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How to measure the returns on R&D spending

technologyreview.com David Rotman 2025-09-20 12:00:00

Sure, it’s easy to argue for the importance of spending on science by pointing out that many of today’s most useful technologies had their origins in government-funded R&D. The internet, CRISPR, GPS—the list goes on and on. All true. But this argument ignores all the technologies that received millions in government funding and haven’t gone anywhere—at least not yet. We still don’t have DNA computers or molecular electronics. Never mind the favorite examples cited by contrarian politicians of se

Topics: funding government innovation science technologies

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When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe?

news.ycombinator.com The Mit Press Reader 2025-09-19 14:28:15

When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe? A childhood spent under the spell of sleight-of-hand taught me skepticism, curiosity, and the habit of looking beneath appearances. By: Richard Cytowic A↑ A↓ Off Bright Dark Blues Gray BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently. My earliest lessons in observation came not from a laboratory but in the living room, with my father in his tuxedo and top hat. To everyone else, he was “Big Ed,” a larger-tha

Topics: appearances father magician science taught

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Fringe Movement Claims the Entirety of Modern Physics Is Wrong

futurism.com Unknown 2025-09-24 20:00:48

It's one thing when a respected scientist has a novel idea of what dark matter or dark energy might be, or what could explain spooky quantum phenomena like entanglement and superpositions. But the wonders of the internet has brought an entire economy built on outrage and conspiracy theories, enabling even the most crackpot grifters and fringe scientists to reach a wide audience and easily make a quick buck. We've all heard them rage against vaccines and seed oils, but one of their buzziest clai

Topics: dark physics science theory weinstein

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Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-09-23 06:58:03

While the Trump administration has continued to refer to efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change as a scam, it has done almost nothing to counter the copious scientific evidence that demonstrates that climate change is real and doing real damage to the citizens of the US. The lone exception has been a draft Department of Energy report prepared by a handful of carefully chosen fringe figures that questioned the mainstream understanding of climate change. The shoddy work and questiona

Topics: change climate committee report science

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Department of Energy gets rid of climate skeptics group to dodge lawsuit

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-09-25 13:58:03

While the Trump administration has continued to refer to efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change as a scam, it has done almost nothing to counter the copious scientific evidence that demonstrates that climate change is real and doing real damage to the citizens of the US. The lone exception has been a draft Department of Energy report prepared by a handful of carefully chosen fringe figures that questioned the mainstream understanding of climate change. The shoddy work and questiona

Topics: change climate committee report science

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NASA found clues of life on Mars, but budget cuts threaten future missions

theverge.com Georgina Torbet 2025-09-28 05:47:01

An exciting discovery on Mars is being overshadowed by turmoil at NASA, with budget cuts threatening to destroy a scientific legacy that has been built over decades. Yesterday, the agency shared a finding, published in Nature, of potential biosignatures identified by the Mars Perseverance rover in a 3.5 billion-year-old rock. “This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars,” said Transportation Secretary and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy in a press confe

Topics: agency exploration mars nasa science

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The Download: Trump’s impact on science, and meet our climate and energy honorees

technologyreview.com Rhiannon Williams 2025-09-29 05:10:00

Every year MIT Technology Review celebrates accomplished young scientists, entrepreneurs, and inventors from around the world in our Innovators Under 35 list. We’ve just published the 2025 edition. This year, though, the context is different: The US scientific community is under attack. Since Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has fired top government scientists, targeted universities and academia, and made substantial funding cuts to the country’s science and technology

Topics: abate read science story technology

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Clarity or accuracy – what makes a good scientific image?

news.ycombinator.com Frankel 2025-10-02 05:02:40

Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History Anika Burgess W. W. Norton (2025) As someone who has spent a career visualizing science, Flashes of Brilliance felt like reading a love letter to the power of the photographic image. This beautifully written book, by writer and photo editor Anika Burgess, is a thoughtful, personal and witty meditation on how imagery does much more than just document a scene. Will AI jeopardize science photog

Topics: burgess early image images science

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“Mockery of science”: Climate scientists tear into new US climate report

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-10-12 17:14:42

More than 85 climate scientists declared the Department of Energy’s new climate report unfit for policymaking in a comprehensive review released Tuesday. The DOE’s report cherry-picked evidence, lacked peer-reviewed studies to support its questioning of the detrimental effects of climate change in the US and is “fundamentally incorrect,” the authors concluded. Scientists have accurately modeled and predicted the volume and impact of excess CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere since the 1970s, when Exx

Topics: climate doe report science scientific

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A Crack in the Cosmos

news.ycombinator.com Colin Wells 2025-10-16 20:11:05

Some time around the year 466 BCE – in the second year of the 78th Olympiad, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder tells us – a massive meteor blazed across the sky in broad daylight, crashing to the earth with an enormous explosion near the small Greek town of Aegospotami, or ‘Goat Rivers’, on the European side of the Hellespont in northeastern Greece. Pliny’s younger contemporary, the Greek biographer Plutarch, wrote that the locals still worshipped the scorched brownish metallic boulder, the s

Topics: anaxagoras greek moon science socrates

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Scientists Are Flocking to Bluesky

wired.com Jennifer Ouellette 2025-10-21 09:26:05

Marine biologist and conservationist David Shiffman was an early power user and evangelist for science engagement on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Over the years, he trained more than 2,000 early career scientists on how to best use the platform for professional goals: networking with colleagues, sharing new scientific papers, and communicating with interested members of the public. But when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, renaming it X, changes to both the platform’s a

Topics: bluesky platform science shiffman twitter

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Reading for pleasure plummets by 40% in the US

news.ycombinator.com Paul Arnold 2025-10-27 03:17:44

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Dataset characterization and measures of reading. Credit: iScience (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113288 If you love nothing more than devouring a page-turner in your free time, you're becoming a rare breed. Reading for pleasure among adults in the United States has fallen dramatically in the last two decades. A n

Topics: 2025 iscience people pleasure reading

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Philosophical Thoughts on Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (2024)

news.ycombinator.com Ziming Liu 2025-10-27 12:03:12

Recently, collaborators and I proposed a new type of neural networks called the Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs), which are somewhat similar to but mostly different from Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs). The technical differences between MLPs and KANs can be found in our paper and many discussions over the internet. This blogpost does not delve into technicalities, but want to lay out quick philosophical thoughts, open to discussion. I will attempt to answer the follwoing questions: Q1: Are KAN

Topics: aligned complicated kans mlps science

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The fight over science funding: Congress vs. the OMB

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-11-06 09:13:29

The Project 2025 document outlined additional ideas, such as the elimination of scientific research at the EPA, something that has since occurred. It also suggests that finding solutions to climate change is part of a "partisan political agenda." So, its hostility to scientific findings extended well beyond the biomedical fields. But what about Congress? It's safe to conclude that this faction, which is now running the government, views science and scientists as ideological opponents and has b

Topics: budget congress passage science support

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Positron, a New Data Science IDE

news.ycombinator.com Posit Team 2025-11-06 16:20:25

We are excited to introduce Positron, a free, next-generation Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for data science by Posit PBC. Positron brings the spectrum of exploration and production work together in one environment so you can move from ideation to insight to application without switching context. Ultimately, we have taken all the learnings from the 14+ years of building RStudio, and applied them to a new platform that treats Python and R as equals. It is a great time to start using P

Topics: data open positron python science

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Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

news.ycombinator.com Unknown 2025-11-07 23:05:59

I really like Ted Chiang’s writing. I think he's probably the best science fiction short story writer alive, and possibly the best short story writer, period. I've read every one of his stories at least twice, and The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate more like seven times. I’ve noticed many of his readers, including some of his most positive reviewers, miss one key point or another of his works, and thus don't fully appreciate his genius. This review covers what he does extremely well, espec

Topics: chiang fiction science stories technology

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Sky Calendar

news.ycombinator.com Unknown 2025-11-06 15:24:29

The Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar promotes skywatching for people of all ages. As its name implies, the sheet for each month takes the form of a calendar. Diagrams in the boxes invite the reader to track the moon's rapid motion past the planets and bright stars of the zodiac, as well as to follow the more leisurely pace of the planets in their gatherings with bright stars and other planets. The reverse side consists of a simplified star map of the month's evening sky. The sky maps are designed

Topics: abrams calendar planets science sky

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Celebrating 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-11-10 02:26:22

When The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in 1975, no one could have dreamed that it would become the longest-running theatrical release film in history. But that's what happened. Thanks to a killer soundtrack, campy humor, and a devoted cult following, Rocky Horror is still a mainstay of midnight movie culture. In honor of its 50th anniversary, Disney/20th Century Studios is releasing a newly restored 4K HDR version in October, along with deluxe special editions on DVD and Blu-ray. And the f

Topics: film horror musical rocky science

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Great Myths #16: The Conflict Thesis

news.ycombinator.com Tim O'Neill 2025-11-11 14:21:29

The “Conflict Thesis” forms a kind of underlying historial metamyth that informs and undergirds a substantial amount of historical assumptions by anti-theist polemicists. This is the assumed and unquestioned idea that Science and Religion have been perpetually at war down the ages. Also known as the Draper-White Thesis or Warfare Model, it is a conception of the history of science that presents religion as the perpetual and consistent enemy of science, technology and progress. It is a pervasive

Topics: conflict draper religion science white

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NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

news.ycombinator.com Unknown 2025-11-15 03:08:16

Ai2 has been awarded $75 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and $77 million from NVIDIA as part of a jointly funded project with the NSF and NVIDIA to advance our research and develop truly open AI models and solutions that will accelerate scientific discovery. The partnership supports the NSF Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure project, Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science (OMAI). Led by Principal Investigator Dr. Noah A. Smith, Senior Director of NLP Rese

Topics: ai nsf open research science

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It Might Already Be Too Late to Save NASA

futurism.com Unknown 2025-11-19 11:47:19

One of president Donald Trump's long-held desires has been to replace NASA with private spaceflight enterprises. With cronies in charge at the agency to execute draconian budget cuts to that end, it looks like the president is about to get his wish. As Aviation Week reports, the agency is gearing up to be gutted as its leadership prepares to enact the Trump administration's outrageous budget reductions, which include thousands of layoffs and nearly 50 percent lobbed off its science budget, whic

Topics: agency budget nasa science trump

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The Black Market for Fake Science Is Growing Faster Than Legitimate Research, Study Warns

wired.com Fernanda González 2025-11-24 02:00:00

A new study by researchers at Northwestern University has set off alarm bells about the future of academic research, warning that the publication of fraudulent science is growing at a faster rate than that of legitimate research. Over the last four centuries, an implicit contract has been established between scientists and states: in exchange for producing knowledge useful for economic and social development, governments and other benefactors offer researchers stable careers, good salaries, and

Topics: data northwestern research researchers science

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National Academies to fast-track a new climate assessment

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-11-25 22:55:43

The nation’s premier group of scientific advisers announced Thursday that it will conduct an independent, fast-track review of the latest climate science. It will do so with an eye to weighing in on the Trump administration’s planned repeal of the government’s 2009 determination that greenhouse gas emissions harm human health and the environment. The move by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to self-fund the study is a departure from their typical practice of respond

Topics: academies administration climate national science

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Welcome to The Stepback, a weekly breakdown of one essential story from across the tech world

theverge.com Marina Galperina 2025-12-01 03:46:23

is the Senior Tech Editor at The Verge. She previously covered tech, science, and art at Popular Science, Gizmodo, and other places. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. I’m excited to announce The Stepback, a weekly subscriber-only newsletter that I’ll be editing for The Verge. We’ll be bringing you a new story each Sunday from a rotating cast of writers from every corner of the Verge extended universe. If you’re a regular reader, you know w

Topics: ll new science verge week

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Researchers map where solar energy delivers the biggest climate payoff

news.ycombinator.com Unknown 2025-12-08 03:21:42

Using advanced computational modeling, a Rutgers professor, in collaboration with researchers from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Stony Brook University, reveal both the immediate and delayed climate benefits of solar power Increasing solar power generation in the United States by 15% could lead to an annual reduction of 8.54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, according to researchers at Rutgers, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Stony Brook Univ

Topics: co2 energy power science solar

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Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Forgotten AI Summit

wired.com Steven Levy 2025-12-08 09:30:00

In 2002, artificial intelligence was still in winter. Despite decades of effort, dreams of bestowing computers with humanlike cognition and real-world understanding had not materialized. To look for a way forward, a small group of scientists gathered for “The St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium.” AI pioneer Marvin Minsky was the central presence, along with his protégé Pushpinder Singh. After the symposium, Minsky, Singh, and renowned philosopher Aaron Sloman published a paper on the group’s ideas

Topics: ai epstein event minsky science

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Research roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

arstechnica.com Unknown 2025-12-08 22:11:28

It's a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. July's list includes the discovery of the tomb of the first Maya king of Caracol in Belize, the fluid dynamics of tacking a sailboat, how to determine how fast blood was traveling when it stained cotton fabric, and how

Topics: blood caracol science site tomb

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Celebrating 40 Years of the Weirdest, Nerdiest Week in Movie History

gizmodo.com Germain Lussier 2025-12-10 17:00:33

“Don’t cannibalize the audience” is an unwritten mantra in Hollywood. If a movie that is coming out has a similar subject matter or serves a similar viewership as one you are releasing, you try and put some distance between them so as not to ruin your chances of success. If two movies come out that are too similar, it’s likely to split the audience and hurt both of them. That seems like a no-brainer point of view. And yet, 40 years ago this week, three movies were released in a seven-day span th

Topics: movies people released science time

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How Scientific Empires End

news.ycombinator.com Ross Andersen 2025-12-12 06:47:15

Roald Sagdeev has already watched one scientific empire rot from the inside. When Sagdeev began his career, in 1955, science in the Soviet Union was nearing its apex. At the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, he studied the thermonuclear reactions that occur inside of stars. A few lab tables away, Andrei Sakharov was developing the hydrogen bomb. The Soviet space program would soon astonish the world by lofting the first satellite, and then the first human being, into orbit. Sagdeev can still rememb

Topics: american sagdeev science scientific scientists

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Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work

wired.com Molly Taft 2025-12-13 17:31:16

A new report released yesterday by the Department of Energy purports to provide “a critical assessment of the conventional narrative on climate change.” But nine scientists across several different disciplines told WIRED that the report mishandled citations of their work: by cherrypicking data, misrepresenting findings, drawing erroneous conclusions, or leaving out relevant context. This report was introduced on the same day that the EPA announced it would seek to roll back the endangerment fin

Topics: climate doe report science wired

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Latest Tech News

How to measure the returns on R&D spending

When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe?

Fringe Movement Claims the Entirety of Modern Physics Is Wrong

Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report

Department of Energy gets rid of climate skeptics group to dodge lawsuit

NASA found clues of life on Mars, but budget cuts threaten future missions

The Download: Trump’s impact on science, and meet our climate and energy honorees

Clarity or accuracy – what makes a good scientific image?

“Mockery of science”: Climate scientists tear into new US climate report

A Crack in the Cosmos

Scientists Are Flocking to Bluesky

Reading for pleasure plummets by 40% in the US

Philosophical Thoughts on Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (2024)

The fight over science funding: Congress vs. the OMB

Positron, a New Data Science IDE

Ted Chiang: The Secret Third Thing

Sky Calendar

Celebrating 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Great Myths #16: The Conflict Thesis

NSF and Nvidia award Ai2 $152M to support building an open AI ecosystem

It Might Already Be Too Late to Save NASA

The Black Market for Fake Science Is Growing Faster Than Legitimate Research, Study Warns

National Academies to fast-track a new climate assessment

Welcome to The Stepback, a weekly breakdown of one essential story from across the tech world

Researchers map where solar energy delivers the biggest climate payoff

Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Forgotten AI Summit

Research roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

Celebrating 40 Years of the Weirdest, Nerdiest Week in Movie History

How Scientific Empires End

Scientists Say New Government Climate Report Twists Their Work

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