Category: Insight
A Toxic Substance Found in Beethoven’s Hair May Solve an Enduring Mystery
For 200 years, Ludwig van Beethoven’s deafness has puzzled experts and fans. But a recent…
Google and Harvard Map a Tiny Piece of the Human Brain With Extreme Precision
Our brains are like a jungle, writes Shelly Fan at Singularity Hub: Fan reports that…
Teaching the Science of Happiness
“In order to help improve my students’ mental health, I offered a course on the…
Astronomers Discover 27,500 New Asteroids Lurking in Archival Images
By Jason Dorrier at Singularity Hub: In tandem with Google Cloud, the Asteroid Institute recently…
AI’s Next Big Step: Detecting Human Emotion and Expression
Alex Kantrowitz at The Big Technology: The AI field has made remarkable progress with incomplete…
Build a Thriving Workforce to Defend Against Disruption
Generative AI has begun to reshape jobs; leaders have an opportunity to reimagine work, the…
My Word of the Year: Hostages
By Anatoly Liberman at OUP: The Hebrew word “hostages” can be translated into English as…
For a Dollar, For a Battle
by John Allen Paulos at 3 Quarks Daily: An abstract paradox discussed by Yale economist…
Why Did Our Ancestors Make Startling Art in Dark, Firelit Caves?
‘Why do you think they drew these stags here?’ Eduardo Palacio-Pérez, the conservator of the…
Why Science Needs Metaphor
Tasneem Zehra Husain in New Humanist: If science has a native tongue, it is mathematics. Equations…
How a NASA Probe Solved a Scorching Solar Mystery
Thomas Zurbuchen in Quanta: Our sun is the best-observed star in the entire universe. We…
How ‘Feelings About Thinking’ Help Us Navigate Our World
A key idea here is that our brains are constantly riding the ups and downs…