Blogs about Science

After doing a night bottle feed of our youngest in the wee hours of the morning some nights earlier this week, in order to help me get back to sleep I decided to turn on …

In an alternative history of the world, perhaps quantum mechanics could have been discovered by chemists following up on the theories of two mathematicians from the late 1800s: Sylvester, and Gordan. Both are famous for …

There is something delightful about riding a bicycle. Once mastered, the simple action of pedaling to move forward and turning the handlebars to steer makes bike riding an effortless activity. In the demonstration below, you …

White blood cells called neutrophils have an unappreciated role in eradicating solid tumors, according to a surprise discovery from a team led by Weill Cornell Medicine scientists.

In a study, published in the journal Science China Chemistry and led by Prof. Pingping Fang (School of Chemistry, Zhejiang University) and Prof. Jianfeng Li (College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University), experiments were …

Why do cancer immunotherapies work so extraordinarily well in a minority of patients, but fail in so many others? By analyzing the role of neutrophils, immune cells whose presence usually signals treatment failure, scientists from …

The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this. Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. Image: CC-BY Tom Stafford 2022 For me though, …

Hot bodies emit heat in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Lightbulbs and night vision cameras are examples of technologies based on this physical phenomenon. Our daily experience tells us that heat is always directed from …

A guide to some of the articles here that don't quite fit into other categories (yet)

Links Nikunj Koathari's H1B-to-US-residency guide The present, past, and future of pharmaceutical blockbusters Experimental gene therapy trials, happening in the charter city Prospera Estimating ChatGPT's inference costs Ben Reinhardt launches Speculative Technologies (previously PARPA) A …

The US particle physics community has been going through a multi-year process designed to lead up this fall to a 10 year strategic plan to be presented to the DOE and the NSF. In particular, …

An international research team led by Professors Tsuneyuki Ozaki and François Légaré at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), has developed a unique method to enhance the power of a laser source emitting …

All animals, plants, fungi and protists — which collectively make up the domain of life called eukaryotes — have genomes with a peculiar feature that has puzzled researchers for almost half a century: Their genes …

In case you hadn’t noticed there is a four-weekly cycle of blog posts here at the Renaissance Mathematicus. Week one is a new series post, week two a fairly random #histSTM post, week three the …

For a decade, scientists have been scratching their heads when trying to put a date on primeval events like the crystallization of the magma ocean on the moon or the early formation of Earth’s continental …

There’s now an open letter arguing that the world should impose a six-month moratorium on the further scaling of AI models such as GPT, by government fiat if necessary, to give AI safety and interpretability …

Last summer, the biggest four-day work week trial in the world kicked off in the UK. 3,300 people started working 80 percent of their regular hours for 100 percent of their pay. Feedback from employees …

The Sixth Stage of Grief Is Retro-computing (h/t Visakan) ExFatLoss on measurement: a “Regular, Boring Scale” is the best way to measure body weight for weight loss. “All other methods are either less precise, more …

Our third seminar speaker competition has come to an end, with the final round pitting Beverly “Ramona” Cleary against Laura “Ingalls” Wilder. Before going on, I’d like to say that Alison Bechdel is the “Veronica …

Vox provides a very clear explanation of Henrietta Leavitt's 1908 discovery that allows us to estimate the distance to stars and galaxies. The book Einstein's Greatest Mistake (which I previously reviewed here) also discusses Leavitt's …