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Scientists may have found mechanism behind cognitive decline in aging
Scientists have discovered what they believe to be the central mechanism behind cognitive decline associated with normal aging.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 440 posts.
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Big Tobacco knew radioactive Po210 in cigarettes posed cancer risk, kept quiet
Tobacco companies knew that cigarette smoke contained radioactive alpha particles for more than four decades and developed "deep and intimate" knowledge of these particles' cancer-causing potential, but they deliberately kept their findings from the public, according to a new study by UCLA researchers.
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Red algae proteins grafted into tobacco double plant growth
Cornell researchers have successfully transferred key regions of a highly efficient red algae into a tobacco plant to dramatically improve plant productivity and increase carbon sequestration.
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An ultra-sensitive on-off switch helps axolotls regrow limbs
Stanford Medicine researchers discover an "on-off" switch that powers tissue regeneration in axolotls, a type of salamander.
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Some alloys don't change size when heated – recent work on why
Researchers in the lab of Brent Fultz have discovered why so-called Invar alloys keep a steady size and shape over a broad range of temperatures—unlike most materials.
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Fiber-infused ink enables 3D-printed heart muscle to beat
The ink helps heart muscle cells align so that they can contract in coordination
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Per capita CO₂ emissions Over Time
An interactive visualization from Our World in Data.
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Have attention spans been declining?
[This is one of the finalists in the SMTM Mysteries Contest, by a reader writing under the pseudonym Cennfaeladh. We’ll be posting about one of these a week until we have gotten through all th…
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Why Frames Tilt Forward (2015)
There is a ten-foot long alcove in our lower-level hallway — we call it the gallery . This is the one place in our house I can hang whatever I want (i.e., my own art) and switch it out whenever I want. To facilitate this, I installed a hanging system — basically a slotted rail mounted near the ceiling, with sliding…
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Managing Kitchen Fruit Flies with a Little Shop of Horrors
I live in Seattle on a fairly wooded property. Every summer since we’ve moved here, we end up with swarms of fruit flies in the kitchen. They congregate around the compost bin and the fruit bowl (where there are always lots of bananas). We aren’t slobbish - I do the dishes and wipe down the counters every night, take…
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Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak with major consequences
At 1.00 a.m. + 17 seconds on Monday, 17 July, the LHC beams were dumped after only 9 minutes in collision due to a radiofrequency interlock caused by an electrical perturbation. Approximately 300 milliseconds after the beams were cleanly dumped, several superconducting magnets around the LHC quenched – i.e. they lost…
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Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers
The fastest way to heat food and drink might also rank as the fastest route to ingesting massive quantities of minuscule plastic particles, says new research led by Husker engineers.
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Generative AI space and the mental imagery of alien minds
AI and the ruliad in the Wolfram Physics Project provide a new way to consider how alien minds might perceive the world. Stephen Wolfram explains how this artificial neuroscience experiment works.
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fMRI-to-image with contrastive learning and diffusion priors
a cutting-edge method for reconstructing and retrieving images from fMRI brain activity. Discover how fMRI enables detailed analysis of brain functions and aids in evaluating brain treatments. MindEye's training on the Natural Scenes Dataset brings new insights to neuroscience research. Explore the
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WHO aspartame brouhaha
the territory under dispute
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Underwater ears everywhere
Programming note: the subscribe link was broken for a while because I am bad at computers (yet another case of "forgot to enable the systemd unit"). It's fixed now. The unsubscribe link was also broken and is now fixed but, you know, maybe that was a feature. Did wonders for reader retention.
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A relatively small amount of force applied at just the right place
Explaining Y Combinator
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Birds make nests out of anti-bird pins
Biologists present the latest innovation in nest building: bird nests made from anti-nesting spikes.
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More green spaces linked to slower biological aging
More green spaces were associated with slower biological aging, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. People who lived near more green spaces were biologically 2.5 years younger, on average, than those who live near less greenness.
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Physicists generate the first snapshots of fermion pairs
MIT physicists captured the first images that directly show the pairing of fermions. The snapshots of particles pairing up in a cloud of atoms can provide clues to how electrons pair up in a superconducting material.
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Why is desalination so difficult?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Carlsbad Desalination Plant outside of San Diego, California. It produces roughly ten percent of the area’s fresh water, around 50 million gallons or 23,000 cubic meters per day. Unlike most treatment plants that cle
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Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023
Renewable power generation in the first half of 2023, with a share of 57.7 percent of the net electricity generation for public power supply, was significantly higher than in 2022.
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Aspartame: Once More Unto the Breach
Like it or not, there’s a clear scientific consensus
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My Meeting with David Bohm
June 29, 2023. Some scientists seek to clarify reality, others to mystify it. Physicist David Bohm seemed driven by both impulses. He is renowned for promoting a sensible (according to experts like Einstein, John Bell and philosopher Tim Maudlin) interpretation of quantum mechanics. But Bohm also a
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Physicists produce neutrino images of Milky Way galaxy
Physics researchers from Drexel University at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory led the production of the unique neutrino-based image of the Milky Way Galaxy using particles of matter instead of the usual electromagnetic energy.