The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 374 posts.
by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman NOTE FROM IAN: The expert risk communication team of Lanard and Sandman has given me permission to post their very well-considered reply to my question of them just
Fossil fuels are the dirtiest and most dangerous energy sources, while nuclear and modern renewable energy sources are vastly safer and cleaner.
If you read any personal finance forums late last year, there's a decent chance you ran across a question from someone who was desperately trying to lose money before the end of the year. There are a number of ways someone could do this; one commonly suggested scheme was to buy put options that were expected to expire…
Part of my series on countering misconceptions in space journalism. The SpaceX Starship is a game changer for space exploration. It is intended to be far bigger, cheaper, versatile, and available t…
Researchers at EPFL have developed a new, high-precision method for 3D-printing small, soft objects. The process, which takes less than 30 seconds from start to finish, has potential applications in a wide range of fields, including 3D bioprinting.
Interactive article explaining how mechanical gears work.
Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch said evidence indicates that the international cordon keeping coronavirus cases bottled up in China is a leaky one, and it’s likely that the relative handful of global cases reported so far are undercounted. If true, that will lead to widespread illness internationally, including in the U.S.
The coronavirus epidemic started one month earlier than is commonly reported and has yet to be brought under control, a new disease-transmission model created by University of Toronto researchers suggests. Using open access data that are updated daily, the model replicates epidemiological scenarios and allows…
Comparing the genome sequences of the Wuhan coronavirus and a bat coronavirus using `diff` and NCBI BLAST reveals an 89% similarity.
Learning and motivation are driven by internal and external rewards. Many of our day-to-day behaviours are guided by predicting, or anticipating, whether a given action will result in a positive (that is, rewarding) outcome. The study of how organisms learn from experience to correctly anticipate rewards has been a…
Researchers at EPFL are assessing Switzerland’s solar power potential. Their results show that photovoltaic panels could be installed on more than half of the country’s 9.6 million rooftops. The resulting power would meet more than 40% of Swiss electricity demand.
The same technology Rochester researchers used to create unsinkable metal structures can also be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.
A majority of U.S. adults say they are taking at least some specific action in their daily lives to protect the environment, though Democrats and Republicans remain at ideological odds over the causes of climate change and the effects of policies to address it.
New antiviral materials made from sugar have been developed by researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of Geneva and the EPFL in Lausanne. They can destroy viruses on contact and may help in the fight against viral outbreaks. Although at an early stage of development, the broad-spectrum activity…
New brain networks come ‘online’ during adolescence, allowing teenagers to develop more complex adult social skills, but potentially putting them at increased risk of mental illness, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources, writes James Lovelock – civilisation is in imminent danger. Published in The Independent , 24 May 2004.
Of all the technologies against infectious disease, which mattered most? A data-driven approach
When did obesity increase? How do rates vary across the world? What is the health impact?
Many scientists believe that parts of the brain are meant only for specific functions. What if there were an animal that proved them wrong?
If you click on this picture, you’ll see a zoomable image of the Milky Way with 84 million stars: But stars contribute only a tiny fraction of the total entropy in the observable Universe. If…
[This is part one of a two-part series. The second part can be found here: Symmetries in Projective Geometric Algebra .]
Stanford researchers have determined that average human body temperature in the United States has decreased since the 1800s.
In our study published in Nature, we demonstrate how artificial intelligence research can drive and accelerate new scientific discoveries. We’ve built a dedicated, interdisciplinary team in hopes of using AI to push basic research forward: bringing together experts from the fields of structural biology, physics, and…
MIT Professor Christopher Voigt and his team are working to transform cereal crops so they are able to fix their own nitrogen. The research has been funded by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS).
