Mining is a messy process. It takes a lot of effort to break open rocks to get the materials needed to keep our current technological level on earth. The march of technology has produced some massive leaps and bounds in communication and quality of life improvements. However, most of these are predicated on the availability of difficult-to-find elements.

Today I am giving the opening speech at a workshop with the same title of this post. The workshop takes place at the Center for Particle Physics and Phenomenology of Université catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, and it is in a mixed formula - we will have 33 in-person attendees and 72 more attending by videolink. 
The workshop is organized by the MODE collaboration, which I lead. It is a small group of physicists and computer scientists from 10 institutions in Europe and America, who have realized how today's deep learning technology allows us to raise the bar of our optimization tasks - we are now targeting the full optimization of the design of some of the most complex instruments ever built by humankind, particle detectors.

Man's best friend learns to understand human emotions, and that can help them predict our behavior and informs their decision making.

It has become common for political activists to demand that social media engage in bans and content warnings, because the other side is too stupid to know false facts from the real kind. In reality, everyone who takes their politics too seriously is inclined to believe the worst when it comes to others, and calling for bans is more of a patronizing way to pretend they care about discourse when they most just want to control it.

This has led to companies like Facebook and Twitter either outright censoring some content or putting nonsensical fact checking warning labels on it. Here is a case in point from our own Facebook page:



Here is what it was ridiculing:

Coronavirus may only have been identified as distinct from the common cold in the 1960s, and it may have only had two pandemics (SARS and MERS) in this century prior to COVID-19, but there is a reason it is called COVID-19 and not just COVID. There have been too many to know about.

Viruses evolve and adapt. New research shows Sarbecoviruses they have been hitting us with disease for over 20,000 years.

COVID-19 is certainly worse than the SARS and MERS pandemics that occurred a few years prior, and the reasons why SARS-CoV-2 is worse than those others is open for debate, but one thing is not; pandemics, even extreme ones, are not as rare as many believe.

The big difference between pandemics now and those of prior generations is the prevalence of real-time media and worldwide connections never available before. We have no real way to know how many people the Asian Flu of the 1950s killed because there was even less transparency in China then than there is now. Likewise, the Spanish Flu may have killed far more than we know, just as we don't know how many died in a country like Brazil or China.

Devices we watch and listen on are smaller than ever, which means speakers for sound are as well. In the past, it was difficult to get quality sound from small parts because sound is still analog when it gets to us, and that takes surface area. 

Like synthetic grape flavor, using one important part when it requires lots means a result is not quite right. Today's compact speakers are more like synthetic banana flavor; you are unlikely to know the difference, and that is due to mastering physics beyond the surface area - controlled destruction of sound waves.

Epilepsy is a brain disorder that arises from imbalances of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. This disorder manifests as recurring seizure, unconsciousness and momentary loss of memory. These events are frequent and unpredictable. This is because the brain cells called neurons either overwork or are unable to balance the release of two chemicals that are vital for normal brain function: gamma aminobutyric acid and glutamate.

The burden of epilepsy in Nigeria is high, with estimated prevalence of eight per 1,000 people.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public fell back in love with science. In the first 19 years of this century, Californians denied vaccines to such an extent a law had to be passed to prevent coastal parents from creating a Whooping Cough pandemic. Every building had cancer warnings somewhere - even oncology wards in hospitals warned cancer patients they might get cancer by visiting their doctor - and Non-GMO Project rock salt(!) took off.

That has now changed.(1) For most of the country, Purell, Clorox, and Lysol replaced bottles of useless green-labeled goop that claimed to be natural alternatives. People wanted what worked.

The thought that learning language stimulates brain growth may never have crossed your mind, but the truth is that language learning challenges your brain and stimulates it to stay pliable and strong. Regardless of your age, learning a new language can boost your brain’s function in more ways than one and we’ll explore all the benefits of learning a foreign language and how it directly affects the brain.