Blogs about Science

The obituaries have been weirdly relevant lately. First, a couple weeks back, Daniel Dennett died. Dennett was someone who could have had a huge impact on my life. Growing up combatively atheist in the early …

Welcome to "The Physicists’ Library": an expertly curated compilation of the best 33 physics books that every enthusiast, student, and professional physicist should consider exploring.

Anyone who's gone under the knife knows the doctor says they're going to put you to sleep, but it's a different kind of sleep one has every night. Science found out how anaesthesia works so …

It has been extremely busy in the ten months or so since I last wrote something here. It’s perhaps the longest break I’ve taken from blogging for 20 years (gosh!) but I think it was …

We’ve been hard at work here in Edinburgh. Kris Brown has created Julia code to implement the ‘stochastic C-set rewriting systems’ I described last time. I want to start explaining this code and also examples …

Open Academic Publication Posted 10/28/2023 I’m currently at a workshop on open practices across disciplines, and one topic of discussion is how to change the academic publishing process to be more accessible to both authors …

The dream of soaring in the sky like a bird has captivated the human mind for ages. Although many failed, some eventually succeeded in achieving that goal. These days we take air transportation for granted, …

In a Tablet Magazine article titled “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers” posted on March 6, 2024, Professor of Statistics and Data Science Abraham Wyner from the Wharton School at the University …

“Any update on the lawsuit?” That is the most common question any of us is asked. It is usually preceded by an apologetic preamble, like, “sorry if this is a sensitive question,” or “I don’t …

It’s now Round 5 of “benzene in your products is giving you cancer” – over the last three years, this “known human carcinogen” been found in hand sanitiser, sunscreen, deodorant, dry shampoo, and now benzoyl …

The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this. Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. Image: CC-BY Tom Stafford 2022 For me though, …

Transmission of innovative taste?

Some debate over the merits of Minicircle, the gene therapy startup. It's a case of "in theory, it shouldn't work", with "working" defined in the most damning way: probably not even raising follistatin. The debate …

The semester here is coming to a close. I’m way behind writing up notes for the lectures I’ve been giving, which are ending with covering the details of the Standard Model. This summer I’ll try …

Atomic physicists “are jacks of all trades,” according to Alex Sushkov. “You have to have the idea, design the experiment, build the experiment, run the experiment, fix everything, take data, analyze data, write up the …

Mathematics and literature ran on parallel tracks throughout much of my life. I fell in love with mathematics, or at least numbers, when I first entered primary school at the age four and I had …

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? The week at Retraction Watch featured: Publisher slaps 60 papers in chemistry journal with expressions of concern Professor, former dean earns nearly …

The idea that the universe is not the same everywhere has been flying under the radar for the last fifty years or so, and a new paper details a fresh perspective on this idea. According …

When I learned of Jim Simons’s passing, I was actually at the Simons Foundation headquarters in lower Manhattan, for the annual board meeting of the unparalleled Quanta Magazine, which Simons founded and named. The meeting …

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE It’s Time to Believe the AI Hype Steven Levy | Wired “There’s universal agreement in the tech world that AI is the biggest thing since the internet, and maybe bigger. …Skeptics might try …