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City street orientations around the world
This post is adapted from this research paper that you can read/cite for more info. It analyzes and visualizes 100 cities around the world.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,456 posts.
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Comparing City Street Orientations
This post is adapted from this research paper that you can read/cite for more info. It analyzes and visualizes 100 cities around the world.
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Random Points on a Sphere
John D. Cook, Greg Egan, Dan Piponi and I had a fun mathematical adventure on Twitter. It started when John Cook wrote a program to compute the probability distribution of distances $latex |xy R…
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Why FTL implies time travel
In science fiction, it is pretty standard fare to introduce some form of faster-than-light communication or travel. After all, space is big, and you can't write your swashbuckling Hornblower-in-space novel if you have to wait for a generation ship to crawl painfully slowly between the nearest stars,
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Illegal Production and Use of Banned CFC-11 in China's Foam Blowing Industry
We investigate and campaign against environmental crime and abuse
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Back-and-forth exchanges boost children’s brain response to language
MIT cognitive scientists have found that engaging children in conversation is more critical to their language development than the number of words they hear early in life. In a study of children 4 to 6, they found differences in the number of “conversational turns” accounted for much of the differences in language…
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How much is time wrong around the world? (2014)
Why Spaniards have dinner so late? A map of the difference between solar time and clock time around the world.
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Lost in Math
Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book Lost in Math should be starting to appear in bookstores around now. It’s very good and you should get a copy. I hope that the book will receive a lot of a…
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The Dipole Drive: A New Concept for Space Propulsion
It’s a fascinating concept but I’d like to see a comparison toDr. Young Bae’s laser thruster concept for solar system travel.
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AI Can Detect Illnesses in Human Breath
Researchers from Loughborough University, Western General Hospital, the University of Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Cancer Centre in the United Kingdom, recently developed a deep learning-based method…
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Mathematician-M.D. claims to have solved the 110-year-old Lindelöf hypothesis
A completely new approach suggests the validity of the 110-year-old Lindelöf hypothesis, opening up the possibilities of new discoveries in quantum computing, number theory and cybersecurity
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Wendelstein 7-X achieves world record
In the past experimentation round Wendelstein 7-X achieved higher temperatures and densities of the plasma, longer pulses and the stellarator world record for the fusion product. Moreover, first confirmation for the optimisation concept on which Wendelstein 7-X is based, was obtained. Wendelstein 7-X at Max Planck…
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Study reveals how, when a synapse strengthens, its neighbors weaken
Neuroscientists at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT have discovered that when a synapse strengthens, neighboring synapses weaken based on the action of a crucial protein called Arc. The finding provides an explanation of how synaptic strengthening and weakening combine in neurons to produce…
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Yakhchal: Ancient Refrigerators (2009)
By 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert. The ice was brought in during the winters from nearby mountains in bulk amounts, and stored in a Yakhchal , or ice-pit. These ancient refrigerators were used primarily to store ice for use in the summer, as…
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How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?
There are large differences in the land of different diets, mostly depending on how much meat people eat.
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First physiological test for autism proves high accuracy in second trial
One year after researchers published their work on a physiological test for autism, a follow-up study confirms its exceptional success in assessing whether a child is on the autism spectrum.
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Why does a spray bottle work?
Exploring a simple machine I took apart a simple spray bottle to see how it kept fluid flowing only in one direction from the reservoir to the nozzle. It does so with simple check valves made of two pieces of plastic, a spring, and a small sphere. It’s a simple way to solve a tricky problem. A simple spray bottle One…
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Research Finds Tipping Point for Large-Scale Social Change
This tipping point — roughly 25% of people — applies to any kind of movement or initiative.
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Direct Coupling of the Higgs Boson to the Top Quark Observed
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Wireless system can power devices inside the body
MIT researchers have developed a new way to power and communicate with devices implanted deep within the human body. Such devices could be used to deliver drugs, monitor conditions inside the body, or treat disease by stimulating the brain with electricity or light.
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High-quality schools can increase academic achievement among the poor (2010)
Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), an ambitious social experiment, combines community programs with charter schools. We provide the first empirical test of the causal impact of HCZ charters on educational outcomes. Both lottery and instrumental variable identification strategies suggest that the effects of attending an HCZ…
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Perceived Physical Activity and Mortality: Study
A study of over 60,000 people who were followed for as long as two decades found that people’s perceptions about their level of activity have a more significant effect on their longevity than the...