Staff and students of the Physics department in Imperial College London have converted a series of physics experiment equipment into a portable lab in a box which can be sent to any student around the world.
Easy Theory on YouTube posted a 4 hour video which answers every Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) Theory of Computation exam question since 1991!
The Human Genome Nomenclature Committee has changed the names of humane genes and proteins because the symbols were being automatically converted to dates in Microsoft Excel. Symbols such as SEPT1 and MARCH1 have been changed to SEPTIN1 and MARCHF1. The tyranny of Excel's rule continues unabated :-p
I recently discovered the Artificial Intelligence with Lex Fridman podcast via Find That Pod. It's like the Tim Ferris podcast but very heavy on the science detail. Lex interviews a range of the world's leading scientists, theorists and technologists and digs deep into their topics. I enjoyed his interview with Stephen Wolfram. Most of the podcast episodes leave me with questions and the want to learn more, which is great!
Researchers MIT's Lincoln Laboratory have identified a way to recognise COVID-19 in asymptomatic people by analysing their speech patterns. The theory that the constriction of muscles caused by a COVID-19 infection could affect speech in otherwise asymptomatic people was put to the test by analysing speech from video interviews of asymptomatic celebrities before and after their postive diagnosis.
Physicists have discovered a scenario whereby they can detect an imminent quantum jump in state of a qubit. In the experiment, perfectly timed pulses of radiation can reverse the quantum jump when it is detected, keeping the quibit in its ground state.
Low Tech Magazine published an interesting article on equipping a stove with a thermoelectrical generator (TEG). A TEG is about 5% efficient at generating electricity, however if the heat from the stove is being generated anyway for other reasons (heating, cooking etc), then adding a TEG would be a more reliable way to generate electricity than installing solar panels.
Scientists are combining high resolution Hubble telescope images of Jupiter with near-infrared images taken from the Gemini Observatory and data from NASA's Juno Jupiter orbiter to study thunderstorms and other weather phenomena on Jupiter!
The Guardian published an interesting interactive visualisation article describing R0, the basic reproduction number, which is the metric used to measure the contagiousness of a pathogen. Reducing the R0 of Covid-19 is funadamental in preventing exponential infections of the virus and will determine how lockdown restrictions can be lifted.
