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NeuroLogica Blog
The Superconductor Flap of 2023 If you are at all interested in science and technology news, you have probably heard that a team...
a year ago
21
a year ago
If you are at all interested in science and technology news, you have probably heard that a team from South Korea claims to have developed a material that is a superconductor at room temperature and ambient pressure. Interestingly, if you are someone who does not follow such...
NeuroLogica Blog
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
40
a year ago
There are several technologies which seem likely to be transformative in the coming decades. Genetic bioengineering gives us the ability to control the basic machinery of life, including ourselves. Artificial intelligence is a suite of active, learning, information tools....
NeuroLogica Blog
How Should We Talk About Autism RFK Jr.’s recent speech about autism has sparked a lot of deserved anger. But like many things in...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
RFK Jr.’s recent speech about autism has sparked a lot of deserved anger. But like many things in life, it’s even more complicated than you think it is, and this is a good opportunity to explore some of the issues surrounding this diagnosis. While the definition has shifted over...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Weird health insurance concepts | Out-Of-Pocket Intercompany eliminations, copay shenanigans, and reference-based pricing
8 months ago
Damn Interesting
The Mount St. Helens Trespasser The Washington state deputy sheriff looked suspiciously at the motorcycle strapped to the back of...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
The Washington state deputy sheriff looked suspiciously at the motorcycle strapped to the back of the odd little French car. The motorcycle was a recently repaired Honda 90, sporting a fresh coat of grey spray paint. The driver, Robert Rogers, kept a neutral expression as the...
Yale E360
Head of African Bank Warns of "Carbon Grabs" by Foreign Firms Akinwumi Adesina, outgoing president of the African Development Bank, is warning that foreign firms...
3 months ago
10
3 months ago
Akinwumi Adesina, outgoing president of the African Development Bank, is warning that foreign firms are underpaying for carbon credits from African forests. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Loss of Antarctic Sea Ice Is Giving Rise to More Frequent Storms The decline of sea ice around Antarctica is fueling more frequent storms in the Southern Ocean, a...
6 months ago
4
6 months ago
The decline of sea ice around Antarctica is fueling more frequent storms in the Southern Ocean, a new study finds. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
Robots and a Sense of Self Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption)...
8 months ago
70
8 months ago
Humans (assuming you all experience roughly what I experience, which is a reasonable assumption) have a sense of self. This sense has several components – we feel as if we occupy our physical bodies, that our bodies are distinct entities separate from the rest of the universe,...
Asterisk
Chimes at Midnight It’s been an idea for over three decades. How did the clock that will run for 10,000 years become a...
8 months ago
15
8 months ago
It’s been an idea for over three decades. How did the clock that will run for 10,000 years become a reality?
Yale E360
Discarded U.K. Clothing Dumped in Protected Wetlands in Ghana Heaps of discarded clothing from the U.K. have been dumped in protected wetlands in Ghana, an...
a month ago
3
a month ago
Heaps of discarded clothing from the U.K. have been dumped in protected wetlands in Ghana, an investigation found. Read more on E360 →
Cremieux Recueil
Food Deserts Are Not Real They're more like bad habit neighborhoods
10 months ago
Yale E360
Saving U.S. Climate and Environmental Data Before It Goes Away Some 2,000 records went missing from government data sets after the Trump administration took office...
4 months ago
8
4 months ago
Some 2,000 records went missing from government data sets after the Trump administration took office in January. Canadian geographer Eric Nost talks about the work he and colleagues are doing to archive data related to climate and the environment while it is still...
Probably...
Political Alignment and Outlook This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
This is the fourth in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. It’s from Chapter 15, which is part of the political alignment case study. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab....
Quanta Magazine
The Brainstem Fine-Tunes Inflammation Throughout the Body The evolutionarily ancient part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate also regulates...
a year ago
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a year 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...
Quanta Magazine
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...
11 months ago
47
11 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...
Yale E360
After 17 Years Underground, Massive Cicada Brood to Swarm U.S. After hiding underground for the last 17 years, billions of cicadas will take to the skies this...
2 months ago
6
2 months ago
After hiding underground for the last 17 years, billions of cicadas will take to the skies this summer, from Tennessee to Cape Cod.  Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Discarded U.K. Clothing Dumped in Protected Wetlands in Ghana Heaps of discarded clothing from the U.K. have been dumped in protected wetlands in Ghana, an...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Heaps of discarded clothing from the U.K. have been dumped in protected wetlands in Ghana, an investigation found. Read more on E360 →
Asterisk
Reports of the Death of California High-Speed Rail Have Been Greatly Exaggerated Building a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco was never going to be easy — but...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
Building a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco was never going to be easy — but the critics who write it off are missing the real source of the project’s struggles.
Damn Interesting
A Blight on Soviet Science On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Two new courses! And ~*fun*~ Out-Of-Pocket updates | Out-Of-Pocket
10 months ago
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, March 2023 A new monthly feature, let me know what you think. Books Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020)....
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
A new monthly feature, let me know what you think. Books Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works (2020). About halfway through, lots of interesting case studies, very readable. Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century (2005). I read the first chapter; saving the rest of it for when...
NeuroLogica Blog
Nadir Crater – A Double Tap for Dinosaurs? It is now generally accepted that 66 million years ago a large asteroid smacked into the Earth,...
9 months ago
70
9 months ago
It is now generally accepted that 66 million years ago a large asteroid smacked into the Earth, causing the large Chicxulub crater off the coast of Mexico. This was a catastrophic event, affecting the entire globe. Fire rained down causing forest fires across much of the globe,...
ToughSF
Space Tethers: Stringing up the Solar System All the methods we have used to reach space so far have been subject to the Tsiolkovsky rocket...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
All the methods we have used to reach space so far have been subject to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation - propellant must be ejected and more and more of it is needed to go further. What if we could break that equation with rotating orbital tethers? The tether I have worked...
Blog - Practical...
Why Bridges Don't Sink [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The essence of a bridge is not...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The essence of a bridge is not just that it goes over something, but that there’s clear space underneath for a river, railway, or road. Maybe this is already obvious to you, but bridges present a unique...
Blog - Practical...
Why Construction Projects Always Go Over Budget [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Boston, Massachusetts is one...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Boston, Massachusetts is one of the oldest cities in America, founded in 1630, more than a few years before the advent of modern motor vehicles. In the 1980s, traffic in downtown Boston was nearly unbearable...
Explorations of an...
Borneo: Quest for the Bornean Peacock-Pheasant October 19, 2024 Laura and I were up dark and early from our accommodations in Ranau. I filled my...
6 months ago
22
6 months ago
October 19, 2024 Laura and I were up dark and early from our accommodations in Ranau. I filled my thermos with coffee, we quickly packed (though not quietly, as every dog in the neighbourhood began barking), and we headed eastwards to the town of Telupid where we had a very...
NeuroLogica Blog
UFOs and the Pandemic Did UFO reporting increase during the pandemic? A group of researchers set out to answer that...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Did UFO reporting increase during the pandemic? A group of researchers set out to answer that question, and recently published their results. Their hypothesis was two-fold, including the notion that people had more free time during the shutdown and perhaps spent more time out...
symmetry magazine
A cosmological headache For over a century, scientists have wondered what is counteracting the force of gravity in the...
over a year ago
63
over a year ago
For over a century, scientists have wondered what is counteracting the force of gravity in the universe.
nanoscale views
Experimental techniques: bridge measurements When we teach undergraduates about materials and measuring electrical resistance, we tend to gloss...
11 months ago
12
11 months ago
When we teach undergraduates about materials and measuring electrical resistance, we tend to gloss over the fact that there are specialized techniques for this - it's more than just hooking up a battery and an ammeter.  If you want to get high precision results, such as measuring...
The Works in...
The Spanish grid collapse Inertia and why we need it
2 months ago
Quanta Magazine
A Very Big Small Leap Forward in Graph Theory Four mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the “Ramsey number,” a crucial property...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Four mathematicians have found a new upper limit to the “Ramsey number,” a crucial property describing unavoidable structure in graphs. The post A Very Big Small Leap Forward in Graph Theory first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wanderingspace
Ganymede from Juno Some incredibly sharp images from the Juno mission of Ganymede. The first new views of this...
over a year ago
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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.
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
24
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...
Quanta Magazine
The Electron Is So Round That It’s Ruling Out Potential New Particles If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles. A new measurement approaches perfection. The post The Electron Is So Round That It’s Ruling Out Potential New Particles first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Does AI Know What an Apple Is? She Aims to Find Out. The computer scientist Ellie Pavlick is translating philosophical concepts such as “meaning” into...
a year ago
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a year ago
The computer scientist Ellie Pavlick is translating philosophical concepts such as “meaning” into concrete, testable ideas. The post Does AI Know What an Apple Is? She Aims to Find Out. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Make Work Redundant? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your job. This, at least, is increasingly conventional wisdom, but I’m not so sure. In a recent interview, Elon Musk predicted that AI would “make paid work redundant.” I encountered the same opinion watching the latest season of...
The Works in...
The value of technological progress Evidence from the life of Matt Clancy
4 months ago
Yale E360
Drop in Air Pollution Drove a Surge in Warming, Study Finds Scientists have been scrambling to make sense of a recent acceleration in warming, which may be...
4 days ago
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4 days ago
Scientists have been scrambling to make sense of a recent acceleration in warming, which may be attributable, they say, to changes in solar output or to shifts in cloud cover. A new study finds the biggest driver may be a drop in air pollution in East Asia, primarily in...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GPT healthcare startup ideas | Out-Of-Pocket and a call for some of yours
a year ago
The Roots of...
If you wish to make an apple pie, you must first become dictator of the universe The word “robot” is derived from the Czech robota, which means “serfdom.” It was introduced over a...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
The word “robot” is derived from the Czech robota, which means “serfdom.” It was introduced over a century ago by the Czech play R.U.R., for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” In the play, the smartest and best-educated of the robots leads a slave revolt that wipes out most of...
Drew Ex Machina
NASA’s Explorer 18: The First Interplanetary Monitoring Platform Among the greatest scientific achievements of the opening years of the Space Age was the...
a year ago
40
a year ago
Among the greatest scientific achievements of the opening years of the Space Age was the characterization of Earth’s magnetic field and the discovery of what became […]
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More (GPTish) healthcare startup ideas | Out-Of-Pocket You might find your future cofounder reading this one
a year ago
Asterisk
The Depths of Wikipedians A conversation about yogurt wars, German hymns, tropical cyclones, and the people who make Wikipedia...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
A conversation about yogurt wars, German hymns, tropical cyclones, and the people who make Wikipedia function.
Yale E360
Turning Farmland Back to Peatland: Can It Slow CO2 Emissions? Farmers have long drained peatlands for agriculture, but the dried-out soils release vast quantities...
5 months ago
6
5 months ago
Farmers have long drained peatlands for agriculture, but the dried-out soils release vast quantities of CO2. To halt this process, new initiatives in Germany are not only rewetting peatlands but also creating markets for the native grasses, reeds, and sedges they support. Read...
Yale E360
Head of African Bank Warns of 'Carbon Grabs' by Foreign Firms Akinwumi Adesina, outgoing president of the African Development Bank, is warning that foreign firms...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
Akinwumi Adesina, outgoing president of the African Development Bank, is warning that foreign firms are underpaying for carbon credits from African forests. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
Will AI Bring Us Jurassic Park I think it’s increasingly difficult to argue that the recent boom in artificial intelligence (AI) is...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
I think it’s increasingly difficult to argue that the recent boom in artificial intelligence (AI) is mostly hype. There is a lot of hype, but don’t let that distract you from the real progress. The best indication of this is applications in scientific research, because the...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Scams, Frauds, and Audits | Out-Of-Pocket Lots of money to be...not lost
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
What's the Difference Between Paint and Coatings? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] There’s a popular myth that...
over a year ago
61
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] There’s a popular myth that I’ve heard about several bridges (including the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Forth Bridge in eastern Scotland) that they paint the structure continuously from end to...
Wanderingspace
Triton Image from Voyager Colored Nice update to an old Voyager image with colors added based on actual colors captured in other...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
Nice update to an old Voyager image with colors added based on actual colors captured in other images. See original post here by Jason Major.
NeuroLogica Blog
How Humans Solve Problems The human brain is extremely good at problem-solving, at least relatively speaking. Cognitive...
a month ago
15
a month ago
The human brain is extremely good at problem-solving, at least relatively speaking. Cognitive scientists have been exploring how, exactly, people approach and solve problems – what cognitive strategies do we use, and how optimal are they. A recent study extends this research and...
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
34
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...
Quanta Magazine
Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures...
a year ago
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a year ago
Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall. The post Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture first appeared on Quanta...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
OOP Slack final reminder | Out-Of-Pocket it's the final countdownnnnn
a year ago
Yale E360
Russia’s War Has Destroyed Forest Twice the Size of New York City Ukraine lost roughly 600 square miles of forest in the first two years of its war with Russia, an...
4 months ago
3
4 months ago
Ukraine lost roughly 600 square miles of forest in the first two years of its war with Russia, an area of woodland twice the size of New York City. Read more on E360 →
Eukaryote Writes...
COVID-19 FAQ A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
A lot of people have been asking me questions about the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak, in my informal capacity as “local biodefense person”.
Blog - Practical...
When Infrastructure Gets Hacked [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is a water tower, or as...
10 months ago
92
10 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is a water tower, or as the pros would say, an elevated storage tank. Pretty common here in the US, especially in flatter areas where there’s no nearby hillside to build a ground-level tank. I have a whole...
Quanta Magazine
Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three...
a month ago
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a month ago
By mathematically proving how individual molecules create the complex motion of fluids, three mathematicians have illuminated why time can’t flow in reverse. The post Epic Effort to Ground Physics in Math Opens Up the Secrets of Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Casey Handmer's blog
California’s path to redemption California is by far the richest and most powerful polity led by Progressive ideals, and it has...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
California is by far the richest and most powerful polity led by Progressive ideals, and it has taken a beating of late. In this post, I discuss a practical roadmap by which California must reclaim its mantle as the shining city on the hill, an embodiment of the positive...
SubAnima
How information and individuality are connected Discrete categorisation of individuals and non-individuals is like herding cats. Thinking about...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Discrete categorisation of individuals and non-individuals is like herding cats. Thinking about individuality more generally offers some solutions
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Plants as Biofactories When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are...
over a year ago
47
over a year ago
When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are powered by the sun, extract raw material from the air and soil, and make all sorts of useful molecules. Mostly we use them to make edible molecules (food), but also to make textiles,...
The Works in...
The End of Combustion Vehicles The final section of Ch.2 of Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and...
a week ago
11
a week ago
An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes. The post Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
An Engineer’s Love Letter to Cable-Stayed Bridges [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I’m Grady, and this is...
5 months ago
59
5 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I’m Grady, and this is Practical Engineering. You know, every once in a while, all the science, technology, economic factors, and stylistic tastes converge into a singular, beautiful idea of absolute...
IEEE Spectrum
The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17...
over a year ago
27
over 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...
Quanta Magazine
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
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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...
IEEE Spectrum
The Pioneer Behind Electromagnetism Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would not have been possible to invent motors, telecommunications equipment, kitchen appliances and more. A key part of our understanding of that relationship, known as classical...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Problem with Self-Diagnosis The recent discussions about autism have been fascinating, partly because there is a robust...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
The recent discussions about autism have been fascinating, partly because there is a robust neurodiversity community who have very deep, personal, and thoughtful opinions about the whole thing. One of the issues that has come up after we discussed this on the SGU was that of...
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...
a year ago
113
a year 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 →
NeuroLogica Blog
What Kind of Social Media Do We Want? Recently Meta decided to end their fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. The move has been both...
6 months ago
57
6 months ago
Recently Meta decided to end their fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. The move has been both hailed and criticized. They are replacing the fact-checkers with an X-style “community notes”. Mark Zuckerberg summed up the move this way: “It means we’re going to catch less bad...
Quanta Magazine
Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Last spring, scientists retrieved a trove of mantle rocks from underneath the Atlantic seafloor — a bounty that could help write the first chapter of life's story on Earth. The post Deep Beneath Earth’s Surface, Clues to Life’s Origins first appeared on Quanta...
IEEE Spectrum
Smellovision Gets a Refresh This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Modern virtual reality is a feast for the eyes and ears—but coming in a distant fourth (behind haptic touch technologies), smell has been nearly completely ignored. Earlier this...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Mental Health And The Weird Fixation With Employers | Out-Of-Pocket an uncomfortable conversation about mental health access
a year ago
Yale E360
Exposure to Air Pollution Can Make It Harder to Focus, Study Finds A person’s ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
A person’s ability to focus on everyday tasks is affected by short-term exposure to air pollution, a study has found. Read more on E360 →
The Works in...
The road from serfdom Using opt-ins to reform Russia's backwards tsarist agricultural sector
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How the Higgs Field (Actually) Gives Mass to Elementary Particles In this article adapted from his new book, "Waves in an Impossible Sea," physicist Matt Strassler...
10 months ago
54
10 months ago
In this article adapted from his new book, "Waves in an Impossible Sea," physicist Matt Strassler explains that the origin of mass in the universe has a lot to do with music. The post How the Higgs Field (Actually) Gives Mass to Elementary Particles first appeared on...
Asterisk
The Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic Are we really living through a uniquely lonely moment in American history? When it comes to...
8 months ago
34
8 months ago
Are we really living through a uniquely lonely moment in American history? When it comes to friendship, this isn’t the first time that authorities have cried wolf.
Quanta Magazine
New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills...
a year ago
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a year ago
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing. The post New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
Koalas Spend Just 10 Minutes a Day on the Ground — That's Usually When They're Killed Koalas, which spend most of their lives high up in eucalyptus trees, usually die while on the...
a week ago
6
a week ago
Koalas, which spend most of their lives high up in eucalyptus trees, usually die while on the ground, often mauled by dogs or hit by cars. More striking, a new study reveals that the amount of time they spend on the ground is only around 10 minutes a day. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
Should Tech Companies Be Liable for Content The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is hearing a case that will have profound effects on social media – is...
over a year ago
82
over a year ago
The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is hearing a case that will have profound effects on social media – is Google liable for a terrorist killing? The family of Nohemi Gonzalez is suing Google, because she was shot by an Islamic terrorist in 2015 and the family alleges this act was abetted...
SubAnima
You've Been Lied To About Genetics Should we give Mendel's peas a chance? Nah, we've moved on.
over a year ago
Asterisk
America Doesn’t Know Tofu China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely scratched the surface.
Yale E360
On a Dammed River, Amazon Villagers Fight to Restore the Flow Indigenous communities that rely on the natural flow of the Xingu River have long fought the Belo...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
Indigenous communities that rely on the natural flow of the Xingu River have long fought the Belo Monte dam in Brazil. With the dam now up for relicensing, they are urging the government to allow more water to flow, which would help revive the river and their way of life. Read...
Yale E360
London Inches Closer to Running Transit System Entirely on Renewable Power Under a new agreement, London will source enough solar power to run its light railway and tram...
2 weeks ago
13
2 weeks ago
Under a new agreement, London will source enough solar power to run its light railway and tram networks entirely on renewable energy. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
As Earth's Magnetic Field Grows Stronger, Oxygen Levels Rise When the magnetic field around the Earth grows stronger, oxygen levels rise. That is the surprising...
a month ago
3
a month ago
When the magnetic field around the Earth grows stronger, oxygen levels rise. That is the surprising finding of a new study looking at more than half a billion years of planetary history. Read more on E360 →
nanoscale views
March Meeting 2025, Day 1 The APS Global Physics Summit is an intimate affair, with a mere 14,000 attendees, all apparently...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
The APS Global Physics Summit is an intimate affair, with a mere 14,000 attendees, all apparently vying for lunch capacity for about 2,000 people.   The first day of the meeting was the usual controlled chaos of people trying to learn the layout of the convention center while...
Yale E360
Renewables Made Up More Than 90 Percent of New Power Installed Globally Last Year Renewables accounted for 92 percent of new power capacity worldwide last year, a new report...
3 months ago
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Adornment "Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
"Form follows function" is a maxim that an object's shape and appearance should be defined only by its purpose or function. A quick perusal of any antique shop will show that this maxim is generally ignored. Humans (Homo sapiens) have been called "naked apes," but we and our...
The Roots of...
Who regulates the regulators? IRBs Scott Alexander reviews a book about institutional review boards (IRBs), the panels that review...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
IRBs Scott Alexander reviews a book about institutional review boards (IRBs), the panels that review the ethics of medical trials: From Oversight to Overkill, by Dr. Simon Whitney. From the title alone, you can see where this is going. IRBs are supposed to (among other things)...
SubAnima
The Problem With Richard Dawkins How should we view The Selfish Gene 50 years on?
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of complex quantum systems. The post A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Flooding is Increasing Last month my flight home from Chicago was canceled because of an intense rainstorm. In CT the storm...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Last month my flight home from Chicago was canceled because of an intense rainstorm. In CT the storm was intense enough to cause flash flooding, which washed out roads and bridges and shut down traffic in many areas. The epicenter of the rainfall was in Oxford, CT (where my...
brr
Brr Wants A Job 8 months post-ice, it's time for something new!
12 months ago
Yale E360
World's Richest 10 Percent Responsible for Two-Thirds of Warming The wealthiest 10 percent of people on Earth have fueled two-thirds of the warming since 1990,...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
The wealthiest 10 percent of people on Earth have fueled two-thirds of the warming since 1990, according to a new modeling study. Read more on E360 →
Asterisk
The Future of American Foreign Aid USAID has been slashed, and it is unclear what shape its predecessor will take. How might American...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
USAID has been slashed, and it is unclear what shape its predecessor will take. How might American foreign assistance be restructured to maintain critical functions? And how should we think about its future?
nanoscale views
Technological civilization and losing object permanence In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put...
7 months ago
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7 months 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...
Quanta Magazine
The Computing Pioneer Helping AI See Alexei Efros has spent his career learning how machines see differently from humans. Now he’s...
a year ago
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a year ago
Alexei Efros has spent his career learning how machines see differently from humans. Now he’s helping to bridge the gap. The post The Computing Pioneer Helping AI See first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Indigenous Knowledge I recently received the following question to the SGU e-mail: “I have had several conversations with...
a year ago
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a year ago
I recently received the following question to the SGU e-mail: “I have had several conversations with friends/colleagues lately regarding indigenous beliefs/stories. They assert that not believing these based on oral histories alone is morally wrong and ignoring a different...
NeuroLogica Blog
Floating Nuclear Power Plants This is an intriguing idea, and one that I can see becoming critical over the next few decades, or...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
This is an intriguing idea, and one that I can see becoming critical over the next few decades, or never manifesting – developing a fleet of floating nuclear power plants. One company, Core Power, is working on this technology and plans to have commercially deployable plants by...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematical Thinking Isn’t What You Think It Is The mathematician David Bessis claims that everyone is capable of, and can benefit greatly from,...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
The mathematician David Bessis claims that everyone is capable of, and can benefit greatly from, mathematical thinking. The post Mathematical Thinking Isn’t What You Think It Is first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Eukaryote Writes...
A love letter to civilian OSINT What is civilian OSINT, and could it be used altruistically?
over a year ago
Yale E360
Retreating Arctic Glaciers Have Exposed 1,500 Miles of Coastline Since 2000, the melting of Arctic glaciers has exposed some 1,500 miles of coastline, a study...
3 months ago
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 13: Quebrada El Limón And The Last Of The Northwest (February 16-18,... February 16, 2024 The town of Olmos isn't the most picturesque in Peru. Situated in the coastal...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
February 16, 2024 The town of Olmos isn't the most picturesque in Peru. Situated in the coastal desert, the streets are dusty, the wind is always present and the roads are potholed. It is certainly not a town that caters to tourists, and I doubt many stop here. But an advantage...
Wanderingspace
Enter Prometheus “Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
“Here's a view of Saturn's moon Prometheus, made from images captured with the narrow-angle camera on Cassini on December 6, 2015. Cassini was about 37,400 km from Prometheus when the images were acquired. Part of the F ring is visible in the background at the top.” — Jason Major
Blog - Practical...
Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder Than You Think [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On June 4, 2022, a small piece...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] On June 4, 2022, a small piece of equipment (called a lightning arrestor) at a power plant in Odessa, Texas failed, causing part of the plant to trip offline. It was a fairly typical fault that happens from...
Wanderingspace
Colorized View of Perseverance Landing An artificially colorized view of Jezero Crater, showing the bird’s eye view of Perseverance...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
An artificially colorized view of Jezero Crater, showing the bird’s eye view of Perseverance screaming towards Mars’s surface. The above image was enhanced by Kevin Gill into full color, taking images captured by Perseverance’s Lander Vision System Camera just after the heat...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Actually good 2024 healthcare predictions | Out-Of-Pocket I know, enough predictions. But these are good!
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Elliptic Curve ‘Murmurations’ Found With AI Take Flight Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial...
a year ago
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a year ago
Mathematicians are working to fully explain unusual behaviors uncovered using artificial intelligence. The post Elliptic Curve ‘Murmurations’ Found With AI Take Flight first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born Happy birthday, IBM! You’re 100 years old! Or are you? It’s true that the businesses that formed IBM...
a year ago
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a year ago
Happy birthday, IBM! You’re 100 years old! Or are you? It’s true that the businesses that formed IBM began in the late 1800s. But it’s also true that a birth occurred in February 1924, with the renaming of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. as the International Business...
Quanta Magazine
How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to...
a year ago
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a year ago
The topologist Danny Calegari discusses the inevitability of disappointment in math, and how to learn from it. The post How Failure Has Made Mathematics Stronger first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 3: Hunter Canyon to Portal September 2, 2024 We awoke to another beautiful sunrise in the Huachuca Mountains. I could get used...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
September 2, 2024 We awoke to another beautiful sunrise in the Huachuca Mountains. I could get used to this view. View from Beatty's Guest Ranch - Miller Canyon, Cochise County, Arizona This was our final morning in this region; we had plans to make the long drive eastwards...
Quanta Magazine
How ‘Embeddings’ Encode What Words Mean — Sort Of Machines work with words by embedding their relationships with other words in a string of numbers. ...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Machines work with words by embedding their relationships with other words in a string of numbers. The post How ‘Embeddings’ Encode What Words Mean — Sort Of first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Casey Handmer's blog
Long duration propellant stability in Starship Some ideas on preventing cryogenic propellant boiloff in Starship during long duration cruise or...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Some ideas on preventing cryogenic propellant boiloff in Starship during long duration cruise or while operating orbital fuel depots. The usual caveats apply! One of the major concerns with using Starship for the Human Landing System is that propellant (cryogenically liquid...
Yale E360
A.I. Model Can Predict When Lightning Will Spark Wildfires Researchers have developed an AI model that can predict with 90 percent accuracy when and where...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
Researchers have developed an AI model that can predict with 90 percent accuracy when and where lightning will ignite wildfires. Read more on E360 →
ToughSF
Riding Sunbeams with Solar Sails Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Reset your expectations of solar sails. They are a fast and free way to travel to any point in the Solar System, as many times as you want, any time of the year. Solar sails can carry passengers and they have a nearly unlimited number of uses. You just have to... think...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Physicians and Pharma Marketing | Out-Of-Pocket oh we getting that drug money
a year ago
The Works in...
Nuclear reactors for dummies Fission basics #1
2 months ago
Drew Ex Machina
Drew Ex Machina 10th Anniversary: Top Ten Posts I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my...
a year ago
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a year ago
I find it difficult to believe but, it was ten years ago today that I posted the first article on my then-new website, Drew Ex Machina. […]
NeuroLogica Blog
Intuitive and Analytical Thinking Here is a relatively simple math problem:  A bat and a ball cost $1.10 combined. The bat costs $1...
a year ago
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a year ago
Here is a relatively simple math problem:  A bat and a ball cost $1.10 combined. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? (I will provide the answer below the fold.) This problem is the basis of a large psychological literature on thinking systems in the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Checkup on Climate Change There is good evidence that if you want to lose weight, you need to weigh yourself at least weekly....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
There is good evidence that if you want to lose weight, you need to weigh yourself at least weekly. You need the constant feedback of the scale to adjust your behavior. This is a good general principle – having outcome feedback to measure the effect of what you are doing so you...
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
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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...
NeuroLogica Blog
The New TIGR-Tas Gene Editing System Remember CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) – that new gene-editing...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Remember CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) – that new gene-editing system which is faster and cheaper than anything that came before it? CRISPR is derived from bacterial systems which uses guide RNA to target a specific sequence on a DNA strand....
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
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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 […]
Blog - Practical...
Why Railroads Don't Need Expansion Joints [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the most common...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] One of the most common attributes folks imagine when they think of trains is the clickety-clack sound they make as they roll down the tracks. The thing is, most trains don’t make that sound anymore. Or really,...
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...
a year ago
20
a year 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.
Probably...
Reject Math Supremacy The premise of Think Stats, and the other books in the Think series, is that programming is a tool...
7 months ago
14
7 months ago
The premise of Think Stats, and the other books in the Think series, is that programming is a tool for teaching and learning — and many ideas that are commonly presented in math notation can be more clearly presented in code. In the draft third edition of Think Stats there is...
symmetry magazine
Searching for the matter that hides its shine Just because matter is visible doesn’t mean it’s easy to see.
over a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Six Healthcare Startup Ideas | Out-Of-Pocket In collaboration with The Generalist
a year ago
Asterisk
All Aboard the Bureaucracy Train The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because...
a year ago
18
a year ago
The United States has the most expensive transportation infrastructure in the world. That’s because we refuse to learn from experts, other countries, and our own history.
Explorations of an...
A Month In Northern Peru, Part 14: River Islands And Explorama Lodge (February 18 - 19, 2024) February 18, 2024 (continued)     Where I last left off, Laura and I had just completed our...
5 months ago
20
5 months ago
February 18, 2024 (continued)     Where I last left off, Laura and I had just completed our sixteen-day loop through the mountains and deserts of northern Peru with the rental car. We dropped the vehicle off at the airport with no issues and boarded our flight. We were heading to...
nanoscale views
Items of interest The start of the semester has been very busy, but here are some items that seem interesting: As...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
The start of the semester has been very busy, but here are some items that seem interesting: As many know, there has been a lot of controversy in recent years about high pressure measurements of superconductivity.  Here is a first-hand take by one of the people who helped bring...
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
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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...
Chris Grossack's...
Explicitly Computing The Action Lie Algebroid for $SL_2(\mathbb{R}) \curvearrowright \mathbb{R}^2$ This is going to be a very classic post, where we’ll chat about a computation my friend Shane did...
4 weeks ago
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4 weeks ago
This is going to be a very classic post, where we’ll chat about a computation my friend Shane did earlier today. His research is largely about symplectic lie algebroids, and recently we’ve been trying to understand the rich connections between poisson geometry, lie algebroids,...
The Works in...
Apply to come to Invisible College Our new residential seminar for 18 to 22-year-olds, during August 2024
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Can Information Escape a Black Hole? Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions....
a year ago
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a year ago
Black holes are inescapable traps for most of what falls into them — but there can be exceptions. The theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind speaks with co-host Janna Levin about the black hole information paradox and how it has propelled modern physics. The post Can...
Breck's Blog
The Internal Comparison Trap
2 months ago
Confessions of a...
Reflections of a postgrad lecturer-in-training: Part 1 In a previous post, I mentioned that I was beginning a stint as postgraduate teaching intern at UWA,...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
In a previous post, I mentioned that I was beginning a stint as postgraduate teaching intern at UWA, and that part of the internship involved keeping a reflective journal.  So I’ve decided that instead of merely writing down my thoughts (and possibly becoming lazy about it as the...
symmetry magazine
Collaboration builds fantastical stories from nuggets of truth What happens when you pair CERN scientists with science fiction writers to create short stories...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
What happens when you pair CERN scientists with science fiction writers to create short stories inspired by particle physics?
Yale E360
Biotech Firm Unveils ‘Woolly Mice,’ a Step Toward Recreating Woolly Mammoths A U.S. biotech firm working to bring back extinct animals said it had reached a milestone in its...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
A U.S. biotech firm working to bring back extinct animals said it had reached a milestone in its quest to recreate woolly mammoths. This week it unveiled “woolly mice” — mice that had been genetically engineered to sport woolly coats reminiscent of long-dead mammoths. Read more...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Reality of Real-World Evidence | Out-Of-Pocket Real recognize real...sort of
a year ago
Yale E360
Penguin Droppings May Be Seeding Clouds, Study Finds Penguin droppings may play a role in the formation of clouds over Antarctica, new research...
a month ago
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a month ago
Penguin droppings may play a role in the formation of clouds over Antarctica, new research finds. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Retreating Arctic Glaciers Have Exposed 1,500 Miles of Coastline Since 2000, the melting of Arctic glaciers has exposed some 1,500 miles of coastline, a study...
3 months ago
nanoscale views
New updates + tetrahedra, tunneling times, and more Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find...
a week ago
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a week ago
Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find interesting: Essentially all the news pertaining to the US federal funding of science continues to be awful.  This article from Science summarizes the situation well, as does this...
The Works in...
The eye of the tiger What makes tigers different from one another?
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Does Nothingness Exist? Even empty space bubbles with energy, according to quantum mechanics — and that fact affects almost...
a year ago
51
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...
Yale E360
City Lights Extend Growing Season for Urban Trees From New York to Paris to Beijing, urban trees are enjoying an extra-long growing season, a new...
3 weeks ago
2
3 weeks ago
From New York to Paris to Beijing, urban trees are enjoying an extra-long growing season, a new study finds. Read more on E360 →
Asterisk
Cows vs. Chemists: The Health Debates Over Plant-Based Meat Everyone wants to know if plant-based meats are good for you. Despite what you might read, no one...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Everyone wants to know if plant-based meats are good for you. Despite what you might read, no one has a definitive answer.
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Observe ‘Unobservable’ Quantum Phase Transition Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are...
a year ago
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a year ago
Measurement and entanglement both have a “spooky” nonlocal flavor to them. Now physicists are harnessing that nonlocality to probe the spread of quantum information and control it. The post Physicists Observe ‘Unobservable’ Quantum Phase Transition first appeared on...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Companions – Good or Bad? Often times the answer to a binary question is “yes”. Is artificial intelligence (AI) a powerful and...
12 months ago
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12 months ago
Often times the answer to a binary question is “yes”. Is artificial intelligence (AI) a powerful and quickly advancing tool or is it overhyped? Yes. Are opiates useful medicines or dangerous drugs? Yes. Is Elon Musk a technological visionary or an eccentric opportunist? This is...
NeuroLogica Blog
Fossil Fuels – Reduce Demand or Supply? This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a somewhat of a dilemma. Is the optimal path to reductions and eventual elimination of fossil fuel burning through reduced demand or supply? There are some interesting tradeoffs...
Quanta Magazine
Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals Complex neural pathways likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
Complex neural pathways likely arose independently in birds and mammals, suggesting that vertebrates evolved intelligence multiple times. The post Intelligence Evolved at Least Twice in Vertebrate Animals first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Beautiful Public...
The Pillbox Database The National Library of Medicine's Pillbox dataset contained 8,693 photographs of pills, with an...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The National Library of Medicine's Pillbox dataset contained 8,693 photographs of pills, with an accompanying database of drug information. It was built to help with the identification of unknown pills.
Quantum Frontiers
Discoveries at the Dibner This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit...
a year ago
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a year ago
This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Dibner Rare Book Library in D.C. Located in a small corner of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, tucked away behind flashier exhibits, the Dibner is … Continue...
Blog - Practical...
These Metals Destroy Themselves to Prevent Rust [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the old Howard...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the old Howard Frankland Bridge that carries roughly 180,000 vehicles per day across Old Tampa Bay between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida. A replacement for the bridge is currently under...
IEEE Spectrum
False Starts: The Story of Vehicle-to-Grid Power In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a groundbreaking experiment. They wanted to see whether an electric vehicle could feed electricity back to the grid. The experiment seemed to prove the feasibility of the technology. The...
Asterisk
Feeding the World Without Sunlight In 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history led to harvest failures across the globe....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
In 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history led to harvest failures across the globe. Today, a nuclear winter could bring the global food system crashing down. Is it possible to feed the world in the aftermath of a catastrophe?
Quanta Magazine
Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order? Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe. ...
4 weeks ago
18
4 weeks ago
Two new notions of infinity challenge a long-standing plan to define the mathematical universe. The post Is Mathematics Mostly Chaos or Mostly Order? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Is the World Really Running Out of Sand? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and...
Quanta Magazine
The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling...
a year ago
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a year ago
Some strange mathematical sequences are always whole numbers — until they’re not. The puzzling patterns have revealed ties to graph theory and prime numbers, awing mathematicians. The post The Astonishing Behavior of Recursive Sequences first appeared on Quanta...
Quanta Magazine
‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
A new proposal makes the case that paraparticles — a new category of quantum particle — could be created in exotic materials. The post ‘Paraparticles’ Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
How Is Flocking Like Computing? Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In...
a year ago
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a year ago
Birds flock. Locusts swarm. Fish school. From chaotic assemblies of life, order somehow emerges. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz interviews the evolutionary ecologist Iain Couzin about how and why collective behaviors arise. The post How Is Flocking Like...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: In pursuit of decent coffee No great stagnation in home espresso
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Oxygen As A Technosignature This is one of the biggest thought experiments in science today – as we look for life elsewhere in...
a year ago
34
a year ago
This is one of the biggest thought experiments in science today – as we look for life elsewhere in the universe, what should we be looking for, exactly? Other stellar systems are too far away to examine directly, and even our most powerful telescopes can only resolve points of...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Air Quality, Breathing, and Health | Out-Of-Pocket What we inhale is a public health issue
a year ago
wadertales
What happens when the mud disappears? The Yellow Sea provides important ‘service stations’ for shorebirds on the East Asian-Australasian...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The Yellow Sea provides important ‘service stations’ for shorebirds on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, especially on their way north to Russian and Alaskan breeding areas. In a thought-provoking paper in Biological Conservation, Xiaodan Wang and colleagues consider how...
Casey Handmer's blog
Solar and batteries for generic use cases A brief note on using solar and batteries as generic power sources. Over the last few years of work...
8 months ago
43
8 months ago
A brief note on using solar and batteries as generic power sources. Over the last few years of work at Terraform Industries, we’ve developed several useful heuristics to understand how rapid progress in solar and battery costs will change industry. This includes the bifurcation...
Quanta Magazine
The Mysterious Flow of Fluid in the Brain A popular hypothesis for how the brain clears molecular waste, which may help explain why sleep...
3 months ago
44
3 months ago
A popular hypothesis for how the brain clears molecular waste, which may help explain why sleep feels refreshing, is a subject of debate. The post The Mysterious Flow of Fluid in the Brain first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the...
3 weeks ago
17
3 weeks ago
Every elementary particle falls into one of two categories. Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing. The post Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles first appeared on...
Yale E360
Trees That Have Never Known Plentiful Rainfall Better Prepared for Drought A new study finds that trees that have lived through many wet years struggle to cope with dry...
6 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
New Healthcare Crash Courses + Some Updates | Out-Of-Pocket learn stuff and also other things
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
All Dams Are Temporary [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Lewis and Clark Lake, on the...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Lewis and Clark Lake, on the border between Nebraska and South Dakota, might not be a lake for much longer. Together with the dam that holds it back, the reservoir provides hydropower, flood control, and...
IEEE Spectrum
In 1926, TV Was Mechanical John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an...
10 months ago
62
10 months ago
John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an early attempt at video recording, with the signals preserved on phonograph records. His noctovision used infrared light to see objects in the dark, which some experts claim was a...
The Works in...
Issue 17: No great stagnation in cruise ships Plus: animals as chemical factories, how progress lost its glamour, and how Madrid built 120 miles...
7 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound...
12 months ago
76
12 months ago
In work that has been 30 years in the making, mathematicians have proved a major part of a profound mathematical vision called the Langlands program. The post Monumental Proof Settles Geometric Langlands Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Factory Farming is Better Than Organic Farming Some narratives are simply ubiquitous in our culture (every culture has its universal narratives)....
7 months ago
79
7 months ago
Some narratives are simply ubiquitous in our culture (every culture has its universal narratives). Sometimes these narratives emerge out of shared values, like liberty and freedom. Sometimes they emerge out of foundational beliefs (the US still has a puritanical bent). And...
Asterisk
Through the Looking Glass, and What Zheludev et al. (2024) Found There Every time microbiologists develop a new way of looking, they find that there’s more to see than...
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Mystery of the Missing Multicellular Prokaryotes Why have bacteria never evolved complex multicellularity? A new hypothesis suggests that it could...
a year ago
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a year ago
Why have bacteria never evolved complex multicellularity? A new hypothesis suggests that it could come down to how prokaryotic genomes respond to a small population size. The post The Mystery of the Missing Multicellular Prokaryotes first appeared on Quanta...
Casey Handmer's blog
To Conquer the Primary Energy Consumption Layer of Our Entire Civilization [Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.] Three years ago we set out to make cheap...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
[Originally posted on the Terraform blog April 3, 2025.] Three years ago we set out to make cheap synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate that we had kicked off the process of recompiling the foundation layer of our entire industrial...
Many Worlds
All Six Element Needed For Life as We Know It Have Now Been Found in The Watery Plumes of Enceladus The elements needed for life as we know it are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulfur and...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The elements needed for life as we know it are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen sulfur and phosphorus. Before today, planetary scientists could say that five of those crucial elements had been found in the watery spray that spurts out of the Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.  All that...
nanoscale views
Turbulent times While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
While I've been absolutely buried under deadlines, it's been a crazy week for US science, and things are unlikely to calm down anytime soon.  As I've written before, I largely try to keep my political views off here, since that's not what people want to read from me, and I want...
Stephen Wolfram...
Nestedly Recursive Functions Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely that’s not enough to be able to generate any serious complexity. In the early 1980s I had made the very surprising discovery that very simple programs based on cellular automata could...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The New Era Of Digital Therapeutics | Out-Of-Pocket Guess it's time to start defining the term again
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Concrete Battery I know it’s only been a couple of weeks since I wrote about cement, but now I need to write about...
a year ago
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a year ago
I know it’s only been a couple of weeks since I wrote about cement, but now I need to write about concrete, or potential version of concrete that is able to function as a battery. If we can get the technology to work this could an extremely useful item for a future of green...
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
27
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...
Yale E360
In a First, Solar Was Europe's Biggest Source of Power Last Month For the first time, solar was the largest source of electricity in the EU last month, supplying a...
a week ago
7
a week ago
For the first time, solar was the largest source of electricity in the EU last month, supplying a record 22 percent of the bloc's power. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
Immune Cells to Fight Cancer There is a recent medical advance that you may not have heard about unless you are a healthcare...
a year ago
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a year ago
There is a recent medical advance that you may not have heard about unless you are a healthcare professional or encountered it from the patient side – CAR-T cell therapy. A recent study shows the potential for continued incremental advance of this technology, but already it is a...
The Works in...
The concept of sustainment A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Explorations of an...
A Quest Nature Tour To Borneo: Tabin Wildlife Reserve And Danum Valley We left the Kinabatangan River behind and transferred to our next destination, the Tabin Wildlife...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
We left the Kinabatangan River behind and transferred to our next destination, the Tabin Wildlife Reserve. This is the largest swath of protected forest; an area of lowland primary and logged forest that is home to iconic species like the Bornean Pygmy Elephant, the Sun Bear and...
NeuroLogica Blog
Where Are All the Dwarf Planets? In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially adopted the definition of dwarf planet – they are large enough for their gravity to pull themselves into a sphere, they orbit the sun and not another larger body, but they don’t...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Citizen fraud detection, self-experimentation, and OOP Updates | Out-Of-Pocket Some random musings and OOP announcements before the holiday
7 months ago
Yale E360
Peruvian Farmer Sues German Energy Giant Over Its Role in Climate Change Hearings began Monday in a landmark climate case in Hamm, Germany, where a Peruvian farmer is suing...
4 months ago
3
4 months ago
Hearings began Monday in a landmark climate case in Hamm, Germany, where a Peruvian farmer is suing energy giant RWE over its role in warming. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Birds vs. Wind Turbines: New Research Aims to Prevent Deaths Window collisions and cats kill more birds than wind farms do, but ornithologists say turbine...
a month ago
3
a month ago
Window collisions and cats kill more birds than wind farms do, but ornithologists say turbine impacts must be taken seriously. Scientists are testing a range of technologies to reduce bird strikes — from painting stripes to using artificial intelligence — to keep birds safe. Read...
Yale E360
Entries Invited for Yale Environment 360 Film Contest The 12th annual Yale Environment 360 Film Contest is now accepting entries. Read more on E360 →
3 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other...
a year ago
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a year ago
New research has uncovered a social world of viruses full of cheating, cooperation and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community. The post Viruses Finally Reveal Their Complex Social Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues...
a year ago
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a year ago
After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move. The post Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living...
Yale E360
With Sea Ice Melting, Killer Whales Are Moving Into the Arctic Killer whales have begun to migrate farther into previously icy regions of the Arctic, preying on...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
Killer whales have begun to migrate farther into previously icy regions of the Arctic, preying on narwhal, beluga, and bowhead. Scientists say their increasing numbers could shift food webs in ways that affect both endangered whale populations and subsistence Inuit hunters. Read...
IEEE Spectrum
When IBM Built a War Room for Executives Computer History Museum’s collection has a biography of sorts—a life before CHM, a tale about how it...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Computer History Museum’s collection has a biography of sorts—a life before CHM, a tale about how it came to us, and a life within the museum. The chapters of that biography include the uses made of it, and the historical and interpretive stories it can be made to tell. This then...
Quanta Magazine
In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which...
a year ago
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a year ago
Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand. The post In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge first...
Quanta Magazine
What Is the Nature of Consciousness? Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon. The post What Is the Nature of...
ToughSF
How to Live on Other Planets: Uranus The weirdest of the planets. A blue giant, resting on its side. Could we find a home in...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
The weirdest of the planets. A blue giant, resting on its side. Could we find a home in the Uranian system? Description Uranus is the fourth-largest planet and the first ‘ice giant’. It orbits between 18.3 and 20.1 AU from the Sun, making it four times more distant than...
Yale E360
Antarctic Ice Sheet May Be Less Vulnerable Than Previously Thought A new study reveals the massive West Antarctic ice sheet did not completely collapse during the last...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
A new study reveals the massive West Antarctic ice sheet did not completely collapse during the last warm period, as prior modeling had suggested. The findings offer some hope for the future of the ice sheet as the planet heats up. Read more on E360 →
Drew Ex Machina
The Dream: The First Probe to the Moon The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as...
a year ago
36
a year ago
The past decade or so has seen a marked increase in interest to reach the Moon for exploration as well as the potential exploitation of its […]
Yale E360
Cuts to U.S. Climate Aid Will Leave Large Gap in Global Funding The U.S. provides nearly a tenth of all climate finance globally, a well of funding that is at risk...
4 months ago
9
4 months ago
The U.S. provides nearly a tenth of all climate finance globally, a well of funding that is at risk of drying up as the Trump administration takes aim at overseas spending. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
In a first, researchers have shown that adding more “qubits” to a quantum computer can make it more resilient. It’s an essential step on the long road to practical applications. The post Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI As Legal Entities Should an artificial intelligence (AI) be treated like a legal “subject” or agent? That is the...
a year ago
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a year ago
Should an artificial intelligence (AI) be treated like a legal “subject” or agent? That is the question discussed in a new paper by legal scholars. They recognize that this question is a bit ahead of the technology, but argue that we should work out the legal ramifications before...
Uncharted...
Desalination: a Future of Infinite Water Desalination is finally cheap, and it’s only getting cheaper. Will this usher a world of plentiful...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
Desalination is finally cheap, and it’s only getting cheaper. Will this usher a world of plentiful water everywhere? Will we be able to build in the Sahara?
NeuroLogica Blog
Grief Tech In the awesome show, Black Mirror, one episode features a young woman who lost her husband. In her...
a year ago
70
a year ago
In the awesome show, Black Mirror, one episode features a young woman who lost her husband. In her grief she turns to a company that promises to give her at least a partial experience of her husband. They sift through every picture, video, comment, and other online trace of the...
Quantum Frontiers
The first and second centuries of quantum mechanics At this week’s American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, John Preskill...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
At this week’s American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California, John Preskill spoke at an event celebrating 100 years of groundbreaking advances in quantum mechanics. Here are his remarks. Welcome, everyone, to this celebration of 100 years of … Continue...
brr
Doors of McMurdo Doors, in a variety of shapes and styles.
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
‘The Rest of the World Disappears’: Claire Voisin on Mathematical Creativity The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and...
a year ago
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a year ago
The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought. The post ‘The Rest of the World Disappears’: Claire Voisin on Mathematical Creativity first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Announcing Think Linear Algebra I’ve been thinking about Think Linear Algebra for more than a decade, and recently I started working...
a month ago
22
a month ago
I’ve been thinking about Think Linear Algebra for more than a decade, and recently I started working on it in earnest. If you want to get a sense of it, I’ve posted a draft chapter as a Jupyter notebook. In one way, I am glad I waited — I think it will be better, faster [to...
Chris Grossack's...
Preprint -- The RAAG Functor as a Categorical Embedding After almost a year of sitting on my hard drive, I finally had time in August to finish revising my...
a year ago
21
a year ago
After almost a year of sitting on my hard drive, I finally had time in August to finish revising my new preprint on Right Angled Artin Groups (Raags). And in September I had time to put it on the arxiv for people to see! Within 24 hours I had an email from somebody who had...
NeuroLogica Blog
Problems with the Institute Of Noetic Sciences I was interviewed recently for a Daily Beast article on recent research involving the Institute of...
over a year ago
64
over a year ago
I was interviewed recently for a Daily Beast article on recent research involving the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Overall the article is very good, and author Maddie Bender was fair and reasonable in how I was quoted. I can’t always take that as a given. No matter how...
Yale E360
In a First, Chimps Found Sharing Fermented Fruit For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been caught on film sharing fermented fruit. The footage...
2 months ago
2
2 months ago
For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been caught on film sharing fermented fruit. The footage comes from Cantanhez National Park in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, where camera traps recorded chimps eating fermented breadfruit together on 10 separate...
Quanta Magazine
Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models? Larger models can pull off greater feats, but the accessibility and efficiency of smaller models...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Larger models can pull off greater feats, but the accessibility and efficiency of smaller models make them attractive tools. The post Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
How Will We Know We’re Not Alone? The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands...
7 months ago
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7 months 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...
The Works in...
New podcasts: Hard Drugs and the Works in Progress Podcast The miracle drug that could end AIDS. Plus: the Great Downzoning, coming soon.
a month ago
Yale E360
Carbon Dioxide Levels Highest in 800,000 Years Temperatures and carbon dioxide levels hit new highs last year, according to a U.N. report detailing...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
Temperatures and carbon dioxide levels hit new highs last year, according to a U.N. report detailing the dire state of the global climate. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Yael Tauman Kalai’s breakthroughs secure our digital world, from cloud computing to our quantum future. The post The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Some Future Tech Possibilities It’s difficult to pick winners and losers in the future tech game. In reality you just have to see...
a year ago
38
a year ago
It’s difficult to pick winners and losers in the future tech game. In reality you just have to see what happens when you try out a new technology in the real world with actual people. Many technologies that look good on paper run into logistical problems, difficulty scaling, fall...
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
43
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
Is Mars the New Frontier? In the excellent sci fi show, The Expanse, which takes place a couple hundred years in the future,...
a year ago
39
a year 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...
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...
over a year ago
51
over 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.
Quanta Magazine
The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light —...
a year ago
26
a year ago
To catch even a whiff of the universe’s earliest epochs — an age of darkness, and one of new light — Cynthia Chiang builds her own equipment. Then she deploys it at the ends of the Earth. The post The Experimental Cosmologist Hunting for the First Sunrise first...
Quanta Magazine
Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible. The post Undergraduate Upends a 40-Year-Old Data Science Conjecture first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Preserving Food About 30-40% of the produce we grow ends up wasted. This is a massive inefficiency in the food...
a month ago
19
a month ago
About 30-40% of the produce we grow ends up wasted. This is a massive inefficiency in the food system. It occurs at every level, from the farm to the end user, and for a variety of reasons. This translates to enough food worldwide to feed 1.6 billion people. We also have to...
Quanta Magazine
The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators,...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more. New experiments explore how evolution may have influenced this phenomenon. The post The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology first appeared...
The Works in...
Issue 16: I dream of genes Plus: how humans are outdoing nature's shiniest creations; the history of measuring price rises; and...
10 months ago
74
10 months ago
Plus: how humans are outdoing nature's shiniest creations; the history of measuring price rises; and how America's favourite type of coffee got really, really good.
The Works in...
Why skyscrapers are so short How to overcome physical, economic and regulatory barriers and build taller
2 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
How To Make Your Own Card Game | Out-Of-Pocket Want to bring a board or card game to life? Here's what you can expect in terms of costs and money...
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Cool Ideas For Dentistry + Medicine With Nisarg Patel | Out-Of-Pocket plus what actually happens in the operating room?
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. ...
a year ago
24
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
Yale E360
Russia's War Is Driving Up Emissions by Forcing Planes to Reroute Since war broke out in Ukraine, Western airlines have been charting longer routes to avoid flying...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
Since war broke out in Ukraine, Western airlines have been charting longer routes to avoid flying over Russia, with a discernible impact on emissions. Read more on E360 →
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Breakfast with g IQ, lived experience, and my boyfriend’s underpants
over a year ago
Asterisk
Aperitif
over a year ago
SubAnima
Why do bees die when they sting you? Suicide is a truly bizarre evolutionary strategy. Why does it exist?
over a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
The Upfront Pricing Phenomenon | Out-Of-Pocket Imagine actually knowing what things cost in advance lmao
a year ago
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...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
How fast will it take over, how fast are costs shrinking, why is it so cheap, what industries will it birth, how much surface will it take up, where will it appear first?
nanoscale views
NSF targeted with mass layoffs, acc to Politico; huge cuts in president’s budget request According to this article at politico, there was an all-hands meeting at NSF today (at least for the...
5 months ago
20
5 months ago
According to this article at politico, there was an all-hands meeting at NSF today (at least for the engineering directorate) where they were told that there will be staff layoffs of 25-50% over the next two months. This is an absolute catastrophe if it is accurately reported and...
Quanta Magazine
New Proof Settles Decades-Old Bet About Connected Networks According to mathematical legend, Peter Sarnak and Noga Alon made a bet about optimal graphs in the...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
According to mathematical legend, Peter Sarnak and Noga Alon made a bet about optimal graphs in the late 1980s. They’ve now both been proved wrong. The post New Proof Settles Decades-Old Bet About Connected Networks first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
The British Navy Resisted a Decent Lightning Rod for Decades Frustrated scientists turned to visual aids to help make their case for the lightning rod. The...
4 months ago
48
4 months ago
Frustrated scientists turned to visual aids to help make their case for the lightning rod. The exploding thunder house is one example. When a small amount of gunpowder was deposited inside the dollhouse-size structure and a charge was applied, the house would either explode or...
Uncharted...
Ten New US Cities: 2. Starbase A city of dreams
6 months ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Provider Directories, Physician data, and Ribbon Health | Out-Of-Pocket why can't I find any important info about my doctor lol
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Flow Batteries – Now With Nanofluids Battery technology has been advancing nicely over the last few decades, with a fairly predictable...
a year ago
54
a year ago
Battery technology has been advancing nicely over the last few decades, with a fairly predictable incremental increase in energy density, charging time, stability, and lifecycle. We now have lithium-ion batteries with a specific energy of 296 Wh/kg – these are in use in existing...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Research papers and the patient perspective | Out-Of-Pocket we can make improvements with some better studies
a year ago
Marine Madness
Book Club: ‘Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia’ by Christina Thompson Who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific? Where did they come from? How did they get...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
Who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific? Where did they come from? How did they get there, and how do we know? The answers to these and more questions are all explored in this mesmerizing novel by Pacific historian Christina Thompson.  For over a millennium,...
Yale E360
Can Toxic Mining Waste Help Remove CO2 from the Atmosphere? On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
On the coast of Newfoundland, waste from a shuttered asbestos mine has been a troubling source of contamination for decades. Now, a company plans to process the waste to draw CO2 from the air — one of several projects worldwide that aim to turn this liability into an asset. Read...
Damn Interesting
Pushing the Envelope As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life insurance policies were prohibitively expensive. Rather than pay the exorbitant insurance fees, the astronauts devised a system to ensure their wives and children would be financially...
nanoscale views
Lots to read, including fab for quantum and "Immaterial Science" Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A...
9 months ago
11
9 months ago
Sometimes there are upticks in the rate of fun reading material.  In the last few days: A Nature paper has been published by a group of authors predominantly from IMEC in Belgium, in which they demonstrate CMOS-compatible manufacturing of superconducting qubit hardware...
Uncharted...
12 Interesting Updates on AI, Immortality, Robotaxis, and More From the last 6 months | Q4 2024 and Q1 2025
3 months ago
Asterisk
Methods Section
a year ago
Yale E360
In a First, Chimps Found Sharing Fermented Fruit For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been caught on film sharing fermented fruit. The footage...
2 months ago
5
2 months ago
For the first time, wild chimpanzees have been caught on film sharing fermented fruit. The footage comes from Cantanhez National Park in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, where camera traps recorded chimps eating fermented breadfruit together on 10 separate...
The Works in...
How pour-over coffee got good While popular with enthusiasts, pour-over coffee frustrated shops because it takes so long to make,...
7 months ago
80
7 months ago
While popular with enthusiasts, pour-over coffee frustrated shops because it takes so long to make, but that's changing.
Quanta Magazine
‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality Experiments that test physics and philosophy "as a single whole" may be our only route to surefire...
11 months ago
114
11 months ago
Experiments that test physics and philosophy "as a single whole" may be our only route to surefire knowledge about the universe. The post ‘Metaphysical Experiments’ Probe Our Hidden Assumptions About Reality first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Why Are Beach Holes So Deadly? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Even though it’s a favorite...
3 months ago
59
3 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Even though it’s a favorite vacation destination, the beach is surprisingly dangerous. Consider the lifeguard: There aren’t that many recreational activities in our lives that have explicit staff whose only job...
brr
McMurdo's Automated Teller Machines Cash, in Antarctica!
over a year ago
Light from Space
The Fossil Footprint Nebula A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total...
a year ago
58
a year ago
A rarely imaged target as it is very dim. This image took me over 50h of total exposure time. Total exposure time: 52h 40' Image resolution: 4,490 × 4,552px (0.96″/px) Shot from my driveway near Tucson, AZ in late 2023 Telescope: William Optics RedCat
Asterisk
The Science of Woo A conversation about neuroscience, meditation, and the many paths to insight.
4 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Using AI To Create Virtual Environments Generative AI applications seem to be on the steep part of the development curve – not only is the...
a year ago
105
a year ago
Generative AI applications seem to be on the steep part of the development curve – not only is the technology getting better, but people are finding more and more uses for it. It’s a new powerful tool with broad applicability, and so there are countless startups and researchers...
Quanta Magazine
Topologists Tackle the Trouble With Poll Placement Mathematicians are using topological abstractions to find places where it’s hard to vote. ...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Mathematicians are using topological abstractions to find places where it’s hard to vote. The post Topologists Tackle the Trouble With Poll Placement first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Drew Ex Machina
Pioneer 3: JPL’s First Moonshot Attempt With the new push by the United States and other space faring powers to renew the exploration of the...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
With the new push by the United States and other space faring powers to renew the exploration of the Moon, miniaturized spacecraft have been made part […]
The Works in...
Everything drugs The promise of SGLT2 inhibitors
2 months ago
Yale E360
Trump Administration Fires Hundreds of Climate and Weather Specialists The Trump administration has re-fired hundreds of probationary workers at NOAA after a court ruling...
3 months ago
2
3 months ago
The Trump administration has re-fired hundreds of probationary workers at NOAA after a court ruling cleared the way. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
Can Space-Time Be Saved? Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the jump to the next theory of reality. The post Can Space-Time Be Saved? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
In a First, California Tribe May Freely Burn Its Ancestral Lands In California, a state increasingly beset by devastating wildfires, the Karuk Tribe will be able to...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
In California, a state increasingly beset by devastating wildfires, the Karuk Tribe will be able to freely set controlled burns, helping to clear the dense underbrush that fuels larger and more destructive fires. Read more on E360 →
Eukaryote Writes...
Will the growing deer prion epidemic spread to humans? Why not? If a fatal neurological virus were spreading across deer in the US, and showed up in cooked infected...
over a year ago
85
over a year ago
If a fatal neurological virus were spreading across deer in the US, and showed up in cooked infected meat, my default assumption would be “we're in danger.” But a prion isn’t a virus. Why does that matter?
ToughSF
Lasers, Mirrors and Star Pyramids Lasers can hit targets at extreme ranges, at the fastest speed possible. They are ideal weapons for...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Lasers can hit targets at extreme ranges, at the fastest speed possible. They are ideal weapons for space warfare.  However, everyone knows that lasers bounce off mirrors... does this make lasers useless? The post is inspired by the discussion that arose from the conclusions...
Stephen Wolfram...
Computing the Eclipse: Astronomy in the Wolfram Language Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately...
a year ago
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a year ago
Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately compute eclipses. But now—as a tiny part of making “everything in the world” computable—computation about eclipses is just a built-in feature of the Wolfram Language. The core...
Quanta Magazine
What Is Quantum Teleportation? Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically...
a year ago
89
a year ago
Teleporting people through space is still science fiction. But quantum teleportation is dramatically different and entirely real. In this episode, Janna Levin interviews the theoretical physicist John Preskill about teleporting bits and the promise of quantum technology. ...
symmetry magazine
India’s gem at CERN: Archana Sharma The first Indian scientist to join CERN was recently recognized with the highest honor of India for...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
The first Indian scientist to join CERN was recently recognized with the highest honor of India for overseas citizens.
nanoscale views
Talk about "The Direct Democracy of Matter" The Scientia Institute at Rice sponsors series of public lectures annually, centered around a...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
The Scientia Institute at Rice sponsors series of public lectures annually, centered around a theme.  The intent is to get a wide variety of perspectives spanning across the humanities, social sciences, arts, sciences, and engineering, presented in an accessible way.  The youtube...
Cremieux Recueil
"Yes, and..." Urbanism What can the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth teach us about effective zoning law?
2 months ago
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Airfoil The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many...
a year ago
97
a year 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
MOBE – A New Gene Editing System Have you memorized yet what CRISPR stands for – clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic...
a year ago
64
a year 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...
Yale E360
Uncertain Future for Clean Tech Boom Underway in Republican Strongholds Government support for clean energy has spurred new projects across the U.S., with more than 80...
4 months ago
3
4 months ago
Government support for clean energy has spurred new projects across the U.S., with more than 80 percent of the spending flowing to Republican districts. But since President Trump took office, new project announcements have seen a precipitous drop. Read more on E360 →
symmetry magazine
Celebrating Dark Matter Day in Latin America Scientists, artists, communicators and physics fans find creative ways to mark the unofficial...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Scientists, artists, communicators and physics fans find creative ways to mark the unofficial holiday devoted to dark matter.
The Works in...
History is in the making It's technology and ideas, not politics, that change our lives the most. History should reflect...
7 months ago
Eukaryote Writes...
There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
Dendronization – Evolving into a tree-like morphology. (In the style of “carcinization".) From 'dendro', the ancient Greek root for tree.
Quanta Magazine
A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
A powerful mathematical technique is used to model melting ice and other phenomena. But it has long been imperiled by certain “nightmare scenarios.” A new proof has removed that obstacle. The post A New Proof Smooths Out the Math of Melting first appeared on Quanta...
NeuroLogica Blog
Betavoltaic Batteries In 1964 Isaac Asimov, asked to imagine the world 50 years in the future, wrote: “The appliances of...
a year ago
35
a year ago
In 1964 Isaac Asimov, asked to imagine the world 50 years in the future, wrote: “The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by-...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI Therapists In the movie Blade Runner 2049 (an excellent film I highly recommend), Ryan Gosling’s character, K,...
a month ago
14
a month ago
In the movie Blade Runner 2049 (an excellent film I highly recommend), Ryan Gosling’s character, K, has an AI “wife”, Joi, played by Ana de Armas. K is clearly in love with Joi, who is nothing but software and holograms. In one poignant scene, K is viewing a giant ad for AI...
Uncharted...
What Asian Development Can Teach the World The Magic Development of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China, and What That Tells Us about US...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
The Magic Development of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China, and What That Tells Us about US Tariffs, China’s Future, EU Protectionism, Japan’s Zombie Debt, Argentina’s Arrested Development, and more
Apoorva Srinivasan
on edward jenner and creativity One common question that’s on everyone’s minds as we fiercely scrub our hands, pool our resources,...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
One common question that’s on everyone’s minds as we fiercely scrub our hands, pool our resources, conserve our consumption, stock up (but not hoard), invent calculus or write King Lear is: when will this end? Nobody knows what the answer to that question is but we
nanoscale views
US science funding - now time to push on the House appropriators Some not-actively-discouraging news out of Washington DC yesterday:  The Senate appropriations...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Some not-actively-discouraging news out of Washington DC yesterday:  The Senate appropriations committee is doing its markups of the various funding bills (which all technically originated in the House), and it appears that they have pushed to keep the funding for NASA and NSF...
Apoorva Srinivasan
an experiment in navigating the knowledge frontier beyond search Lately, I've been experimenting with interfaces for large language models (LLMs) in my free time....
a year ago
25
a year ago
Lately, I've been experimenting with interfaces for large language models (LLMs) in my free time. The fruit of this labor is something I'm calling "curie," an exploratory and sense-making tool designed to navigate complex topics. 0:00 ...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Clipper Europa Mission I wrote earlier this week about the latest successful test of Starship and the capture of the Super...
9 months ago
64
9 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...
IEEE Spectrum
Meet Mr. Internet: Vint Cerf It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a problem Kahn had been pondering for some time: how to connect ground-based military computers seamlessly to communications satellites and mobile radios. The two had been...
NeuroLogica Blog
Controlling the Narrative with AI There is an ongoing battle in our society to control the narrative, to influence the flow of...
a year ago
45
a year ago
There is an ongoing battle in our society to control the narrative, to influence the flow of information, and thereby move the needle on what people think and how they behave. This is nothing new, but the mechanisms for controlling the narrative are evolving as our communication...
The Works in...
The prehistoric psychopath Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. But this made them vulnerable to...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
Life in the state of nature was less violent than you might think. But this made them vulnerable to a few psychopaths.
Quantum Frontiers
Caltech’s Ginsburg Center Editor’s Note: On 10 August 2023, Caltech celebrated the groundbreaking for the Dr. Allen and...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Editor’s Note: On 10 August 2023, Caltech celebrated the groundbreaking for the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement, which will open in 2025. At a lunch following the ceremony, John Preskill made these remarks. Hello everyone. … Continue...
Yale E360
Warmer, Greener Arctic Becoming a Source of Heat-Trapping Gas As the northern latitudes warm, ice is melting and vegetation is spreading. But instead of absorbing...
5 months ago
4
5 months ago
As the northern latitudes warm, ice is melting and vegetation is spreading. But instead of absorbing more carbon, the region is becoming a source of heat-trapping gas, a new study shows. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
3D Printed Rocket Launches This is one of those technology news stories where the implications of the technology is greater...
over a year ago
48
over 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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Fossil Fuels – Reduce Demand or Supply? This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a...
a year ago
20
a year ago
This is a bit of a false choice – we can do both, or neither – but it is an important question and a somewhat of a dilemma. Is the optimal path to reductions and eventual elimination of fossil fuel burning through reduced demand or supply? There are some interesting tradeoffs...
Quanta Magazine
How Metabolism Can Shape Cells’ Destinies A growing body of work suggests that cell metabolism — the chemical reactions that provide energy...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
A growing body of work suggests that cell metabolism — the chemical reactions that provide energy and building materials — plays a vital, overlooked role in the first steps of life. The post How Metabolism Can Shape Cells’ Destinies first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide. The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely...
a year ago
99
a year ago
The work of the neuroscientist Ishmail Abdus-Saboor has opened up a world of insights into precisely how much pleasure and pain animals experience during different forms of touch. The post Pleasure or Pain? He Maps the Neural Circuits That Decide. first appeared on...
Quanta Magazine
The Deep Link Equating Math Proofs and Computer Programs Mathematical logic and the code of computer programs are, in an exact way, mirror images of each...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Mathematical logic and the code of computer programs are, in an exact way, mirror images of each other. The post The Deep Link Equating Math Proofs and Computer Programs first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Evolution: Fast or Slow? Lizards Help Resolve a Paradox. Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A...
a year ago
87
a year ago
Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A multigenerational study of four lizard species addresses biology’s “paradox of stasis.” The post Evolution: Fast or Slow? Lizards Help Resolve a Paradox. first appeared...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Six (More) Healthcare Startup Ideas | Out-Of-Pocket In collaboration with The Generalist, one of the few newsletters I read end-to-end every time
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
The Real Risk of AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been...
a week ago
13
a week ago
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been steadily infiltrating the technology we use every day, whether you realize it or not. I remain somewhat in the middle in terms of the hype-to-technological-miracle spectrum. I don’t...
Quanta Magazine
Graduate Student Solves Classic Problem About the Limits of Addition A new proof illuminates the hidden patterns that emerge when addition becomes impossible. ...
a month ago
30
a month ago
A new proof illuminates the hidden patterns that emerge when addition becomes impossible. The post Graduate Student Solves Classic Problem About the Limits of Addition first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Marmosets Call Each Other By Name Humans identify and call each other by specific names. So far this advanced cognitive behavior has...
10 months ago
64
10 months ago
Humans identify and call each other by specific names. So far this advanced cognitive behavior has only been identified in a few other species, dolphins, elephants, and some parrots. Interestingly, it has never been documented in our closest relatives, non-human primates – that...