The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Wildfires, pushed by powerful winds, raced through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 8 and 9, 2023, leaving a charred and smoldering landscape across the tourist town of about 13,000 residents that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii. At least 36… Continue reading Maui’s Deadly Wildfires Are a Reminder of Growing Risks
Tag: Quantum Stuff
Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster
“It turns out that we did not have full understanding” of the theory behind gradient descent, said Shuvomoy Das Gupta, an optimization researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now, he said, we’re “closer to understanding what gradient descent is doing.” The technique itself is deceptively simple. It uses something called a cost function, which… Continue reading Risky Giant Steps Can Solve Optimization Problems Faster
The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers
Quanta Magazine > 0; if (typeof predicate !== ‘function’) { throw new TypeError(‘predicate must be a function’); } var thisArg = arguments[1]; var k = 0; while (k We care about your data, and we’d like to use cookies to give you a smooth browsing experience. Please agree and read more about our privacy policy.Agree… Continue reading The Cryptographer Who Ensures We Can Trust Our Computers
How Genetic Surprises Complicate the Old Doctrine of DNA
Does an unseen force lurk within genetics? Biologists have made enormous strides over the past 100 years in understanding the role of the millions of parcels that convey our genetic information — DNA, RNA and proteins. But they have also learned about undetectable interactions between these biochemical agents, hiding in their midst like ghosts in… Continue reading How Genetic Surprises Complicate the Old Doctrine of DNA
The World’s Oldest Moss Outlived the Dinosaurs, but It May Not Survive Climate Change
CLIMATEWIRE | For nearly 400 million years, the world’s oldest moss has survived the shifting landscapes of planet Earth. Takakia, as the genus is known by scientists, has lived through ice ages and mass extinctions, and endured age after age of natural warming and cooling. It outlasted the dinosaurs, and it was there when the first… Continue reading The World’s Oldest Moss Outlived the Dinosaurs, but It May Not Survive Climate Change
Ninth Dedekind Number Found by Two Independent Groups
Richard Dedekind was a 19th-century mathematical giant, responsible for reshaping the field right down to its foundations. He was the first to give a rigorous definition of infinity; he also came up with the definition of the real numbers that form the basis of much of modern mathematics. In 1897, he published an investigation into… Continue reading Ninth Dedekind Number Found by Two Independent Groups
How to Protect Yourself from Ticks and the Dangerous Diseases They Spread
Summer is the season for stone fruit, pool parties, cookouts and, increasingly for Americans, ticks. Ecologist Felicia Keesing had an uncanny sense for ticks for as long as she could remember. If one bit her, she could feel it and would quickly pluck it off with tweezers. But last year this superpower failed her when… Continue reading How to Protect Yourself from Ticks and the Dangerous Diseases They Spread
AI Promises Humanity One Last Job. Helping AI Help Humanity
From dethroning chess masters and game show champions to outperforming radiologists, the dazzling—and at times overwhelming—world of artificial intelligence raises deep questions about the future of human jobs. In the last century, our capacity to store and process data has soared, with electronics marching from the vacuum tube to the transistor to today’s semiconductor chips.… Continue reading AI Promises Humanity One Last Job. Helping AI Help Humanity
New Calculations Show How to Escape Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox
Akers had already convinced himself that the conversion program should be written in the language of quantum error correction, as Harlow had already worked out for empty space. The semiclassical interior would be the message, and the quantum exterior would be the transmission. And given that the interior seemed to grow inside a shrinking horizon,… Continue reading New Calculations Show How to Escape Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox
Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species
Previous studies of horizontal transfers have often focused on the mobile genetic elements called transposons. These privileged “jumping genes” can hop around the genome of an organism by replicating themselves and inserting their copies. Their sole concern is to promote their own survival within the genome rather than the fitness of the organism, which is… Continue reading Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species