Weekly Research Roundups
A monthly email digest of papers you'd find sitting on the desk of an old timey natural philosopher who'd been whisked to the present.
How did life begin? Could we create life in the lab? How do genomes code for organisms? Do living things shape their own evolution? What is consciousness? How do we learn, perceive, and act? How intelligent is AI, actually? What is intelligence, even? Are we alone? How does order and complexity emerge from chaos and simplicity?
Every week, I publish a curated list of the most fascinating, groundbreaking inflammatory, or otherwise bold new scholarship on "big questions" like this so you can keep tabs on the frontiers of basic science.
I like to imagine these are the papers you'd find sitting on the desk of an old timey natural philosopher who'd been whisked to the present.
My top three picks for each week are free for everyone, but the rest of the roundup is a perk for paid subscribers. I also do a monthly round-up of big science news on my main newsletter that's free for everyone.
You can choose to subscribe to roundups only, the main newsletter only, or both — and change your mind at any time from your user portal.
Any glaring omissions, bad recommendations, or typos are 100% human fallibility and 0% AI hallucination.
Fields and topics that tend to come up include:
- Astrobiology and the search for life
- Artificial life/ALife
- Origins of life
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Artificial intelligence
- Language
- Sleep
- Consciousness
- Emergence
- Causation
- Philosophy of science
- Statistical physics and information
- Scaling laws and phase transitions
- Evolution and persistence
- Function and purpose in biology
- Agency and free will
- Quantum biology
- Physical biology and biophysics
- Morphogenesis
- Deep time and Earth history
- Exoplanet astronomy
- Solar system exploration
- Cosmology
The point of curation is to make it easier to find interesting things, not to flood you with all the things. So I skip most papers, even in relevant fields. If you're a maximalist, consider becoming a paid subscriber: paid patrons get the whole roundup instead of just my top 3 picks each week, and can follow the custom RSS feeds I've set up for astrobiology, exoplanets, and origin of life research. More feeds are coming soon!
Recommendations are welcome. Send them to elise@reviewertoo.com with "Paper Roundup Recommendation" in the subject line.