In a new report, Penn State political scientists say that it’s not the recommendation engine, but the communities that form around right-wing content. From a report: YouTube is the biggest social media platform in the country, and, perhaps, the most misunderstood. Over the past few years, the Google-owned platform has become a media powerhouse where political discussion is dominated by right-wing…
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Ice cliffs in Antarctica might not contribute to extreme sea-level rise in this century
A 2016 study suggested tall ice cliffs along Antarctica’s coast might collapse rapidly under their own weight and contribute to more than 6 feet of sea-level rise by 2100. Now, MIT researchers have found this prediction may be overestimated. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ice-cliff-collapse-antarctica-sea-level-rise…
A Code Glitch May Have Caused Errors In More Than 100 Published Studies
Scientists have uncovered a glitch in a piece of code that could have yielded incorrect results in over 100 published studies that cited the original paper. From a report: The glitch caused results of a common chemistry computation to vary depending on the operating system used, causing discrepancies among Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The researchers published the revelation and a…
Python Code Glitch May Have Caused Errors In Over 100 Published Studies
Over 100 published studies may have incorrect results thanks to a glitchy piece of Python code discovered by researchers at the University of Hawaii. An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
The glitch caused results of a common chemistry computation to vary depending on the operating system used, causing discrepancies among Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The researchers published the revelation and a debugged…
Quantum Computing May Be Closer Than Expected With ‘Game Changer’ Discovery
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University describe a superconducting material, B-Bi2Pd, that naturally exists in a quantum state without the additional influence of magnetic fields usually needed for such an effect. The authors write that the low-maintenance, stability of this material makes it a perfect candidate for designing quantum systems. The research will…
Curiosity finds an ancient oasis on Mars
Scientists working with the Curiosity rover have found salt-enriched rock at a place called Sutton Island on Mars. The rocks suggest ponds with briny water on Mars, billions of years ago. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/curiosity-rover-ancient-oasis-mars-sutton-island…
Ocean Plastic Waste Probably Comes From Ships, Report Says
Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published this week said. From a report: The study offers fresh evidence that the vast garbage patches floating in the middle of oceans, which have…
Giant Planet Around Tiny Star ‘Should Not Exist’
Thelasko quotes the BBC: Astronomers have discovered a giant planet that, they say, should not exist, according to current theories. The Jupiter-like world is unusually large compared with its host star, contradicting a widely held idea about the way planets form. The star, which lies 284 trillion km away, is an M-type red dwarf – the most common type in our…
Do We Need To Rethink What Free Software Is?
Matthew Garrett is a security developer at Google and a Linux contributor who in 2014 won the Free Software Foundation’s annual “Advancement of Free Software” award. But now he’s asking if we need to re-think what free software is:
If users can pay Amazon to provide a hosted version of a piece of software, there’s little incentive for them to pay the…
Creating different kinds of light with manipulable quantum properties
In a paper published today in Nature’s NPJ Quantum Information, Omar Magaña-Loaiza, assistant professor in the Louisiana State University (LSU) Department of Physics & Astronomy, and his team of researchers describe a noteworthy step forward in the quantum manipulation and control of light, which has far-reaching quantum technology applications in imaging, simulation, metrology, computation, communication, and cryptography, among other areas. The…