Abstractions blog

Using inserted genetic circuitry, synthetic biologists controlled the growth of plant roots for the first time.

A simple geometric idea has been used to power advances in information theory, cryptography and even blockchain technology.

A custom-built machine learning algorithm can predict when a complex system is about to switch to a wildly different mode of behavior.

Neural networks originally designed for language processing turn out to be great models of how our brains understand places.

What’s a message, really? Claude Shannon recognized that the elemental ingredient is surprise.

The grainy image of a “super-Jupiter” is a sign of what’s to come as the telescope’s exoplanet observations ramp up.

A new study reveals that bacteria can fight viruses in a surprisingly elegant way that has no known counterpart in more complex life.

Two researchers have broken an encryption protocol that many saw as a promising defense against the power of quantum computing.

By studying how electric organs arose in different lineages of fish, scientists gain new insights into a long-standing question of evolutionary biology.