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Quantum transitions take time – the news is its experimental demonstration
A number of people have asked me to weigh in on this story in Quanta Magazine (based on this paper [ PDF version ] and also reported in t...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 323 posts.
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Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation (2007)
When an experimental study states "The group with treatment X had significantly less disease ( p = 1%)", many people interpret this statement as being equivalent to "there is a 99% chance that if I do treatment X it will prevent disease." This essay explains why these statements are not equivalent. For such an…
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Artificial “muscles” achieve powerful pulling force
MIT researchers have created a fiber-based, lightweight, fast-acting artificial muscle that could be useful for robotics and for prosthetics.
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A Ring of Controversy Around a Black Hole Photo
[Note Added: Thanks to some great comments I’ve received, I’m continuing to add clarifying remarks to this post. You’ll find them in green.] It’s been a couple of months si…
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How common was it for parents to lose a child?
The death of a young child has always been the most devastating tragedy mothers and fathers could experience. How common was it?
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A Visual Introduction to Morse Theory
In a previous article , I already introduced manifolds and their, ahem, manifold ways. Among the many interesting comments I received about this article, some were dealing with a basic question, namely how to measure the properties of a manifold. In this article, I want to present a few concepts from Morse theory …
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Open-Sourcing Our Reactor Design, and the Future of Transatomic
When Mark Massie and I started Transatomic in April 2011, the future of nuclear power was uncertain. In the wake of Fukushima, all bets for a nuclear renaissance were off, and starting a venture-funded advanced nuclear technology startup seemed like an unusual path, to say the very least. At the time, there were only…
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Yellowstone National Park’s Sound and Video Libraries
Yellowstone National Park maintains a collection of sounds and videos taken in the park that are in the public domain and free for anyone to use. The collection
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Time to Abolish "Statistical Significance"?
The idea of "statistical significance" has been a basic concept in introductory statistics courses for decades. If you spend any time lookin...
287
Historical Map of the Cognitive Sciences: An Attempt
Map of the cognitive science, historical from 1930 to 2020 with prehistory and future prediction. Including Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Biology and more.
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Measuring the size of the Earth by watching a shadow on a wall
Recently I've been discussing the details of measuring the size of the Earth by watching a shadow descending a wall at sunrise, or ascending at sunset. The sums are easy enough if you do it at either Equinox, and at the Equator, and you can read about it here:
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Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to sea-level rise as much as predicted
Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to sea-level rise as much as once thought: An MIT study finds even the tallest ice cliffs are unlikely to collapse catastrophically and trigger a runaway ice sheet retreat.
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Longevity and anti-aging research: ‘Prime time for an impact on the globe’
Research into extending humanity’s healthy lifespan has been progressing rapidly in recent years. In February, a group of aging and longevity scientists founded a nonprofit to foster the work and serve as a resource for governments and businesses looking to understand the potentially far-reaching implications of a…
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John Ioannidis Aims His Bazooka at Nutrition Science (2018)
Dr. Ioannidis is not just a bull in a china shop; he's a bazooka in a china shop. And now the bazooka is aimed at shoddy nutrition research, which he suggests is in need of "radical reform."
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Researchers develop a new houseplant that can clean home air (2018)
Researchers at the University of Washington have genetically modified a common houseplant to remove chloroform and benzene from the air around it.
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World's oldest periodic table chart found in St. Andrews
A periodic table chart discovered at the University of St Andrews is thought to be the oldest in the world.
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If the number of children is not growing, why is the population still increasing
50 years ago, the total fertility rate was five. This figure has more than halved. Yet the global population is still rising — why?
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Study identifies main culprit behind lithium metal battery failure
UC San Diego researchers have discovered the root cause of why lithium metal batteries fail, challenging a long-held belief in the field. The study presents new ways to boost battery performance and brings research a step closer to incorporating lithium anodes into rechargeable batteries.
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Being multilingual alters your experience of time (2018)
A new study shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events.
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Happiness and Life Satisfaction (2017)
Self-reported life satisfaction differs widely between people and between countries. What explains these differences?