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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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The Economic Complexity of the Western Roman Empire
I am one of those people who think about the Roman Empire daily – possibly out of my worrying addiction to Crusader Kings III and similar games. I also spent some time working on estimating economic complexity , a neat measure that can be used to explain economic development trajectories. One fateful day, I was…
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Wireless magnetic millirobots that deliver medicine inside the beating heart
Hopkins engineers have created robots the size of a pencil tip intended to travel through the body to deliver medicine to infections inside a beating heart
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The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s
Globally, electricity generation per person has grown by more than 50% this century.
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A Visual Intro to Complex Numbers
A visual and intuitive intro to complex number system providing a historical overview of how it was developed and why it is useful.
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MIT class project turns into an FDA-cleared treatment for tremors
Encora Therapeutics, which developed a wrist-based device that reduces essential tremor, started as a project in MIT’s famous product-design class, 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes).
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Illustration Beyond Proof
[This is a guest post by Kate Stange and Edmund Harriss. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] In January a group of mathematicians, hi…
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Recursive self-improvement through collective intelligence
Self-supervision through better coordination among agents that share one language model.
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PVX-001: open-source Covid-19 vaccine starts Phase 1 trial
First participants safely dosed in Melbourne, Australia, on August 31, 2026, in the first-in-human trial of our broadly-protective COVID-19 vaccine candidate PVX-001.
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Food processing influences metabolism and brain activity
In healthy adults, meals matched for calories and nutrients, but otherwise prepared differently, led to unexpectedly different metabolic responses and activity in the brain’s reward system.
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Clinical trial of a prion disease drug candidate begins enrolling participants
It’s the first time the potential treatment, a small interfering RNA targeting the prion protein, is being tested in humans.
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Pointing AI at archives found a forgotten meteorite, lost rhinos, and more
How I used AI to investigate millions of historical records and surfaced a forgotten meteorite report, three lost rhinos, and unrecorded volcano eruptions.
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AI-ready biological data: $1.8B global commitment
Biohub, DOE, NIH, and partners will generate open, standardized data to train AI models that predict how cells respond to interventions.
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The Mathocalypse
More Updates (Oct. 12): Jeffrey Ketchersid has used Claude Code agents to show that BusyBeaver(10) exceeds Graham’s number, beating the previous best result that BB(13) does so. In response t…
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Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2026 was awarded jointly to Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai "for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis"
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What's Earth's dominant species by mass?
You might have heard that all the ants in the world weigh as much combined as all the humans. That isn’t true. We outweigh ants 5 to 1.1 Termites might have us beat, though.2 Either way, it’s not r…
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Nobel Prize in Physics 2026: Francis Halzen
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2026 was awarded to Francis Halzen "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin"
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Opus 5.5 agents discover two room-temperature magnetic semiconductor candidates
Explore two room-temperature antiferromagnetic semiconductor candidates found by Claude Opus 5.5 agents, with calculations, code and caveats.
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The Future of Mathematics
[This is a guest post by Jeremy Avigad. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] “Mathematics underwent, in the nineteenth century, …
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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"
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2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Deisseroth, Hegemann, Nagel
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2026 was awarded jointly to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel "for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics"
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Using A.I. to decode communication of sperm whales
David Gruber wants to know what sperm whales are saying. He thinks it might actually be possible.
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ArXiv's Updated Rate Limit Policy
arXiv, and the scientific community at large, are facing a watershed moment. Scholarly publishing is currently changing at a rapid pace, and we are seeing a…
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Loss of cell identity drives human aging: Two new papers
That’s What Biological (Epigenetic) Aging Clocks Are Measuring
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NRC issues first U.S. construction permit for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor
KNOXVILLE, TN (September 29, 2026) – GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) today welcomed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) issuance of a construction permit to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.The permit is the…
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Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far
Nicholas Polson has, by my count using his SSRN page, already written 258 working papers in 2026 alone. He’s already written (or at least published to SSRN), six papers today, August 26, 2026.
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Lunar Terminator Paradox
There's an optical illusion known by names like the "lunar terminator paradox". This has much discussion and descriptions online, but none made sense in my head, so I wrote this program to figure out what was going on. The paradox:
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What is the size of Yemen? (2024)
Uncovering a century-old misinformation
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Why is the liver so weirdly regenerative?
the question everyone is asking
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ArXiv receives multiyear commitments to support it as an independent nonprofit
arXiv is pleased to announce that three leading philanthropic organizations have provided multimillion-dollar support for arXiv. These new multiyear…