Science, Spoken

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With This DNA Dating App, You Swab, Then Swipe For Love Feb 28, 2018

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Christopher Plata doesn’t have time or patience for bad dates anymore. The 30 year-old nursing student has been trying for years to meet Mr. Right—first on Grindr and Compatible Partners (eHarmony’s queer subsidiary), and more recently on Bumble—and has yet to find someone with whom he shares a real connection. “I’ve really been through the ringer,” he says.

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If There's Life on Saturn's Moon Enceladus, It Might Look Like This Feb 28, 2018

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Saturn’s moon Encedalus has become an alien-hunting hot spot, and not just for the tinfoil hat crowd. Thought to be a barren cue ball until NASA’s Cassini mission found both active geysers and a liquid ocean beneath its frozen surface, the icy little moon is now one of the likeliest places to encounter extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

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Why It's So Hard to Dose Weed Feb 27, 2018

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Cannabis is a notoriously finicky drug. Take the right amount and you get relaxation or euphoria, but take too much and it’s a long ride of paranoia. Which makes marijuana tricky for casual users, and potentially problematic for new users who want to use cannabis to treat ailments like pain.

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Inside Robert Bigelow's Decades-Long Obsession With UFOs Feb 26, 2018

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In 1994, a Mormon family bought a 480-acre plot in in Utah’s Uintah Basin, thinking they’d get back to the land. But this particular land was weird. It came with too-large-thrice-over wolves that refused to die by bullet, cattle with their reproductive organs sucked clean out, and a multitude of UFOs, as they told the Deseret News in 1996. It was driving them bonkers. Robert Bigelow saw their story.

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The Ongoing Battle Between Quantum and Classical Computers Feb 26, 2018

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A popular misconception is that the potential—and the limits—of quantum computing must come from hardware. In the digital age, we’ve gotten used to marking advances in clock speed and memory. Likewise, the 50-qubit quantum machines now coming online from the likes of Intel and IBM have inspired predictions that we are nearing “quantum supremacy”—a nebulous frontier where quantum computers begin to do things beyond the ability of classical machines.

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The Struggle to Predict—and Prevent—Toxic Masculinity Feb 23, 2018

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Terrie Moffitt has been trying to figure out why men are terrible for more than 25 years. Or, to calibrate: Why some men are really terrible—violent, criminal, dangerous—but most men are not. And, while she’s at it, how to tell which man is going to become which. A small number of people are responsible for the vast majority of crimes.

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To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls and Give them Birth Control Feb 23, 2018

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Climate change is a ubiquitous hydra, a many-headed beast that affects everyone and everything in some form. Solutions to climate change range from the effective and the practical to the potentially catastrophically dangerous—but, in this somewhat heated debate, a potent weapon in our arsenal is falling by the wayside: the empowerment of women. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Robin George Andrews (@squigglyvolcano and robingeorgeandrews.

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You Don't Need a Personal Genetics Test to Take Charge of Your Health Feb 23, 2018

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The online storefront for the consumer genetics company Orig3n features an image of a young woman facing toward a sepia horizon. Her tresses are wavy, her triceps enviably toned. Her determined stance complements the copy floating beside her: "Take charge of your future," it reads. "Orig3n DNA tests uncover the links between your genes and how you think, act, and feel. The more you know, the easier it is to reach your highest potential.

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Snakelike Skin Gives a Robot the Power to Crawl Feb 22, 2018

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Snakes, serpents, danger noodles. Whatever you call them, you’ve gotta respect them. I mean, have you tried getting around without any arms or legs? (Also, they can bite you.) The snake’s ambulatory secret is its special belly scales, which grip a surface like cleat spikes to help the reptile push forward. And now that secret has made it into robotics.

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Solve Genomics with the Blockchain? Why the Hell Not Feb 21, 2018

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Scientists lust after genomes like the wolf from a Tex Avery cartoon, heart pounding in throat, tongue lolling, fist pounding on the table, submarine-dive-ahOOOgah!-alarm sounding—all out of desire for the hot, hot data curled coaxingly inside every one of your cells. Think of all the information tucked into those sinuous DNA spirals—and the life-saving discoveries that some smart machine learning could pull out if it had lots and lots and lots of it to learn from.

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