Some say the reason most manhole covers are round is that a circle cannot fall through a smaller circular hole. Which of these other two-dimensional shapes cannot fall through a hole that is the same shape but slightly smaller? Show puzzle solution Shapes 1, 2 and 3 can all fall through their own holes. Shape…
AI can help mathematicians tackle a range of problems Andresr/ Getty Images AI tools developed by Google DeepMind are surprisingly effective at assisting mathematical research and could usher in a wave of AI-powered mathematical discovery at a previously unseen scale, say mathematicians who have tested the technology. In May, Google announced an AI system called…
Megan Murray has been in limbo. The Harvard University epidemiologist and infectious diseases doctor has grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to fund ongoing research on tuberculosis. Over decades, her work has produced insights on how TB spreads, how genetic and microbial characteristics interact in the disease and better ways to diagnose TB…
HIGH TESTOSTERONE I’m grateful for the warnings threaded through Stephanie Pappas’s “The Truth about Testosterone” and would like to elaborate from personal experience. As a transgender man, I adore the effects of testosterone. But I discovered some unwelcome ones when my levels climbed. My higher dosage was accidental; I assumed my doctor wanted me to…
A dry riverbed near Latyan dam, one of the main water sources for Tehran, Iran BAHRAM/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Iran is experiencing a drought so intense that the country’s president has said the capital city, Tehran, might have to be evacuated. In an attempt to bring rain, aircraft began a cloud-seeding operation on…
This article is part of a package in collaboration with Forbes on time capsules, preserving information and communicating with the future. Read more from the report. After my grandmother died, we had to clean out her condominium. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling, her studio apartment in a Berkeley, Calif., high-rise was filled with…
If you melted down the average UK adult, you’d find around 22 kilograms (48.5 pounds) of creamy yellow fat – equivalent to around 88 blocks of lard, enough to fill two-thirds of a small suitcase or cast into 446 dinner candles. Melted, it would easily be enough to paint a large bedroom in a translucent,…
This article is part of a package in collaboration with Forbes on time capsules, preserving information and communicating with the future. Read more from the report. Around 38 percent of websites that were on the Internet in 2013 are gone now. Half of Wikipedia pages reference dead links. Information seems to be disappearing all around…
A reconstruction of a Neanderthal face Ryhor Bruyeu/Alamy The first analysis of a well-preserved nasal cavity in the human fossil record has revealed that the hefty Neanderthal nose wasn’t adapted to cold climates in the way many people thought it was. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) lived between about 400,000 and 40,000 years ago, and some specimens…
This article is part of a package in collaboration with Forbes on time capsules, preserving information and communicating with the future. Read more from the report. IGNACE, Ontario, C.E. 51,500—Feloo, a hunter, chews a strip of roasted caribou flank, washing it down with water from a nearby lake. Her boots press into thin soil that,…
