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For 200 years, Ludwig van Beethoven’s deafness has puzzled experts and fans. But a recent discovery of toxic substances in locks of the composer’s hair may finally solve the mystery.
Continue readingA Toxic Substance Found in Beethoven’s Hair May Solve an Enduring Mystery
Our brains are like a jungle, writes Shelly Fan at Singularity Hub: Fan reports that “scientists just published the most detailed map of a cubic millimeter of the human brain.
Continue readingGoogle and Harvard Map a Tiny Piece of the Human Brain With Extreme Precision
“In order to help improve my students’ mental health, I offered a course on the science of happiness. It worked – but why?” Bruce Hood in Aeon: In 2018, a
By Jason Dorrier at Singularity Hub: In tandem with Google Cloud, the Asteroid Institute recently announced they’ve spotted 27,500 new asteroids—more than all discoveries worldwide last year—without requiring a single
Continue readingAstronomers Discover 27,500 New Asteroids Lurking in Archival Images
Alex Kantrowitz at The Big Technology: The AI field has made remarkable progress with incomplete data. Leading generative models like Claude, Gemini, GPT-4, and Llama can understand text but not
Continue readingAI’s Next Big Step: Detecting Human Emotion and Expression
Generative AI has begun to reshape jobs; leaders have an opportunity to reimagine work, the workplace, and the worker. Here are five actions that orgs. can take to help make
Continue readingBuild a Thriving Workforce to Defend Against Disruption
By Anatoly Liberman at OUP: The Hebrew word “hostages” can be translated into English as “children of surety,” and in many languages the word for “hostage” means both “security, pledge”
by John Allen Paulos at 3 Quarks Daily: An abstract paradox discussed by Yale economist Martin Shubik has a logical skeleton that can, perhaps surprisingly, be shrouded in human flesh
‘Why do you think they drew these stags here?’ Eduardo Palacio-Pérez, the conservator of the cave, asks me. ‘I really don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,’ I reply. Izzy
Continue readingWhy Did Our Ancestors Make Startling Art in Dark, Firelit Caves?
Tasneem Zehra Husain in New Humanist: If science has a native tongue, it is mathematics. Equations capture, precisely, the relationships among the elements of a system; they allow us to pose
Thomas Zurbuchen in Quanta: Our sun is the best-observed star in the entire universe. We see its light every day. For centuries, scientists have tracked the dark spots dappling its
Continue readingHow a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery
A key idea here is that our brains are constantly riding the ups and downs of the uncertainty that surrounds us. Part of this uncertainty has to do with our
Continue readingHow ‘Feelings About Thinking’ Help Us Navigate Our World