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Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from?
Globally, we emit around 50 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases yearly. Where do these emissions come from? We take a look, sector-by-sector.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 409 posts.
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Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life: study
New research suggests that rocks in the Martian crust could produce the same kind of chemical energy that supports microbial life deep beneath Earth’s surface.
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Referees’ home-bias in football disappears without audience: study
We analyzed referees’ performances in 1283 games from the top four Eu
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Open Source Goes to Mars
Celebrating the nearly 12,000 developers who aided Ingenuity's first Martian flight with a profile badge that recognizes their contributions to this historic achievement.
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Prions
Editor’s Note 4/4/21: A few weeks after this article was published, a mysterious prion disease was identified in New Brunswick, Canada. I do not have to say that viruses have dominated every level of public conversation for the past year. Ancient and odd but relatively easy to talk about,
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Deriving the piano keyboard from biological principles using clustering
Once upon a time we were creatures in the wilderness and we evolved the ability to hear sounds. Now here's an interesting thing, if you hear a sound of frequency f and others of frequency 2f, 3f, etc then there's a good chance these sounds come from the same object, due to the physical principle of resonance . And so…
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Neurons might contain something within them
Neurons might contain something incredible within them.
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Time flies in Google Earth’s biggest update in years
In the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017, you can now see our planet in an entirely new dimension — time.
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The Wolfram Physics Project: A One-Year Update
An update from Stephen Wolfram on the Physics Project. Exploration of models, connections to existing frameworks, space and time, quantum mechanics, experimental implications, applications to other fields.
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Previous Covid-19 may cut risk of reinfection 84%
People who had COVID-19 had an 84% lower risk of becoming reinfected and a 93% lower risk of symptomatic infection during 7 months of follow-up, according to findings from a large, multicenter study published late last week in The Lancet .
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What the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t (2010)
If you regularly read cognitive science or psychology blogs (or even just the lowly New York Times!), you’ve probably heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger e…
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Does the Universe Have Higher Dimensions? Part 1
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Which form of transport has the smallest carbon footprint?
How can individuals reduce their emissions from transport?
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The Gaslighting of Science
Final Installment of the Misinformation Trifecta
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Hawking Hawking
There’s a very good new book about Stephen Hawking that just came out, Charles Seife’s Hawking Hawking. Some detailed reviews can be found at Prospect Magazine (Philip Ball) and the New…
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Monkey MindPong
Get the latest on neurotech directly from our experts. Check out the Neuralink blog for news, insights, and behind-the-scenes looks at our work.
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The Tarnished Moon
Remote sensing observations reveal the presence of ferric iron in the form of the mineral hematite at high latitudes on the Moon, possibly the product of reaction of ferrous iron on the Moon with oxygen from the Earth�s upper atmosphere.
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Home-Built Scanning Tunneling Microscope (2015)
Scan Head STM Tips Vibration Isolation Electronics Software Scans Image Gallery Useful Links This project is my attempt to build a low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of atomic res…
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FDA approves first test of CRISPR for genetic defect causing sickle cell disease
UC scientists and physicians hope to permanently cure patients of sickle cell disease by using CRISPR-Cas9 to replace a defective gene with the normal version
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Soil bacteria could improve crop yields, via fungi
The findings from Boyce Thompson Institute researchers could point the way to cost-effective, eco-friendly ways of enriching soil and reducing reliance on conventional fertilizers.
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Neuroscientists discover molecular mechanism that allows memories to form (2020)
Encoding memories in engram cells is controlled by large-scale remodeling of the proteins and DNA that make up cells’ chromatin, according to an MIT study. This chromatin remodeling, which allows specific genes involved in storing memories to become more active, takes place in multiple stages spread out over several…
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Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface
In an important step toward a fully implantable intracortical brain-computer interface system, BrainGate researchers demonstrated the first human use of a wireless transmitter capable of delivering high-bandwidth neural signals.
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“Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors
Note: I link to a bunch of paywalled studies in this essay. Please do not use sci-hub to access them for free and do not use this trick (a) to easily redirect papers to sci-hub. For the clearest example of deliberate data manipulation, see how Walker edits out the data that contradicts his argument from the graph…
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Ergodicity, What's It Mean
Ensemble averages and time averages
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Jump in cancer diagnoses at 65 implies patients wait for Medicare: study
Analyzing a national cancer database, researchers find a bump in diagnoses at 65, suggesting that many wait for Medicare to kick in before they seek care.
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Suppressing a gene by using its antibody can lead to tooth growth: animal study
Tooth loss is a widespread problem in adults and results in poor quality of life. Currently, solutions to this problem include artificial teeth and implants. But these aren’t as good as “real teeth,” and they don’t markedly improve quality of life. Now, scientists from Japan have made a discovery that can make…
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Drinking strong coffee before exercising increases fat-burning, new study finds
Scientists from the University of Granada also found that, if the exercise is performed in the afternoon, the effects of the caffeine are more marked than in the morning Scientists from the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada (UGR) have shown that caffeine (about 3 mg/kg, the equivalent of a strong…