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The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion and the O-ring
A tragic case of how poor data analysis can lead to very bad outcomes.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,457 posts.
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Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily. Most reactors under construction are in the Asian region. Significant further capacity is being created by plant uprating.
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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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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…
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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.
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Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time
New research finds that small regions of the brain cycle in and out of sleep, even when awake. The cycles shift toward “awake” when that part of the brain pays attention to a task.
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What makes Bach sound like Bach? New dataset teaches algorithms classical music
MusicNet is the first publicly available large-scale classical music dataset designed to allow machine learning algorithms to tackle everything from automated m
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Young blood does not reverse aging in old mice, UC Berkeley study finds
A new study from UC Berkeley argues against the rejuvenating properties of young blood and points to old blood, or molecules within, as driving the aging process.
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Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens
Scientists propose unique way in which ‘colorblind’ cephalopods can detect color
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Artificial Intelligence Generates Christmas Song from Holiday Image
Researchers from University of Toronto developed an AI system that creates and then sings a Christmas song based by analyzing the visual components of an uploaded image. With the help of CUDA…
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Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans
A new study of one of our closest invertebrate relatives, the acorn worm, reveals that regenerating body parts might one day be possible.
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Inside tiny tubes, water turns solid when it should be boiling
MIT team gets water to freeze solid at boiling temperature; finding could lead to new kinds of electronic devices with wires made of ice
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‘Diamond-age’ of power generation as nuclear batteries developed
New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.
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Forbidden Spheres
A document from 1947 points towards an interesting Los Alamos policy: banning all spheres, innocuous or not, from technical areas.
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Supercapacitors Batteries charges in seconds without degrading
UCF Today provides news articles and events happening at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, Central Florida, and around the world.
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Famines
In many parts of the world famines have been common in the past. What causes famines? How can famines be averted?
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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…
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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.
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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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Data from over 100 failed ceasefires shows most are followed by offensives
This article was originally published by War is Boring on 31 October 2016.On Sept. 10, 2016, the U.S.-brokered a ceasefire with Russia and Syria in the besieged city of Aleppo. Although low-in
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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.
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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…
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Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence
Steven Pinker believes deeply in the power of reason to understand the world and ourselves. But can he convince Tyler?