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Schizophrenia: No Smoking Gun
[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it] I. Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophren…
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,455 posts.
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The rise and fall of peer review
Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing
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What is nuclear waste? Challenges and solutions
Nuclear waste is primarily composed of the atoms that are left over after larger atoms are split in a fission chain reaction. This page explains what it is in detail, what the hazards are, how we store it today, what the long-term plans are, and how much waste we make.
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Fertility Rate
Explore changing patterns in fertility worldwide, from birth rates to parental ages, twinning rates, reproductive technologies, and more.
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Radioactive Waste Management
Nuclear waste is neither particularly hazardous nor hard to manage relative to other toxic industrial wastes. The amount of radioactive waste is very small relative to wastes produced by fossil fuel electricity generation. Safe methods for the final disposal of high-level radioactive waste are technically proven.
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An Intuitive (and Short) Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem
Bayes’ theorem was the subject of a detailed article. The essay is good, but over 15,000 words long — here’s the condensed version for Bayesian newcomers like…
4357
Why FTL implies time travel
In science fiction, it is pretty standard fare to introduce some form of faster-than-light communication or travel. After all, space is big, and you can't write your swashbuckling Hornblower-in-space novel if you have to wait for a generation ship to crawl painfully slowly between the nearest stars,
4358
Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from?
Globally, we emit around 50 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases yearly. Where do these emissions come from? We take a look, sector-by-sector.
4359
Why has nuclear power been a flop?
Nuclear is expensive, but it should be cheap
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Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science
Attention conservation notice : Once, I was one of the authors of a paper on cellular automata . Lawyers for Wolfram Research Inc. threatened to sue me, my co-authors and our employer, because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret…
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Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions
Which 20 countries emit the most carbon dioxide? You may be surprised.
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Poverty
In order to make progress against poverty in the future, we need to understand poverty around the world today and how it has changed.
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California, Water You Doing?
[Epistemic status: Low confidence. I have found numbers and stared at them until they made sense to me, but I have no education in this area. Tell me if I’m wrong.] I. There has recently been…
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Population Growth
Explore global and national data on population growth, demography, and how they are changing.
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Each Country's Share of CO2 Emissions
Which 20 countries emit the most carbon dioxide? You may be surprised.
4367
How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?
There are large differences in the land of different diets, mostly depending on how much meat people eat.
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What share of global CO₂ emissions come from aviation?
Aviation accounts for 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions. But it has contributed around 4% to global warming to date.
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From 1,000,000 to Graham's Number
Graham's number is so big, we need a whole new set of tools to even discuss it.
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Almost all of the world’s mammal biomass is humans and livestock
Humans and livestock make up 95% of the world’s mammal biomass; wild mammals are just 5%.
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Long COVID: Lasting effects of COVID-19
COVID-19 can have lasting symptoms that affect many parts of the body. Learn more about the symptoms and effects of long COVID.
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Land Use
How is humanity using the Earth’s land? And how can we decrease our land use so that more land is left for wildlife?
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Pump Up the Storage
If we adopt solar and wind as major components of our energy infrastructure as we are weaned from fossil fuels, we have to solve the energy storage problem in a big way. An earlier post demonstrated that we do not likely possess enough materials in the world to simply build giant lead-acid (or nickel-based or…
4374
Which form of transport has the smallest carbon footprint?
How can individuals reduce their emissions from transport?
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How much did the Apollo program cost?
The U.S spent $25.8 billion on Project Apollo ($309 billion when adjusted for inflation). This dataset provides annual expenditures and additional cost…
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing
Explore data on COVID-19 testing across the world.
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How reliable are climate models?
<p>While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.</p>
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SSRIs: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
The claim that “SSRIs don’t work” or “SSRIs are mostly just placebo” is most commonly associated with Irving Kirsch, a man with the awesome job title of “Associa…
4379
How do CO2 emissions compare when we adjust for trade?
Which countries are net importers and exports of emissions? How much CO2 is ‘offshored’?
4380
Flood Death Valley
Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?