In a recent entry, I provided a summary of Brian Caplan’s views (in his book The Case against Education ) about the main evils of our contemporary education system. In a nutshell, the main problem is, in the first place, that most of what is taught in schools and colleges is basically not learnt, or […]
Remains of woolly mammoths found in Mexico pits The remains of 14 woolly mammoths have been found in pits in Mexico dug about 15,000 years ago by humans, according to officials with the National Institute of Anthropology and History. “[The discovery] represents a watershed, a touchstone on what we imagined until now was the interaction […]
A collection of local magnetic moments arranged in a linear fashion that interact via some spin-spin coupling is generally known as a spin chain . This seemingly simple object is one of the most complex and rich physical systems that have been studied since the advent of quantum mechanics without a decline in interest ever […]
Some people are cool not getting enough sleep. I am, however, not one of those. After almost two years of sleep deprivation I can say I am close to becoming the grumpy dwarf from Snow White. And up until now, I didn’t have a reason to justify why me and not others. But Sahil Bajaj […]
Emotion recognition is the process of identifying human emotions. This is something that humans do automatically but computational methodologies have also been developed. Humans show universal consistency in recognizing emotions but also show a great deal of variability between individuals in their abilities. Whether persons with autism are able to recognize human emotions as well […]
AI outplays most humans in StarCraft II video game An artificial intelligence developed by tech firm DeepMind is better at playing the strategic video game StarCraft II than most human players, and its prowess is detailed in a study published in Nature. “Ever since computers cracked Go, chess, and poker, StarCraft has emerged by consensus […]
Any physical law in which the magnitude of a physical quantity is proportional to the reciprocal of the square of the distance (1/r 2) from the source of that property is known as an inverse-square law. Newton’s law of gravitation and Coulomb’s law are both examples. When Newton proposed his law of gravitation in his […]
Tides are more predictable than winds or sunshine. Then, why are not they already widely used as a source of renewable energy? The simple answer is that designing and building an ocean energy array is quite complex. This complexity has an associated variability in the cost of energy that makes projects difficult to evaluate from […]
That female fertility is not stable during a woman’s lifetime is nothing new, but now a new study in the journal Science has found an explanation to its inverted U shape: chromosome errors! This inverted U shape for female fertility means that adolescent women and women over their mid-30s are not as fertile as those […]
Unexpected extra digit found on aye-aye lemur The already unusual aye-aye lemur has revealed another secret to researchers — a spare thumb hidden in its palm. Over time, the animals became so adept at tap foraging, they lost their ability to grip, but may have used their pseudo thumbs to make up for it. The […]