The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 190 posts.
We can define roundness in many ways. For example, as you may know, the circle is the shape that given a fixed perimeter maximizes the area. This definition has many problems. One of the problems is that countries generally have chaotic perimeters (also known as borders), so they tend to be much longer than they seem…
When listening to music, however, we are not just listening to a series of disconnected instants. Instead, the way things sound depends on the notes we have heard. In other words, we integrate over time . One of the most important functions of a musical scale is to limit the overall pitch content of what we're hearing…
Think I’m pranking you, right? You can see the paper right here (“Synthetic recombinase-based state machines in living cells,” by Nathaniel Roquet, Ava P. Soleimany, Alyssa C. Fer…
The other day I was amused to find a quote from Einstein , in 1936, about how hard it would be to quantize gravity: “like an attempt to breathe in empty space.” Eight decades later, I think we can still agree that it’s hard.
It’s no surprise that children suck their thumbs or bite their nails. These behaviors are often discouraged, as they can go on to cause damaged teeth, infections, or even elicit teasing from othe...
What is the most rectangular country?
MIT scientists have discovered strange quantum effects hold, even over hundreds of miles. In longest test of quantum mechanics, researchers find neutrinos, traveling over 450 miles at close to speed of light, have no single identity.
Northwell's Newsroom offers the latest news, thought leadership and media coverage from the health system's hospitals, clinicians and administrators.
Child mortality remains one of the world’s largest problems and is a painful reminder of work yet to be done. With global data on where, when, and how child deaths occur, we can accelerate efforts to prevent them.
Abstract It has been a common practice in social psychology to publish only significant results. As a result, success rates in the published literature do not provide empirical evidence for the existence of a phenomenon. A recent meta-analysis suggested that ego-depletion is a much weaker effect than the published…
When the central heating takes effect I'll get up and make myself some tea and porridge to which I'll add some nuts and fruit. I'll switch on The World Service to hear the news, and then make a few phone calls about damp-proofing. And I'll probably plant the daffodil bulbs for Spring (it says on the packet they should…
Noninvasive laser therapy could radically shift dental treatment and lead to a host of broader clinical applications in regenerative medicine
Edit: Part 2 of this post can be found here , and part 3 here . Most of the code used in these posts is available here .
I write about Startups, coding and Physics
Astronomers are using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras — stunning light shows in a planet’s atmosphere — on the poles of the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter. This observation programme is supported by measurements made by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, currently on its way to Jupiter.
Anyone who has talked to me in the last year would have heard me complain about my 8-times-failure-to-replicate which nobody wants to publis...
In preparation for the imminent arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to obtain spectacular new infrared images of Jupiter. They are part of a campaign to create high-resolution maps of the giant planet. These observations will inform the work to be undertaken by Juno over…
Physicist: Actual pictures of atoms aren’t actually pictures at all. There are a few good rules of thumb in physics. Among the best is: light acts like you’d expect on scales well abov…
How is inequality measured, who produces key databases, and what does the data tell us?
Explore research at Microsoft, a site featuring the impact of research along with publications, products, downloads, and research careers.
China has become largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. The strong impetus for nuclear power in China is increasingly due to air pollution from coal-fired plants.
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
As Tesla Motors {NASDAQ: TSLA] overarching mission witnessed a milestone via the International Energy Agency's (IEA) report we wrote about yesterday, it turns out there's more great news. Expanding on this further, according to the IEA,
