What We're Reading

Despite being tiny, cyanobacteria have a disproportionately large impact on the ecosystem. Kyle Frischkorn, a member of the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology, describes the efforts to uncover the secret lives of diverse and remarkable microbes.

The study relates to the theory that our bodies co-evolved with bacteria over millions of years. Over that time, microbes gradually came to help regulate bodily processes from digestion to energy processing to immune defenses.

The road to discovery is littered with judgment calls, educated guesses and assumptions. Some scientists, especially in physics and astronomy, have come to embrace a system of thinking that lays all the subjective laundry out — it's called Bayesian statistics.

High-quality beams could be among the first practical applications of the booming field of topological physics.

Observations from neutron star smashup challenge some theories that include unknown realms.

Only around 40 percent of published findings can be replicated reliably. But replication is not enough. Marcus R. Munafò and George Davey Smith state the case for triangulation.

The breakthrough drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal are undeniable as art. Cajal is considered as important to modern neuroscience as Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur are in their fields.

There are many science search engines. But a database called Dimensions, launched on January 15, aims to provide academics with new ways to analyze the scholarly literature — including the grant funding behind it.

Take a tour of the gravitational-wave detecting LIGO. This 360 video is best experienced through VR glasses, such as Google Cardboard. You'll need to download the WITHIN app to your smartphone.

In this oral history video, Dick Karp, founding director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, discusses some of the key developments in theoretical computer science during his long and distinguished career. He stepped down as director at the end of 2017.