Tagged “science”

Decoding scrolls from Pompeii

maybe? Saw some tweet on the equivalent of "I can't remember phone numbers" but for coming up with ideas. Maybe worrying, probably fine.

I think this is the source of the "men at 25 at mature as women at 18" thing.

any field with “behavioral” in its name is not real

why are they yin-yangs

cool new thing to worry about this week

weird little anaerobic guys

probably not. fun idea though

one of the best MR comments sections I have seen

People become preoccupied with food

very very very very big things

too many papers being published leads to "ossification of canon"

Essay about slime molds

paper fibres make the edges quite rough and serrated

Lot of interesting stats throughout.

1. To add enough CO2 to Mars to make the atmosphere thicker (which reduces temp fluctations), would make the atmosphere unbreathable regardless of O2 content
2. Earth-like does not mean like current earth. For most of the planet's history the water and atmosphere were toxic to us
3. It would take 79,000 years at current rocket speeds to get to Alpha Centauri

“There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.”

Impurities (lime clasts) that heal cracks when water runs through them.

Some craaazy facts about microbes in there. And I actually came away convinced! Have previously taken the same argument NASA made for space exploration originally - all the incidental inventions and discoveries made make it worthwhile. But the extreme cost (and risk of contamination) make sending humans to Mars seem like a not great idea. Just let robots do it.

Humans in space is more of a biology problem than an engineering problem. Or at least the engineering of life support systems is the bigger challenge than building rockets.

The subject selection baffled me. The 1890 group was all people from military, I don't think that was the case for more recent cohort.

From hn

tldr no idea

Don't stop at the first sentence like I did on first open.
Unless you want the opposite takeaway

Abstract:

Instrumental variable (IV) analysis assumes the instrument only affects the dependent variable via its relationship with the independent variable. Other possible causal routes from the IV to the dependent
variable are exclusion-restriction violations and invalidate the instrument. Weather has been widely used as an instrumental variable in social science to predict many different variables. The use of weather to instrument different independent variables represents strong prima facie evidence of exclusion violations for all studies using weather IVs. A review of 288 studies reveals 192 variables previously linked to weather: all representing potential exclusion violations. Using sensitivity analysis, I show that the magnitude of many of these violations is sufficient to overturn numerous existing IV results. I conclude with practical steps to systematically review existing literature to identify possible exclusion violations when using IV designs.

questions:

• what is an instrumental variable?
• what are exclusion results?
• is 192 variables in 192 studies, or are some shared
• what else is included in weather?
• what is sensitivity analysis?
• what are IV results

The continuing value of the little solar system model.

Little planets are easier to comprehend than a probalistic cloud of electrons

Recommended from Friedberg when talking about fertilisers

bit clickbaity

Quite a few microbes have abandoned the human gut, as humans have lost 57 of the 100 or so branches, or clades, of microbes currently found in chimps or bonobos and at least one other nonhuman primate, Moeller reported on 11 June at Microbe 2022, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Moeller was also able to estimate when some of the human gut microbes disappeared. A few were lost thousands of years ago, and some have disappeared more recently, with city dwellers having lost the most, Moeller reported.

Invention is overrated, implementation underrated. Both in difficulty, and importance.

Hacking coral sex to accelerate reef regrowth

The physics and background of curling. Some fascinating bits in there. I thought it was just about pushing a stone across some ice.

Awesome diagrams of the inside of undersea cables, and the boats and bots used to lay them.

Pretty damn hard to make things that last

Except the batteries on that rover are long dead. Many, if not all, of the plastic and paper insulators exposed to vacuum are now brittle and broken. All labels or painted surfaces are likely bleached white. Differential expansion during lunar daylight cycles has likely snapped a few things here and there too. Fifty years of exposure to static electric charges on the moon has put lunar dust in all sorts of places it doesn't belong.

some very beautiful math drawings

good writing, particularly some of the analogies

They concluded white stripes! The zebra's skin is black, and the change in pigment in the hair makes it white.

My (non-expert) opinion is still in favor of fractional dosing. Really needed more non-industry research on it though.

Original title was "Why Captcha Pictures Are So Unbearably Depressing", which felt a bit complainy compared to the updated one. I agreed less with that take on the article, but a lot with the sentiment from the HN comments

A website with captchas is like a retail store with metal detectors; it's not somewhere I feel welcome.

Some terrifying terms in there. Universe 25 seemed ominous enough, but the 'Beautiful Ones' - the mice that just dedicated their lives entirely to grooming - is like something from a movie.

This is the kind of thing where you think "oh sure that would be a neat side project" but the reality is an immense amount of effort

Pending peer review, but apparently large benefit in waiting 12 weeks rather than three.

In donors without evidence of previous infection the peak antibody response was 3.5-fold higher in donors who had undergone delayed interval vaccination. Cellular immune responses were 3.6-fold lower.

Overview of a century of breakthroughs and other improvements to health and longevity. The many small changes that stack up to reduce mortality.

Interesting stuff. I have no real background in this but still found the article and experiment outline very readable.

Ambitious thing to estimate - I don't even try to predict a week ahead!

Some things to get excited about:

• mRNA tech
• geothermal power
• in-orbit manufacturing of things that cannot exist on Earth(!)

I particularly like the interlude:

no, you can't randomly cite 2,000-page-long books and hope nobody will read them