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China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal
China is adding more coal capacity, but its plants are running less often.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 20 posts.
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When (if ever) did the Sun set on the British Empire?
It hasn't. Yet. But only because of a few dozen people living in an area smaller than Disney World.
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The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.
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Story of Vitamin D Toxicity (2022)
How much Vitamin D should I take? This is still the looming question, and it’s time to address it. First, though, imagine that someone in a public forum online asked me, “How much metoprolol (a…
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Airfoil
Interactive article explaining the physics of an airfoil and what makes airplanes fly
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The Lunacy of Artemis
Introduction A Note on Apollo I. The Rocket II. The Capsule III. The Orbit IV. Gateway V. The Lander VI. Refueling VII. Conclusion Notes
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The rise of batteries in six charts
The unstoppable rise of batteries is leading to a domino effect that puts half of global fossil fuel demand at risk.
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Mapping the Mind of a Large Language Model
We identified how millions of concepts are represented inside Claude Sonnet, the first detailed look inside a production-grade language model.
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We have surpassed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries that sustain human life (2023)
The planetary boundaries framework highlights the rising risks from human pressure on nine critical global processes that regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth
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Tire-related chemical responsible for salmon deaths in urban streams (2020)
A team led by researchers at UW Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup has discovered a chemical that kills coho salmon in urban streams before the
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The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it
Very few think the world is making progress. In this article, we look at the history of global living conditions and show that the world has made immense progress in important aspects.
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Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll
The 2000-year-old scroll discusses music, food, and how to enjoy life’s pleasures.
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Willow, Our Quantum Chip
Our new quantum chip demonstrates error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.
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The Engineering of Landfills
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills Landfill outside of Los Angeles, California. The first truckload of trash was dumped here in 1957, and the trucks just kept coming. For more than five decades, if you threw something away in LA County, t
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Weather forecasts have become more accurate
A four-day forecast today is as accurate as a one-day forecast 30 years ago.
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Dana-Farberications at Harvard University
“Imagine what mistakes might be found in the raw data if anyone was allowed to look!” – Sholto David
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Reports of the death of dental cavities are greatly exaggerated
If I asked you to name the most common chronic disease in children, what would you say? Asthma comes top of mind, but there is something five times more common in kids: cavities. We don’t typically think of dental cavities as a chronic disease—in part because of the separation between medicine and dentistry—but it is…
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AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules
Our new AI model AlphaFold 3 can predict the structure and interactions of all life’s molecules with unprecedented accuracy.
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Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science