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Artificial “muscles” achieve powerful pulling force
MIT researchers have created a fiber-based, lightweight, fast-acting artificial muscle that could be useful for robotics and for prosthetics.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,419 posts.
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Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests
Pain researchers at University of Sydney have found compelling evidence that insects feel persistent pain after injury. Read more.
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Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)
A new study shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events.
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Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction
Today’s carbon dioxide emissions may trigger a reflex in the carbon cycle with devastating consequences, according to a new MIT study.
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New antibiotics effective against resistant bacteria in mice
Researchers from Inserm and Université de Rennes recently identified a new bacterial toxin which they transformed into potent antibiotics active against various bacteria responsible for human infections.
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California Earthquakes Disrupted HF Propagation on West Coast
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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The Riemann Hypothesis Says 5040 Is the Last
Note: These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards . They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in…
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M 7.1 SoCal Earthquake: What's Next?
The 50-km-long rupture has triggered widely dispersed aftershocks. However, almost none of these struck on the faults that the M 7.1 brought closer to failure: The major Garlock Fault; or the Blackwater, Panamint Valley, or Sierra Nevada Faults.
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Breaking max efficiency of solar cells by activating 2 electrons with 1 photon
Researchers at MIT and Princeton have found a way to increase the output of silicon solar cells by allowing a single photon to release two electrons in the silicon.
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Mitchell Feigenbaum, physicist who pioneered chaos theory, has died
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum , a mathematical physicist whose groundbreaking work on deterministic chaos influenced fields ranging from cardiology to cartography, died in New York City on June 30 at the age of 74. Feigenbaum was the Toyota Professor and director of the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at…
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Study suggests surgery alternative for rotator cuff pain: push-ups, pull-ups
On a Sunday morning in 2006, Cecilia Wu was mugged after leaving church. The pain became unbearable. Discouraged with her treatment options, Wu opted to participate in a pilot study at an orthopedics lab for patients with a full-thickness rotator cuff tear. “It was better than surgery,” Wu said.
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The case against plant consciousness
Botanist Lincoln Taiz and colleagues argue against the suggestion that plants have neurobiology or consciousness.
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India is now producing the world’s cheapest solar power
As the costs of generating cleaner energy continue to fall, there is growing potential to speed up the transition to a zero-carbon future.
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‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation
Study of thousands of players shows a simple online game works like a 'vaccine', increasing skepticism of fake news by giving people a “weak dose” of the methods behind disinformation.
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AI Models Predict Breast Cancer with Radiologist-Level Accuracy
The IBM Research blog is the home for stories told by the researchers, scientists, and engineers inventing What’s Next in science and technology.
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Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain
Can’t stop checking your phone, even when you’re not expecting any important messages? Blame your brain. A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. “To the brain, information is…
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Two centuries of rapid global population growth will come to an end
Global population grew rapidly over the past century, but this period of fast growth is coming to an end.
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Gut microbes eat medication
The first time Vayu Maini Rekdal manipulated microbes, he made a decent sourdough bread. At the time, young Maini Rekdal, and most people who head to the kitchen to whip up a salad dressing, pop popcorn, ferment vegetables, or caramelize onions, did not consider the crucial chemical reactions behind these concoctions.
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There are now more people over sixty-four than children younger than five
What is the age profile of populations around the world? How did it change and what will the age structure of populations look like in the future?
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Open-Sourcing Our Reactor Design, and the Future of Transatomic
When Mark Massie and I started Transatomic in April 2011, the future of nuclear power was uncertain. In the wake of Fukushima, all bets for a nuclear renaissance were off, and starting a venture-funded advanced nuclear technology startup seemed like an unusual path, to say the very least. At the time, there were only…
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Urbanization
Around 80% of the world’s population lives in cities, towns, and suburbs rather than rural settlements. How has this changed, and what does urbanization look like across the world today?
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CO₂ and Other Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary driver of climate change. The world needs to decarbonize to reduce them.