Since the first avian influenza outbreaks hit the U.S. early this year, health and agriculture experts have struggled to track the virus’s spotty path as it spreads in dairy cow herds and an unknown number of humans. Infection risk still seems low for most people, but dairy workers and others directly exposed to cows have… Continue reading There’s Bird Flu in California Wastewater. What’s Next?
What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?
It’s fair to say that enjoyment of a podcast would be severely limited without the human capacity to create and understand speech. That capacity has often been cited as a defining characteristic of our species, and one that sets us apart in the long history of life on Earth. Yet we know that other species… Continue reading What Can Birdsong Teach Us About Human Language?
What Might Happen to Public Health under RFK, Jr.
Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread as well as uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team. Trump has promised he would allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “go wild” on medicines, food, and health. With that, a… Continue reading What Might Happen to Public Health under RFK, Jr.
What If Adam Didn’t Bite the Apple? (Weird Questions)
Podcast: Download MYS340: It’s a fifth Friday, so Cy Kellett of Catholic Answers Live is asking Jimmy Akin weird questions from listeners, about topics like the serpent in the Garden of Eden; Time Lords and Sunday obligation; Adam and the apple; and more weird questions. Get all new episodes automatically and for free: Follow by… Continue reading What If Adam Didn’t Bite the Apple? (Weird Questions)
How Astronomers Tried to Communicate with the Cosmos
[CLIP: Sound of Arecibo message being sent] Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. On November 16, 1974, humanity sent an unprecedented message into the stars. [CLIP: Frank Drake gives a speech on the day of the Arecibo transmission: “If we go as far away as Mars or the other planets and… Continue reading How Astronomers Tried to Communicate with the Cosmos
In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain
To see how, consider two reference frames; we’ll label them A and B. Let’s say that A’s origin is anchored to a quantum object that has probabilities of being found in various locations. From the perspective of B, A’s location is smeared over some region. But from the perspective of A, the distance to B… Continue reading In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain
The People’s Champ Has Lost His People
Picture this, because it really happened: Dwayne Johnson stands in an IMAX theater, taking Christopher Nolan’s seat. “I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits,” he said in a recent interview with Imax. “They said, ‘Chris sits here.’” He watches Oppenheimer, then does something peculiar. He texts his movie director a picture of… Continue reading The People’s Champ Has Lost His People
What Is Distributed Computing? | Quanta Magazine
No device is an island: Your daily computational needs depend on more than just the microprocessors inside your computer or phone. Our modern world relies on “distributed computing,” which shares the computational load among multiple different machines. The technique passes data back and forth in an elaborate choreography of digital bits — a dance that… Continue reading What Is Distributed Computing? | Quanta Magazine
Illegal Migrants Less Likely to Commit Crime? Guess Again.
In June, Victor Martinez-Hernandez was charged with the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland. Police in Oklahoma tracked the accused repeat offender down with a sample of his DNA recovered from a Los Angeles home invasion in which a nine-year-old girl and her mother were assaulted. Police say he came to… Continue reading Illegal Migrants Less Likely to Commit Crime? Guess Again.
New Elliptic Curve Breaks 18-Year-Old Record
In August, a pair of mathematicians discovered an exotic, record-breaking curve. In doing so, they tapped into a major open question about one of the oldest and most fundamental kinds of equations in mathematics. Elliptic curves, which date back to at least ancient Greece, are central to many areas of study. They have a rich… Continue reading New Elliptic Curve Breaks 18-Year-Old Record