Nature
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theoretical chemist who first simulated proteins using molecular dynamics
Credit: Cyril Frésillon/CNRS Photothèque Martin Karplus was a theoretical chemist who set out to explore the fundamentals of his subject, but always with an eye to the broadest possible applications in the real world. He seized the potential of computers to simulate the interactions between molecules at scales represented by both classical physics and quantum mechanics. His simulations of complex…
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Pictograms, comics and other illustrations: Books in brief
What the Body Knows John Trowsdale Yale Univ. Press (2024) To understand the body, “we might picture the heart as a pump, the brain as a kind of computer, the lungs as bellows, the kidney as filters”. But what about the immune system — asks immunologist John Trowsdale in his engaging analysis. It has no straightforward analogy, operating simultaneously as…
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‘WithdrarXiv’ database of 14,000 retracted preprints launches
Thousands of preprints have been withdrawn from the arXiv preprint server because of factual or methodological errors.Credit: Ralf Geithe/Getty Researchers have launched a database of more than 14,000 studies that have been withdrawn from the preprint server arXiv since its launch in 1991. As well as shedding light on why those preprints were pulled from arXiv, the data set —…
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Of your own device
Walls. Thick, dark, stone walls. Ben couldn’t recall how long he’d been here. There was nothing to help him keep track of time. He ran his hands over the walls again. No chinks, no loose stones, no cracks. No way to make a passage out, even to the next cell. The walls pressed down on him, stopping just short of…
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Digital origins for ancient digits
Nature, Published online: 23 December 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-04123-5 Pupil contractions in a talking parrot, and how ancient numerals were derived from counting on fingers, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive. Source link
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Sci-fi icon Kim Stanley Robinson: ‘there’s so much bad fiction about anthropomorphizing AI’
Nature, Published online: 16 December 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-04116-4 The influential writer talks about frighteningly accurate predictions, the creative act of reading, AI consciousness — and hope. Source link
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the physicist on a mission to build the world’s first nuclear clock
Ekkehard Peik thought it would take only a few months to create the basic ingredients of a radical new clock. That was back in 2001, when he and his colleague Christian Tamm proposed a device with the potential to be even more precise and portable than the world’s best atomic clocks. Peik’s estimate was off by more than two decades.…
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How provinces and cities can sustain US–China climate cooperation
In 2017, the governor of California Jerry Brown (left) met with China’s President Xi Jinping to sign a series of climate agreements.Credit: Imago/Alamy The relationship between the United States and China stands at a crucial juncture. Given Donald Trump’s recent victory in the US election, the slowdown in China’s economy and rising tensions around trade and technology, productive cooperation between…
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I fled the war in Ukraine. Now I work on ways to help the country’s soil heal
Olena Melnyk at the Salisbury Plain military training area, UK, testing a soil-sampling protocol for use in bomb craters.Credit: Mark Horton As head of the International Projects Division at Sumy National Agrarian University (SNAU) in Ukraine, Olena Melnyk often strongly encouraged researchers to keep up with the latest developments by building international networks. Little did she know that this skill…
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First rocks returned from Moon’s far side reveal ancient volcanic activity
Researchers have had their first-ever look at samples brought back from the Moon’s far side — and they detail a history of volcanic activity that spans billions of years. The results are the first scientific analyses of samples retrieved by the Chinese mission Chang’e-6, which scooped up nearly two kilograms of lunar soil and returned it to Earth in a…
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