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NeuroLogica Blog
Dwarf Planet Ring Mystery Scientists love mysteries, because that is where new discoveries lay. It is nice to find evidence...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
Scientists love mysteries, because that is where new discoveries lay. It is nice to find evidence consistent with existing theories, providing further confirmation, but it’s exciting to find evidence that cannot be explained with existing theories. Astronomers may have found such...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Ciitizen And The Patient Data Marketplace | Out-Of-Pocket The path to our personal health record
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
During Pregnancy, a Fake ‘Infection’ Protects the Fetus Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Cells in the placenta have an unusual trick for activating gentle immune defenses and keeping them turned on when no infection is present. It involves crafting and deploying a fake virus. The post During Pregnancy, a Fake ‘Infection’ Protects the Fetus first appeared...
NeuroLogica Blog
Converting CO2 to Carbon Nanofibers One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not...
a year ago
47
a year ago
One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not slowly increasing, is the ability to draw CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to a solid form. Often referred to as carbon capture, some form of this is going to be necessary...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Real Risk of AI Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unavoidable. It’s now a part of our daily lives as it has been...
2 months ago
32
2 months 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...
The Roots of...
What is progress? In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another...
a year ago
139
a year ago
In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview. The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Black Hole Has Daily Meals Worthy of Thanksgiving You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another...
9 months ago
69
9 months ago
You think you ate too much?  No matter how stuffed you were after Thanksgiving (or another celebratory meal), it’s nothing compared to Quasar J0529-4351, which astronomers observed earlier this year to be consuming the mass of our entire Sun EACH and every day!  They called it...
The Works in...
Whatever happened to the industrial R&D lab? From the Works in Progress archives.
a year ago
Inverted Passion
Review of 2023 Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Time is strange – 2023 simultaneously felt too long and too short. It was short because I remember recently writing my 2022 review, and it was long because I ended up packing a lot of stuff into it. ✅ Train 5 days a week (including Mixed Martial Arts) I did manage to train 5...
IEEE Spectrum
How Antivirus Software Has Changed With the Internet We live in a world filled with computer viruses, and antivirus software is almost as old as the...
7 months ago
89
7 months ago
We live in a world filled with computer viruses, and antivirus software is almost as old as the Internet itself: The first version of what would become McAfee antivirus came out in 1987—just four years after the Internet booted up. For many of us, antivirus software is an...
SubAnima
How information and individuality are connected Discrete categorisation of individuals and non-individuals is like herding cats. Thinking about...
over a year ago
16
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
Factory Farming is Better Than Organic Farming Some narratives are simply ubiquitous in our culture (every culture has its universal narratives)....
8 months ago
91
8 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...
Casey Handmer's blog
The Los Angeles wildfires are self-inflicted I don’t ordinarily write about events “in the moment” but for this I will make an exception, as I...
7 months ago
73
7 months ago
I don’t ordinarily write about events “in the moment” but for this I will make an exception, as I was personally affected. Caveats aside, my family and I are safe, we evacuated for several days, and due to heroic efforts by professional firefighters and psychotically brave...
Drew Ex Machina
Star Way of Humanity: American Space Art During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
During the COVID-19 shutdown three years ago, I spent a lot of my time at home digging through my archives discovering all sorts of items I […]
Drew Ex Machina
You Can’t Fail Unless You Try: NASA’s Pioneer P-3 Lunar Orbiter Space enthusiasts of a certain age, like myself, grew up learning about the trio of NASA’s unmanned...
9 months ago
86
9 months ago
Space enthusiasts of a certain age, like myself, grew up learning about the trio of NASA’s unmanned programs which provided scientists and engineers with vital information […]
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
24
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...
The Roots of...
Highlights from The Industrial Revolution, by T. S. Ashton The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in...
over a year ago
45
over a year ago
The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in 1948. Here are some of my highlights from it. (Emphasis in bold added by me.) The role of chance What was the role of chance in the inventions of the Industrial Revolution? It is true...
Asterisk
Development Finance Done Right A veteran diplomat explains how to navigate the U.S. development ecosystem, master the interagency...
a year ago
21
a year ago
A veteran diplomat explains how to navigate the U.S. development ecosystem, master the interagency process, and bring electricity to 200 million people.
Yale E360
World Cannot Recycle Its Way Out of Plastics Crisis, Report Warns The 8 billion tons of plastic waste that have amassed on Earth pose a grave and growing danger to...
a month ago
20
a month ago
The 8 billion tons of plastic waste that have amassed on Earth pose a grave and growing danger to human health, according to a new report published in the leading medical journal The Lancet. Ahead of a U.N. conference on plastic pollution, authors warn that countries urgently...
pcloadletter
Somewhere along the way we forgot about software craftsmanship "Ship it!" "We're agile now, baby. Move fast and break things!"" "We measure our engineers by the...
a year ago
45
a year ago
"Ship it!" "We're agile now, baby. Move fast and break things!"" "We measure our engineers by the impact they have!" Somewhere along the way, in the midst of the agilification of software, or the software engineer salary gold rush, we forgot about craftsmanship. I have been in...
Stephen Wolfram...
What Can We Learn about Engineering and Innovation from Half a Century of the Game of Life Cellular... Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow...
5 months ago
74
5 months ago
Metaengineering and Laws of Innovation Things are invented. Things are discovered. And somehow there’s an arc of progress that’s formed. But are there what amount to “laws of innovation” that govern that arc of progress? There are some exponential and other laws that purport to...
Quanta Magazine
The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI By training machine learning models with enough examples of basic science, Miles Cranmer hopes to...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
By training machine learning models with enough examples of basic science, Miles Cranmer hopes to push the pace of scientific discovery forward. The post The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
A Win for Farmers and Tribes Brings New Hope to the Klamath In the long-contentious Klamath River watershed, an experiment that turned a barley field into a...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
In the long-contentious Klamath River watershed, an experiment that turned a barley field into a wetland not only improved water quality. It also offered a path forward for restoring populations of two endangered fish species that are of cultural importance to Native tribes. Read...
nanoscale views
Brief items A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close,...
9 months ago
24
9 months ago
A few tidbits that I encountered recently: The saga of Ranga Dias at Rochester draws to a close, as described by the Wall Street Journal.  It took quite some time for this to propagate through their system.  This is after multiple internal investigations that somehow were...
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
39
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...
Melting Asphalt
Going Critical Background: This is an interactive blog post. I wanted to host it here, but don't know how to make...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
Background: This is an interactive blog post. I wanted to host it here, but don't know how to make it play nice with WordPress. So I decided to host it on another part of the site instead. Click here for… Read more ›
Uncharted...
What Are My Politics? And my unrefined thoughts on US politics
5 months ago
Blog - Practical...
The Hidden Engineering Behind Texas's Top Tourist Attraction [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I am on location in downtown...
8 months ago
101
8 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] I am on location in downtown San Antonio, Texas, where crews have just finished setting up this massive 650-ton crane. The counterweights are on. The outriggers are down. And the jib, an extension for the...
Yale E360
U.S. Support and New Investments Buoy Hopes for Marine Energy Producing energy from waves and tides has a stop-and-start history. But with a new U.S. testing site...
8 months ago
11
8 months ago
Producing energy from waves and tides has a stop-and-start history. But with a new U.S. testing site opening in 2026, recent federal investment, and accelerating efforts to reach net zero emissions, developers aiming to harness the vast power of the sea are feeling...
Yale E360
‘Sponge City’: How Copenhagen Is Adapting to a Wetter Future Climate change is bringing ever more precipitation and rising seas to low-lying Denmark. In response...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Climate change is bringing ever more precipitation and rising seas to low-lying Denmark. In response to troubling predictions, Copenhagen is enacting an ambitious plan to build hundreds of nature-based and engineered projects to soak up, store, and redistribute future...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Cross the Line to Get to the Point A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between sets of lines...
a year ago
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a year ago
A new paper establishes a long-conjectured bound about the size of the overlap between sets of lines and points. The post Mathematicians Cross the Line to Get to the Point first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Should Japan Release Radioactive Water Into The Pacific? Japan is planning on releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
Japan is planning on releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into the ocean. They claim this will be completely safe, but there are protests going on in both Japan and South Korea, and China has just placed a ban on seafood from Japan. In a perfect...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
“Mission-driven” should be more specific | Out-Of-Pocket everything is a set of tradeoffs, let's be honest about that
a year ago
Yale E360
A.I. Is Quietly Powering a Revolution in Weather Prediction Weather forecasts powered by artificial intelligence are usually more accurate — and require less...
5 months ago
26
5 months ago
Weather forecasts powered by artificial intelligence are usually more accurate — and require less computational energy and fewer human hours — than conventional predictions. But questions remain about A.I. systems’ reliability and their ability to forecast extreme weather...
Blog - Practical...
Why Are Cooling Towers Shaped Like That? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is not smoke. And this...
10 months ago
119
10 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is not smoke. And this isn’t a smoke stack (at least not the kind we normally think of). It serves a totally different purpose at a power plant than smoke stacks whose job is moving combustion products...
Quanta Magazine
What Does Milk Do for Babies? Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this...
a year ago
69
a year ago
Human nutrition begins with milk, but the wondrous biofluid does much more than feed babies. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with molecular nutritionist Elizabeth Johnson about her research into the impact of human milk on a healthy microbiome. The...
The Works in...
Computers of the future How to process information without waste
3 months ago
Quanta Magazine
The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool...
a year ago
78
a year ago
An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool to probe the forces that bind the universe. The post The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
More thoughts consumerization in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket tales from other countries, industries, and more
a year ago
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...
7 months ago
28
7 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...
Asterisk
The Science of Woo A conversation about neuroscience, meditation, and the many paths to insight.
6 months ago
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...
5 months ago
11
5 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...
NeuroLogica Blog
New Theory Unites Gravity and Quantum Mechanics One of the greatest mysteries of modern science is how to unite the two overarching theories of...
a year ago
39
a year ago
One of the greatest mysteries of modern science is how to unite the two overarching theories of physics – quantum mechanics and general relativity. If physicists could somehow unite these two theories, which currently do not play well together, then we might get to a deeper “one...
Beautiful Public...
How LiDAR measures the toll of climate disasters Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale...
2 weeks ago
20
2 weeks ago
Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale of devastation in ways satellite imagery can’t match.
Asterisk
The Devil in the Details: Matthew Desmond’s Poverty by America Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America is one of the most celebrated books on the subject....
a year ago
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a year ago
Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America is one of the most celebrated books on the subject. Unfortunately, carelessness about the ways we measure poverty undercuts its main argument.
Quanta Magazine
Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster New results break with decades of conventional wisdom for the gradient descent algorithm. ...
over a year ago
29
over 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
Asterisk
Why Is Everyone Suddenly Furious About AI Regulation? Please tell us, because we're stumped.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Where Are All the Dwarf Planets? In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially...
6 months ago
53
6 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...
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
21
over a year ago
China has spent millennia exploring the culinary possibilities of soybean curds. The West has barely scratched the surface.
Cremieux Recueil
"You Couldn't Replicate Our Study Because You're Ugly" Attractiveness rating studies shouldn't be taken too seriously
9 months ago