1531
Why Are Medical Ultrasound Systems So Inexpensive?
Hackernews linked to a Medium post on ultrasound devices today, entitled " Why are Ultrasound Machines So Expensive? " which, being my cor...
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
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1533
Confronting the Credibility Gap for Crewed Exploration of Mars
Confronting the Credibility Gap for Crewed Exploration of Mars (Notes from talk on September 22, 2016, at the Mars Society Conference. ...
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1535
Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier
In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…
1536
Telomeres – Too much of a good thing?
One of the major themes in aging science of the last 15 years has been that there is natural variation in telomere length, and individuals with longer telomeres have lower disease risk and longer life expectancy than those with shorter telomeres.
1537
Forbidden Spheres
A document from 1947 points towards an interesting Los Alamos policy: banning all spheres, innocuous or not, from technical areas.
1538
What Math Do You Need for Physics?
Chad Orzel has a very sensible piece at Forbes, headlined What Math Do You Need For Physics? It Depends, which addresses the question of what math a physicist like him (experimental AMO physics) re…
1539
Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
How Stephen Wolfram helped with the theory of interstellar travel, communication with aliens and questions from the actors in “Arrival”, the movie.
1540
Why is electricity so hard to understand? (1989)
HEY NEWS-YCOMBINATOR , I think you're looking for my articles explaining electricity. This is the 1989 page of raw unedited notes NOT A FRIGGIN' ARTICLE!!! You're all critiquing a wad of crap written on napkins, while not actually reading any of the finished articles. WHY?! Perhaps try these instead: ...
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1542
Cartoon Laws of Physics
Cartoon Law I Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.
1543
Shrimp Trap
I built a prawn trap from lawyer cane, sticks and vine. Then I caught some prawns and ate them. Prawn (and fish) traps are simple traps designed to catch aquatic life due to their shape. It consist…
1544
The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory
<p>Would you believe that there is a conspiracy theory about the way we tune musical instruments? And that this theory even involves the Nazis, chakras, and whatnot? No? Then sit down and enjoy
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So You Want to Learn Physics
Over the past few years, ever since writing “If Susan Can Learn Physics So Can You,” I've been contacted by people from all backgrounds who are inspired and want to learn physics, but don't know where to start, what to learn, what to read, and how to structure their studies...this post is a condense
1547
The Moon Illusion, an Unsolved Mystery
physics, history of science, pseudoscience, hoaxes, writing, education, skepticisism, humor, quotes, illusions, 3d stereo photography.
1548
What does a kilowatt hour look like?
Some time ago I came across a very good read by David McCay - Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air. I’ve seen many good reviews of the book, so it didn’t t...
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1550
Will Coke Dissolve a Nail? (2003)
An experiment to see if Coke really dissolves a nail after four days like the email says
1551
Nootropics
Notes on nootropics I tried, and my experiments
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Schizophrenia: No Smoking Gun
[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it] I. Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophren…
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A Rocket to Nowhere (2005)
The Space Shuttle Discovery is up in orbit, safely docked to the International Space Station, and for the next five days, astronauts will be busy figuring out whether it's safe for them to come home. In the meantime, the rest of the Shuttle fleet is grounded (confined to base, not allowed to play with its spacecraft…
1556
On Two Views of Computation in Computer Science
Abstract: Machine and language models of computation differ so greatly in the computational complexity properties of their representation that they form two distinct classes that cannot be directly…
1557
Why bad scientific code beats code following “best practices” (2014)
I've just read " The Low Quality of Scientific Code ", which claims that code written by scientists comes out worse than it would if "software engineers" were involved.
1558
An Interesting SETI Candidate in Hercules
Although the presence of ET planetary-based life as we know life and don’t know it, is all, comparatively as, and less and in gradations more technologically and cognitively achieved or advanced than our species, such life, in mathematical and thermochemical terms, is a must on a vast in raw numbers but quite possibly…
1559
Sad Trombone Exoplanet Reality Check
Some people on the internet are getting very excited at the (unconfirmed) reports of an "Earth-like" exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri , a mere 4.25 light-years away from Earth. If correct, the planet is orbiting in the liquid water zone around our nearest stellar neighbour and is of the same order of mass as the…
1560
The LHC “nightmare scenario” has come true
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science