Science on dan.heskett

Police In Guinea-Bissau Raid Offices Of Danish Anti-Vaxxers Planning CDC-Funded Unethical Study

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:40:00 -0400

“The study is designed to knowingly expose 7,000 children to hepatitis B, which can have immensely deleterious long-term health outcomes if exposed.”

The Mother Museum

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:35:00 -0400

“Despite the claims of collectors, a skull can only belong to its own person, not a museum or any other buyer on the market.”

A 10-year-old CNN outperforms frontier LLMs for skin cancer diagnosis

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 18:20:00 -0400

“A ten-year-old network, fine-tuned for about twenty minutes, beat both of them at recognising skin cancer.”

Reg readers land on 'Binface' as name for UK space cleanup mission

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 17:45:00 -0400

“Binface (and McBinface) have secured the popular vote for a satellite clean-up mission.”

AI-Assisted Paper on Z-Library Cites a TorrentFreak Article That Doesn't Exist

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 09:35:00 -0400

“The problem is that this particular legal action is new to us.”

Warhound raises $200M to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 09:30:00 -0400

“If we make the dog safer, make it healthier, make it perform better, it’s going to perform better in the line of duty.”

An artist's take on AI in math

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:35:00 -0400

“AI is seen as a tool to replace the work done by humans, rather than one to empower those humans.”

Bird Flu Is Raging on a Mink Farm. It Could Spark a Human Pandemic, Experts Say, but Officials Won't Act.

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:24:00 -0400

“Instead of trying to stop the outbreak and prevent it from spilling into humans, state and federal officials have done little except try to keep its existence quiet, our investigation shows.”

Nuclear Weapons Waste Made Workers Sick. Despite a Law Meant to Help, the DOE Keeps Fighting Their Claims.

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:46:00 -0400

“State records show that the DOE has filed more than 500 appeals since the presumption law passed in 2018.”

The Other Epidemic

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:39:00 -0400

“I knew that every hypochondriac is eventually vindicated, but that their “I told you so” has a fatal price.”

Will it be a golden age or a dark age for mathematics (and science)?

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:41:00 -0400

“I therefore disagree with claims that mathematics is over because machines can prove theorems.”

Bringing the magic: Google breaks open a bottleneck in quantum computing

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 08:10:00 -0400

“We’ve shown that magic state cultivation works on Google Quantum AI hardware.”

Android earthquake alerts now available in more than 200 regions

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 08:09:00 -0400

“We’ve sent over one billion Android earthquake alerts.”

Russian lab worker dies of suspected plague as 200 enter medical observation

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:05:00 -0400

“The sanitary-epidemiological situation” in the area “is currently stable,” Kobsev said.

Four Kids in One Faith-Healing Family Died. Authorities Could Do Nothing.

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:00:00 -0400

“If you don’t do anything, kids are going to die.”

Things that Apparently Cause Cancer

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:55:00 -0400

“Sophisticated statistics can produce extremely precise nonsense when the design fails to identify the causal mechanism.”

Toadstools and Toxins

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:50:00 -0400

“Muscimol killed mice at a lower dose than nearly all psychotropic drugs we examined, including fentanyl.”

China is excelling in health tech. That's good news for the world

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:10:00 -0400

“Chinese products are cheaper and scalable, which is so important for developing countries.”

Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It's Worse in States With Abortion Bans.

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:27:00 -0400

“Almost 200 women with the condition died from 2020 to 2025, compared with about 100 in the previous six years.”

On Tour with the Eclipse Chasers

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:20:00 -0400

“Totality is in a league of its own. Totality is what they are chasing.”

The part of Navier-Stokes no one is talking about

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:42:00 -0400

“I hesitate to use the word ‘revolutionary,’ but lowering the cost of anything by four orders of magnitude is revolutionary.”

Regulators Knew This Marijuana Product Was Harming People. It Stayed on Shelves for More Than a Year.

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:53:00 -0400

“Regulators knew this marijuana product was harming people. It stayed on shelves for more than a year.”

Google DeepMind Maps 9 Billion Possible DNA Variants

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 07:13:00 -0400

“The AI model can compare an original DNA sequence with an altered one and predict how the change might affect gene expression and other regulatory activity.”

Caltech Mathathon: first hackathon ever devoted to research level mathematics

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:25:00 -0400

“It will be the first hackathon ever devoted to research level mathematics.”

The Scientist Trying to Keep Kratom Legal Has Not Disclosed Longstanding Ties to Kratom Lobbyists

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 21:50:00 -0400

“I’m really confused on where science ends and lobbying begins.”

Where's the Beef? The Lab-Grown-Meat Revolution That Wasn't

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 03:00:00 -0400

“On August 5, 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historical burger, made from cattle cells grown in a lab by Mark Post.”

More Than Half of Adults in U.S. Say They Lack Basic Statistical Understanding

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:45:00 -0400

“While statistics are not hard to understand, they are even easier to misunderstand.”

His Research on Pregnant Opioid Users Was Widely Celebrated. Auditors and Experts Found Major Flaws.

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:45:00 -0400

“The misrepresentation is not minor. It runs throughout the piece.”

A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0400

“A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers.”

Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:30:00 -0400

“Adequate coverage for all could avert about 62,863 deaths annually.”

AI isn't outthinking mathematicians, it's out-remembering them

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

“The machine may appear more mathematically intelligent partly because it is much less constrained by a cognitive limitation that suppresses human performance.”

Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead of Winter

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 09:30:00 -0400

“Peak anomalies reach +7 in the eastern parts.”

Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0400

“Those individuals with normal weight or overweight and clinically defined high WC or WHR were associated with a 15% - 50% greater risk for most of the nine studied outcomes.”

What sort of maths are LLMs good at?

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:20:00 -0400

“The most notable mathematical results proved by LLMs have tended to be ones that we would classify as examples or counterexamples.”

Swarms of tiny robots remove microplastics from soil and water

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:10:00 -0400

“In water, they removed about 94% of test polystyrene particles and 89% of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) in around an hour.”

Compression is prediction

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:55:00 -0400

“Here’s how an order-1 model stacks up against GPT-2 with arithmetic coding in compressing a famous Charles Dickens quote: order-1 434 bits, 24% of original; GPT-2 176 bits, 10% of original.”

New spinning drone hides in plain sight

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:54:26 -0400

“Instead, we asked whether we could design the drone itself around the way humans perceive motion.”

Postmortem for Kernel Soundness Bug #14576

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 20:50:19 -0400

“This is an implementation bug, not a hole in Lean’s meta-theory.”

Detect Dark Matter's Mark from Your Backyard

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:03:26 -0400

“Something out there is putting its stamp on how the Milky Way turns. And that basic observation is what allows me to say that, with the help of some roof flashing and a paint-thinner can, I’ve been able to detect dark matter from my backyard.”

The Maxwell Conjecture is False

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:57:15 -0400

“We exhibit a configuration of five point charges in Euclidean space whose electrostatic potential admits at least 24 critical points all of which are non-degenerate. Maxwell’s conjecture that the field of n point charges has at most (n-1)² critical points which are all non-degenerate is therefore false.”

Lawmakers Call for CDC to Track Vitamin K Shot Refusals, Cite ProPublica Report

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 07:52:30 -0400

“Recent reporting from ProPublica has highlighted a major problem: the federal government does not currently track vitamin K shot refusal, vitamin K deficiency bleeding, or the preventable deaths related to vitamin K deficiency.”

Earth's Biggest Disasters Strike In a Hidden Pattern Every 27 Million Years

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 07:28:30 -0400

“Whether the apparent cycle reflects a genuine feature of Earth’s history remains an open question.”

AI Systems Out-Persuade Expert Humans, Including Professional Canvassers And World Championship Debaters

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:50:00 -0400

“AI systems were reliably more persuasive than expert humans, even when expert humans chose their issues, researched in advance, underwent hours of live, structured practice, and were incentivized with £1,000 cash bonuses.”

Amazon Files Application for Direct-to-Device Satellite Constellation

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:30:00 -0400

“Amazon has filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission for a constellation of more than 5,100 satellites that would provide direct-to-device (D2D) services using Globalstar spectrum.”

Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:25:00 -0400

“Babies who don’t get the vitamin K shot, research shows, are 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding.”

New HIV Vaccine Shows Unprecedented Success in Preclinical Study

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:15:00 -0400

“We succeeded in taking ultra-rare antibody responses and turning them common responses by the end of the vaccination process.”

Astronauts describe persistent 'observer' sensation after 6 month missions

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:01:00 -0400

“Coming home, it turns out, is its own kind of mission, and the part of you that watched yourself float for six months does not stop watching the moment your boots touch the tarmac.”

Canadian Lab Extracts 90% of Nuclear Waste Danger in 24 Hours

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:15:00 -0400

“Moltex projects that a single 300 MW SSR-W could run for its full 60-year life on recycled fuel from about 260,000 used CANDU bundles.”

Astronomers Detect First Atmosphere Around a Rocky Earth-Like Planet in the Habitable Zone

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:30:00 -0400

“It’s in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life.”

The Extraordinary Life and Quiet Death of the World's Largest Iceberg

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:40:00 -0400

“In March 2024, A23a’s progress across the ocean simply halted, and it began to twirl.”