Biology
Posted by Marco Altamirano on October 20, 2020
The study of memory has always been one of the stranger outposts of science. In the 1950s, an unknown psychology professor at the University of Michigan named James McConnell made headlines—and…
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Culture
Posted by William Buckner on October 14, 2020
A productive hunt is a violent act—success requiring as it does the dismemberment of a living creature. Yet, to focus alone on the concluding moment, the bloody brutality of the killing…
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Biology
Posted by Alice Fleerackers on October 07, 2020
It’s a feeling we all know well—you’re at a work meeting or in the middle of a book, when you realize that you have no idea what just happened. Without noticing it, your thoughts…
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Culture
Posted by Scott Koenig on October 06, 2020
The power of platforms like Facebook and Google has escaped the control of the optimistic technocrats at their helm. And it is wreaking havoc in ways that we lab rats have only just begun…
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Culture
Posted by Ayala Danzig on October 05, 2020
COVID has reached peak unsexiness. The thought occurs to me as I scroll through previously lively physician COVID forums where research, clinical quandaries, and professional anxieties…
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Biology
Posted by Mary Ellen Hannibal on October 02, 2020
In his new book, The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World, Edward Melillo calls some insects “little laboratories,” the various productions of which have supported…
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Numbers
Posted by George Musser on September 30, 2020
The first artificial neural networks weren’t abstractions inside a computer, but actual physical systems made of whirring motors and big bundles of wire. Here I’ll describe how you…
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Culture
Posted by Brian Gallagher on September 23, 2020
I’m one of the lucky ones. The onset of this pandemic has put a strain on the sanity of many people forced to isolate themselves from friends and family. If you live alone, or with roommates…
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Numbers
Posted by Kevin Hartnett on September 22, 2020
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine‘s Abstractions blog.The 61st International Mathematical Olympiad, or IMO, began yesterday. It may go down in history for at least two reasons:…
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Biology
Posted by Diana Fleischman on September 15, 2020
Manipulative communication surrounds us. With misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic, “cheap” and “deep” fakes of elected officials, and targeted ads and emotionally…
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