What We're Reading

A new study reveals that the geometry of brain activity patterns determines how well knowledge transfers to new situations, and presents a single mathematical formula that captures this in both brains and AI systems.

A new preprint shows that a type of particle interaction many physicists expected would not occur can in fact arise under specific conditions. The work focuses on gluons, the particles that carry the strong nuclear force.

New research examines a newly characterized beetle species, Sceptobius, that lives in a symbiotic relationship with ant colonies, and finds that Sceptobius infiltrates ant colonies by developing an invisibility cloak — silencing its own pheromones in order to steal and mask themselves with ant pheromones.

A group of ocean bacteria long considered perfectly adapted to life in nutrient-poor waters may be more vulnerable to environmental change than scientists realized.

Astronomers may have uncovered how the most common types of planets in our galaxy grow. The discovery confirms astronomers’ theories that these planets start as 'bloated' babies but quickly lose much of their thick atmospheres.

Simons Foundation president David Spergel talks about the evolving landscape for science philanthropy, his outlook for the research enterprise, and remaining hopeful in an uncertain time.

Tensor networks grapple with the complexities of both quantum particles and machine learning.

New York aims to democratize access to hardware often limited to federal labs and Big Tech.

A new paper, researchers at the Flatiron Institute, NYU Langone, and Rutgers University propose that sensory neurons are not just passive filters but active, “self-supervised learners“. Their job is to find hidden structures in the dynamic flow of sensory data, effectively sorting the present moment based on its shared history or its likely future.

The Museum of the Moving Image is becoming a place to gather, play, and create.