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The Math That Tells Cells What They Are
During development, cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing, which could hint at a more general principle of life.
The…
6 years, 1 month ago
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science
The latest AI algorithms are probing the evolution of galaxies, calculating quantum wave functions, discovering new chemical compounds and more. Is t…
6 years, 1 month ago
A World Without Clouds
A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disa…
6 years, 2 months ago
How the Brain Creates a Timeline of the Past
The brain can’t directly encode the passage of time, but recent work hints at a workaround for putting timestamps on memories of events.
The post How…
6 years, 2 months ago
Foundations Built for a General Theory of Neural Networks
Neural networks can be as unpredictable as they are powerful. Now mathematicians are beginning to reveal how a neural network’s form will influence i…
6 years, 3 months ago
The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces
Emerging evidence suggests that the brain encodes abstract knowledge in the same way that it represents positions in space, which hints at a more uni…
6 years, 3 months ago
Milestone Experiment Proves Quantum Communication Really Is Faster
In a Paris lab, researchers have shown for the first time that quantum methods of transmitting information are superior to classical ones.
The post M…
6 years, 4 months ago
Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution’s Speed
Some researchers are using a complexity framework thought to be purely theoretical to understand evolutionary dynamics in biological and computationa…
6 years, 4 months ago
Should Evolution Treat Our Microbes as Part of Us?
How does evolution select the fittest “individuals” when they are ecosystems made up of hosts and their microbiomes? Biologist debate the need to rev…
6 years, 5 months ago
A Universal Law for the ‘Blood of the Earth’
Simple physical principles can be used to describe how rivers grow everywhere from Florida to Mars.
The post A Universal Law for the ‘Blood of the Ea…
6 years, 5 months ago