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Newly observed optical state could enable quantum computing with photons
MIT and Harvard physicists have created a new form of light that could enable quantum computing with photons.
Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 248 posts.
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Notes on Resonance
Resonance occurs when two sources of excitation fall completely in sync, and reinforce one another endlessly. In this state, the sources convey an unbounded amount of energy over time.
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Yale scientists make a borophene breakthrough
A flake just one atom thick has provided scientists at Yale with new insight into a promising material for the next generation of high-speed electronics.
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Enemy within: gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease
Bacteria in the small intestines can travel to other organs and trigger an autoimmune response, though vaccines or antibiotics can suppress this reaction.
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Losing the Nobel Prize
There’s a fascinating new book just now appearing in book stores, Losing the Nobel Prize, by astronomer Brian Keating. An excerpt from the book is available at Nautilus, with the title How My…
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How working memory gets you through the day
Scientists have discovered how brain waves are key to both maintenance and control of information in the mind. A new model for this has been developed by Earl Miller and colleagues at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.
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Clinical trial finds blood-plasma infusions for Alzheimer’s safe, promising
In a small safety trial based on preclinical work by a Stanford researcher, participants receiving blood plasma infusions from young donors showed some evidence of improvement.
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Apollo 11 and Other Screw-Ups
(A paper presented to the 27th annual Guidance and Control Conference of the American Astronautical Society (AAS), in Breckenridge, Colorado on February 6, 2004, and designated AAS 04-064. This version includes additional illustrations and comments, and several minor corrections.)
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Can optical illusions fool AI too?
Deep neural networks (DNN) have made the news recently for their application as a predictive software used to create convincing fake videos of politicians and celebrities. You may not be aware, however, that you have most likely already used the same technology in a much less controversial form: the translation app on…
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MIT and newly formed company launch effort to build compact tokamak pilot plant
Development of fusion power, a carbon-free, combustion-free source of energy, is now on a faster track toward realization, thanks to a collaboration between MIT and a new private company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems. CFS will join with MIT to carry out rapid, staged research leading to a new generation of fusion…
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Jean Bourgain
I have just learned that Jean Bourgain passed away last week in Belgium, aged 64, after a prolonged battle with cancer. He and Eli Stein were the two mathematicians who most influenced my early ca…
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In field tests, device harvests water from desert air
You really can extract clean drinking water right from the air, even in the driest of deserts, MIT researchers have found. They’ve demonstrated a real-world version of a water-harvesting system based on metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, that they first described last year.
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Biologist E.O. Wilson suggests ‘moon shot’ conservation effort
Biologist E.O. Wilson suggests conserving half of the Earth to save species. He and former National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis discuss how to do that.
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Why Were Early Psychedelicists so Weird?
[Epistemic status: very speculative, asserted with only ~30% confidence. On the other hand, even though psychiatrists don’t really talk about this it’s possible other groups know this a…
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Why are amplitudes complex?
[By prior agreement, this post will be cross-posted on Microsoft’s Q# blog, even though it has nothing to do with the Q# programming language. It does, however, contain many examples th…
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Systems Neuroscience Is About to Get Bonkers
We are all familiar with the standard paradigm in systems neuroscience: Study a simplified behavior in a model organism while measuring neural activity in brain structures thought to subserve the…
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Assessing Cardiovascular Risk Factors with Computer Vision
Posted by Lily Peng MD PhD, Product Manager, Google Brain Team Heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular (CV) diseases continue to be among ...
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PyTorch for Scientific Computing: Quantum Mechanics Example Part 2
This is the second post on using Pytorch for Scientific computing. I'm doing an example from Quantum Mechanics. In this post we go through the formulas that need to coded and write them up in PyTorch and give everything a test.
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Breakthrough Announced in Dark Matter Detection Technology
This week, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) announced that it has achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions.
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How thick is the atmosphere? A derivation of the Boltzmann distribution
Let’s talk about a small question as a way of introducing a big question. How thick is the atmosphere? How far does Earth’s atmosphere extend into space? In other words, how high can y…
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Supertasks
Background Reading: Earman and Norton, Infinite Pains: The Trouble with Supertasks and Comments on Laraudogoita's Supertask
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The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
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How much is time wrong around the world? (2014)
Why Spaniards have dinner so late? A map of the difference between solar time and clock time around the world.
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Climate change
WHO fact sheet on climate change and health: provides key facts, patterns of infection, measuring health effects and WHO response.
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Fertility Rate
Explore changing patterns in fertility worldwide, from birth rates to parental ages, twinning rates, reproductive technologies, and more.