Most Spanish words come from Latin, but did you know there are 2 different types? Words inherited from spoken Latin vs. words borrowed from written Latin during the Middle Ages and after. Some words took both routes, creating doublets. Here’s episode 3 of my 10-part doublet series. Next: Italian.

So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!

We’re further away from The Rolling Stones recording “Sympathy for the Devil” than they were from the murders of the Romanovs when they recorded it

A step towards real-world applications of quantum computers! blog.google/technology/r... It was really fun to be involved in this work, by using Alpha Evolve to optimize quantum circuits.

In @elife.bsky.social: Investments in photoreceptors compete with investments in optics to determine eye design doi.org/10.7554/eLif... Much improved - key points emphasised, arguments clarified. Thanks to editors, referees and above all my co-author Fran Hernandez

A huge, quiet success: violence has fallen 75% in a generation:

¡Mapa de la renta de padre e hijos! 💶 Publicamos unos datos fascinantes. El cruce de 1) la renta de hogares de los ochenta y 2) las rentas de sus hijos hoy. En el mapa, renta bruta actual de los hijos (1980-1986) de hogares *renta baja* de cada lugar. Luego hilo👇

El gasto público sanitario por persona en Estados Unidos es 5 veces superior al de España a pesar de tener una cobertura ridícula en comparación con España Esto sucede cuando se construye sobre un sistema sanitario privado que prima los beneficios económicos por encima de la salud de los ciudadanos

Los datos que señalan que vamos a una economía de herederos como la de principios del siglo XX👇 El peso de las herencias de viviendas y del resto de inmuebles (fincas rústicas, solares...) en el PIB de España alcanza máximos no vistos desde la Primera Guerra Mundial: más del 3% eldiario.es/1_b94e3b

Whenever you hear someone sneer about scientific research that seems useless to them — “they’re studying the spit of lizards?!” — remind them that’s exactly how we got Ozempic. globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

“The demise of just one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide, a compound that eats away at the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022, and the recent surge is increasing the pollution even more.”

Spain's boom is a story of: - energy abundance (wind, solar, LNG) - public investment thanks to NextGenEU & domestic fiscal choices - labour reforms driving higher-quality employment - immigration combined with successful integration So some luck - but also good policy.

- This massive asteroid has 99.5% chance of hitting Earth in 10 years - Should we keep it secret? People might panic - Like they are panicking for climate change, you mean? - Ah, good point.

Nunca dejará de sorprenderme la naturalidad con la que hemos aceptado que nuestra ciudad sea un gran y feo parking de coches sin espacio para nadie.

Max capacity passengers per hour: * Boring Co’s Vegas Loop: 4,500 * NYC subway 6 train: 105,000

-Cari, dime cosas románticas. -Contrafuerte, bóveda de cañón, arco de medio punto... -¡Con T, idiota! -Transepto, triforio, tímpano...

Happy birthday to #mathematician & #astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute (1723-1788)! 🧪🐡🧮🔭👩🏼‍🔬 #histsci My #linocut celebrates her calculated path of the solar eclipse of 1764. She also worked with Alexis Clairaut & Jérôme Lalande to precisely calculate the date of return of Halley’s Comet, solving the 🧵

Feliz día de despistarse, de olvidar que aún hay un Imperio Romano y de crear otro.

En una provincia en la que el coche de Google maps, que pasa cada 15 años, te puede fotografiar metiendo un cadáver en el maletero en una calle desierta de un pueblo casi vacío, es esperable que la gente tenga una percepción particular de las leyes de la probabilidad y la estadística.

Error-corrected qubits are cool, and they get even more interesting when you do logic with them! Happy to present our (Google Quantum AI + @deepmind.google.web.brid.gy ) new work demonstrating scaling and logic with the color code. Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2412.14256

El proyecto de ayer fue instalar LineageOS (lineageos.org) en un móvil viejo. Tuve que instalar una máquina virtual de windows para desbloquear el móvil (nadie usa windows en casa), y mi pobre ordenador se pasó una noche entera compilando, pero ha merecido la pena.

Our Google Quantum AI friends are presenting a new chip "Willow". Its low error rates allow, for the first time, error corrected qubits to get exponentially better as they get bigger. Blog: research.google/blog/making-... Nature article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How can physics define universal laws for computation, from cells and chips to brains? In this @pnas.org Perspective, led by @sfiscience.bsky.social David Wolpert and Jan Korbel, they suggest how Stochastic Thermodynamics can provide the proper framework pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Very interesting podcast by @garethdennis.bsky.social in @novaramedia.com about trains in the UK and beyond novaramedia.com/2024/11/24/t... "Trains Are Better Than Cars. Here’s Why"

Albert Einstein submitted "The Field Equations of Gravitation" to the Prussian Academy #OTD in 1915. After years of work culminating in a frenzied month-long race against David Hilbert, Einstein had finally obtained the correct form of the field equations for general relativity. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ (1/n)

Tras comentar tres bluiteros concluimos: 1.- seguir llamando tuit a las publicaciones (como tipex o Danone, paso a genérico) 2.- bluit también mola, porque se entiende y es corto 2.- maripost es largo pero divertido, se deja para ocasiones especiales Hemos dicho

¿Cómo se trazan las rutas que toman las naves espaciales para llegar a su destino? ¿Quiénes son los encargados de planificarlas y calcularlas? Eso exploro en este artículo que publiqué en AGENCIA SINC ( @sinc-ciencia.bsky.social ) www.agenciasinc.es/Reportajes/A...

Beyond excited to introduce AlphaQubit, now published in Nature! AlphaQubit is a neural network for quantum error correction and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy on simulated and real-world data.

Really excited to share our (Google DeepMind and Google QuantumAI) new publication in @Nature, where we use neural networks to identify errors in quantum computers with state-of-the-art accuracy. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Blog: blog.google/technology/g...

For people interested in the life of Isaac Newton, I highly recommend a guided tour to Woolsthorpe Manor, his family house. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/nottin... The famous apple tree is also there. You can buy a graft, but it will cost you upwards of ten thousand pounds!

This week I finished reading "The Life of Isaac Newton", by Richard S. Westfall. Highly recommended. Some things I learned:

Hello world!