To some biologists, that approach leaves the protein folding problem incomplete. From the earliest days of structural biology, researchers hoped to learn the rules of how an amino acid string folds into a protein. With AlphaFold2, most biologists agree that the structure prediction problem is solved. However, the protein folding problem is not. “Right now,… Continue reading How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It
Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep?
Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep? “Bed rotting,” or staying in bed all day, has been touted as a self-care routine on TikTok, but it might actually make you feel worse. Here’s why that happens and how you can snap out of it By Elana Spivack Mariia Borovkova/Getty Images The grueling stretch… Continue reading Is ‘Bed Rotting’ Good or Bad for Your Sleep?
How the Federal Government Loses More Money Than Its Bean-Counters Can Count
Not long after Jeremy Gober started running a sleep center, he quit treating patients for narcolepsy and sleep apnea and went full-time submitting bogus insurance claims. According to Gober’s 2022 indictment, he committed at least one especially sloppy error: One of his make-believe billings included a Medicare claim for treatment in March 2018 for a… Continue reading How the Federal Government Loses More Money Than Its Bean-Counters Can Count
CRISPR Will Likely Not Solve Bird Flu
CRISPR Will Likely Not Solve Bird Flu New research shows that CRISPR, the gene editing technique, could make chickens more resistant to bird flu. But its use raises many ethical and scientific issues By Carol Cardona & Michelle Kromm Alexey Rezvykh/Alamy Stock Photo Recently, a group of scientists announced a breakthrough approach to combat Highly… Continue reading CRISPR Will Likely Not Solve Bird Flu
Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack?
Mathematicians initially believed that it’s a circle. Then, in 1934, a German mathematician named Karl Reinhardt found something worse: an octagon with rounded edges. When those arcs in the corners are drawn using hyperbolas, the total coverage is about 90.24%. The difference between this and the circle’s 90.69% is tiny, but it’s mathematically vital. Reinhardt… Continue reading Why Is This Shape So Terrible to Pack?
How Is Science Even Possible?
The universe seems like it should be unfathomably complex. How then is science able to crack fundamental questions about nature and life? Scientists and philosophers alike have often commented on the “unreasonable” success of mathematics at describing the universe. That success has helped science probe some profound mysteries — but as the physicist Nigel Goldenfeld… Continue reading How Is Science Even Possible?
America’s Suez Moment | RealClearWorld
History, as the familiar saying goes, does not repeat, but often rhymes. Do the crises in Gaza and Ukraine impose a “Suez Moment” on the United States – the events of 2022-24, a refrain to 1956-57? October 1956 featured two major international crises. In that month, Israel launched an assault on Egypt to reopen the… Continue reading America’s Suez Moment | RealClearWorld
How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number
The ancient Greeks wanted to believe that the universe could be described in its entirety using only whole numbers and the ratios between them — fractions, or what we now call rational numbers. But this aspiration was undermined when they considered a square with sides of length 1, only to find that the length of… Continue reading How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number
The Politics of Life | RealClearBooks
The following excerpt is adapted from The Politics of Life: My Road to the Middle of a Hostile and Adversarial World (Regan Arts.) by Douglas E. Schoen Penn, Schoen & Berland had been a successful consulting firm for almost 20 years, but we were still waiting for the ultimate invitation – to work on a… Continue reading The Politics of Life | RealClearBooks
Deathbed Visions (Afterlife Research)
Podcast: Download MYS318: A deathbed vision is a vision that someone has just before they die and they’ve been reported throughout history. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss how they’re just being scientifically studied only recently, what they are, what happens in them, and what they might tell us about the afterlife. Get all new… Continue reading Deathbed Visions (Afterlife Research)