For people at the conference who don’t know me, this might be a good time to...
Beautiful Public...
The Army and Navy Style Guides These fascinating Army and Navy brand style guides define the look, feel and voice of our armed...
a year ago
Damn Interesting
To Hell With Facebook The earliest known version of the idiom “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was written by the...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
The earliest known version of the idiom “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was written by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury in 1677, though it was concerned with horses and feathers: “The last Dictate of the Judgement, concerning the Good or Bad, that may...
Cremieux Recueil
Evaluating a Sitting Senator's Healthcare Claims If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to...
4 days ago
12
4 days ago
If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to speculate, try not so speculate wildly, lest you end up telling brazen lies to the American people
ToughSF
The Expanse's Epstein Drive We aim to take a fictional propulsion technology from The Expanse, and apply the appropriate science...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
We aim to take a fictional propulsion technology from The Expanse, and apply the appropriate science to explain its features in a realistic manner. This also applies to other SciFi settings that want a similar engine for their own spacecraft. The Epstein Drive Title art...
The Works in...
Fixing retail with land value capture How to create beautiful shopping streets everywhere
6 months ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Injecting Caution Into Media Reports of Northern Lights as far South as California Friday, May 10, there was a lot of discussion on the news, on social media, and on different web...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
Friday, May 10, there was a lot of discussion on the news, on social media, and on different web sites about storms on the Sun that are unleashing great outbursts of radiation and particles, some of them toward Earth. The fact that we are seeing such “space weather” now certainly...
NeuroLogica Blog
Update on AI Art It’s been a while since I discussed artificial intelligence (AI) generated art here. What I have...
4 weeks ago
11
4 weeks 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...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI – Is It Time to Panic? I’m really excited about the recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and their potential...
a year ago
27
a year ago
I’m really excited about the recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and their potential as powerful tools. I am also concerned about unintended consequences. As with any really powerful tool, there is the potential for abuse and also disruption. But I also think that...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GTFO Employers | Out-Of-Pocket Back To The Future
a year ago
Melting Asphalt
Crony Beliefs [Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
[Note: if you prefer audio, you can listen to this essay narrated by Grognor on his excellent podcast Second Enumerations. —Ed.]   Credits up front: This essay draws heavily from Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong, Slate Star Codex, Robert Kurzban, Robert… Read more ›
The Works in...
Issue 17: No great stagnation in cruise ships Plus: animals as chemical factories, how progress lost its glamour, and how Madrid built 120 miles...
2 weeks ago
pcloadletter
Coding interviews are effective Coding interviews are controversial. It can be unpleasant to code in front of someone else, knowing...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
Coding interviews are controversial. It can be unpleasant to code in front of someone else, knowing you're being judged. And who likes failing? Especially when it feels like you failed intellectually. But, coding interviews are effective. One big criticism of coding interviews is...
Quanta Magazine
Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like...
a year ago
17
a year ago
How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like Carmichael numbers. The post Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Elizabeth Holmes Going to Prison I first wrote about the Theranos scandal in 2016, and I guess it should not be surprising that it...
a year ago
42
a year ago
I first wrote about the Theranos scandal in 2016, and I guess it should not be surprising that it took 7 years to follow this story through to the end. Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the company Theranos, was  convicted of defrauding investors and sentenced to 11 years in prison....
Quanta Magazine
What Is the Nature of Time? Time is all around us: in the language we use, in the memories we revisit and in our predictions of...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
Time is all around us: in the language we use, in the memories we revisit and in our predictions of the future. But what exactly is it? The physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek joins Steve Strogatz to discuss the fundamental hallmarks of time. The post What Is...
Quanta Magazine
How the Brain Protects Itself From Blood-Borne Threats To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is...
a year ago
24
a year ago
To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is built into the brain’s blood vessels. The post How the Brain Protects Itself From Blood-Borne Threats first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Gene Editing Chickens to Resist Bird Flu There are 33 billion chickens in the world, mostly domestic species raised for egg-laying or meat....
a year ago
6
a year ago
There are 33 billion chickens in the world, mostly domestic species raised for egg-laying or meat. They are a high efficiency source of high quality protein. It’s the kind of thing we need to do if we want to feed 8 billion people. Similarly we have planted 4.62 billion acres of...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: The stats gap Students understand just enough statistics to get by
a year ago
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 1: Introduction Ever since wrapping up our extensive traveling last spring, Laura and I have been itching to get...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
Ever since wrapping up our extensive traveling last spring, Laura and I have been itching to get back on the road in Latin America. After returning to Ontario, finding a rental house and obtaining employment, our lives have been a little more grounded. I still have been on some...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Social Media Dilemma Australia is planning a total ban on social media for children under 16 years old. Prime Minister...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Australia is planning a total ban on social media for children under 16 years old. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese argues that it is the only way to protect vulnerable children from the demonstrable harm that social media can do. This has sparked another round of debates about...
Explorations of an...
Uruguay Part 3: Lagoon Shorebirding February 28, 2023 Our first few days in Uruguay had been very successful. We had been able to...
a year ago
23
a year ago
February 28, 2023 Our first few days in Uruguay had been very successful. We had been able to experience a few days in the beautiful rural countryside, staying at a wonderful hacienda. We had found our first Uruguayan snake. And we had found most of the potential bird lifers that...
Probably...
PMFs and PDFs It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. If you get this post by email, the formatting is not good — you might want to read it on the site. pmf_and_pdf PMFs and PDFs¶ Here’s...
Uncharted...
Interesting News & Game Theory of Sex | Q3 2024 Trans & bathrooms, the end of nation states, woke pendulum, trigger warnings, is breastfeeding...
2 months ago
3
2 months ago
Trans & bathrooms, the end of nation states, woke pendulum, trigger warnings, is breastfeeding actually good for IQ, are differences in household work justified, and more
The Works in...
The Cocktail Revolution How bad drinks became good, and good drinks became great
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined. The post How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
Sichuan Mala has written a guest post on one of the most unfairly maligned parts of the financial industry
NeuroLogica Blog
The Next Step in Space Travel The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space...
a year ago
7
a year ago
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space capsule. This will be used initially for cargo, but then eventually for crew as well. They anticipate a maiden voyage in 2028. I think this is a positive development. It seems we are...
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
24
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...
Quanta Magazine
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
10
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...
Wanderingspace
Mars Express is Still Making Great Images 20 Years Later Mars Express was launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, and is ESA’s first Mars mission. In...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
Mars Express was launched by the European Space Agency in 2003, and is ESA’s first Mars mission. In one shot, you can see Mars as a half-lit disk, with Phobos, its tiny moon, hovering above. Right below Phobos is Olympus Mons, the solar system's largest volcano, towering 22 km...
symmetry magazine
Creating the next 3D maps of the universe Scientists have proposed new instruments that would use spectroscopy to decode dark matter, dark...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Scientists have proposed new instruments that would use spectroscopy to decode dark matter, dark energy and cosmic inflation. Telescope images can tell us a whole lot about celestial objects: where they are located in the sky, how bright they are, how big they...
Probably...
Why are you so slow? Recently a shoe store in France ran a promotion called “Rob It to Get It”, which invited customers...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Recently a shoe store in France ran a promotion called “Rob It to Get It”, which invited customers to try to steal something by grabbing it and running out of the store. But there was a catch — the “security guard” was a professional sprinter, Méba Mickael Zeze. As you would...
NeuroLogica Blog
Eclipse 2024 I am currently in Dallas Texas waiting to see, hopefully, the 2024 total solar eclipse. This would...
8 months ago
55
8 months ago
I am currently in Dallas Texas waiting to see, hopefully, the 2024 total solar eclipse. This would be my first total eclipse, and everything I have heard indicates that it is an incredible experience. Unfortunately, the weather calls for some clouds, although forecasts have been...
Wanderingspace
Hope for Mars Nothing really. Just a gorgeous image of Mars from the UAE Hope mission.
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Fossil Fuels – Reduce Demand or Supply? This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a...
a year ago
8
a year ago
This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a somewhat of a dilemma. Is the optimal path to reductions and eventual elimination of fossil fuel burning through reduced demand or supply? There are some interesting tradeoffs...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How Value-Based Care Contracting Works with Accorded | Out-Of-Pocket With calculators and contracts you can see yourself
a year ago
Confessions of a...
Let’s argue against the Shark Cull with science There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the...
over a year ago
49
over a year ago
There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the Government put it, the “shark protection measures”) here in Western Australia.  Just as I am not a climate scientist, I am not a shark biologist, and cannot claim to be a shark expert....
IEEE Spectrum
50 Years Later, We’re Still Living in the Xerox Alto’s World I’m sitting in front of a computer, looking at its graphical user interface with overlapping windows...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I’m sitting in front of a computer, looking at its graphical user interface with overlapping windows on a high-resolution screen. I interact with the computer by pointing and clicking with a mouse and typing on a keyboard. I’m using a word processor with the core features and...
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 3: Hunter Canyon to Portal September 2, 2024 We awoke to another beautiful sunrise in the Huachuca Mountains. I could get used...
2 months ago
12
2 months ago
September 2, 2024 We awoke to another beautiful sunrise in the Huachuca Mountains. I could get used to this view. View from Beatty's Guest Ranch - Miller Canyon, Cochise County, Arizona This was our final morning in this region; we had plans to make the long drive eastwards...
Probably...
Rip-off ETF? An article in a recent issue of The Economist suggests, right in the title, “Investors should avoid...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
An article in a recent issue of The Economist suggests, right in the title, “Investors should avoid a new generation of rip-off ETFs”. An ETF is an exchange-traded fund, which holds a collection of assets and trades on an exchange like a single stock. For example, the SPDR S&P...
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence and the Nanny State Part II In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should...
a year ago
5
a year ago
In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should impose regulations on people and institutions in order to engineer positive outcomes. In the end the best approach, it seems to me, is a balanced one, where we consider the burden of...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Uncover a New Way to Count Prime Numbers To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to...
a week ago
6
a week ago
To make progress on one of number theory’s most elementary questions, two mathematicians turned to an unlikely source. The post Mathematicians Uncover a New Way to Count Prime Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Young Americans are Marrying Later or Never I’ve written before about changes in marriage patterns in the U.S., and it’s one of the examples in...
a week ago
19
a week ago
I’ve written before about changes in marriage patterns in the U.S., and it’s one of the examples in Chapter 13 of the new third edition of Think Stats. My analysis uses data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Today they released the most recent data, from surveys...
NeuroLogica Blog
Let’s Talk About Cement Industry is responsible for 23% of carbon emissions, close to the amount of electricity production...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
Industry is responsible for 23% of carbon emissions, close to the amount of electricity production (25%) and transportation (28%). We talk a lot about transportation and energy, but industrial carbon is a harder nut to crack. Also, the 23% is direct carbon release from industrial...
Eukaryote Writes...
Who invented knitting? The plot thickens Last time on Eukaryote Writes Blog: You learned about knitting history. You thought you were done...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Last time on Eukaryote Writes Blog: You learned about knitting history. You thought you were done learning about knitting history? You fool. You buffoon. I wanted to double check some things in the last post and found out that the origins of knitting are even weirder than I...
Wanderingspace
Enter Prometheus “Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks 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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New Wave of Concierge Medicine | Out-Of-Pocket This episode of Out-Of-Pocket is brought to you by…
5 months ago
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
6
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...
Asterisk
Through a Glass Darkly Nobody predicted the AI revolution, except for the 352 experts who were asked to predict it.
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
Why Locomotives Don't Have Tires [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Formula 1 is, by many...
10 months ago
45
10 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Formula 1 is, by many accounts, the pinnacle of car racing. F1 cars are among the fastest in the world, particularly around the tight corners of the various paved tracks across the globe. Drivers can experience...
Damn Interesting
Hunting For Kobyla On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
On a January day in 1964, something remarkable happened: Simon Wiesenthal took the afternoon off. He parked himself at a table on the terrace of Tel Aviv’s Café Roval, soaking up the sunshine as if he wished to bottle it. The friend he’d come to meet was late, but Wiesenthal had...
Quanta Magazine
A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of...
a year ago
39
a year ago
So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of complex quantum systems. The post A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some Thoughts On Startups Overpromising | Out-Of-Pocket the role RFPs play, how it's difficult to define patient harm, and more
9 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Superconducting Kagome Metals Superconductivity is an extremely interesting, and potentially extremely useful, physical...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
Superconductivity is an extremely interesting, and potentially extremely useful, physical phenomenon. It refers to a state in which current flows through a material without resistance, and therefore without any loss of energy or waste heat. As our civilization is increasingly run...
Quanta Magazine
The Best Neighborhoods for Starting a Life in the Galaxy Some neighborhoods in the Milky Way may be better suited for making habitable planets than others. ...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
Some neighborhoods in the Milky Way may be better suited for making habitable planets than others. The post The Best Neighborhoods for Starting a Life in the Galaxy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
Los Amigos Biological Station - Part 3 My final post from Peru.... September 22, 2022 Much like the previous morning, Laura and I...
a year ago
15
a year ago
My final post from Peru.... September 22, 2022 Much like the previous morning, Laura and I arranged a packed breakfast and we hit the trails around dawn. While birds were obviously on my mind, there were still a few mammals that I was really keen to search for, too. And luck...
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
a year ago
21
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...
Light from Space
The Path to the Pillars of Creation Famously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, here's my first look at the Pillars of Creation...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Famously photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, here's my first look at the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16). Total exposure time: 16h 5m Shot from my driveway near Tucson, AZ in April & May 2022 Telescope: William Optics RedCat 51 (250mm focal length ƒ
pcloadletter
Surely dark UX doesn't work in the long run I was just feeling pretty good—I published my article about RSS and it's being pretty...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
I was just feeling pretty good—I published my article about RSS and it's being pretty well-received. I decided a fitting way to celebrate was to head on over to Feedly and catch up on some reading! I clicked on an engineers blog feed to check out here latest couple posts. I...
The Works in...
The eye of the tiger What makes tigers different from one another?
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills...
11 months ago
20
11 months ago
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing. The post New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery. The post In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Air Quality, Breathing, and Health | Out-Of-Pocket What we inhale is a public health issue
a year ago
Asterisk
Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses The central question of development economics is simple: how can poor countries become rich? The...
5 months ago
1
5 months ago
The central question of development economics is simple: how can poor countries become rich? The answer is neither small-scale, targeted interventions nor broad generalizations about growth. Instead, we should focus on firms.
symmetry magazine
CERN opens Science Gateway About 1,400 people attended the grand opening of CERN’s new science education center.
a year ago
The Works in...
Should you infect yourself with Zika? What life is like in a challenge trial
8 months ago
Quanta Magazine
To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional spheres. The post To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Interaction Magic -...
Modelling my brain A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of it.
NeuroLogica Blog
The Superconductor Flap of 2023 If you are at all interested in science and technology news, you have probably heard that a team...
a year ago
2
a year ago
If you are at all interested in science and technology news, you have probably heard that a team from South Korea claims to have developed a material that is a superconductor at room temperature and ambient pressure. Interestingly, if you are someone who does not follow such...
NeuroLogica Blog
Have Current AI Reached Their Limit? We are still very much in the hype phase of the latest crop of artificial intelligence applications,...
a year ago
89
a year ago
We are still very much in the hype phase of the latest crop of artificial intelligence applications, specifically the large language models and so-called “transformers” like Chat GPT. Transformers are a deep learning model that use self-attention to differentially weight the...
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...
10 months ago
35
10 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...
ToughSF
Fusion without Fissiles: Superbombs and Wilderness Orion Fusion technology today relies on expensive, building-sized equipment for ignition, or the help of...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Fusion technology today relies on expensive, building-sized equipment for ignition, or the help of an already powerful fission detonation. What if we could do away with both? Fusion power without the need for fissiles, but also small enough to be launched into space. It is...
symmetry magazine
A collaboration pairs Fermilab with fashion students Fashion students at the College of DuPage successfully designed gear to protect Fermilab’s SPOT...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Fashion students at the College of DuPage successfully designed gear to protect Fermilab’s SPOT robot from radioactive dust. In a recent demonstration for Engineers Week in Chicago, an engineering physicist took the stage accompanied by an unusual guest: a...
Inverted Passion
Notes from the book “Hooked” I re-read the book Hooked by Nir Eyal and these are my notes. 1/ The key question that the book...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
I re-read the book Hooked by Nir Eyal and these are my notes. 1/ The key question that the book answers is: how to make habit-forming products. And its answer is a model that involves four stages: a) trigger; b) action; c) variable reward; d) investment 2/ Why should products be...
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
23
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....
Eukaryote Writes...
Eukaryote in Asterisk Magazine + New Patreon Per-post setup Eukaryote elsewhere I have an article in the latest issue of Asterisk Magazine. After you get really...
a year ago
55
a year ago
Eukaryote elsewhere I have an article in the latest issue of Asterisk Magazine. After you get really deep into the weeds of invertebrate sentience and fish welfare and the scale of factory farming, what do you do with that information vis-a-vis what you feel comfortable eating?...
Quanta Magazine
How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
Zero, which was invented late in history, is special among numbers. New studies are uncovering how the brain creates something out of nothing. The post How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Interaction Magic -...
Think outside the screen Nobody likes stroking a pane of glass, so why do we love touchscreens so much? Let's build...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Nobody likes stroking a pane of glass, so why do we love touchscreens so much? Let's build distributed interfaces that work.
Quantum Frontiers
Always appropriate I met boatloads of physicists as a master’s student at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
I met boatloads of physicists as a master’s student at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Researchers pass through Perimeter like diplomats through my current neighborhood—the Washington, DC area—except that Perimeter’s visitors speak math...
Quanta Magazine
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
4
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...
Many Worlds
A Real ET Discovery With Promise, Amid Some Other Quite Questionable Claims Beware easy answers to the question of whether life exists beyond Earth. Be they “alien” skeletons...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Beware easy answers to the question of whether life exists beyond Earth. Be they “alien” skeletons in Mexico City, interstellar probes that briefly pass through our solar system, UFOs of all sorts and claims to have found “biosignature” chemical byproducts of life around planets...
Probably...
Logarithms and Heteroskedasticity Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
6 months ago
58
6 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. log_heterosked Logarithms and heteroskedasticity¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Is it correct to use...
NeuroLogica Blog
Collapsars and Gravitational Waves The state of modern science and technology is truly amazing, much more so than the fake stuff that...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
The state of modern science and technology is truly amazing, much more so than the fake stuff that people like to spread around. Gravitational waves have opened up an entirely new type of astronomy, a way to explore the universe through very subtle ripples in spacetime produce by...
Drew Ex Machina
First Pictures: View of the Earth from NASA’s Explorer 6 – August 14, 1959 Today we take for granted that we can instantly access images of almost any part of the Earth taken...
4 months ago
45
4 months ago
Today we take for granted that we can instantly access images of almost any part of the Earth taken from space using an ever growing collection […]
Eukaryote Writes...
Recommendation: reports on the search for missing hiker Bill Ewasko How to find someone who has died in the wilderness.
4 months 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...
7 months ago
77
7 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...
Damn Interesting
A Taste of Italy In the mid-1800s, Italy was consumed by two parallel fights: one to rid itself of Austrian...
over a year ago
3
over a year ago
In the mid-1800s, Italy was consumed by two parallel fights: one to rid itself of Austrian domination (a holdover from the Holy Roman Empire) and the other for unification. At the time, Europe’s boot was a curious conglomeration of separate states, not all of which got along....
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some Common Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching Angels | Out-Of-Pocket With some real decks and emails!
10 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Upfront Pricing Phenomenon | Out-Of-Pocket Imagine actually knowing what things cost in advance lmao
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Roleplaying Games May Help Autistic People Gotta love the title of this paper: “A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
Gotta love the title of this paper: “A critical hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a buff for autistic people“. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop roleplaying game where a small group of people each play characters adventuring in an imaginary world run by the dungeon master (DM)....
Uncharted...
Is Desalination Everywhere Realistic? Which countries are doing it already? Are they happy? Is desalinated water safe to drink? Does it...
a month ago
2
a month ago
Which countries are doing it already? Are they happy? Is desalinated water safe to drink? Does it taste good? Does it pollute too much? Can we shrink its cost?
Quanta Magazine
Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time Seventy years after the invention of a data structure called a hash table, theoreticians have found...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
Seventy years after the invention of a data structure called a hash table, theoreticians have found the most efficient possible configuration for it. The post Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Why America’s Racial Poverty Statistics Are a Lesson for Researchers What if a single government employee could tell you an entire literature was wrong?
3 months ago
Blog - Practical...
Why Railroads Don't Need Expansion Joints [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the most common...
a year ago
21
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the most common attributes folks imagine when they think of trains is the clickety-clack sound they make as they roll down the tracks. The thing is, most trains don’t make that sound anymore. Or really,...
Probably...
Regrets and Regression It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
5 months ago
60
5 months ago
It’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. standardize Standardization and Normalization¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. I want to write a research...
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...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
I already wrote about this issue here back in August, but I wanted to highlight a policy statement that I wrote with colleagues as part of Rice's Baker Institute's Election 2024: Policy Playbook, which "delivers nonpartisan, expert insights into key issues at stake on the 2024...
Quanta Magazine
The Year in Biology Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and...
4 days ago
3
4 days 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
Asterisk
Crash Testing GPT-4 Can we tell if an AI model is safe before it’s released? The group that tested GPT–4 is trying to...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Can we tell if an AI model is safe before it’s released? The group that tested GPT–4 is trying to figure out how.
Explorations of an...
Black-fronted Piping-Guans at Parque Provincial Urugua-í February 8, 2023 Laura and I left the environs of Iguazú Falls and worked our way south and then...
a year ago
15
a year ago
February 8, 2023 Laura and I left the environs of Iguazú Falls and worked our way south and then east, our destination being Parque Provincial Uragua-í. This park is a little bit off of the standard birding route and is not frequently visited by foreign birders. And, because...
Light from Space
Iris Nebula and the Ghost of Cepheus The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula in Cepheus. A popular target with amateur astronomers, the...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
The Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula in Cepheus. A popular target with amateur astronomers, the sourrounding flux nebulas are harder to photograph and require long integration times. Also visible in this wide-field image, near the bottom left, is the Ghost Nebula. Click or...
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...
9 months ago
28
9 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...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 6: A Long, Sketchy Drive To Find Atuen Antpittas (February 8, 2024) One of the fun aspects of birding during this particular period of history is that our understanding...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
One of the fun aspects of birding during this particular period of history is that our understanding of how birds are related to each other is changing rapidly. Back in the "old days", our collective knowledge of these topics was a bit more rudimentary. Species were grouped...
Probably...
Think Python Goes to Production Think Python has moved into production, on schedule for the official publication date in July — but...
9 months ago
57
9 months ago
Think Python has moved into production, on schedule for the official publication date in July — but maybe earlier if things go well. To celebrate, I have posted the next batch of chapters on the new site, up through Chapter 12, which is about Markov text analysis and generation,...
Quantum Frontiers
Astrobiology meets quantum computation? The origin of life appears to share little with quantum computation, apart from the difficulty of...
a year ago
47
a year ago
The origin of life appears to share little with quantum computation, apart from the difficulty of achieving it and its potential for clickbait. Yet similar notions of complexity have recently garnered attention in both fields. Each topic’s researchers expect only … Continue...
wadertales
Conservation beyond boundaries When an environmental impact assessment concludes that only a small number of shorebirds will be...
a year ago
26
a year ago
When an environmental impact assessment concludes that only a small number of shorebirds will be affected by a new airport, because relatively small flocks are counted during field surveys, is there an assumption that the birds encountered are always the same individuals? What if...
nanoscale views
What is the thermal Hall effect? One thing that physics and mechanical engineering students learn early on is that there are often...
a year ago
32
a year ago
One thing that physics and mechanical engineering students learn early on is that there are often analogies between charge flow and heat flow, and this is reflected in the mathematical models we use to describe charge and heat transport.  We use Ohm's law,...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Next Step in Space Travel The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space...
a year ago
6
a year ago
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space capsule. This will be used initially for cargo, but then eventually for crew as well. They anticipate a maiden voyage in 2028. I think this is a positive development. It seems we are...
NeuroLogica Blog
Should Tech Companies Be Liable for Content The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is hearing a case that will have profound effects on social media – is...
a year ago
54
a year ago
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is hearing a case that will have profound effects on social media – is Google liable for a terrorist killing? The family of Nohemi Gonzalez is suing Google, because she was shot by an Islamic terrorist in 2015 and the family alleges this act was abetted...
Probably...
Destructive Testing Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. sample_size Sample Size Selection¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Hi Redditors, I am a civil engineer trying...
The Works in...
How Israel turned homeowners into YIMBYs A housing success story
8 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed In all bilaterally symmetrical animals, from humans down to simple worms, nerves cross from one side...
a year ago
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a year ago
In all bilaterally symmetrical animals, from humans down to simple worms, nerves cross from one side of the body to the opposite side of the brain. Geometry may explain why. The post Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed first appeared on Quanta...
Quanta Magazine
Thirty Years Later, a Speed Boost for Quantum Factoring Shor’s algorithm will enable future quantum computers to factor large numbers quickly, undermining...
a year ago
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a year ago
Shor’s algorithm will enable future quantum computers to factor large numbers quickly, undermining many online security protocols. Now a researcher has shown how to do it even faster. The post Thirty Years Later, a Speed Boost for Quantum Factoring first appeared on...
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
14
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...
The Works in...
Rust never sleeps A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Artificial Diamond Boom The history of aluminum, and what is now happening in the artificial diamond market, may tell us...
a year ago
26
a year ago
The history of aluminum, and what is now happening in the artificial diamond market, may tell us something about a post-scarcity world. Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust. However, it like to form with other elements and therefore it was very difficulty to...
Quanta Magazine
How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques...
a year ago
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a year ago
In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques known as “resurgence” points toward an escape. The post How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA. The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively...
a month ago
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a month ago
The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish. The post All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet...
Asterisk
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because...
10 months ago
1
10 months ago
The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because we refuse to learn from experts, other countries, and our own history.
Quanta Magazine
Can Information Escape a Black Hole? Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions....
8 months ago
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8 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...
Quanta Magazine
Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its...
a year ago
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a year ago
There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants. The post Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Reality of Real-World Evidence | Out-Of-Pocket Real recognize real...sort of
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
You Spend More on Rust Than Gasoline (Probably) [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 1995, Folsom Lake,...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 1995, Folsom Lake, a reservoir created by Folsom Dam in Northern California, reached its full capacity as snow continued to melt in the upstream Sierra. With the power plant shut down for...
Quanta Magazine
With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
After decades of uncertainty, a motley team of programmers has proved precisely how complicated simple computer programs can get. The post With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Marine Madness
Book club: ‘Being Salmon Being Human’ by Martin Lee Mueller Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild Norwegian and Pacific Northwest salmon industries...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild Norwegian and Pacific Northwest salmon industries remain largely overlooked and Martin Lee Mueller cleverly weaves the stories of artificially inseminated and reared salmon to highlight the long-standing notion of human...
Quanta Magazine
A Multitalented Scientist Seeks the Origins of Multicellularity The pathbreaking geneticist Cassandra Extavour pursues the secrets of multicellular life while...
10 months ago
28
10 months ago
The pathbreaking geneticist Cassandra Extavour pursues the secrets of multicellular life while balancing careers in both science and singing. The post A Multitalented Scientist Seeks the Origins of Multicellularity first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Special Edition - WoW | Out-Of-Pocket World Of Warcraft vs. COVID-19
a year ago
Asterisk
Note to the Reader
over a year ago
nanoscale views
Strategic planning + departmental reviews It's been a while since I've written a post about the ways of academia, so I thought it might be...
a year ago
2
a year ago
It's been a while since I've written a post about the ways of academia, so I thought it might be time, though it's not exactly glamorous or exciting.  There are certain cycles in research universities, and two interrelated ones are the cycle of departmental strategic planning and...
Drew Ex Machina
Star Way of Humanity: American Space Art During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my...
a year ago
12
a year ago
During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my archives discovering all sorts of items I […]
Asterisk
A Field Guide to AI Safety AI safety is starting to go mainstream, but the researchers who’ve been immersed in it for over a...
a year ago
1
a year ago
AI safety is starting to go mainstream, but the researchers who’ve been immersed in it for over a decade still have strong disagreements.
Asterisk
The Virtue of Wonder: Martha Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals Martha Nussbaum’s latest book challenges us to change the way we think — and feel — about animals....
a year ago
1
a year ago
Martha Nussbaum’s latest book challenges us to change the way we think — and feel — about animals. What role can wonder and awe play when pathos comes up short?
Quantum Frontiers
Quantum computing vs. Grubhub pon receiving my speaking assignments for the Tucson Festival of Books, I mentally raised my...
a year ago
42
a year ago
pon receiving my speaking assignments for the Tucson Festival of Books, I mentally raised my eyebrows. I’d be participating in a panel discussion with Mike Evans, the founder of Grubhub? But I hadn’t created an app that’s a household name. I … Continue reading →
Apoorva Srinivasan
a review on protein language models Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been...
7 months ago
1
7 months ago
Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been building and training language models on protein sequence data, replicating the success seen in other domains, with profound implications. In this post, I will explore how transformer...
Articles - Chris...
My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story Some mistakes feel worse than death.
a year ago
Uncharted...
Should You Be Able to Experiment on Your Own Cancer? A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the...
2 months ago
2
2 months ago
A researcher in virology and immunotherapy got bad news: Her cancer was back with a vengeance; the treatments weren’t working. She decided to treat it herself.
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 2: The Huachucas September 1, 2024 For the first and only time in the trip I managed a much-needed seven hours of...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
September 1, 2024 For the first and only time in the trip I managed a much-needed seven hours of sleep. Unfortunately, some of the others were woken up earlier than they would have liked. The owner of Beatty's Guest Ranch (he lives in a different building on the property) owns a...
NeuroLogica Blog
Decarbonizing Aviation and Agriculture When we talk about reducing carbon release in order to slow down and hopefully stop anthropogenic...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
When we talk about reducing carbon release in order to slow down and hopefully stop anthropogenic global warming much of the focus is on the energy and transportation sectors. There is a good reason for this – the energy sector is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas (GHG)...
Drew Ex Machina
Venera 8: The First Characterization of the Surface of Venus Recent years has seen a marked increase in the planetary community’s interest in Venus after decades...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
Recent years has seen a marked increase in the planetary community’s interest in Venus after decades of near-neglect. Part of this renewed interest is to understand […]
NeuroLogica Blog
Framing and Global Warming When we talk publicly about the effects of human activity on the climate should we refer to “global...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
When we talk publicly about the effects of human activity on the climate should we refer to “global warming”, “climate change”, the “climate crisis” or to “climate justice”? Perhaps we should also be more technical and say specifically, “anthropogenic climate change”. This kind...
wadertales
Curlew nest survival The Eurasian Curlew is designated as ‘Near-Threatened’ by IUCN/BirdLife. It is Red-listed in the UK,...
a year ago
22
a year ago
The Eurasian Curlew is designated as ‘Near-Threatened’ by IUCN/BirdLife. It is Red-listed in the UK,  largely due to a rapid decline in breeding numbers. In this context, the fact that there are a few pink squares (indicating increased numbers) on the map showing breeding...
Damn Interesting
The Traveler and His Baggage On 19 May 1943, a news report from Berlin deepened the already dreary gloom that clung to the people...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
On 19 May 1943, a news report from Berlin deepened the already dreary gloom that clung to the people of Nazi-occupied Paris. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels proudly announced to the world that the German capital of Berlin was officially judenfrei–free of all Jews. As this...
Quanta Magazine
Cellular Self-Destruction May Be Ancient. But Why? How did cells evolve a process to end their own lives? Recent research suggests that apoptosis, a...
9 months ago
33
9 months ago
How did cells evolve a process to end their own lives? Recent research suggests that apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death, first arose billions of years ago in bacteria with a primitive sociality. The post Cellular Self-Destruction May Be Ancient. But Why? first...
Marine Madness
Fear factor: How sensationalised shark documentaries undermine conservation efforts Experts explain why misleading documentaries about sharks can be problematic. When Brendon Sing...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Experts explain why misleading documentaries about sharks can be problematic. When Brendon Sing first encountered sharks he was as a young boy behind the safety of aquarium glass in his native South Africa. Like many children of his generation, Brendon’s limited knowledge about...
Quanta Magazine
The #1 Clue to Quantum Gravity Sits on the Surfaces of Black Holes A black hole formula worked out in the 1970s remains the most concrete clue physicists have about...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
A black hole formula worked out in the 1970s remains the most concrete clue physicists have about the threads of the space-time fabric. The post The #1 Clue to Quantum Gravity Sits on the Surfaces of Black Holes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
The need for energy-efficient computing Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen the essential data in this figure several times over the last few months, and it has convinced me that the need for energy-efficient computing hardware is genuinely pressing.  This...
Quanta Magazine
The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions A new theory describes how particle interactions fuel fast magnetic reconnection, the process behind...
a year ago
41
a year ago
A new theory describes how particle interactions fuel fast magnetic reconnection, the process behind solar flares and other astrophysical jets. The post The Tiny Physics Behind Immense Cosmic Eruptions first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Desirable properties for a superconductor Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor,...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor, as some people on social media seem ready to jump straight on the "what does superconductivity mean for bitcoin?" train. First, the preliminaries.  Superconductivity is a state of...
Quanta Magazine
What Makes for ‘Good’ Mathematics? Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the...
10 months ago
30
10 months ago
Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the common ingredients in “good” mathematical research. In this episode, the Fields Medalist joins Steven Strogatz to revisit the topic. The post What Makes for ‘Good’...
Beautiful Public...
Design for the People: The US Web Design System and the Public Sans Typeface The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface that belongs to the...
5 months ago
60
5 months ago
The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface that belongs to the people. This thoughtful public design system aims to make government websites not only look good, but to make them accessible and functional for all.
NeuroLogica Blog
Electronic Noses I am always sniffing around (pun intended) for new and interesting technology, especially anything...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
I am always sniffing around (pun intended) for new and interesting technology, especially anything that I think is currently flying under the radar of public awareness but has the potential to transform our world in some way. I think electronic nose technology fits into this...
nanoscale views
The 2022 Welch Conference The last couple of weeks have been very full.   One event was the annual Welch Foundation conference...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
The last couple of weeks have been very full.   One event was the annual Welch Foundation conference (program here).  The program chair for this one was W. E. Moerner, expert (and Nobel Laureate) on single-molecule spectroscopy, and it was really a great meeting.  I'm not just...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Bit of Energy Pseudoscience Remember the 1980 film, The Formula? Probably not, because it was a mediocre film that did not age...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Remember the 1980 film, The Formula? Probably not, because it was a mediocre film that did not age well. The basic plot is that Nazi chemists during WWII developed a formula for synthetic gasoline. A detective investigating a murder gets embroiled in a conspiracy to cover up the...
Apoorva Srinivasan
an experiment in navigating the knowledge frontier beyond search Lately, I've been experimenting with interfaces for large language models (LLMs) in my free time....
a year ago
2
a year ago
Lately, I've been experimenting with interfaces for large language models (LLMs) in my free time. The fruit of this labor is something I'm calling "curie," an exploratory and sense-making tool designed to navigate complex topics. 0:00 ...
Melting Asphalt
2015 Meta Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Time for my annual blogging review. And only 11 days late! I'll keep it brief. Blog stats I published a paltry six full essays this year. Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of them. But still, six. It would be… Read more ›
NeuroLogica Blog
Flooding is Increasing Last month my flight home from Chicago was canceled because of an intense rainstorm. In CT the storm...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
Last month my flight home from Chicago was canceled because of an intense rainstorm. In CT the storm was intense enough to cause flash flooding, which washed out roads and bridges and shut down traffic in many areas. The epicenter of the rainfall was in Oxford, CT (where my...
Quanta Magazine
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
33
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
symmetry magazine
India’s gem at CERN: Archana Sharma The first Indian scientist to join CERN was recently recognized with the highest honor of India for...
a year ago
32
a year ago
The first Indian scientist to join CERN was recently recognized with the highest honor of India for overseas citizens.
Blog - Practical...
How To Install a Pipeline Under a Railroad [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Union Pacific...
10 months ago
55
10 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Union Pacific Railroad’s Austin Subdivision in central Texas. It’s a busy corridor that moves both freight and passengers north and south between Austin and San Antonio… But it’s mostly freight....
nanoscale views
What are "quantum oscillations"? For the first time in a couple of decades, I was visiting the Aspen Center for Physics, which is...
a year ago
20
a year ago
For the first time in a couple of decades, I was visiting the Aspen Center for Physics, which is always a fun, intellectually stimulating experience.  (Side note: I sure hope that the rapidly escalating costs of everything in the Aspen area don't make this venue untenable in the...
Damn Interesting
Breaking a Bit It’s been a busy summer, and the large shortfall in donations last month has been demoralizing, so...
a year ago
51
a year ago
It’s been a busy summer, and the large shortfall in donations last month has been demoralizing, so we’re taking a week off to rest and recuperate. The curated links section will be (mostly) silent, and behind the scenes we’ll be taking a brief break from our usual researching,...
Quanta Magazine
‘The Rest of the World Disappears’: Claire Voisin on Mathematical Creativity The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and...
9 months ago
19
9 months ago
The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought. The post ‘The Rest of the World Disappears’: Claire Voisin on Mathematical Creativity first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
The Unraveling of Space-Time This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the...
2 months ago
18
2 months ago
This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality. The post The Unraveling of Space-Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, March 2023 A new monthly feature, let me know what you think. Books Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020)....
a year ago
33
a year ago
A new monthly feature, let me know what you think. Books Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020). About halfway through, lots of interesting case studies, very readable. Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century (2005). I read the first chapter; saving the rest of it for when...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Mental Health And The Weird Fixation With Employers | Out-Of-Pocket an uncomfortable conversation about mental health access
a year ago
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...
a year ago
8
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...
nanoscale views
Some recent papers of interest A couple of recent papers that seem interesting and I need to read more closely: This paper in...
a year ago
33
a year ago
A couple of recent papers that seem interesting and I need to read more closely: This paper in Nature, a collaboration between folks at Ohio University and Argonne, is a neat combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and (synchrotron-enabled) resonant x-ray absorption.  The...
Asterisk
Fracking Eyeballs How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers at the turn of the 20th century taught us how...
a year ago
2
a year ago
How an alliance between psychologists and advertisers at the turn of the 20th century taught us how to measure (and monetize) human attention.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Start your healthcare company outside of the US | Out-Of-Pocket Gotta start somewhere...else?
10 months ago
nanoscale views
Scientific travel Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the argument that it's always worth asking, "Is this trip really necessary?"  We are in the age of remote work and zoom seminars that are attended by people from all over the world.  Is...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Provider Directories, Physician data, and Ribbon Health | Out-Of-Pocket why can't I find any important info about my doctor lol
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
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
43
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
Wanderingspace
Neptune from the James Webb Space Telescope Webb’s latest image is the clearest look at Neptune's rings in 30+ years, and our first time seeing...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Webb’s latest image is the clearest look at Neptune's rings in 30+ years, and our first time seeing them in infrared light. Take in Webb's ghostly, ethereal views of the planet and its dust bands, rings and moons: https://go.nasa.gov/3RXxoGq #IAC2022
Quanta Magazine
Math’s ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’ Has Been Debunked It was intuitive, even obvious. It was also wrong. The post Math’s ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’...
a month ago
19
a month ago
It was intuitive, even obvious. It was also wrong. The post Math’s ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’ Has Been Debunked first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Salt, Sugar, Water, Zinc: How Scientists Learned to Treat the 20th Century’s Biggest Killer of... Oral rehydration therapy is now the standard treatment for dehydration. It’s saved millions of...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Oral rehydration therapy is now the standard treatment for dehydration. It’s saved millions of lives, and can be prepared at home in minutes. So why did it take so long to discover?
Willem Pennings
ClockSquared Mini, a word clock wristwatch About a year ago, I had some time to spare over the summer and decided to challenge myself with a...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
About a year ago, I had some time to spare over the summer and decided to challenge myself with a project that I call “Clocksquared Mini”. It is Clocksquared, but in a tiny wristwatch package. This gives rise to a major challenge, as everything has to be shrunk down approximately...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Copper and Green Energy The United States Department of Energy has updated its list of critically important materials. The...
5 months ago
1
5 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...
Quanta Magazine
Clashing Cosmic Numbers Challenge Our Best Theory of the Universe As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to...
11 months ago
20
11 months ago
As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to make sense of sparring values. The post Clashing Cosmic Numbers Challenge Our Best Theory of the Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall. The post Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
More On Electric Vehicles I recently wrote about electric vehicles, which sparked a lively discussion in the comments. There...
a year ago
15
a year ago
I recently wrote about electric vehicles, which sparked a lively discussion in the comments. There was enough discussion that I wanted to pull my responses together into a new post. Before I get to the details, some general observations. The conversation, in my opinion, nicely...
The Roots of...
What if they gave an Industrial Revolution and nobody came? Imagine you could go back in time to the ancient world to jump-start the Industrial Revolution. You...
a year ago
76
a year ago
Imagine you could go back in time to the ancient world to jump-start the Industrial Revolution. You carry with you plans for a steam engine, and you present them to the emperor, explaining how the machine could be used to drain water out of mines, pump bellows for blast furnaces,...
The Roots of...
Can submarines swim? Did any science fiction predict that when AI arrived, it would be unreliable, often illogical, and...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Did any science fiction predict that when AI arrived, it would be unreliable, often illogical, and frequently bullshitting? Usually in fiction, if the AI says something factually incorrect or illogical, that is a deep portent of something very wrong: the AI is sick, or turning...
Quanta Magazine
The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes Making ice requires more than subzero temperatures. The unpredictable process takes microscopic...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
Making ice requires more than subzero temperatures. The unpredictable process takes microscopic scaffolding, random jiggling and often a little bit of bacteria. The post The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Representation and human history Do shrunken heads belong in a museum?
over a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
My investing theses | Out-Of-Pocket Hit up ya boi
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Did They Find Amelia Earhart’s Plane Is this sonar image taken at 16,000 feet below the surface about 100 miles from Howland island, that...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Is this sonar image taken at 16,000 feet below the surface about 100 miles from Howland island, that of a downed Lockheed Model 10-E Electra plane? Tony Romeo hopes it is. He spent $9 million to purchase an underwater drone, the Hugan 6000, then hired a crew and scoured 5,200...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New Era Of Digital Therapeutics | Out-Of-Pocket Guess it's time to start defining the term again
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Out-Of-Pocket Game plan | Out-Of-Pocket How to build the on-boarding system for healthcare
a year ago
Probably...
Another step toward a two-hour marathon This is an update to an analysis I run each time the marathon world record is broken. If you like...
a year ago
4
a year ago
This is an update to an analysis I run each time the marathon world record is broken. If you like this sort of thing, you will like my forthcoming book, Probably Overthinking It, which is available for preorder now. On October 8, 2023, Kelvin Kiptum ran the Chicago Marathon in...
Quanta Magazine
To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA Under a microscope, cells in a worm embryo deliberately eliminated one-third of their genome — an...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Under a microscope, cells in a worm embryo deliberately eliminated one-third of their genome — an uncompromising tactic that may combat harmful genetic parasites. The post To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Observe ‘Unobservable’ Quantum Phase Transition Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are harnessing that nonlocality to probe the spread of quantum information and control it. The post Physicists Observe ‘Unobservable’ Quantum Phase Transition first appeared on...
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. if you look on 3M’s own website, you will see no mention of this legacy—it’s a firm that sells abrasive materials, adhesive tapes, filters, films, personal...
Explorations of an...
2023 Part 4: Indonesia and Ecuador September The island of Sulawesi must be on the bucket list for any naturalist with a strong...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
September The island of Sulawesi must be on the bucket list for any naturalist with a strong interest in biogeography. Though Borneo is situated only a few hundred kilometers to the west, and the Moluccas are not far to the east, the species composition of Sulawesi is...
Beautiful Public...
Here’s All the Rocks We Hauled Back From the Moon The 12 human beings who walked on the Moon collected, catalogued and returned 842 pounds of lunar...
a year ago
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a year ago
The 12 human beings who walked on the Moon collected, catalogued and returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil. Each sample has been meticulously documented in NASA's Lunar Sample Catalog.
Damn Interesting
Journey to the Invisible Planet In the late 17th century, natural philosopher Isaac Newton was deeply uneasy with a new scientific...
a year ago
8
a year ago
In the late 17th century, natural philosopher Isaac Newton was deeply uneasy with a new scientific theory that was gaining currency in Europe: universal gravitation. In correspondence with a scientific contemporary, Newton complained that it was “an absurdity” to suppose that...
NeuroLogica Blog
How Substance Abuse Affects the Brain I will acknowledge up front that I never drink, ever. The concept of deliberately consuming a known...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I will acknowledge up front that I never drink, ever. The concept of deliberately consuming a known poison to impair the functioning of your brain never appealed to me. Also, I am a bit of a supertaster, and the taste of alcohol to me is horrible – it overwhelms any other...
Damn Interesting
A Blight on Soviet Science On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking...
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part I This is the first entry in an exchange between me and Scott Hastings, who requested the exchange....
a year ago
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a year ago
This is the first entry in an exchange between me and Scott Hastings, who requested the exchange. This is his opening arguments. My response will be tomorrow’s post.   Part I: Hi Steven, first of all, I am tremendously grateful to you for taking time to engage with me on this...
The Roots of...
Quote quiz: “drifting into dependence” Quote quiz: who said this? (No fair looking it up). I have modified the original quotation slightly,...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Quote quiz: who said this? (No fair looking it up). I have modified the original quotation slightly, by making a handful of word substitutions to bring it up to date: It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to AI. But we are...
Blog - Practical...
Why Are Texas Interchanges Texas So Tall? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Dallas High Five,...
4 months ago
51
4 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Dallas High Five, one of the tallest highway interchanges in the world. It gets its name from the fact that there are five different levels of roadways crossing each other in this one spot. In some...
nanoscale views
A few quick highlights It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to...
a year ago
24
a year ago
It's been a very busy time, hence my lower posting frequency.  It was rather intense trying to attend both the KITP conference and the morning sessions of the DOE experimental condensed matter PI meeting (pdf of agenda here).  A few quick highlights that I thought were...
NeuroLogica Blog
UFOs and the Pandemic Did UFO reporting increase during the pandemic? A group of researchers set out to answer that...
a year ago
22
a year ago
Did UFO reporting increase during the pandemic? A group of researchers set out to answer that question, and recently published their results. Their hypothesis was two-fold, including the notion that people had more free time during the shutdown and perhaps spent more time out...
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
5
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Categorization and What’s In a Name Categorization is critical in science, but it is also very tricky, often deceptively so. We need to...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
Categorization is critical in science, but it is also very tricky, often deceptively so. We need to categorize things to help us organize our knowledge, to understand how things work and relate to each other, and to communicate efficiently and precisely. But categorization can...
Quanta Magazine
The Computer Scientist Peering Inside AI’s Black Boxes Cynthia Rudin wants machine learning models, responsible for increasingly important decisions, to...
a year ago
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a year ago
Cynthia Rudin wants machine learning models, responsible for increasingly important decisions, to show their work. The post The Computer Scientist Peering Inside AI’s Black Boxes first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More weird rules in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket 3 liters of blood, sequential billing, COBRA, and more
6 months ago
Quanta Magazine
To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the...
a year ago
3
a year ago
Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the cost of forgetting the path they took. A new result suggests that the trade-off may be inevitable. The post To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past...
Beautiful Public...
Pilot Manual for a 1940's U.S. Navy Blimp This 122 page manual contains all of the operating instructions and technical details needed to...
a year ago
27
a year ago
This 122 page manual contains all of the operating instructions and technical details needed to pilot this sleek, silver, 250 foot long, weaponized anti-submarine dirigible.
nanoscale views
Items of interest A couple of interesting papers that I came across this week: There is long been an interest in...
4 months ago
50
4 months ago
A couple of interesting papers that I came across this week: There is long been an interest in purely electronic cooling techniques (no moving parts!) that would work at cryogenic temperatures.  You're familiar with ordinary evaporative cooling - that's what helps cool down...
Quanta Magazine
Game Theory Can Make AI More Correct and Efficient Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them more consistent. The post Game Theory Can Make AI More Correct and Efficient first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule...
a year ago
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a year ago
After decades of frustration, researchers have finally determined how an airborne scent molecule links to a human smell receptor. The post How a Human Smell Receptor Works Is Finally Revealed first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Part 2: How To Build Patient Communities | Out-Of-Pocket And my investments in Most Days + Little Otter
a year ago
Explorations of an...
The Terror Bird's Relative January 21, 2023 Laura and I left Salta before dawn so that we could be at our first birding...
a year ago
20
a year ago
January 21, 2023 Laura and I left Salta before dawn so that we could be at our first birding location nice and early. The forecasted weather would be few degrees warmer than normal summer temperatures, and we wanted to make the most of our morning.  Our goal for the day was to...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
All of the main problems with US healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket let's get all of our problems out on the table
9 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Three computer scientists have disproved a long-standing conjecture about a fundamental problem involving imperfect information. The post Researchers Refute a Widespread Belief About Online Algorithms first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Spiderweb Microphone Microphones convert sound into an electrical signal for subsequent amplification, as in auditorium...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
Microphones convert sound into an electrical signal for subsequent amplification, as in auditorium public address systems; or transmission, as in landline and mobile phones. The most common types of microphones are carbon, used in early telephones, condenser, electret, dynamic,...
Blog - Practical...
What Happens When a Reservoir Goes Dry? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2022, the level in...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2022, the level in Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the United States formed by the Hoover Dam, reached yet another all-time low of 175 feet or 53 meters below full, a level that hasn’t been...
IEEE Spectrum
The Pioneer Behind Electromagnetism Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would not have been possible to invent motors, telecommunications equipment, kitchen appliances and more. A key part of our understanding of that relationship, known as classical...
Probably...
Happy Launch Day! Today is the official publication date of Probably Overthinking It! You can get a 30% discount if...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Today is the official publication date of Probably Overthinking It! You can get a 30% discount if you order from the publisher and use the code UCPNEW. You can also order from Amazon or, if you want to support independent bookstores, from Bookshop.org. I celebrated launch day by...
brr
Engineering for Slow Internet How to minimize user frustration in Antarctica.
6 months ago
nanoscale views
A couple of links + a thought experiment about spin A couple of interesting things to read: As someone interested in lost ancient literature and also...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
A couple of interesting things to read: As someone interested in lost ancient literature and also science, I really liked this news article from Nature about progress in reading scrolls excavated from Herculaneum.  The area around the Bay of Naples was a quite the spot for posh...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Identify the Best Versions of Iconic Shapes Researchers are discovering the shortest knots and fattest Möbius strips, among other “optimal...
11 months ago
15
11 months 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
IEEE Spectrum
Granville T. Woods: Smartest Guy in the Room Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe,...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe, things don’t always turn out the way you envisioned. Such was the life of inventor extraordinaire Granville T. Woods. Who was Granville T. Woods? Woods was endowed with...
The Works in...
The value of family Traditional values don't deliver babies
a year ago
The Roots of...
Why consumerism is good actually “Consumerism” came up in my recent interview with Elle Griffin of The Post. Here’s what I had to say...
a year ago
23
a year ago
“Consumerism” came up in my recent interview with Elle Griffin of The Post. Here’s what I had to say (off the cuff): I have to admit, I’ve never 100% understood what “consumerism” is, or what it’s supposed to be. I have the general sense of what people are gesturing at, but it...
Quantum Frontiers
Discoveries at the Dibner This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit...
10 months ago
31
10 months ago
This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Dibner Rare Book Library in D.C. Located in a small corner of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, tucked away behind flashier exhibits, the Dibner is … Continue...
The Roots of...
Event, Feb 29: “Towards a New Philosophy of Progress” in Boston and on Zoom On Thursday, February 29, I’ll be giving my talk “Towards a New Philosophy of Progress” to the New...
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
On Thursday, February 29, I’ll be giving my talk “Towards a New Philosophy of Progress” to the New England Legal Foundation, for their Economic Liberty Speaker Series. The talk will be held over breakfast at NELF’s offices in Boston, and will also be livestreamed over Zoom. See...
Chris Grossack's...
Internal Group Actions as Enriched Functors Earlier today this month on the Category Theory Zulip, Bernd Losert asked an extremely natural...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
Earlier today this month on the Category Theory Zulip, Bernd Losert asked an extremely natural question about how we might study topological group actions via the functorial approach beloved by category theorists. The usual story is to treat a group $G$ as a one-object...
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
50
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
Artificial Robotic Muscles By now we have all seen the impressive robot videos, such as the ones from Boston Dynamics, in which...
3 months ago
38
3 months ago
By now we have all seen the impressive robot videos, such as the ones from Boston Dynamics, in which robots show incredible flexibility and agility. These are amazing, but I understand they are a bit like trick-shot videos – we are being shown the ones that worked, which may not...
Quanta Magazine
In a Fierce Desert, Microbe ‘Crusts’ Show How Life Tamed the Land Extreme microorganisms carpeting the Atacama Desert in Chile illuminate how life might have first...
a year ago
22
a year ago
Extreme microorganisms carpeting the Atacama Desert in Chile illuminate how life might have first taken hold on Earth’s surface. The post In a Fierce Desert, Microbe ‘Crusts’ Show How Life Tamed the Land first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
18
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.”
wadertales
WaderTales blogs in 2022 Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Here are brief summaries of the sixteen WaderTales blogs that were published in 2022. I have grouped the blogs into sections; problems with trees, more research from Iceland, Curlews, news from the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, tracking and updates. As ever, I am grateful to...
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...
a week ago
17
a week 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...
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...
6 months ago
47
6 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...
nanoscale views
What is a Wigner crystal? Last week I was at the every-2-years Gordon Research Conference on Correlated Electron Systems at...
5 months ago
59
5 months ago
Last week I was at the every-2-years Gordon Research Conference on Correlated Electron Systems at lovely Mt. Holyoke.  It was very fun, but one key aspect of the culture of the GRCs is that attendees are not supposed to post about them on social media, thus encouraging presenters...
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
21
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...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: An Englishman in New York Reflections on the revolution in Manhattan
over a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Physicians and Pharma Marketing | Out-Of-Pocket oh we getting that drug money
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Race And Healthcare: Recognizing And Addressing the Issues Facing Black Patients | Out-Of-Pocket The systemic issues that plague black communities are extremely prevalent in healthcare, and we...
a year ago