The New Yorker: Science & Technology

"Thinking like a geologist, The A.I.-cheating panic, Why 'educability' matters more than intelligence."

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 

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In today’s newsletter, The New Yorker’s ideas editor, Joshua Rothman, on how period blood is changing medicine. And then: • Thinking like a geologist • The A.I.-cheating panic • Why “educability” matters more than intelligence Joshua Rothman Ideas editor Illustration by Hélène Blanc “Holy mackerel, look at this treasure chest I opened up,” a researcher recalls thinking, in Rachel E. Gross’s fascinating new piece about the diagnostic promise of menstrual blood. Each year, millions of women suffer from reproductive diseases that are impossible to definitively diagnose without surgery; they endure not just illness but uncertainty. Now, Gross writes, a new wave of startups hopes to change that by analyzing menstrual blood. It contains “hundreds of unique proteins” that can’t be found in an ordinary blood test. Until very recently, period blood was profoundly overlooked as a subject of study. So Gross’s piece actually tracks two kinds of progress. On a scientific level, researchers are understanding more and more about the reproductive system; on a social level, they’re breaking a taboo. How do you get from a tampon or pad to a reliable diagnosis? You need to analyze proteins—and you need to uncover the value in something that’s usually thrown away. Read “What Can We Learn from Menstrual Blood?” Editor’s Pick  Books Studying Stones Can Rock Your World To think like a geologist is to contemplate timescales that stagger the imagination—and lay bare the planetary forces behind our earthly existence. By Kathryn Schulz Our Columnists  Open Questions What Does It Really Mean to Learn? A leading computer scientist says it’s “educability,” not intelligence, that matters most. By Joshua Rothman  Fault Lines Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools? New technologies are raising suspicions about students’ work, but the controversy—like so many others swirling around American classrooms—misses the point of what we want our kids to learn. By Jay Caspian Kang  Infinite Scroll “Emily in Paris” in the Late Streaming Era Over four seasons, the Netflix series has hollowed out along with the streaming industry that spawned it. By Kyle Chayka Cartoon by Avi Steinberg More from The New Yorker  Annals of Disaster Real-Estate Shopping for the Apocalypse Thirty-nine per cent of Americans believe that we’re living in end times, and the market for underground hideouts is heating up. By Patricia Marx  Books The Forgotten History of Sex in America Today’s battles over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights have antecedents that have been lost or suppressed. What can we learn from them? By Rebecca Mead P.S. The dam-removal project to restore the Klamath River, on the California-Oregon border, is nearly complete. Soon, salmon will be able to reach their spawning grounds for the first time in a hundred years and local tribes, such as the Yurok people, will regain access to the fish as a food source. In 2018, Carolyn Kormann wrote about how, after the Yurok’s way of life had been decimated by the dams, they created a carbon-offset project, which helped the tribe buy back nearly sixty thousand acres of their former land.

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