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NeuroLogica Blog
Non-Invasive Deep Brain Stimulation We are rapidly entering the era of neuromodulation – using electrical and magnetic fields in order...
6 months ago
58
6 months ago
We are rapidly entering the era of neuromodulation – using electrical and magnetic fields in order to increase or decrease the activity of specific regions and circuits in the brain. Such treatments are already shown to be effective in treating some Parkinson’s symptoms,...
Probably...
Migration and Population Growth On a recent run I was talking with a friend from Spain about immigration in Europe. We speculated...
6 months ago
55
6 months ago
On a recent run I was talking with a friend from Spain about immigration in Europe. We speculated about whether the population of Spain would be growing or shrinking if there were no international migration. I thought it might be shrinking, but we were not sure. Fortunately, Our...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: An environmentalist gets lunch Why being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Robots and a Sense of Self Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption)...
a month ago
20
a month ago
Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption) have a sense of self. This sense has several components – we feel as if we occupy our physical bodies, that our bodies are distinct entities separate from the rest of the universe,...
Light from Space
Andromeda: Our Galactic Neighbor Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
Many things have been said about the Andromeda Galaxy, arguably the most majestic galaxy that amateur astronomers can image due to it's sheer size in the sky—many times larger than the Moon appears to us, but also many times dimmer. With the naked eye, even in
Out-of-Pocket Blog
"AI sucks", Quantifying EMR burden, and Loneliness | Out-Of-Pocket 3 interesting papers I like
a year ago
Math Is Still...
How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth’s Oscillating Weather Patterns By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a...
a year ago
8
a year ago
By treating Earth as a topological insulator — a state of quantum matter — physicists found a powerful explanation for the movements of the planet’s air and seas. The post How Quantum Physicists Explained Earth’s Oscillating Weather Patterns first appeared on Quanta...
Math Is Still...
The Year in Computer Science Artificial intelligence learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Artificial intelligence learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer scientists developed algorithms that solved long-standing problems. The post The Year in Computer Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Pierre de Fermat’s Link to a High School Student’s Prime Math Proof How Fermat’s less famous ‘little theorem’ got mathematicians young and old to play with prime-like...
a year ago
18
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
Will Hydrogen BEV Hybrids Be A Thing? I recently recorded a YouTube video on the notion of hydrogen fuel cell cars (it will be posted...
a year ago
64
a year ago
I recently recorded a YouTube video on the notion of hydrogen fuel cell cars (it will be posted soon, and I will add the link when it’s up). One question I did not get into in the video, but which is an interesting thought experiment, is hydrogen – plug-in battery hybrid...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, September 2023 A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them...
a year ago
262
a year ago
A quasi-monthly feature. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. I’ve been busy helping to choose the first cohort of our blogging fellowship, so my reading has been relatively light. All emphasis in bold in the quotes...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
New Health Plans Need New Operating Systems with Flume Health | Out-Of-Pocket this claim is automatic, programmatic, hypnotic, funky fresh
a year ago
Drew Ex Machina
Habitable Planet Reality Check: TOI-700e Discovered by NASA’s TESS Mission During a press conference held on January 6, 2020 at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical...
a year ago
23
a year ago
During a press conference held on January 6, 2020 at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Honolulu, Emily Gilbert (then a graduate […]
Blog - Practical...
How French Drains Work [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February of 2017, one of...
4 months ago
50
4 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In February of 2017, one of the largest spillways in the world, the one at Oroville Dam in northern California, was severely damaged during releases from heavy rain. You might remember this. I made a video...
Math Is Still...
What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us? If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge — or do they? In this week’s...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
If you cover a surface with tiles, repetitive patterns always emerge — or do they? In this week’s episode, mathematician Natalie Priebe Frank and co-host Janna Levin discuss how recent breakthroughs in tiling can unlock structural secrets in the natural world. The...
Asterisk
Why Worry?
a year ago
Asterisk
How We Can Regulate AI The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving...
a year ago
2
a year ago
The chips used to train the most advanced AIs are scarce, expensive, and trackable — giving regulators a path forward.
Asterisk
Want Growth? Kill Small Businesses The central question of development economics is simple: how can poor countries become rich? The...
5 months ago
2
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.
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
25
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...
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,...
Math Is Still...
New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
In an atomically thin stack of semiconductors, a mechanism unseen in any natural substance causes electrons’ spins to align. The post New Kind of Magnetism Spotted in an Engineered Material first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
How Will We Know We’re Not Alone? The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands...
3 days ago
4
3 days ago
The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna...
Stephen Wolfram...
Yet More New Ideas and New Functions: Launching Version 14.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector Databases and Semantic Search RAGs and Dynamic Prompting for LLMs Connect to Your Favorite LLM Symbolic Arrays and Their Calculus Binomials and Pitchforks: Navigating Mathematical...
Math Is Still...
How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger than others?...
a year ago
42
a year ago
All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger than others? The mathematician Justin Moore discusses the mysteries of infinity with Steven Strogatz. The post How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? first appeared on Quanta...
The Works in...
Getting people to donate their organs Too few people donate their organs, dead or alive. How can we make it easier?
8 months ago
Math Is Still...
Researchers Approach New Speed Limit for Seminal Problem Integer linear programming can help find the answer to a variety of real-world problems. Now...
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
Integer linear programming can help find the answer to a variety of real-world problems. Now researchers have found a much faster way to do it. The post Researchers Approach New Speed Limit for Seminal Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quantum Frontiers
To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question. If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this…...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this… To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question:Whether ’tis more natural for the system to sufferThe large entanglement of thermalizing dynamics,Or … Continue reading →
Cremieux Recueil
Workers For Robots Want to give blue collar workers the sorts of jobs they can raise a family on and revive American...
a month ago
4
a month ago
Want to give blue collar workers the sorts of jobs they can raise a family on and revive American manufacturing? Then you should support automation
nanoscale views
Moiré and making superlattices One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
One of the biggest condensed matter trends in recent years has been the stacking of 2D materials and the development of moiré lattices.  The idea is, take a layer of 2D material and stack it either (1) on itself but with a twist angle, or (2) on another material with a slightly...
Asterisk
Debugging Tech Journalism A huge proportion of tech journalism is characterized by scandals, sensationalism, and shoddy...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
A huge proportion of tech journalism is characterized by scandals, sensationalism, and shoddy research. Can we fix it?
Math Is Still...
Are Robots About to Level Up? Today’s AI largely lives in computers, but acting and reacting in the real world — that’s the realm...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
Today’s AI largely lives in computers, but acting and reacting in the real world — that’s the realm of robots. In this week’s episode, co-host Steven Strogatz talks with pioneering roboticist Daniela Rus about creativity, collaboration, and the unusual forms robots of the future...
Beautiful Public...
Nuclear Weapon Test Films Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear weapons tests from the 1940's - 1960's.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Transforming Healthcare Data with Tuva Health | Out-Of-Pocket The nitty, gritty, and shitty of working with health data
a year ago
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
20
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...
Probably...
Zipf’s Law Elements of Data Science is in print now, available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. To...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Elements of Data Science is in print now, available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. To celebrate, I’ll post some excerpts here, starting with one of my favorite examples, Zipf’s Law. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In almost any...
Math Is Still...
Tiny Language Models Come of Age To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler...
a year ago
6
a year ago
To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories. The post Tiny Language Models Come of Age first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
HWY 101 - Forest Birding Near Iguazú Highway 101 is the main corridor that runs east-west along the top end of Misiones Province in...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Highway 101 is the main corridor that runs east-west along the top end of Misiones Province in Argentina. Though this road looks like a major artery on Google Maps, in practice it is nothing more than a clay track that receives very little traffic - mainly, just a few locals...
NeuroLogica Blog
Hunter-Gatherers and Childcare What is “natural” for humans? It’s often hard to say, and in my opinion this is a highly overused...
a year ago
4
a year ago
What is “natural” for humans? It’s often hard to say, and in my opinion this is a highly overused concept. Primarily this is because humans are adaptable – we adapt to our environment, our situation, and our culture. So it is “natural” for us not to have a natural state. But this...
Math Is Still...
What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front...
a year ago
12
a year ago
A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front of an audience. It crowned no winners — but it can still claim progress. The post What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved first appeared on Quanta...
Uncharted...
What Is the Earth’s Carrying Capacity? Most "experts" don't understand technology or economics
a month ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Curious Case of Professional Employer Organizations | Out-Of-Pocket A tale about complexity, risk skimming, and what counts as an “employee” or “company”
3 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Carbon Fiber Structural Battery I have written previously about the concept of structural batteries, such as this recent post on a...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
I have written previously about the concept of structural batteries, such as this recent post on a concrete battery. The basic idea is a battery made out of material that is strong enough that it can bare a load. Essentially we’re asking the material to do two things at once – be...
Math Is Still...
The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues Sticking out your tongue while doing delicate work with your hands reveals a history of evolutionary...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Sticking out your tongue while doing delicate work with your hands reveals a history of evolutionary relationships. The post The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
What Is Distributed Computing? Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines. The...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines. The post What Is Distributed Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Wood Vaulting for Carbon Sequestration I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
I can’t resist a good science story involving technology that we can possibly use to stabilize our climate in the face of anthropogenic global warming. This one is a fun story and an interesting, and potentially useful, idea. As we map out potential carbon pathways into the...
Asterisk
When Was the Last Time We Built a New City? California Forever wants to build a new city in Solano county. On paper, it would be an affordable,...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
California Forever wants to build a new city in Solano county. On paper, it would be an affordable, high-density urbanist wonderland — but can they actually pull it off?
Quantum Frontiers
Happy 200th birthday, Carnot’s theorem! In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
In Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, a Mole meets a Water Rat who lives on a River. The Rat explains how the River permeates his life: “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, … Continue reading →
Math Is Still...
Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works. One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data...
a year ago
30
a year ago
One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data without sacrificing information. The post Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Is Mars the New Frontier? In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future,...
11 months ago
22
11 months ago
In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future, Mars has been settled and is an independent self-sustaining society. In fact, Mars is presented as the most scientifically and technologically advanced society of humans in the...
Damn Interesting
Devouring the Heart of Portugal On the morning of Thursday, 04 December 1924, a tall and well-dressed Dutch trader named Karel...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
On the morning of Thursday, 04 December 1924, a tall and well-dressed Dutch trader named Karel Marang strolled along Great Winchester Street in the City of London, among the bustling crowds of bankers and brokers of the business district, unaware that the parcel he carried held...
nanoscale views
Annual Nobel speculation thread Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your speculative laureates this year for physics and chemistry?  As I did last year and for several years before, I will put forward my usual thought that the physics prize could...
Damn Interesting
Lofty Ambitions One summer day in 1933, in a brief pocket of time between the two World Wars, a British man named...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
One summer day in 1933, in a brief pocket of time between the two World Wars, a British man named Maurice Wilson clutched the stick of his tiny, open air biplane and watched his fuel gauge dwindle. He had only learned to fly two months earlier, but inexperience was not his...
Quantum Frontiers
My experimental adventures in quantum thermodynamics Imagine a billiard ball bouncing around on a pool table. High-school level physics enables us to...
9 months ago
70
9 months ago
Imagine a billiard ball bouncing around on a pool table. High-school level physics enables us to predict its motion until the end of time using simple equations for energy and momentum conservation, as long as you know the initial conditions … Continue reading →
Quantum Frontiers
Mo’ heights mo’ challenges – Climbing mount grad school My wife’s love of mountain hiking and my interest in quantum thermodynamics collided in Telluride,...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
My wife’s love of mountain hiking and my interest in quantum thermodynamics collided in Telluride, Colorado. We spent ten days in Telluride, where I spoke at the Information Engines at the Frontiers of Nanoscale Thermodynamics workshop. Telluride is a gorgeous … Continue reading...
symmetry magazine
Whatever happened to the theory of everything? A theory of everything was all the rage in the 1980s. So where did it go? It is...
a year ago
53
a year ago
A theory of everything was all the rage in the 1980s. So where did it go? It is only the optimists who achieve anything in this world—theorist John Ellis once read this adage on a candy wrapper. It stuck with him, so much so that in 1986 he referenced this...
Wanderingspace
Space-X Looking Like 2001 Space Odyssey Amazing shot. Looks like a movie.
a year ago
Math Is Still...
How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface....
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface. The hidden culprit? Magnetic activity. The post How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Grading the World's Shortest Manifesto It gets an F and the student has earned the death penalty
a week ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
"We Should Sell To Self-Insured Employers" | Out-Of-Pocket Six Stages Of Health Tech Grief Pt. 2
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Secret Research Techniques | Out-Of-Pocket A magician always reveals his tricks for the purposes of engagement
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
AC vs DC and other Power Questions I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9...
a month ago
28
a month ago
I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9 hour seminar on scientific skepticism for the Dubai Future Foundation. That sounds like a lot of time, but it isn’t. It was a good reminder of the vast body of knowledge that is...
The Roots of...
Highlights from The Industrial Revolution, by T. S. Ashton The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in...
a year ago
24
a year ago
The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in 1948. Here are some of my highlights from it. (Emphasis in bold added by me.) The role of chance What was the role of chance in the inventions of the Industrial Revolution? It is true...
Willem Pennings
Home Assistant-compatible air quality sensor I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I recently moved and our new home is equipped with a ventilation system that distributes fresh (outside) air through the house and recoups heat from the air that is exhausted. There is a problem with this system, though. Sometimes, for example when a neighbour lights their wood...
Marine Madness
Book Club: ‘The Island of Sea Women’ by Lisa See Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
Little is known about Jeju- a Korean island- occupied by brutal Japanese troops in the 1930s and ’40s, later liberated by US forces and turned over to the even more barbarous Korean regime whose wrongdoings were overlooked by both American and U.N. occupiers. Lisa See travels...
Wanderingspace
Webb’s Jupiter So this is “false color” becuase it is infrared (like all Webb images) and made from only two...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
So this is “false color” becuase it is infrared (like all Webb images) and made from only two filters orange and cyan. However, the detail is incredible. That dot is tiny Amalthea at the left and— yes… that is Jupiter’s elusive ring. According to researcher Thierry Fouchet, “This...
NeuroLogica Blog
MOBE – A New Gene Editing System Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats? Well, now you can add MOBE to the list – multiplexed orthogonal base editor. Base editors are not new, they are basically enzymes that will change one base – C (cytosine), T...
Chris Grossack's...
Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 3 -- Bonus Axioms In the first post of the series, we talked about what the topological topos is, and how we can...
5 months ago
49
5 months ago
In the first post of the series, we talked about what the topological topos is, and how we can think about its objects (and, importantly, how we can relate computations in the topos $\mathcal{T}$ to computations with topological spaces in “the real world”). In part two, we...
brr
Doors of McMurdo Doors, in a variety of shapes and styles.
over a year ago
Math Is Still...
What Is Analog Computing? You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them. ...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
You don’t need 0s and 1s to perform computations, and in some cases it’s better to avoid them. The post What Is Analog Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Obstacles To Value-Based Care | Out-Of-Pocket taking on risk is easier said than done
a year ago
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
2
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.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
AI in healthcare - defensibility, capabilities, and cost reduction | Out-Of-Pocket
7 months ago
Wanderingspace
Kind of Cool Image of Io from Juno Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI The brightest spot is a radiation signature, but all the rest are thought to be active volcanos on the Io surface. The moons are not a primary target of the Juno mission, but they do occasionally take a peek to try and monitor such...
IEEE Spectrum
The Forgotten Story of How IBM Invented the Automated Fab In 1970, Bill Harding envisioned a fully automated wafer-fabrication line that would produce...
3 weeks ago
23
3 weeks ago
In 1970, Bill Harding envisioned a fully automated wafer-fabrication line that would produce integrated circuits in less than one day. Not only was such a goal gutsy 54 years ago, it would be bold even in today’s billion-dollar fabs, where the fabrication time of an advanced IC...
Math Is Still...
Magnetism May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry The preferred “handedness” of biomolecules could have emerged from biased interactions between...
a year ago
6
a year ago
The preferred “handedness” of biomolecules could have emerged from biased interactions between electrons and magnetic surfaces, new research suggests. The post Magnetism May Have Given Life Its Molecular Asymmetry first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Should you infect yourself with Zika? What life is like in a challenge trial
8 months ago
Asterisk
Manufacturing Bliss A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique that practitioners claim could upend how we think about the brain — and transform our lives in the process.
Chris Grossack's...
A truly incredible fact about the number 37 So I was on math stackexchange the other day, and I saw a cute post looking for a book which lists,...
a year ago
6
a year ago
So I was on math stackexchange the other day, and I saw a cute post looking for a book which lists, for many many integers, facts that Ramanujan could have told Hardy if he’d taken a cab other than 1729. A few days ago OP answered their own question, saying that the book in...
NeuroLogica Blog
Is AI Sentient Revisited On the SGU this week we interviewed Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google employee who believes that Google’s...
a year ago
31
a year ago
On the SGU this week we interviewed Blake Lemoine, the ex-Google employee who believes that Google’s LaMDA may be sentient, based on his interactions with it. This was a fascinating discussion, and even though I think we did a pretty deep dive in the time we had, it also felt...
Blog - Practical...
Every Construction Machine Explained in 15 Minutes [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] We talk about a lot of big...
a year ago
22
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] We talk about a lot of big structures on this channel. But, it takes a lot of big tools to build the roads, dams, sewage lift stations, and every other part of the constructed environment. To me, there’s almost...
ToughSF
Actively Cooled Armor: from Helium to Liquid Tin. We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all,...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all, be-all of space warfare? Not if we fend off their destructive power with actively cooled armor. Let's have a look at the different cooling solutions, from high pressure gas to...
Asterisk
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because...
10 months ago
2
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.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Research papers and the patient perspective | Out-Of-Pocket we can make improvements with some better studies
a year ago
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Baseball Mud A manufactured baseball has a smooth surface with very little friction, and this makes it hard for a...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
A manufactured baseball has a smooth surface with very little friction, and this makes it hard for a baseball pitcher to throw with great accuracy. Pitchers in the early days of baseball enhanced the friction by several ad hoc techniques that included rubbing with tobacco juice...
nanoscale views
Bob Curl - it is possible to be successful and also a good person I went to a memorial service today at Rice for my late colleague Bob Curl, who died this past...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
I went to a memorial service today at Rice for my late colleague Bob Curl, who died this past summer, and it was a really nice event.  I met Bob almost immediately upon my arrival at Rice back in 2000 (though I’d heard about him from my thesis advisor, who’d met him at the Nobel...
Math Is Still...
‘A-Team’ of Math Proves a Critical Link Between Addition and Sets A team of four prominent mathematicians, including two Fields medalists, proved a conjecture...
a year ago
27
a year ago
A team of four prominent mathematicians, including two Fields medalists, proved a conjecture described as a “holy grail of additive combinatorics.” The post ‘A-Team’ of Math Proves a Critical Link Between Addition and Sets first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
23
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
Power-To-X and Climate Change Policy What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy,...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy, like wind, solar, nuclear, or hydroelectric, to make hydrogen from water. This process does not release any CO2, just oxygen, and when the hydrogen is burned back with that oxygen...
Math Is Still...
Bats Use the Same Brain Cells to Map Physical and Social Worlds New research in social bats raises the intriguing possibility that evolution can reprogram the...
a year ago
11
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...
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise of Groupware A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. These days, computer users take collaboration software for granted. Google Docs, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Salesforce, and so on, are such a big part of many...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, July–August 2023 A quasi-monthly feature (I skipped it last month, so this is a double portion). This is a longish...
a year ago
6
a year ago
A quasi-monthly feature (I skipped it last month, so this is a double portion). This is a longish post covering many topics; feel free to skim and skip around. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find them in my links digests. These updates are less...
nanoscale views
The future of the semiconductor industry, + The Mechanical Universe Three items of interest: This article is a nice review of present semiconductor memory...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Three items of interest: This article is a nice review of present semiconductor memory technology.  The electron micrographs in Fig. 1 and the scaling history in Fig. 3 are impressive. This article in IEEE Spectrum is a very interesting look at how some people think we will get...
NeuroLogica Blog
New Generation of Electric Robots Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These robot videos always look impressive, but at the very least we know that we are seeing the best take. We don’t know how many times the robot failed to get the one great video. There...
NeuroLogica Blog
3D Printed Rocket Launches This is one of those technology news stories where the implications of the technology is greater...
a year ago
28
a year ago
This is one of those technology news stories where the implications of the technology is greater than the thing itself. Relativity Space, a rocket company based in California, launched their first Terran-1 rocket. The launch ultimately failed when the second stage failed to...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Representation and human history Do shrunken heads belong in a museum?
over a year ago
Chris Grossack's...
Internal Group Actions as Enriched Functors Earlier today this month on the Category Theory Zulip, Bernd Losert asked an extremely natural...
10 months ago
24
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
What Is a Grand Conspiracy? Ah, the categorization question again. This is an endless, but much needed, endeavor within human...
9 months ago
37
9 months ago
Ah, the categorization question again. This is an endless, but much needed, endeavor within human intellectual activity. We have the need to categorize things, if for no other reason than we need to communicate with each other about them. Often skeptics, like myself, talk about...
Cremieux Recueil
The Worst Argument Against Ozempic Unfortunately, being skinny might require effort
3 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Clickbait and Misinformation Which is worse – clickbaity headlines for news articles that are factually correct, but may be...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
Which is worse – clickbaity headlines for news articles that are factually correct, but may be playing up a sensational angle, or straight-up misinformation? It depends on what you mean by “worse”. A new study tries to address this information, with some interesting findings....
Blog - Practical...
The Wild Story of the Taum Sauk Dam Failure [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Early in the morning of...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Early in the morning of December 14, 2005, pumps were nearly finished filling the upper reservoir at the Taum Sauk power station, marking the end of the daily cycle. Water rose to the top of the rockfill...
Math Is Still...
In the Milky Way’s Stars, a History of Violence Our galaxy's stars keep a record of its past. By reading those stories, astronomers are learning...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Our galaxy's stars keep a record of its past. By reading those stories, astronomers are learning more about how the Milky Way came to be — and about the galaxy we live in today. The post In the Milky Way’s Stars, a History of Violence first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Shutting the California Prison System’s Revolving Door Between 2009 and 2014, California passed a series of laws to reduce the population in its prison...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
Between 2009 and 2014, California passed a series of laws to reduce the population in its prison system, which for years had operated over capacity. Determining whether those laws worked was not a straightforward task.
Explorations of an...
Desert Birding, And The Spectacular Quebrada De Las Conchas January 18, 2023 Ah, a sleep-in. The late night owling escapades (can it really be called owling if...
a year ago
14
a year ago
January 18, 2023 Ah, a sleep-in. The late night owling escapades (can it really be called owling if we didn't find any owls?) had made our decision for a leisurely start quite easy to make. It also helped that we had just a few bird targets this day.  We began in the cactus-laden...
Math Is Still...
My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to...
8 months ago
21
8 months ago
Founding editor-in-chief Thomas Lin looks back at a decade of Quanta journalism and forward to what’s next for the magazine. The post My Fantastic Voyage at Quanta Magazine first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Converting CO2 to Carbon Nanofibers One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not slowly increasing, is the ability to draw CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to a solid form. Often referred to as carbon capture, some form of this is going to be necessary...
NeuroLogica Blog
Boeing Starliner Launches Soon If all goes well, Boeing’s Starliner capsule will launch on Monday May 6th with two crew members...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
If all goes well, Boeing’s Starliner capsule will launch on Monday May 6th with two crew members aboard, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who will be spending a week aboard the ISS. This is the last (hopefully) test of the new capsule, and if successful it will become officially...
brr
Mud Murdo The beautiful ambiance of a McMurdo summer.
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
How We Determine What to Believe as True Psychologists have been studying a very basic cognitive function that appears to be of increasing...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Psychologists have been studying a very basic cognitive function that appears to be of increasing importance – how do we choose what to believe as true or false? We live in a world awash in information, and access to essentially the world’s store of knowledge is now a trivial...
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
9
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....
brr
South Pole Arrival Flying to the bottom of the world!
over a year ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Black Hole Has Daily Meals Worthy of Thanksgiving You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another celebratory meal), it’s nothing compared to Quasar J0529-4351, which astronomers observed earlier this year to be consuming the mass of our entire Sun EACH and every day!  They called it...
NeuroLogica Blog
Fruit Fly Connectome Completed Scientists have just published in Nature that they have completed the entire connectome of a fruit...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Scientists have just published in Nature that they have completed the entire connectome of a fruit fly: Network statistics of the whole-brain connectome of Drosophila. The map includes 140,000 neurons and more than 50 million connections. This is an incredible achievement that...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Dec. 21 is Winter Solstice — Why We Have Seasons on Earth Saturday, Dec. 21 will be the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year, with...
3 days ago
7
3 days ago
Saturday, Dec. 21 will be the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year, with which we mark the beginning of the winter season in the Earth’s northern hemisphere.  It’s interesting to note that the planets Venus and Jupiter do not have seasons like the...
Math Is Still...
How to Build an Origami Computer Two mathematicians have shown that origami can, in principle, be used to perform any possible...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Two mathematicians have shown that origami can, in principle, be used to perform any possible computation. The post How to Build an Origami Computer first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Rip-off ETF? An article in a recent issue of The Economist suggests, right in the title, “Investors should avoid...
3 months ago
36
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...
Quantum Frontiers
The Book of Mark, Chapter 2 Late in the summer of 2021, I visited a physics paradise in a physical paradise: the Kavli Institute...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Late in the summer of 2021, I visited a physics paradise in a physical paradise: the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). The KITP sits at the edge of the University of California, Santa Barbara like a bougainvillea bush at … Continue reading →
The Works in...
History is in the making It's technology and ideas, not politics, that change our lives the most. History should reflect...
3 weeks ago
Eukaryote Writes...
[UPDATE to most recent post] I edited the post “A point of clarification on infohazard terminology” in response to a good point...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
I edited the post “A point of clarification on infohazard terminology” in response to a good point of feedback, and changed a terminology proposal. I’m writing a separate update in case the old unedited version is still lodged in your RSS feed. Read the new one instead! It’s the...
Wanderingspace
COMET 67P/CG ANIMATED FROM ROSETTA STILLS COMET #67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO INTERNATIONAL #ROSETTA MISSION Date 18 jul 2015 Distance to...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
COMET #67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO INTERNATIONAL #ROSETTA MISSION Date 18 jul 2015 Distance to Target 182 km Orange+Blue filtershttps://t.co/ZuYVehJOLx ESA/Rosetta/MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA/J. Roger pic.twitter.com/Fg8rNmjbNy — landru79 (@landru79) June 13, 2022 Hit...
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
58
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,...
Math Is Still...
The Brainstem Fine-Tunes Inflammation Throughout the Body The evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate also regulates...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
The evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate also regulates the immune system — a discovery about the brain-body axis made by experts on taste. The post The Brainstem Fine-Tunes Inflammation Throughout the Body first appeared on...
Beautiful Public...
Special Database 18: 3,248 Mugshots Used for Training Image Recognition Systems The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos...
a year ago
26
a year ago
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a dataset of mugshot photos of 1,573 people for decades, including 175 minors, until we asked about them.
IEEE Spectrum
Designing the First Apple Macintosh: The Engineers’ Story In 1979 the Macintosh personal computer existed only as the pet idea of Jef Raskin, a veteran of the...
a year ago
9
a year ago
In 1979 the Macintosh personal computer existed only as the pet idea of Jef Raskin, a veteran of the Apple II team, who had proposed that Apple Computer Inc. make a low-cost “appliance”-type computer that would be as easy to use as a toaster. Mr. Raskin believed the computer he...
Asterisk
Growing Up Overnight A look at the past few years of LLM progress.
a year ago
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
Blog - Practical...
Philadelphia I-95 Bridge Collapse Explained [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On Jun 11, 2023, a fuel tanker...
a year ago
35
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On Jun 11, 2023, a fuel tanker truck caught fire on an exit underneath Interstate 95 in Northeast Philadelphia. The fire severely damaged the northbound bridge, eventually causing it to collapse. Sadly, the...
Wanderingspace
Ganymede from Juno Some incredibly sharp images from the Juno mission of Ganymede. The first new views of this...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Some incredibly sharp images from the Juno mission of Ganymede. The first new views of this beautiful moon since Galileo. See more from kevinmgill on flickr. Also see the thread building up to these full composites in unmannedspaceflight.com.
nanoscale views
Condensed matter on the public stage, and not in a good way This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and...
a year ago
4
a year ago
This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and while in the abstract I like our discipline getting noticed, this is definitely not how I’d have preferred it to happen. First, more fun re Ranga Dias.  Fresh off renewed...
IEEE Spectrum
This Engineer Became a Star in Technology Publishing Donald Christiansen, who transformed IEEE Spectrum from a promising but erratic technology magazine...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Donald Christiansen, who transformed IEEE Spectrum from a promising but erratic technology magazine into a repeat National Magazine Award winner, died on 2 October 2024, at the age of 97, in Huntington, N.Y. served aboard the aircraft carrier San Jacinto, an experience that led...
Melting Asphalt
Outbreak Harry Stevens at The Washington Post recently published a very elegant simulation of how a disease...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Harry Stevens at The Washington Post recently published a very elegant simulation of how a disease like COVID-19 spreads. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking it out. Today I want to follow up with something I've been working… Read more ›
NeuroLogica Blog
Another UFO Whistleblower How seriously should we take the claims of David Grusch? He is an airforce veteran and former member...
a year ago
30
a year ago
How seriously should we take the claims of David Grusch? He is an airforce veteran and former member of the UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) task force, which is enough to at least hear him out. He gave an exclusive interview to journalist Ross Coulthart from NewsNation, part...
Math Is Still...
Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame...
a year ago
56
a year ago
The development of attosecond pulses of light allowed researchers to explore the frame-by-frame movement of electrons. The post Physicists Who Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time Win Nobel Prize first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Student Attitudes Toward AI in the Class Researchers recently published an extensive survey of almost 6,000 students across academic...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Researchers recently published an extensive survey of almost 6,000 students across academic institution in Sweden. The results are not surprising, but they do give a snapshot of where we are with the recent introduction of large language model AIs. Most students, 56%, reported...
Math Is Still...
How Is AI Changing the Science of Prediction? With lots of data, a strong model and statistical thinking, scientists can make predictions about...
a month ago
22
a month ago
With lots of data, a strong model and statistical thinking, scientists can make predictions about all sorts of complex phenomena. Today, this practice is evolving to harness the power of machine learning and massive datasets. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with...
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime:...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime: black hole entropy. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory,...
Math Is Still...
How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to...
7 months ago
46
7 months ago
The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to learn from it. The post How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
28
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
How Humans Can Adapt to Space My recent article on settling Mars has generated a lot of discussion, some of it around the basic...
11 months ago
43
11 months ago
My recent article on settling Mars has generated a lot of discussion, some of it around the basic concept of how difficult it is for humans to live anywhere but a thin envelope of air hugging the surface of the Earth. This is undoubtedly true, as I have discussed before – we...
Asterisk
What I Won’t Eat A reflection on ethics, animal cognition, and chocolate cake.
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Scientists Find a Fast Way to Describe Quantum Systems After years of false starts, a team of computer scientists has found a way to efficiently deduce the...
7 months ago
43
7 months ago
After years of false starts, a team of computer scientists has found a way to efficiently deduce the Hamiltonian of a physical system at any constant temperature. The post Scientists Find a Fast Way to Describe Quantum Systems first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible...
a month ago
18
a month ago
The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications. The post In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Light from Space
Lagoon and the Hourglass A view of the center region of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8, Sharpless 25). There's several other...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
A view of the center region of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8, Sharpless 25). There's several other objects visible, notably the Hourglass Nebula and open star cluster NGC 6530, as well as numerous Bok globules (the small dark clouds, that will one day form new stars). Click...
nanoscale views
New paper - plasmons, excitons, and steering energy We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it...
a year ago
11
a year ago
We have a new paper out in Nano Letters (arxiv version here), and I wanted to explain a bit about it and why I think it's a really cool result.    I've written before about the Purcell Effect.  When we study quantum mechanics, we learn that the rates of processes, like the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Age of the Moon Revised There are a few interesting stories lurking in this news item, but lets start with the top level – a...
a year ago
8
a year ago
There are a few interesting stories lurking in this news item, but lets start with the top level – a new study revises the minimum age of the Moon to 4.46 billion years, 40 million years older than the previous estimate. That in itself is interesting, but not game-changing. It’s...
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
58
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...
Math Is Still...
The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea Cell membranes from comb jellies reveal a new kind of adaptation to the deep sea: curvy lipids that...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
Cell membranes from comb jellies reveal a new kind of adaptation to the deep sea: curvy lipids that conform to an ideal shape under pressure. The post The Cellular Secret to Resisting the Pressure of the Deep Sea first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Drew Ex Machina
Tropical Weather Analytics and Phantom Space Partner on Hurricane Hunter Satellite Constellation Tropical Weather Analytics, Inc. (TWA), with a revolutionary 3D measurement capability for improved...
a year ago
33
a year ago
Tropical Weather Analytics, Inc. (TWA), with a revolutionary 3D measurement capability for improved hurricane forecasting and weather intelligence, is announcing a strategic partnership with Phantom Space […]
ToughSF
Cold, Laser-Coupled Particle Beams This is a follow-up to the Particle Beams in Space post. This time, we look at two concepts that...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
This is a follow-up to the Particle Beams in Space post. This time, we look at two concepts that can massively increase the effective range of particle beam: one is being applied every day in modern accelerators, and the other is an outgrowth of a tool used in...
Math Is Still...
Memories Help Brains Recognize New Events Worth Remembering Memories may affect how well the brain will learn about future events by shifting our perceptions of...
a year ago
68
a year ago
Memories may affect how well the brain will learn about future events by shifting our perceptions of the world. The post Memories Help Brains Recognize New Events Worth Remembering first appeared on Quanta Magazine
wadertales
When mates behave differently Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
Iceland’s 40,000 Oystercatchers are an interesting mix of resident birds and migrants, providing an ideal system in which to study the costs and benefits of the two options, and to try to work out what influences whether an individual becomes a ‘resident’ or a ‘migrant’. I’ve...
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve...
a year ago
20
a year ago
This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge...
IEEE Spectrum
This Clock Made Power Grids Possible On 23 October 1916, an engineer named Henry E. Warren quietly revolutionized power transmission by...
9 months ago
25
9 months ago
On 23 October 1916, an engineer named Henry E. Warren quietly revolutionized power transmission by installing an electric clock in the L Street generating station of Boston’s Edison Electric Illuminating Co. This master station clock kept a very particular type of time: It used a...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: Did The FDA Mess Up With Aduhelm? | Out-Of-Pocket what if it incentivizes actually good drugs?
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
HEAVY CONSTRUCTION of a Sewage Pump Station - Ep 3 This is the third episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's...
a year ago
48
a year ago
This is the third episode of a five-part pilot series to gauge your interest in "How It's Made"-esque heavy construction videos. Drop a comment or send me an email to let me know what you think! Watch on YouTube above or ad-free on Nebula here.
Math Is Still...
The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics. ...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics. The post The Symmetry That Makes Solving Math Equations Easy first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Many Worlds
Many Worlds Archive is Available I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS...
a year ago
32
a year ago
I had the pleasure of reporting and writing the Many Worlds column — sponsored by NASA’s NExSS initiative and the Lunar & Planetary Institute — for almost eight years. But the run came to an end in October. Now an archive of the more than 400 columns is easily available at...
Beautiful Public...
The United States Frequency Allocation Chart This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s...
a year ago
25
a year ago
This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s most crucial – and invisible – national assets: the radio spectrum.
Probably...
Standard deviation of a count This post is part of a new project with the working title Data Q&A: Answering the real questions...
8 months ago
51
8 months ago
This post is part of a new project with the working title Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. In each installment, I’ll take a question from Reddit’s statistics forum and answer it, using Python code to demonstrate. My answer is in a Jupyter notebook — see the...
Probably...
Multiple Regression with StatsModels This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from...
2 weeks ago
8
2 weeks ago
This is the third is a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science which available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 10, which is about multiple regression. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In the previous...
Cremieux Recueil
Did Unions End Long Work Hours? Is it growth or organized labor that's more responsible for giving us shorter workdays?
3 months ago
Math Is Still...
What Is the Nature of Consciousness? Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as...
a year ago
21
a year ago
Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon. The post What Is the Nature of...
nanoscale views
Seeing through your head - diffuse imaging From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it...
2 weeks ago
18
2 weeks ago
From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it might be very convenient to be able to perform some kind of optical imaging of the interior of what you'd ordinarily consider opaque objects.  Even when a wavelength range is...
Asterisk
The Transistor Cliff Moore’s law may be coming to an end. What happens to AI progress if it does?
a year ago
Quantum Frontiers
A classical foreshadow of John Preskill’s Bell Prize Editor’s Note: This post was co-authored by Hsin-Yuan Huang (Robert) and Richard Kueng. John...
10 months ago
29
10 months ago
Editor’s Note: This post was co-authored by Hsin-Yuan Huang (Robert) and Richard Kueng. John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, has been named the 2024 John Stewart Bell Prize recipient. The prize honors John’s contributions in … Continue...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Decentralizing Journals and Peer Review DAOs | Out-Of-Pocket the evolution of legitimacy in scientific publishing
a year ago
Math Is Still...
The Two Faces of Space-Time A mysterious phenomenon known as duality often leads to new discoveries in physics. This time,...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
A mysterious phenomenon known as duality often leads to new discoveries in physics. This time, space-time itself can sometimes be two things at once. The post The Two Faces of Space-Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Sean Carroll
Johns Hopkins As far as I remember, the first time I stepped onto a university campus was in junior high school,...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
As far as I remember, the first time I stepped onto a university campus was in junior high school, when I visited Johns Hopkins for an awards ceremony for the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. (I grew up in an environment that didn’t involve spending a lot of time on...
NeuroLogica Blog
Spotting Misinformation There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they...
7 months ago
73
7 months ago
There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they verify information they encounter in the news and on social media, and 96% of Americans say that we need to limit the spread of misinformation online. And yet, the spread of...
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Airfoil The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many...
9 months ago
60
9 months ago
The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, but the physics of flight can still be puzzling. In this article we’ll...
NeuroLogica Blog
Being Trans Is Not A Mental Illness On the current episode of the SGU, because it is pride month, we expressed our general support for...
a year ago
53
a year ago
On the current episode of the SGU, because it is pride month, we expressed our general support for the LGBTQ community. I also opined about how important it is to respect individual liberty, the freedom to simply live your authentic life as you choose, and how ironic it is that...
NeuroLogica Blog
Panspermia Again Recently I was asked what I thought about this video, which suggests it is possible that life formed...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Recently I was asked what I thought about this video, which suggests it is possible that life formed in the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang. Although no mentioned specifically in the video, the ideas presents are essentially panspermia – the idea that life formed in...
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Bicycle There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling...
a year ago
93
a year ago
There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you can guide the rider with the slider, and you can also...
Marine Madness
Which countries eat the most seafood per person? The top 10 seafood-consuming nations in the world, plus trends among the world’s richest countries....
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
The top 10 seafood-consuming nations in the world, plus trends among the world’s richest countries. Seafood is a vital food group and form of income for millions of people around the world. The seafood industry has more than quadrupled in the last 50 years and is estimated to be...
Math Is Still...
Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to...
a year ago
15
a year ago
New research reveals how marine microbes use an extra membrane that once had digestive functions to boost their yield from photosynthesis. The post Microbes Gained Photosynthesis Superpowers From a ‘Proton Pump’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Anyons, simulation, and "real" systems Quanta magazine this week published an article about two very recent papers, in which different...
a year ago
90
a year ago
Quanta magazine this week published an article about two very recent papers, in which different groups performed quantum simulations of anyons, objects that do not follow Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac statistics when they are exchanged.  For so-called Abelian anyons (which I wrote...
The Works in...
Issue 12: Houston, we have a solution Plus: How Mexico built its state, the causes of the Baby Boom, and the 141-year quest for a malaria...
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Computer Scientists Establish the Best Way to Traverse a Graph Dijkstra’s algorithm was long thought to be the most efficient way to find a graph’s best routes....
a month ago
21
a month ago
Dijkstra’s algorithm was long thought to be the most efficient way to find a graph’s best routes. Researchers have now proved that it’s “universally optimal.” The post Computer Scientists Establish the Best Way to Traverse a Graph first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Eukaryote Writes...
Internet Harvest (2020, 2) Internet Harvest is a selection of the most succulent links on the internet that I’ve recently...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
Internet Harvest is a selection of the most succulent links on the internet that I’ve recently plucked from its fruitful boughs. Feel free to discuss the links in the comments. Also, semi-intentionally, none of the links in this harvest are COVID-19-related. If you want some...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using CRISPR To Treat HIV CRISPR has been big scientific news since it was introduced in 2012. The science actually goes back...
9 months ago
31
9 months ago
CRISPR has been big scientific news since it was introduced in 2012. The science actually goes back to 1987, but the CRISPR/Cas9 system was patented in 2012, and the developers won the Noble Prize in Chemistry in 2020. The system gives researchers the ability to quickly and...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Special Edition: A Toilet And A Neural Network | Out-Of-Pocket You didn't know you needed this. And you probably don't.
a year ago
Math Is Still...
Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the...
10 months ago
26
10 months ago
The Reykjanes Peninsula has entered a new volcanic era. Innovative efforts to map and monitor the subterranean magma are saving lives. The post Inside Scientists’ Life-Saving Prediction of the Iceland Eruption first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 4 + wrapup My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a...
a year ago
22
a year ago
My last day at the March Meeting was a bit scattershot, but here are a few highlights: In a session about spin transport, the opening invited talk by Jiaming He was a clear discussion of recent experimental results on spin Seebeck effects in the magnetic insulator LuFeO3. The...
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
27
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...
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
27
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...
IEEE Spectrum
Robert Kahn: The Great Interconnector In the mid-1960s, Robert Kahn began thinking about how computers with different operating systems...
8 months ago
67
8 months ago
In the mid-1960s, Robert Kahn began thinking about how computers with different operating systems could talk to each other across a network. He didn’t think much about what they would say to one another, though. He was a theoretical guy, on leave from the faculty of the...
wadertales
UK waders: “Into the Red” If you ask British birdwatchers to name the eleven wader species that are causing the most...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
If you ask British birdwatchers to name the eleven wader species that are causing the most conservation concern in the UK, they would probably not include Dunlin. Curlew may well be top of their lists, even though the most recent population estimate is 58,500 breeding pairs, but...
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...
Stephen Wolfram...
What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost...
Uncharted...
6 Questions You Asked Yourself about Solar How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will...
a month ago
4
a month ago
How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will it birth, how much surface will it take up, where will it appear first?
Casey Handmer's blog
We can Terraform the American West Why is there almost nothing on the left hand side of the USA? Water scarcity! We’re missing 300...
a month ago
3
a month ago
Why is there almost nothing on the left hand side of the USA? Water scarcity! We’re missing 300 million Americans. We’re missing  30 global cities west of 100 degrees longitude. We should do something about it! The western US is a parched opportunity to create millions of acres...
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
27
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Light and Distance in an Expanding Universe Commenter Lal asks in the topic suggestions: “Media reports that light has been travelling from that...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
Commenter Lal asks in the topic suggestions: “Media reports that light has been travelling from that distant galaxy for 13 and a half billion years, which I assume is true, but this neither represents the original nor the current distance to that galaxy in terms of light years. I...
Chris Grossack's...
Life in Johnstone's Topological Topos 2 -- Topological Algebras In the first post, we introduced Johnstone’s topological topos $\mathcal{T}$ and talked about what...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
In the first post, we introduced Johnstone’s topological topos $\mathcal{T}$ and talked about what its objects look like. We showed how the interpretation of type theory in $\mathcal{T}$ gives us an “intrinsic topology” on any type we construct. We also alluded to the fact...
Probably...
Elements of Data Science I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle suggests, it is about “Getting started with Data Science and Python”. Order now from Lulu.com and get 20% off! I am publishing this book myself, which has one big advantage: I can...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Healthcare Ideas That Look Good But Are Bad | Out-Of-Pocket clinical trial matching, "find a specialist", and more
8 months ago
Math Is Still...
‘Species Repulsion’ Enables High Biodiversity in Tropical Trees Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests. The post ‘Species Repulsion’ Enables High Biodiversity in Tropical Trees first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Ears Are Weird In a previous article, I looked at 93 measurements from the ANSUR-II dataset and found that ear...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
In a previous article, I looked at 93 measurements from the ANSUR-II dataset and found that ear protrusion is not correlated with any other measurement. In a followup article, I used principle component analysis to explore the correlation structure of the measurements, and found...
Blog - Practical...
What Really Happened with the Substation Attack in North Carolina? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] At around 7PM on the balmy...
a year ago
30
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] At around 7PM on the balmy evening of Saturday, December 3, 2022, nearly every electric customer in Moore County, North Carolina was simultaneously plunged into darkness. Amid the confusion, the power utility...
Math Is Still...
Does Nothingness Exist? Even empty space bubbles with energy, according to quantum mechanics — and that fact affects almost...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Even empty space bubbles with energy, according to quantum mechanics — and that fact affects almost every facet of physical reality. The theoretical physicist Isabel Garcia Garcia explains to Steven Strogatz why it’s so important in modern physics to understand what a true vacuum...
Math Is Still...
A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence By imbuing enormous vectors with semantic meaning, we can get machines to reason more abstractly —...
a year ago
94
a year ago
By imbuing enormous vectors with semantic meaning, we can get machines to reason more abstractly — and efficiently — than before. The post A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence first appeared on Quanta Magazine
wadertales
Conservation beyond boundaries When an environmental impact assessment concludes that only a small number of shorebirds will be...
a year ago
27
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...
The Works in...
The road from serfdom Using opt-ins to reform Russia's backwards tsarist agricultural sector
9 months ago
Math Is Still...
The Unraveling of Space-Time This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the...
2 months ago
19
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
Inverted Passion
Review of 2023 Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember...
11 months ago
27
11 months ago
Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember recently writing my 2022 review, and it was long because I ended up packing a lot of stuff into it. ✅ Train 5 days a week (including Mixed Martial Arts) I did manage to train 5...
Math Is Still...
How Is Science Even Possible? How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the...
6 months ago
57
6 months ago
How are scientists able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? How does math make the complex cosmos understandable? In this episode, the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld and co-host Steven Strogatz explore the deep foundations of the scientific process. The...
NeuroLogica Blog
Harvesting Energy from Water Vapor I did not plan to write yet another post about energy, but this popped up and I had to write about...
a year ago
55
a year ago
I did not plan to write yet another post about energy, but this popped up and I had to write about it. UMASS researchers have produced a device that generates electricity by harvesting charge from water vapor. They write: The common feature of these materials is that they are...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Potential of AI + CRISPR In my book, which I will now shamelessly promote – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
In my book, which I will now shamelessly promote – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors and I discuss the incredible potential of information-based technologies. As we increasingly transition to digital technology, we can leverage the increasing power of computer...
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
26
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
The Clipper Europa Mission I wrote earlier this week about the latest successful test of Starship and the capture of the Super...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
I wrote earlier this week about the latest successful test of Starship and the capture of the Super Heavy booster by grabbing arms of the landing tower. This was quite a feat, but it should not eclipse what was perhaps even bigger space news this week – the launch of NASAs...
Beautiful Public...
Mapping the Sea Floor USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of...
a year ago
43
a year ago
USGS research vessels equipped with cameras, sonar and scanners created a map of 125 square miles of the sea floor off Cape Ann, MA.
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 4: The Chiricahuas September 3, 2024 It was another beautiful day in paradise, and all of us were up early to watch the...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
September 3, 2024 It was another beautiful day in paradise, and all of us were up early to watch the sun rise over the desert. The active bird feeders gave us something to study while we drank our coffee and ate our egg sandwiches that Nikki had crafted for us.  Black-throated...
Math Is Still...
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
Drew Ex Machina
Webb’s First Glimpse of Jupiter, Its Moons & Rings A long time ago when I was a budding amateur astronomer, one of the first targets I would observe...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
A long time ago when I was a budding amateur astronomer, one of the first targets I would observe each evening with my new telescope was […]
Math Is Still...
Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. ...
a year ago
5
a year ago
New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. The post Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Math Is Still...
Math That Connects Where We’re Going to Where We’ve Been Recursion builds bridges between ideas from across different math classes and illustrates the power...
9 months ago
38
9 months ago
Recursion builds bridges between ideas from across different math classes and illustrates the power of creative mathematical thinking. The post Math That Connects Where We’re Going to Where We’ve Been first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
Smellovision Gets a Refresh This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
a year ago
5
a year ago
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Modern virtual reality is a feast for the eyes and ears—but coming in a distant fourth (behind haptic touch technologies), smell has been nearly completely ignored. Earlier this...
Probably...
Have the Nones Leveled Off? Last month Ryan Burge published “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling“, using data from the 2023 Cooperative...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
Last month Ryan Burge published “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling“, using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study to show that the increase in the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has hit a plateau. Comparing the number of Atheists, Agnostics, and “Nothing in...
Drew Ex Machina
NASA’s Viking Mission & The Search for Life on Mars: The Experiments For young space enthusiasts like myself growing up in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking mission to Mars was...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
For young space enthusiasts like myself growing up in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking mission to Mars was one of the more exciting and memorable. The Viking […]
symmetry magazine
IceCube and NANOGrav open new windows onto the universe New results from a neutrino telescope and a gravitational-wave observatory show how astronomers use...
a year ago
18
a year ago
New results from a neutrino telescope and a gravitational-wave observatory show how astronomers use different forms of messengers to study the cosmos.
IEEE Spectrum
The Cold War Arms Race Over Prosthetic Arms In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts...
a year ago
5
a year ago
In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts General Hospital. Wiener’s bad luck turned into fruitful conversations with his orthopedic surgeon, Melvin Glimcher. Those talks in turn led to a collaboration and an invention: the...
IEEE Spectrum
The Incredible Story Behind the First Transistor Radio But that’s pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
But that’s pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The result was the Regency TR-1, the world’s first commercial transistor radio, which debuted 70 years ago this month. The engineers delivered on Haggerty’s audacious goal, and I...
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
31
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...
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
31
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)...
NeuroLogica Blog
GMOs and Butterflies Are attitudes towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our agriculture softening? Back in...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Are attitudes towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our agriculture softening? Back in 2015 a Pew survey found that the gap between public opinion and that of scientists was greatest on acceptance of GMOs (more than any other topic surveyed), with a 51% gap. But more...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: A tale of two particles Not all radioactivity is risky or harmful
over a year ago
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...
Asterisk
Intelligence Testing Everyone agrees that AIs are getting smarter — but it’s surprisingly difficult to measure by how...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Everyone agrees that AIs are getting smarter — but it’s surprisingly difficult to measure by how much.
Uncharted...
Why Could Lebanon Be Rich, but Is so Chaotic? Mountains, seas, and a shitty region
2 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Is Music Getting Simpler I don’t think I know anyone personally who doesn’t have strong opinions about music – which genres...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
I don’t think I know anyone personally who doesn’t have strong opinions about music – which genres they like, and how the quality of music may have changed over time. My own sense is that music as a cultural phenomenon is incredibly complex, no one (in my social group) really...
The Works in...
The entrepreneurial state How state competition – through war – can drive institutional progress
11 months ago
Quantum Frontiers
It from Qubit: The Last Hurrah Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Editor’s note: Since 2015, the Simons Foundation has supported the “It from Qubit” collaboration, a group of scientists drawing on ideas from quantum information theory to address deep issues in fundamental physics. The collaboration held its “Last Hurrah” event at … Continue...
Math Is Still...
To Pack Spheres Tightly, Mathematicians Throw Them at Random Four mathematicians broke a 75-year-old record by finding a denser way to pack high-dimensional...
7 months ago
30
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
The Works in...
Works in Progress: 2023 Wrapped Our most read work of the year
a year ago
Wanderingspace
Cassini’s Final Look at Enceladus Taken on August 28, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute This is from images...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Taken on August 28, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute This is from images obtained by Cassini shortly before plunging into the Saturnian atmosphere. The images were taken over 14 hours and compiled into this animation.
NeuroLogica Blog
Making Fuel from Sunshine When it comes to big problems it’s generally a good idea to remember some basic principles. One is...
a year ago
56
a year ago
When it comes to big problems it’s generally a good idea to remember some basic principles. One is that there is no free lunch. This is a cliche because it’s true. Another way to put this is – there are no solutions, only trade offs. Sometimes there is a genuine advance that does...
Asterisk
My Primal Scream of Rage: The Big Alcohol Study That Didn't Happen Five years ago, the National Institutes of Health cancelled the largest study on alcohol ever...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Five years ago, the National Institutes of Health cancelled the largest study on alcohol ever planned. Here’s why — and why you should be mad too.
NeuroLogica Blog
New Type of Black Hole Discovered ESA’s Gaia orbital telescope has recently discovered two new black holes. This, in itself, is not...
a year ago
55
a year ago
ESA’s Gaia orbital telescope has recently discovered two new black holes. This, in itself, is not surprising, as that is Gaia’s mission – to precisely map the three-dimensional position of two billion objects in our galaxy, using three separate instruments. The process is called...
Math Is Still...
Game Theory Can Make AI More Correct and Efficient Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them...
7 months ago
43
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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New (Experimental) Ways To Tackle The Mental Health Crisis | Out-Of-Pocket let's try some new stuff to scale mental health care
a year ago
Math Is Still...
The Lawlessness of Large Numbers Mathematicians can often figure out what happens as quantities grow infinitely large. What about...
a year ago
21
a year ago
Mathematicians can often figure out what happens as quantities grow infinitely large. What about when they are just a little big? The post The Lawlessness of Large Numbers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
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
29
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
NeuroLogica Blog
ChatGPT Almost Passes Medical Licensure Exams The emergence of several AI applications for public use, such as Dalle-2, Midjourney, and ChatGPT,...
a year ago
23
a year ago
The emergence of several AI applications for public use, such as Dalle-2, Midjourney, and ChatGPT, had made AI one of the biggest science news items of the past year. I have written about it here extensively myself, and have been using these applications extensively to get a feel...
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
32
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Copilots Are Coming I’m going to do something I rarely do and make a straight-up prediction – I think we are close to...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
I’m going to do something I rarely do and make a straight-up prediction – I think we are close to having AI apps that will function as our all-purpose digital assistants. That’s not really a tough call, we already have digital assistants and they are progressing rapidly. So I am...
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
34
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...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Healthcare, but funny | Out-Of-Pocket US healthcare is a joke. Let's make it funny.
a year ago
pcloadletter
Write code that you can understand when you get paged at 2am The older I get, the more I dislike clever code. This is not a controversial take; it is pretty-well...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
The older I get, the more I dislike clever code. This is not a controversial take; it is pretty-well agreed upon that clever code is bad. But I particularly like the on-call responsiblity framing: write code that you can understand when you get paged at 2am. If you have never...
NeuroLogica Blog
Understanding Jumbo Phage Viruses Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are the most abundant form of life on Earth. And yet...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are the most abundant form of life on Earth. And yet we know comparatively little about them. But in recent years phage research has taken off with renewed interest. This is partly driven by the availability of CRISPR-based tools for...
nanoscale views
Condensed matter’s rough start I’m teaching undergrad solid-state for the first time, and it has served as a reminder of how...
a year ago
24
a year ago
I’m teaching undergrad solid-state for the first time, and it has served as a reminder of how condensed matter physics got off the ground.  I suspect that one reason CM historically had not received a lot of respect in the early years (e.g. Pauli declaring that solid-state...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Cement for Energy Storage Imagine if every house, every building, came with 1-2 days (or possibly more) of energy storage....
a year ago
21
a year ago
Imagine if every house, every building, came with 1-2 days (or possibly more) of energy storage. What if every wind turbine could store a day’s worth of the energy it produces on average? How beneficial would it be if the most common building material the world could be used to...
Math Is Still...
A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force...
a year ago
55
a year ago
By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force that binds protons and neutrons. The post A New Experiment Casts Doubt on the Leading Theory of the Nucleus first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
How Railroad Crossings Work [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you’ve ever ridden a bike,...
11 months ago
63
11 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you’ve ever ridden a bike, driven a car, or operated pretty much any other vehicle on earth, there’s a fact you’ve probably taken for granted: you can see farther than it takes to stop. Within the span...
Math Is Still...
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
Math Is Still...
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
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
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
22
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 […]
Probably...
What is a percentile rank? Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
6 months ago
60
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. percentile_rank What is a Percentile Rank?¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. What’s the difference between...
nanoscale views
Molecular electronics in 2023 This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series...
a year ago
26
a year ago
This past week I was fortunate to attend this meeting, the most recent in an every-few-years series that brings together a group of researchers interested in electronic transport in molecular systems.  This brings together physicists and chemists, and this was the first one I've...
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 2: Chiclayo area (February 3, 2024) February 2, 2024 Traveling to Chiclayo in northern Peru isn't an easy endeavour. Luckily, we live...
9 months ago
23
9 months ago
February 2, 2024 Traveling to Chiclayo in northern Peru isn't an easy endeavour. Luckily, we live less than an hour from a major international airport - Pearson Airport in Toronto - but there are few direct flights between Toronto and Lima (and none that were affordable for us...
symmetry magazine
A different way of thinking Neurodivergent physicists face barriers in STEM, but there are also benefits to being who they are.
a year ago
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 3 My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
My highlights today are a bit thin, because I was fortunate enough to spend time catching up with collaborators and old friends, but here goes: Pedram Roushan from Google gave an interesting talk about noisy intermediate-scale quantum experiments for simulation.  He showed some...
The Roots of...
Accelerating science through evolvable institutions This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on...
a year ago
23
a year ago
This is the written version of a talk presented to the Santa Fe Institute at a working group on “Accelerating Science.” We’re here to discuss “accelerating science.” I like to start on topics like this by taking the historical view: When (if ever) has science accelerated in the...
Asterisk
Culture Studies Montessori classrooms don’t have much in common with the Jesuit colleges of early modern Europe. But...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
Montessori classrooms don’t have much in common with the Jesuit colleges of early modern Europe. But students in both settings learn more than a core curriculum — instead they’re taught a distinctive culture. And then they pass it on.
IEEE Spectrum
The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17 August of 1956, is widely considered the event that kicked off AI as a research discipline. Organized by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and Nathaniel Rochester, it...
Math Is Still...
What Are Sheaves? These metaphorical gardens have become central objects in modern mathematics. The post...
5 months ago
Blog - Practical...
Which Power Plant Does My Electricity Come From? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2000, the power...
a month ago
32
a month ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In June of 2000, the power shut off across much of the San Francisco Bay area. There simply wasn’t enough electricity to meet demands, so more than a million customers were disconnected in California's largest...
Probably...
Probably Overthinking It Notebooks To celebrate one month since the launch of Probably Overthinking It, I’m releasing the Jupyter...
11 months ago
37
11 months ago
To celebrate one month since the launch of Probably Overthinking It, I’m releasing the Jupyter notebooks I used to create the book. There’s one per chapter, and they contain all of the code I used to do the analysis and generate the figures. So if you are curious about the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Havana Syndrome Revisited Last month I wrote about Havana Syndrome, the claim that a number of American and Canadian diplomats...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
Last month I wrote about Havana Syndrome, the claim that a number of American and Canadian diplomats and military personnel were the targets of some sort of directed energy weapon attack causing symptoms of headache, disorientation, nausea, and sometimes associated with an...
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
5
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...
Math Is Still...
A Close-Up View Reveals the ‘Melting’ Point of an Infinite Graph Just as ice melts to water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Two mathematicians showed that they...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Just as ice melts to water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Two mathematicians showed that they can pinpoint such transitions by examining only local structure. The post A Close-Up View Reveals the ‘Melting’ Point of an Infinite Graph first appeared on Quanta...
brr
Last Flight Out Good-byes, and the beginning of winter isolation.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Virtual Reality for Mice Scientists have developed virtual reality goggles for mice. Why would they do this? For research....
a year ago
10
a year ago
Scientists have developed virtual reality goggles for mice. Why would they do this? For research. The fact that it’s also adorable is just a side effect. One type of neuroscience research is to expose mice in a laboratory setting to specific tasks or stimuli while recording their...
nanoscale views
Large magnetic fields as a scientific tool When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to...
10 months ago
53
10 months ago
When I was at Berkeley at the beginning of the week to give a seminar, I was fortunate enough to overlap with their departmental physics colloquium by Greg Boebinger, an accomplished scientist who is also an extremely engaging and funny speaker.  Since 2004 he has been the...
NeuroLogica Blog
What Is Orbitronics You have definitely heard of electronics. You may (if you are a tech nerd like me) have heard of...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
You have definitely heard of electronics. You may (if you are a tech nerd like me) have heard of spintronics and photonics. Now there is also the possibility of orbitronics. What do these cool-sounding words mean? Electronic technology is one of those core technologies that has...
Wanderingspace
Uranus is not as boring as we thought “An animation of three near-infrared images of Uranus captured by the JWST Space Telescope with...
a month ago
24
a month ago
“An animation of three near-infrared images of Uranus captured by the JWST Space Telescope with assigned representative colors. During processing, I aligned the rings separately to reduce the bubbling effect caused by different inclinations, making the planet appear to rotate on...
The Roots of...
Links digest, 2023-10-12 I’ve been traveling for a while, so this is a long one, covering the last ~month. I tried to cut it...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I’ve been traveling for a while, so this is a long one, covering the last ~month. I tried to cut it down, but there have been so many amazing announcements, opportunities, etc.! Feel free to skim and jump around: From the Roots of Progress fellows Connor O’Brien and Adam Ozimek...
Melting Asphalt
Social Status II: Cults and Loyalty So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/​critique by Scott Alexander...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
So my previous post on social status was recently treated to a review/​critique by Scott Alexander over at Slate Star Codex. I expect most of my readers are already big fans of Scott's blog (as am I). But for those… Read more ›
brr
The Last Egg Five more months until freshies...
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New Clinic Buildouts | Out-Of-Pocket Has software changed what's necessary in the clinic?
a year ago
nanoscale views
Technological civilization and losing object permanence In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put...
2 days ago
7
2 days ago
In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put down some thoughts on a societal trend.  This isn't physics or nanoscience, so feel free to skip this post. Object permanence is a term from developmental psychology.  A person (or...
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
19
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...
nanoscale views
The physics of squeaky shoes In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
In these unsettling and trying times, I wanted to write about the physics of a challenge I'm facing in my professional life: super squeaky shoes.  When I wear a particularly comfortable pair of shoes at work, when I walk in some hallways in my building (but not all), my shoes...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Threat of Technology In my second book (shameless plug alert) – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors and I...
a year ago
6
a year ago
In my second book (shameless plug alert) – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors and I try to imagine both the utopian and dystopian versions of the future, brought about by technology, either individually or collectively. This topic has come up multiple times recently...
nanoscale views
The wormhole kerfuffle, ER=EPR, and all that I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
I was busy trying to finish off a grant proposal and paper revisions this week and didn't have the time to react in realtime to the PR onslaught surrounding the recent Nature paper by a team from Harvard, MIT, Fermilab, and Google.  There are many places to get caught up on this,...
Explorations of an...
Borneo: Quest For The Bulwer's Pheasant The Bulwer's Pheasant was one of the first birds to grab hold of my attention when I first flipped...
3 weeks ago
4
3 weeks ago
The Bulwer's Pheasant was one of the first birds to grab hold of my attention when I first flipped through the pages of my Borneo field guide many years ago. This pheasant of Bornean hill forest is nearly unbelievable-looking (the male, that is). He has a deep maroon chest and a...
NeuroLogica Blog
World Events and the Conspiracy Instinct By now most people have heard that on Saturday there was a failed assassination attempt on candidate...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
By now most people have heard that on Saturday there was a failed assassination attempt on candidate Trump at a rally. While it has only been a few days, preliminary investigation has found that 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, using a AR style rifle purchased legally by his...
Quantum Frontiers
Announcing the quantum-steampunk short-story contest! The year I started studying calculus, I took the helm of my high school’s literary magazine....
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
The year I started studying calculus, I took the helm of my high school’s literary magazine. Throughout the next two years, the editorial board flooded campus with poetry—and poetry contests. We papered the halls with flyers, built displays in the … Continue reading →
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
22
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 Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, October 2023 A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots...
a year ago
60
a year ago
A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots of Progress as a nonprofit organization, so I haven’t had as much time as I prefer for research and writing. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find...
Asterisk
Animal Welfare in the Anthropocene Wild animals outnumber farmed animals by orders of magnitude. Are we obligated to help them? And...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Wild animals outnumber farmed animals by orders of magnitude. Are we obligated to help them? And even if we wanted to, do we know how?
Blog - Practical...
What Really Happened at the New Harbor Bridge Project? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 2022, the Texas...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In July of 2022, the Texas Department of Transportation issued an emergency suspension of work on the half-finished Harbor Bridge project in Corpus Christi, citing serious design flaws that could cause the main...
The Roots of...
Why no Roman Industrial Revolution? Why didn’t the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Why didn’t the Roman Empire have an industrial revolution? Bret Devereaux has an essay addressing that question, which multiple people have pointed me to at various times. In brief, Devereaux says that Britain industrialized through a very specific path, involving coal mines,...
Math Is Still...
How Simple Math Moves the Needle The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem....
a year ago
8
a year ago
The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem. The post How Simple Math Moves the Needle first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Marine Madness
Cownose rays at Bristol Aquarium (video) Watch Bristol Aquarium’s newest residents in action. Bristol Aquarium reopened its doors on May 18...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
Watch Bristol Aquarium’s newest residents in action. Bristol Aquarium reopened its doors on May 18 after being closed for months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning visitors were finally allowed to return and see their favourite ocean creatures up close. But during the...
Eukaryote Writes...
Internet Harvest (2024, 1) Free covid treatment for everyone in the US, a novel orthopox virus, a really big machine, cameras...
9 months ago
96
9 months ago
Free covid treatment for everyone in the US, a novel orthopox virus, a really big machine, cameras used for good and evil, ant heaven now, and more.
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Video Recently OpenAI launched a website showcasing their latest AI application, Sora. This app, based on...
10 months ago
26
10 months ago
Recently OpenAI launched a website showcasing their latest AI application, Sora. This app, based on prompts similar to what you would use for ChatGPT or the image creation applications, like Midjourney or Dalle-2, creates a one minute photorealistic video without sound. Take a...
brr
Pressure Altitude Day-to-day variability at the South Pole.
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Machine Vision, Robots, and Endoscopes with Matt Schwartz | Out-Of-Pocket When GI met AI
a year ago
brr
South Pole Signage Please close doors quietly!
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Should we charge for patient messaging? | Out-Of-Pocket guess I'm texting my resident friends
a year ago