Practical Magic

1,117 papers · Page 18 of 23

Research with immediate practical use. A method, a material, or a procedure that works today and changes what is possible at the bench or in the field.

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Taxes can totally change how a company behaves even if those taxes are never actually passed into law.

The best way to stop an AI apocalypse might be to copy a 1,000-year-old tribal government system from a tiny Pacific island.

If you want a nuclear plant to be safe, it matters less how many people live nearby and more what kind of people they are.

Some 'clean' cities only keep their good reputation by dumping all their illegal stuff and 'vice' into neighboring towns across the border.

Believe it or not, getting rid of draws in sports with penalty shootouts actually makes the games more likely to end in a tie.

Connecting two countries' apps like Venmo or Cash App boosts trade by 4%—that’s about half the impact of a massive free trade deal.

Those 'compostable' coffee pods that never actually break down in the dirt will disappear 300% faster if you turn them into biogas first.

If you want to know when the next big animal disease outbreak is coming, look at the price of meat, not the weather or biology.

The whole point of 'cloud kitchens' is mixing and matching food from different brands, but it makes your delivery about 48% more likely to be late.

When a wife gets a job, her happiness goes way up—but unlike when a husband gets a job, it doesn't give her spouse any boost at all.

If your rent goes up today, you can bet the price of a haircut or a doctor's visit will go up too within the next couple of years.

Adding just one more mile of road per square mile is associated with a 1.3% drop in the price of local groceries.

Luxury brands keep their 'cool' factor much better by giving digital stuff away for free than by selling it for cheap.

A country's ability to innovate doesn't depend on how much money is in the bank, but on how much the people actually trust each other.

One housing program for people in small-town slums was actually responsible for 20% of the entire country's rent inflation.

Minneapolis managed to lower its overall inflation rate just by getting rid of rules that only allowed for single-family homes.

Simply fixing up the kitchens and bathrooms in low-income housing leads to a massive 8.6% drop in unemployment for the people living there.

Banks are actually giving cheaper loans to companies that start using AI.

A study of 11,000 sales shows that most small businesses fail because they mess up internally, not because people don't want to buy their stuff.

India’s huge plan to give poor women clean cooking gas didn't change how they cooked, but it accidentally made them way more financially independent.

If your city has terrible traffic, your company might actually end up paying higher interest rates on its loans.

Future phones might have 'liquid' antennas that literally swim around inside the device to hunt down a better signal.

Scientists found a way to make a basic home computer screw up math exactly like a super-expensive AI chip does.

New 360-degree video treats things on screen like they have gravity, just so it can predict exactly where you're gonna look next.

Your future phone might have antennas that physically slide along tracks to 'pinch' the best Wi-Fi signal possible.

Researchers built an AI sensor that 'thinks' using light ripples, letting it spot objects in about 25 billionths of a second.

A new voting system lets you check if a national election was legit using just basic math and zero computers.

A new light-based processor can scan an entire library’s worth of AI memory just as fast as it scans a single page.

The 'battery health' percentage on your EV's dashboard is basically a lie and usually misses how much the battery is actually dying.

A new 'two-faced' material lets battery juice move 1,000 times faster than anything we’ve got right now.

Mathematicians can now find the leader of a secret group just by watching how fast news hits a few random outsiders.

New research shows you can predict a system's future even if you have no idea what laws of physics are actually running it.

An algorithm just 'rediscovered' the laws of gravity and quantum mechanics just by staring at raw data.

Scientists figured out how to 'crank up' superconductivity using a tiny light bulb built right into the material.

Researchers just made a synthetic brain cell using nothing but a single piece of organic plastic.

Scientists made a material where waves actually get stronger and louder the further they go.

Scientists built a steerable micro-robot by stuffing a living piece of algae inside a microscopic bubble.

Researchers figured out how to 'program' literal empty space to act like an electronic device.

Scientists are designing 'impossible' materials that use quantum tricks to break the limits of how heat works.

Engineers figured out how to 'print' light-bending devices using bubbles of air instead of solid stuff.

Researchers can now spot microplastic pollution using light that never even touches the plastic samples.

New math can spot life-threatening internal bleeding in patients before doctors can even see it.

AI can now map out the secret relationships between terrorist groups that they try to keep hidden.

A new protocol has dropped the death rate for the world’s deadliest mushroom poisoning to basically zero.

To actually debunk fake news, you should show the fake AI image again while you're correcting it.

Job boards that suggest roles based on your 'clicks' are actually making your life worse.

Mass surveillance has made it basically impossible to treat paranoia in a clinical setting.

Specialized 'green' courts actually make companies quit polluting industries entirely instead of just cleaning up their act.

You can force a class of 'market fixers' to exist just by using the right math in your pricing.

Monopoly banks don't just charge more; they use a 'menu' of products to hide how much they're ripping you off.