In this public lecture (in Dutch), Jasper de Groot takes you into the surprising and often hidden world of scent.

A major atmospheric change is about to start, as the latest oceanic data confirms the 2026 El Niño is intensifying below the ocean surface. New … The post Atmospheric Code Red: 2026 Super El…

The not-Moon-Monday edition. 🌝

Lalela, the LO-Def Film Factory and GaudiLabs teamed up to co-run a workshop where participants learned how to build their own solar-powered devices, and learners were invited to think beyond solar

We are excited to announce the release of The qPocketPCR; an ultra-compact, open-source Real-Time PCR thermal cycler designed for portability, accessibility, and versatility. About the size of a…

5 DAYS until Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony tickets go on sale (12 May 2026).

I read the book Principles of Neural Design recently. It’s extremely dense, which you’d hate or love depending on how much you’re in awe with how our brain works. I totally loved it! The…

Every day we encounter a diversity of materials: liquids, glass, ceramics, metals, crystals, magnets, plastics, semiconductors, foams, … These materials look and feel different from one another.…

The forecast is: record-breaking heat, wildfires in the West, and extreme rainfall mayhem across the world. Maybe the strongest El Niño in 150 years. Following breaking climate news, we explore a…

Bending the needle with geometric probability

Become a MOC member to see the clickable quiz with answers on the back. Become a MOC member to see the clickable quiz with answers on the back. Become a MOC member to see the clickable quiz with…

Maybe this is the image in your head when you read the title of this post? In college in the late nineties, I devoured a fantastic new book called A Perfect Storm on a flight to Boston. I was on my…

It is the transition that Northwest residents both expect and regret: the intrusion of low-level stratus clouds into western Washington and Oregon. Usually occurring in late May, this year the…

Julius Csotonyi © Julius CsotonyiUp in the High Arctic, where the wind cuts clean across a stark polar desert and the ground remembers a very different world, and a most unexpected creature has…

Last week marked a major milestone in small-molecule drug discovery with the first FDA approval of a proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC). After a modest but successful phase 3 clinical trial…

As the blog of record in computational complexity, we like to bring attention to those in the community who have left us. When we learn of someone in our field who has died, Bill and I will talk to…

Short on time today and yet I feel it's important to try and get across the idea that even in a weak hurricane season, your home town can be rocked and set back in time while it's being put back…

Updated May 2026 with refined visuals, clearer examples, and expanded analysis. The energy transition is easier than it looks Caption: Electrification reduces total energy demand by cutting systemic…

Space activity started as a government effort. It was driven by competition, mainly between the USSR and the USA.Key early milestones:1957 – first satellite, first signal from space1957…

Another anthropogenic global warming (AGW) modeling failure emerges in observed tropical cyclone data. According to climate modeling (Knutson et al., 2015 and 2020), everyday human activities such as…

In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we learn that mushrooms are more similar to people than they are plants. You probably learned in school that there are two main categories […] The…

The standard per-mile metric shows planes are 519x safer than cars. But per vehicle, per hour of general aviation, and per accident, the numbers tell a different story. This analysis runs the…

How America nearly destroyed its own national symbol, and then saved it. A history of the bald eagle’s fall, persecution, protection, and astonishing recovery.

image by AI; my own prompt In a time of growing chaos, precarity, scarcity, anger, obscene inequality, economic and ecological decline, and untold war-mongering, fear-mongering and suffering, when…

By Gareth Strangemore-Jones and Dhruv Mehrotra They can mine your data, model your behaviour, nudge your choices, even read your  thoughts, but they cannot yet be held accountable. In the……

“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the…

By Tony Nguyen Stress is an unavoidable part of life, and for many people, stressful experiences are temporary challenges that the brain and body eventually adapt from. However, early life… The…

When I think about our vision for AI and automation at Bristol Myers Squibb, I think about the music video by the band OK Go for their song “This Too Shall Pass.” Stick with me – I promise this will…

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]Have you ever filled a bucket with water from the garden hose? It’s kind of a slow process. Or at least it feels slow while you’re…

There’s a gap between doing good foresight work and getting anyone to care about it, and navigating that gap is where the real challenge begins.

Reshaping estuaries puts more coastal communities at risk worldwide.

The surface of the Earth is heated by solar radiation (shortwave radiation) passing through the atmosphere. The air near the earth’s surface is heated from below using this energy converting…

Also the null hypothesis

The cracks in the facade of the global climate science are getting wider, more glaring as a significant group of experts chooses to break rank. Modern Galileos are increasingly challenging the…

Brilliant fireball captured on 2026 April 11 at 09h 05m UT by the AMS48 system operating from North Linn County, …

There was a big anniversary at the Greater Cincinnati Water Works this year, but it does not appear that anyone celebrated the occasion. Fifty years ago, on March 15, 1976, after more than 25 years…

Some records are more significant than others. And some records are being used to hype normal temperature variability in unfortunate ways. Consider yesterday (Sunday). SeaTac Airport beat its daily…

A steak-walk thought experiment about brute-force universe simulation, Kardashev-scale compute, compression, probabilities, and how much reality a mind needs from the inside.

I’ve been in the AI space since ChatGPT first dropped. I’ve toyed around with a lot of Language Models, built random side projects, built a couple from scratch and I’ve spent hours looking at the…

Use this visualization to see the medical colleges in India established over time. The first one to be established was the Madras Medical College, in 1835. My home town has two medical colleges: one…

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States conducted by the CDC. The survey is…

Almost-daily, as Hobonichi puts it. A practice supported by good intentions and best efforts.

Hemay’s Phase 2 mufemilast data suggest that oral PDE4 inhibition can drive biologic-range remission rates in moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis. This class-level evidence may partially de-risk…

Nous voici dans le 80ième épisode de Quantum, le podcast et la newsletter de l’actualité quantique en France et dans le monde. 80, mazette ! On avait démarré il y a presque 7 ans, en septembre 2019.…

We present the first light of a new robotic unit we have in Chile: it shows the amazing Centaurus A galaxy (aka NGC 5128). It’s hard to hold back the emotion and satisfaction as... The…

Figure 1 Most game theory assumes the players exist at the same time and can interact: observe each other’s moves, retaliate against defections, form coalitions, bargain over outcomes.…

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in India announced that 45 lakh households in India are now powered entirely by solar energy. In other news, The Cubbon Park Namma Metro station was…

Chapter 18 - Indistinguishable Portent Flip two fair coins. Odds of each are independent, thus a 25% chance of each of the four outome permutations. HH HT TH TT Equal odds that the coins match to…

Probabilistic Uniqueness Ground Truth Consider a set of observations \mathcal{O} and a binary relation \mathord{\sim} \subseteq \mathcal{O} \times \mathcal{O} such that a \sim b means that the…

The official line: there are true anomalies which the head of the Pentagon’s UFO office does not understand with his physics and engineering background, and from his time in the Intelligence…