Something Happened In Silicon Valley
Learning Through Student Feedback
By Mark Pierce
Quantum Leap Or Quantum Mirage? What Happens...
Life Sciences Can’t Afford Fragmented Data...
The electric car industry is held back by reliance on conventional energy.... Read >
The Usual Suspects of the anti-science movement, Center for Biological Diversity(1)... Read >
Genetic modification of maize over the last century has led to desirable shoot... Read >
"Medical" marijuana is legal in many places but often just an excuse to buy... Read >
“I have lost D’Artagnan, in whom I had every confidence,” wrote King... Read >
In an eight-hour operation, Dr. Daniel Borsuk, doctor at Hôpital Maisonneuve... Read >
Co-Design Of Scientific Experiments
Next Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, you will find a new bulky paper in the arXiv. Titled "On the Co-Design of Scientific Experiments and Industrial Systems", the work is authored by over 80 colleagues. I directed them as co-chair of WG2 of EUCAIF (with Pietro Vischia) in assembling a view of ...
The Strange Case Of The Monotonous Running Average
These days I am putting the finishing touches on a hybrid algorithm that optimizes a system (a gamma-ray observatory) by combining reinforcement-learning with gradient descent. Although I published an optimization strategy for that application already, I am going back to it to demonstrate a case ...
On The Illusion Of Time And The Strange Economy Of Existence
I recently listened again to Richard Feynman explaining why the flowing of time is probably an illusion. In modern physics time is just a coordinate, on the same footing as space, and the universe can be described as a four-dimensional object — a spacetime block. In that view, nothing really ...
RIP - Hans Jensen
Today I was saddened to hear of the passing of Hans Jensen, a physicist and former colleague in the CDF experiment at Fermilab. There is an obituary page here with nice pics and a bio if you want detail on his interesting, accomplished life. Here I thought I would remember him by pasting an excerpt ...
California Taxpayers Forced To Prop Up $2 Billion Ivanpah Solar Disaster
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System "concentrated" solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert is by any measure an unmitigated disaster.The party that is now claiming they are rescuing the Ivanpah they mandated to exist was scheduled to be closed this year - because its low costs were always ...
Urban Trees Can Absorb More CO2 Than Cars Emit
A new study finds that even in urban environments, trees make a terrific contribution to offsetting carbon dioxide emissions in cities, while grass is less valuable.Soil respiration of grass exceeds photosynthesis so grassy areas release more carbon dioxide than they bind, making them a source ...
New Study Shows Shrinking Snow Coverage
A new study examining regional snow cover trends across the Northern Hemisphere found seasonal shifts in snow - and a lot less of it.The authors used the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab Northern Hemisphere Weekly Snow Cover Extent Data Record to determine whether snow cover across the Northern ...
El Niño Climate Effects Shaped By Ocean Salt
Once the weather got political, more attention became focused on the cyclical climate phenomenon El Niño. Critics charged that too many early models were shaped by understating its effects while proponents insisted its efforts were worse due to CO2 emissions.There is something for everyone. It ...
Pilot Study: Fibromyalgia Fatigue Improved By TENS Therapy
Fibromyalgia is the term for a poorly-understood condition where people experience pain and fatigue while moving but have no testable inflammation or damage. Because fatigue is a non-specific symptom, fibromyalgia becomes a 'diagnosis of exclusion', where pain persists but testable conditions are ...
High Meat Consumption Linked To Lower Dementia Risk
Older people who eat large amounts of meat have a lower risk of dementia and cognitive decline than they should have with a gene that some link to increased risk. The gene that has been linked to increased risk is Apolipoprotein E, which plays a role in the transport of cholesterol and fats ...
Teens Are Getting Much Less Sleep Than In The Past
A new paper says teens are not getting enough sleep and a lot of parents with teenage children may disagree. Others reflexively blame phones and tablets.It isn't a new concern, though. Nor is technology new in getting blame. In 1905, The Lancet published a study saying that kids in British boarding ...
Bacteroides Fragilis May Be A Fifth Columnist Helping Colon Cancer In Your Body
The gut bacterium Bacteroides fragilis has long presented researchers with a paradox. It has been associated with colorectal cancer, yet it also lives quite happily in most healthy people. A new study from a Danish research team offers a possible clue. When they looked beyond the bacterium itself ...
The Feel Good Fallacy Of Sugary Drink Taxes On Reducing Obesity
Social authoritarians like to make people more reliant on government and then control what people do with the government assistance they are now reliant upon. It keeps those in control in positions of power. The most recent example is with government funding for food coming attached to strings ...
Ozempic Is A Kickstart, Not Magic - Here Is How To Make Weight Loss Stick
Publicly doctors say all of the things you'd expect a group with heavy state and federal scrutiny to say about weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy but privately they say things like 'people will be on it for the rest of their lives.'Because a drug does not change lifestyle. To reduce risk ...
Don't Sleep A Lot? You May Be At Risk For Diabetes
A new paper says the way to lower your risk of acquiring type 2 diabetes is not losing weight and exercising more, but sleeping 7 hours and 18 minutes every night.You can't multiply that by seven days and catch up by sleeping more on the weekend and it also means if you just sleep less, you are ...
Mushrooms Linked To Fewer COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial tested a four-day oral supplement, “FoTv,” which is made from the mycelium — the root-like network — of two types of mushrooms: Fomitopsis officinalis and Trametes versicolor (FoTv). Participants began taking the supplement on ...
Young People Have Become Jaded To Emotional Appeals On Screens - And That Is Good
Running a pro-science nonprofit is a poor business model. Especially compared to lawyer groups like Environmental Working Group or rich deniers like Greenpeace.'Your food is safe' is a terrible call to action but 'evil chemical corporations are killing you' gets the money rolling in - even though ...
Dogs Have Been 'Man's Best Friend' For 14,000 Years
The bond between humans and dogs is one of the oldest stories in anthropology. It may also be a cautionary tale for other animals, though the organic, holistic, free-range, ayurvedic, shade-tree grown dog food is probably pretty good.A new study of bones recovered from Gough’s Cave and Pınarbaşı ...
Long Before The Inca Colonized Peru, Natives Had A Thriving Trade Network
A new DNA analysis reveals that long before the Incan Empire took over Peru, animals were being transported across the Andes, a trek that also involved rainforests, highlands and deserts. The analysis was of parrot feathers discovered at Pachacamac, Peru, a religious hub that is far outside ...
The Creepy Uncanny Valley Of Targeted Online Marketing
Personalized online ads must work for the same reason advertising must work; it wouldn't be a trillion-dollar industry if it didn't work. Even supplements and organic food are only $140 billion, and those are really popular things that don't work. Advertising is not popular at all but good luck ...
A Chess Study Requiring Backpropagation
The following position is a win for white. But how?It seems like white is able to grab a knight for free. However, that would be not a wise idea, as the c4 pawn would then be free to run down to become a queen. You can easily convince yourself that 1.Nxd8? c3! wins for black. White also has its ...
No Danger, How A Stranger Can Be A Game Changer - A New Book About Making 'Small' Talk
The future career arc for my house is a library bed-and-breakfast. It will be just like it sounds; every bedroom is also a library, as is the house. Except not a government library, with sterile walls and floors that echo, the whole thing will be comfortable.Because some readers are less social ...
Travel With Two Infants
The other day I traveled with Kalliopi and our two newborns to Padova from Lulea. After six full months in Lapland - a full autumn and winter, in fact - I needed to get back to my original office, and take care of other business at what has become my second home now. Meanwhile, travel has become ...
A Nice Little Combination
Although I have long retired from serious chess tournaments (they take too much time, a luxury I do not have anymore - even more so now that I have two infants to help grow!), I insist playing online blitz on chess.com, with alternating fortunes. My elo rating hovers in the 2200-2300 range, signalling ...
A study has been making the rounds and has been published in BJSM. It is a meta-analysis of various... more »
Air India Flight 171 - Flawed EE Bay Water Ingress TheoryRichard Godfrey, in many videos on the... more »
In the past few years my activities on this site - but I would say more in general, as the same... more »
This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture... more »
Sheer beauty — a beautiful Euhoplites ammonite from Folkstone, UK. These lovelies have a pleasing... more »
