The New Math of Wrinkling
A few minutes into a 2018 talk at the University of Michigan, Ian Tobasco picked up a large piece of paper and…
Writings
Will Transformers Take Over Artificial Intelligence?
Imagine going to your local hardware store and seeing a new kind of hammer on the shelf. You’ve heard about…
Some ecologists value parasites — and now want a plan to save them
Chelsea Wood always wanted to be a marine biologist. As a child growing up on New York’s Long Island, she…
Researchers turn to deep learning to decode protein structures
Twenty-eight years ago, computational biologists led by John Moult then at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, launched an ambitious, large-scale…
Research Has a “Trash Island.” Some Are Trying to Clean it Up.
Bad science can do lasting damage. A study falsely connecting COVID-19 to 5G wireless technology, for instance, was quickly retracted for its…
How Mathematicians Cracked the Zodiac Killer’s Cipher
In the late 1960s, a serial killer self-identifying as “the Zodiac” killed at least five people in Northern California and…
Genes point to how some bacteria can gobble up electricity
Bacteria can have superpowers. Some flourish in almost any environment. Others can transform toxic materials into harmless sludge. A bacterium…
AI, Explain Thyself
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 20, 2021 The past decade has seen machine learning—finding patterns in vast piles of data—in a state of…
Bringing Out the Dead
One bright morning in November 2018, state biologists in Louisiana loaded three dead and toothy alligators, each more than 5…
Cold plasma and the farms of the future
Physicist Stephan Reuter of Polytechnique Montréal spends most days using his expertise in energy and matter to improve medical technologies.…