Hacker News with Generative AI: Science

RFK Jr threatens ban on federal scientists publishing in top journals (theguardian.com)
Robert F Kennedy Jr has threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, which he branded “corrupt”, and to instead create alternative publications run by the state.

Science, Politics, Publishing, Journalism, Censorship

40 points by bookofjoe 30 days ago | 24 comments

The bad science behind expensive nuclear (worksinprogress.co)
On 23 May 2025, President Trump signed four executive orders on nuclear power, intended to speed up approvals of and reduce regulatory burdens on new nuclear reactors in America. Buried in one of them was a requirement that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reconsider its use of ‘Linear No Threshold’ (or LNT). LNT is the hypothesis that the relationship between radiation dose and cancer risk to humans is linear and that there is no truly ‘safe’ level of radiation.

Nuclear Power, Science, Politics, Regulation

31 points by ortegaygasset 31 days ago | 4 comments

Scientists with ADHD speak up: when fire meets focus (nature.com)
Researchers with the neurodevelopmental condition discuss its peaks and valleys and how they structure their work lives to succeed.

ADHD, Science, Neurology, Work-Life Balance

10 points by rntn 31 days ago | 1 comments

They Inhaled a Gas and Scaled Everest in Days. The Future of Mountaineering? (nytimes.com)
A group of British men went from London to the summit of Everest and back in less than a week with the help of xenon gas. Mountaineers and the Nepalese government weren’t pleased.

Mountaineering, Science, Environment, Ethics

10 points by instagib 31 days ago | 5 comments

How a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully (frontiersin.org)
A Cooper’s hawk, a medium-sized raptor native to North America, appears to have learned how to adapt its hunting strategy and strike at a flock of birds precisely when cars at an intersection lined up after traffic lights switched to red, having been alerted by a sound signal that the red phase would last longer than usual.

Animal Behavior, Wildlife, Science, Urban Wildlife, Birds

463 points by layer8 31 days ago | 145 comments

Most leading chatbots routinely exaggerate science findings (uu.nl)
It seems so convenient: when you are short of time, asking ChatGPT or another chatbot to summarise a scientific paper to quickly get a gist of it. But in up to 73 per cent of the cases, these large language models (LLMs) produce inaccurate conclusions, a new study by Uwe Peters (Utrecht University) and Benjamin Chin-Yee (Western University and University of Cambridge) finds.

Science, AI, Research

57 points by lr0 32 days ago | 59 comments

You share a house with Einstein, Hawking and Tao (faisalabid.com)
You're apartment hunting when a friend mentions a free room. Your skepticism evaporates the moment you hear the roommate's name: Albert Einstein.

Humor, Science, Thought Experiments

23 points by FaisalAbid 32 days ago | 50 comments

New Bacteria Have Been Discovered on a Chinese Space Station (wired.com)
It is microscopic and rod-shaped, can create spores, and may have evolved to survive hundreds of miles above our planet's surface. This bacterium, never before seen on Earth, was detected on China's Tiangong space station.

Space Exploration, Microbiology, China, Science

14 points by zzzeek 33 days ago | 0 comments

Trump Team's $500M Bet on Old Vaccine Technology Puzzles Scientists (kffhealthnews.org)
The Trump administration’s unprecedented $500 million grant for a broadly protective flu shot has confounded vaccine and pandemic preparedness experts, who said the project was in early stages, relied on old technology, and was just one of more than 200 such efforts.

Science, Health, Politics, Vaccines

13 points by tzs 33 days ago | 5 comments

Laser Breakthrough can read text from a mile away (sciencealert.com)
Your eyesight might be good enough to confidently read the tiny text at the optometrist from a few meters away. But you're left in the dust by a new device recently demoed by researchers, which was able to scan tiny individual characters of text from a distance of 1.36 kilometers (about 0.85 miles).

Technology, Science, Optics, Lasers

7 points by wmstack 33 days ago | 0 comments

The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62 (blogspot.com)
Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an “Enlightened and miraculous being” with a Google Scholar page, an h-index1 of 62, and 12,031 citations of his work.

Science, Research, Google Scholar

9 points by qifzer 33 days ago | 0 comments

Are the Colors in Astronomical Images 'Real'? (scientificamerican.com)
In colorful photographs of galaxies, stars, planets, and more, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get

Astronomy, Image Processing, Science, Space

19 points by bryanrasmussen 33 days ago | 30 comments

Designing Tools for Scientific Thought (forester-notes.org)

Science, Tools, Design

77 points by harperlee 33 days ago | 10 comments

Neural Thermodynamic Laws for Large Language Model Training (arxiv.org)
Beyond neural scaling laws, little is known about the laws underlying large language models (LLMs). We introduce Neural Thermodynamic Laws (NTL) -- a new framework that offers fresh insights into LLM training dynamics.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Research, Science

6 points by anticensor 33 days ago | 0 comments

What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds Beyond Ours (stephenwolfram.com)
What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours(VIDEO)

Science, Speculative Fiction, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence

208 points by nsoonhui 33 days ago | 260 comments

Mouth bacteria partially spread depression and anxiety in newlywed couples (xiahepublishing.com)
Oral microbiota transmission between individuals in close contact partially mediates symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Mental Health, Microbiology, Relationships, Science

53 points by nreece 34 days ago | 22 comments

Spruce trees communicate during a solar eclipse (phys.org)
An international study has revealed spruce trees not only respond to a solar eclipse but actively anticipate it by synchronizing their bioelectrical signals hours in advance into a cohesive, forest-wide phenomenon.

Science, Plants, Ecology, Astronomy

8 points by geox 34 days ago | 0 comments

Vital for Bone Health, Vitamin D May Also Slow Aging at the Cellular Level (discovermagazine.com)
A long-term trial reveals how the powerhouse vitamin D can add anti-aging to its already-impressive list of health benefits.

Health, Science, Vitamin D, Aging

8 points by jnord 34 days ago | 0 comments

Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears (nature.com)
Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere, as organizers respond to researchers’ growing fears over the country’s immigration crackdown.

Science, Immigration, United States, Conferences

429 points by mdhb 34 days ago | 411 comments

Worlds first petahertz transistor at ambient conditions (news.arizona.edu)
A team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Arizona, are working to make that possible.

Science, Nanotechnology, Engineering, Transistors

119 points by ChuckMcM 34 days ago | 82 comments

Please Fund More Science (2020) (samaltman.com)
Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal.

Science, Funding, COVID-19, Pandemic

72 points by ssuds 34 days ago | 68 comments

New Study Confirms That Cancer Cells Ferment Glutamine [video] (youtube.com)

Cancer, Biology, Science, Medicine, Research

8 points by teleforce 34 days ago | 0 comments

Frequentism and Bayesianism: A Practical Introduction (2014) (jakevdp.github.io)
One of the first things a scientist hears about statistics is that there is are two different approaches: frequentism and Bayesianism. Despite their importance, many scientific researchers never have opportunity to learn the distinctions between them and the different practical approaches that result. The purpose of this post is to synthesize the philosophical and pragmatic aspects of the frequentist and Bayesian approaches, so that scientists like myself might be better prepared to understand the types of data analysis people do.

Statistics, Science, Bayesian Statistics, Frequentist Statistics, Data Analysis

7 points by Tomte 34 days ago | 0 comments

'Golden Dome' plan has a major obstacle: Physics (sciencenews.org)
In sports, the best offense is often a good defense. It’s not clear if the same applies in nuclear war.

Physics, Nuclear War, Science

10 points by Anon84 34 days ago | 2 comments

Turing treasure trove rescued from attic goes under the hammer (theregister.com)
Precious scientific papers once belonging to wartime codebreaking genius Alan Turing – rescued from an attic clear-out where they faced destruction – are set to fetch a fortune at auction next month.

History, Computing, Science, Auction, War

6 points by defrost 34 days ago | 0 comments

How the Non-Essential Spleen Could Regenerate Vital Organs Inside the Body (discovermagazine.com)
The idea of using the body’s own organs as mini bioreactors to grow replacement tissue or even regenerate other organs might sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it's already becoming reality in cutting-edge labs around the world.

Science, Biology, Regenerative Medicine, Bioengineering

5 points by jnord 34 days ago | 0 comments

The Pedestrians Who Abetted a Hawk's Deadly Attack (theatlantic.com)
A zoologist observed a Cooper’s hawk using a crosswalk signal as a cue to ambush its prey.

Animal Behavior, Urban Wildlife, Science

11 points by a_w 35 days ago | 2 comments

Modification of acetaminophen to reduce liver toxicity and enhance drug efficacy (societyforscience.org)
Chloe Yehwon Lee, 17, of Murphy, explored a way to lower the toxic effects of acetaminophen (Tylenol) on the liver for her Regeneron Science Talent Search chemistry project.

Science, Chemistry, Pharmaceuticals, Drug Development, Liver Toxicity

229 points by felineflock 35 days ago | 149 comments

Decades On, SSRIs Remain Mired in Mystery and Debate (undark.org)
In 2006, a new study on antidepressants was making headlines with its promising results: Two-thirds of participants who tried various antidepressants recovered from their depression symptoms within less than a year.

Mental Health, Pharmaceuticals, Science

5 points by EA-3167 35 days ago | 0 comments

Rice inherits tolerance to cold without DNA changes (nature.com)
Rice plants can inherit tolerance to cold without changes to their genomes, according to a decade-long study1 carried out by researchers in China.

Genetics, Agriculture, Science, Rice

9 points by GolfPopper 35 days ago | 1 comments