It is the height of blogging clichés to lead with “Welp, it’s been a while since my last post . . .” But in this case my hiatus has lasted so long — five years, in fact — that I hope you’ll forgive me a bit of metaphorical throat-clearing. Where the hell have you been?…
Poker robot knows *exactly* when to hold ’em, fold ’em
Last month, Stephen Hawking caused quite a stir when he mused that advances in artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race.” Computer scientists quickly shot back, pointing out that today’s algorithms still struggle to recognize kittens, never mind plotting our ultimate doom. Still, with programs like Deep Blue and Watson outplaying humans…
Secrets of the naked mole rat
Naked mole rats — is there anything they can’t do? These wrinkly little critters live up to 30 years, more than ten times as long as other rodents their size. They are essentially immune to cancer (a fact which makes them of great interest to the medical community) and also apparently insensitive to some…
Check email less, reduce your stress?
#117149403 / gettyimages.com Are you an e-mail addict? I know I am. Every time I pick up my phone the blinking envelope in the corner reminds me that there’s something new to deal with. And while hope springs eternal that it’s a note from an editor assigning me a juicy new story, as often…
A Canadian message to the stars
If you could talk to an extraterrestrial civilization, what would you say? That’s the question being asked, in all seriousness, by a group of scientists and science enthusiasts at the University of Toronto. As part of the newly organized Toronto Science Festival (TSF) they are asking the general public to submit potential messages by e-mail, Twitter,…
In the skin of a . . . hadrosaur?
Were dinosaurs dull green and grey like today’s large reptiles, or bright and flashy like their descendants, the birds? For a long time this was considered an unanswerable question, but that may soon change due to a singularly well-preserved sample of skin from a hadrosaur — a duck-billed dinosaur from the late Cretaceous — found…
The Call of Cthulhu
Erick James spends his days investigating the contents of termite intestines, a line of work that you’d think would relegate him to obscurity. But thanks to a bit of clever marketing, James, who works in the biology lab of Patrick Keeling at the University of British Columbia, has garnered attention from countless blogs and even…
Cannabalistic Stars – Explaining Luminous Red Novae
If a star began to eat another star, what would it look like? Natasha Ivanova can tell you better than almost anyone; as the Canada Research Chair in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Alberta, pondering questions like this is her full-time job. Last week, Ivanova and her colleagues published a paper in Science…
Are we ready for the paper computer?
If you’re reading this on a computer, take a moment and look around your monitor or laptop screen. Do you see any stray pieces of paper, such as articles with highlighted passages, notes to yourself, or contact details to follow up with later? Me too. It seems that even after more than thirty years of…
A Sea Monster Moves Inland
Of all the terrifying things that have ever lived in the ocean, mosasaurs hold a special place in my heart. Admittedly, the similarity between the name of the biggest mosasaur species – Tylosaurus – and my own may play a small role. But mostly it’s because they are the original sea monsters. Although more closely…