Welcome to our curated articles collection, from a variety of sources. The articles are now grouped by topic. Full length articles published by MathSciTech continue to be on the main site.
This year in April 2024, it will have been 10 years since we began this collection of 300+ thought-provoking articles.
Curated Articles by Topic
A. Mathematics, Its Applications, Its History
+ 1. Mathematics & Applied Maths
+ 2. History of Mathematical Sciences and Mathematicians
B. Science, Technology, & Computing
+ 3. Space & Space-Related Science
+ 4. Modern Astronomy & Cosmology
+ 5. Breakthrough Science
+ 6. Emerging Technology
+ 7. Computing
C. Life & the Human Condition
+ 8. Future Prospects
+ 9. Present Condition
+ 10. Past Condition
+ 11. Public Policy
D. History & Civilization
- Monstrous Moonshine – (March 2015, Erica Klarreich, Quanta) – Mathematicians have found connections between J theory of modular forms, sporadic simple groups, and connections to theoretical physics including string theory
- The Langlands and Geometric Langlands Programs – Explorations into a Grand Unified Theory of Mathematics – (March 2022, Rachel Crowell, Scientific American). Pure mathematics and physics are finding deep connections in the modern parts of both subjects through the two Langlands Programs. The original was shared in 1969 by Robert Langlands in a private 17-page letter to Andre Weil. Connections have been found between quantum mechanics, high energy physics, condensed matter physics, and number theory, group theory, and representation theory.
- The Langlands Program in Mathematics (June 1, 2022, Alex Kontorovich, Quanta) A far-reaching program that unifies harmonic analysis and number theory, through a bridge that includes modular forms and elliptic curves.
- Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Mathematics (Sep 21, 2023, Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta). There are five fundamental operations in mathematics: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and modular forms.
- Elliptic curves create a new number system (July 6, 2023, Kevin Hartnett)
- John Baez on On Elliptic Curves (April 20, 1993, John Baez, This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics) – Covers elliptic curves by analogy with the sine function, but in two dimensions (complex variables), construction from first principles, as solution to differential equation, whose solution possesses a group structure, which can be used to find integer/rational solutions to polynomial equations (Diophantine solutions, related to Andrew Wiles’ solution of Fermat’s Last Theorem).
- How math achieved transcendence, (June 27, 2023, David Richeson, Quanta)
- Riemann’s Hypothesis (Jan 4, 2021, Alex Kontorovich, Quanta)
- Complex numbers naturally describe the shape of space
- Extending the Arnold conjecture on stable orbits in classical mechanics: a new geometric theory of motion – (June 2022, Kelsey Houston-Edwards, Wired)
- Tomb Raider: An Allegory for Quantum Mechanics – (Feb 2007, Terence Tao) – Fields Medalist mathematician Terence Tao explores how the world might appear to look from the perspective of a quantum particle. The analogy explores the link with how the world might look to us if we were a character in a computer game that allowed save points, and retries in case of death in the game.
- A Link Between Number Theory and Genetics – (Aug 2023, SciTechDaily) – The sum-of-digits function from number theory appears in the maximum robustness of mutations in genetics via the logarithm of all possible gene sequences that map to a particular phenotype.
- Daniel Larsen (aged 17) discovered a new property of Carmichael numbers – (October 2022, Jordana Cepelewicz, Quanta) – these are numbers that mimic the primes.
- New bounds on the number of integers that can be written as the sum of 2 rational cubes – (November 2022, Erica Klarreich) – The bounds are 2/21 and 5/6. The long-standing conjecture is 1/2.
- Another Three Fields Medals and Three Puzzles – In 2022, there were four fields medal winners. In this article, a taste of the mathematics behind 3 of the fields medal topics are given in the form of puzzle challenges for you to try.
- A chess puzzle whose mathematics led to a Fields Medal.
- The Mathematics behind winning games of strategy.
- OpenAI is developing an artificial intelligence Q* that’s good at maths – (December 2023, Tom Oliver, The Conversation) – The Q* AI algorithm has the ability to reason mathematically instead of employing a purely generative large language algorithm. It remains to be seen whether Q* can either do, or assist in, research-level mathematics, in much the same way that large-language AI algorithms are able to write, program or assist writers and programmers.
- Interview with a Mathematician series: John Baez | Terence Tao |
- Fields medalist mathematician Terence Tao comments on finding uses for ChatGPT in his mathematics – (April 2023, PanDaily) – From intelligent search, to more efficient location of a source or citation, to parsing articles for formulas, to providing a sounding board for likely questions from bright undergraduates, to taking away tedium of administrative or formatting tasks involved in writing, coding, or preparing journal papers for publication.
2022
- ArXiV – Papers on Quantitative Science (#282c) (Feb 1, 2022).
- Nick Higham’s Fifty ‘What Is’ Articles on Numerical Linear Algebra and the GitHub page
#282b – The Bernoulli Numbers and the value of persistence in driving Change in Conventional Perspectives - An Introduction to the Bernoulli function, a detailed study by Peter Lucsny, (2020).
- The Bernoulli Numbers are the Children of the Zeta Function (The Bernoulli Manifesto).
- Don Knuth accepts the arguments of Peter Luchsny and changes the definition of B(1) to +1/2 instead of previously -1/2. Replacement pages for Concrete Mathematics
#280 – Expository Math
A tradition in advanced math is the exposition of a subject that makes it accessible to interested non-specialists. Expository writing in mathematics can aim to provide this service for other mathematicians, or for non-mathematicians.
In this entry, I will share some expository writing aimed at mathematicians that I find effective. For me the criteria are (1) brevity and (2) scope, that is, keep it short, and take a broad lens (breadth first) view of the subject. By contrast, most formally developed mathematics is depth first, which is why it takes an academic year to develop a subject from beginning to end, layer by layer, bottom up. You can judge for yourself the value of good expository writing. - Birth of a Theorem
- John Baez, Week 20: On Sphere Packings, the Golden Ratio, and Exotic Simple Groups, October 2, 1993, TWF-MP
- John Baez, Week 21: On the fundamental examples of elementary topology, Oct 10, 1993, TWF-MP
- John Baez, Week: 39 On Noncommutative geometry, differential forms, and the Higgs boson, Sep 24, 1994, TWF-MP
- John Baez, Week 40: On Logic and modern branches of logic used to model quantum computing, Oct 19, 1994, TWF-MP
#279 – Math & Reasoning Puzzles Suitable for Children
Puzzles suitable for children need to be accessible, immediately appealing, and perplexingly difficult. This means they need to be easy to explain, not require a lot of symbolism or require specialized knowledge, and contain some deep ideas.
Here are a few I’ve used over the years with kids (6 years+) and teenagers through adults:- Lion, Goat, Cabbage and Farmer. Variants: Cannibals and Missionaries. [Algorithms]
- Towers of Hanoi. [Algorithms]
- Permutations of N. [Combinatorics]
- 8-Matchstick Fish [Symmetry]
- Bridges of Konigsberg. Variants: Draw house with central X without lifting pencil. [Network/Graphs. Eulerian/Hamiltonian paths and cycles]
- Sum of First 100 numbers. Variant. Sum of Squares. Sums of Nth Powers. [Gauss problem. Proof by Induction. Bernoulli Numbers]
- Triangular Numbers. Square Numbers. [Number Theory]
- Sieve of Erastosthenes. Prime Numbers. [Number Theory]
- Prime Races. Variant: Consecutive Primes. [Number Theory]
- Pascal’s Triangle. [Patterns, Combinatorics, Combinatorial Identities]
- Divisibility Rules. [Modular Arithmetic. Casting out 9s]
- Rock Paper Scissors. [Strange Algebras]
- Enumerating subsets of N-Set. [Combinatorics]
- Doubling grains of Wheat on a chessboard. [Exponential growth] Variant: Sumerian cattle [Unconstrained population growth]
- Gray code tour of binary numbers on N digits [DFS/BFS algorithms]. Variant: Knights Tour
- More than K or less than L Heads out of N tosses [binomial distribution, tail probabilities and gambling]
- Fair distribution into 2 parts [Game Theory]. Variant: Into 3 parts. Into N Parts. [Knife Cutting Algorithm]
2021
#278b – Math & Computer Science Breakthroughs – Year in Review - Kernal Machines unlock Deep Neural Networks, a resolution of Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis and a larger size for the continuum than previously thought, and bridging probability theory and representation theory to come up with a model for 2D quantum gravity.
- #277b – DeepMind’s AI untangles mathematics of knots
- #263 – The Antikythera, the world’s earliest computer, at 100 BCE
#257 – Premier Problems in Modern Maths
Mar 6th, 2021 - Hilbert’s problems: 1900
- Landau problems: 1912
- Weil conjectures: 1949
- Smale problems: 1998
- Simon problems: 2000
- Millenium prize problems: 2000
- What does being a mathematician entail? This lovely talk by Fields Medalist Cedric Villani in 2010 for a non-mathematical audience does an excellent job of talking about mathematics.
Cedric Villani himself is a lucid and entertaining speaker, sometimes called the Lady Gaga of Mathematics (New Yorker) for his flamboyant style and persona. His narratives are gripping – I recall listening with fascination, from start to finish, to an audio book by Villani, “Birth of a Theorem“, on a flight between London and Seattle a few years ago. If you want to know the delights of mathematical discovery and live glimpse into what it’s like to be a professional mathematician, let Villani’s talk and book be your introduction. - #220 – Tribute to Mariam Mirzakhani, mathematician, first female (and first Iranian) Fields Medalist
Miriam Mirzakhani passed away on Friday May 15th, 2020, after a battle with cancer for several years. In 2014, at the age of 40, she won mathematics’ highest award, the Fields Medal, for her work in the geometry of curves spaces. She leaves a daughter of 12 years, and her husband. The New York times gives a fitting tribute Mariam. Rest in Peace. - #191 – Statistical Testing: Why Signal to Noise (and Type II errors) matter.
Mon 19th August, 2019The sample size for a statistical test is a function of three factors:
(1) significance level, or what likelihood to assign Type 1 errors (false alarms). Typically this is at least 5% (95% confidence).
(2) power of the test to detect the effect, or what likelihood to assign Type 2 errors (missed detections). Typically this is at least 20% (80% power), though for important studies, this will be 10% (90% power).
(3) Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), which is the ratio of the difference in the means (signal) and the standard deviation in measurements (noise).
The result indicates the recommended sample size.
Rules of thumb:
SNR=0.2 means N=500,
SNR=1.0 means N=20,
SNR>=2.0 means N<=6.
Sample Size from Signal to Noise Ratio and Desired Power
Reference:
Power & Sample Size
#93 20160617 – On Certainty – Standards of Certainty in Physics – Why 5-sigma is the standard for a theory, 3-sigma has been spectacularly wrong. - #186 – Data looks better naked. Less is more… effective, attractive, impactive.
Sat 20th July, 2019
In Aug 2013, Joey Cherdarchuk, cofounder of Darkhorse Analytics, published the 3-part series called Data looks better naked.Everyone working with tables, numbers, data, visualizations, will benefit from looking at the slides. The changes are easy to make but powerful. They embody some fundamental tenets: (1) maximize the data-ink ratio by reducing non-data related ink, (2) simplify, (3) to let the data speak for itself i.e. get rid of the clutter.
Love the quote at the end: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The series:
Part I: Improve your Bar ChartsPart II: Improve your Data Tables
Part III: Improve your Heat Maps
References:
- #175 20190126 – Scientists recreate monster waves (mathematics, physics, simulation)
- #163 20180928 – The Mathematics of Bell-Ringing
- #153 20180816 – Artificial Intelligence – Deep Mind (mathematics)
- #140 20180510 – Artificial Intelligence and Navigation (mathematics)
- #108 20170412 – Shoelace Knot Failure (mathematics, physics, engineering, applied to ordinary life)
- #105 20170129 – 23 Mathematical Puzzles to Try (mathematics)
- #104 20161122 – Mathematics of Gerrymandering Districts
- #96 20160713 – Mathematics – the tradition – Read the Masters! Avoid second-hand learning!
- #95 20160712 – Mathematics – The Princeton Companions to Mathematics and Applied Mathematics – tomes well worth having!
- #79 20150822 – Mathematics of Image De-cluttering
- #74 20150510 – String theory – Geometry tensor networks (physics and mathematics)
- #71 20150412 – The Mathematics of High Performance
- #69 20150221 – Mathematics – Good films about maths and 13 masterful living mathematicians (The Csiseray Collection)
- #68 20150207 – Mathematical Virology – using cryptography (mathematics)
- #67 220150115 – The Three Temperaments of Mathematicians – Birds, Frogs, and Beavers (mathematics)
- #66 20141221 – Recommender systems are a hot topic
- #63 20141111 – MetaMoji Note – A Digital Pencil
- #62 20141103 – How to Write a 21st Century Proof – Richard Lamport’s method. (Mathematics)
- #54 20140920 – LogiComix – An Epic Search for Truth (Mathematics)
- #100 20160917 – Data Visualization – The Fallen in the World War
- #90 20160210 – Data Science – The infographic
- #81 20151007 – Analytics in the AWS cloud
- #55b 20140927 – Big Data isn’t about Big The focus on data should be about analytical capability rather than size: “‘Big Data’ is the subjective state a company finds itself in when its human and technical infrastructure can’t keep pace with its data needs.”
- #51 20140830 – Focusing on Data – Big Data isn’t about Big
- #49 20140819 – Presenting Data: Less terrible tables
- #33 20140624 – Who, really, is a Data Scientist?
- #47 20140817 – Mathematics Prize Awards – the 2014 International Mathematics Union awards and their recipients
- #41 20140721 – Mathemati-stan – a map (mathematics)
- #28 20140523 – Resolving controversies in a duel: the mathematics of dueling with pistols
- #17 20140425 – the algorithms behind the way we board airplanes make no sense (mathematics)
- #13 20140424 – Probability is the heart of simulation (Mathematics)
- #7 20140410 – Would Euler and Gauss have been ‘coders’ or ‘provers’
April 10, 2014Yuri Manin offers this gem: “The importance of computers for the mathematical community is that a group of people took to mathematics who had an algorithmic sort of mind, better for writing computer programs than for proving theorems. In the last century they probably would have proved theorems but nowadays they do not.
He continues:
“I have a great suspicion that for example Euler today would spend much more of his time on writing software … And I believe that Gauss as well would spend much more time sitting in front of the [computer] screen.” (from An Interview with Yuri Manin, Berlin Intelligencer, 1998, pp.16-19)“Good proofs are proofs that make us wiser.” – Yuri Manin (PDF of interview by Martin Aigner, 1998)
The biography of Yuri Manin and a video interview with mathematician David Eisenbud (2012).
Mikhail Gelfand interviews Yuri Manin (PDF): “We do not choose our profession, it chooses us.”
- #130 20180314 – Prime Numbers – Cryptography (mathematics)
- #111 20170703 – From Poetry to Mathematics – the journey of June Hu over ten years to Fields Medal contender at 34, a pinnacle of mathematical achievement.
- #3 20140319 – Prime Number Theory – the remarkable story of Yitang Zhang and his breakthrough in Number Theory (Mathematics)
2. History of Mathematical Sciences and Mathematicians
- The forgotten maths genius who laid the foundations for Isaac Newton
- Leibniz – Arte Combinatoria
- Concept Writing: A Formula Language for Pure Thought (Begriffsschrift) by Frege
- Leibniz – on Partitions of Integers, Paper by George Andrews
- Partitions of Integers – Book
- Tschirnhaus – 1683 – Algebraic manipulations to solve indeterminate equations
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Formal Logic
- Leibniz – Couturat’s Collection of his Writings
- The Prehistoric Origins of Mathematics
- The Mathematics of Uruk and Susa (c.3500-3000 BCE)
- Why Are There 360 Degrees In A Circle, Instead Of Something Useful Like 100?
- The symbols of modern mathematics are a relatively late invention, most not being standardized until early in the 20th century! Here’s a view of specifically set theory & logic symbols timeline, and here a timeline of words used in maths.
- #64 20141117 – The Evolution of Standards – History of Mathematics and Science
- #115 20170825 – Babylonian Trigonometry predates the Greek tradition (mathematics)
B. Science & Technology
3. Space and Space-Related Science
- How the UAE got a spacecraft to Mars – on the first try
- UK space ambitions unveiled: Roadmap to push new frontiers
Progress in Space Exploration and Astrophysics
The links below capture the various developments in space exploration and astrophysics that have been noted in the short articles series since 2014. - #43 – Quantum Propulsion Engine, EmDrive, and Next Generation Space Technologies
#75 20150531 – Dot Space – New Space Companies in SeattleFrom UW PhD Rob Hoyt’s Tethers Unlimited, to Planetary Resources preparing to mine asteroids, Greater Seattle is home to a wave of entrepreneurial space technology companies looking to transcend earthly business, joining the previous centers of Florida, Southern California, and Huntsville, Alabama.
- Tethers Unlimited (TU) – inter-planetary cargo transfer systems and space products – founded by UW Aerospace Engineering PhD Rob Hoyt in Bothell, Washington (1998-2022), in 2023 acquired by ARKA
- Planetary Resources, Inc. – asteroid mining – founded by Eric Anderson
- SpaceX – space launch technology and satellite constellation for broadband internet access- founded by Elon Musk
- Blue Origins – space launch technology – founded by Jeff Bezos, run by Rob Meyerson (former Kistler)
- Virgin Galactic – founded by Richard Branson
- Vulcan Aerospace – airborne space launch technology – founded by Paul Allen
- Aerojet Rocketdyne – small rockets and thrusters for space missions, including ion thrusters for deep space
- Spaceflight – compact yet powerful satellites, cubesats, 4in x 4in x 4in, easy to launch, CEO Jason Andrews (former Kistler)
- OneWeb – satellite constellation for broadband internet access, backed by Richard Branson
- Leosat – satellite constellation for broadband internet access
#91 20160220 – Photonic propulsion using lasers for space travel at roughly the speed of light - #106 – 20170313 – Inter-planetary Radar from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
- #189 – Space Sailing on the Solar Wind – Light Sail
Sat 3rd August, 2019
LightSail2, the first steerable spacecraft capable of using momentum transfer from the solar wind (stream of charged photons emitted from the sun) as a propulsion mechanism.
Last week was a milestone in space exploration and the journey from science fiction to reality. LightSail2, a tiny satellite the size of a loaf of bread that was designed, built, and launched by the crowdfunded Planetary Society, successfully raised its earth-orbit by 2 miles using only the energy from the solar wind as propellant, guided by a thin mylar sail approx. 40m^2 (about the size of a boxing ring).
“LightSail 2 is the first steerable solar sail ever launched into orbit around Earth. The cubesat has a momentum wheel, which allows the Planetary Society’s engineering team on Earth to guide its sails. That will keep the spacecraft at a 90-degree angle to the sun at all times, not unlike the way a sailboat needs to tack into the wind to move.”
Additional Reading:
The Physics of Solar Sails (and a Brief History of the Concept), 2002, W.Hollerman – PDF 6 pages
Artist conception of the solar wind, a stream of charged photons having momentum but no mass, which, when harnessed by a solar sail, can provide propulsion through momentum transfer.
- #205 – Review of Space Propulsion state of the art (2019)
- #223 – Interplanetary Space Travel: Getting There, Staying There, Getting Back
- July 2020 – SpaceX is on a mission to populate Mars with human colonists. (Aug 7th) SpaceX wins US Air Force contract in partnership with Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Company (United Launch Alliance), to provide rockets for NASA, breaking the dependence on Russian RD-180 rockets that has been the case for the past 20-30 years. The new rockets will use Bezos’s Blue Origin BE-4 high-power methane-oxygen engine amongst other components. More details on the contract and launch missions.
- Oct 2021 – Internet for the Moon! NASA’s LuRaNet for 2024.
- Jan 2022 – Geomagnetic Storms and impact on a high tech earth society – the Carrington event is the last such massive event.
- Reinvention of the factory: microfactories | Robotics as a service (RAAS)
- Materials Science: stronger than steel but lighter than plastic: 2DPA1
- China sending orbiter to the outer planets
- plasma on mars could allow humans to form oxygen and rocket fuel from water.
- Nuclear fusion breakthrough: ignition reached: split second using 192 simultaneous lasers, reaching energy of sun, consuming more power than the entire us electrical grid for a fraction of a second.
Google deepmind has trained an AI to control the highly complex real time fusion reaction - Space travel speeds: It takes a speed (escape velocity) of 25,000 mph to escape Earth’s gravity field | A light year is approx 10 trillion km | Moon is 300k km away, light gets there in a second | Space speed stats: Sound travels at c. 800 mph | Bullets can travel 3x faster than sound at 2600 mph | NASA’s X3 jet plane travels 7k mph | Parker Solar Probe used the sun’s gravity assist to accelerate to 330k mph and will raeach 450k mph | 1% of speed of light is 7M mph | Speed of light is 700M mph | Current efforts are not fast enough to travel to other stars, as the Parker Solar Probe at 450k mph would take 6k years to reach Proxima Centuri (4.25 light years, or 40away)
- August 2022
2) using a spacecraft collision to nudge an asteroid’s position enough to shift its overall orbit - The physics of a warp drive: how it could work for faster than light travel by creating a space bubble and deforming space time so that gravity pulls the craft along
- Incompleteness of gravitational theory: a rotating universe (another Godel incompleteness discovery) would permit time travel without going faster than light
- How the wobble from a muon indicates that not all measurements are explained by the four known forces of physics: there may be a fifth force of nature
4. Modern Astronomy and Cosmology
- Gravitational Waves Should Permanently Distort Space-Time
- The Case for a Small Universe
- Could dark matter be made of gravitons?
- Universe slows cosmic growth defying the theory of relativity
- #110 20170618 – A conscious universe?
- #169 – 20181206 – Dark Fluid – An extension of the current theory of the universe
why is is 40% of the mass calculated as present at the big bang currently undetected?
2020-05-28 – Note that even of the ordinary (baryonic) matter that we understand, we can currently only account for 40% of it in the universe. Where did the rest of it go that was detected as being present in the universe shortly after the big bang? Using FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), scientists have been able to detect an extremely diffuse gas that appears to account for a large portion of the missing matter.
- #193 – Space collisions millions of miles away may have caused some of Earth’s ice ages. Do they offer a way to control Global temperature change too?
Wed 18th September, 2019Most of us are aware of the fate of the dinosaurs, driven to extinction by an asteroid 66M years ago that crashed into Chicxulub, in the Gulf of Mexico / Yucatan peninsula, creating a crater 20 miles deep and 60 miles wide. What drove the extinction? The area is sulpher rich so the impact sent tons of fine particulates into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun, and creating ice age age for decades. Article 1 (National Geographic), new drillcore data describes Day 1 of the world following the impact: Article 2, Article 3, Article 4 (NY Times, subscription)
Now, new research has shown that earlier than this event, there was another ice age on earth, about 500M years ago (remember the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, life on earth about 4 billion years, and the universe 13 billion years old). This one was triggered by the collision of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter that sent debris through the solar system, reducing the extent to which the sun’s rays reached earth.
Artist illustration: Asteroid impact on Chicxulub, 66M years ago
- #226 – I’ve lost my moon
- The strange thing about dark matter.
- #233 – Calculating Total Mass/Energy in the Universe
- Nov 2021 – Is our Solar System in a Magnetic Tunnel? Telescopic observations match an analogy with camera observations inside a tunnel
- a new theory of gravitation called milgromian dynamics or mond, better matches the known data than the hypothesis of dark matter which, like many historical scoring hypothesis was invented purely to save the appearances. This is like the theory of epicycles in astronomy, the theory of the ether in the propagation of light.
The xenon experiment has just raised the bar on how unlikely a result would have to be observed for dark matter to be measurable.
Time to ditch the theory of dark matter
Finding missing atoms in the vacuum of space - Did Jupiter eat other planets to get so big?
- Did Einstein get the theory of gravity wrong?
- What is the standard model?
- Do we live in a giant void? It could solve the puzzle of the universe’s expansion
- The Big Bang never happened – so what did?
- New theory claims to unite Einstein’s gravity with quantum mechanics
- Unifying gravity and quantum mechanics without the need for quantum gravity
- Gravity doesn’t happen instantly
- #109 20170425 – Dynamics of planetary size
- Jovian moons Europa and Ganymede have persistant water wapor in their atmospheres
- Dec 2021 – Wormholes can exist, as they fit within the mathematical structure of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (which also predicted the existence of black holes before they were discovered). Stable microscopic wormholes can be created and held open using quantum entanglement (2017). Creating and holding open a stable human-sized (macroscopic) wormhole is an area of active research.
- science of wormholes
- MOND: Milgrom dynamics adjusts gravity theory beyond Newton/Einstein and the model fits unexplained astrophysical observations better than the parallel theory of dark matter. The case for two starts orbiting each other. | Another study | Third study
- MOND: Milgrom dynamics adjusts gravity theory beyond Newton/Einstein and the model fits unexplained astrophysical observations better than the parallel theory of dark matter. The case for two starts orbiting each other. | Another study | Third study
- Principle of least action shown to hold also in the quantum space
- All of Physics is contained within an atom | But inside the proton is the most complicated thing you can imagine
- Scientists find two new minerals in Somalia meteorite
5. Breakthrough Science
- Discovery of new ice may change our understanding of water
- Stressed plants emit sounds that can be heard by animals, new study finds
- Genome of Australian fly defeats killer bacteria by evolving to co-exist with it
- Cause of grey hair may be ‘stuck’ cells, say scientists
- #218 – Quantum Computing – from initial demonstration to harnessing the capability
May 18th, 2020
In 2019 a team at Google demonstrated “quantum supremacy”, the term used to describe the situation where a quantum computer can compute in seconds what would take thousands of years for a classic computer, even a supercomputer. But that was a very specific problem, using very particular and finicky particles called “superconducting qubits” whose time in an entangled state is tiny fractions of a second, working in a cryosat cooled to temperatures colder than in outerspace (milliKelvin). For large scale quantum computing, both the quantum particles, the hardware machinery and the algorithms will need to be refined, something which may take 5 years or it may take 50 years. Or we may discover a new law of nature in the process and find it is in fact not possible. But for now the dream is alive, at Google, Microsoft, IBM, and several other tech giants racing for computations Grand Challenge.Article: Wired magazine.
#217 – Best of the Latest research in Computer Science
May 11th, 2020
The publisher Elsevier, long reviled in academic publications for its draconian pricing policies, has opened some of its archives to make freely available its curated “best of” collections in computer science research. Previous years are 2018, 2019. 2020 “best of” is free until Aug 20th.
#211 – Antibiotics effective on drug-resistant bacteria have been found using computer-aided drug discovery running machine learning/AI search algorithms on databases of pharmaceutical compounds
Feb 21st, 2020
#209 – Cancer-killing immune cells offer hope of a universal cancer therapy
21st January, 2020
#208 – Xenobots – programmable robots made of living cells created in biology/computer-science collaboration
15th January, 2020
#207 – Human Brain-computer interfaces allow thought controlled typing speeds of up to 4-8 words per minute
13th January, 2020
#206 – Living five times (5x) longer (400-500 years) may no longer be science fiction
Thursday 9th January, 2020
#204 – Are we close to Suspended Animation technology? – the latest medical breakthrough has moved to human trials
Wednesday 20th November, 2019#199 – Flying Electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing (eVTOL) Taxis starting 2023
#198 – Brain Organoids – a new way to study neuroscience
Sun 20th October, 2019
Studying the human brain is notoriously difficult,and while simulation offers some insights, it is difficult to run controlled experiments on the impact of environment or disease on brain function and development. Now scientists have shown the ability to grow human brain organoids, tissues that form neuronal connections and respond to stimulation. From here, one can imagine diverse sensory research, and a pandora’s box of ethical issues, including the insertion of human brain organelle’s into animal brains.
#195 – Mind-controlled robotics – Breakthrough of a full body exoskeleton using 64 electrodes placed on the surface of the human brain of a paralyzed man
Fri 4th October, 2019Researchers at University of Grenoble (France) and Clinatec have demonstrated the first successful trials of an exoskeleton suit (robo-suit) operated through thought-control by a young man paralyzed in all four limbs following a 15m fall at a night club. The constraint is the requirement to decode the brainwaves from 2x 64 electrodes on the surface of his brain, and translate these signals into smooth motor control commands to drive the exoskeleton, all within 350 milliseconds. The implications are astounding. Progress in neuro-computing interfaces has been extraordinarily rapid in the past 20 years. We have gone from interfacing computers with a snails brain (late 1990s/early 2000s), to interfacing computers with rat brains (2014, see below), to interfacing computers to human brains to enable thought-controlled complex motions.
Recommended Reading
- Paralysed man moves in thought-controlled robotic exoskeleton, Oct 4th, 2019, BBC
Uni. Grenoble (FR) – Thibault, paralyzed in 4 limbs, able to thought-control a robotic exoskeleton via 2 x 64 electrodes on his brain, and a real-time computer interpreting his brainwaves and controlling the motors.
- Transferring Memories from One Snail to Another, through injected RNA, May 14th 2018, LiveScience.com
- Decision-making in snail brains, 3 June 2016, BBC
- Rat brains talking through each other across a computer network, Jun 15th, 2014, MathSciTech
- Introduction & Overview to Brain-Computer Interfaces, Nov 25, 2018, Toward Data Science
#185 – Future of Personal Air Flight – Frank Zapata’s Jet Hoverboard featured in the 2019 French Bastille Day Parade today
Sun 14th July, 2019
#181 20190328 – Genetically enhanced soldiers
#176 20190209 – Immortalizing the Stradivarius violin
#175 20190126 – Scientists recreate monster waves
#166 20181111 – Quantum Compass
#161 20180902 – Immortality, Life Extension, and the Fountain of Youth – Have we Found the Chemical Basis of Aging, and a means for its reversal?
#153 20180816 – Artificial Intelligence – Deep Mind
#152 20180815 – Reversing the Greenhouse effect
#149 20180803 – The Bell Labs Miracle in technology
#140 20180510 – Artificial Intelligence and Navigation
#135 20180411 – Man-made Materials as strong as steel
#133 20180402 – Our (minute) place in a Vast Universe
#131 20180314 – Tribute to Stephen Hawking
#125 20171019 – Gravitational wave detection
#118 20170921 – The Science of Sleep
#114 20170808 – Tissue NanoTransfection (TNT)
#88 20160121 – Hard Truths – Why science rarely wins and the difficulty of doing the right thing at large scale (climate change)
#085 20151208 – The Next Frontier_ Thought as a User Interface
#058 20141005 – The Eight Great UK Technologies
#057 20141004 – Good news for UK Marine Technology
#045 20140809 – The Gingerbread Man (Origami Robotics)
#039 20140705 – Robotics powered by muscle cells
#031 20140615 – Brain-to-Brain communication in Rats
#029 20140531 – Robotics and the Mathematics of Origami
#025 20140513 – Robotics advances through imitation of nature
#020 20140503 – Reversing Aging – Google Calico
#015 20140424 – Nano blood mites as medicine
6. Emerging Technology
2023
- Paralysed man moves in thought-controlled robotic exoskeleton, Oct 4th, 2019, BBC
- AI has designed bacteria-killing proteins from scratch – and they work
- DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis Urges Caution on AI
- Amazon’s drone-delivery service rolled out in California and Texas
- Warn your children: Robots and AI are coming for their careers
- AI Industrial Revolution puts middle class workers under threat this time
- China Leads US in Technology Race in all but a few fields
- Robot Hand Looks And Acts Like The Real Thing
- Technology that would exceed GPT-4 and related capabilities
- Wind Powered Cargo Ship
2022
- 119 new AWS services from re:Invent 2022 explained simply
- #217 – Best of the Latest research in Computer Science May 11th, 2020
The publisher Elsevier, long reviled in academic publications for its draconian pricing policies, has opened some of its archives to make freely available its curated “best of” collections in computer science research. Previous years are 2018, 2019. 2020 “best of” is free until Aug 20th.
- #208 – Xenobots – programmable robots made of living cells created in biology/computer-science collaboration
15th January, 2020Research biologist Michael Levin (Tufts), computer scientist Josh Bongard (U.Vermont) and a team of specialists have created a new type of microscopic living robot: the xenobot. This is a tiny creature smaller than a pin-head created through microsurgery from stem cells of a particular species of frog. The design of the xenobot is selected to exhibit a certain behaviour, from amongst a catalog of designs created by simulation algorithms. For example, the combination of skin cells (passive) and heart cells (that contract) allow shapes with active beating cells. Placing these heart cells in specific locations on the xenobot give it locomotion. Altering placement and quantity of beating cells and geometry of the whole, allows the robots to be pre-programmed before fabrication to perform desired movements.
Envisioned applications include swimming through the body to deliver medicine to certain locations, or gathering microplastics in the ocean.
“In the past several decades, humankind has made staggering advances in robotics. Machines can now master difficult board games [e.g. AlphaZero using deep learning artificial intelligence [4]], and navigate tough terrain [e.g. AntBot using simple environmental cues [5]]; they can steer themselves as autonomous vehicles [e.g. autonomous bicycle using neuromorphic AI chips [6]], and search for survivors in the wake of disaster [e.g. all-terrain snake robots with cameras [7]]. But many of the basic functions that living things accomplish still flummox devices built by human hands. Even in their most creative configurations, metals and plastics simply can’t live up to cells.”[1]
Reading List:
- [1] Smithsonian (Katherine Wu) – Xenobot
- [2] Wired (Matt Simon) Xenobot
- [3] The Scientist (Emma Yasinkski) – Xenobot
- [4] AlphaZero, Google’s new deep learning algorithm that can master complex strategy games in a few hours, to beat traditional AI algorithms.
- [4b] AutoML Zero, Google’s new self-learning algorithm that can allow AI programs to be developed with effectively zero human input. This is work that is intended to allow AI to evolve.
- [5] AntBot, developed by a French biomimetic research team integrating the navigation strategies of a desert ant into a robot.
- [6] Neuromorphic chips combine standard AI algorithms on a chip design modeled around thousands of neurons that fire when reaching a certain threshold, mimicking human brain’s learning mechanisms. Chinese researchers demonstrate a bicycle that can ride by itself using such a chip.
- [7] Snake-inspired biomimetic robotics creates all-terrain capabilities from inside the body (surgical applications) to search-and-rescue, to climbing, and space exploration.
- [8] Could living robots be nourished by a bloodstream? Blood perfusion technology can now keep livers alive outside the body for up to a week.
- #207 – Human Brain-computer interfaces allow thought controlled typing speeds of up to 4-8 words per minute
13th January, 2020The technology is getting accurate and responsive enough to offer a way forward to make communication easier for thousands of people who have musculo-skeletal disorders that make speech, writing, or finger typing infeasible.
- [1] Scientific American: Brain Computer interface to assisted typing
- [2] Video: Illustrating the implanted sensors
- [3] Research Paper: From thoughts to Text (Xiang Zhang, Sep 26th, 2017)
- [4] #195 – Mind Controlled Robotics
- #199 – Flying Electric Vertical TakeOff and Landing (eVTOL) Taxis starting 2023
Tue 22th October, 2019 (before the COVID pandemic and before “return to office” was a thing)What would it take to less the rigours of the daily commute? Let’s look at an example London commute, mine. May commute takes 80-90 minutes each way door-to-door (walk, train, tube), travelling just 26 miles. This makes my average speed 17 miles/hr. Even under minimal traffic conditions (say at 0500h) this would still take 50 minutes by car (avg 31mph).
Indulging for a moment into the fantastical, at the 50% of the top speed of an average charter helicopter (75mph), and travelling as-the-crow-flies (20 miles) means an average 16 minutes commute, assuming the helicopter could take off from my rear garden and land on the rooftop of the office building.
But is this realistic? Absolutely. Over a dozen companies are actively developing eVTOL vehicles, getting them tested, certified, and approved for passenger flight over densely populated urban areas, with commercial flight operations planned from 2023 onwards (2023 Uber Air, 2024 Lilium).
Volocopter, Germany (max range 22 miles, top speed 68 mph). Company. Wikipedia. Flight demonstrations (since 2011).
Lilium Jet, Germany (max range 180 miles, top speed 180 mph). Company. Wikipedia. May 2019 hover demonstration. Oct 2019 flight demonstration.
Vertical Aerospace, Bristol UK (max range >100 miles). Company. Wikipedia
Uber Air, US. Company. Concept articleRace to build a flying electric taxi (BBC News)
The physics behind conventional helicopter maximum speed limit (Popular Mechanics)
As-the-Crow-Flies distance calculator
- #185 – Future of Personal Air Flight – Frank Zapata’s Jet Hoverboard featured in the 2019 French Bastille Day Parade today
Sun 14th July, 2019
Frank Zapata, France’s Tony Stark (Iron Man), or perhaps Green Goblin, this weekend soared above French crowds during the Bastille Day Parade, holding a rifle aboard his flying hoverboard. Made by his company Zapata Industries, the Flyboard is capable of up 190km/hr for up to 10min. The user controls the Flyboard with his feet, and the jets are powered by liquid fuel carried in a rucksack on the flyer’s back. Independent twin jets are controlled by board logic to assist the flyer with stability and to prevent the Flyboard from spinning.Watch the 3m video clip to catch a glimpse of the future of personalized flight.
- #177 20190210 – I built this 13-key (pure analog) music keyboard
- #172 20190106 – 3-D printed mechanical limbs – Jamie Miller’s story
- #171 20190102 – Interfacing Electronics, Motors, and Microcontrollers
- #170 20181208 – Exploring Electronics Tiny flashlights
- #165 20181104 – Exploring Electronics in Junior School
- #164 20181023 – Ubiquitous – Bell Labs
- #160 20180827 – Getting started with 8-bit Microcontrollers
- #134 20180410 – Robotic Arm on 3D printer
- #121 20171005 – Real-time Language Translation
- #112 20170715 – Ingenious (and useful!) tool hacks
- #107 20170408 – The Ford baby crib simulates a night drive
- #103 20161031 – Coding – An expository article
- #102 20160924 – Coding – The Turtle Logo drawing program for 3+ years
- #099 20160828 – Coding – Wrote a Turtle Logo drawing program to teach algorithms to 3+ year olds
- #083 20151106 – Coding. Parentheses are used to align
#80 20150923 – Distinguishing occupants in a room from the microbial signatures - #070 20150312 – Who’s Winning the Battle of Distributed Version Control?
- #044 20140808 – Live-coding Music through Programming
- #042 20140727 – On Managing Technical People
- #037 20140630 – Understanding startups
- #026 20140518 – Great user interface design
- #24 20140508 – Innovation I
- #23 20140508 – Innovation II
- #22 20140508 – Innovation III: The Innovator’s Dilemma
- #21 20140508 – Innovation IV: Successful Small Companies
- #14 20140424 – Electronics kit from NASA — future gift for me (ahem), I mean, my daughter
#10 20140416 – The importance of persistance (grit) to creativity – a look at the impact of grit demonstrated by parents on their children, and some examples in mathematics
7. Computing
- #174 20190123 – Chip Foundry – what does it take to be at the top of the silicon game January 23, 2018
- #168 20181130 – Customized Computer II November 30, 2018
- #167 20181128 – Customized Computing I November 28, 2018
#164 20181023 – Ubiquitous – Bell Labs – the Bell Labs Miracle in Technology (mathematics) - #159 20180824 – Graphics Ingenuity on ancient hardware August24, 2018
- #156 20180818 – The Great Races of Computing Dominance August 18, 2018
#155 20180816 – Robotics: a £500 Burger — Yum!Related interest:
The Star Wars robots – R2D2, 3CPO, and the most fascinating: the BB-8 spherical droid – how the BB8 works
#154 20180816 – Robotics: and this is the platform that $280,000 buys you… - #150 20180803 – The birth of the Microprocessor August 03, 2018
- #149 20180803 – The Bell Labs Miracle in technology August 03, 2018
- #148 20180803 – Silicon Valley History & Culture August 03, 2018
- #147 20180803 – Intel’s Forgotten Past – Wayne Pickette
August 03, 2018 - #146 20180803 – A brilliant debugger – Scroll Screen Tracer August 03, 2018
- #145 20180802 – The chip that changed computing August 02, 2018
#103 20161031 – Coding – An expository article
#102 20160924 – Coding – The Turtle Logo drawing program for 3+ years
#99 20160828 – Coding – Wrote a Turtle Logo drawing program to teach algorithmic thinking to 3+ year olds (mathematics)
#83 20151106 – Coding. Parentheses are used to align
#70 20150312 – Who’s Winning the Battle of Distributed Version Control?
#53 20140914 – Software Patents – The debate - #27 20140521 – Social Media Economics – the Invisible Hand of Publicity
This has parallels to the reward system in open source software development (see The Cathedral and the Bazaar).
- #19 20140427 – Larry Page’s story at Google
- #18 20140426 – The technical world tends to splinter based on its aesthetic tastes – simplicity vs. layers of abstraction (mathematics)
- #16 Larry Wall (Perl creator) on Java: “it’s like chewing shoe leather”
April 25th, 2014"Java is sort of the Cobol of the 21st century … It's kind of heavyweight, verbose, and everyone loves to hate it …
But managers like it because it looks like you're getting a lot done. If 100 lines of Java code accomplish a task, then it looks like you've written 100 lines, even though in a different language, it might only take 5 lines.
It's like, you can eat a 1-pound steak or you can eat, 100 pounds of shoe leather and [though] you feel a greater sense of accomplishment after the shoe leather, maybe there's some downsides…Read the transcript, or hear him speak — the chuckler is about a minute in.
- #9 Engineering Design: “Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.” Alan Perlis
14th April, 2014It is worth re-reading Alan Perlis’ Epigrams on Programming. This reminder reinforces why prototyping is key to success in new ventures: you’re exploring the hard bits early, bottom-up, while the overall design is still fluid.
- #5 20140403 – NASA has moved to open-source many years of code
- #4 20140403 – 2014 US Government releases open source
C. The Human Condition: Looking To the Future, at the Past, and in the Present
8. Life: Future Prospects
- Futurists predict a point where humans and machines become one. But will we see it coming?
- Humans predicted to achieve immortality within 8 years’ time
- Earth Well outside of safe operating limits for humanity
- Scale of bird biodiversity loss: Europe has lost half a billion birds in the past 40 years due primarily to pesticides
- There is unlikely to be a Planet B for us: As astronomical observation capabilities improve and we find more examples of earth like planets (e.g. TOI 700 e) and think that perhaps we might move to other planets, it’s worth remembering why we should not assume that there’s a planet B waiting for us: it has taken 3.2 billion years of joint evolution of earth and life, each impacting the other.
- Life on Mars was discovered 50 years ago and then eradicated
- Should we colonise other planets?
- Panspermia: When we think about the remarkable diversity of life currently on earth (est. 1 trillion species overall, est. 8.7 million eukaryote species, of which only 1.2 million are known, mostly insects), and the even larger biodiversity lost (est. 5 billion extinct species), the question arises: if we could seed life in the universe using comets (panspermia), should we? Were we the result of such an seeding event (Cambrian explosion)?
#173 20190120 – Property rights in Space: US and Luxembourg pave the way
- #126 20171020 – Human settlement of the moon
- Human Settlement of Mars – Mars One (#30)
- Hibernation Artificially Triggered in Potential Space Travel Breakthrough
#194 – Extremophiles, Pan-spermia, and space colonization
Sun 29th September, 2019Extremophiles are creatures discovered to be able to live in temperatures incapable of sustaining most life on earth. First discovered in the 1960s, we now know of dozens of extremophiles. The list is fascinating. The mechanisms for how these creatures survive hold secrets that can be harvested for the benefit of humanity. They raise an interesting astro-environmental ethical question about whether they should or should not be deliberately introduced to solar bodies (the recent crash landing on the moon that spilled tardigrades on what was otherwise believed to be a pristine environment is one such example).
Comprehensive bibliography here
Tardigrade on Moss
- Nematodes, including Auanema sp., are tiny worms found to have three sexes (male, female, and self-fertilizing hermaphrodite) and can live in Mona Lake in the Eastern Sierras in California (3x more salty than oceans, 500x more arsenic than humans can tolerate, more alkaline than baking soda). Article 1, Article 2
- Five extreme extremophiles: Tardigrades, Brine Shrimp, Ice Worms, Fireball Microbe, Radio-durans Bacteria
- Tardigrades, or “8-legged water bears” are tiny (less than 1mm long) invertebrates which can survive radiation (through the Dsup gene that repairs radidation damaged DNA), extreme dehydration (in which they go into hibernation at 0.01% of their normal metabolism), reanimiation from 10+ years of hibernation, no food or water for 30 years, and can vitrify their organs (use TDP proteins to turn their innards to glass and suspends their function, until water reactivates them). Article 1, Article 2 (vitrification), Article 3 (cataclysmic astrophysical events challenge)
- Wood frogs produce a sugar called trehalose during vitrification, a process in which they harden into ice-like structures under extreme cold from which they can later thaw unharmed. Article 1
- #204 – How close are we to suspended animation? The prospects for long distance space travel
- July 2020 – BioDome2 – A group of eight volunteers spent two years inside a sealed shelter – the BioDome2 – to explore the challenges of prolonged space travel. Article
- #240- The practical business of breathing on Mars
- #246 – a Government for Mars? Elon Musk’s Starlink Terms of Service
- #264 – Settling Space – a look at where we might go
- #94 20160617 – Probability of alien communication (mathematics)
- Sep 2020 – Tardigrade hardiness: computer simulation identifies highly flexible proteins as the key to their armor.
- Jan 2022 – 2020 XL5: a second “Earth Trojan” asteroid, but not yet ideal as a way-station for intergalactic travel. Trojans are asteroids that orbit a planet from deep space in a three-body system (asteroid-planet-Sun). These are typically orbitting in deep space, far from influence of other planets. 2020 XL5 was discovered in Dec 2020 and found to have orbital stability with Earth for c.4,000 years. In theory Earth Trojans could be ideal for human habited space stations, but in this case calculations of fuel budget to reach it show it is as yet too expensive (delta-v budget) to be a recommended mission. The search is on for additional Earth Trojans that are better positioned.
- Aug 2022 – Living in the outer solar system:
Devastating effect on bones while traveling in space – we will need to go faster - #188 – Applied Science stranger than fiction? indistinguishable from magic?
Sat 3rd August, 2019Which science fiction writers have correctly anticipated the future? One causal factor is when their vision of the future is so compelling including the details that they have inspired others to design the technology to make them reality. Below are a selection of books that have had and are having that effect:
Depiction of flooded lower Manhatten, inundated after 50 foot rise in sea level triggered by glacial melt
1. Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey (written in 1968). Quote: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
2. Philip K. Dick: Bladerunner, Do Androids dream of electric sheep, Minority Report, more.
3. Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars Trilogy, New York 2140, Galileo’s Dream, Icehenge
4. Isaac Asimov: I, Robot
5. George Orwell: 1984 (written in 1949)
6. H.G. Wells – War of the Worlds, Time Machine, The Invisible ManSuggest your favorites in the comments! (refer to article #188).
8. Life: Present Condition
-
#197 – How fast you walk as a 45-yr old indicates ageing, future health, intelligence, and is predictable from age three!
Sat 12th October, 2019If you really parse this sentence, it is claiming something almost unbelievable: that by age three, most of the factors are formed that send our lives down distinguishable pathways that, on average, arrive at a known outcome 42 years later. Either this is another example of a correlation-causation fallacy (like shoe size is a predictor of math ability in children), or the age-three fact is a red herring and we should be asking the question whether overall health and ageing rates are largely determined by our genetic blueprint?
Article: Slow walking at 45 ‘a sign of faster ageing’, BBC, Slow walkers have ‘older’ brains and bodies, the study found.
Related Interesting (Correlation/Causation Fallacy):
- Shoe size and intelligence in children
- Head circumference, height, and intelligence, in children
- Spurious Correlations (Tyler Vigen)
- Buzzfeed’s best spurious correlations
Spurious Correlation: Cheese consumption and Bedsheet related deaths
- #138 20180422 – The microbiome in your gut
#132 20180330 – Aluminium Age – Material Abundance & Toxicity - #187 – Art’s intimate connection to hope.
Sun 29th July, 2019What is the meaning of Art? “Art is about opening up to possibility. Possibility links to hope. We all need hope.” – Kojiro Umezaki ’91, The Silk Road Ensemble. The Music of Strangers.
References
BBC Documentary: Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (90min) – Watch here
Wired Article: How Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble Got Its Spectacular Sound
The SilkRoad Project: a global musical collective
Silkroad Artists and Productions (Wikipedia)
The Silk Road Ensemble: The Music of Strangers
Where Hope Takes Root, by Aga Khan IV
10. Life: Origins, Evolution
- Rocks From Mars Are Hitting Earth, And Something Is Odd About Their Age
- First life: missing link
Scientists discover that the origins of human life began in the Sun - A virovore discovered
- Emergence of bipedalism in humans – new evidence (in trees, using branches for training)
- Paleolithic stone knapping – life/limb threatening occupation
- Simple stone tool flakes are created unintentionally by cracking nuts with stones: false causation (monkeys vs. humans), but also mode for human discovery.
- Ancient humans apex predators for 2m years.
- Did carnivorous lifestyle kill the Neanderthals
- 300,000 years ago: advanced wood working creating ancient spears
- Archeoastronomy: cave paintings or calendar?
- 12,000 year old bird bone flute: music or hunting?
- Human orgins: The Sumerian Problem: Mixed dna from 13 samples from ubaid period Mesopotamia
- 10m years ago, ancestors of African apes in Hungary had more flexible and longer lower back enabling upright gait
- 8.7m years old ape fossil from Türkiye provides link showing ancestors of African apes originated in Western Europe, migrated to Eastern Europe, Mediterranean, near east, and from there to Africa, following the change in climate and resulting savanna ecology
- 2m years ago, Greenland was tropical and had corresponding fauna and flora
- Humans and wild apes have a common gesture language. A gesture language may explain an additional advantage for bipedalism: hands free for hand speech
- Why humans do not have fur
- From homo Erectus to homo sapiens there may be another human species in China 750kya
- Tens of thousands of years ago, atlatl invention may have equalized men and women’s ability to hunt
- Gobekli tepe: 9000bce, 6000 years before Stonehenge
- 5000bce in Kurdistan north of erb there was a religion that has survived to the present: yazidism
- 3300bce in the alps, copper age people had periodontal disease
- The myths of ancient slavery
- Native Americans have Chinese dna links
- The temptation to over ascribe sophistication to ancient monuments: archastronony and Stonehenge: solstice alignment likely and awareness of solar cycle but not a calendar
- How did plants first evolve into all different shapes and sizes? We mapped a billion years of plant history to find out
- How the extinction of larger animals drove humans to become smarter
- How to get good sparks from flint and steel. (Beginner basics) – YouTube
- Scientists grow chickens with dinosaur legs as they aim to prove how evolution works
Neolithic people were capable ofcomplex engineering - Sailing the Ancient Aegean Trade Routes Neolithic Style
- 2000 year old Lost Cities in Ecuador
- Population Collapse almost wiped out human ancestors
- Oldest Human Ancestors May Have Evolved Nine Million Years Ago in Turkey
- Early human ancestors turned stones into spheres purposefully
- Stone Age herders transported heavy rock tools to grind animal bones, plants and pigment
- The genetic heritage of the Denisovans may have left its mark on our mental health
- Have we found the genes for cognition in primates and humans?
11. Public Policy & Leadership
#196 – The disproportionate impact of public policy decisions — how the Beeching report sowed the seeds of the unrest and inequality between North and South England that (at least in part) has led to Brexit
Sun 6th October, 2019In 1963, the Beeching Report made the historic decision to trim the UK’s railway network into essentially a London-centric, North-South feeder system. The ability to travel East-West between towns in England, without passing through London, was severely reduced. Why did this happen? The cuts were deemed necessary in order to allow the then nationalized Railway service to operate profitably, ahead of privatization. Arguments about bus and road networks compensating did not come to pass, and the result has been small towns and villages especially outside the London orbit becoming isolated, opportunity drying up, and social demographic changing.
Alongside the article #192 (Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?) that looks at UK’s decision to join the second Iraq war 15 years ago and the Austerity policy that followed soon after, we can place this as an antecedent almost 60 years earlier, before Thatcher’s decisions in the 1980s to gut the industrial and coal mining heartland of the English North.
UK Rail Network, 2019 vs. 1963 (Beeching Report)
Related Reading:
- The Beeching Report and Brexit
- Maps of current UK Rail Network
- The Beeching Cuts to UK Railroads, 1963 vs. 1984
- #192 – Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?
- Thatcher, the “New Tories”, and Brexit
- #192 – Can the seeds of Brexit be traced back to Austerity (Tories) and the Iraq War (New Labour)?
Tue 17th September, 2019The release this weekend of the memoirs of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has kicked off a flurry of retrospection on the events leading up to UK’s fateful Brexit vote in the summer of 2016. In this opinion piece (The Guardian, Mon 16th September), John Harris traces a direct connection from the austerity program of 2010 to the Brexit vote in 2016.
What drove austerity policy? The empty Treasury from the Blair/Gordon Labor governments certainly gave the newly elected Tories a ripe opportunity to significantly roll back the state through austerity. But what caused the empty Treasury? One might point to the fall of the financial markets in 2008 following the subprime mortgage lending crisis and the collapse of Bear Stearns, leading to the prolonged Great Recession. Or one might point to the military adventurism of Blair’s Labor government in 2003 backing Bush’s infamous (and catastrophically expensive) War in Iraq.
It is ironic that the decision of a Labor government to overrule the will of the people and enter the catastrophic and financially ruinous second Iraq war (based on accusations that neither Parliament nor the public believed), may in the end have led ultimately to the public ultimately thrice betrayed (New Tories under Thatcher, New Labor under Blair, Austerity Tories under Osborne) voting for change in the form of the only meaningful change that was in their grasp: Brexit. The connection between the last two is that public taxes were spent prosecuting that failed war followed by bailing out the subsequent failure of banking regulations and irresponsible financial leadership.
It seems that missteps taken 12 and 18 years ago have come home to roost, i.e. those same people whose will had been ignored and whose taxes had been spent irresponsibly, voted to take back a control that had clearly not been theirs for some time.
Article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/16/david-cameron-brexit
- #190 – What causes a “normal” recession (one not driven by a financial crash)?
Sun 18th August, 2019
Number of Recessions Americans have experienced (by age).
It’s been a while since the last “normal” recession which one could argue occurred in the 80s. In the 90s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Asian savings crisis interrupted the normal cycle, leading to the telecom and dot com bubbles of the late 90s, which burst in 2001, leading to the subprime mortgage bubbles of the 2000s, which burst in 2008, leading to the current slow recessionary recovery that has been going on for the past 10 years.
What’s on the horizon now is, worryingly, not a financial crisis, but rather a bunch of old school trade and tariff shocks looming with the US / China Trump trade war, and the upcoming Brexit trade disruption.
How should a “normal” recession be countered? Through deficit spending by the government to counteract the fear-based constriction of the macro economy based on the anticipation of the slowdowns.
But deficit spending as a tool has not been used by governments since the 80s, as this article by Dan Davies (Guardian contributor) explains.
Recommended Reading:
- Guardian: A Normal Recession?
- New Statesman: Why we are facing a coordinated global slowdown that will long and deep
- Washington Post: What the next recession may look like judging on the statistics of the past 11 (since World War II)
- The list of 33 business cycles (recessions) since 1854: 16 from 1854 to 1919, 6 from 1919 to 1945, and 11 from 1945 to the present.
List of 33 business cycles (recessions) from 1854 to present
- #184 – The Balcony and the Dance Floor – A Leadership Parable
Fri 12th July, 2019This metaphor of the Dance Floor and the Balcony, by Ronald Heifetz (Leadership on the Line, 2002, Harvard Business School Press), is one worth reflecting on each day.
Enhance your effectiveness by moving between the dance floor and the balcony
“Let’s say you are dancing in a big ballroom. . . . Most of your attention focuses on your dance partner, and you reserve whatever is left to make sure you don’t collide with dancers close by. . . . When someone asks you later about the dance, you exclaim, ‘The band played great, and the place surged with dancers.’
“But, if you had gone up to the balcony and looked down on the dance floor, you might have seen a very different picture. You would have noticed all sorts of patterns. . . you might have noticed that when slow music played, only some people danced; when the tempo increased, others stepped onto the floor; and some people never seemed to dance at all. . . . the dancers all clustered at one end of the floor, as far away from the band as possible. . . . You might have reported that participation was sporadic, the band played too loud, and you only danced to fast music.
“. . .The only way you can gain both a clearer view of reality and some perspective on the bigger picture is by distancing yourself from the fray. . . .
“If you want to affect what is happening, you must return to the dance floor.”*
“Each day you need to be both among the dancers and up on the balcony. That’s where the magic and insight is, going back and forth between the two, using one to enhance the other. To do that takes discipline, can be tiring, and takes time. The pressure of daily life tends to keep us on the dance floor.
“How to shift between the dance floor and the balcony:
“Pencil in some quiet time each day to step outside the daily grind and review what you are doing against where you would like to be going. Create an opportunity amongst the demands of the day to stop and reflect. Think about how your time each day is split between the ‘dance floor’ and the ‘balcony’. The split will be different for different people on any given day. It’s about asking yourself if you are aligning what you are doing, with what you want.”Sources:
- Book: Heifetz, R., and Linsky, M. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002
- Article 1: https://gettingchangeright.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/the-dance-floor-and-the-balcony/
- Article 2: https://www.resiliencedevelopmentcompany.com/single-post/2016/05/11/Get-Off-The-Dance-Floor-On-To-The-Balcony
- #183 – Virtual Currencies – Facebook’s plan with the Libra Association
Tue 25th June, 2019
The opportunity for Facebook and a handful of partner companies (Visa, Mastercard, Vodafone, Uber) is clear: build up a customer funded reserve of government bonds and national currencies, where interest accumulates for the association, and ordinary users gain transaction free management of ability to buy and sell.What lies beneath is the accumulation of power and the ability to influence macroeconomic policy on a scale that is bigger than all central banks together.
This article presents how this might play out.
The Atlantic, Eric Posner, 25th June 2019.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/dont-trust-libra-facebooks-new-cryptocurrency/592450/
Facebook’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency
#139 20180508 – Thinking Big – the top 10 challenges facing the UK
#84 20151207 – Corruption free governance
#82 20151007 – Social Justice: Those Who Get Left Behind – The Bard Prison Initiative
#77 20150705 – The Economics Behind Greece’s Sovereign Debt Default, and the Debate on the integrity of the IMF’s position
#76 20150626 – The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice (Martin Luther King Jr.)
#61 20141026 – The mechanics of mosquito-born illness
#60 20141017 – Social Justice – Rising Economic Inequality in the U.S. – Facts from the Federal Reserve – Change is coming.Change is coming. Read the discussion.
#59 20141011 – Ebola – how culture & politics affect this deadly disease
D. History & Civilization
- Tricolor flags and republicanism/nationalism. (Mar 2, 2024) Did you know that the prevalence of tricolor flags of modern nation states traces back to the the first three tricolors: Dutch Nation after independence from the Spanish Empire, the Russian nation under Tsar Peter, and the French tricolor after the French Revolution. The use of simple tricolors or charged tricolors (with an emblem typically in the centre band, but sometimes in each band) was a departure from the previous tradition of heraldic flags linked to personages, royalty, and aristocratic hierarchy.
Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and the Ancient Near East
- Enheduanna: The world’s first named author
- Eridu – Wikipedia
- Etana – Wikipedia
- RIME 1.09.09.01 (Reforms of Urukagina) composite (P431154) – Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
- Lugal-zage-si – Wikipedia
- The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
- Agricultural Mathematics: Ancient and Modern « Mathematical Science & Technologies
#290 – The Saxon Chronicles: The 600 year story of Britain after the Roman Occupation (400 CE) and before William of Normandy (1066)
21 October, 2023 - What Cambridgeshire was like when the Ancient Iceni Tribe of Boudicca ruled
The periods before 1066, the founding of Norman Britain under the control of William the Conqueror, are less well known. Below a sketch, primarily based on the less well known Saxon Chronicle
- Britons came from Armenia and settled the southern part of Britain.
- Scots were indiginous to Ireland
- Picts came from Scythian (northeastern Iran/western Siberia) area of the Black Sea and tried to settle in Ireland but were denied and were given help to settle in the north of Brtain
- The Romans came to conquer Britain (Julius Caesar). Why? Northern Britain had one of the largest tin deposits in the European continent, and tin was an essential ingredient to mix with copper to make bronze, the metal that was the backbone of war (swords, shields, armour, helmets, spears): hard but malleable. Were there also iron mines?
- The Romans went up to Hadrians wall, the Britons retreated to Wales.
- When Atila the Hun of the Goths sacked Rome c.400 CE, the Romans retreated from Briton, leaving it open to other forces.
- The Picts attempted to come southward over Hadrian’s wall.
- King of the Britons sailed over the water seeking allies to help him. Rome declined, occupied with Atila. But the Angles accepted
- The Angles found the Britons to be weak, and their land to be mild, rich and fertile, compared to their own land which was heavily forested and hard to till. So they sent for more help ostensibly to support the Britons, but ultimately turned against them and established their own kingdom..
- More settlers came from northern Germany and Denmark, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (from Jutland in Denmark), and by 600 CE they had established the 7 kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain, with the Britons retreating into Wales. The Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Celts and Romanized Britons from Britain.
- The kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Brtain: The Jutes had Kent, Isle of Wight. The Old Saxons from Saxony in Northern Germany had Essex (East Saxony), Wessex (West Saxony), and Sussex (South Saxony). The Angles had East Anglia, Middle Anglia, and Mercia. It is from the Angles that we get the name Angle-land or England.
- Then came the Viking attacks from Scandinavia, from Norway and Sweden.
- The Vikings fought the Anglo Saxons, establishing Northumbria as their kingdom, with their capital at York.
- They were successful, conquering most of the 7 kingdoms, except for Wessex, the Last Kingdom (the 2015-2022 series). King Alfred (the Great) fought back and eventually defeated the Vikings and Britain was partitioned into Wessex and Danelaw. Seven Kings Must Die completes the unification of Britain and peaceful coexistence of Northumbria under Viking governorship but subject to the Anglo-Saxon kings.
- Aethelstan the Second betrays the Danelaw and seeks to establish Anglo-Saxon superiority over all of Britain. This brings the revenge of the Vikings portrayed in the 2022 series Vikings: Valhalla.
- Then William the Conqueror, after travails of his own in Brittany and Normandy in France, leads an army of Normans (Northmen, also Vikings) to invade Britain from the south, and succeeds in controlling the country.
- King Edward I and the independence of Scotland – Braveheart, the story of William Wallace (1995)
- Robert the Bruce (2019) – the follow-on story of how Robert the Bruce eventually won Scottish independence (1300s)
- Henry V – told in the 2019 movie The King (starring Timothee Chalemet) and the loyal advisor Sir John Falstaff.
- Henry VIII and Thomas More – A Man for All Seasons (1988)
- Why Roman concrete was so durable (they mixed it with material that filled in the cracks as they formed)
Additional Collections: Data Science (16) | Life Hacks (20) | Mathematics & Applications (28) | Society & Social Justice (46) | Space & the Universe (12) |
For the streams of postings in chronological order: #200-290: (Oct 2019 to Oct 2023), and #1-199 (April 2014 to Oct 2019)
A. Mathematics, Its Applications, and Its History
1. Mathematics & Applied Maths
2023
2020
#229b – A New Proof in Number Theory goes into the fundamental nature of numbers and the nature of approximations to numbers like pi. article in Quanta Magazine
#228 – Work-as-Refuge: Mathematicians and Poets, perhaps Programmers and Hobbyists too?
“Of all common ground shared by mathematicians and poets, work-as-refuge may be the most compelling. In both mathematics and poetry, ‘You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong,’ to borrow words from F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mathematicians and poets practice looking past artificial boundaries. In return, they are rewarded with essential, if sometimes fleeting, beauty.” – Susan D’Agostino, from How to Free your Inner Mathematician: Notes on Mathematics & Life, 2020
Article
#221 – “Top Job” spot in the Wall Street Journal in 2009 and 2014 goes to “Mathematician”.
Mathematician takes the top spot in Best Jobs (Wall Street Journal, 2009, 2014).
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