What We're Reading

In this podcast posted October 26, 2018, host Michelle Thaller talks with Chiara Mingarelli of the Center for Computational Astrophysics, who describes the use of gravitational waves to study ancient supermassive black holes and the dawn of our universe.

Extrasolar planetary systems made up of terrestrial-type planets in compact, tightly-spaced orbits are most likely to form around lower-metallicity stars, a new study concludes.

The ratchet is a microscopic heat engine that converts thermal fluctuations into work. Conceived by Richard Feynman to show that the second law of thermodynamics cannot be violated, it works only when connected to two heat sources at different temperatures.

Scientists should acknowledge that emotions and values play a legitimate role in shaping public perceptions of risk.

To better find disease-causing genes, researchers from the Flatiron Institute and Princeton University have developed diseaseQUEST, an integrative approach that combines data from human genome-wide disease studies with in silico network models of tissue- and cell-type-specific function in model organisms.

Scientists worry about how new tools that are enabling them to home in on the genetic basis of hot-button traits like intelligence will be misconstrued to fit racist ideologies.

In this heartfelt essay, an MIT graduate student writes of obsessively laboring to understand the intricacies of frog embryos and how his "monomania" affected his personal life. His adviser had a saying: “You have to believe that Sisyphus was happy.”

With the development of an adaptive, multiview light sheet microscope and a suite of computational tools, researchers have captured the first view of early organ development inside the mouse embryo.

A writer finds out she is on the autism spectrum and comes to understand the challenges it has posed as well as the benefits it has offered.

Her work advances new theories of how celestial collisions give birth to planets and their natural satellites.