Primal Urge
(Azure) Two to the power of Seventy-Four Million Two Hundred and Seven Thousand Two Hundred Eighty-One minus One, a Castor Design book series comprised of three volumes, transforms the largest prime number known into a physical object.
Patchen Barss
About Patchen Barss
Posts by Patchen Barss:
Ghost Effects
(U of T Magazine) Social psychologist Michael Inzlicht launched his academic career on the study of “ego depletion.” His research suggested it was real. Then came doubts.
Go Argonautes! (U of T Magazine)
Julie Claycomb talks about her research into RNA interference the way a college football star might talk about getting drafted into the NFL – as though she’d trained her whole career to be the best at what she does, and now can’t quite believe she’s made the big leagues. Claycomb discovered a love of […]
A foot in two worlds (U of T Magazine)
A U of T lab is partnering with an international NGO and a Ugandan hospital to use 3-D scanning and printing to speed the process of creating and fitting sockets for artificial limbs. While three-dimensional printing has been around for some time, a new generation of fast, cheap 3-D printers offers up a world of […]
Is steel, wood or concrete the most ‘green’ building material? (TVO.org)
If the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs were written today, the pigs’ homes would likely be built not out of straw, branches and bricks, but instead out of wood, steel and concrete. And the porky trio would be imperiled not by a big bad wolf, but by environmental cataclysm. Any child reading the […]
The Science of Disagreement (U of T Magazine)
Prejudices and moral condemnation might be products of the human brain, but they can manifest in many other parts of the body. When a person comes face to face with someone they find disagreeable, their heart may beat faster. Their skin may conduct electricity better because their sweat glands are more active, which correlates with […]
The hunt for the perfect potato (TVO.org)
In 1980, potato breeder extraordinaire and University of Guelph alumnus Garnet (Gary) Johnston unleashed a new strain of potato on the commercial world: the now-legendary Yukon Gold. Its robust yellow flesh and eye-free skin made it a crossover success, topping the charts for mashed, baked and fried alike. Johnston created many other potato strains throughout […]
A little light interaction leaves quantum physicists beaming
A team of physicists at the University of Toronto have taken a step toward making the essential building block of quantum computers out of pure light. Their advance, described in a paper published this week in Nature Physics, has to do with a specific part of computer circuitry known as a “logic gate.” Logic gates […]
Toronto the wild: Biodiversity is the city’s true strength (Commons Magazine)
Sidling through ravines and parks, creeping across gardens and lawns, swimming down rivers and scrambling up trees, a panoply of beasts makes our city denser and more diverse than any mere human census would suggest. Researchers from many disciplines have discovered how rich Toronto’s animal community is; their work debunks the illusory divide between urban […]
Power Plants: “artificial leaves” could generate more solar power
Solar energy is called “green” for a reason. Our planet is covered in a massive solar power system that is as verdant as it is versatile. Leaves, plants, algae and bacteria use photosynthesis to convert and store solar energy on a scale that dwarfs anything attempted by human beings. Greenery is at work on land […]