Pankaj Sharma is one of the world's premier speakers on Leadership and Personal Mastery. As a presenter, Sharma has the rare ability to electrify an audience yet deliver uncommonly original and useful insights that lead to individuals doing their best work, teams providing superb results and organizations becoming unbeatable.
Pankaj Sharma is also a Research Scientist.
Friday, April 7, 2023
‘Alien Calculus’ Could Save Particle Physics From Infinities
Plus: The aperiodic hat tile; How randomness helps algorithms; Animal mutation rates revealed; Vaccines on The Joy of Why
How to Tame the Endless Infinities Hiding in the Heart of Particle Physics
By CHARLIE WOOD
In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. Physicists get around this by just ignoring certain parts of the equations — an approach that provides approximate answers. But by using the techniques known as "resurgence," researchers hope to end the infinities and end up with perfectly precise predictions.
Should Covid-19 vaccines be judged by how well they prevent disease or how well they prevent death? Anna Durbin, a public health expert and vaccine researcher, talks about the science behind vaccines.
Unreliable Narrator New research shows that our memory can become unreliable in as little as a few seconds after an event, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. Unreliable memories are a universal experience that we've only recently begun to understand neurologically. Last year, Veronique Greenwood wrote for Quanta about how the uncertainty in our memories appears to be reflected in the electrical chatter in our brain signals.
Offsite Parasite Toxoplasma gondii is one of the most widespread parasites in the world, but it only reproduces sexually in the intestines of cats. Now researchers have figured out how to grow the toxoplasma cells in a lab, reports Catherine Offord for Science Magazine. Although it's a far cry from the mind-controlling fungus in "The Last of Us," some evidence hints that Toxoplasma might subtly change the behavior of infected humans. Tara C. Smith explained the science of zombie-like infections for Quanta in February.
