Plus: Ethernet Pioneer wins Turing award; Surprise combinatorics breakthrough; Category theory on "The Joy of Why"; Dinosaur size; Quadratic functions

Math and Science News from Quanta Magazine View this email in your browser QUANTUM GRAVITY | ALL TOPICS   Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question By CHARLIE WOOD Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that's not quite what happened. Read the article COMBINATORICS   Surprise Computer Science Proof Stuns Mathematicians By LEILA SLOMAN Two computer scientists have blown past decades of incremental progress on a key problem in arithmetic progression. Read the article Related:  Coloring by Numbers Reveals Arithmetic Patterns in Fractions By Leila Sloman QUANTIZED ACADEMY   The Symmetry That Makes Solving Equations Easy By PATRICK HONNER Learn why the quadratic formula works and why quadratics are easier to solve than cubics. Read the column Related:  The Sordid Past of the Cubic Formula By David S. Richeson (2022) THE JOY OF WHY   Is There Math Beyond the Equal Sign? Podcast hosted by STEVEN STROGATZ Can mathematics handle things that are essentially the same without being exactly equal? Category theorist Eugenia Cheng and host Steven Strogatz discuss the power and pleasures of abstraction. Listen to the podcast Read the transcript DINOSAURS   Dinosaur Bone Study Reveals That Not All Giants Grew Alike By ANNA GIBBS A survey of prehistoric bones reveals that T. rex and some of its cousins had more than one way to reach enormous sizes. Evolution may have preserved that variation in modern animals too. Read the blog TURING AWARD   Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet Pioneer, Wins Turing Award By BEN BRUBAKER The American researcher was recognized for his central role in inventing, standardizing and commercializing the ubiquitous networking technology. Read the blog Related:  To Boldly Go Where No Internet Protocol Has Gone Before By Susan D'Agostino (2020) Around the Web Bye Bye Bias Artificial intelligence is notoriously plagued by bias. For MIT Technology Review, Niall Firth reports on research that suggests a surprisingly simple solution: Ask the AI to be unbiased. Biases in AI often reflect the biases — unconscious and otherwise — in our society. In 2020, Natalie Wolchover wrote for Quanta about how AI does what it's told and why that's often a problem. Brain Stem Researchers have traced how different types of stem cells take on specialized roles in the brain, reports Heidi Ledford for Nature. They injected stem cells into the brains of mice and watched as the human brain tissue grew and differentiated. Integrating human brain tissue into the brains of mice and rats is a young technology that enables a host of neurological experiments. In 2022, Allison Whitten wrote for Quanta about how implanted brain "organoids" could be used to study neurodevelopment. 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