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Got food cravings? What’s living in your gut may be responsible
A new Pitt study shows that the gut microbiome of mice influences their preferred diet. The results, researchers say, could apply to humans, too.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 2,418 posts.
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Where does the plastic in oceans come from?
Which countries and rivers emit the most plastic to the ocean? What does this mean for solutions to tackle plastic pollution?
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AI Can Transform Anyone Into a Professional Dancer
Think of it as style transfer for dancing, a deep learning based algorithm that can convincingly show a real person mirroring the moves of their favorite dancers. The work, developed by a team of…
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Electricity can heal wounds three times as fast (2023)
Chronic wounds are a major health problem for diabetic patients and the elderly – in extreme cases they can even lead to amputation. Using electric stimulation, researchers in a project at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the University of Freiburg, Germany, have developed a method that speeds up the…
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Gene-silencing tool shows promise as a future therapy against prion diseases
MIT Whitehead and Broad Institute researchers designed an epigenetic editor that can silence the prion protein gene, which could potentially be developed into a therapy against fatal prion diseases. The same approach could be used against other genetic diseases.
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Supersharp Images from New VLT Adaptive Optics
ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography — and has captured remarkably sharp test images of the planet Neptune, star clusters and other objects. The pioneering MUSE instrument in Narrow-Field Mode, working with the GALACSI adaptive optics module…
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Monitoring marine litter from space
Every 60 seconds the equivalent of a lorry-load of plastic enters the global ocean. Where it goes after that remains largely unknown. But a new ESA Discovery study reported in Nature Communications has proven the concept of monitoring floating plastic litter using satellites.
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Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree
On Friday, October 30, Caltech conferred degrees on 51 graduate students by a vote of the Board of Trustees as part of a special allowance made for students impacted by coronavirus-related campus closures.
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Three reasons fungi are not plants
Fungi are more closely related to us than they are to plants. Yet, fungi have been grouped with plants historically, with an impact felt even today.
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MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials
MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.
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Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5
On 2026 August 5, within a few minutes of 06:35 UTC, an upper stage (section) of a rocket used for a lunar mission will hit the moon. This may be of some (probably minor) scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it. It doesn't present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness…
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Gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
Why gene banks aren’t enough to save the world’s food
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Freshwater from salt water using only solar energy
A federally funded research effort to revolutionize water treatment has yielded a direct solar desalination technology that uses energy from sunlight alone to heat salt water for membrane distillation. The technology could provide off-grid water treatment for some of the 1 billion people who lack access to clean water.
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Postmortem: Our first VLEO satellite mission (with imagery and flight data)
On March 14, 2025, Albedo's first satellite, Clarity-1, launched on SpaceX Transporter-13. We took a big swing with our pathfinder. The mission goals:
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New AI Imaging Technique Reconstructs Photos with Realistic Results
Researchers from NVIDIA, led by Guilin Liu, introduced a state-of-the-art deep learning method that can edit images or reconstruct a corrupted image, one that has holes or is missing pixels.
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The Riemann Hypothesis Says 5040 Is the Last
Note: These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards . They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in…
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How we plan to de-extinct the Dodo bird
Join us in witnessing the legendary dodo's resurrection. Explore scientific breakthroughs, conservation efforts, and the ethical implications.
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Full ignition for ESA’s reusable rocket engine
Work to develop a reusable engine for European rockets is progressing, with full ignition of an early prototype of Prometheus. These images were taken on 22 June 2023 at ArianeGroup’s test facility in Vernon, France during a 12-second burn.
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Goldene: A single atom layer of gold
For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. According to the researchers from LiU this has given the gold new properties that can make it suitable for use in various applications.
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California Earthquakes Disrupted HF Propagation on West Coast
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.
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Saliva based Covid test: results in 45 minutes
Researchers from the BioFrontiers Institute at CU Boulder have developed a saliva-based COVID-19 test capable of returning results in as little as 45 minutes—no
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New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely
A new study co-authored by a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor finds that life expectancy gains made by high-income countries in the first half of the 20th century have slowed significantly, and that none of the generations born after 1939 will reach 100 years of age on average. Published in the journal…