Welcome to Lux Recommends #289, this week’s edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (want to receive this by email? Sign up here).
Articles
Loving an Elevator: “The Space Elevator has been a dream of scientists for centuries. A new design may finally make it a reality — at least, by the next century.” — Sam
Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real: “Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer.” — Nelson
A blood test for your body clock? It’s on the horizon — Adam G
37 Comparisons Of The Sizes Of Prehistoric Animal Ancestors And Their Modern Relatives By Roman Uchytel — Sam
Researchers Hid Malware Inside an AI’s ‘Neurons’ and It Worked Scarily Well: “In a proof-of-concept, researchers reported they could embed malware in up to half of an AI model’s nodes and still obtain very high accuracy.” — Mike
How sex cells get the right genetic mix: An interdisciplinary approach solves a century-old puzzle — Sujude
How Olympic Surfing Is Trying to Ride the Machine Learning Wave: “As surfing completes its first-ever Olympic ride, the sport is poised for another sea change thanks to artificial intelligence and big data” — Shaq
Goose flying upside down is simply showing off, say experts — Sam
Fast, Efficient Neural Networks Copy Dragonfly Brains: “An insect-inspired AI could make missile-defense systems more nimble” — Nelson
Women Are The Future Of Space Travel: “While space exploration’s past has been largely a male enterprise, the future is likely to be female.” — Deena
Astronomers spot light behind a black hole for the first time, reaffirming Einstein’s theory of general relativity: “An unexpected observation” — Sujude
City of Hope researchers develop miniature brain models to study the causes of Alzheimer’s disease and to test drugs in development — Adam G
Bioorthogonal information storage in L-DNA with a high-fidelity mirror-image Pfu DNA polymerase — Rahul
Books
The Peacemaker’s Code by Deepak Malhotra: “Professor Kilmer, a renowned historian of war and diplomacy, is collected from his home and whisked off to Washington. Thrust into the highest levels of government as an adviser to the President, the young historian must come to terms with the seemingly impossible, figure out how to navigate a world where not everything is as it appears, and use all the skills and knowledge he has acquired in his life to help save humanity from a conflict of truly epic proportions.”— Sam
Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul by Jamie Ducharme: “With rigorous reporting and clear-eyed prose that reads like a nonfiction thriller, Big Vape uses the dramatic rise of Juul to tell a larger story of big business, Big Tobacco, and the high cost of a product that was too good to be true.” — Lux Recommends reader Dan Katz
Television
Alone: ‘“Alone” is back like never before and taking place in the most dangerous location yet. In Season 8, 10 contestants fight to survive in the Canadian wilderness on the shores of Chilko Lake, British Columbia. Equipped with just 10 items and a camera kit, each participant must survive in total isolation, with the hopes of lasting the longest and winning the $500,000 prize.’ — Adam G
Videos
Your airplane hits an animal — now what? — Adam K
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