1741
Fishing gear accounts for an alarming amount of plastic in oceans (2021)
Explore past press releases and news by The Nature Conservancy in the United States and around the globe.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
1742
Noether's Theorem in a Nutshell (2020)
Noether's theorem is an amazing result which lets physicists get conserved quantities from symmetries of the laws of nature. Time translation symmetry gives conservation of energy; space translation symmetry gives conservation of momentum; rotation symmetry gives conservation of angular momentum, and so on.
1743
Hydroponics: Growing an appreciation for plants
I once heard a saying – “Don’t feel pity on plants because they can’t move. Feel pity on us, because we have to”. I really didn’t have an appreciation for what this meant until the COVID pandemic hit, which restricted my movement for a couple of years, and I decided to spend some of my new-found time at home learning…
1744
How do palm trees survive hurricanes? (2017)
The destructive force of typhoons and hurricanes are no joking matter. Human structures are torn to shreds and flooded in the blink of an eye. It is devastating to say the least. With all of this destruction, one must wonder how native flora and fauna have coped with such forces over millions of years. The true…
1745
Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active
This is in line with a recent theory on how our brain works: it is a prediction machine, which continuously compares sensory information that we pick up (such as images, sounds and language) with internal predictions. "This theoretical idea is extremely popular in neuroscience, but the existing evidence for it is…
1746
The Latest Study on Red Meat and Heart Disease: A Red Herring
Procter & Gamble has driven research on TMAO and heart disease since 2015
1747
Using grape harvest dates to estimate summer temperature over 650 years
It’s hot these days, it’s unusually hot, even dangerously hot, in a lot of places a lot of the time. While America has been hit hard this summer, it seems that Europe has been hit even …
1748
Toward a Better Music Theory (2013)
Update: a version of this post appeared on Slate.com. I seem to have touched a nerve with my rant about the conventional teaching of music theory and how poorly it serves practicing musicians. I th…
1749
Elizabeth Cotton’s Fingerstyle Ragtime
Dust-to-digital posted this lovely performance of “Washington Blues” by Elizabeth Cotten. It reminded me that she is the greatest and that I should write more about her. If you are a gu…
1750
Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells
MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the world’s deepest holes in order to repurpose coal and gas plants.
1751
Bumblebees kept in isolation make up for it by being more social later
Princeton researchers studied the Common Eastern Bumblebee to learn how social isolation impacts behavior and brain development.
1752
1753
Disney's mosquito control program
Mosquitoes are some of the most annoying (and most deadly) pests out there. If you're from a country without mosquitoes- like Iceland- then you might not realise just how annoying mosquitoes can be. Just imagine returning to your hotel with not only tired feet, a sunburn but also itchy mosquito
1754
1755
The worst dam idea: evaporating the Mediterranean to power Europe
Lessons from Atlantropa, the megaproject to unite Europe (& erase Africa)
1756
1757
Shor, I’ll do it (2007)
I’ve been talking a lot recently about how quantum algorithms don’t work. But last week JR Minkel, an editor at Scientific American, asked me to write a brief essay about how quantum al…
1758
MIT engineers develop stickers that can see inside the body
MIT engineers designed an adhesive patch that produces ultrasound images of the body. The stamp-sized device sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours.
1759
Finding the biological roots for pathological social withdrawal, Hikikomori
Researchers identify a number of key biomarkers in Hikikomori patients and show their promise for predicting the severity of the condition
1760
Scientists discover new “origins of life” chemical reactions
The reaction generates amino acids and orotic acid, the building blocks of proteins and DNA.
1761
Is the Kalman filter just a low-pass filter?
Exploring the relationship between Kalman filtering and optimal frequency domain filtering.
1762
AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe
Today, in partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we’re now releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the AlphaFold DB by over 200x - from nearly 1 million structures to over 200 million structures - with the potential to…
1763
Propagation of mistakes in papers
A blog by and for database architects.
1764
Does the Past Still Exist?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
1765
Health effects of the use of non-sugar sweeteners: a review and meta-analysis
Non-sugar sweeteners have been developed as an alternative to sugars and are widely used both as an ingredient in pre-packaged foods and beverages and added to food and beverages directly by the consumer.
1766
Galactic-Scale Energy (2011)
[ An updated treatment of this material appears in Chapter 1 of the Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet (free) textbook , and also appears as part of an article in Nature Physics in 2022.]
1767
We're going to need a lot of solar panels
The team at Terraform Industries is now 11 people working towards a near term future where atmospheric CO2, much of it centuries of unpriced industrial waste, becomes the preferred default source o…
1768
For the first time in four decades, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dry
For the first time in ~40 years (? – see below) New Mexico’s Rio Grande has “broken” – is no longer flowing – in what we call “the Albuquerque reach”…
1769
Migratory monarch butterfly now endangered
Gland, Switzerland, 21 July 2022 (IUCN) – The migratory monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus), known for its spectacular annual journey of up to 4,000 kilometres across the Americas, has entered the IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM as Endangered, threatened by habitat destruction and climate change. All…
1770
Can the knees go over the toes? (2016)
Just last week, I was guest lecturing to a class of physical therapy students at the University of Missouri. I asked a simple question, “How many people here think we should never have our knees go…