The New Math of Some Temporary Things
New Math is an attempt to quantify the world using words and basic math.
New Math is an attempt to quantify the world using words and basic math.
Researchers at the University of Manchester say they have discovered a 16 million-year-old springtail hitchhiking on the wings of mayflies. Researchers say that a CT scan of amber has revealed the very first evidence of any creature hitchhiking on the wings of an adult mayfly. Tiny springtails are likely using mayflies for transportation today, researchers…
It started with a bang, and has been expanding ever since. For nearly a century, this has been the standard view of the Universe. Now one cosmologist is proposing a radically different interpretation of events — in which the Universe is not expanding at all. In a paper posted on the arXiv preprint server1, Christof…
Researchers at Rice University and Penn State University have discovered that adding a dash of boron to carbon while creating nanotubes turns them into solid, spongy, reusable blocks that have an astounding ability to absorb oil spilled in water. That’s one of a range of potential innovations for the material created in a single step….
A pair of detectors that measure minute distortions in images of distant galaxies will probe the riddle of cosmic acceleration.
An international research team says it has identified a specific DNA sequence associated with leadership skills. The findings, which appeared online in the journal Leadership Quarterly, suggest that a quarter of the variation among leadership qualities in individuals could be inherited — due to the genotype rs4950. To find this genotype, the team analyzed the…
Steven Pinker has written a long essay in The New Republic embracing scientism. That’s really too bad, because this way Pinker joins a disturbingly long list of scientists (and a few philosophers) who confuse a defense of good science with a knee-jerk reaction against sound criticism of science. [For a good, if partial, response to Pinker from the Left look here; for a far less convincing one, from the Right, look here.]