But just how much harder? In 1962, the mathematician Tibor Radó invented a new way to explore this question through what he called the busy beaver game. To play, start by choosing a specific number of rules — call that number n. Your goal is to find the n-rule Turing machine that runs the longest… Continue reading Busy Beaver Hunters Reach Numbers That Overwhelm Ordinary Math
Can You Ordain Yourself on a Desert Island? (And More Weird Questions)
Podcast: Download MYS379: Could a layperson on a desert island take on the role of a priest? It’s time for more listener weird questions with Jimmy Akin and Cy Kellett of Catholic Answers Live, including topics like aerial toll booths in the afterlife, whether Balaam’s donkey had a rational soul, whether God could have become… Continue reading Can You Ordain Yourself on a Desert Island? (And More Weird Questions)
Lessons from Latvia’s Efforts to Keep Essential Services Running During a Crisis
Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression has demonstrated an important lesson about national defense: it requires all levels of society, not just the military. It’s also not enough simply to respond in a crisis. It’s necessary to be prepared ahead of one. Applying these lessons, Latvia has in recent years pursued a comprehensive approach to defense… Continue reading Lessons from Latvia’s Efforts to Keep Essential Services Running During a Crisis
What Does It Mean To Be Thirsty?
Because these brain areas are difficult to study — due not only to their location, but also to their composition, with many different cell types and crisscrossed circuitry — it’s only in the last decade or so that neuroscientists have begun to understand how thirst fundamentally works. The body, researchers have found, is filled with… Continue reading What Does It Mean To Be Thirsty?
There’s a Dangerous Mismatch Between School Schedules and Adolescent Circadian Rhythms. As a Sleep Scientist, Here Are My Recommendations
As summer winds down and the days grow shorter, Utah families are gearing up for the start of another school year. The excitement of new school supplies and the pursuit of that perfect first-day-of-school outfit is tempered by the threat of painfully earlier mornings and stricter nighttime routines. Many parents may welcome this return to… Continue reading There’s a Dangerous Mismatch Between School Schedules and Adolescent Circadian Rhythms. As a Sleep Scientist, Here Are My Recommendations
The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil.
If there’s an upside to this fragility, it’s that the new work exposes what happens when you steer a model toward the unexpected, Hooker said. Large AI models, in a way, have shown their hand in ways never seen before. The models categorized the insecure code with other parts of their training data related to… Continue reading The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil.
Dissecting America’s AI Action Plan: A Primer for Biosecurity Researchers
Recently, the Trump administration unveiled its AI Action Plan (PDF). While there are throughlines linking this to the last administration’s policies, this new plan emphasizes AI “opportunity” over AI “safety,” a recalibration previously signaled by Vice President J.D. Vance at the AI Action Summit this spring and the renaming of the AI Safety Institute as… Continue reading Dissecting America’s AI Action Plan: A Primer for Biosecurity Researchers
New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
Their techniques aren’t just promising for analyzing models of electron behavior like Anderson’s. The work also taps into a longtime quest to understand systems that aren’t entirely random or entirely ordered. “I’m actually very excited,” said Horng-Tzer Yau of Harvard University, who has been working on the problem for most of his career. When it… Continue reading New Physics-Inspired Proof Probes the Borders of Disorder
The Missing Star in Your Hotel Review? Sleep Quality
A colleague of mine, a fellow sleep scientist, has something of a reputation. Whenever she stays at a hotel, she travels armed with a small “sleep retrofitting” toolkit: black duct tape to seal light leaks from inadequate curtains, sticky notes to cover glowing electronic displays, even her own pillow and white noise machine. Before she’s… Continue reading The Missing Star in Your Hotel Review? Sleep Quality
Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation
“That’s just freaking awesome. It’s a really clever thing,” Glotzer said. “Until now, no one has ever successfully tried to do DFT calculations on something that wasn’t periodic.” Michael Widom, a physicist at Carnegie Mellon University, said the stability result might help explain how quasicrystals form in the first place. “It answers a fundamental question.… Continue reading Quasicrystals Spill Secrets of Their Formation