Plus: Language AI tackles high school math; heart attack recovery; Feynman diagrams aid math puzzle; new Quanta Science Podcast

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser EVOLUTION | ALL TOPICS   Gene Expression in Neurons Solves a Brain Evolution Puzzle By ALLISON WHITTEN The neocortex of our brain is the seat of our intellect. New data suggests that mammals created it with new types of cells that they developed only after their evolutionary split from reptiles. Read the article ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE   To Teach Computers Math, Researchers Merge AI Approaches By KEVIN HARTNETT Large language models still struggle with basic reasoning tasks. Two new papers that apply machine learning to math provide a blueprint for how that could change. Read the article Related:  Building the Mathematical Library of the Future By Kevin Hartnett (2020) GRAPH THEORY   Quantum Field Theory Pries Open Mathematical Puzzle By LEILA SLOMAN Mathematicians have struggled to understand the moduli space of graphs. A new paper uses tools from physics to peek inside. Read the blog Related:  He Dropped Out to Become a Poet. Now He's Won a Fields Medal. By Jordana Cepelewicz (2022) Q&A   She Studies Growing Arteries to Aid Heart Attack Recovery By CLAUDIA DREIFUS Regenerative medicine researcher Kristy Red Horse's discoveries may someday help damaged hearts heal better. Her stewardship of her Native American heritage may advance science in other ways too. Read the interview Related:  The Contrarian Who Cures Cancers By Claudia Dreifus (2020) QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST   Inside the Proton, the 'Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine' Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT; Story by CHARLIE WOOD Graphics by MERRILL SHERMAN The positively charged particle at the heart of the atom is an object of unspeakable complexity, one that changes its appearance depending on how it is probed. Listen to the podcast Read the story   Around the Web Ripples of Information Gravitational waves produced by neutron star collisions provide invaluable clues about the life cycle and contents of these stellar corpses, Sophia Chen writes for WIRED. In 2020, one gravitational wave signal had properties so unexpected that it forced astronomers to radically revise their models of how neutron stars are born. Dana Najjar wrote about it for Quanta. Defining Life Our cells are made of complicated micromachines driven by electric potentials. Precisely where that complexity shades into "life" is difficult to define. Kurzgesagt explains how life is an emergent phenomenon in a new video. There are many different definitions of life, and all come with exceptions. For The Joy of Why podcast, Steven Strogatz spoke with astrobiologist Robert Hazen and chemist Sheref Mansy about the dividing line between the living and non-living on a "continuum of chemical complexity." Follow Quanta Simons Foundation 160 5th Avenue, 7th Floor New York, NY 10010 Unsubscribe | About Quanta Privacy Policy | Terms | Contact Us   Copyright © 2023 Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation