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Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012)
The good educator insists on exercise, play, and plentiful sleep: "the great cordial of nature."
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 2,418 posts.
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Violence alters human genes for generations, researchers discover
Children of Syrian refugees inherit the stress of civil war.
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Controlling the nuclear fusion plasma in a tokamak with reinforcement learning
Successfully controlling the nuclear fusion plasma in a tokamak with deep reinforcement learning
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80-year Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life
For nearly 80 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been producing data and lessons on how to live longer, happier, and healthier lives.
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FDA approves first test of CRISPR for genetic defect causing sickle cell disease
UC scientists and physicians hope to permanently cure patients of sickle cell disease by using CRISPR-Cas9 to replace a defective gene with the normal version
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The 'Batman Effect': How having an alter ego empowers you (2020)
Thinking of yourself as a separate entity can reduce anxiety, while also kicking up some major benefits for your confidence and determination.
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Shortest-possible walking tour to 81,998 bars in South Korea
We have solved a traveling salesman problem (TSP) to walk to 81,998 bars in South Korea. The problem was created using the Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) to build a table of the 3,361,795,003 point-to-point travel times, one for each pair of bar locations. Our computation produced a tour together with a proof that…
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Euclid's First Images
Euclid, our dark Universe detective, has a difficult task: to investigate how dark matter and dark energy have made our Universe look like it does today. 95% of our cosmos ...
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Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study
Toothpaste made from your own hair may offer a sustainable and clinically effective way to protect and repair damaged teeth.
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Sleep on it: How the brain processes many experiences, even when 'offline'
In a new study, Yale researchers uncover how the brain, during sleep, replays and bundles many of the experiences that occur in our waking hours.
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Wi-Fi signals enable gesture recognition throughout entire home
University of Washington researchers have shown it's possible to leverage Wi-Fi signals around us to detect specific movements without needing sensors on the hu
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No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation
GENEVA (20 January 2022) – In a new policy brief, the World Heart Federation (WHF) challenges the widespread notion that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can decrease the risk of heart disease, and calls for urgent and decisive action to tackle the unprecedented rise in alcohol-related death and disability…
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A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depression in a small study
Stanford Medicine researchers used high doses of magnetic stimulation, delivered on an accelerated timeline and targeted to individual neurocircuitry, to treat patients with severe depression.
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Study: Low Carb Diet May Prevent, Reverse Age-Related Effects Within the Brain
The news in brief: 1) Brain changes associated with aging become visible much earlier than would be expected, in the late 40's. 2) This is hypothesized to result from neurons’ loss of energy; if so, researchers may have found a way to prevent or reverse these effects. 3) This can be done with diet, by
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MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts (2018)
MIT engineers have flown the first silent, fuel-free “ion plane.” The light aircraft is the first plane to fly with no propellers, turbine blades, or other moving parts.
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FDA grants Breakthrough Therapy designation to MDMA for treatment of PTSD
The non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to MDMA for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). MAPS and the FDA have also reached agreement under the Special…
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No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy
In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.”
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Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal
Time crystals — a form of matter that “ticks” when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse — may help to build better atomic clocks, gyroscopes, and quantum tech.
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Breakdown of faults by car brand: Tesla has replaced Dacia at the bottom
Minimised clearances, active hoods, new materials, new drive technologies – surely modern cars have reached their pinnacle?
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IAC confirms existence of a Super-earth in the habitable zone of a Sun-like Star
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad de La Laguna (ULL) has confirmed the discovery of a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of HD 20794, a nearby Sun-like star. This discovery, the result of over two decades of observations, opens a window to future studies of Earth-like planetary…
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Human blood cells can be directly reprogrammed into neural stem cells
Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the stem cell institute HI-STEM* in Heidelberg have succeeded for the first time in directly reprogramming human blood cells into a previously unknown type of neural stem cell. These induced stem cells are similar to those that occur during the early…
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Reasoning models don't always say what they think
Research from Anthropic on the faithfulness of AI models' chain-of-thought reasoning.
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Myths in cycling: wider tires are slower
When we started to publish Bicycle Quarterly 15 years ago, it seemed that most of the technical aspects of bicycles were well-known. And yet, as we tested many different bikes, we started to question many of the things we had accepted as 'facts.' To celebrate…
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The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.