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What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 82 posts.
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CO₂ emissions
How much CO₂ does the world emit? Which countries emit the most?
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations
Explore data on COVID-19 vaccinations across the world.
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Breakdown of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions by sector
How much do electricity, transport, and land use contribute to different greenhouse gas emissions?
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Reverse Engineering the Source Code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Translations: ελληνικά / عربى / 中文 (Weixin video, Youtube video) / 粵文 / bahasa Indonesia / český / Català / český / Deutsch / Español / 2فارسی / فارسی / Français / עִברִית / Hrvatski / Italiano / Magyar / Nederlands / 日本語 / 日本語 2 / नेपाली / Polskie / русский / Português / Română / Slovensky / Slovenščina / Srpski /…
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Excess mortality from March to December of 2020
Explore data on COVID-19 excess mortality across the world.
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You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
“Eat local” is a common recommendation to reduce your diet's carbon footprint. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it comes from?
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Concerns with that Stanford antibody study of coronavirus prevalence
I’ve been following your blog for a while and checked in today to see if there was a thread on last week’s big-splash Stanford antibody study (the one with the shocking headline that they got 50 positive results in a “random” sample of 3330 antibody tests, suggesting that nearly 2% of the population has been infected…
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Lab-made? CoV2 genealogy through the lens of gain-of-function research
Virologists have created dozens of chimeric coronaviruses in the lab over the past 20 years.
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Plastic Pollution
How much plastic ends up in the ocean? Where does it come from?
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COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the world. Explore global data and research to understand its impact, spread, and global response.
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The Wolfram Physics Project
How does our universe work? Scientist Stephen Wolfram opens up his ongoing Wolfram Physics Project to a global effort. His team will livestream work in progress, post working materials, release software tools and hold educational programs.
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Mortality Risk of COVID-19
Explore data on the mortality risk of COVID-19 across the world.
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Environmental Impacts of Food Production
What are the environmental impacts of food production? How do we reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment?
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Pfizer and BioNTech Conclude Phase 3 Study of COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate, Meeting All Primary Efficacy Endpoints
Primary efficacy analysis demonstrates BNT162b2 to be 95% effective against COVID-19 beginning 28 days after the first dose; 170 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were evaluated, with 162 observed in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group Efficacy was consistent across age, gender, race and ethnicity demographics…
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Long COVID: Lasting effects of COVID-19
COVID-19 can have lasting symptoms that affect many parts of the body. Learn more about the symptoms and effects of long COVID.
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Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture
More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories.
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What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)
If you regularly read cognitive science or psychology blogs (or even just the lowly New York Times!), you’ve probably heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger e…
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Face Masks: Much More Than You Wanted to Know
There’s been recent controversy about the use of face masks for protection against coronavirus. Mainstream sources, including the CDC and most of the media say masks are likely useless and no…
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Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate
There is bipartisan support for several proposals to reduce the effects of climate change, especially for large scale tree-plantings to help absorb carbon emissions and offering tax credits to businesses that capture carbon emissions.
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What share of global CO₂ emissions come from aviation?
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions. But it has contributed around 4% to global warming to date.
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Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?
Our impact on climate change is not just about emissions that occur today. How much we emitted in the past also matters.
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Book Review: Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind
I. Julian Jaynes’ The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind is a brilliant book, with only two minor flaws. First, that it purports to explains the origin of consciou…
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing
Explore data on COVID-19 testing across the world.
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Gears
Interactive article explaining how mechanical gears work.
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AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
Proteins are essential to life, supporting practically all its functions. They are large complex molecules, made up of chains of amino acids, and what a protein does largely depends on its unique 3D structure. Figuring out what shapes proteins fold into is known as the “protein-folding problem”, and has stood as a…
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How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?
Any time you have a benchmark that gets taken seriously, some people will start gaming the benchmark. Some famous examples in computing are the CPU benchmark specfp and video game benchmarks. With specfp, Sun managed to increase its score on 179.art (a sub-benchmark of specfp) by 12x with a compiler tweak that…
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Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?
Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries despite paying much more for healthcare. What factors may explain this?