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Alternately, we could defer to the safety task forces that determine these policies. It is fairly clear, though, that politics alone drives much of the variation, across institutions and across state lines, in the protectiveness of COVID-safety policies. Senior professors…

The funds will support, among other things, postdocs and a PhD scholarship, each of which will involve placements with scientists in Hong Kong and the UK. Science has changed considerably in recent decades and continues to change at a remarkable rate.…

The more vulnerable-making the endeavor, the more reflexive the limitation and the more redemptive the liberation. There is a faith in loving fiercelythe one who is rightfully yours,especially if you havewaited years and especiallyif part of you never believedyou could…

[Hilma af Klint, “Series VIII – Picture of the Starting Point”] In a recent post at his blog, Stephen Mumford (Durham), provides some historical examples of this phenomenon: In Professor Mumford’s examples, there is the suggestion that those historically credited…

For each of us, one thing is true: Had any one variable been ever so subtly different — had your parents mated on a different day or at a different altitude, had the early universe cooled a fraction of a…

That process isn’t trivial during a windshield repair, lest the driver have a false sense of security when they get their car back. Scroll through this Honda presentation to get a feel for the number of systems and calibration processes involved. In…

How the gaps in gravity contour the next frontiers in the quest to understand the fundaments of what we are. By Maria Popova Complement with an animated look at the little loophole in the Big Bang model, then revisit the…

Inherent biases in the quantum propensities for alternative physical outcomes provide varying amounts of free will, which can be quantified with the expected information gain from learning the actual course of action chosen by the nervous system. For example, neuronal electric…

The following philosophers were elected as Corresponding Fellows: There were 84 new fellows elected in total. You can see the full list of them here. The following philosophers were elected as new UK Fellows: The British Academy, the UK’s national…

Dismantling these fallacies might be especially challenging in America, in whose young mind Emerson’s cry of rugged individualism still reverberates: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” But half a century of quiet, empirically unassailable research into the…