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Topics /
Science & Space
The most popular blog posts about science & space on Hacker News. 4,454 posts.
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AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome
Introducing a new, unifying DNA sequence model that advances regulatory variant-effect prediction and promises to shed new light on genome function — now available via API.
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Eigenvectors from eigenvalues
Peter Denton, Stephen Parke, Xining Zhang, and I have just uploaded to the arXiv the short unpublished note “Eigenvectors from eigenvalues”. This note gives two proofs of a general eige…
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Gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger observed by LIGO and Virgo
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo collaboration report the first joint detection of gravitational waves with both the LIGO and Virgo detectors. This is the fourth announced detection of a binary black hole system and the first significant gravitational-wave signal recorded by the Virgo detector, and…
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42
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the number 42 is the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”. But he didn’t say wha…
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1 in 4 Statisticians Say They Were Asked to Commit Scientific Fraud
As the saying goes, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." We know that's true because statisticians themselves just said so. A jaw-dropping study reveals that nearly 1 in 4 of them report being asked to remove or alter data to better support a hypothesis. That is called scientific fraud.
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Sci-Hub as necessary, effective civil disobedience
Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal” came of age last year. I’m now teaching students younger than Stevan’s proposal, and yet, very little has actually changed in these 21 years. On the contrary, one may even make the case that while efforts […] <a class="more-link"…
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Why I still won’t review for or publish with Elsevier
In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…
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Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
Ignition is a key process that amplifies the energy output from nuclear fusion and could provide clean energy and answer some huge physics questions.
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The Engineering of Landfills
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] This is the Puente Hills Landfill outside of Los Angeles, California. The first truckload of trash was dumped here in 1957, and the trucks just kept coming. For more than five decades, if you threw something away in LA County, t
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New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste
The energy-efficient desalination system produces fresh water without chemical additives and transforms leftover salts into useful materials.
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Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto Win 2024 Turing Award
Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton as the recipients of the 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Award for developing the conceptual and algorithmic foundations of reinforcement learning. In a series of papers beginning in the 1980s, Barto and Sutton introduced the main ideas, constructed the mathematical foundations, and developed…
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What are the mysterious light sources on light pollution maps?
I got my first telescope in 2017, in time for the Great American Eclipse. I started paying attention to the concept of light pollution, including finding detailed maps of what places had high or lo…
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Snowflake macro photography (2013)
Snowflake macro photography: how to take closeup images of real snow crystals with simple optical add-on for compact camera? In this article, you'll find detailed description of shooting and photo processing techniques, scheme of optical add-on, snowflake pictures gallery, tips and tricks, useful links. Author: Alexey…
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Private company landing on the moon today
Home | Intuitive Machines
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It’s raining PFAS: rainwater is unsafe to drink even in Antarctica and Tibet
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made hazardous chemicals that are spread globally in the atmosphere and as a result they can be found in the rainwater and snow in even the most remote locations on Earth. During the last 20 years, guideline values for PFAS in drinking water, surface waters and soils…
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Images of the the samples returned to earth from the asteroid Ryugu
Images of the samples from Ryugu
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Wendelstein 7-X: Gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes
After successful recommissioning in autumn 2022, the Greifswald nuclear fusion experiment has surpassed an important target.
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Helion
I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen. David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense...
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Is the world really running out of sand?
[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.] If you have to know the answer right away, it’s no; or at least, my goal with this video is to convince you that the world is not running out of sand. But if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here (right?) and you probably woul
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Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight
Analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical. Read more.
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First federal grant for psychedelic treatment research in 50 years
Can #psilocybin help smokers quit? #NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse has funded @HopkinsMedicine Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., to find out. @Drug_Researcher ›
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The baffling intelligence of a single cell: The story of E. coli chemotaxis
I want to tell the story of a beautiful phenomenon in biology. In some sense it’s the prototype of much of the activity of life. The phenomenon is the way in which an individual cell of E. coli forages for nutrients. This process, known as “chemotaxis”—the “chemo-” for chemical and the “taxis” from the Greek τάξις…
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Proteins That May Restore Damaged Sound-Detecting Cells in the Ear
Proteins instruct when and where sound-detecting cells form in the developing ear ›
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New cancer therapy holds potential to switch off major cancer types
In mice and in human tissue, a new compound discovered at Princeton disables a key gene that’s implicated in breast, prostate, liver, lung, colon and other cancers.
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Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012)
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