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An animation of a glowing conical beam
astrophysics

Physicists Identify the Engine Powering Black Hole Energy Beams

By Natalie Wolchover
May 20, 2021
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Supermassive black holes emit jets of white-hot plasma that stretch thousands of light-years across the cosmos. For the first time, researchers have identified what’s creating these jets.

Illustration showing a graph against a purple background, with certain vertices and edges highlighted in orange.
combinatorics

Mathematicians Answer Old Question About Odd Graphs

By Kevin Hartnett
May 19, 2021
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A pair of mathematicians solved a legendary question about the proportion of vertices in a graph with an odd number of connections.

Video of a hydra moving against a dark background.
sleep

Sleep Evolved Before Brains. Hydras Are Living Proof.

By Veronique Greenwood
May 18, 2021
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Studies of sleep are usually neurological. But some of nature’s simplest animals suggest that sleep evolved for metabolic reasons, long before brains even existed.

Illustration of red spools with strands of DNA as the thread, with a blue brain in the background.
Quantized Columns

Can Machines Control Our Brains?

By R. Douglas Fields
May 17, 2021
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Advances in brain-computer interface technology are impressive, but we’re not close to anything resembling mind control.

A looping image of two black holes orbiting one another, with the second one smaller than the first.
mathematical physics

New Black Hole Math Closes Cosmic Blind Spot

By Steve Nadis
May 13, 2021
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A mathematical shortcut for analyzing black hole collisions works even in cases where it shouldn’t. As astronomers use it to search for new classes of hidden black holes, others wonder: Why?

An illustration representing the genomic mobility of transposons.
genomics

Scientists Catch Jumping Genes Rewiring Genomes

By Max Kozlov
May 12, 2021
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Transcription factors that act throughout the genome can arise from mashups of transposable elements inserted into established genes.

topology

How Mathematicians Use Homology to Make Sense of Topology

By Kelsey Houston-Edwards
May 11, 2021
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Originally devised as a rigorous means of counting holes, homology provides a scaffolding for mathematical ideas, allowing for a new way to analyze the shapes within data.

Illustration of DNA spooling around the histones in a classic nucleosome, with diverse animal life in the background.
molecular biology

DNA’s Histone Spools Hint at How Complex Cells Evolved

By Viviane Callier
May 10, 2021
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New work shows that histones, long treated as boring spools for DNA, sit at the center of the origin story of eukaryotes and continue to play important roles in evolution and disease.

Quantized Academy

How to Solve Equations That Are Stubborn as a Goat

By Patrick Honner
May 6, 2021
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Math teachers have stymied students for hundreds of years by sticking goats in strangely shaped fields. Learn why one grazing goat problem has stumped mathematicians for more than a century.


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