12 comments

  • altairprime 2 hours ago
    This content is from 2014-15; perhaps they AI-rehashed the Yahoo! News story about them?

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-old-girls-win-google-science-f...

    They posted a video summarizing their efforts in 2014:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL9N7O0uJoU

    Vice did an interview in 2016:

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/these-teenagers-science-proj...

    Ciara Judge went on to join the research effort to stop Covid in 2021:

    https://ciarajudge.github.io/about

    And recently earned her Ph.D publishing GPL3 software:

    https://github.com/ciarajudge/EpiFusion

    > EpiFusion uses particle filtering to simulate epidemic trajectories over time and weight their likelihood according to both case incidence data and a phylogenetic tree using separate observation models, resulting in the inference of trajectories in agreement with both sets of data.

    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012528

    • telesilla 1 hour ago
      Definitely AI written, though it got the point across and it wasn't terrible to read and it was new information to me so I was glad to read it.

      At this point what news site isn't AI written? Except for the few remaining human blogs (which are a delight and a pleasure). Why I detected AI: it said "The honest footnote.." at the end. That's how Claude always ends our long-rambling discussions.

      • albumen 1 hour ago
        Lots of news sites aren't AI written; or if AI is involved, it's not as blatant as in this article. The 'papers of record' largely remain AI-free. You increasingly have to pay for good journalism.
    • ChrisRR 38 minutes ago
      From their about page

      https://scienceblog.com/about-us/

      "Every published piece is editorially directed and reviewed before it goes live. We use AI tools in research, drafting, and editing. Editors decide what claims, framing, and pieces make it to publish."

  • daRealDodo 0 minutes ago
    I hate those g's
  • stuaxo 5 minutes ago
    ". Émer, then in her early teens, did the thing that separates a science story from a compost story: " this reads so AI / LLMish.. it's like the same feeling if you had to eat the same food again and again, not quite sickness but something about the repetition.
  • Tade0 1 hour ago
    Using nitrogen-fixing bacteria is not a new concept and it's the life's work of Dr Mariangela Hungria, who recently received the 2025 World Food Prize for her achievements in the field:

    https://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/laureates/20202026_laureat...

    • metalman 1 hour ago
      "Hungria" cant have a better name for food research. Nitrogen fixing is one of the more frustrating things to work on as there is such a massive ready supply of unfixed nitrogen to work with everywhere on our planet and all in all we need such a tiny proportion to dramiticly improve agriculture.The whole thing is so finly balanced that herbivors can likely smell the diference in plants that have been given nitrogen fertiliser and raid our crops and gardens for the fixed nitrogen that then facilitates there own internal bacteria and thereby achive better nutrition for themselves. But to my frustration and anger, nothing eats alder bushes, which are a never ending problem in taking over fields, but when after employing machinery to uproot them,( it bieng the only way to kill them), reveals there bright orange knobly roots, that host the nitrogen fixing bacteria that they contain. There is enough nitrogen and other nutrients in alder that the area's where they are piled and burnt will remain significantly more fertile for many years after. One of my(many) projects is to experiment with "terra preta" and build a charcoal kiln, primarily for alder and hopefully be able to retain a greater portion of the "good stuff™" that is otherwise lost to rotting or combustion.
  • pluc 50 minutes ago
    Refreshing to see there are other outcomes than asking AI what it is these days.
  • GaryBluto 1 hour ago
    Is the letter 'g' designed to appear as if the bottom loop is missing, or is that a rendering error on my end?
  • vintermann 57 minutes ago
    That's a qreat discovery by these three qirls. But what IS it with websites that use a font with utterly weird g's? Do they think they need it to stand apart?
    • retsibsi 45 minutes ago
      Studies show that your concentration remains sharper if your visual processing system is jarred out of its complacency at frequent, semi-random intervals, preventing you from lapsing into a low-effort 'skim-reading' mindset. It's something to do with the predictive processing model; over time, your brain comes to rely increasingly on top-down processing if its expectations are consistently met, and I guess there is some interplay between visual processing and semantic comprehension in this context.

      (Just kidding! I think it is simply an annoying affectation.)

    • Hugsbox 43 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • CalRobert 2 hours ago
    I thought this was going to be an eats, shoots, and leaves style discussion.

    A wart-covered pea plant is what they refer to (near Cork, Ireland)

  • spiderfarmer 1 hour ago
    Cool a science blog! But it's a rehashed article, followed by an infinite amount of random Taboola scams, arbitrage posts, clickbait articles with jarring content.

    Why does shit like that work better than quality contextual advertising?

    • classified 19 minutes ago
      Agreed, it's an article with an interesting topic for once, and it's completely ruined by the way it's presented.
  • akhil_findincal 1 hour ago
    [flagged]
  • rmason 3 hours ago
    For years the holy grail has been for corn to produce its own nitrogen. This could be a small step in the right direction. Interested to see what happens when some of the great American agricultural schools further this experiment.
    • dofm 2 hours ago
      Putting aside the cultural imperialism (this happened in Ireland, which is in Europe, which is also where two of the greatest agricultural schools in the world, if not also the two greatest for this, are based), it also happened over a decade ago, so I guess everyone has tried furthering it by now.
    • KaiserPro 2 hours ago
      I thought all those school/systems of colleges had their budgets cut last year?
    • blooalien 1 hour ago
      > ... what happens when some of the great American agricultural schools further this experiment.

      "Brawndo! It's got what plants crave!"