I once was an active chessplayer, but work duties have long taken tournaments off my plate - I simply do not have the time to sit through long hours of chess battles. So I play blitz online on chess…

As a forewarning to the reader, I am a physicist, not an economist. What I wrote below may very well be naive. In fact, I hope to stand corrected by readers in the comments thread - that has been an…

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commmonly called PFAS, are about 12,000 chemicals, nearly all found in nature, and since the 1940s, a handful have been synthesized for use in various products.…

Skip the glossary. Yes, it's the kind of thing editors love because of the famous communication guidance 'assume a lack of vocabulary but not a lack of intelligence' but that is when you're writing…

The ocean has quietly protected us from the full force of climate change. Since the industrial revolution, it has absorbed a vast amount of the carbon dioxide released by human activity. That has…

I want that table, I'll say that right out of the gate.You won't see the table on the cover, there is a gaming die and four cars even though only one of them ever drives to the place where all of the…

Last week I traveled to Singapore to give an invited talk at the AI4X conference, an exciting new venue gathering computer scientists, physicists and engineers to discuss how AI will accelerate…

Football fans everywhere are gearing up to celebrate the sport’s most skilled athletes as they prepare for the start of another Fifa World Cup. But few get to see how the next generation of Messis…

Am thrilled to report here that Scilight just launched a new gold open-access journal, "AI and Brain", of which I am the editor in chief. Below you can see the front page of a leaflet I will soon be…

What would you do if you disappeared, only to appear 24 hours later, with no memory of anything that happened and no change in you at all? And then the next day it happened again, except the time…

What would you do if you disappeared, only to appear 24 hours later, with no memory of anything that happened and no change in you at all? And then the next day it happened again, except the time…

A 1979 seismic event was a different kind of earthquake, and it is has intrigued scientists ever since. A new look at old data has provided some additional answers. On Feb. 24th, 1979, seismographs…

In times of social rancor and strife, most will fight each other, but societies are saved by those who think about the bigger issue. There is a lesson humans could learn from wasps. Polistes…

Europe alone has so much unpublished, un-catalogued biological data that it is challenging to take surveys and estimates about extinction risk and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the…

In 1994, United States President Bill Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise to his constituents by exempting supplements from any real FDA oversight. Scientists objected on the grounds that heavy…

In 1994, United States President Bill Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise to his constituents by exempting supplements from any real FDA oversight. Scientists objected on the grounds that heavy…

A new computer estimate says that the ocean is an important carbon sink that absorbs 40 to 60 percent of China's anthropogenic CO2 emissions but tropical cyclones prevent the oceans from absorbing…

Five days are left to apply to a 2-year research position at INFN-Padova, to work in the context of the EIC-Pathfinder-2025 winning project "PHINDER" on the simulation of the apparatus.PHINDER…

Nowadays it has become exceedingly hard to distinguish legitimate academic endeavours from scam in my mailbox. Not even AI filters can sort stuff out properly: my inbox often contains invitations to…

Every now and then, for one reason or another, an academic will have to update one's own CV. This is a chore in general - once you get tenure, why should you care to keep a detailed record of your…