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"The ultimate objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to reconsider the emergence of modern science as a process of disintegration of the quadrivium, which was considered a stable scheme for the organization of knowledge."

Valleriani M. (2022) From the Quadrivium to Modern Science. HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology, Vol.16 (Issue 1), pp. 121-132. doi.org/10.2478/host-2022-0007 @science @medievodons

"Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being."
doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-044 @science @economics

"In this paper, we presented a proof of concept for an artificial intelligent agent system capable of (semi-)autonomously designing, planning and multistep executing scientific experiments."

Boiko, D.A., MacKnight, R., Kline, B. et al. Autonomous chemical research with large language models. Nature 624, 570–578 (2023). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-067 @science @engineering

"...we try to illustrate in a concise way the two main “wonders” of Faraday’s life: that the son of a poor blacksmith in the Victorian age was able to become the director the Royal Institution and member of the Royal Society, still keeping a honest and “virtuous” moral conduct, and that Faraday’s approach to many topics, but mainly to electrochemistry and electrodynamics, has paved the way to the modern (atomistic and field-based) view of physics, only relying on experiments and intuition."

Bagnoli, F. and Livi, R. (2018) “Michael Faraday: a virtuous life dedicated to science”, Substantia, 2(1), pp. 121–134. doi: doi.org/10.13128/Substantia-45 @science @chemistry @physics

"Finally, basing our discussion in part on an examination of the reading marks that Newton left in the surviving copies of Hebrew grammars and lexicons that he owned, we will argue that his interest in Hebrew was not intended to achieve linguistic proficiency but remained limited to particular theological queries of singular concern."

Joalland, M. and Mandelbrote, S. (2016) ‘Isaac Newton learns Hebrew: Samuel Johnson's Nova cubi Hebræi tabella’, Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Royal Society, 70(1), p. 9-21. doi: doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2015.0055. @earlymodern @science @histodon @histodons

attribution: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Page URL: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil

"The Amsterdam-based merchant and mathematics enthusiast Adriaen Verwer (1654/5–1717) was one of the few in the Dutch Republic to respond to the first edition of Newton's Principia (1687). Based on a close study of his published work, his correspondence with the Scottish mathematician and astronomer David Gregory (1659–1708), and his annotations in his own copy of the first edition of the Principia, I shall scrutinize the impact of Newton's ideas on Verwer's thinking."

Ducheyne, S. (2020) ‘Adriaen Verwer (1654/5-1717) and the first edition of Isaac Newton’s Principia in the Dutch Republic’, Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Royal Society, 74(3), p. 479-505. doi: doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2019.0008. @science @physics

"We designed the Vibrating Ingestible BioElectronic Stimulator (VIBES) pill, an ingestible device that performs luminal vibratory stimulation to activate mechanoreceptors and stroke mucosal receptors, which induces serotonin release and yields a hormonal metabolic response commensurate with a fed state."

Shriya S. Srinivasan et al., A vibrating ingestible bioelectronic stimulator modulates gastric stretch receptors for illusory satiety. Sci. Adv. 9, eadj3003(2023). DOI: doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adj3003 @science @engineering

"These ancient DNA results reveal a relatively genetically homogeneous population in Peqi’in. We show that the movements of people within the region of the southern Levant were remarkably dynamic, with some populations, such as the one buried at Peqi’in, being formed in part by exogenous influences."

Harney, É., May, H., Shalem, D. et al. Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel reveals the role of population mixture in cultural transformation. Nat Commun 9, 3336 (2018). doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-056 @science @biology @archaeodons @anthropology

"Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is stressed that artificial algorithms attempt to mimic only the conscious function of parts of the cerebral cortex, ignoring the fact that, not only every conscious experience is preceded by an unconscious process but also that the passage from the unconscious to consciousness is accompanied by loss of information."

Athanassios S Fokas, Can artificial intelligence reach human thought?, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2023, pgad409, doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad @science @engineering

"I argue that inclusion of Occam's razor is an essential factor that distinguishes science from superstition and pseudoscience. I also describe how the razor is embedded in Bayesian inference and argue that science is primarily the means to discover the simplest descriptions of our world."

McFadden, J. (2023). Razor sharp: The role of Occam's razor in science. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1530, 8–17. doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15086 @science

"The study has revealed that the Balkans was a frontier region of ancient Rome as cosmopolitan as the imperial centre, and that Slavic migration arriving in the Balkans from the 6th century onwards represents between 30% and 60% of the ancestry of the Balkan peoples today." ehu.eus/en/web/campusa-magazin @biology @science

"The authors introduce the two main theoretical approaches in SM, Boltzmannian SM and Gibbsian SM, and discuss how they conceptualise equilibrium and explain the approach to it. In doing so, the authors examine how probabilities are introduced into the theories, how they deal with irreversibility, how they understand the relation between the micro and the macro level, and how the two approaches relate to each other."

Frigg R, Werndl C. Foundations of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2024. doi: doi.org/10.1017/9781009022798 @philosophy @philosophyofscience @physics

"The findings gave a unique understanding of life and death in this early Christian Viking community and indicated that it was common to suffer from dental caries, tooth loss, infections of dental origin and tooth pain. These Vikings also manipulated their teeth through filing, tooth picking and other occupational behaviors."

Bertilsson C, Vretemark M, Lund H, Lingström P (2023) Caries prevalence and other dental pathological conditions in Vikings from Varnhem, Sweden. PLOS ONE 18(12): e0295282. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0 @archaeodons @science

"A team of astronomers has used asteroseismology, or the study of stellar oscillations, to accurately measure the distance of stars from the Earth. Their research examined thousands of stars and checked the measurements taken during the Gaia mission to study the near Universe." actu.epfl.ch/news/scientists-m

"To address questions about the real appearance of St Anthony, we applied body mass estimation equations to the osteometric measurements taken in 1981, during the public recognition of the Saint’s skeletal remains. Both the biomechanical and the morphometric approach were employed to solve some intrinsic limitations in the equations for body mass estimation from skeletal remains. The estimated body mass was used to assess the physique of the Saint with the body mass index."

Mongillo J, Vescovo G, Bramanti B (2021) Belly fat or bloating? New insights into the physical appearance of St Anthony of Padua. PLOS ONE 16(12): e0260505. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0 @science

"Medieval hospitals were founded to provide charity, but poverty and infirmity were broad and socially determined categories and little is known about the residents of these institutions and the pathways that led them there. Combining skeletal, isotopic and genetic data, the authors weave a collective biography of individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge."

Inskip S, Cessford C, Dittmar J, et al. Pathways to the medieval hospital: collective osteobiographies of poverty and charity. Antiquity. 2023;97(396):1581-1597. doi: doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.167 @archaeodons @science

The secrets of Einstein's unknown equation – with Sean Carroll.

"The real Einstein's Equation is part of general relativity, which relates the curvature of spacetime to the mass and energy distributed within it.

Sean explains why the geometry of spacetime has anything to do with gravity, and how this famous equation expresses the way that spacetime curves." youtu.be/BRudidBcfXk @science @physics

"Our results highlight the joint importance of network structure, commitment, and psycho-linguistic aspects of social interactions in characterizing grassroots collective action, and contribute to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that drive processes of behavior change of online groups."

Cava, L.L., Aiello, L.M. & Tagarelli, A. Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon. Sci Rep 13, 21626 (2023). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-482

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