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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
Out-of-Pocket Blog
What does longevity medicine actually mean? | Out-Of-Pocket An interview with a practicing longevity medicine doctor
a month ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence and the Nanny State Part II In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should...
a year ago
7
a year ago
In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should impose regulations on people and institutions in order to engineer positive outcomes. In the end the best approach, it seems to me, is a balanced one, where we consider the burden of...
NeuroLogica Blog
BBC Gets Into UFOs Paranormal phenomena tend to wax and wane in the public interest. Typically a generation will become...
5 months ago
62
5 months ago
Paranormal phenomena tend to wax and wane in the public interest. Typically a generation will become fascinated with a topic, but eventually the novelty will wear thin and interest will fade. But the flame will be kept alive by the hardcore believers. Wait long enough, and...
NeuroLogica Blog
Diamond Batteries Again Why does news reporting of science and technology have to be so terrible at baseline? I know the...
a week ago
9
a week ago
Why does news reporting of science and technology have to be so terrible at baseline? I know the answers to this question – lack of expertise, lack of a business model to support dedicated science news infrastructure, the desire for click-bait and sensationalism – but it is still...
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...
a week ago
19
a week 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
What Is Distributed Computing? Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines. The...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Our computers can get a lot more done when they share the load with other machines. The post What Is Distributed Computing? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime:...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
This year we give thanks for one of the very few clues we have to the quantum nature of spacetime: black hole entropy. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory,...
Asterisk
The EA-Progress Studies War is Here, and It’s a Constructive Dialogue! We’re hoping Marc Andreessen doesn’t read this and polarize everyone again.
6 months ago
Cremieux Recueil
2024 SAT Data Drop The College Board has just released the latest SAT data. Here's a review.
2 months ago
Asterisk
California vs. Big Soda Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes work. But during the time it took to figure this out, enacting them...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes work. But during the time it took to figure this out, enacting them became much harder.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GTFO Employers | Out-Of-Pocket Back To The Future
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How Is Cell Death Essential to Life? Cells in our bodies are constantly dying — and these countless tiny deaths are essential to human...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
Cells in our bodies are constantly dying — and these countless tiny deaths are essential to human health and multicellular life itself. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with cellular biologist Shai Shaham about what makes a cell “alive” and the latest developments...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023, Day 2 I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my...
a year ago
24
a year ago
I ended up spending more time catching up with people this afternoon than going to talks after my session ended, but here are a couple of highlights: There was an invited session about the metal halide perovskites, and there were some interesting talks.  My faculty colleague...
The Roots of...
Cellular reprogramming, pneumatic launch systems, and terraforming Mars In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot...
11 months ago
9
11 months ago
In December, I went to the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend 2023 in San Francisco. I had a lot of fun talking to a bunch of weird and ambitious geeks about the glorious abundant technological future. Here are few things I learned about (with the caveat that this is mostly...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Solve Long-Standing Coloring Problem A new result shows how much of the plane can be colored by points that are never exactly one unit...
a year ago
6
a year ago
A new result shows how much of the plane can be colored by points that are never exactly one unit apart. The post Mathematicians Solve Long-Standing Coloring Problem first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Invisible College applications close on Friday Applications to our new residential seminar close this coming Friday, 31st May
6 months ago
Asterisk
Michael Lewis’s Blind Side In Going Infinite, the famed chronicler of American finance proves he’s more interested in myths...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
In Going Infinite, the famed chronicler of American finance proves he’s more interested in myths than morals — or even math.
Probably...
Elements of Data Science I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
I’m excited to announce the launch of my newest book, Elements of Data Science. As the subtitle suggests, it is about “Getting started with Data Science and Python”. Order now from Lulu.com and get 20% off! I am publishing this book myself, which has one big advantage: I can...
NeuroLogica Blog
Trust in New Technology In an optimally rational person, what should govern their perception of risk? Of course, people are...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
In an optimally rational person, what should govern their perception of risk? Of course, people are generally not “optimally rational”. It’s therefore an interesting thought experiment – what would be optimal, and how does that differ from how people actually assess risk? Risk is...
Blog - Practical...
What Is A Black Start Of The Power Grid? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] November 1965 saw one of the...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] November 1965 saw one of the most widespread power outages in North American history. On the freezing cold evening of the 9th, the grid was operating at maximum capacity as people tried to stay warm when a...
The Works in...
How America Made Machines Make Machines A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Quantum Frontiers
A (quantum) complex legacy Early in the fourth year of my PhD, I received a most John-ish email from John Preskill, my PhD...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Early in the fourth year of my PhD, I received a most John-ish email from John Preskill, my PhD advisor. The title read, “thermodynamics of complexity,” and the message was concise the way that the Amazon River is damp: “Might … Continue reading →
NeuroLogica Blog
3D Printed Rocket Launches This is one of those technology news stories where the implications of the technology is greater...
a year ago
28
a year ago
This is one of those technology news stories where the implications of the technology is greater than the thing itself. Relativity Space, a rocket company based in California, launched their first Terran-1 rocket. The launch ultimately failed when the second stage failed to...
Wanderingspace
Phobos over mount Sharp Taken by the Curiosity rover. This is one of Mars tiny moons as seen from the ground. Impressive as...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Taken by the Curiosity rover. This is one of Mars tiny moons as seen from the ground. Impressive as it is only 14 long and you can actually see its shape from the surface. See Phobos below for reference.
Apoorva Srinivasan
niceR code with functional programming At the end of this blog post, you will be able to: Describe functional programming concepts Write...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
At the end of this blog post, you will be able to: Describe functional programming concepts Write functional programming code using purrr package in R If you are anything like me, you probably focused primarily on learning statistics, machine learning and programming on a...
Explorations of an...
Cañadon de Profundidad and Iguazú Falls February 4, 2023 For our second day in Misiones, Laura and I ventured over to a small park only a...
a year ago
13
a year ago
February 4, 2023 For our second day in Misiones, Laura and I ventured over to a small park only a half-hour drive from our accommodations in Posadas. Our main reason for visiting Parque Provincial Cañadón de Profundidad was to search for Creamy-bellied Gnatcatcher, of which...
NeuroLogica Blog
Everything Will Evaporate What will be the ultimate fate of our universe? There are a number of theories and possibilities,...
a year ago
55
a year ago
What will be the ultimate fate of our universe? There are a number of theories and possibilities, but at present the most likely scenario seems to be that the universe will continue to expand, most mass will eventually find its way into a black hole, and those black holes will...
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....
a year ago
40
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...
Quanta Magazine
Will AI Ever Have Common Sense? Common sense has been viewed as one of the hardest challenges in AI. That said, ChatGPT4 has...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
Common sense has been viewed as one of the hardest challenges in AI. That said, ChatGPT4 has acquired what some believe is an impressive sense of humanity. How is this possible? Listen to this week’s “The Joy of Why” with co-host Steven Strogatz. The post Will AI Ever...
nanoscale views
Recent papers to distract.... Time for blogging has continued to be scarce, but here are a few papers to distract (and for readers...
a month ago
28
a month ago
Time for blogging has continued to be scarce, but here are a few papers to distract (and for readers who are US citizens:  vote if you have not already done so!). Reaching back, this preprint by Aharonov, Collins, Popescu talks about a thought experiment in which angular...
Drew Ex Machina
The Largest Launch Vehicles in Service – 1957 to the Present With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
With the successful launch of NASA’s Artemis I test flight, we now have a new holder of the title “the largest launch vehicle in service”: the […]
nanoscale views
Michio Kaku and science popularization in the Age of Shamelessness In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications...
a year ago
44
a year ago
In some ways, we live in a golden age of science popularization.  There are fantastic publications like Quanta doing tremendous work; platforms like YouTube and podcasts have made it possible for both practicing scientists and science communicators to reach enormous audiences;...
NeuroLogica Blog
Converting CO2 to Carbon Nanofibers One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
One of the dreams of a green economy where the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable, and not slowly increasing, is the ability to draw CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to a solid form. Often referred to as carbon capture, some form of this is going to be necessary...
Quanta Magazine
How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins and...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Changes in the 3D structure of their genome gave skates and rays their distinctive winglike fins and pancake flatness. The post How 3D Changes in the Genome Turned Sharks Into Skates first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Confessions of a...
Cottesloe Fish Habitat Protection Area Today I am teaching my first tutorial in the second year unit ‘Marine Systems‘, which will introduce...
over a year ago
57
over a year ago
Today I am teaching my first tutorial in the second year unit ‘Marine Systems‘, which will introduce students to their major project, which is centred around a field trip to the Cottelsoe Fish Habitat Protection Area (CFHPA).  I’m pretty excited to introduce a few of my new ideas...
IEEE Spectrum
Smellovision Gets a Refresh This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
a year ago
5
a year ago
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Modern virtual reality is a feast for the eyes and ears—but coming in a distant fourth (behind haptic touch technologies), smell has been nearly completely ignored. Earlier this...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: An environmentalist gets lunch Why being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
over a year ago
Drew Ex Machina
Catching Up: Talking about the Weather After an unintended four-month hiatus publishing new work on the Drew Ex Machina website, I figured...
a year ago
37
a year ago
After an unintended four-month hiatus publishing new work on the Drew Ex Machina website, I figured it was time to catch up on what I’ve been […]
Explorations of an...
Day Three at Río Bigal: A Rainout, Another Snake, And More Mothing Adventures Part of the reason why I gave myself five nights to spend at Río Bigal was to mitigate in case I had...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Part of the reason why I gave myself five nights to spend at Río Bigal was to mitigate in case I had a couple of days washed out by heavy rain. The eastern Andes of Ecuador receive a high amount of precipitation. Moisture-laden air from the Amazon basin drifts westwards to the...
brr
Cape Crozier A nearby field camp, and my first helicopter flight!
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Year in Computer Science Researchers got a better look at chatbots’ thoughts, amateurs learned just how complicated simple...
3 days ago
5
3 days ago
Researchers got a better look at chatbots’ thoughts, amateurs learned just how complicated simple systems can be, and codes became expert self-fixers. The post The Year in Computer Science first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Where Does Grounded Electricity Actually Go? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Imagine this scenario: You...
a year ago
19
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Imagine this scenario: You have a diesel-powered generator on a stand that is electrically isolated from the ground. Run a wire from the energized slot of an outlet to an electrode driven into the ground. Don’t...
IEEE Spectrum
Skylab: The Space Station That Fell on Australia end cap from one of Skylab’s oxygen tanks in the dirt. Cattle were drinking collected rainwater from...
a year ago
4
a year ago
end cap from one of Skylab’s oxygen tanks in the dirt. Cattle were drinking collected rainwater from the remains of a US $2.2 billion NASA investment. Skylab’s Failure and Recovery Skylab’s fate was sealed moments after lift-off when the sun shield and main solar panel were...
ToughSF
Fusion Highways in Space A transport system that can get spacecraft to Jupiter in 10 days, but without a massive onboard...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
A transport system that can get spacecraft to Jupiter in 10 days, but without a massive onboard reactor, using antimatter fuel or riding a gigantic laser beam?  What we need instead is a Fusion Highway to connect the Solar System in unprecedented ways.  The art above is by...
nanoscale views
Scientific travel Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the...
a year ago
31
a year ago
Particularly in these post-pandemic, climate-change-addled, zoom-enabled times, I appreciate the argument that it's always worth asking, "Is this trip really necessary?"  We are in the age of remote work and zoom seminars that are attended by people from all over the world.  Is...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Healthcare in India | Out-Of-Pocket From the eyes of someone on the ground
a year ago
Beautiful Public...
The Naughty Words the FAA Removed From the Sky New FOIA records from the FAA shed light on the frantic effort in 2015 to rename navigation...
6 months ago
70
6 months ago
New FOIA records from the FAA shed light on the frantic effort in 2015 to rename navigation waypoints related to Donald Trump and reveal the list of naughty waypoint names that were changed over the years.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Video Games x Healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket Video games should be our models for engagement
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
"Non"-Profit Hospitals | Out-Of-Pocket "We're investing in ourselves"
a year ago
Asterisk
Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash The United States leads the world in airline safety. That’s because of the way we assign blame when...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
The United States leads the world in airline safety. That’s because of the way we assign blame when accidents do happen.
nanoscale views
Wind-up nanotechnology When I was a kid, I used to take allowance money and occasionally buy rubber-band-powered balsa wood...
7 months ago
73
7 months ago
When I was a kid, I used to take allowance money and occasionally buy rubber-band-powered balsa wood airplanes at a local store.  Maybe you've seen these.  You wind up the rubber band, which stretches the elastomer and stores energy in the elastic strain of the polymer, as in...
Drew Ex Machina
An ISS Success Story: CyMISS (Tropical Cyclone Intensity Measurements from the ISS) to the Hurricane... The team at Tropical Weather Analytics (TWA), where this author is the Chief Scientist, had the...
4 months ago
The Works in...
Upzoning New Zealand How a small country started building a lot of homes
10 months ago
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Artificial flavoring "Artificial" didn't scare Americans in the 19th century. Why does it scare us now?
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
A Galaxy Without Dark Matter Dark matter is one of the greatest current scientific mysteries. It’s a fascinating story playing...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Dark matter is one of the greatest current scientific mysteries. It’s a fascinating story playing out in real time, although over years, so you have to be patient. Future generations might be able to binge the dark matter show, but not us. We have to wait for each episode to...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Selective breeding and chicken welfare We've bred larger and larger chickens. Now can we breed happier ones?
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Some Thoughts on Aging If either of the two presumptive nominees for the major political parties in the US are elected in...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
If either of the two presumptive nominees for the major political parties in the US are elected in November they will be the oldest person ever to be inaugerated as president. What implications does this have? As a neurologist who sees patients every workday of various ages,...
NeuroLogica Blog
Hunger Circuitry One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature...
a year ago
5
a year ago
One of the organizing principles that govern living organisms is homeostasis. This is a key feature of being alive – maintaining homeostatic equilibrium both internally and externally. Homeostatic systems usually involve multiple feedback loops that maintain some physiological...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
First Dollar and the HSA wedge | Out-Of-Pocket Triple. Tax. Advantage.
a year ago
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. (We’ve previously given thanks for the...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
This year we give thanks for Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge symmetry, Landauer’s Principle, the...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2023 - coming soon I will be attending the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas this week.  I will do my best to try to...
a year ago
21
a year ago
I will be attending the 2023 APS March Meeting in Las Vegas this week.  I will do my best to try to report on some highlights daily, though that may be more challenging than usual for me this time around (looming proposal deadline that I suspect all of my condensed matter faculty...
nanoscale views
Some interesting recent papers - lots to ponder As we bid apparent farewell to LK99, it's important to note that several other pretty exciting...
a year ago
9
a year ago
As we bid apparent farewell to LK99, it's important to note that several other pretty exciting things have been happening in the condensed matter/nano world.  Here are a few papers that look intriguing (caveat emptor:  I have not had a chance to read these in any real depth, so...
The Works in...
The Maintenance Race was just the beginning A new book from Stewart Brand, serialized on Works in Progress
a year ago
Probably...
Should divorce be more difficult? “The Christian right is coming for divorce next,” according to this recent Vox article, and “Some...
6 months ago
58
6 months ago
“The Christian right is coming for divorce next,” according to this recent Vox article, and “Some conservatives want to make it a lot harder to dissolve a marriage.” As always when I read an article like this, I want to see data — and the General Social Survey has just the data I...
Confessions of a...
Let’s argue against the Shark Cull with science There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
There’s been a lot in the news recently about the implementation of the Shark Cull (or, as the Government put it, the “shark protection measures”) here in Western Australia.  Just as I am not a climate scientist, I am not a shark biologist, and cannot claim to be a shark expert....
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move. The post Physicists Reveal a Quantum Geometry That Exists Outside of Space and Time first appeared on...
Explorations of an...
Day Four At Río Bigal - Birding The Interior Trails November 5, 2023 Sunday began overcast, but unlike the previous day there did not seem to be the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
November 5, 2023 Sunday began overcast, but unlike the previous day there did not seem to be the same threat of rain looming over everything. Therefore, yesterday's plan shifted to today. Natalia made me a packed lunch and I prepared for a day on my own on the long PNS trail. I...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Thirty Madison and Condition-Specific Care | Out-Of-Pocket I wanted to use this as an opportunity to talk a little bit about scalable telemedicine + specialist...
a year ago
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
22
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,...
nanoscale views
Technological civilization and losing object permanence In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put...
2 days ago
7
2 days ago
In the grand tradition of physicists writing about areas outside their expertise, I wanted to put down some thoughts on a societal trend.  This isn't physics or nanoscience, so feel free to skip this post. Object permanence is a term from developmental psychology.  A person (or...
Probably...
Life in a Lognormal World At PyData Global 2023 I will present a talk, “Extremes, outliers, and GOATs: On life in a lognormal...
a year ago
5
a year ago
At PyData Global 2023 I will present a talk, “Extremes, outliers, and GOATs: On life in a lognormal world”. It is scheduled for Wednesday 6 December at 11 am Eastern Time. Here is the abstract: The fastest runners are much faster than we expect from a Gaussian distribution, and...
Probably...
Combining Risks Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
7 months ago
60
7 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. combine_risk Combining Risks¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Bit of a weird one but I’m hoping you’re the...
Quantum Frontiers
Noncommuting charges are much like Batman Understanding a character’s origins enriches their narrative and motivates their actions. Take...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
Understanding a character’s origins enriches their narrative and motivates their actions. Take Batman as an example: without knowing his backstory, he appears merely as a billionaire who might achieve more by donating his wealth rather than masquerading as a bat … Continue...
Asterisk
Is Cultivated Meat For Real? Cultivated meat faces a wall of scientific skepticism, but investors haven’t been deterred. A decade...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Cultivated meat faces a wall of scientific skepticism, but investors haven’t been deterred. A decade in, how close are we to seeing it on our plates?
nanoscale views
Seeing through your head - diffuse imaging From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it...
2 weeks ago
18
2 weeks ago
From the medical diagnostic perspective (and for many other applications), you can understand why it might be very convenient to be able to perform some kind of optical imaging of the interior of what you'd ordinarily consider opaque objects.  Even when a wavelength range is...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Tikalon Blog Archive Tikalon Blog is now in archive mode. Here's a directory of links to easily printed and saved...
3 months ago
4
3 months ago
Tikalon Blog is now in archive mode. Here's a directory of links to easily printed and saved articles. If you're willing to wait a while for the download, a zip file of all the blog articles can be found at the link below. Note, however, that these articles are copyrighted and...
Explorations of an...
Black-fronted Piping-Guans at Parque Provincial Urugua-í February 8, 2023 Laura and I left the environs of Iguazú Falls and worked our way south and then...
a year ago
15
a year ago
February 8, 2023 Laura and I left the environs of Iguazú Falls and worked our way south and then east, our destination being Parque Provincial Uragua-í. This park is a little bit off of the standard birding route and is not frequently visited by foreign birders. And, because...
Beautiful Public...
Wild Horses The Bureau of Land Management wants to pay you $1,000 to adopt a wild horse. But the program has...
a year ago
68
a year ago
The Bureau of Land Management wants to pay you $1,000 to adopt a wild horse. But the program has been criticized by animal rights advocates and subject to scrutiny by Congress.
Beautiful Public...
Nuclear Weapon Test Films Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories has an archive of an estimated 10,000 films of nuclear weapons tests from the 1940's - 1960's.
Light from Space
The Soul of the Heart Nebula A spectacular emission Nebula, the Heart Nebula is one of the classics of Northern Hemisphere...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
A spectacular emission Nebula, the Heart Nebula is one of the classics of Northern Hemisphere amateury astronomy. In the gallery below, I've highlighted 3 very different areas of the image: Left: Planetary Nebula WeBo-1 Middle: Melotte 15 in the... heart of the Heart...
Quanta Magazine
How to Build a Big Prime Number A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably...
a year ago
16
a year ago
A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably construct large prime numbers. The post How to Build a Big Prime Number first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Power-To-X and Climate Change Policy What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy,...
2 weeks ago
14
2 weeks ago
What is Power-to-X (PtX)? It’s just a fancy marketing term for green hydrogen – using green energy, like wind, solar, nuclear, or hydroelectric, to make hydrogen from water. This process does not release any CO2, just oxygen, and when the hydrogen is burned back with that oxygen...
Quanta Magazine
Tiny Language Models Come of Age To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler...
a year ago
6
a year ago
To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s stories. The post Tiny Language Models Come of Age first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills...
11 months ago
21
11 months ago
Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing. The post New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Cremieux Recueil
Rich Country, Poor Country Growth is our most precious resource and small amounts of it make a big difference
3 months ago
Asterisk
The Virtue of Wonder: Martha Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals Martha Nussbaum’s latest book challenges us to change the way we think — and feel — about animals....
a year ago
2
a year ago
Martha Nussbaum’s latest book challenges us to change the way we think — and feel — about animals. What role can wonder and awe play when pathos comes up short?
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
8 months ago
34
8 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. if you look on 3M’s own website, you will see no mention of this legacy—it’s a firm that sells abrasive materials, adhesive tapes, filters, films, personal...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Viz.ai and why workflow > tech | Out-Of-Pocket Also ?? about AI business models
a year ago
Wanderingspace
Dust Storm On Mars A dust storm in Olympia Planum's north polar dune fields was triggered by a late Martian summer cold...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
A dust storm in Olympia Planum's north polar dune fields was triggered by a late Martian summer cold front. As the northern polar cap shrinks fast, it releases cold air that sometimes moves south, like on Earth. These cold fronts strengthen in late summer and early fall due to...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Ins and Outs of Fundraising Today | Out-Of-Pocket Some stuff I’ve learned doing a little healthcare startup investing
a year ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Why don’t healthcare companies say what they do? | Out-Of-Pocket And some tips to figure out what a company does
a year ago
The Roots of...
Quote quiz: “drifting into dependence” Quote quiz: who said this? (No fair looking it up). I have modified the original quotation slightly,...
a year ago
58
a year ago
Quote quiz: who said this? (No fair looking it up). I have modified the original quotation slightly, by making a handful of word substitutions to bring it up to date: It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to AI. But we are...
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...
3 months ago
24
3 months 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
Quanta Magazine
Are There Reasons to Believe in a Multiverse? Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural...
a year ago
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a year ago
Several areas of physics suggest reasons to think that unobservable universes with different natural laws could lie beyond ours. The theoretical physicist David Kaplan talks with Steven Strogatz about the mysteries that a multiverse would solve. The post Are There...
IEEE Spectrum
Taking the Measure of the Earthquake That Destroyed Tokyo At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The...
a year ago
6
a year ago
At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The earthquake began with a violent horizontal back-and-forth motion, followed by two vertical jolts, and then another horizontal shock even stronger than the first. The intensity of the tremor...
Quanta Magazine
Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking...
9 months ago
28
9 months ago
By mapping the largest structures in the universe in X-rays, cosmologists have found striking agreement with their standard theoretical model of how the universe evolves. The post Fresh X-Rays Reveal a Universe as Clumpy as Cosmology Predicts first appeared on Quanta...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Christian Health Insurance | Out-Of-Pocket Love thy neighbor, pay for thy neighbor
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
UFOs – Has the Narrative Shifted In an interview for Newsweek, Michio Kaku was asked about UFOs. Here’s his response: Well, first of...
a year ago
52
a year ago
In an interview for Newsweek, Michio Kaku was asked about UFOs. Here’s his response: Well, first of all, I think that there’s been a game changer. In the old days, the burden of proof was on the true believers to prove that what they saw last night was a flying saucer of some...
Probably...
Probably the Book Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is...
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at posit::conf(2024). When the video is available, I will post it here. In the meantime, you can read the slides, if you don’t mind spoilers. For people at the conference who don’t know me, this might be a good time to...
Quantum Frontiers
To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question. If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this…...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this… To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question:Whether ’tis more natural for the system to sufferThe large entanglement of thermalizing dynamics,Or … Continue reading →
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: A tale of two particles Not all radioactivity is risky or harmful
over a year ago
Asterisk
Mysticism & Empiricism The best way to predict if you’ll benefit from psychedelic therapy is a questionnaire asking if...
a year ago
2
a year ago
The best way to predict if you’ll benefit from psychedelic therapy is a questionnaire asking if you’ve met God. Where did it come from, and what is it really measuring?
The Works in...
Does higher density cause lower birth rates? Assessing one recent claim that it does
7 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
What Is a Grand Conspiracy? Ah, the categorization question again. This is an endless, but much needed, endeavor within human...
9 months ago
37
9 months ago
Ah, the categorization question again. This is an endless, but much needed, endeavor within human intellectual activity. We have the need to categorize things, if for no other reason than we need to communicate with each other about them. Often skeptics, like myself, talk about...
Wanderingspace
Eclipse 2024 from Space https://twitter.com/ThePlanetaryGuy
8 months ago
Quanta Magazine
A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene...
10 months ago
29
10 months ago
Highly repetitive regions of junk DNA may be the key to a newly discovered mechanism for gene regulation. The post A ‘Lobby’ Where a Molecule Mob Tells Genes What to Do first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
The Role of Plausibility in Science I have been writing blog posts and engaging in science communication long enough that I have a...
a year ago
53
a year ago
I have been writing blog posts and engaging in science communication long enough that I have a pretty good sense how much engagement I am going to get from a particular topic. Some topics are simply more divisive than others (although there is an unpredictable element from social...
Quanta Magazine
Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
At sea, biologists discovered microbial partners that together produce nitrogen, a nutrient essential for life. The pair are in the process of merging into a single organism. The post Tight-Knit Microbes Live Together to Make a Vital Nutrient first appeared on Quanta...
brr
The Last Egg Five more months until freshies...
a year ago
Explorations of an...
Day Five And Six At Río Bigal - The Last Hurrah November 6, 2023 Somehow, it was already my final full day at Río Bigal. I am not sure where the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
November 6, 2023 Somehow, it was already my final full day at Río Bigal. I am not sure where the time all went, but now the end was in sight. Hoping to maximize my final day, I arranged for a packed lunch and planned for an earlier breakfast so that I could hit the trails ahead...
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...
a year ago
21
a year ago
Consciousness, our experience of being in the world, is one of the mind’s greatest mysteries, but as the neuroscientist Anil Seth explains to Steven Strogatz, research is making progress in understanding this elusive phenomenon. The post What Is the Nature of...
Wanderingspace
Saturn Vortex “This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
“This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in polarized light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on November 27, 2012. I've processed the original monochrome image to approximate the color of the area at the time.” — Jason...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Machine Vision, Robots, and Endoscopes with Matt Schwartz | Out-Of-Pocket When GI met AI
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental. ...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
These three imagined scenarios lead many physicists to doubt that space-time is fundamental. The post The Thought Experiments That Fray the Fabric of Space-Time first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
How Simple Math Moves the Needle The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem....
a year ago
8
a year ago
The spatial intuition behind a three-point turn offers an on-ramp to a century-old geometry problem. The post How Simple Math Moves the Needle first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Will Hydrogen BEV Hybrids Be A Thing? I recently recorded a YouTube video on the notion of hydrogen fuel cell cars (it will be posted...
a year ago
64
a year ago
I recently recorded a YouTube video on the notion of hydrogen fuel cell cars (it will be posted soon, and I will add the link when it’s up). One question I did not get into in the video, but which is an interesting thought experiment, is hydrogen – plug-in battery hybrid...
Quanta Magazine
The Cosmos Teems with Complex Organic Molecules Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials. The post The Cosmos Teems with...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials. The post The Cosmos Teems with Complex Organic Molecules first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Roots of...
The American Information Revolution in Global Perspective In “What if they gave an Industrial Revolution and nobody came?” I reviewed The British Industrial...
a year ago
46
a year ago
In “What if they gave an Industrial Revolution and nobody came?” I reviewed The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, by Robert Allen. In brief, Allen’s explanation for the Industrial Revolution is that Britain had high wages and cheap energy, which meant it was...
NeuroLogica Blog
Passive Solar Water Desalination I know we are supposed to be worried about the world supply of fresh water. I have been hearing that...
a year ago
6
a year ago
I know we are supposed to be worried about the world supply of fresh water. I have been hearing that at least for the last 40 years, and the statistics are alarming. According to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water: “We are seeing the consequences not of freak events,...
Cremieux Recueil
Did Unions End Long Work Hours? Is it growth or organized labor that's more responsible for giving us shorter workdays?
3 months ago
NeuroLogica Blog
It’s Not Possible – Until Suddenly It Is There are a couple of recent stories that remind me that perhaps the most powerful thing in the...
a year ago
24
a year ago
There are a couple of recent stories that remind me that perhaps the most powerful thing in the world is political will. Often politicians and motivational speakers will say something along the lines of, “We can do anything, if we put our minds to it.” While this sounds like...
wadertales
Will head-starting work for Curlew? 83 captive-reared Curlew were released successfully in 2019, over 130 in 2021 and a similar number...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
83 captive-reared Curlew were released successfully in 2019, over 130 in 2021 and a similar number in 2022 but this does not mean that head-starting is a solution to England’s Curlew problems. We don’t yet know the proportion of youngsters that survive the difficult ‘teenage...
Quanta Magazine
In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles in digestion and disease that scientists are only just starting to understand. The post In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge first...
Quanta Magazine
What Causes Giant Rogue Waves? Once dismissed as myths, monstrous rogue waves that tower over ships and appear without warning are...
a year ago
40
a year ago
Once dismissed as myths, monstrous rogue waves that tower over ships and appear without warning are real. Wave-science researcher Ton van den Bremer and Steven Strogatz discuss how rogue waves can form in relatively calm seas and whether their threat can be predicted. ...
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
8
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...
nanoscale views
Items of interest For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were...
11 months ago
39
11 months ago
For the first post of the new calendar year, here are a few items that I thought were interesting: Here is a feature article in Science that talks about the experimental quest for detecting Majorana fermions in solid state systems, bookended by the story of Majorana's...
Quanta Magazine
Can Space-Time Be Saved? Curious connections between physics and math suggest to Latham Boyle that space-time may survive the...
2 months ago
16
2 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
NeuroLogica Blog
Finding Small Primordial Black Holes Astrophysicists come up with a lot of whacky ideas, some of which actually turn out to be possibly...
2 weeks ago
17
2 weeks ago
Astrophysicists come up with a lot of whacky ideas, some of which actually turn out to be possibly true (like the Big Bang, black holes, accelerating cosmic expansion, dark matter). Of course, all of these conclusions are provisional, but some are now backed by compelling...
Willem Pennings
Fixing my heating system The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm...
7 months ago
37
7 months ago
The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm water to the underfloor heating system of about a dozen apartments, including mine. During the warm summer months, the system supplies cool water instead. The heat pumps figure out...
The Roots of...
The epistemic virtue of scope matching Something a little bit different today. I’ll tie it in to progress, I promise. I keep noticing a...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Something a little bit different today. I’ll tie it in to progress, I promise. I keep noticing a particular epistemic pitfall (not exactly a “fallacy”), and a corresponding epistemic virtue that avoids it. I want to call this out and give it a name. The virtue is: identifying the...
NeuroLogica Blog
Should Japan Release Radioactive Water Into The Pacific? Japan is planning on releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear accident into...
a year ago
9
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
The Next Step in Space Travel The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space...
a year ago
8
a year ago
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced they are developing their own commercial space capsule. This will be used initially for cargo, but then eventually for crew as well. They anticipate a maiden voyage in 2028. I think this is a positive development. It seems we are...
Asterisk
Manufacturing Bliss A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
A growing community centered on the Bay Area is rediscovering the jhanas, a meditation technique that practitioners claim could upend how we think about the brain — and transform our lives in the process.
pcloadletter
My articles don't belong on certain social networks I write this blog because I enjoy writing. Some people enjoy reading what I write, which makes me...
6 months ago
66
6 months ago
I write this blog because I enjoy writing. Some people enjoy reading what I write, which makes me feel really great! Recently, I took down a post and stopped writing for a few months because I didn't love the reaction I was getting on social media sites like Reddit and Hacker...
wadertales
Inland feeding by coastal godwits Species such as Dunlin and Knot are well-served by conservation measures that aim to protect...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
Species such as Dunlin and Knot are well-served by conservation measures that aim to protect estuaries but the same is not necessarily true for Black-tailed Godwits. In a 2022 paper in the journal Wader Study, Clément Jourdan and colleagues describe the movements of ten tagged...
Chris Grossack's...
Talk - Where Are The Open Sets? I was invited to give a talk at HoTTEST 2022, and was more than happy to accept! Ever since I was...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
I was invited to give a talk at HoTTEST 2022, and was more than happy to accept! Ever since I was first learning HoTT I was curious how we could be sure that theorems in HoTT give us corresponding theorems in “classical” homotopy theory. Earlier this summer I spent a lot of...
Probably...
Logarithms and Heteroskedasticity Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. log_heterosked Logarithms and heteroskedasticity¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Is it correct to use...
Asterisk
Half A Million Kinksters Can’t Be Wrong The story of how one independent researcher conducted the largest-ever survey on fetishes, and what...
a year ago
1
a year ago
The story of how one independent researcher conducted the largest-ever survey on fetishes, and what it has to teach us about sex, pleasure, and social science methodology.
Quanta Magazine
Physicists Spot Quantum Tornadoes Twirling in a ‘Supersolid’ New observations of microscopic vortices confirm the existence of a paradoxical phase of matter that...
a month ago
16
a month ago
New observations of microscopic vortices confirm the existence of a paradoxical phase of matter that may also arise inside neutron stars. The post Physicists Spot Quantum Tornadoes Twirling in a ‘Supersolid’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine
symmetry magazine
Physics fashion and collider couture Symmetry is back with more physics-themed Halloween costumes.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Managing Plastic Waste The world produces 350-400 million metric tons of plastic waste. Less than 10% of this waste is...
a month ago
20
a month ago
The world produces 350-400 million metric tons of plastic waste. Less than 10% of this waste is recycled, while 25% is mismanaged or littered. About 1.7 million tons ends up in the ocean. This is not sustainable, but whose responsibility is it to deal with this issue? The debate...
pcloadletter
Agile is a tainted term Oh no, not another agile article. But at least this one isn't attempting to teach or reconcile. I'm...
10 months ago
22
10 months ago
Oh no, not another agile article. But at least this one isn't attempting to teach or reconcile. I'm not going to talk about the difference between agile and Agile™ nor will I try to convince you of my favorite flavor of Agile™. Instead, I'm here to assert that agile is a tainted...
Quanta Magazine
How Pools of Genetic Diversity Affect a Species’ Fate A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity...
a year ago
33
a year ago
A new, deeper understanding of how the breeding structure of species affects their genetic diversity is giving conservationists better tools for saving animals. The post How Pools of Genetic Diversity Affect a Species’ Fate first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Asterisk
Moving Past Environmental Proceduralism The foundations of modern environmental legislation were laid in the early ‘70s. Some of these laws...
8 months ago
2
8 months ago
The foundations of modern environmental legislation were laid in the early ‘70s. Some of these laws helped fix the ozone layer, clean up DDT, and fight lead pollution — while others are delaying the necessary transition to green energy. If the activists of fifty years ago had...
NeuroLogica Blog
Hunter-Gatherers and Childcare What is “natural” for humans? It’s often hard to say, and in my opinion this is a highly overused...
a year ago
4
a year ago
What is “natural” for humans? It’s often hard to say, and in my opinion this is a highly overused concept. Primarily this is because humans are adaptable – we adapt to our environment, our situation, and our culture. So it is “natural” for us not to have a natural state. But this...
The Works in...
The asbestos times How asbestos saved cities, before we realized its risks
11 months ago
Quanta Magazine
AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help? Optical neural networks, which use photons instead of electrons, have advantages over traditional...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
Optical neural networks, which use photons instead of electrons, have advantages over traditional systems. They also face major obstacles. The post AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Disorganized thoughts on "Oppenheimer" I saw "Oppenheimer" today.  Spoiler warning, I suppose, though I think we all know how this story...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I saw "Oppenheimer" today.  Spoiler warning, I suppose, though I think we all know how this story ends.  Just in case you were wondering, there is no post-credit scene to set up the sequel.  (For the humor-impaired: that was a joke.) The movie was an excellent piece of...
Eukaryote Writes...
Web-surfing tips for strange times Meditations on what's bad about the internet lately and how to use it anyhow.
6 months ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Two Eclipses of the Sun Coming to North America 2023-24 Two eclipses of the Sun will be visible in North America during the 2023-24 school year. The post...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Two eclipses of the Sun will be visible in North America during the 2023-24 school year. The post Two Eclipses of the Sun Coming to North America 2023-24 appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
Cremieux Recueil
Evaluating a Sitting Senator's Healthcare Claims If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to...
4 days ago
12
4 days ago
If you're a public official who wants to to use numbers, use correct numbers, and if you're going to speculate, try not so speculate wildly, lest you end up telling brazen lies to the American people
Quanta Magazine
How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger than others?...
a year ago
42
a year ago
All infinities go on forever, so how is it possible for some infinities to be larger than others? The mathematician Justin Moore discusses the mysteries of infinity with Steven Strogatz. The post How Can Some Infinities Be Bigger Than Others? first appeared on Quanta...
Quanta Magazine
Celebrated Cryptography Algorithm Gets an Upgrade Two researchers have improved a well-known technique for lattice basis reduction, opening up new...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Two researchers have improved a well-known technique for lattice basis reduction, opening up new avenues for practical experiments in cryptography and mathematics. The post Celebrated Cryptography Algorithm Gets an Upgrade first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Casey Handmer's blog
Why do we need a Department of Government Efficiency? President Trump’s recent sweeping electoral victory is a clear mandate for change. There is some...
2 weeks ago
4
2 weeks ago
President Trump’s recent sweeping electoral victory is a clear mandate for change. There is some urgency, and Trump has assembled the early stages of a team and coalition that can deliver it. It’s not exactly a mystery what Elon and Vivek plan for The Department of Government...
Quanta Magazine
A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of...
a year ago
41
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
nanoscale views
Desirable properties for a superconductor Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor,...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Given the present interest, let's talk about what kind of properties one wants in a superconductor, as some people on social media seem ready to jump straight on the "what does superconductivity mean for bitcoin?" train. First, the preliminaries.  Superconductivity is a state of...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Injecting Caution Into Media Reports of Northern Lights as far South as California Friday, May 10, there was a lot of discussion on the news, on social media, and on different web...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Friday, May 10, there was a lot of discussion on the news, on social media, and on different web sites about storms on the Sun that are unleashing great outbursts of radiation and particles, some of them toward Earth. The fact that we are seeing such “space weather” now certainly...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Out-Of-Pocket’s 2025 Predictions | Out-Of-Pocket I’m like 50% right every year, I just never know which 50%
6 days ago
Quanta Magazine
How Genetic Surprises Complicate the Old Doctrine of DNA For over a century, biologists have had to contend with a complicated picture of genetics, which...
a year ago
4
a year ago
For over a century, biologists have had to contend with a complicated picture of genetics, which they’ve only recently begun to understand. The post How Genetic Surprises Complicate the Old Doctrine of DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
The Center Moves Faster Than You In May 2022, Elon Musk tweeted this cartoon: The creator of the cartoon, Colin Wright, explained it...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
In May 2022, Elon Musk tweeted this cartoon: The creator of the cartoon, Colin Wright, explained it like this: At the outset, I stand happily beside ‘my fellow liberal,’ who is slightly to my left. In 2012 he sprints to the left, dragging out the left end of the political...
NeuroLogica Blog
Fake Fossils In 1931 a fossil lizard was recovered from the Italian Alps, believed to be a 280 million year old...
10 months ago
25
10 months ago
In 1931 a fossil lizard was recovered from the Italian Alps, believed to be a 280 million year old specimen. The fossil was also rare in that it appeared to have some preserved soft tissue. It was given the species designation Tridentinosaurus antiquus and was thought to be part...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
GPT-3 x Healthcare: Democratizing AI | Out-Of-Pocket ICD-10 vs. GPT-3, who will win?
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Hobbyist Finds Math’s Elusive ‘Einstein’ Tile The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane in a...
a year ago
42
a year ago
The surprisingly simple tile is the first single, connected tile that can fill the entire plane in a pattern that never repeats — and can’t be made to fill it in a repeating way. The post Hobbyist Finds Math’s Elusive ‘Einstein’ Tile first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Wanderingspace
The First Ever Real-Time Video from Another Planet When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why:...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
When you watch this video, if you find yourself thinking of the Apollo moon landings— here is why: this is the first real-time video taken from another world since 1972, and this is the first ever taken on another planet. Most “video” you see from other planetary missions are...
Damn Interesting
A Blight on Soviet Science On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
On a hazy afternoon in March 1927, a Russian scientist was walking through the dense forests of Abyssinia, ducking under low-hanging branches and stopping to inspect the wild coffee trees lining his path. Accompanied by a group of local guides, the young traveller had been hiking...
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
4
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
Asterisk
Why We Shut Down In international development, it’s not enough to try to do good. We need the tools to tell if a...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
In international development, it’s not enough to try to do good. We need the tools to tell if a project is really working — and the incentive to end it if it’s not.
NeuroLogica Blog
What to Make of Havana Syndrome I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any...
8 months ago
52
8 months ago
I have not written before about Havana Syndrome, mostly because I have not been able to come to any strong conclusions about it. In 2016 there was a cluster of strange neurological symptoms among people working at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. They would suddenly experience...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Decentralizing Journals and Peer Review DAOs | Out-Of-Pocket the evolution of legitimacy in scientific publishing
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part II Yesterday’s post was the first in an exchange about the effects of climate change on public health....
a year ago
30
a year ago
Yesterday’s post was the first in an exchange about the effects of climate change on public health. Today’s post is my response. Part II Climate change is a critically important topic for society today, and it’s important that the public have a working knowledge of the facts,...
nanoscale views
Tour de force work: Bragg, diffraction, and diamond There are some examples of scientific progress that just seem so far above and beyond the norm, it's...
a year ago
29
a year ago
There are some examples of scientific progress that just seem so far above and beyond the norm, it's almost jaw dropping in terms of the mental leap needed for the insight.  One example that I always liked to point out to first-year undergrads learning about gravity is Johannes...
ToughSF
Actively Cooled Armor: from Helium to Liquid Tin. We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all,...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
We have seen designs for long ranged particle beams and powerful lasers. Could they be the end-all, be-all of space warfare? Not if we fend off their destructive power with actively cooled armor. Let's have a look at the different cooling solutions, from high pressure gas to...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Musings on CVS, two-way negotiation, and dynamic pricing | Out-Of-Pocket + we're hosting another dinner! and courses ending!
8 months ago
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
9
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
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence of Ancient Solar Flares From time to time the Earth gets hit by a wave of energetic particles from the sun – solar flares or...
a year ago
42
a year ago
From time to time the Earth gets hit by a wave of energetic particles from the sun – solar flares or even coronal mass ejections (CMEs). In 1859 a large CME hit Earth (known as the Carrington Event), shorting out telegraphs, brightening the sky, and causing aurora deep into...
nanoscale views
Experimental techniques: bridge measurements When we teach undergraduates about materials and measuring electrical resistance, we tend to gloss...
4 months ago
45
4 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...
NeuroLogica Blog
New Generation of Electric Robots Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Boston Dynamics (now owned by Hyundai) has revealed its electric version of its Atlas robot. These robot videos always look impressive, but at the very least we know that we are seeing the best take. We don’t know how many times the robot failed to get the one great video. There...
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Thinking like a dog How dog brains could save us from dementia
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
6
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
Podcast Pseudoscience A recent BBC article highlights some of the risk of the new age of social media we have crafted for...
a week ago
15
a week ago
A recent BBC article highlights some of the risk of the new age of social media we have crafted for ourselves. The BBC investigated the number one ranked UK podcast, Diary of a CEO with host Steven Bartlett, for the accuracy of the medical claims recently made on the show. While...
nanoscale views
APS March Meeting 2024, Day 2 A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high...
9 months ago
28
9 months ago
A decent part of today was spent in conversation with friends and colleagues, but here are some high points of scientific talks: The DMP prize session was excellent.  The first talk was by Harold Hwang, this year's awardee of the McGroddy Prize.  He gave a very compelling...
Tikalon Blog by Dev...
Green Ammonia Ammonia is an important industrial chemical with an estimated worldwide production exceeding 150...
5 months ago
2
5 months ago
Ammonia is an important industrial chemical with an estimated worldwide production exceeding 150 million metric tons. About 70% of ammonia is used to make nitrate fertilizers. Unfortunately, the production of ammonia is energy and it's a major source of carbon dioxide emission. ...
Quantum Frontiers
Can Thermodynamics Resolve the Measurement Problem? At the recent Quantum Thermodynamics conference in Vienna (coming next year to the University of...
a year ago
35
a year ago
At the recent Quantum Thermodynamics conference in Vienna (coming next year to the University of Maryland!), during an expert panel Q&A session, one member of the audience asked “can quantum thermodynamics address foundational problems in quantum theory?” That stuck with …...
Asterisk
Intelligence Testing Everyone agrees that AIs are getting smarter — but it’s surprisingly difficult to measure by how...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Everyone agrees that AIs are getting smarter — but it’s surprisingly difficult to measure by how much.
Asterisk
From Warp Speed to 100 Days During the COVID pandemic, we learned to design vaccines within weeks. Now, the bottleneck is...
a year ago
2
a year ago
During the COVID pandemic, we learned to design vaccines within weeks. Now, the bottleneck is testing that they work. To get even faster, we need innovations in clinical trial design.
Drew Ex Machina
Top Ten Posts of 2022 Now that we are at the end of 2022, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Now that we are at the end of 2022, it is time to look back at this year’s material published on Drew Ex Machina and see […]
Damn Interesting
The Comforts of the Throne In the days when hunting was a more common pursuit than it is today, those involved in the job...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
In the days when hunting was a more common pursuit than it is today, those involved in the job cultivated a taxonomy for the various droppings they might encounter and use for tracking. Thus, rather than merely looking out for scat, those stalking deer would keep an eye peeled...
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
40
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
Will Apple’s Vision Pro Change Anything? For the first time in over a decade, Apple has announced a new product designed to change computing....
a year ago
39
a year ago
For the first time in over a decade, Apple has announced a new product designed to change computing. There was the transition to personal computing with the Apple computer, then to portable computing with the iPhone, and now they hope to usher in the transition to virtual...
NeuroLogica Blog
Flow Batteries – Now With Nanofluids Battery technology has been advancing nicely over the last few decades, with a fairly predictable...
10 months ago
34
10 months 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...
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, October 2023 A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots...
a year ago
60
a year ago
A ~monthly feature. Last month was busy for me with a lot of travel and a lot of focus on The Roots of Progress as a nonprofit organization, so I haven’t had as much time as I prefer for research and writing. Recent blog posts and news stories are generally omitted; you can find...
wadertales
How successful are headstarted waders We know that headstarting (hatching eggs in captivity and rearing chicks through to fledging) can...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
We know that headstarting (hatching eggs in captivity and rearing chicks through to fledging) can boost the number of young waders in a population. However, the sustainability of this intervention is dependent upon several factors that apply after the point of release. A paper in...
Drew Ex Machina
Failure to Launch: The First Moon Race 1958-60 While it has been a few months since I have published a new post on the Drew Ex Machina website,...
a year ago
25
a year ago
While it has been a few months since I have published a new post on the Drew Ex Machina website, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t […]
nanoscale views
Seeing through tissue and Kramers-Kronig There is a paper in Science this week that is just a great piece of work.  The authors find that by...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
There is a paper in Science this week that is just a great piece of work.  The authors find that by dyeing living tissue with a particular biocompatible dye molecule, they can make that tissue effectively transparent, so you can see through it.  The paper includes images (and...
NeuroLogica Blog
Serial Dependence Bias As I have discussed numerous times on this blog, our brains did not evolve to be optimal precise...
a year ago
27
a year ago
As I have discussed numerous times on this blog, our brains did not evolve to be optimal precise perceivers and processors of information. Here is an infographic showing 188 documents cognitive biases. These biases are not all bad – they are tradeoffs. Evolutionary forces care...
NeuroLogica Blog
Neuralink Implants Chip in Human Elon Musk has announced that his company, Neuralink, has implanted their first wireless computer...
10 months ago
66
10 months ago
Elon Musk has announced that his company, Neuralink, has implanted their first wireless computer chip into a human. The chip, which they plan on calling Telepathy (not sure how I feel about that) connects with 64 thin hair-like electrodes, is battery powered and can be recharged...
Quanta Magazine
Why Is It So Hard to Define a Species? The idea of a species is fundamental to the way that many people understand the structure of life on...
a month ago
16
a month ago
The idea of a species is fundamental to the way that many people understand the structure of life on Earth. But ask 10 specialists how they define the concept and you might get 10 answers. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with evolutionary biologist Kevin de Queiroz...
NeuroLogica Blog
Artificial Robotic Muscles By now we have all seen the impressive robot videos, such as the ones from Boston Dynamics, in which...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
By now we have all seen the impressive robot videos, such as the ones from Boston Dynamics, in which robots show incredible flexibility and agility. These are amazing, but I understand they are a bit like trick-shot videos – we are being shown the ones that worked, which may not...
Wanderingspace
JUPITER FROM JUNO An unusual perspective, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft in 2018.
a year ago
The Roots of...
A plea for solutionism on AI safety Will AI kill us all? This question has rapidly gone mainstream. A few months ago, it wasn’t...
a year ago
34
a year ago
Will AI kill us all? This question has rapidly gone mainstream. A few months ago, it wasn’t seriously debated very far outside the rationalist community of LessWrong; now it’s reported in major media outlets including the NY Times, The Guardian, the Times of London, BBC, WIRED,...
NeuroLogica Blog
AI – Is It Time to Panic? I’m really excited about the recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and their potential...
a year ago
29
a year ago
I’m really excited about the recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and their potential as powerful tools. I am also concerned about unintended consequences. As with any really powerful tool, there is the potential for abuse and also disruption. But I also think that...
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...
3 days ago
4
3 days ago
The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna...
Cremieux Recueil
Preregistration Is No Panacea Stopping scientific cheaters requires setting up systems that can't be gamed
a month ago
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Some Common Mistakes to Avoid When Pitching Angels | Out-Of-Pocket With some real decks and emails!
10 months ago
Quanta Magazine
Novel Architecture Makes Neural Networks More Understandable By tapping into a decades-old mathematical principle, researchers are hoping that Kolmogorov-Arnold...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
By tapping into a decades-old mathematical principle, researchers are hoping that Kolmogorov-Arnold networks will facilitate scientific discovery. The post Novel Architecture Makes Neural Networks More Understandable first appeared on Quanta Magazine
symmetry magazine
Spacetime: All the universe’s a stage In the 1900s, Albert Einstein unified the concepts of space and time, giving us a useful new way to...
a year ago
65
a year ago
In the 1900s, Albert Einstein unified the concepts of space and time, giving us a useful new way to picture the universe.
Quanta Magazine
Can Thermodynamics Go Quantum? The Industrial Revolution brought us the laws of thermodynamics, and new ideas about work, energy...
3 months ago
25
3 months ago
The Industrial Revolution brought us the laws of thermodynamics, and new ideas about work, energy and efficiency. In this episode, co-host Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern about what these concepts might mean in the age of quantum mechanics....
nanoscale views
Condensed matter on the public stage, and not in a good way This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and...
a year ago
4
a year ago
This week, condensed matter physics has been getting far more broad public attention than usual, and while in the abstract I like our discipline getting noticed, this is definitely not how I’d have preferred it to happen. First, more fun re Ranga Dias.  Fresh off renewed...
NeuroLogica Blog
Using Plants as Biofactories When you think about it, plants are self-reproducing solar-powered biological factories. They are...
a year ago
27
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,...
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
The Roots of...
What I’ve been reading, April 2023 A monthly feature. Note that I generally don’t include very recent writing here, such as the latest...
a year ago
21
a year ago
A monthly feature. Note that I generally don’t include very recent writing here, such as the latest blog posts (for those, see my Twitter digests); this is for my deeper research. AI First, various historical perspectives on AI, many of which were quite prescient: Alan Turing,...
Sean Carroll
Thanksgiving This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve...
a year ago
20
a year ago
This year we give thanks for a feature of nature that is frequently misunderstood: quanta. (We’ve previously given thanks for the Standard Model Lagrangian, Hubble’s Law, the Spin-Statistics Theorem, conservation of momentum, effective field theory, the error bar, gauge...
symmetry magazine
Applications of quantum mechanics at the beach How does sunscreen work on the atomic level?
a year ago
IEEE Spectrum
The Lisa Was Apple’s Best Failure Happy 40th Birthday to Lisa! The Apple Lisa computer, that is. In celebration of this milestone, the...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Happy 40th Birthday to Lisa! The Apple Lisa computer, that is. In celebration of this milestone, the Computer History Museum has received permission from Apple to release the source code to the Lisa, including its system and applications software. You can access the Lisa source...
Explorations of an...
The Quest For The Rufous-throated Dipper The east slope of the Andes is one of my favourite places in the world to explore. As I've mentioned...
a year ago
13
a year ago
The east slope of the Andes is one of my favourite places in the world to explore. As I've mentioned before on this blog, this is due to several factors, but prime among them is that this slope receives a high level of rainfall. Turn on the taps, and you turn on the biodiversity....
Blog - Practical...
Endeavour's Wild Journey Through the Streets of Los Angeles [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In May of 1992, the Space...
over a year ago
28
over a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In May of 1992, the Space Shuttle Endeavour launched to low earth orbit on its very first flight. That first mission was a big one: the crew captured a wayward communications satellite stuck in the wrong orbit,...
NeuroLogica Blog
Spotting Misinformation There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they...
7 months ago
73
7 months ago
There is an interesting disconnect in our culture recently. About 90% of people claim that they verify information they encounter in the news and on social media, and 96% of Americans say that we need to limit the spread of misinformation online. And yet, the spread of...
The Works in...
Special Issue 01: Lost in Stagnation Dude, where is my flying car?
over a year ago
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Dec. 21 is Winter Solstice — Why We Have Seasons on Earth Saturday, Dec. 21 will be the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year, with...
3 days ago
7
3 days ago
Saturday, Dec. 21 will be the winter solstice – the shortest day and longest night of the year, with which we mark the beginning of the winter season in the Earth’s northern hemisphere.  It’s interesting to note that the planets Venus and Jupiter do not have seasons like the...
Quanta Magazine
What Makes for ‘Good’ Mathematics? Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the...
10 months ago
31
10 months ago
Terence Tao, who has been called the “Mozart of Mathematics,” wrote an essay in 2007 about the common ingredients in “good” mathematical research. In this episode, the Fields Medalist joins Steven Strogatz to revisit the topic. The post What Makes for ‘Good’...
Wanderingspace
Webb’s Jupiter So this is “false color” becuase it is infrared (like all Webb images) and made from only two...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
So this is “false color” becuase it is infrared (like all Webb images) and made from only two filters orange and cyan. However, the detail is incredible. That dot is tiny Amalthea at the left and— yes… that is Jupiter’s elusive ring. According to researcher Thierry Fouchet, “This...
Quanta Magazine
He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If...
a month ago
27
a month ago
Yizhi “Patrick” Cai is coordinating a global effort to write a complete synthetic yeast genome. If he succeeds, the resulting cell will be the artificial life most closely related to humans to date. The post He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It first...
Quanta Magazine
How Did Altruism Evolve? If evolution favors the survival of the fittest, where did the impulse to help others come from?...
10 months ago
30
10 months ago
If evolution favors the survival of the fittest, where did the impulse to help others come from? Host Janna Levin speaks with Stephanie Preston, a neuropsychologist who studies the biology of altruism. The post How Did Altruism Evolve? first appeared on Quanta...
Quanta Magazine
How This Marine Worm Can Tell Moonglow From Sunbeams For the first time, scientists have decoded the molecular structure of a protein that helps to sync...
a year ago
9
a year ago
For the first time, scientists have decoded the molecular structure of a protein that helps to sync a biological clock to the phases of the moon. The post How This Marine Worm Can Tell Moonglow From Sunbeams first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
Interesting reading - resonators, quantum geometry w/ phonons, and fractional quantum anomalous Hall Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
Real life continues to be busy, but I wanted to point out three recent articles that I found interesting: Mechanical resonators are a topic with a long history, going back to the first bells and the tuning fork.  I've written about micromachined resonators before, and the quest...
Probably...
Destructive Testing Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous...
7 months ago
68
7 months ago
Here’s another installment in Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python. Previous installments are available from the Data Q&A landing page. sample_size Sample Size Selection¶ Here’s a question from the Reddit statistics forum. Hi Redditors, I am a civil engineer trying...
Interaction Magic -...
Modelling my brain A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A 22 hour medical experiment breathing 12% oxygen, and the 7000 images of my brain that came out of it.
Eukaryote Writes...
Book Review: Cuisine and Empire Things people nigh-universally like to eat: salt, fat, sugar, starch, sauces, meat, drugs...
11 months ago
nanoscale views
Annual Nobel speculation thread Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Not that prizes are the be-all and end-all, but this has become an annual tradition.  Who are your speculative laureates this year for physics and chemistry?  As I did last year and for several years before, I will put forward my usual thought that the physics prize could...
Asterisk
Note to the Reader
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
The Threat of Technology In my second book (shameless plug alert) – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors and I...
a year ago
5
a year ago
In my second book (shameless plug alert) – The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future – my coauthors and I try to imagine both the utopian and dystopian versions of the future, brought about by technology, either individually or collectively. This topic has come up multiple times recently...
Quanta Magazine
New Cell Atlases Reveal Untold Variety in the Brain and Beyond Recent efforts to map every cell in the human body have researchers floored by unfathomable...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Recent efforts to map every cell in the human body have researchers floored by unfathomable diversity, with many thousands of subtly different types of cells in the human brain alone. The post New Cell Atlases Reveal Untold Variety in the Brain and Beyond first...
Asterisk
Pew Problems A conversation about religion, fertility, and the American family.
a year ago
Sean Carroll
Energy Conservation and Non-Conservation in Quantum Mechanics Conservation of energy is a somewhat sacred principle in physics, though it can be tricky in certain...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Conservation of energy is a somewhat sacred principle in physics, though it can be tricky in certain circumstances, such as an expanding universe. Quantum mechanics is another context in which energy conservation is a subtle thing — so much so that it’s still worth writing papers...
NeuroLogica Blog
Do We Have Free Will? Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Let’s dive head first into one of the internet’s most contentious questions – do we have true free will? This comes up not infrequently whenever I write here about neuroscience, most recently when I wrote about hunger circuitry, because the notion of the brain as a physical...
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Euclid Space Telescope Delivers Great Images The first images are coming in from the new Euclid Space Telescope and they are spectacular. The...
a year ago
6
a year ago
The first images are coming in from the new Euclid Space Telescope and they are spectacular. The post Euclid Space Telescope Delivers Great Images appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
symmetry magazine
Will AI make MC the MVP of particle physics? Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo simulations with the power of AI.
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: Too much money in digital health? | Out-Of-Pocket Here's what some of you had to say
a year ago
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
21
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...
Quanta Magazine
Quanta Relaunches Hyperjumps Math Game Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new and improved interactive math game,...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
Explore a universe of numbers and arithmetic in our new and improved interactive math game, Hyperjumps! The post Quanta Relaunches Hyperjumps Math Game first appeared on Quanta Magazine
IEEE Spectrum
The Invention That Let Fiber Optics Span the Globe Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten:...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten: New Coke, “We Are the World,” the rise of desktop publishing. But one at-the-time obscure invention from that year has long eclipsed the frothy headlines of its time, because it...
Asterisk
The Wrong Kind of City? How much can the way cities grow tell us about the economic trajectory of their countries? According...
3 months ago
4
3 months ago
How much can the way cities grow tell us about the economic trajectory of their countries? According to the father of modern sociology, quite a lot.
Quanta Magazine
Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math Modular forms are one of the most beautiful and mysterious objects in mathematics. What are they? ...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Modular forms are one of the most beautiful and mysterious objects in mathematics. What are they? The post Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Blog - Practical...
Engineering The Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is my friend Jade,...
a year ago
24
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is my friend Jade, creator of the Up and Atom channel. She makes these incredible math and physics explainers that I absolutely love, and she recently got the opportunity to visit ITER (eater) in France....
Cremieux Recueil
Food Deserts Are Not Real They're more like bad habit neighborhoods
3 months ago
The Works in...
How Poor Maintenance Loses Wars - 2022, Ukraine Maintains A new section from Stewart Brand's Maintenance on Books in Progress
a year ago
Explorations of an...
Day Two At Río Bigal - Brilliant Birding and Magnificent Mothing The Pink-throated Brilliant.  There are, of course, many other weird and wonderful species that call...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The Pink-throated Brilliant.  There are, of course, many other weird and wonderful species that call Río Bigal home, but I was first drawn to the idea of visiting this reserve while reading about the enigmatic Pink-throated Brilliant. This rare hummingbird lives only in forest in...
Drew Ex Machina
The Promise of MIDAS: The First Experimental Early Warning Satellites Today in the United States we almost take for granted the military’s ability to detect missile...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Today in the United States we almost take for granted the military’s ability to detect missile launches anywhere on the planet and quickly determine whether it […]
The Works in...
Notes on Progress: Agglomeration benefits are here to stay Building more homes in the most productive cities could massively boost productivity
over a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How Selective Forgetting Can Help AI Learn Better Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new...
9 months ago
14
9 months ago
Erasing key information during training results in machine learning models that can learn new languages faster and more easily. The post How Selective Forgetting Can Help AI Learn Better first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Damn Interesting
The Anticipated Future of the Moon When the Earth was young, shortly after the moon formed, our planet was spinning so fast that a day...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
When the Earth was young, shortly after the moon formed, our planet was spinning so fast that a day was approximately five hours long. During the intervening billions of years, the dragging effect of the moon’s gravity slowed the Earth’s spin to the 24-hour day we now observe....
Probably...
Another step toward a two-hour marathon This is an update to an analysis I run each time the marathon world record is broken. If you like...
a year ago
5
a year ago
This is an update to an analysis I run each time the marathon world record is broken. If you like this sort of thing, you will like my forthcoming book, Probably Overthinking It, which is available for preorder now. On October 8, 2023, Kelvin Kiptum ran the Chicago Marathon in...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Answers: Did The FDA Mess Up With Aduhelm? | Out-Of-Pocket what if it incentivizes actually good drugs?
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
How Many Microbes Does It Take to Make You Sick? Exposure to a virus isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The concept of “infectious dose” suggests...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Exposure to a virus isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. The concept of “infectious dose” suggests ways to keep ourselves safer from harm. The post How Many Microbes Does It Take to Make You Sick? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Quanta Magazine
Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Though they live only a few hours before dividing, bacteria can anticipate the approach of cold weather and prepare for it. The discovery suggests that seasonal tracking is fundamental to life. The post Even a Single Bacterial Cell Can Sense the Seasons Changing first...
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
23
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...
NeuroLogica Blog
Update on Self-Driving Cars The story has become a classic of failed futurism – driverless or self-driving cars were supposed...
a year ago
5
a year ago
The story has become a classic of failed futurism – driverless or self-driving cars were supposed start taking over the roads as early as 2020. But that didn’t happen – it turned that the last 5% of capability was about as difficult to develop as the first 95%. Around 2015 I...
Quanta Magazine
Flow Proof Helps Mathematicians Find Stability in Chaos A series of new papers describes how to fully characterize key dynamical systems with relatively...
a year ago
27
a year ago
A series of new papers describes how to fully characterize key dynamical systems with relatively little data. The post Flow Proof Helps Mathematicians Find Stability in Chaos first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Explorations of an...
Monsoon Season In Arizona, Part 2: The Huachucas September 1, 2024 For the first and only time in the trip I managed a much-needed seven hours of...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
September 1, 2024 For the first and only time in the trip I managed a much-needed seven hours of sleep. Unfortunately, some of the others were woken up earlier than they would have liked. The owner of Beatty's Guest Ranch (he lives in a different building on the property) owns a...
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
2
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
symmetry magazine
Kétévi Assamagan pays it forward Kétévi Assamagan's contributions to physics go beyond his research at the Large Hadron...
a year ago
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a year ago
Kétévi Assamagan's contributions to physics go beyond his research at the Large Hadron Collider. Kétévi Assamagan first became interested in physics in high school—because he had to be. His school in Togo, in West Africa, required students to declare a major....
IEEE Spectrum
How the Designer of the First Hydrogen Bomb Got the Gig Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE Life Fellow has won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, France’s La Grande Médaille de l’Académie des Sciences, and is one of just a handful of people...
Quanta Magazine
What Is Machine Learning? Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
Neural networks and other forms of machine learning ultimately learn by trial and error, one improvement at a time. The post What Is Machine Learning? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
nanoscale views
The need for energy-efficient computing Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Computing is consuming a large and ever-growing fraction of the world's energy capacity. I've seen the essential data in this figure several times over the last few months, and it has convinced me that the need for energy-efficient computing hardware is genuinely pressing.  This...
Quanta Magazine
How the Brain Protects Itself From Blood-Borne Threats To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is...
a year ago
25
a year ago
To buffer the brain against menaces in the blood, a dynamic, multi-tiered system of protection is built into the brain’s blood vessels. The post How the Brain Protects Itself From Blood-Borne Threats first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Beautiful Public...
FAA Aviation Maps Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a...
10 months ago
64
10 months ago
Among all of the visual information published by the U.S. government, there may be no product with a higher information density than the Federal Aviation Administration’s aviation maps.
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...
a year ago
Quanta Magazine
Michel Talagrand Wins Abel Prize for Work Wrangling Randomness The French mathematician spent decades developing a set of tools now widely used for taming random...
9 months ago
34
9 months ago
The French mathematician spent decades developing a set of tools now widely used for taming random processes. The post Michel Talagrand Wins Abel Prize for Work Wrangling Randomness first appeared on Quanta Magazine
The Works in...
Communities of Practice: The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine The first section of Ch. 3 of Stewart Brand’s Maintenance on Books in Progress
4 months ago
Quantum Frontiers
Building a Visceral Understanding of Quantum Phenomena A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the...
4 months ago
49
4 months ago
A great childhood memory that I have comes from first playing “The Incredible Machine” on PC in the early 90’s. For those not in the know, this is a physics-based puzzle game about building Rube Goldberg style contraptions to achieve … Continue reading →
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Sleep health is getting interesting | Out-Of-Pocket The consumer and clinical worlds of sleep are colliding
a month ago
NeuroLogica Blog
A Climate Debate Regarding Health Effects – Part I This is the first entry in an exchange between me and Scott Hastings, who requested the exchange....
a year ago
33
a year ago
This is the first entry in an exchange between me and Scott Hastings, who requested the exchange. This is his opening arguments. My response will be tomorrow’s post.   Part I: Hi Steven, first of all, I am tremendously grateful to you for taking time to engage with me on this...
Cremieux Recueil
Eliminating Distractions in Longevity Research Longevity maximizers should invest in biotechnology, not modifiable lifestyle factors
2 months ago
Damn Interesting
Journey to the Invisible Planet In the late 17th century, natural philosopher Isaac Newton was deeply uneasy with a new scientific...
a year ago
9
a year ago
In the late 17th century, natural philosopher Isaac Newton was deeply uneasy with a new scientific theory that was gaining currency in Europe: universal gravitation. In correspondence with a scientific contemporary, Newton complained that it was “an absurdity” to suppose that...
Quanta Magazine
Math That Goes On Forever but Never Repeats Simple math can help explain the complexities of the newly discovered aperiodic monotile. ...
a year ago
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a year ago
Simple math can help explain the complexities of the newly discovered aperiodic monotile. The post Math That Goes On Forever but Never Repeats first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Too much money in digital health? | Out-Of-Pocket trying a new format out
a year ago
wadertales
Why count shorebirds? A tale from Portugal The Sado Estuary is one of Portugal’s most important wetlands – a key link in the chain of sites...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Sado Estuary is one of Portugal’s most important wetlands – a key link in the chain of sites connecting Africa and the Arctic, on the East Atlantic Flyway. In a paper in Waterbirds, João Belo and colleagues analyse changes in numbers of waders wintering in this estuary over...
Quanta Magazine
Computer Scientists Inch Closer to Major Algorithmic Goal A new paper finds a faster method for determining when two mathematical groups are the same. ...
a year ago
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a year ago
A new paper finds a faster method for determining when two mathematical groups are the same. The post Computer Scientists Inch Closer to Major Algorithmic Goal first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Interaction Magic -...
Plastic archeology The history, science and engineering of Lego bricks, on the cusp between trash and treasure.
a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
World Events and the Conspiracy Instinct By now most people have heard that on Saturday there was a failed assassination attempt on candidate...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
By now most people have heard that on Saturday there was a failed assassination attempt on candidate Trump at a rally. While it has only been a few days, preliminary investigation has found that 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, using a AR style rifle purchased legally by his...
Quantum Frontiers
Always appropriate I met boatloads of physicists as a master’s student at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
I met boatloads of physicists as a master’s student at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Researchers pass through Perimeter like diplomats through my current neighborhood—the Washington, DC area—except that Perimeter’s visitors speak math...
Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang By studying the geometry of model space-times, researchers offer alternative views of the universe’s...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
By studying the geometry of model space-times, researchers offer alternative views of the universe’s first moments. The post Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Evidence Suggests Lunar Cave Astronomers have discovered multiple “pits” on the surface of the moon – these look superficially...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
Astronomers have discovered multiple “pits” on the surface of the moon – these look superficially like craters, but on closer inspection are actually vertical pits. There has been considerable speculation that these pits might be cave openings. Now, an analysis of data from the...
The Works in...
ARIA: Betting on science An inside look at Britain's new DARPA
a year ago
Blog - Practical...
How Flood Tunnels Work [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is Waterloo Park in...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is Waterloo Park in downtown Austin, Texas, just a couple of blocks away from the state capitol building. It’s got walking trails, an ampitheater, Waller Creek runs right through the center, and it has...
Uncharted...
The Moral Case for More People on Earth Today we’re going to cover four points that have emerged from the last few articles on growing our...
3 weeks ago
4
3 weeks ago
Today we’re going to cover four points that have emerged from the last few articles on growing our population, but which I haven’t covered yet:
Andrew Fraknoi –...
Enjoy the Coming Leap Day: Some Thoughts about the Calendar This year February will have an extra day -- we discuss why? The post Enjoy the Coming Leap Day: ...
10 months ago
9
10 months ago
This year February will have an extra day -- we discuss why? The post Enjoy the Coming Leap Day: Some Thoughts about the Calendar appeared first on Andrew Fraknoi - Astronomy Lectures - Astronomy Education Resources.
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
4
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...
Every Kind of Bridge Explained in 15 Minutes [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The Earth is pretty cool and...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] The Earth is pretty cool and all, but many of its most magnificent features make it tough for us to get around. When the topography is too wet, steep, treacherous, or prone to disaster, sometimes the only way...
NeuroLogica Blog
Predicting Outcome in Severe Brain Injury One of the most difficult situations that a person can face is to have a loved-one in a critical...
7 months ago
78
7 months ago
One of the most difficult situations that a person can face is to have a loved-one in a critical medical condition and have to make life-or-death medical decisions for them. I have been in this situation many times as the consulting neurologist, and I have seen how weighty this...
nanoscale views
Guide to faculty searches, 2024 edition As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, I have been unusually busy.  I hope to be writing about more condensed matter and nano science soon.   In the meantime, I realized that I have not re-posted or updated my primer on how tenure-track faculty searches work in physics...
pcloadletter
The ChatGPT wrapper product boom is an uncanny valley hellscape Here we go again: I'm so tired of crypto web3 LLMs. I'm positive there are wonderful applications...
7 months ago
80
7 months ago
Here we go again: I'm so tired of crypto web3 LLMs. I'm positive there are wonderful applications for LLMs. The ChatGPT web UI seems great for summarizing information from various online sources (as long as you're willing to verify the things that you learn). But a lot fo the "AI...
Quanta Magazine
‘Species Repulsion’ Enables High Biodiversity in Tropical Trees Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Because tree seedlings don’t grow as well when close to their parents, more tree species can be packed into tropical forests. The post ‘Species Repulsion’ Enables High Biodiversity in Tropical Trees first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Probably...
Zipf’s Law Elements of Data Science is in print now, available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. To...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Elements of Data Science is in print now, available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. To celebrate, I’ll post some excerpts here, starting with one of my favorite examples, Zipf’s Law. You can read the complete chapter here, or run the Jupyter notebook on Colab. In almost any...
symmetry magazine
Whatever happened to the theory of everything? A theory of everything was all the rage in the 1980s. So where did it go? It is...
a year ago
53
a year ago
A theory of everything was all the rage in the 1980s. So where did it go? It is only the optimists who achieve anything in this world—theorist John Ellis once read this adage on a candy wrapper. It stuck with him, so much so that in 1986 he referenced this...
nanoscale views
Favorite science fiction invention? In the forward-looking spirit of the New Year, it might be fun to get readers’ opinions of their...
a year ago
24
a year ago
In the forward-looking spirit of the New Year, it might be fun to get readers’ opinions of their favorite science fiction inventions.  I wrote about favorite sci-fi materials back in 2015, but let’s broaden the field. Personally, I’m a fan of the farcaster (spoiler warning!) from...
Quanta Magazine
How Public Key Cryptography Really Works, Using Only Simple Math The security system that underlies the internet makes use of a curious fact: You can broadcast part...
a month ago
20
a month ago
The security system that underlies the internet makes use of a curious fact: You can broadcast part of your encryption to make your information much more secure. The post How Public Key Cryptography Really Works, Using Only Simple Math first appeared on Quanta...
Interaction Magic -...
Interaction20 Round-up Summary of all the amazing, curious and challenging ideas from last week's IXDA Interaction 20...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Summary of all the amazing, curious and challenging ideas from last week's IXDA Interaction 20 conference.
The Works in...
Works in Progress: 2023 Wrapped Our most read work of the year
a year ago