New Math Book Rescues Landmark Topology Proof By KEVIN HARTNETT Michael Freedman's momentous 1981 proof of the four-dimensional Poincaré conjecture was on the verge of being lost. The editors of a new book are trying to save it.
Read the article | | | | |  | Karen Miga Fills In the Missing Pieces of Our Genome By CARRIE ARNOLD Driven by her fascination with highly repetitive, hard-to-read parts of our DNA, Karen Miga led a coalition of researchers to finish sequencing the human genome after almost two decades.
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How Scientists Finally Finished the Human Genome |  | One Lab's Quest to Build Space-Time Out of Quantum Particles By ADAM BECKER Physicists have pondered how the fabric of space-time may emerge from some kind of quantum entanglement. In Monika Schleier-Smith's lab at Stanford University, the thought experiment is becoming real.
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Albert Einstein, Holograms and Quantum Gravity | |  | The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks By NATALIE WOLCHOVER Studies of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations — as well as insights into the nature of time itself.
Read the article | |  | To Learn More Quickly, Brain Cells Break Their DNA By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ New work shows that neurons and other brain cells use DNA double-strand breaks, often associated with cancer and aging, to quickly express genes related to learning and memory.
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Does Evolution Evolve?
by Emily Singer (2014) |  | How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron? By ALLISON WHITTEN Computational neuroscientists taught an artificial neural network to imitate a biological neuron. The result offers a new way to think about the complexity of single brain cells.
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Hidden Computational Power
Found in the Arms of Neurons
by Jordana Cepelewicz (2020) | |  | The Mystery at the Heart of Physics That Only Math Can Solve Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT;
Story by KEVIN HARTNETT The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.
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Read the article |  | The Complex Truth About 'Junk DNA' By JAKE BUEHLER Genomes hold immense quantities of noncoding DNA. Some of it is essential for life, some seems useless, and some has its own agenda.
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Evolving in Genome's Junkyard
by Vivane Callier (2020) | | Molded Differently
Slime molds — single-celled organisms that can collaborate to solve mazes, recreate maps of the Tokyo railway network, and more — challenge our notion of individuality, Lacy Johnson writes in an essay for Orion Magazine. The amoebas also challenge biologists' notion of cognition, Katia Moskvitch reported for Quanta in 2018. Slime molds show signs of learning and remembering, all without a single brain cell.
New Hope for Nine
If the solar system's fringe hides a super-Earth, it may be larger and closer than astronomers had thought, Nadia Drake reports for National Geographic. That's good news for those hunting for the hypothesized Planet Nine beyond the orbit of Pluto. The world's inferred characteristics had previously put it right at the edge of what was feasible to detect with optical telescopes, Charlie Wood reported for Quanta in 2018. | | A Quantum Route to Randomness
Researchers have created a SIM card-sized chip that uses the quantum behavior of photons to pull off a feat impossible for standard computers: creating truly random numbers, Pradeep Niroula reports for Physics World. Because genuinely random numbers are a scarce resource, generating them could be the first commercial application for quantum computers. Anil Ananthaswamy wrote about two schemes for doing so for Quanta in 2019.
Evolution, Fast and Slow
Animals are "shapeshifting" as the planet warms, Helena Horton reports for The Guardian. Birds in particular are rapidly evolving larger beaks, legs and wings that can radiate heat more efficiently. While the observed pace of evolution tends to be slow over eons, biologists are finding abundant evidence that more frantic adaptation can often occur over just a few generations, Carrie Arnold reported for Quanta in 2017. | | | |
