People often feel that they can intuitively recognize whether something is alive, but nature is filled with entities that flout easy categorization as life or non-life — and the challenge may intensify as other planets and moons open up to exploration. In this excerpt from his new book, Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive, published today, the science writer Carl Zimmer discusses scientists’ frustrated efforts to develop a universal definition of life.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org

How we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork, and why we must do better.

We’ve all had to fight our way through administrative sludge–filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up–and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it.
Because of sludge, Sunstein, explains, too many people don’t receive benefits to which they are entitled. Sludge even prevents many people from exercising their constitutional rights–when, for example, barriers to voting in an election are too high. (A Sludge Reduction Act would be a Voting Rights Act.) Sunstein takes readers on a tour of the not-so-wonderful world of sludge, describes justifications for certain kinds of sludge, and proposes “Sludge Audits” as a way to measure effects of sludge. On balance, Sunstein argues, sludge infringes on human dignity, making people feel that their time and even their lives don’t matter. We must do better.

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Read the full two volume proceedings at: complexnetworks.org

Scriptinformatics, in other words, scriptological informatics or computational scriptology, as a branch of applied computer science (informatics), deals with the investigation concerning the evolution of graphemes in various scripts and with the exploration of relationships between scripts, where the scripts could be any sequence of symbols of cultural origin, such as historical writing systems or urban graffiti. In a scriptinformatic research, the machine learning, artificial intelligence and bioinformatics tools are used (Hosszú 2010a; Hosszú 2017). It deals with phylogenetic (phyletic) modelling, developing the necessary algorithms and the phenetic, evolutionary and statistical analyses of features of the studied scripts (Hosszú 2014b; Hosszú 2019: 120).

Read the full book at: real.mtak.hu

This is the first comprehensive overview of the ‘science of science,’ an emerging interdisciplinary field that relies on big data to unveil the reproducible patterns that govern individual scientific careers and the workings of science. It explores the roots of scientific impact, the role of productivity and creativity, when and what kind of collaborations are effective, the impact of failure and success in a scientific career, and what metrics can tell us about the fundamental workings of science. The book relies on data to draw actionable insights, which can be applied by individuals to further their career or decision makers to enhance the role of science in society. With anecdotes and detailed, easy-to-follow explanations of the research, this book is accessible to all scientists and graduate students, policymakers, and administrators with an interest in the wider scientific enterprise.

Get it at: www.amazon.com