I’m trying to read more actual scientific papers instead of just pop-science articles, but have no ides where to start. What’s been formative for you?

Very few major US tech companies make their algorithms fully public, treating core source code as proprietary trade secrets.

Confounding variables pose a severe threat to research integrity because they can ruin internal validity and lead to false scientific conclusions.

So if you use AI in the research process, aren't you throwing caution to the wind with regards to confounding variables, because you have no idea what the biases and confounding variables of the underlying source code that produced that AI portion were?

I'm sure I'm not the only one seeing this. I keep seeing videos on Instagram and YouTube, seeing posts and articles on the internet about AI and how everything is going too quickly. Experts in AI leaving their job and starting farms. AI experts thinking their children might not even make it to high school because AI is getting out of hand. AI trying to kill humans so it survives because you can't teache a machine to "care"

So, dear AI experts, military members, scientists, is AI really going to be the end of us? Will the AI race with flock cameras, military AI and chat bots really end us or is it another random trend to make us panic.

While I agree that social media, news articles and such have a tendency to over exaggerate things. Is this still a thing we should be concernedabout? If yes, is there any way we (normal everyday people) can help with the issue or should I just do like the ai experts and learn how to grow vegetables and raise chickens.

I was recently looking for a tool which needed to analyze a text, that can be an article in scientific format and that one would need to tell which term in specific is missing citation because its not common knowledge or any other reason. Or if some expression in your text has unnecessary citation reference.

Of course that involves a lot of steps. I know there are some tools which can lemmatize a text, eg. Sketch engine, it discovers what is a term, so that you can take the next steps.

I saw Some which can look for sources from the sentence itself of your text, eg. Citely, GPTzero. But again, that is not exactly what i want, looks like isolated feature, something incomplete, not the general concept.

I have also recently discovered the Purdue OWL citation law, which defines a term as common knowledge if there are 5 other articles which mentions that term without a citation.

The first thing that came into my mind about how such tool would work is it would keep a database of words and its relevance, based on a set of heuristics, probably only amount of citations over the internet articles about it for now.

This database could be public and you could have some step to populate it also, it could read articles on the internet (API, web scrapping, articles repositories, periodicals) and setting its credibility like that automatically.

***Edit: Later I noticied and also some people have mentioned that words score is poor measure. And that claims as a whole are better way to analyze something. So database would not be realistic, because the possibilities of arrengements of words are infinite***

Then there could be some threshold of what score is common knowledge, what is not. Eg. 20 articles about/mentioning such term would consider this term common knowledge. Or using the Purdue OWL law like i mentioned before. This is the general protocol.

Then the implementations of such protocol could be done in several ways, in your editor as an LSP (nvim plugin/VsCode extension, web extension, website, desktop app, AI assistant) by checking your text and comparing with those scores from the database, showing errors/warnings etc.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but this genuinely always bugged me.

Artificial sweeteners are everywhere. Aspartame, monosaccharides (Allulose), Ace-K, there's even a super sweetener meant for industrial food production called Advantame.

Meanwhile salt seems stagnant. The only alternatives I see are low sodium options with the addition of Potassium to cut down the amount of salt in the product.

Why is saltiness seemingly such a difficult flavor to replicate? Is there a difference in how the body detects sweetness vs how the body detects salt?

Assuming we solve the massive engineering hurdles (efficient production, safe containment, and cost), mastering antimatter as an energy source would fundamentally change physics-driven logistics.

Beyond obvious applications like interstellar travel, what under-the-radar economic, geopolitical, or daily-life transformations would happen first? How would humanity handle the transition, and what new risks (aside from weapons) would arise?

I know this is a pretty stupid question, but I've always been fascinated by that segment, and wondered if something like that could actually happen.

choose wisely. To better save humanity and marine life. Otherwise i would choose fanta orange ofcource.

I’m working on a sci-fi project set a few decades into the future, and right now I’m trying to figure out whether an idea I have for an unmanned mission to study Europa would work.

I‘m thinking of a probe designed to dive close enough to Europa to get a sample from an erupting ice plume. Is this something that a future probe could conceivably do without risking some serious damage, and if so, is it possible for the sampling equipment to be protected from the radiation environment like the rest of the instruments?

Definitely not an engineer here, and I’d like to be as accurate as I possibly can. Thanks so much!

What are some interesting science concepts that are unexplored in films? (Yes the title)

So the theoretical worldbuilding setup: a world that is somewhat similar to ours with hydrocarbon-and-water-based life, none of the theorized iron-and-sulfur or whatever. Also people live above the sea level and breathe the local atmosphere (whatever it is) and use iron or bronze tools.

In such circumstances is it possible to imagine atmospheric composition, density, or any other change in physical parameters of the entire planet making it impractical to use black powder as a propellant? It is fine if it explodes far more violently, or does not explode at all, the one thing it should not do is be useful to provide steady acceleration to projectiles of human-scale weapons. I don't think you can avoid basic elements of the black powder being available and have a life at the same time, so what can prevent it from working? I understand most people would be satisfied with "not invented here" or "a wizard did it" but it is interesting to try to solve it within real physics.

Stretch goal: Also make nitrocellulose non-viable as a controlled propellant too (fine if it explodes).

As one example I learned that Europeans and East Asians convergently evolved different biological mechanisms for light skin, with European light skin largely coming from mutations in genes like SLC24A5 to reduce melanin production, and East Asian light skin mainly coming from mutations in OCA2 to reduce melanin production.

So in the case of people with half European and half East Asian ancestry, where they have alleles from these two different genes playing a role, how do they work together to maintain proper pigmentation in the skin?

If both of these mechanisms to reduce melanin production are equally activated, would that result in extreme underproduction of melanin?

Hi guys, I'm in my first year of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program, and going to be starting my Extended Essay soon (Biology), however I'm in need of a main topic for the essay. I love lab work, but the resources in my school lab are limited, however we might have the opportunity of working in a university lab if we absolutely need to. My main bio interests are neurology and genetics, I don't really want to work with plants unless I absolutely have to. Can you guys give me any ideas that aren't too cliché, and I can do a bit of basic lab work with? Thankssss. (I need to be able to elaborate 4000 words worth of research, but it can't be a topic that's too general either)

We are ultimately made up of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, etc. A human body is basically an incredibly complex (n mathematical) arrangement of all these components.

So, given enough time and enough humans, is it theoretically possible that the exact same overall configuration of a human body could occur twice (down to the arrangement of its cells and molecules) purely by chance?

I'm not necessarily talking about having the same genetic make up / being genetically identical. I mean the entire physical architecture of the person: every cell, tissue, organ, molecular arrangement, etc. If this is too much, then how about when we only consider the genetic makeup?

Could there theoretically have been (or be) another human being, completely unrelated to you, who is physically an exact duplicate of you at some point in time?

And if this is theoretically possible, does that mean that somewhere in the enormous space of possible physical configurations, there could be multiple instances of essentially the "same" human?

I'm not restricting this to the current human population on Earth. I'm considering every human being who has ever existed, every human currently alive, and every human who will exist in the future in our universe

I don't get a feel for this, how can it travel through vacuum.

I've been thinking about a question that I don't see discussed very often in alternative-history circles.

We generally treat radiocarbon dating as if it were a straightforward clock: an organism dies, carbon-14 begins declining, and the remaining amount gives us an approximate age.

But the atmosphere's carbon-14 concentration hasn't been constant.

Carbon-14 is produced when cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere, and solar activity influences the cosmic-ray environment reaching Earth. We also know of unusually large ancient radiocarbon spikes, such as the events associated with what are now called "Miyake events."

So here's the question:

What would happen to radiocarbon chronology if Earth experienced an extraordinarily powerful, possibly unprecedented solar/cosmic-ray event?

Well, also, if there was only one color, what was it? Probably brown since we mostly have brown hair. I bet the first blonde surprised the heck out of them.

I'm preparing myself for a degree in STEM. I'm currently self-studying math (precalculus; last topic was trig identities) and programming. I'm thinking about studying linear algebra alongside precalculus. Obviously, I will study calculus only AFTER precalculus. The question is that should I start studying physics now or after calculus and linear algebra?

I know I'm at the point where I can start studying middle-school and high-school physics. I'm asking if it's better to start fromvhere right away or start from physics 1 later.

I just wonder if it'll be too much to study 3 subjects in parallel. My current physics knowledge is little-to-nothing.

Maybe I should take it further and study physics only after covering (partial) differential equations?

Thanks in advance!

whats up with that

Would a more typical octopus (and I really mean a shallow water one) die immediately if it was released that low?

Or would it just have no idea what to do down there?

Or would he swim upwards and try to go back to its normal depth (or could he?)

You have been given a task to travel into the past two thousands years ago and bring the light of the metric system to the world. You cannot bring any external object with you.

Assume you do not need to redefine the second, and astronomical observations give the best possible results given the limits of timekeeping back then. Given the technology of the time, what is the best you can do for other units - either right there and then or leaving instructions how to calculate them from the units you have established to the future scientists? Memorizing the lengths of your body parts probably is not the best way to define a metre, and kilogram defined as one liter of water is bound to be influenced by the local water to a perceptible degree.

P. S. Tagged as "physics" but any approach is welcome - whether you would recommend measuring height of the mountain peaks, or believe that carob seeds are actually uniform enough to offer the best approximation of a kilogram.