(21 Dec 2023) As 2023 rolls to a close, Knowable Magazine has looked back over its articles and canvassed editorial committee members from the 51 academic journals — covering analytical chemistry to vision science — published by Knowable’s parent company, Annual Reviews. From good news to bad, from novel vaccines to insect invaders, this year left us with much…
Flexible organic circuits that mimic biological neurons could increase processing speed and might someday hook right into your head By Kurt Kleiner (25 Aug 2022) The human brain is an amazing computing machine. Weighing only three pounds or so, it can process information a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer, store a…
Mindfulness, detachment, selecting off-time activities with care: Here are evidence-based strategies to achieve healthy work-life balance By Chris Woolston (8 Jul 2022) There’s job stress, and then there’s the crushing pressure paramedics went through during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The uncertainty, the dread, the constantly changing protocols, the shortages of personal…
A worn pair of nurse’s shoes. That coronavirus model Anthony Fauci used in public briefings. Oral histories, iconic photos and social media posts. All of us are curators now, and what we preserve — as well as what we don’t — will write the pandemic story. By Karen Emslie (30 Jul 2021, feed from Knowable…
Evolution of children’s literature into high-tech form may offer benefits, but also some detriments By Cypress Hansen (28 May 2021, feed from Knowable Magazine) Grandma’s picture books had colored ink. Dad’s had pop-outs and fun textures. Today kids’ books can feature videos in place of illustrations, define words aloud and have characters that walk across…
The purpose of play — for children, monkeys, rats or meerkats — has proved surprisingly hard to pin down. Scientists continue to toss around ideas. (30 Mar 2021, feed from Knowable Magazine) Anyone who has ever chucked a tennis ball in the general vicinity of a border collie knows that some animals take play…
The pandemic prompted many scientists to pivot their research to the coronavirus. That’s not an entirely good thing. By Julie K. Pfeiffer and Terence S. Dermody (29 Jan 2021, feed from Knowable Magazine) For many researchers, the choice to spend decades working in a lab or in the field comes from a desire to…
Traffic planners, securities traders and military strategists all use it. Simulating the behavior of millions of idiosyncratic individuals also may be the best way to understand complex phenomena like pandemics. (15 Dec 2020, feed from Knowable Magazine) It’s been a long year, but a vaccine against Covid-19 has started to roll out across the…
The unlikely marriage of two major artificial intelligence approaches has given rise to a new hybrid called neurosymbolic AI. It’s taking baby steps toward reasoning like humans and might one day take the wheel in self-driving cars. (14 Oct 2020, feed from Knowable Magazine) A few years ago, scientists learned something remarkable about…
An infected and impatient world needs protection from Covid-19, but rushing it won’t be easy. How can we speed up a complicated process? (22 May 2020, feed from Knowable Magazine) The Covid-19 coronavirus has knocked our world off its axis. We won’t return to anything approaching normal — that is, life without social distancing, quarantines,…