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Epistemic standards for “Why did it take so long to invent X?”
How to answer this question—and how not to
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 374 posts.
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Color blindness
Color blindness is an inaccurate term. Most color-blind people can see color, they just don't see the same colors as everyone else. There ha...
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Fitful nightly sleep linked to chronic inflammation, hardened arteries
Scientists tie disrupted slumber to deadly plaque buildup known as atherosclerosis
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Optimal Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches
I was personally useless for most of the Spring of 2020. There was a period of time, though, after the peak in coronavirus cases here in NYC and before the onslaught of police violence here in NYC that I managed to scrounge up the motivation to do something other than drink and maniacally refresh my Twitter feed. I…
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The human genome is full of viruses
Your body requires viruses, but viruses don’t always require a body
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What is protein folding? A brief explanation
AlphaFold from Google DeepMind is said to solve the protein folding problem. What is that, and why is it hard?
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All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong
At this critical time in the modern history of the human race, mathematical models have been pushed into the foreground. Epidemic forecasting informs policy and even individual decision-making. Sad…
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Smoke has caused temperature forecasts to go crazy
This blog provides updated forecasts and comments on current weather or other topics
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Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment
The prevalence of dementia in places where more than one language is spoken is 50% lower than in regions where the population uses only one languageA study has shown that Alzheimer's patients with a higher degree of bilingualism receive a later diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment
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Vitamin D, part 3 – The Evidence
Vitamin D deficiency is linked to cancer, heart disease, respiratory infection, stroke, diabetes, and death. It might seem reasonable that we should all be taking this supplement.
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How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?
Any time you have a benchmark that gets taken seriously, some people will start gaming the benchmark. Some famous examples in computing are the CPU benchmark specfp and video game benchmarks. With specfp, Sun managed to increase its score on 179.art (a sub-benchmark of specfp) by 12x with a compiler tweak that…
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Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)
I recently learned that cells are extremely crowded and busy places. I knew there's a lot of activity in cells, but I didn't realize just h...
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UChicago doctors see ‘remarkable’ success using ventilator alternatives
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Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier that takes 30s to assemble
You can make a DIY air purifier in 30s. To test if it works, I generated smoke, and measured how well it removes tiny particles.
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Ancient shell shows days were half-hour shorter 70M years ago
Fossil rudist bivalves ( Vaccinites ) from the Al-Hajar Mountains, United Arab Emirates. Credit: Wikipedia, Wilson44691 – Own work, Public Domain
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Past Time to Tell the Public:It Will Probably Go Pandemic, We Should Prepare Now
by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman NOTE FROM IAN: The expert risk communication team of Lanard and Sandman has given me permission to post their very well-considered reply to my question of them just
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How strong is your knot?
MIT mathematicians and engineers have developed a mathematical model that predicts how stable a knot is, based on several key properties, including the number of crossings involved, and the direction in which the rope segments twist as the knot is pulled tight.
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What Happens Next? Covid-19 Futures, Explained with Playable Simulations
an interactive guide
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Dopamine and Temporal Difference Learning
Learning and motivation are driven by internal and external rewards. Many of our day-to-day behaviours are guided by predicting, or anticipating, whether a given action will result in a positive (that is, rewarding) outcome. The study of how organisms learn from experience to correctly anticipate rewards has been a…
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Why is 70% isopropyl alcohol a better disinfectant than 99% isopropanol?
How does one solution kill viruses and bacteria on contact, and the other not at all?
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Log-log plot of new vs. total Covid-19 cases by country
Visualizing the exponential growth of COVID-19 across the world.
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Glucosamine Supplementation Reduces All-Cause Mortality: Study
A recent analysis published in the journal BMJ showed that glucosamine supplementation conveys around a 15% reduction of all-cause mortality.
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Open access to ACM Digital Library during coronavirus pandemic
For the next 3 months, through 6/30/20, ACM is making all work published by ACM in the ACM Digital Library freely accessible.
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Systems that defy detailed understanding
Last week, I wrote about the mindset that computer systems can be understood, and behaviors can be explained, if we’re willing to dig deep enough into the stack of abstractions our software is built atop. Some of the ensuing discussion on Twitter and elsewhere lead me to write this followup, in which I want to run…
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CERN Online introductory lectures on quantum computing from 6 November
This content is currently in the process of being archived and integrated into the CERN Library collections.
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A googol-to-one gear ratio [video]
To celebrate being alive for a billion seconds, Daniel Bruin built a machine with 100 gears with a 10-to-1 gear ratio…meaning that the overall gear ratio is a g
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Study helps explain why motivation to learn declines with age
MIT neuroscientists have identified a brain circuit critical for learning to make decisions that require evaluating the cost or reward of an action. They showed this circuit is negatively affected by aging and in Huntington’s disease.