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CT scans of 1k lithium-ion batteries show quality risks in inexpensive cells
Lumafield’s Battery Quality Report exposes hidden risks in 18650 cells; 1 in 13 low-cost units have dangerous defects. See how CT helps enforce safety.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,454 posts.
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I found ultra-pure quantum crystals in an abandoned mine in the Atacama desert
A Two Part Post on the Immense Promise and Ecological Tragedy of Natural Herbertsmithite Crystals
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Simulation of a 2B-atom cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell
Researchers from the University of Illinois developed GPU-accelerated software to simulate a cell that metabolizes and grows like a living cell.
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A requiem for amateur chemistry
Bidding farewell to classic experiments.
906
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.
907
Decoding James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope probably needs no introduction, since it is perhaps the most important and well-known mission of the last years. It was launched on Christmas day from Kourou, French Guiana , into a direct transfer orbit to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point . JWST uses S-band at 2270.5 MHz to transmit…
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What Happens Next? Covid-19 Futures, Explained with Playable Simulations
an interactive guide
909
Is my cat Turing-complete?
This article is an adaptation of a Lightning Talk I gave at CppCon2021. Link here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtqTGSOdmBo
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America Had an Atomic Mecha Warrior Robot
"REAL stories. REAL history."
912
SoME1 results
Reflections on the Summer of Math Exposition
913
What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] At around 7PM on the balmy evening of Saturday, December 3, 2022 , nearly every electric customer in Moore County, North Carolina was simultaneously plunged into darkness. Amid the confusion, the power utility was quick to di
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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…
918
Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
The method is based on a recyclable filtration fluid consisting of a superbase-alcohol compound. One gram of the new compound can absorb 156 milligrams of carbon dioxide.
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Human use of high-bandwidth wireless brain-computer interface
In an important step toward a fully implantable intracortical brain-computer interface system, BrainGate researchers demonstrated the first human use of a wireless transmitter capable of delivering high-bandwidth neural signals.
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Why bad scientific code beats code following “best practices” (2014)
I've just read " The Low Quality of Scientific Code ", which claims that code written by scientists comes out worse than it would if "software engineers" were involved.
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I'm scared about biological computing
I’ve been in the AI space since ChatGPT first dropped. I’ve toyed around with a lot of Language Models, built random side projects, built a couple from scratch and I’ve spent hours looking at the math behind it all.
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20 Years of "Not Even Wrong"
The first entry on this blog was 20 years ago yesterday, first substantive one was 20 years ago tomorrow (first one that drew attacks on me as an incompetent was two days later). Back when I starte…
924
Aluminum foil (2021)
It’s typically 10 μm thick and 400 mm wide, giving it an aspect ratio of 40000 in that dimension, and rolls are commonly some ten meters in length, for an aspect ratio of 1 000 000; heavy-duty versions can reach 30 μm or more. Despite their thinness, foils of 25 μm or more are impermeable to oxygen, water, and light…
925
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?
926
What Is a Manifold?
In machine learning, the term manifold is thrown around a lot—in fact, there’s even a branch of machine learning dealing with learning the structure of manifolds. Said branch is aptly named manifold learning . Inspired by fantastic visualizations of shapelet mining algorithms , this post aims to give a visual…
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How to Be a Systems Thinker
At the moment, I’m asking myself how people think about complex wholes like the ecology of the planet, or the climate, or large populations of human beings that have evolved for many years in separate locations and are now re-integrating. To think about these things, I find that you need something like systems theory…
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Consciousness is not computation
Spend enough time in the tech world and you will sooner or later find that itis a common article of faith that comput...
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Student rocket group shatters amateur space record
Aftershock II is believed to be the world’s first civilian-built rocket to reach an altitude of 470,000 feet.
930
AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea
Study reveals 75 percent of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are hidden from public view