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• Post #4354760

  "“He started off solving well-known spectacular problems,” said Tobias Ekholm of Uppsala University. “At a slightly older age, he’s doing this same spectacular work, but he has this ability: He solves a famous problem but does it in a way that creates a framework, a whole new package, that will be useful to other people.”" https://www.quantamagazine.org/john-pardon-wins-the-2026-fields-medal-for-work-in-symplectic-geometry-20260723/ #Mathematics #Mathematicians #Medals #Fields

• Post #4063995

  Link to stories for each of the Field and Abacus Medal winners for 2026. "Every four years, the math world’s preeminent awards are given to the finest minds of a generation. The young winners — all under 40 on the first day of the year — have reshaped mathematics and theoretical computer science. Here are their stories." https://www.quantamagazine.org/series/fields-and-abacus-medals-2026/ #Mathematics #Medals #Fields #Mathematicians

• Post #3868852

  "While we know that seals can hear [in both air and water] what’s long remained a mystery is exactly how they do so, and when this ability evolved. In our new paper, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, we investigated amphibious hearing in seals to find answers to these questions." https://theconversation.com/seals-have-a-unique-superpower-in-their-ears-and-we-finally-know-how-it-evolved-287072 #Seals #Hearing #Biology

• Post #3697507

  "Male dragonflies are known to engage in mid-air “dogfights” to defend their breeding territory, using different maneuvers than those they employ when hunting prey. A new paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface concluded that relatively simple rules drive that behavior, namely that male dragonflies are trying to maintain a tactical position. This mirrors the tactics of human fighter pilots." https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/07/dragonflies-maneuver-like-fighte...

• Post #3553749

  Includes images of many of the amazing neutrino detectors. "Because of these and other audacious experiments, the particle that Pauli was sure could never be caught has slowly been revealing its secrets. The recipe for discovery hasn’t changed in seven decades: Think big, go deep, and summon patience." https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-physicists-track-and-trap-the-elusive-neutrino-20260624/ #Particle #Physics #Neutrino #Detectors #BigScience

• Post #3481843

  "In the tropical rainforests of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, we discovered a spider with a new hunting strategy […] As we describe in a paper published today in Current Biology, it constructs a unique spring-loaded snare triggered only by a single kind of prey: the highly territorial and aggressive green tree ant (Oecophylla smaragdina)." https://theconversation.com/this-tiny-australian-spider-uses-a-high-powered-web-catapult-to-trap-and-eat-aggressive-ants-285700 #Spiders...

• Post #2563757

  "Flies (Diptera) are particularly suitable transport hosts. They are highly mobile, capable of long-distance flight, and frequently visit the same types of transient habitats that pseudoscorpions depend on. By attaching themselves to a fly, pseudoscorpions can effectively outsource dispersal – reaching new habitats they could never access on their own." https://blog.pensoft.net/2026/05/13/tiny-hitchhikers-in-a-big-world-how-pseudoscorpions-travel-on-flies/ #Flies #Pseudoscorp...

• Post #2397905

  A very fascinating video. It breaks down Escher's famous Print Gallery to show how it was created mathematically. It also shows what would appear in that round blank space in the middle of the drawing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxFjLJ3rVY #3Blue1Brown #Escher #Mathematics #Art

• Post #2193718

  "While electricity plays a central role, lightning bolts are formed and shaped by the whole physics canon — from cosmic blasts to particle physics. In particular, triggering a bolt seems to require extreme events more typically associated with supernovas, black holes, and particle colliders than with fluffy clouds." https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-causes-lightning-the-answer-keeps-getting-more-interesting-20260506/ #Physics #Lightning

• Post #1887990

  Cool, and good for Malaysian birders. [ https://x.com/DrAmarMOH/status/2049302877760561551 ] "Amar-Singh HSS @DrAmarMOH Malaysian Bird Report is delighted to report that in our partnership with Birds of the World (Cornell Lab) it is now OPEN ACCESS IN MALAYSIA. Will need an eBird account (free) to sign in. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/home If you are interested contributing to the work please contact me." #Malaysia #Birds #Birding #Resources

• Post #1887985

  "The FPGA earned the Milestone designation because it introduced iteration to semiconductor design. Engineers could redesign hardware repeatedly without fabricating a new chip, dramatically reducing development risk and enabling faster innovation at a time when semiconductor costs were rising rapidly." https://spectrum.ieee.org/fpga-chip-ieee-milestone #IEEE #Milestones #History #Technology #Engineering #FPGAs

• Post #1887984

  They are also known as plasma stoves. "Electric fire stoves cannot be sold in Singapore, said the Consumer Product Safety Office (CPSO), which advised those who have already bought such cooking appliances to use them “at their own discretion”." https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/electric-fire-stoves-not-certified-for-safety-cannot-be-sold-here-consumer-safety-office #Singapore #Consumer #Products #Cooking #Stoves #Safety #Standards

• Post #1887983

  "J. Craig Venter, the scientist who raced to decode the human genome, has died at 79. Venter rose to fame in the field for publishing the first bacterial genome ever decoded, along with a list on gene annotations, in 1995. The achievement kicked off an age of discovery in genetics, with researchers racing to decode the genomes of other pathogens—and eventually, animals." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/infamous-geneticist-and-decoder-of-the-human-genome-j-craig-ven...

• Post #1847090

  "[Giant clams] long-term existence hinges on strongly enforcing anti-poaching laws and improving the survival of offspring. Scientists also need sufficient funding to sustain conservation programmes, said 20 South-east Asian experts of the flamboyant bivalves. These were the key conclusions of a policy paper published on April 6 to improve the conservation of the threatened reef animals in the region." https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/saving-giant-clams-in-s...

• Post #1648384

  RIP. I've seen his remarkable footage in various BBC Wildlife documentaries. "The acclaimed wildlife cameraman and photographer Doug Allan has died while trekking in Nepal. Allan, 74, was principal cameraman on a number of BBC programmes including The Blue Planet, Blue Planet II, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, and spent much of his career working alongside Sir David Attenborough." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx9kvqxeq5o #BBC #Wildlife #Documentaries #Photogr...

• Post #1471225

  "Creating a conlang involves much more than stringing together some make-believe words. Languages are complex machines with many interlocking parts, and linguists must wield their expertise in these systems to create functional languages that suit their fictional speakers. That careful engineering not only adds depth and realism to many fantastical realms. It may also offer insight into the nature of language itself." https://www.sciencenews.org/article/conlang-fictional-langu...

• Post #1471224

  "A survey of 169 trees found 11 latrines—all of them in the major forks of the strangler fig tree (Ficus tuerckheimii). A camera trap at one arboreal potty captured 17 different species visiting the spot. The findings, published March 16 in Ecology and Evolution, suggest that treetop toilets might provide communication hubs across mammal species." https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cloud-forest-mammals-poop-tree-hub #Nature #Behaviour #Trees #Animals

• Post #615779

  "In May 2025, Lloyd’s syndicates began underwriting Armilla Insurance’s new AI liability coverage, one of the first policies explicitly designed to cover the costs of chatbot errors. At the exact same time, other major insurers began moving in the opposite direction, rewriting policies to add “absolute AI exclusions” to avoid exposure entirely." https://cacm.acm.org/news/ai-liability-insurance-arrives/ #AI #Insurance

• Post #615777

  "The latest search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing 12 years ago in one of aviation's greatest enduring mysteries, concluded in January without yielding any findings, Malaysia's transport ministry said on Sunday (Mar 8)." https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/mh370-new-search-ends-12-year-mystery-5981276 #Malaysia #Airlines #MH370

• Post #615776

  RE: https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/116199197526716498 @gregeganSF might be interested in this too.

• Post #615767

  "Angus McKie's an elusive artist. He had a flurry of stellar science fiction paperback covers across the mid-to-late '70s, before slowing down across the '80s and '90s while working across a variety of other mediums, including his own graphic novels, the 1981 Heavy Metal film, some pioneering '90s work with CG for comics and graphic novels, and more recently, working on video games." https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/angus-mckies-modular-f...

• Post #534326

  "Spaceships: The first frontier. Across the '70s and '80s, complex and colorful spaceships were the primary element that publishers everywhere thought to shoehorn onto any science fiction book cover. The diverse visual style of all that spacecraft is impossibly to fully sum up, but in this post, we're going to try regardless." https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/cool-spaceships/ #Art #Space #SpaceShips

• Post #534325

  "Robert Tinney passed away on February 1st, 2026. [...] He was the artist behind the beautiful hand-painted covers of the influential computer hobbiest magazine Byte from the December 1975 issue until the early '90s. [...] Tinney's career didn't begin or end with Byte. He worked for a range of electronics companies and magazines [...] doing plenty of covers and advertisements that have rarely been collected or highlighted." https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost....