Briana Brownell

Tech entrepreneur. Data scientist. Lover of art, music, travel, food, wine, and improbable shoes. Narrowly avoided living with a leopard in SoMA. www.leopardless.com

Magazines

UNCANNY LEARNING
By Briana Brownell

Flips

Protein
Douglas Adams was right – knowledge without understanding is meaningless
The Guardian - John Naughton
Machine-learning may soon enable us to accurately predict how a protein will fold. But it won’t be scientific knowledge Fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy treasure the bit where group
Technology
Nanotechnology promises to revolutionize global nutrition — but it might be dangerous
TNW - Mićo Tatalović
The science of nanotech is cutting-edge but simple enough to be affordable globally. And the development prospect is huge. So it’s no surprise that many developing countries have already embarked on commercializing
Artificial Intelligence
2. The disinformation industry
Axios
To reach us, hit reply to this email or message me at steve@axios.com, Kaveh Waddell at kaveh@axios.com and Erica Pandey at erica@axios.com. For the …
Earth Science
The Moon Is Older Than Scientists Thought
curiosity.com
The most comprehensive and widely held theory of how the moon formed is called the “giant impact hypothesis.” That hypothesis shows that about 150 …
Bill Gates
Bill Gates Says This Type of AI Will Be Worth “10 Microsofts”
The Motley Fool - Rex Moore
Artificial Intelligence is set to change the world according to several billionaires. Here are seven stocks riding the AI wave. Microsoft …
Hubble
Space Photos of the Week: Hubbub Over Hubble
WIRED - Shannon Stirone
We are entering low earth orbit this week and spending time with the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was launched from the Discovery space shuttle in …
Universe
Ask Ethan: Where Is The Center Of The Universe?
Forbes - Ethan Siegel
Our view of a small region of the Universe near the northern galactic cap, where each pixel in the image represents a mapped galaxy. On the largest scales, the Universe is the same in all directions and
Netflix
Netflix tests Collections that are curated by humans instead of algorithms
The Verge - Chris Welch
Netflix is testing a new Collections section that rounds up content into themed lists like “Watch in One Weekend” and “Stream & Scream.” Netflix told TechCrunch that Collections are put together by “experts
Time-lapse Photography
Video: Incredible timelapse shows Earth's rotation relative to the Milky Way
dpreview.com - Gannon Burgett
Photographer Aryeh Nirenberg has shared an incredible timelapse from a trip to Northeast Colorado that shows the Earth’s axial rotation in relation …
Science
Human-animal hybrids: Can we justify the experiments?
sciencefocus.com - Sara Rigby
Human-animal hybrids, also known as ‘chimeras’, are creatures with a mixture of human and animal cells. They are created by injecting human stem …
Oceans
Alien Life On Exoplanets May Be 'More Abundant And Active' Than On Earth, Say Scientists
Forbes - Jamie Carter
Earth is the only place we know of in the entire Universe that sustains any kind of life. That doesn’t make it the only place per se, and it certainly doesn’t necessarily make it the perfect place to life.
CRISPR
Gene Editing Transforms Gel into Shape-Shifting Smart Material
scientificamerican.com - Ewen Callaway, Nature magazine
Is there anything CRISPR can’t do? Scientists have wielded the gene-editing tool to make scores of genetically modified organisms, as well as to …
Space
Ghost Particles Could Explain Just About Everything in the Universe
Popular Mechanics - By David Grossman
Scientists have learned more about the subatomic particles known as neutrinos, sometimes called ghost particles. They're known for traveling at near lightspeeds and being nearly massless, but a new study
Amazon Web Services
Microsoft, Amazon and other big tech companies are putting us at risk of a "killer AI,” study says
Mic News - AJ Dellinger
Tech companies are happy to tout their innovations and latest developments, but one organization is warning that not all advancements are good ones. …
Occult
The world's largest occult library has a public online archive
boingboing.net - Cory Doctorow
Amsterdam's Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (AKA "The Ritman Library) houses more ths 25,000 occult texts, covering "Hermetics, Rosicrucians, …
The Brain
A Mathematical Model Unlocks the Secrets of Vision
Quanta Magazine - Kevin Hartnett
Mathematicians and neuroscientists have created the first anatomically accurate model that explains how vision is possible. This is the great mystery …
Dinosaurs
New species of stegosaurus uncovered in Moroccan dig
The Guardian - PA Media
A new species of one of the most recognisable types of dinosaur is also the oldest of its kind ever discovered, British scientists believe. Remains of a stegosaurus, an armoured dinosaur instantly recognisable
Dark Energy
A New Experiment Narrows Potential Properties of Dark Energy Particle
Gizmodo - Ryan F. Mandelbaum
An experiment in the United Kingdom has failed to find evidence of a particle meant to explain most of the universe’s mass. But the search isn’t over. …
Chemical Engineering
Gene Editing Humans: It's Not Just about Safety
scientificamerican.com - Mildred Z. Solomon
Chinese scientist He Jiankui surprised the scientific community and the world when he announced in November 2018 that he had genetically modified two …
Chandrayaan Programme
India's Chandrayaan-2 mission achieves lunar orbit
newatlas.com - Anthony Wood
India's Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft has successfully made orbit around the Moon. The ambitious mission, which is comprised of an orbiter, a lander, and …
Geek
Scientists Detect Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
Geek - By Stephanie Mlot
Astronomers identified eight new repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources using Canada’s CHIME telescope. The findings, led by Bridget Andersen of …
Science
Science Communication: Truth, Lies and Uncertainty
scientificamerican.com - Mariette DiChristina
The scientific process, as I have often said, is an engine of human prosperity. For centuries it has been a driving force behind the advances in …
Culture
How big data and unfair algorithms change our lives
futurity.org - ETH Zurich
On a daily basis, we each leave behind a huge digital footprint in all sorts of ways, researchers say. “Everything I do on the computer or smartphone …
Science
Truth, Lies & Uncertainty
scientificamerican.com - Seth Fletcher, Jen Schwartz, Kate Wong
On July 8 President Donald Trump stood in the East Room of the White House and delivered a speech celebrating his administration's environmental …
Science
Saturn Could Lose Its Rings in Less Than 100 Million Years | Science | Smithsonian
smithsonianmag.com - Shaun Raviv
If someone asked you to draw a planet other than ours, you would likely draw Saturn, and that is because of its rings. But for most of history, human …
Google Lens, Augmented Reality, and the Future of Learning
WIRED - Lauren Goode
Did you know that the painter Rockwell Kent, whose splendorous Afternoon on the Sea, Monhegan hangs in San Francisco's de Young Museum, worked on …
Building Virtual Worlds Is a New Form of Self-Expression
WIRED - Clive Thompson
Recently, a 23-year-old college student named Nick tried out a new pastime: building 3D virtual worlds. He got his hands on Dreams, a game by Media …
Puzzles
Upstart Crossword Puzzle Builders Get Their Point Across (and Down)
WIRED - Peter Rubin
On Sunday, June 9, The New York Times published its 25,415th daily crossword since the newspaper debuted its first in 1942. Times puzzle editor Will …
The Future
The weird, repeating signals from deep space just tripled
CNET - by Eric Mack
Fast radio bursts are getting more attention from scientists, who can now detect more of them.
Planetary Habitability
There Could Be Up to 10 Billion Earth-Like Planets in Our Galaxy Alone
ScienceAlert - MORGAN MCFALL-JOHNSEN
Our galaxy could be littered with warm, watery planets like Earth. That's the conclusion of researchers at Penn State University, who used data from …