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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 58 posts.
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BU-808: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries
Manufacturers take a conservative approach and specify the life of Li-ion in most consumer products as being between 300 and 500 discharge/charge cycles.…
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James Burke’s Connections: A BBC History of Innovation
Science historian James Burke’s entire iconic Connections series, tracing the origin of innovation, is now available for free online.
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Medical researcher discovers integration, gets 75 citations
(Note: this post is `just for fun;’ no premeds, doctors, researchers, or nobel laureates were meant to be offended in the writing of this post.) The bane of many American physics grad student…
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Chance of Dying From Backscatter Radiation Same as Chance of Terrorism
Link to: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/16/5477568-are-airport-x-ray-scanners-harmful
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Evaluating Extraordinary Claims
To demonstrate the problem, I did a simulation where I generated 480 random numbers per subject, representing the 480 time slices in the experiment. I repeated this generation of random numbers 20 times. I compared the send and no-send intervals of random numbers using a T-test; none of the 20 trials found a…
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The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?
Disclaimer: This blog post covers only a fraction of what’s sketchy with “The China Study.” In the years since I wrote it, I’ve added a number of additional articles expandi…
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Project GREAT: General Relativity Einstein/Essen Anniversary Test
In September 2005 the kids and I took several very accurate cesium atomic clocks from home and parked 5400 feet up Mt Rainier (the volcano near Seattle) for a full two days. The goal was to see if the clocks actually gained time, even if billionths of a second, as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity…
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Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says
Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science really says.
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How the pantheon has lasted 2000 years without steel in its concrete
This famous building stands in the business district of Rome--much as it was built some 18 centuries ago. Amazingly, it has withstood the ravages of both the elements and war permitting a firsthand view of a unique product constructed by Roman hands. Now, it is exposed to acid rain and fumes from passing automobiles…
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2010 Physics Nobel Prize (Graphene)
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was awarded jointly to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene"
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Potentially Habitable Planet Discovered
Complexity scientist and VC Samuel Arbesman
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If you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider...
Several physicists weigh in on what would happen if you were to place your hand in the proton stream of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. There’s not a definit
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Vaccines don't cause autism
The debate is essentially over and the final word is in: vaccines do not cause autism. The results of a rigorous study conducted over several years were just an
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The Science of Word Recognition
Reviews the history of why psychologists moved from a word shape model of word recognition to a letter recognition model.
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There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
I used to work next to the center for nanotechnology. The first indication I had that there was something wrong with the discipline of “nanotechnology” is I noticed that the people who …
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Traffic Experiments -- How to clear traffic jams
Once upon a time, years ago, I was driving through a number of stop/go traffic waves on SR 520 at rush hour in Seattle. I decided to try something. On a day when I immediately started hitting the usual "waves" of stopped cars, I decided to drive smoothly. Rather than repeatedly rushing ahead with everyone else, only…