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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 409 posts.
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Deforestation and Forest Loss
Explore long-term changes in deforestation and deforestation rates across the world today.
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How Dangerous Are Solar Storms?
Science News, Physics, Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
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Why we're blind to the color blue
I'm always in the market for surprising facts. One of my favorites is that the color blue is always out of focus for the human eye. It's hard to believe since it appears that we see blue clearly, but it's astonishing when shown an example. Here', I'll explain why we're unable to focus on blue, and show examples of…
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New generation artificial heart implanted in patient
DURHAM, N.C. -- A surgical team at Duke University Hospital, led by Drs. Jacob Schroder and Carmelo Milano, successfully implanted a new-generation artificial heart in a 39-year-old man with heart failure, becoming the first center in North America to perform the procedure.
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Delta Variant
Cases are growing exponentially across the world. Again. If you don’t know where this is going, a historical refresher might help. India has suffered about two million COVID deaths, the majority of them during its latest surge caused by Delta.Victims of COVID-19 are cremated in funeral pyres in New Delhi.
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Mike Levin on using bioelectricity to study how cells form (2019)
By Lindsay Brownell At first glance, the lab of Wyss Associate Faculty member Mike Levin looks like any standard biology lab: graduate students in white lab coats pipette liquids into tubes at benches surrounded by centrifuges, freezers, racks of graduated cylinders hanging over sinks, and shelves of petri dishes…
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Is π the Same in Every Universe?
Mathematician: That depends on what you mean by “universe.” Here’s a framing: A circle of radius R centered at a point P is the set of all points in the plane with distance R fro…
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What DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 really achieved (2020)
Disclaimer: this post is an opinion piece based on the experience and opinions derived from attending the CASP14 conference as a doctoral student researching protein modelling. When provided, quotes have been extracted from my notes of the event, and while I hope to have captured them as accurately as possible, I…
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A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries
The study of obesity is the study of mysteries.
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How The Chronicle is trying to malign Sci-Hub
A new article was published in The Chronicle about me running Sci-Hub, a project dedicated to providing free access to academic journals all over the world. Their goal is to present Sci-Hub and its…
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Out of Africa's midlife crisis
on bottlenecks, crashes and what diversity really looks like
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HIV vaccine trial starts at Oxford
The University of Oxford today started vaccinations of a novel HIV vaccine candidate as part of a Phase I clinical trial in the UK.
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Poisson's Equation
If you aren’t used to staring at math, Poisson’s equation looks a little intimidating:
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Cars, planes, trains: where do CO₂ emissions from transport come from?
Transport accounts for around one-fifth of global CO₂ emissions. Three-quarters of this is from road transport.
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Wav2vec Overview: Semi and Unsupervised Speech Recognition
A mid-depth cap with classic style for any occasion, this Nike Club Cap comes in smooth cotton twill that's been softly washed for casual, daily comfort. Soft and unstructured, the precurved bill makes for easy styling, and the adjustable back-strap lets you find the right fit. Nike Hat Size 6 1/2 6 5/8 6 3/4 6 7/8 7…
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Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020)
A completely passive solar-powered desalination system developed by researchers at MIT and in China could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal areas to provide an efficient, low-cost…
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Physicists observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for first time
Physicists at MIT and elsewhere have used gravitational waves to observationally confirm Hawking’s black hole theorem for the first time.
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Alcohol, health, and the ruthless logic of the Asian flush
Why did the Asian flush evolve? What does this say about alcoholism? What does this have to do with Odysseus?
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Maps Of Matter
Status: Rough working notes – me thinking aloud. Speculative, and likely contains errors, misconceptions, and omissions; thoughtful, informed comments are welcome. Intended for a general scientifically curious audience, not requiring much detailed specialist background.
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“The Martian” + Starship
“The Martian” by Andy Weir, and its film adaptation directed by Ridley Scott, remain some of my all time favorite science fiction works. Way back in the day I wrote a technical commenta…
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Why we don’t understand heavier-than-air flight
If you've been reading popular science websites or magazines lately, then you may have heard the news: we don't understand how airplanes work. For example:…
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Stress does turn hair gray, and it’s reversible
A new study from researchers at Columbia University is the first to quantitatively link psychological stress to graying hair in people and find that the process is reversible.
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‘Vegan spider silk’ provides sustainable alternative to single-use plastics
Researchers have created a plant-based, sustainable, scalable material that could replace single-use plastics in many consumer products.
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Costa Rica Has Run on 100% Renewable Electricity for 299 Days
For 75 days straight, Costa Rica ran on 100% renewable electricity