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My stupid noise journey (2023)
A tale of bad choices
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 422 posts.
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The brain navigates new spaces by 'darting' between reality and mental maps
A new Yale study reveals the brain's internal map doesn't just track one’s current location, it constantly "flickers" between the present space and remembered
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Reversible computing with mechanical links and pivots
With the concern that “Moore’s Law is dead,” new interest has grown for unconventional forms of computing. This includes:
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Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions
A new Danish study finds no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions, including autism, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. The findings reaffirm the safety of Denmark’s childhood vaccination program.
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DSM Disorders Disappear in Statistical Clustering of Psychiatric Symptoms (2024)
Whither Major Depression?
277
An engineering history of the Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project, the US program to build an atomic bomb during WWII, is one of the most famous and widely known major government projects: a survey in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb as the top news story of the 20th century. Virtually everyone knows that the project built the bombs that were dropped…
278
Mapping the off-target effects of every FDA-approved drug in existence
6.2k words, 29 minutes reading time
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Simulating and Visualising the Central Limit Theorem
Update: this post was discussed on Hacker News I completed a Computer Science degree at uni, and bundled a lot of maths subjects in as electives: partial differential equations, vector calculus, discrete maths, linear algebra.
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Where do those undergraduate divisibility problems come from?
Chris Grossack's math blog and professional website.
281
Erdős Problem #1026
Problem 1026 on the Erdős problem web site recently got solved through an interesting combination of existing literature, online collaboration, and AI tools. The purpose of this blog post is to try…
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Personal aviation is about to get interesting (2023)
FAA is getting one enormously consequential thing right
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Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, study finds
Research highlights how a lack of vegetation and shade exposes vulnerable residents to heightened health risks.
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Lithium compound can reverse Alzheimer’s in mice: study
Study: Lithium loss ignites Alzheimer’s, but lithium compound can reverse disease in mice
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Sharper MRI scans may be on horizon thanks to new physics-based model
Researchers at Rice and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have unveiled a physics-based model of magnetic resonance relaxation that bridges molecular-scale dynamics with macroscopic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signals, promising new insight into how contrast agents interact with water molecules.
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Research team digitizes more than 100 years of Canadian infectious disease data
The new, publicly accessible database contains more than a million infectious disease incidence counts dating back to 1903.
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How Tube Amplifiers Work
How Tube Guitar Amplifiers Work
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Physicists Magnetize a Material with Light
MIT physicists created a long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. The results provide a new way to control and switch antiferromagnetic materials, which are of interest for their potential to advance information processing and memory chip technology.
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Metabolic and cellular differences between sedentary and active individuals
We're discussing a paper that demands attention...
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The future of solar doesn't track the sun
PV modules are cheap enough today that the simple fixed East-West arrays are cheaper and faster to install than the industry’s darling, the single-axis tracked array. Xavier Dedenbach, Terraform Po…
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Manganese is Lyme disease's double-edge sword
Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, which relies on the antioxidant manganese to protect it from its host’s immune system. Both removing or adding too much manganese weakens the bacteria. Disrupting this balance could lead to new treatments for Lyme disease.<br />
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Common misconceptions about the complexity in robotics vs. AI (2024)
Common misconceptions about the complexity in robotics vs AI
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Pierogi in Space
In a first for space cuisine, ESA project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will bring pierogi, the traditional Polish dumplings, to the International Space Station during the upcoming Axiom Mission 4.
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Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles
I can't remember where I first saw them, but ever since, I have been unable to forget them: abelian sandpiles. I'm far from the only one . They're remarkably simple, yet produce lovely symmetric patterns. I loved them so much that I adorned the title banner of this blog with an animation of an abelian sandpile. But…
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The Shape of a Mars Mission
“From a mathematics and trajectory standpoint and with a certain kind of technology, there’s not too many different ways to go to Mars. It’s been pretty well figured out. You can adjust the decimal places here and there, but basically if you're talking about chemical rockets, there's a certain way you're going to go…
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The Effect of Noise on Sleep
Using Apple Watch noise and sleep stages to quantify the effect of noise on sleep
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Eliminating contrails from flying could be cheap
Could we halve aviation's climate impact at a fraction of the cost of sustainable aviation fuels?