The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 4,456 posts.
Springer was very generous with free access to their material for some months, but this period has unfortunately passed. You can no longer access the following books for free, but you can still support them by purchasing the ones you find useful. 🙏😇
Making catalysts to convert waste carbon dioxide into useful industrial products has been expensive and complicated – until now. UNSW engineers show it’s as easy as playing with Lego.
Researchers have identified two brain phenomena that may explain some of the side-effects of ketamine. Their measurements of the brain waves of sheep sedated by the drug may explain the out-of-body experience and state of complete oblivion it can cause.
I. Julian Jaynes’ The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind is a brilliant book, with only two minor flaws. First, that it purports to explains the origin of consciou…
Why 5G's faster data rates are possible: Shannon's Law explained in plain language.
What is electricity? This question is impossible to answer because the word " Electricity " has several contradictory meanings. These different meanings are incompatible, and the contradictions confuse everyone. If you don't understand electricity, you're not alone. Even teachers, engineers, and scientists have a hard…
Scientists tie disrupted slumber to deadly plaque buildup known as atherosclerosis
Hundreds of published studies over the last decade have claimed it's possible to predict an individual’s patterns of thoughts and feelings by scanning their brain in an MRI machine as they perform some mental tasks.
American Chemical Society: Chemistry for Life.
Face masks can help slow the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Learn about mask types, which masks to use and how to use them.
The first known interstellar object to pass through Earth’s solar system may be a 900-foot hydrogen iceberg, say researchers.
Kids with autism may have a change in their symptom severity during childhood. Around 30% of them have less symptoms by age 6.
Emergence occurs when there is a conceptual discontinuity between two descriptions targeting the same phenomenon. This does not mean that emergence is a purely subjective phenomenon — only th…
Rare elongated dice and board game pieces from the Roman Iron Age have been discovered in western Norway. Last month, Norwegian archaeologists chose to excavate the remains of a small Early Iron Age grave cairn
These tiny insects kill more than 1,000,000 people every year
Welcome to this post, in which we’ll be taking a trip through the wild and bumpy ride that has been Vitamin D & sunlight research over the past few decades, and what it might mean for COVID-19. As with my previous post, before any non-specialist attempts to write something on COVID-19, we should wonder: are any actual…
Remarkable relationship between psychedelics, the brain, well-being, and creativity
This blog is not peer reviewed at all. I write it, I put it out there, and people read it or not. It is my little megaphone that I alone control.
Light-weight, cheap and ultra-thin, perovskite solar cells have promised to shake-up renewable energy for some time. Research by Professor Anita Ho-Baillie from the University of Sydney means they are ready to take the next steps towards commercialisation.
Explore data on the mortality risk of COVID-19 across the world.
Meat is an important source of nutrition for people around the world. How quickly is demand growing? And what are the implications for animal welfare and the earth’s environment?
New research has revealed that four Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments housed at The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library, which were previously thought to be blank, do in fact contain text. The discovery means that The University of Manchester is the only institution in the UK to possess authenticated…
Ben’s software blog. Mostly Scala, with a few other things.
Discuss this study on my forum or see discussion on Hacker News (>400 points, >350 comments). Abstract I slept 4 hours a night for 14 days and didn’t find any effects on cognition (assessed via Psychomotor Vigilance Task, a custom first-person shooter scenario, and SAT). I’m a 22-year-old male and normally I sleep 7-8…
