The Auberge du Soleil, a five-star hillside hotel and spa with a panoramic view overlooking the vineyards of Napa Valley, appears to be first-rate in all ways but one. While the glamorous resort, an hour’s drive from San Francisco, fills rooms that routinely go for $2,000 a night with A-list celebrities and tech titans, financial records… Continue reading Nancy Pelosi Profited as Luxury Napa Resort Won COVID-19 Bailout
Developing Expertise Improves the Brain’s Ability to Concentrate
November 13, 2024 5 min read Developing Expertise Improves the Brain’s Ability to Concentrate Expertise bulks up the brain’s ability to think deeply, a skill that may generalize across tasks By Hanna Poikonen edited by Daisy Yuhas Malte Mueller/Getty Images Think of the last time you concentrated deeply to solve a challenging problem. To solve… Continue reading Developing Expertise Improves the Brain’s Ability to Concentrate
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust in Public Health
Just weeks before President-elect Trump announced that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya would be his nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Bhattacharya and I were together at Stanford University for a bold, first-of-its-kind symposium on public health decision making during the COVID-19 crisis. The idea behind the symposium was to shatter the public health… Continue reading Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust in Public Health
How I Overcame Solastalgia
As I sit in my backyard in Abuja, Nigeria, looking out at the open landscape around me, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of loss. The rolling hills that were once vibrant with a rich carpet of wild ferns, daisies, lupines and goldenrods are now dotted with invasive species that have choked out… Continue reading How I Overcame Solastalgia
Do Illegal Migrants Drive Up Housing Costs? It’s Complicated
Logansport, Indiana, seems like the perfect place to test Donald Trump’s claim that an influx of migrants is a major reason housing prices and rents are soaring in America. The heartland town with a population of 18,200 has seen an influx of between 2,000 and 5,000 Haitian immigrants during the last few years, all of… Continue reading Do Illegal Migrants Drive Up Housing Costs? It’s Complicated
What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know.
In investigating the limits of extracting work from their real-world information engine, Bechhoefer and Still have found that, in certain regimes, it can significantly outperform conventional engines. They’ve also tracked the inefficiency associated with receiving partial information about the bead’s state, inspired by Still’s theoretical work. The information engine is now shrinking to the quantum… Continue reading What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know.
America Is Ready for a New Chapter and Restoration of the American Dream
In the weeks since President-elect Donald Trump’s historic victory, I’ve walked the streets of Miami, talking to the people who shape our future, about the future. I listened to a young couple who had just opened a small café—its tables filled with neighbors eager to support their new venture. I spoke with a college student… Continue reading America Is Ready for a New Chapter and Restoration of the American Dream
Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
Theorists brainstormed new ways of pairing electrons. The higher-temperature superconductors seemed to have atoms arranged in a way that slows electrons down. And when electrons get the chance to mingle in a leisurely fashion, they collectively generate an ornate electric field that can make them do novel things, like form pairs rather than repel. Physicists… Continue reading Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold
“The whole story hinges on that kind of scaling,” said David Hayes, a physicist at the quantum computing company Quantinuum. “It’s really exciting to see that become a reality.” Majority Rules The simplest version of error correction works on ordinary “classical” computers, which represent information as a string of bits, or 0s and 1s. Any… Continue reading Quantum Computers Cross Critical Error Threshold
The Potential Power of DOGE
There can be little doubt that the recent election of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States has unleashed a fair degree of animal spirits in the financial markets and in corporate America. Some of this could simply be a function of the fact that a chaotic and sometimes frightening election is… Continue reading The Potential Power of DOGE