1231
Nuclear Conversion for Starship
A blog dedicated to helping Science Fiction authors create and discuss worlds where a realistic setting can still serve the fiction.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
1232
First observation of a virus attaching to another virus
Pairs of viruses where one needs the other to reproduce are well documented, but no one has ever see one virus directly attached to another. "I can’t...
1233
MetNet-3: A state-of-the-art neural weather model
Posted by Samier Merchant, Google Research, and Nal Kalchbrenner, Google DeepMind Forecasting weather variables such as precipitation, temperature,...
1234
One sleepless night can rapidly reverse depression for several days in mice
In a new study, researchers induced mild, acute sleep deprivation in mice and then examined their behaviors and brain activity. Not only did dopamine release increase during the acute sleep loss period, synaptic plasticity also was enhanced — literally rewiring the brain to maintain the bubbly mood for the next few…
1235
Light can make water evaporate without heat
At the interface of water and air, light can, in certain conditions, bring about evaporation without the need for heat, according to an MIT study.
1236
Earth's blobs are remnants of an ancient planetary collision
In the 1980s, geophysicists made a startling discovery: Two continent-sized blobs of unusual material were found deep near the center of the Earth, one beneath the African continent and one beneath the Pacific Ocean.Each blob is twice the size of the moon, and research over the last decade has shown that they are…
1237
Where do our atoms come from?
Falling down a rabbit hole
1238
1239
1240
π in Other Universes
How the value of π depends on the definition of distance.
1241
How many billions of transistors in an iPhone processor?
In about 10 years, Apple has multiplied by 19 the number of transistors in its mobile processors. It corresponds roughly to a steady rate of improvement of 34% per year on the number of transistors, or a doubling every 2.5 years. In real dollars, an iPhone has roughly a constant price: the price tag of … Continue…
1242
Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking
Necessary cognitive fortification against propaganda, pseudoscience, and general falsehood.
1243
Running Speeds
Recently a shoe store in France ran a promotion called “Rob It to Get It”, which invited customers to try to steal something by grabbing it and running out of the store. But there was a catch — the “security guard” was a professional sprinter, Méba Mickael Zeze. As you would expect, he is fast, but you might not…
1244
How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything
In his TED Talk, Stephen Wolfram covers the emergence of space by the application of computational rules to spacetime, gravity and quantum mechanics to AI and LLMs. Computational irreducibility and the ruliad.
1245
1246
Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population
Study shows antibodies against polyethylene glycol in 83 percent of the German population
1247
My Left Kidney
...
1248
Ceasing print publication of ACM journals and transactions
Ceasing Print Editions for ACM Journals and Transactions
1249
How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs
Biologist’s innovative research on how cells rebuild themselves could be the future of regenerative medicine
1250
Adding crushed rock to farmland pulls carbon out of the air
Learn from UC Davis researchers how adding crushed volcanic rock to farmland removes carbon dioxide from the air.
1251
LIGO Surpasses the Quantum Limit
New technology in operation at LIGO is tackling quantum mechanical noise, enabling LIGO to probe a larger volume of the Universe and greatly boost the observatory's ability to study the exotic events that shake space and time.
1252
1253
Ozone hole goes large again
Measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite show that this year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the biggest on record. The hole, which is what scientists call an ‘ozone depleting area,’ reached a size of 26 million sq km on 16 September 2023. This is roughly three times the size of Brazil.
1254
ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades
Cornell Tech has announced a total of more than $10 million in gifts and grants from the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation, respectively, to support arXiv, a free distribution service and open-access archive for scholarly articles.
1255
Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
In an unusual trial, Stanford Medicine researchers found that a patient’s belief that they had received ketamine, even if they didn’t, could improve their depression.
1256
Scientists discover links between Alzheimer's disease and gut microbiota
New research has identified links between gut bacteria, inflammation and brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
1257
This is what the year actually looks like (2018)
A few weeks back, I asked the Norwegian public what the year looks like inside their heads. It led to a deluge of responses. Here's a summary of more than 75 000 month placements, and nearly 40 000 questionnaire responses.
1258
Fractional Factorial Experiment Design: There Are Too Many Experiments to Do
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had a bunch of parameters to tune for a better result, but there were just too many to exhaustively search all possibilities? I recently saw a …
1259
1260
A successful example of "adversarial collaboration"
We synthesized the vast, contradictory scholarly literature on gender bias in academic science from 2000 to 2020. . . . Claims and counterclaims regarding the presence or absence of sexism span a range of evaluation contexts. Our approach relied on a combination of meta-analysis and analytic dissection. We evaluated…