The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. Please consider a monthly contribution to support this newsletter. Several media outlets this week have covered hints and speculation that two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines—probably ones being tested by Moderna and […]
When researchers at Google announced last fall that they had achieved “quantum superiority”—a point at which a quantum computer can perform a task beyond the reach of regular computers—some people wondered what the big deal was. The program, which checked the output of a random number generator, was of limited practical value and did not […]
Recently, one of my patients borrowed money from a loan shark just to get a private taxi to the hospital. When we had a problem locating her test results, she broke down, justifiably furious. She probably wouldn’t be able to find the money to come in again. Another patient, an elderly woman, was so scared […]
Quantum cryptography promises a future in which computers communicate with one another over ultrasecure links using the razzle-dazzle of quantum physics. But scaling up the breakthroughs in research labs to networks with a large number of nodes has proved difficult. Now an international team of researchers has built a scalable city-wide quantum network to share […]
Our solar system is far from the only way to put together stars and their planets. “If you look at all the stars in our galaxy, in the Milky Way, more than half of the stars are formed in multiples. Meaning there’s more than one star in the system.” Astrophysicist Jaehan Bae of the Carnegie […]
If and when a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine is available, what is the fairest way to distribute it? In a policy report published on Thursday in Science, 19 public health experts laid out an ethical framework called the Fair Priority Model. It is geared toward three principles: benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing countries […]
[CLIP: Thunder sound] The chance that a human being like you will be struck by lightning is minuscule. But what if you’re a tall tree in the tropics? “Lightning happens in milliseconds. We can’t predict where it’s going to be, and we generally can’t find it after it’s happened, so what a hard thing to […]
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Quantum cryptography promises a future in which computers communicate with one another over ultrasecure links using the razzle-dazzle of quantum physics. But scaling up the breakthroughs in research labs to networks with a large number of nodes has proved difficult. Now an international team of researchers has built a scalable city-wide quantum network to share […]
In 1952, educators and broadcasters met in State College, Pa., to discuss the potential of a new technology—television—for education. The mood was hopeful yet tempered with skepticism. One attendee pessimistically compared the medium with the potential of “atomic energy”; perhaps neutral, but possibly dangerous. One of the special guests of this conference was a slight […]