I like learning stuff through discussion and a lot interesting projects or groups still use mailing lists as a main medium of exchange.
What are some that you are reading and/or participating in? Any topics are welcome, although tech or science related ones are probably of most interest here.
As a sort of new years resolution, I want to read more about current frontiers in science. But how do people find good papers to read? For textbooks I always found this easy, as there are a handful of good ones at best for somewhat niche topics and you can easily find them, often along with reviews that help to decide which one is the right choice. For papers and journals I find this significantly harder.
As an example, I recently read Mandelbrot's "Fractal Geometry of Nature" and really enjoyed it. I am sure there are many groups researching the mathematical properties of structures found in (living) nature (think patterns in fungi growth, selfoptimization of bone structure for weight and stability, paths in ant colonies or anything else in that fashion), but I just can't find any current projects in this field. So far, I tried reading through relevant wikipedia pages, but the references there are typically quite old, looked for relevant journals but didn't know what exactly to look for and just googled a lot with very limited success.
So, how do you do it? Do you have any journals for your field that you look through, and if not, how else do you find interesting research?
