Tag: science

Metamaterial Noise Cancellation

Acoustic metamaterial and noise cancellation device capable of blocking 94% of transmitted sound energy while preserving air flow

Easy distributed consistency

What is the family of problems that can be consistently computed in a distributed fashion without coordination, and what problems lie outside that family?

Enhanced photoreceptors

Injectable NanoParticles Let Mice See Near Infrared

these nanoparticles not only provide the potential for close integration within the human body to extend the visual spectrum, but also open new opportunities to explore a wide variety of animal vision-related behaviors. Furthermore, they exhibit considerable potential with respect to the development of bio-integrated nanodevices in civilian encryption, security, military operations, and human-machine interfaces, which require NIR light image detection that goes beyond the normal functions of mammals, including human beings. Moreover, in addition to visual ability enhancement, this nanodevice can serve as an integrated and light-controlled system in medicine, which could be useful in the repair of visual function as well as in drug delivery for ocular diseases.

Claymation Education

Human beings are strange. The unimaginative jackass Logan Paul has 18m YouTube subscribers, while the fascinating and talented Maxwell Helmberger has 105 subscribers. In my opinion, Paul should have 105 subscribers and Helmberger should have 18m. Helmberger’s claymation video about how the pincushion millipede (smaller than a grain of rice!) defends itself against ants trying it eat it has 94 views. Please watch and share with your friends. I want to encourage him to do more.

Hifi image synthesis

Ian Goodfellow’s tweets showing x years of progress on GAN image generation really bring home how fast things are improving. For example, here’s 4.5 years worth of progress on face generation:

And here we have just 2 years of progress on class-conditional image generation:

I was drawn to this paper to try and find out what’s behind the stunning rate of progress.

Bye, Clouds

A new simulation finds that global warming could cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear in as little as a century, which would add 8°C of extra warming to the planet.

Medieval Trade Routes

Even before modern times the Afro-Eurasian world was already well connected. This map depicts the main trading arteries of the high middle ages, just after the decline of the Vikings and before the rise of the Mongols, the Hansa and well before the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

Fragile DNA

Fragile DNA Enables New Adaptations to Evolve Quickly

If highly repetitive gene-regulating sequences in DNA are easily lost, then that may explain why some adaptations evolve quickly and repeatedly

Alphabet Origin

this alphabet, designed by and for sub-literate Semites living on the borderlands of Egypt 4 ka ago – is likely the origin point of all modern alphabets. In some cases, it’s a direct lineal descent as in Canaanite to Greek to Latin to our modern alphabet

Scale can weigh a proton

Ricci’s sensor can achieve ~1% accuracy. 1 goal for such precise sensors is to create high-resolution images of individual proteins and other molecules. Bachtold is developing similar sensors made of carbon nanotubes. You could place a single molecule in a magnetic field, which rotates the molecule’s constituent atoms. Because distinct elements rotate at different rates, a nearby force sensor could detect the rate of rotation of the atoms to identify them.