When were you first drawn to learning about it? I don’t think that was from some deep-seated, lifelong need to study magnetism, but it grabbed me in grad school as an area of astrophysics that is not well understood and is avoided for its complexity. For astrophysics in general, I did a National Science Foundation… Continue reading Tracing the Hidden Hand of Magnetism in the Galaxy
Amateur Mathematicians Find Fifth ‘Busy Beaver’ Turing Machine
One memorable encounter occurred while Ligocki was visiting Germany the summer after his sophomore year, when he took a side trip to Berlin to meet up with Marxen. “We got through the language barrier through the medium of busy beavers,” he said. The medium of beer also helped. Ligocki ended up having too many and… Continue reading Amateur Mathematicians Find Fifth ‘Busy Beaver’ Turing Machine
Lost Scripture? Jubilees (Missing Book of the Bible?)
Podcast: Download MYS319: Throughout history, there have been books some people considered scripture and others didn’t. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss one of those books, Jubilees. What was does it say? Could any of it be true? What should Christians today think of it? Get all new episodes automatically and for free: Follow by… Continue reading Lost Scripture? Jubilees (Missing Book of the Bible?)
What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?
In the tiling of wallpaper and bathroom floors, collective repeated patterns often emerge. Mathematicians have long tried to find a tiling shape that never repeats in this way. In 2023, they lauded an unexpected amateur victor. That discovery of the elusive aperiodic monotile propelled the field into new dimensions. The study of tessellation is much… Continue reading What Can Tiling Patterns Teach Us?
How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It
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?