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Quanta Magazine
How Did Multicellular Life Evolve? One of the most important events in the history of life on Earth was the emergence of...
5 months ago
55
5 months ago
One of the most important events in the history of life on Earth was the emergence of multicellularity. In this episode, Will Ratcliff discusses how his snowflake yeast models provide insight into what drove the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms. ...
Damn Interesting
Fifteen Years Forsaken Editor’s Note: This article contains quotations from contemporaneous accounts which might be...
over a year ago
38
over a year ago
Editor’s Note: This article contains quotations from contemporaneous accounts which might be offensive for today’s readers. The moon was new on the night of 31 July 1761, and the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean uniformly black. But Captain Jean de Lafargue of the French cargo...
NeuroLogica Blog
Woman with Catatonia for Years Wakes After Treatment The story of a woman, in a severe state of catatonia for years and “waking up” after being treated...
over a year ago
75
over a year ago
The story of a woman, in a severe state of catatonia for years and “waking up” after being treated for an autoimmune disease, is making the rounds and deserves a little bit of context. April Burrell was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia resulting in catatonia, and has...
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
105
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...
Quanta Magazine
Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re...
6 months ago
68
6 months ago
Ten years ago, researchers proved that adding full memory can theoretically aid computation. They’re just now beginning to understand the implications. The post Catalytic Computing Taps the Full Power of a Full Hard Drive first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Yale E360
Britain Sees Sunniest Spring on Record This spring was the warmest and sunniest on record in the U.K., a symptom of a rapidly warming...
3 months ago
7
3 months ago
This spring was the warmest and sunniest on record in the U.K., a symptom of a rapidly warming climate, weather officials say. Read more on E360 →
nanoscale views
Science slow down - not a simple question I participated in a program about 15 years ago that looked at science and technology challenges...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
I participated in a program about 15 years ago that looked at science and technology challenges faced by a subset of the US government. I came away thinking that such problems fall into three broad categories. Actual science and engineering challenges, which require...
Yale E360
Return of Trees to Eastern U.S. Is Fueling a Surge in Wildfires Trees and shrubs have proliferated in unmanaged forests in the eastern U.S. This growth, which marks...
8 months ago
9
8 months ago
Trees and shrubs have proliferated in unmanaged forests in the eastern U.S. This growth, which marks a return of trees to the region after centuries of deforestation, is fueling a new surge in wildfires, a study finds. Read more on E360 →
NeuroLogica Blog
Are Small Modular Reactors Finally Coming? Small nuclear reactors have been around since the 1950s. They mostly have been used in military...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
Small nuclear reactors have been around since the 1950s. They mostly have been used in military ships, like aircraft carriers and submarines. They have the specific advantage that such ships could remain at sea for long periods of time without needing to refuel. But small modular...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Getting Healthcare Data To Train An AI Model - with Protege | Out-Of-Pocket And all the different ways you can “train” a model
6 months ago
Yale E360
Carbon Dioxide Levels Rose by a Record Amount Last Year Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before, putting hopes of limiting...
7 months ago
8
7 months ago
Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before, putting hopes of limiting warming in jeopardy. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Taiwan to Ramp Up Gas Imports After Shuttering Last Nuclear Plant Having shut down its last remaining nuclear plant Saturday, Taiwan is working to secure new imports...
3 months ago
12
3 months ago
Having shut down its last remaining nuclear plant Saturday, Taiwan is working to secure new imports of natural gas. Read more on E360 →
Yale E360
Planned Indian Mega-Port Could 'Wipe Out' Isolated Tribe The Shompen, residents of a small island in the Indian Ocean, are among the world's last isolated...
4 months ago
9
4 months ago
The Shompen, residents of a small island in the Indian Ocean, are among the world's last isolated tribes. But that may soon change as the Indian government moves forward with plans for a massive port that could "wipe out" the tribe, a watchdog group says. Read more on E360 →
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....
over a year ago
55
over 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...
Yale E360
On Controlling Fire, New Lessons from a Deep Indigenous Past For centuries, the Native people of North America used controlled burns to manage the continent's...
a month ago
21
a month ago
For centuries, the Native people of North America used controlled burns to manage the continent's forests. In an e360 interview, ecologist Loris Daniels talks about the long history of Indigenous burning and why the practice must be restored to protect against catastrophic...
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
29
a year ago
In Part I of this post I outlined some basic considerations in deciding how much the state should impose regulations on people and institutions in order to engineer positive outcomes. In the end the best approach, it seems to me, is a balanced one, where we consider the burden of...
Quanta Magazine
To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
Quantum algorithms can find their way out of mazes exponentially faster than classical ones, at the cost of forgetting the path they took. A new result suggests that the trade-off may be inevitable. The post To Move Fast, Quantum Maze Solvers Must Forget the Past...
NeuroLogica Blog
Scammers on the Rise Good rule of thumb – assume it’s a scam. Anyone who contacts you, or any unusual encounter, assume...
a year ago
80
a year ago
Good rule of thumb – assume it’s a scam. Anyone who contacts you, or any unusual encounter, assume it’s a scam and you will probably be right. Recently I was called on my cell phone by someone claiming to be from Venmo. They asked me to confirm if I had just made two fund...
Quanta Magazine
Analog vs. Digital: The Race Is On To Simulate Our Quantum Universe Recent progress on both analog and digital simulations of quantum fields foreshadows a future in...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
Recent progress on both analog and digital simulations of quantum fields foreshadows a future in which quantum computers could illuminate phenomena that are far too complex for even the most powerful supercomputers. The post Analog vs. Digital: The Race Is On To...
brr
South Pole Topography The relentless accumulation (and management) of snow.
over a year ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Where Are All the Dwarf Planets? In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
In 2006 (yes, it was that long ago – yikes) the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially adopted the definition of dwarf planet – they are large enough for their gravity to pull themselves into a sphere, they orbit the sun and not another larger body, but they don’t...
Damn Interesting
Pushing the Envelope As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life insurance policies were prohibitively expensive. Rather than pay the exorbitant insurance fees, the astronauts devised a system to ensure their wives and children would be financially...
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
38
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...
Blog - Practical...
How To Install a Pipeline Under a Railroad [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Union Pacific...
a year ago
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a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Union Pacific Railroad’s Austin Subdivision in central Texas. It’s a busy corridor that moves both freight and passengers north and south between Austin and San Antonio… But it’s mostly freight....
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...
8 months ago
116
8 months ago
Computer History Museum’s collection has a biography of sorts—a life before CHM, a tale about how it came to us, and a life within the museum. The chapters of that biography include the uses made of it, and the historical and interpretive stories it can be made to tell. This then...
Casey Handmer's blog
Stuff you should have been taught in college but weren’t As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart...
7 months ago
76
7 months ago
As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvious, but I remember when they weren’t obvious to me on the other side of the table!...
Blog - Practical...
Why are Smokestacks So Tall? [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] “The big black stacks of the...
3 months ago
44
3 months ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] “The big black stacks of the Illium Works of the Federal Apparatus Corporation spewed acid fumes and soot over the hundreds of men and women who were lined up before the red-brick employment office.” That’s the...
Asterisk
When RAND Made Magic in Santa Monica RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most...
a year ago
22
a year ago
RAND’s halcyon days lasted two decades, during which the corporation produced some of the most influential developments in science and American foreign policy. So how did it become just another think tank?
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Common ROI mistakes in healthcare | Out-Of-Pocket Plus some benchmark ROI numbers for you to think about
2 months ago
nanoscale views
Brief items - Static electricity, quantum geometry, Hubbard model, + news It's been a busy time that has cut into my blogging, but I wanted to point out some links from the...
a month ago
29
a month ago
It's been a busy time that has cut into my blogging, but I wanted to point out some links from the past couple of weeks. Physics Today has a cover article this past issue about what is colloquially known as static electricity, but what is more technically described as...
Casey Handmer's blog
Dittemore’s Law A quick note to formalize some observations on elite organization dysfunction. The Space Mirror...
7 months ago
74
7 months ago
A quick note to formalize some observations on elite organization dysfunction. The Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center in Florida commemorates the 25 US astronauts who have died in flight.  Ron Dittemore is the retired former Space Shuttle program manager who was...
Chris Grossack's...
How to Explicitly Compute Charts for a Levelset Submanifold While doing a computation with my friend Shane the other day, we realized we needed to explicitly...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
While doing a computation with my friend Shane the other day, we realized we needed to explicitly compute a local chart near the identity of $SL_2(\mathbb{R})$. It took us longer than I’d like to admit to figure out how to do this (especially since it’s so geometrically...
Blog - Practical...
When Natural Gas Had No Smell [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Excitement and hope permeated...
a year ago
114
a year ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Excitement and hope permeated the crowds gathered in a dusty farm carved from the piney woods in east Texas. The rumor was that Columbus Joiner had struck oil. At 70 years old, Joiner had already won and lost...
symmetry magazine
Encouraging a new community Physicists advocate for getting community college students involved in research.
over a year ago
Wanderingspace
Saturn Vortex “This is a view of a ~2,000-km-wide vortex of swirling clouds above Saturn's north pole, imaged in...
9 months ago
81
9 months 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...
The Roots of...
What does it mean to “trust science”? And this, my children, is why we do not say things like “I believe in science”. I mean, don’t get me...
over a year ago
31
over a year ago
And this, my children, is why we do not say things like “I believe in science”. I mean, don’t get me wrong, science definitely exists—I’ve seen it. But not everything that calls itself science is science, and even good science sometimes gets wrong results. –Megan McArdle Should...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Healthcare Ideas That Look Good But Are Bad | Out-Of-Pocket clinical trial matching, "find a specialist", and more
a year ago
symmetry magazine
Muon g-2 doubles down with latest measurement, explores uncharted territory Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment brings particle physics closer to a showdown between theory and...
over a year ago
Yale E360
Israeli Forces Allegedly Bulldoze Palestinian Seed Bank Israeli forces have attacked a seed bank in the West Bank city of Hebron, destroying equipment used...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Israeli forces have attacked a seed bank in the West Bank city of Hebron, destroying equipment used to reproduce heirloom seeds, according to the group managing the facility. The attack comes as an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has fueled widespread hunger in the...
IEEE Spectrum
Smalltalk Blew Steve Jobs’s Mind Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There they were introduced to the experimental Alto computer and the Smalltalk language and computing environment, developed by Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group....
Quanta Magazine
Math Proof Draws New Boundaries Around Black Hole Formation For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
For a half century, mathematicians have tried to define the exact circumstances under which a black hole is destined to exist. A new proof shows how a cube can help answer the question. The post Math Proof Draws New Boundaries Around Black Hole Formation first...
NeuroLogica Blog
AC vs DC and other Power Questions I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9...
10 months ago
70
10 months ago
I was away last week, first at CSICON and then at a conference in Dubai. I was invited to give a 9 hour seminar on scientific skepticism for the Dubai Future Foundation. That sounds like a lot of time, but it isn’t. It was a good reminder of the vast body of knowledge that is...
nanoscale views
New updates + tetrahedra, tunneling times, and more Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Here are a number of items from the past week or so that I think readers of this blog might find interesting: Essentially all the news pertaining to the US federal funding of science continues to be awful.  This article from Science summarizes the situation well, as does this...
The Roots of...
The Commission for Stopping Further Improvements On May 24, 1847, a bridge over the Dee River in Chester, England, collapsed. A passenger train...
over a year ago
47
over a year ago
On May 24, 1847, a bridge over the Dee River in Chester, England, collapsed. A passenger train plunged into the river; five people were killed and nine seriously injured. The subsequent investigation blamed the bridge’s cast iron girders. Cast iron, like concrete but unlike...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Advice and Lessons for Healthcare Founders | Out-Of-Pocket Some stuff people don’t tell you
a month ago
NeuroLogica Blog
ChatGPT Almost Passes Medical Licensure Exams The emergence of several AI applications for public use, such as Dalle-2, Midjourney, and ChatGPT,...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
The emergence of several AI applications for public use, such as Dalle-2, Midjourney, and ChatGPT, had made AI one of the biggest science news items of the past year. I have written about it here extensively myself, and have been using these applications extensively to get a feel...
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...
a year ago
46
a year 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...
Beautiful Public...
The United States Frequency Allocation Chart This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s most crucial – and invisible – national assets: the radio spectrum.
symmetry magazine
Will AI make MC the MVP of particle physics? Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
Particle physicists are building innovative machine-learning algorithms to enhance Monte Carlo simulations with the power of AI.
Willem Pennings
Fixing my heating system The heating system in my apartment building consists of a group of heat pumps that deliver warm...
a year ago
70
a year 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...