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Squawk bots: Can generative AI lead us to understanding animals?
The Earth Species Project is using large language models to develop tools to decipher animal communication.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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First space images captured by balloon-borne telescope
Astronomers have successfully launched a balloon-borne telescope that has begun capturing images of the universe on its first flight above the Earth’s atmosphere. The Super Pressure Balloon-Borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) was flown to the edge of space by a helium-filled NASA scientific balloon the size of a…
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Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots: study
Pet parrots in a new study led by Northeastern researchers loved using iPads to call fellow birds to chat while forging lasting friendships.
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Explosions are great, actually
The history of spaceflight is the story of weirdos, explosions, and stacked odds.
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The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
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Geneticists develop novel gene therapy for glaucoma
The gene therapeutic approach, which shows promise for treating age related macular degeneration (AMD), may also be effective in treating other eye conditions such as glaucoma. It provided benefit in three additional models of mitochondrial dysfunction, including cells taken from patients living with an optic…
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MRI brain images become 64M times sharper
MRI technology from Duke-led effort reveals the entire mouse brain in the highest resolution
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The basics of decoupling capacitors
How to stabilize digital supply voltages - and why most of the online advice on this topic is suspect.
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SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a license for SpaceX to launch the first orbital test of Starship, the largest rocket in human history, as soon as this Monday, April 17th.
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Understanding large language models: A cross-section of the relevant literature
A Cross-Section of the Most Relevant Literature To Get Up to Speed
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Tiny DNA circles are key drivers of cancer, study finds
Tiny circles of DNA harbor cancer-associated oncogenes and immunomodulatory genes promoting cancer development. They arise during transformation from pre-cancer to cancer, say Stanford Medicine-led team.
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ESA’s Juice lifts off on quest to discover secrets of Jupiter’s icy moons
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 14:14 CEST on 14 April. The successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious voyage to uncover the secrets of the ocean worlds around giant planet Jupiter.
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Warm liquid from Oregon seafloor comes from Cascadia fault
UW oceanographers discovered warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport. They named the unique underwater spring
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Almost all of the world’s mammal biomass is humans and livestock
Humans and livestock make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass; wild mammals are just 5%.
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What are the most common tinnitus frequencies? (2015)
Please note: the following information does not constitute professional medical advice, and is provided for general informational purposes only. Please speak to your doctor if you have tinnitus. I've been reading the literature on tinnitus for several years, and I have yet to come across a paper that provided data…
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Shutting down nuclear power could increase air pollution: study
An MIT study shows that if U.S. nuclear power plants are retired, the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to fill the energy gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths.
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P < 0.05 Considered Harmful
The unreasonable persistence of an old standard
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My diatribe against “skeptics” (2016)
April 10, 2023. The backlash was immediate after I spoke at the 2016 Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism , which bills itself as a “celebration of science and critical thinking.” Although the conference had allotted me 10 minutes for questions, the stage manager, Jamy
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I think faster than light travel is possible [video]
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Nuclear power is too safe
If you don't pursue safety in a way that is cost effective, you are killing people.[David Okrent]
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Mach 3.5 Over Libya in an SR-71 Blackbird
In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi's terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111's had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a 'line of death,' a territorial marking…
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Bicycle
Interactive article explaining the physics of a bicycle.
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Greenland ice sheet is close to a melting point of no return
Once we emit about 1000 gigatons of carbon, much of the massive ice sheet will melt irreversibly. We’ve emitted 500 gigatons so far.
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Robot Learns to See in 30 Minutes (2022)
TL;DR: Learning to walk from pixels in the real world by using proprioception as supervision.
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GPT-2 as step toward general intelligence (2019)
A machine learning researcher writes me in response to yesterday’s post, saying:I still think GPT-2 is a brute-force statistical pattern matcher which blends up the internet and gives you bac…