This week I am attending the every-two-years DOE Experimental Condensed Matter Physics PI meeting.  Previously I have written up highlights of these meetings (see here, here, here, here, here), though two years I was unable to do so because I was attending virtually.  I will do my best to hit some high points (though I will restrict myself to talking only about already published work, to avoid any issues of confidentiality).   In the meantime, here are a couple of topics of interest from the last couple of weeks.   I just learned about the existence of Mathos AI, an AI product that can function as a math solver and calculator, as well as a tutor for students.  It is pretty impressive. I liked this historical piece about Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (he of the “Chandrasekhar limit”, which describes the degeneracy physics + gravitation that limits the upper size of compact stellar objects like white dwarfs and neutron stars before they collapse into black holes) and his interactions with Stephen Hawking.  It's pretty humanizing to see an intellectual giant like Chandra sending a brief letter to Hawking in 1967 asking for advice on what to read so that Chandra can understand Hawking’s work on singularities in cosmology.  Hawking’s handwritten response is clear and direct. In an online discussion about what people will do if Google decides to stop supporting Google Scholar, I was introduced to OpenAlex.  This seems like an interesting, also-free alternative.  Certainly worth watching.  There is no obvious reason to think that Google Scholar is going away, but Alphabet has retired many free products, and it’s far from obvious how they are making any money on this.  Anyone from Google who reads the blog, please chime in.  (Note to self:  keep regularly backing up this blog, since blogger is also not guaranteed future existence.)

Scientists have identified tubulin structures in primitive Asgard archea that may have been the precursor of our own cellular skeletons. The post Tiny Tubes Reveal Clues to the Evolution of Complex Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

It is becoming increasingly clear, in my opinion, that we need to further shift from an overall economic system based on a linear model of extraction-manufacture-use-waste to a more circular model where as much waste as possible becomes feedstock for another manufacturing process. It also seems clear, after reading about such things for a long […] The post Upcycling Plastic and Reducing Mineral Waste first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

In the village of Bellewstown, about 15 miles north of Dublin, Ireland, they still talk about what Barney Curley did back in 1975. It all happened during a horse race on the Hill of Crockafotha. It was just an amateur jockey race on a lazy summer day in a sleepy, remote town; it wasn’t meant to be anything special. The last thing anyone expected was to witness the making of history. The race in question occurred on 26 June 1975. Barney Curley–our protagonist, if you could call him that–owned one of the horses running later that day. But at the racecourse, as preparations were being made, Curley was nowhere to be seen. And not because he wasn’t in attendance–it was because he was taking great pains to stay out of sight. If the trackside bookmakers caught wind that he was at Bellewstown that day, or if they discovered that he was the owner of one of the horses, they would be on full alert, and take precautions with the wagers and odds. Curley had earned a reputation in horse racing circles–he was known to engage in some gambling shenanigans from time to time. But the shenanigan he was planning that day was his most ambitious to date, hands-down. As the spectators placed their wagers and settled in around the edge of the track for a pleasant afternoon of laid back horse racing, Curley was concealed in the thicket of gorse shrubs in the center section of the oval-shaped track. This particular infield wasn’t ideal for human occupation, it was all dust and thorns. Nevertheless he stood in his trademark felt fedora, shrouded by tall shrubbery, far from the other spectators, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. In the distance the loudspeaker announced, “They’re off!” Curley tugged his hat down tight over his bald head as if he could hide inside of it, and peered through his field glasses toward the rumble of horse hooves. In the next five minutes, if everything went according to plan, all of Barney Curley’s considerable money troubles would be over. If the plan went sideways–if his animal was not up to the task, or there was one inopportune stumble–he would be utterly ruined. Continue reading ▶

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 Simulate Our Quantum Universe first appeared on Quanta Magazine