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Out-of-Pocket Blog
(Ethically dubious) ways to give patients more choice | Out-Of-Pocket Do these ideas give you the ick? Or is there something interesting here
9 hours ago
Yale E360
Warming Made Hot, Dry Weather That Fueled Iberian Wildfires 40 Times More Likely So far this year, fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across northern Portugal and...
18 hours ago
2
18 hours ago
So far this year, fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across northern Portugal and northwest Spain, killing eight people and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. The bulk of the wildfires coincided with a brutal heat wave in August, the most intense on record in...
The Works in...
Liberté, égalité, radioactivité France built forty nuclear reactors in a decade. Here's what the world can learn from it.
14 hours ago
NeuroLogica Blog
Charting The Brain’s Decision-Making Researchers have just presented the results of a collaboration among 22 neuroscience labs mapping...
15 hours ago
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15 hours ago
Researchers have just presented the results of a collaboration among 22 neuroscience labs mapping the activity of the mouse brain down to the individual cell. The goal was to see brain activity during decision-making. Here is a summary of their findings: “Representations of...
IEEE Spectrum
Esoteric Languages Challenge Coders to Think Way Outside the Box Have you ever tried programming with a language that uses musical notation? What about a language...
13 hours ago
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13 hours ago
Have you ever tried programming with a language that uses musical notation? What about a language that never runs programs the same way? What about a language where you write code with photographs? All exist, among many others, in the world of esoteric programming languages, and...
Yale E360
Warming Made Hot, Dry Weather That Fueled Iberian Wildfires 40 Times More Likely So far this year, fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across northern Portugal and...
18 hours ago
1
18 hours ago
So far this year, fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across northern Portugal and northwest Spain, killing eight people and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. The bulk of the wildfires coincided with a brutal heat wave in August, the most intense on record in...
The Works in...
Proteins: Weird blobs doing important things Episode two of Hard Drugs explores the world of proteins
2 days ago
Quanta Magazine
What Is the Fourier Transform? Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
Amid the chaos of revolutionary France, one man’s mathematical obsession gave way to a calculation that now underpins much of mathematics and physics. The calculation, called the Fourier transform, decomposes any function into its parts. The post What Is the Fourier...
Yale E360
Global Solar Installations Up 64 Percent So Far This Year Even as the U.S. guts support for renewable power, the world is still pushing ahead on the shift to...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
Even as the U.S. guts support for renewable power, the world is still pushing ahead on the shift to solar energy, with installations up 64 percent in the first half of this year. Read more on E360 →
Chris Grossack's...
$F_2 \times F_2$ is Incoherent -- A Polite Spectral Sequence Computation Yesterday I watched my friend Jialin Wang defend her thesis, and as part of her background section...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
Yesterday I watched my friend Jialin Wang defend her thesis, and as part of her background section she mentioned that the group $F_2 \times F_2$ is incoherent in the sense that it has a subgroup that’s finitely generated and not finitely presented. I was curious how one might...
Blog - Practical...
The Weirdest Tool in Underwater Construction [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In 1989, the Loma Prieta...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake shook the central coast of California, collapsing buildings and damaging infrastructure across the Bay Area. Bridges, in particular, suffered extensive damage. In one case, a...
Quanta Magazine
‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
You’re carrying around in your head a model of how the world works. Will AI systems need to do the same? The post ‘World Models,’ an Old Idea in AI, Mount a Comeback first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Detecting Online Predatory Journals The World Wide Web has proven to be a transformative communication technology (we are using it right...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
The World Wide Web has proven to be a transformative communication technology (we are using it right now). At the same time there have been some rather negative unforeseen consequences. Significantly lowering the threshold for establishing a communications outlet has democratized...
Yale E360
In Indonesia’s Rainforest, a Mega-Farm Project Is Plowing Ahead The Indonesian government is fast-tracking a massive agricultural project that is turning 7 million...
3 days ago
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3 days ago
The Indonesian government is fast-tracking a massive agricultural project that is turning 7 million acres of tropical forest into rice and sugarcane farms. Critics say it is the world’s largest deforestation project and would upend the lives of thousands of Indigenous...
IEEE Spectrum
The Karaoke Machine’s Surprising Origin Belting your favorite song over prerecorded music into a microphone in front of friends and...
a week ago
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a week ago
Belting your favorite song over prerecorded music into a microphone in front of friends and strangers at karaoke is a popular way for people around the world to destress after work or celebrate a friend’s birthday. The idea for the karaoke machine didn’t come from a singer or a...
The Works in...
Toronto's underground labyrinth How Canada's largest city developed a 30 kilometer network of pedestrian tunnels
a week ago
Yale E360
In Indonesia’s Rainforest, A Mega-farm Project Is Plowing Ahead The Indonesian government is fast-tracking a massive agricultural project that is turning 7 million...
a week ago
4
a week ago
The Indonesian government is fast-tracking a massive agricultural project that is turning 7 million acres of tropical forest into rice and sugarcane farms. Critics say it is the world’s largest deforestation project and would upend the lives of thousands of Indigenous...
Quanta Magazine
The Sudden Surges That Forge Evolutionary Trees An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic,...
a week ago
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a week ago
An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes. The post The Sudden Surges That Forge Evolutionary Trees first appeared...
nanoscale views
25 years of Nano Letters Back in the dawn of the 21st century, the American Chemical Society founded a new journal, Nano...
a week ago
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a week ago
Back in the dawn of the 21st century, the American Chemical Society founded a new journal, Nano Letters, to feature letters-length papers about nanoscience and nanotechnology.  This was coincident with the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and it was back before...
IEEE Spectrum
The First Inkjet Printer Was a Medical Device Millions of people worldwide have reason to be thankful that Swedish engineer Rune Elmqvist decided...
a week ago
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a week ago
Millions of people worldwide have reason to be thankful that Swedish engineer Rune Elmqvist decided not to practice medicine. Although qualified as a doctor, he chose to invent medical equipment instead. In 1949, while working at Elema-Schonander (later Siemens-Elema), in...
The Works in...
How to become President of China with Dan Wang Episode five of the Works in Progress podcast is about why China outbuilds America
a week ago
Yale E360
How the Next Pandemic Could Emerge from an Aardvark Burrow Animals of all kinds mix and mingle in underground burrows, offering troubling opportunities for...
a week ago
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a week ago
Animals of all kinds mix and mingle in underground burrows, offering troubling opportunities for diseases to jump species. Read more on E360 →
The Works in...
The beauty of batteries Keeping the grid stable requires overbuilding generation, driving up costs. Batteries fix that.
a week ago
Quanta Magazine
Astrophysicists Find No ‘Hair’ on Black Holes According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing...
a week ago
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a week ago
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, black holes have only a small handful of distinguishing characteristics. Quantum theory implies they may have more. Now an experimental search finds that any of this extra ‘hair’ has to be pretty short. The post...
IEEE Spectrum
It’s the End of the Line for AOL’s Dial-Up Service The last time I used a dial-up modem came sometime around 2001. Within just a few years, dial-up had...
a week ago
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a week ago
The last time I used a dial-up modem came sometime around 2001. Within just a few years, dial-up had exited my life, never to return. I haven’t even had a telephone line in my house for most of my adult life. But I still feel a strong tinge of sadness to know that AOL is...
Yale E360
The Best Wildlife Photography of the Year Every year the Natural History Museum in London honors the best wildlife photographers from around...
a week ago
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a week ago
Every year the Natural History Museum in London honors the best wildlife photographers from around the world, highlighting 100 extraordinary photos of nature. This year, the finalists were selected from more than 60,000 entries and feature dynamic portraits of wildlife alongside...
wadertales
Identifying key areas of Iceland for wader conservation In the same way that geological maps tell mining companies where to look for precious metals, new...
a week ago
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a week ago
In the same way that geological maps tell mining companies where to look for precious metals, new bird maps, produced by Verónica Méndez and colleagues in a paper in Wildlife Biology, highlight the areas of Iceland most likely to hold significant populations of breeding waders....
Yale E360
Map Reveals Toxic Pollution Leaking from U.S. Drilling Sites Scientists have shown that U.S. oil and gas drilling sites are not just leaking methane but also a...
a week ago
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a week ago
Scientists have shown that U.S. oil and gas drilling sites are not just leaking methane but also a host of toxic chemicals that pose an urgent threat to the health of those living nearby. A new interactive map details the impact of hundreds of major leaks. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
‘Ten Martini’ Proof Uses Number Theory to Explain Quantum Fractals The proof, known to be so hard that a mathematician once offered 10 martinis to whoever could figure...
a week ago
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a week ago
The proof, known to be so hard that a mathematician once offered 10 martinis to whoever could figure it out, connects quantum mechanics to infinitely intricate mathematical structures. The post ‘Ten Martini’ Proof Uses Number Theory to Explain Quantum Fractals first...
Beautiful Public...
How LiDAR measures the toll of climate disasters Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale...
a week ago
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a week ago
Comparing LiDAR data from before and after the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles reveals the scale of devastation in ways satellite imagery can’t match.
NeuroLogica Blog
Brightest Fast Radio Burst Discovered The universe is a big place, and it is full of mysteries. Really bright objects, that can be seen...
a week ago
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a week ago
The universe is a big place, and it is full of mysteries. Really bright objects, that can be seen from millions or even billions of light years away, can therefore be found, even if they are extremely rare. This is true of fast radio bursts (FRBs), which are extremely bright and...
Yale E360
In the Yucatan, the High Cost of a Boom in Factory Hog Farms In “Slaughter-land” — the First-Place Winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — two...
a week ago
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a week ago
In “Slaughter-land” — the First-Place Winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — two Latin American filmmakers document how hundreds of mega-farms that contain tens of thousands of pigs are trampling Indigenous rights and befouling the air and water in the...
nanoscale views
Learning and AI/LLMs - Why do we need to know or teach anything anymore? The fall semester is about to begin at my university, and I'm going to be teaching undergraduate...
a week ago
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a week ago
The fall semester is about to begin at my university, and I'm going to be teaching undergraduate statistical and thermal physics.  This is a course I've taught before, last full term in 2019, and the mass availability of large language models and generative AI tools have changed...
Quanta Magazine
Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math The quest to find the longest-running simple computer program has identified a new champion. It’s...
a week ago
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a week ago
The quest to find the longest-running simple computer program has identified a new champion. It’s physically impossible to write out the numbers involved using standard mathematical notation. The post Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math...
Yale E360
Wildfires Burning Less Land but Threatening More People A growing number of people globally are seeing wildfires encroach on their homes. That is not...
a week ago
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a week ago
A growing number of people globally are seeing wildfires encroach on their homes. That is not because wildfires are burning more land, however. Over the last two decades, the number of acres burned has dropped. The growing exposure to fires, a new study finds, is driven by the...
IEEE Spectrum
The 60-Year Old Algorithm Underlying Today’s Tech CT scanning, streaming videos, and sending images over the Internet wouldn’t be possible without the...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
CT scanning, streaming videos, and sending images over the Internet wouldn’t be possible without the Fast Fourier transform. Commonly known as FFT, the computer algorithm designed by researchers at Princeton University and IBM is found in just about every electronic device,...
NeuroLogica Blog
A New Way to Watch Foreign Language Films Watch this movie trailer before reading on. What did you think? This is an independent Swedish film,...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Watch this movie trailer before reading on. What did you think? This is an independent Swedish film, originally filmed in Swedish, and then dubbed into English. However, it wasn’t just dubbed in the conventional way – AI was used to convert the facial movements of the actors to...
Quanta Magazine
Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage? Richard Prum explains why he thinks feathers and vibrant traits in birds evolved not solely for...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Richard Prum explains why he thinks feathers and vibrant traits in birds evolved not solely for survival, but also through aesthetic choice. The post Do Beautiful Birds Have an Evolutionary Advantage? first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Pixel Tracking, Healthcare Advertising, And HIPAA | Out-Of-Pocket And what Ours Privacy does here
2 weeks ago
Quanta Magazine
The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Unimaginable A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
A decade ago, Karen Lloyd discovered single-celled microbes living beneath the seafloor. Now she studies how they can survive in Earth’s crust, possibly for hundreds or thousands of years, and push life’s limits of time and energy. The post The Pursuit of Life Where...
The Works in...
How a Norwegian chemist defeated lead paint Lead paint was banned. Before that, it was outcompeted by a cheap and safe alternative.
2 weeks ago
Yale E360
In Scotland, Whale Strandings Have More Than Tripled Over the past three decades, the number of whale strandings in Scotland has grown dramatically, a...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Over the past three decades, the number of whale strandings in Scotland has grown dramatically, a new study shows. Scientists say pollution and industrial noise may be driving the losses. Read more on E360 →
Blog - Practical...
California’s Tallest Bridge Has Nothing Underneath [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Foresthill Bridge soars across...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] Foresthill Bridge soars across the valley of the North Fork of the American River just outside Auburn, California. At more than 700 feet or 200 meters above the canyon floor, it’s the fourth-tallest bridge in...
Yale E360
In the Transition to Renewable Energy, China Is at a Crossroads For the first time, wind and solar are beginning to displace coal power in China, causing emissions...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
For the first time, wind and solar are beginning to displace coal power in China, causing emissions to drop. Analyst Lauri Myllyvirta explores the challenges ahead for policymakers, who must now choose between propping up coal or doubling down on the shift to clean energy. Read...
Out-of-Pocket Blog
Why Radiology AI Didn’t Work and What Comes Next | Out-Of-Pocket FDA Approvals, PACS Pain, Selling Point Solutions, and Why Radiology AI Needed a Rethink
2 weeks ago
Yale E360
As Greenland Melts, Sea Life Blooms Meltwater flowing from the Greenland ice sheet is stirring up nutrients from the ocean depths,...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Meltwater flowing from the Greenland ice sheet is stirring up nutrients from the ocean depths, fueling algal blooms. A new study reveals the extent to which melting is driving the growth of algae. Read more on E360 →
Quanta Magazine
Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
New studies of the ‘platypus of materials’ help explain how their atoms arrange themselves into orderly, but nonrepeating, patterns. The post Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation first appeared on Quanta Magazine
NeuroLogica Blog
Chat-GPT 5 Is Out I have been using Chat GPT since it was first released, so I was interested to see how much of an...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
I have been using Chat GPT since it was first released, so I was interested to see how much of an upgrade the new Chat-GPT 5 is. For those of you living in a luddite cave, Chat-GPT is one of the new artificial intelligence (AI) applications known as an LLM, or large language...
Yale E360
In India, a Young Poacher Evolves into a Committed Conservationist In “Chasing Birds” — Second-Place Winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — filmmaker...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
In “Chasing Birds” — Second-Place Winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — filmmaker Salma Sultana Barbhuiya explores how Rustom Basumatary, who came of age during a time of violent conflict in the Indian state of Assam, found identity and purpose in nature. Read...
wadertales
Peatland restoration – ploughing for plovers. Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Commercial forestry was never a good option for the wet peatlands of northeast Scotland, with planting financed by tax subsidies and sold on the mantra of ‘rural jobs’. The trees did not grow well and, thirty years on, more government money started to be spent to restore the same...