Make computer-aided research more verifiable

A central problem with modern computer-aided research is that research based on long computations becomes difficult to verify. It is thus unclear how and why such should be trusted. The most widely discussed aspect of this problem is the... continue reading

Playing Games with Ideas: when epistemology pays off

In standard game theory analysis, gameplay proceeds using rational strategies. While there is no explicit link between rationality and strategy selection, playing to equilibrium solutions often depends on choosing the optimal strategy. Yet what if... continue reading

Applying Supervised Machine Learning to the Fight against Online Child Sexual Abuse

Some reports of NGOs and anecdotal evidence suggest that child abuse materials (CAMs) share some characteristics extensively. They mostly take place indoor settings, victims' face or genitalia is visible and there are few visual clues about the... continue reading

Anthropogenic increase in the length of a day

The length of a day might have been increasing owing to decreased speed of the earth's rotation triggered by anthropogenic factors: 1) anthropogenic induced increase in the moment of inertia of the earth; and 2) slowdown of tidal currents due to... continue reading

Searching for Dyson spheres with Gaia

Assuming that Dyson spheres obscure optical/near-infrared light as grey absorbers, a partial Dyson sphere with high covering fraction (fcov > 0.5) could reveal itself as an anomalously subluminous star with a parallax-based distance smaller than... continue reading

The simple observation by Huygens that disproved Newton's rule for the extraordinary refraction of calcite

Huygens (1629–1695), in his Treatise on Light (1690), explained the double refraction of calcite on the correct hypothesis that the secondary waves for the... continue reading

A nanobattery based on biopolymers

Conventional batteries have been manufactured by top-down approach. It is believed that bottom-up approach offers better efficiency.... continue reading

Soap bar skin scanner for detection of early melanoma

Many scanners look inside the body, but none examine our whole skin because the ripples and folds of flesh need to be unfolded for camera access. The current approach assumes no cooperation from the person being examined, except to lie or stand... continue reading

Carbon concentrations in phytoliths and carbon sequestration in soil

In recent years there has been much work on the possibility that carbon could be sequestered in phytoliths and contribute to solving global warming.1,... continue reading

What do humans strive for, generally? A universal description of humans’ motivation to act.

When one considers a general and universal description of humans’ motivation to act, probably reproduction, or biological fitness, comes to mind (Darwin, 1859). However, there is an abundance of residual behaviour, across humans’ life domains... continue reading

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