Based on data from NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), Villanova University researchers developed a map of the magnetic fields in the Milky Way. For Strange Maps, Frank Jacobs: The colors show the interaction between warmer dust clouds (pink), cooler ones (blue), and magnetic fields, indicated by radio filaments (yellow)...

PerThirtySix made a communal plot that asks for your opinion via scatterplot and you can see how you compare against the aggregates. A new poll goes up every day. The inspiration for this comes from a whiteboard in an office I used to work at. Every so often, a new pair of questions would be posted and people would contribute their answers by marking...

From the oldie-but-goodie department, this fun program uses a genetic algorithm to drive car thingies across a bumpy terrain. Change parameters. Watch the cars go. See how far the winner travels before crashing. The code is available on GitHub. In case you’re unfamiliar, a genetic algorithm creates mutations in a population of objects or systems....

For Reuters, Mariano Zafra, Anurag Rao, and Jon McClure describe how bird flu can pass between mammals, but, while not impossible, transmission to humans is still unlikely. Because of the heavy viral load in milk and mammary glands, scientists suspect the virus can spread between cattle during the milking process, either through contact with infected...

We get 24 hours in a day. How do we spend this time? How does our time use change as we get older and priorities shift? Here is the percentage breakdown in our teens, 20s, and 30s, through to our 80s. Read More

Maybe one day AI tools will be advanced enough to process a random dataset and produce valuable insights that incorporate the context of the real world. But that day is not today. Today, we can play with the tools available to us and see what happens. I’m Nathan Yau. I am a real person for now. This is The Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members...