fun facts

When your health insurer monitors your sleep.

“Millions of sleep apnea patients rely on CPAP breathing machines to get a good night’s rest. Health insurers use a variety of tactics, including surveillance, to make patients bear the costs. Experts say it’s part of the insurance industry playbook.” […]

fun facts

Video of a lion fending off 20 hyenas during attack.

“The lion, named Red, appears to unknowingly venture into a hyena territory – a move that could have easily ended in his demise. The fight ensues for several moments as the lion growls at the cackling hyenas, who paw and […]

book recommendations

Farsighted

Author: Steven Johnson People have been making decisions of great importance for as long as there have been people. With the help of evolution, some of those decision-making tools have been genetically encoded into our human DNA as biases and heuristics. […]

under the microscope

Science is getting less bang for its buck. 

Researchers Patrick Collison and Michael Nielsen ran a survey of scientists to conclude: “Over the past century, we’ve vastly increased the time and money invested in science, but in scientists’ own judgement, we’re producing the most important breakthroughs at a […]

under the microscope

How to engineer biology. 

Vijay Pande, partner at a16z, published this post in Scientific American explaining how we’re moving from pure discovery to a more structured engineering approach for biological. “With design, however, we can plan and progress very systematically along a roadmap and […]