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Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 4,455 posts.
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Does X cause Y? An in-depth evidence review (2021)
This summarizes the frustratingly ambiguous state of the evidence for pretty much any "Does X cause Y?" question you might have.
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CubeSats are fascinating learning tools for space
These are CubeSats. Satellites that are going to space—or at least, the ones I have here are prototypes. But these have one thing in common: they're all powered by either a Raspberry Pi, or a microcontroller. There are already Pis in space, like on Mark Rober's SatGus, on GASPACS, and the Astro Pis on the Space…
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Ice
Water is complicated and fascinating stuff! There are at least sixteen known crystal phases of ice, many shown in this diagram based on the work of Martin Chaplin: (Click for a larger version.) For…
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Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?
Does explicitly acknowledging bias make us less likely to make biased decisions? A new study examining how people justify decisions based on biased data finds that this is not necessarily the case.
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Some people who take psychedelics continue hallucinating indefinitely
[Related to: Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics And The Anarchic Brain, HPPD And The Specter Of Permanent Side Effects] I. Hallucinogen persisting perceptual disorder is a condition where people wh…
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When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow, a new study shows
Exercise can have benefits at the level of neurons, through chemical and mechanical effects, MIT researchers find. The discovery could inform exercise-related therapies for repairing damaged and deteriorating nerves.
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The Year 2512
Usually when I speculate about the future, I stick to two areas; either the really near future (within the next couple of decades), or the really far future (so far out that signs of continental drift should be glaringly obvious). But what about the medium term?
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Research team discovers breakthrough with potential to reverse Alzheimer's
Wayne Chen's lab at UCalgary identifies a way to interrupt and prevent progression of devastating condition
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Cornell researchers see atoms at record resolution
Cornell researchers have topped their own record for atomic resolution with an electron microscope pixel array detector that incorporates sophisticated 3D reconstruction algorithms.
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'Visual clutter' alters information flow in the brain
Too much stuff in the periphery of our vision can make it difficult to identify what we’re seeing. Yale researchers now know how that clutter affects the brain.
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Scientists find massive reserves of mercury in permafrost
Researchers have discovered permafrost in the northern hemisphere stores massive amounts of natural mercury, a finding with significant implications for human health and ecosystems worldwide.
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SR-71 Blackbird Speed Check Story
There were a lot of things we couldn't do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this...
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Modification of acetaminophen to reduce liver toxicity and enhance drug efficacy
2025 Science Talent Search Project Showcase: Chloe Yehwon Lee, 17, of Murphy, explored a way to lower the toxic effects of acetaminophen (Tylenol) on the liver for her Regeneron Science Talent Search chemistry project.
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There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)
1 post published by Georgia Ray on May 2, 2021
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Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra
EDIT: Be warned that this post is angry. If you’re easily offended when someone goes on a rant, then leave now because I’m very unforgiving in several places below. The tone of my writing is unusually harsh, but the people whose work I’m talking about deserve it, and here’s why. Even though I had been working with…
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Robot Learns to See in 30 Minutes (2022)
TL;DR: Learning to walk from pixels in the real world by using proprioception as supervision.
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Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
Observations made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed evidence for a moon-like object in the CD-35 2722 system. Unlike moons in our Solar System, the newly found object does not orbit a planet, raising questions about what to name it. Instead, it circles a brown…
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Cargo Cult Quantum Factoring
Just days after we celebrated my wife’s 40th birthday, she came down with COVID, meaning she’s been isolating and I’ve been spending almost all my time dealing with our kids. But …
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Drinking strong coffee before exercising increases fat-burning, new study finds
Scientists from the University of Granada also found that, if the exercise is performed in the afternoon, the effects of the caffeine are more marked than in the morning Scientists from the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada (UGR) have shown that caffeine (about 3 mg/kg, the equivalent of a strong…
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Oxygen atoms discovered in most distant known galaxy
Two different teams of astronomers have detected oxygen in the most distant known galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0. The discovery, reported in two separate studies, was made possible thanks to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. This…