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Sir, there's a cat in your mirror dimension
Pets do the darndest things, especially if you teach them a bit of math.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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A review on protein language models
Protein “language” is a lot like human language. Given the similarities, researchers have been building and training language models on protein sequence data, replicating the success seen in other domains, with profound implications. In this post, I will explore how transformer models have been applied to protein data…
483
Brain Uses Quantum Effects, New Study Finds [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
484
The world has probably passed peak pollution
Millions die prematurely from local air pollution, but we can reduce this number significantly.
485
How bad are satellite megaconstellations for astronomy?
Over the last number of years, our planet has become encircled by Starlink, OneWeb, and other “megaconstellation” satellites.
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The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (2023)
A decade-long effort to build a machine to unlock the promise of nuclear fusion fell victim to budget constraints and competing science, and was shut down the day it was dedicated. It was never turned on.
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The unstallable plane that stalled
The Cessna 185 Skywagon is a high wing, single engine aircraft: basically a Cessna 180 with six seats, a strengthened fuselage and a slightly more powerful engine. It’s a popular aircraft in remote…
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Carl Sagan, nuking the moon, and not nuking the moon
Most of us go about our lives comforted by the thought “I would never drop a nuclear weapon on the moon.” The truth is that given a lot of power, a nuclear weapon, and a lot of extremely specific c…
490
Debugging the Doctor Brain: Who's teaching doctors how to think?
Who's teaching doctors how to think?
491
Thoughts on Seed Oil
Don't get distracted.
492
How many bathrooms have Neanderthals in the tile?
A Reddit poster finds an ancient jaw in his parents' new travertine. It may be more common than most people imagine.
493
The purge of German science in 1933
“If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years!” — Adolf Hilter
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The rise and impending fall of the dental cavity
Another of history's great killers is on the chopping block
495
The Eclipse via Satellite
Yesterday’s eclipse as seen by the GOES-East weather satellite. I just grabbed the full-disk geocolor JPGs with wget and stitched them together with ffmpeg. BTW, If you’re wondering why the clouds remain in view as night falls to the East, it’s because the geocolor image is a composite of “true color” daytime and a…
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Is the frequency domain a real place?
Dissing Fourier, exploring the Hadamard-Walch transform, and making square-wave spectrograms.
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Homemade 6 GHz pulse compression radar
Designing a modern pulse compression radar that uses digital signal processing.
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Legendre transform, better explained (2017)
The way that most physicists teach and talk about partial differential equations is horrible, and has surprisingly big costs for the typical understanding of the foundations of the field even among professionals. The chief victims are students of thermodynamics and analytical mechanics, and I've me
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Not so fast, Mr. Fourier
A real explanation of discrete Fourier transform (DFT, FFT), discrete cosine transform (DCT), and their inverses.
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When will the eclipse happen? A multimillennium tale of computation
Wolfram tech and its dedicated website now easily predict eclipses. A look at advances in understanding and science from ancient eclipse data thousands of years old through current eclipse calculations.
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How do MRI Headphones work? (2022)
Thoughts and more by Tom Lingham
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Radios, how do they work?
A brief introduction to antennas, superheterodyne receivers, and signal modulation schemes.
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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis
I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις…
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20 Years of "Not Even Wrong"
The first entry on this blog was 20 years ago yesterday, first substantive one was 20 years ago tomorrow (first one that drew attacks on me as an incompetent was two days later). Back when I starte…
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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…
509
Romeo and Julia, Where Romeo Is Basic Statistics
Hello there. This is an open access book entitled: “Romeo and Julia, where Romeo is Basic Statistics”. So I guess it’s gonna be about a programming language named Julia and its usage for basic statistics.
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How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airpla