Antiviral drugs are generally considered to be a 20th century invention. But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections.

My laboratory studies a protein that makes these natural antiviral molecules. Far from a modern human invention, nature evolved cells to make their own “drugs” as the earliest defense against viruses.

When science finally settled the debate between genetics and lifestyle regarding oral health, the world began to set new benchmarks for improved health overall. After World War II it was discovered that bacteria in our mouths create acid from carbohydrates, and that acid erodes the enamel on teeth, which will mean more decay and cavities.

Our five senses are gathering information at all times. One way our brain sorts the abundance of information is by combining information from two or more senses, such as between smells and the smoothness of textures, or pitch, color, and musical dimensions.

It may be why we began to associate higher temperatures with warmer colors, lower sound pitches with less elevated positions, or colors with the flavor of particular foods. A new paper argues that such unconscious 'crossmodal' associations with our sense of smell can even affect our perception of colors.

A new paper has given a name for long-term symptoms that test negative for COVID-19 - "long colds."

Coronavirus is very similar to the common cold, so similar that coronavirus was not known to be distinct until the 1960s. Most who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 and got COVID-19 experienced symptoms like a cold, but those with co-morbidities or who had severe reactions got more like a super flu, some with devastating effect. Even after recovery, some still report lingering effects, given rise to the term 'long COVID.'

Controversial social media video site TikTok has one supporter - a public relations academic at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

A recent paper, ironically in a journal from a publisher that has also been called predatory, argues that TikTok may be effective for encouraging women to get a pap smear, which aids in early detection of cervical cancer, which kills some 4,000 women each year in the United States. 

As I am waiting in Prague airport for my flight back home, after a few days spent discussing the options of the SWGO collaboration for the detectors we are going to build, I came across (through compulsive scrolling on twitter) a thread that caught my attention. It was about emails to academics on PhD openings. Since I found the discussion there a bit too forgiving on the academics, I wish to express my position here - possibly in a less toxic environment.

A new analysis found an increasing trend in psychotropic medication dispensation for Swedish children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. The results from from 2006 to 2019 showed consistent higher use than kids without type 1 diabetes. 

Last week I received in my mailbox a copy of the Princeton University Press book "Machine Learning for Physics and Astronomy" by Viviana Acquaviva. They sent me a copy because I had reviewed its contents for Princeton Press.


I am happy with the book. When I accepted to review it, I was a bit hesitant because I am not a computer scientist. I might pass as an expert in machine learning because after all I have been developing such tools for 20 years now (or maybe I should say over 30, as my first attempt was in 1992, with a bootstrap-powered classification method), but I feel I still lack knowledge in some of the theoretical underpinnings, and there are holes in my knowledge base. 

Spending on mental health for teens and younger rose by 26 percent from March 2020 to August 2022 - but it may be even higher because the analysis only saw families with employer-provided insurance from one group, Castlight Health, which managers employer-sponsored health insurance plans for about 200 companies. 

Health care in America is broken and the chief reason is the government. In 2009, when Obamacare became part of the President's agenda, I said we should just write out the check for trillions of dollars and nationalize the industry. My reasoning was that anything else would mean we have worse access and much higher cost.