The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,419 posts.
“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?
Fossil rudist bivalves ( Vaccinites ) from the Al-Hajar Mountains, United Arab Emirates. Credit: Wikipedia, Wilson44691 – Own work, Public Domain
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.
Pollution from tyre wear can be 1,000 times worse than what comes out of a car’s exhaust, Emissions Analytics has found.
While the drug is known to increase focus, alertness and motor skills, its effect on creative thinking had not been studied previously.
The news in brief: 1) Brain changes associated with aging become visible much earlier than would be expected, in the late 40's. 2) This is hypothesized to result from neurons’ loss of energy; if so, researchers may have found a way to prevent or reverse these effects. 3) This can be done with diet, by
The Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory has deployed an in-house diagnostic test for the virus that causes COVID-19. Rapid identification of infected people could help limit the spread of the virus.
The scientific community has galvanised in response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, building on decades of basic research characterising this virus family. Labs at the forefront of the outbreak response shared genomes of the virus in open access databases, which enabled researchers to rapidly develop tests for this…
Founded by polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk, the Salk Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization. We drive foundational, risk-taking research that addresses society’s most pressing challenges, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, and agricultural resilience.
It has long been assumed that lifespan and health are strongly correlated, but although there has been an overall increase in human life expectancy
Researchers from China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention today describe the clinical findings on more than 72,000 COVID-19 cases reported in mainland China, which reveal a case-fatality rate (CFR) of 2.3% and suggest most cases are mild, but the disease hits the elderly the hardest.
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
Researchers at EPFL have developed a new, high-precision method for 3D-printing small, soft objects. The process, which takes less than 30 seconds from start to finish, has potential applications in a wide range of fields, including 3D bioprinting.
Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch said evidence indicates that the international cordon keeping coronavirus cases bottled up in China is a leaky one, and it’s likely that the relative handful of global cases reported so far are undercounted. If true, that will lead to widespread illness internationally, including in the U.S.
The coronavirus epidemic started one month earlier than is commonly reported and has yet to be brought under control, a new disease-transmission model created by University of Toronto researchers suggests. Using open access data that are updated daily, the model replicates epidemiological scenarios and allows…
Learning and motivation are driven by internal and external rewards. Many of our day-to-day behaviours are guided by predicting, or anticipating, whether a given action will result in a positive (that is, rewarding) outcome. The study of how organisms learn from experience to correctly anticipate rewards has been a…
Researchers at EPFL are assessing Switzerland’s solar power potential. Their results show that photovoltaic panels could be installed on more than half of the country’s 9.6 million rooftops. The resulting power would meet more than 40% of Swiss electricity demand.
The same technology Rochester researchers used to create unsinkable metal structures can also be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.
A majority of U.S. adults say they are taking at least some specific action in their daily lives to protect the environment, though Democrats and Republicans remain at ideological odds over the causes of climate change and the effects of policies to address it.
New antiviral materials made from sugar have been developed by researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of Geneva and the EPFL in Lausanne. They can destroy viruses on contact and may help in the fight against viral outbreaks. Although at an early stage of development, the broad-spectrum activity…
New brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
When did obesity increase? How do rates vary across the world? What is the health impact?
Many scientists believe that parts of the brain are meant only for specific functions. What if there were an animal that proved them wrong?
