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Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) Vaccine Shows Promise For Pancreatic Cancer

Messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) Vaccine Shows Promise For Pancreatic Cancer

Mar 03 2025 | comment(s)

Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a molecule that provides blueprints for cells to make a protein that may be needed by the body. Though around for nearly 60 years before COVID-19 erupted from Wuhan, China, it didn't get a lot of attention from government-funding agencies, where the grant system most often means experiments likely to work rather than anything revolutionary,(1)

That all changed when Moderna said they could make a COVID-19 vaccine fast, they just needed the bloated federal government and its need to make companies spend 18 months getting approval for a font color on a product label to instead get out of the way. The Trump administration did just that and by the end of 2020 it was being rushed to those on the medical front lines.(2)
What Will Become Of Reality?

What Will Become Of Reality?

Mar 02 2025 | comment(s)

For convenience, let’s say it started with Photoshop. That program made it obvious not only that we couldn’t believe our eyes any more, but that photographic evidence could no longer be admissible in court. Socioeconomic implications were even wider, as new industries popped up with products purporting to tell unretouched photos from photoshopped ones. (And the trademarked noun gave rise to a verb!)

Trump Administration Authorizes $100 Million For New Vaccine Research

Trump Administration Authorizes $100 Million For New Vaccine Research

Feb 26 2025 | comment(s)

In its second year, Avian Influenza has wrecked the U.S. poultry industry and caused egg prices to rise sharply. A month into a new presidential term, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has been given $1 billion to get the problem under control.

Hundreds of millions fewer chickens mean expensive eggs, and poor people who suffered through 44% food inflation were counting on lower prices.
Female Physicians 50% More Likely To Commit Suicide

Female Physicians 50% More Likely To Commit Suicide

Feb 26 2025 | comment(s)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data have revealed an alarming trend: female physicians were 53% more likely to commit suicide than females in the general population. Women are still only 25% of physician suicides, men are 80% of doctors who kill themselves, and the obvious risk factor is mental health issues and a key cause for that is legal issues. The American legal system allows unlimited liability and lawyers have successfully blocked all efforts at tort reform.
PFAS: Environmental Working Group Is Thrilled Republican Allies Are in Power

PFAS: Environmental Working Group Is Thrilled Republican Allies Are in Power

Feb 26 2025 | comment(s)

With new analyses created by their employees to 'detect' chemicals in water, plus their war on seed oils, Environmental Working Group have joined Natural Resources Defense Council in becoming Republican allies.

Welcome to politicization of science in the 2020s. Just a few years ago, Republicans were the enemy of anti-science activists, but now the Trump administration has an environmental conspiracy theorist in the Cabinet. Science won't matter and that's good for environmental lawyers.
Scientization Of Politics: Seed Oils Are The Latest Nocebo Fad

Scientization Of Politics: Seed Oils Are The Latest Nocebo Fad

Feb 24 2025 | comment(s)

You may suddenly have read a lot about the dangers of seed oils - e.g. sunflower and canola oil - and wonder why this is just being discovered. 

The harms weren't recently discovered, they've still never been discovered. They're not harmful so nothing has changed except the demographic criticizing them flipped from endorsing them. They were never healthier for you either, despite claims by people touted as experts, because those claims were also based on mouse studies and food surveys. It is just the pendulum of money-driven nutrition culture that goes where political winds take them.
Basically No chance 2024 YR4 will hit Earth.

Basically No chance 2024 YR4 will hit Earth.

Feb 24 2025 | comment(s)

Recent observations have virtually eliminated any concern about an impact from asteroid 2024 YR4. With a series of new data points collected over the past months, NASA has refined its understanding of the asteroid's path, reducing the predicted risk from the initially calculated 1% to nearly zero.

Alternate Representations for Impact Probability = 2.7e-5
0.0027% chance of Earth impact
Anti-Science Epidemiologists Have A New Friend In Government

Anti-Science Epidemiologists Have A New Friend In Government

Feb 18 2025 | comment(s)

In September, epidemiologists out to scare people about homeopathic - "detectable" - levels of pesticides published a paper hoping to get journalists promoting fear and doubt about agriculture.

Being the opposition to science in academia is a good place to be. They can get a publication to check off that annual box and nothing much will change. They won't get any blame.
Prop 65 Is A California Gimmick That Raises Prices For The Poor

Prop 65 Is A California Gimmick That Raises Prices For The Poor

Feb 13 2025 | comment(s)

Proposition 65 was a voter referendum that stated if a chemical was correlated to cancer, it needed to have a cancer warning label. Lawyers who were behind the public relations effort to get it passed assured consumers it would not be abused. Yet a few years later, epidemiologists inside the once-credible International Agency for Research on Cancer in France set out to gain "expert witness" contracts from lawyers and began to create more and more "correlations" - no science needed, just a possible link in mice - and now over 80,000 products carry these labels.

Not only will you find warning labels on nearly every product inside a Walmart, a warning label is on the outside, to warn you that the brick and glass has been "linked to" cancer.
KM3NeT: Most Energetic Neutrino In The Universe Detected

KM3NeT: Most Energetic Neutrino In The Universe Detected

Feb 12 2025 | comment(s)

The  Kilometre Cubic Neutrino Telescope (KM3NeT) collaboration has reported detection of  a neutrino with an estimated energy of about 220 PeV (220 million billion electron volts) by its ARCA detector.

The event, KM3-230213A, is the first evidence that neutrinos of such high energies are produced in the Universe and the most energetic neutrino ever observed. 
My Most Important Column Ever

My Most Important Column Ever

Feb 11 2025 | comment(s)

       This column deals with political opposition, resistance, and the future of the nation. It dissects the Trump-Musk financial bromance and the role of VP Vance. Bear with me to its end, then please comment pro, con, or in between.

Shadow action

Chocolate Is A Treat - It's Not An 'Antioxidant' Or Anything Except Valentine's Day Candy

Chocolate Is A Treat - It's Not An 'Antioxidant' Or Anything Except Valentine's Day Candy

Feb 11 2025 | comment(s)

Ignore epidemiology claims that chocolate is healthy. It is not, claiming it is requires the same suspect correlation that "suggests" weedkillers causes human cancer and acupuncture prevents COVID-19. No science involved. Mars, Incorporated was funding the Chair in Nutrition at UC Davis when a lot of those claims came out and while it's not the case that academics are creating results-for-hire any more than industry scientists are, it is the case that government and companies only fund people whose work they like.
Unsupervised Tracking

Unsupervised Tracking

Feb 11 2025 | comment(s)

Pattern recognition is an altisonant name to a rather common, if complex, activity we perform countless times in our daily lives. Our brain is capable of interpreting successions of sounds, written symbols, or images almost infallibly - so much so that people like me, who have sometimes trouble to recognize a face that should be familiar, get their own disfunctionality term - in this case, prosopagnosia.
The Paris Agreement Is Only Symbolic - And Helping Nothing

The Paris Agreement Is Only Symbolic - And Helping Nothing

Feb 10 2025 | comment(s)

In 2015, nearly every country signed The Paris agreement and agreed to keep global warming to below 2 degrees higher than before humans began emitting industrial levels of CO2 emissions.

Yet very little has changed, because every country gets to arbitrarily decide for itself how it can meet its goal, or if it should have a goal at all.(1) That's how useless the Paris Agreement is.
Asteroid 2024 YR4: A 2032 Threat? Not on Our Watch

Asteroid 2024 YR4: A 2032 Threat? Not on Our Watch

Feb 08 2025 | comment(s)

Back in December 2024, astronomers caught wind of something unusual—a small, fast-moving rock dubbed 2024 YR4 hurtling through space. Over the past several months, NASA’s eagle-eyed observations have tracked its path with increasing precision, revealing a roughly 1% chance that this cosmic wanderer could impact Earth in 2032. Now, before alarm bells start ringing, let’s break down what that really means and why there’s no need to panic.

When Told Lower Incomes Mean Less School Funding, College Students Become More Liberal

When Told Lower Incomes Mean Less School Funding, College Students Become More Liberal

Feb 07 2025 | comment(s)

So many people want to move to the United States of America because virtually anyone who arrives legally can start a business with little problem and get rich.

A lot of people born in the US would rather be born in a place where they can never get rich but more things are free for the poor. They're not wrong, normal human psychological variation means most people would rather not compete if given a choice. That is seen all across the animal kingdom.
The Earth Beneath Our Feet: How The Zagros Mountains Are Shaping The Middle East

The Earth Beneath Our Feet: How The Zagros Mountains Are Shaping The Middle East

Feb 07 2025 | comment(s)

The Zagros Mountains are nestled in Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey, and are the scene of an unfolding geological story deep beneath it.
Yellowstone Wolves: Good For Urban Environmentalists, Bad For Everyone Else

Yellowstone Wolves: Good For Urban Environmentalists, Bad For Everyone Else

Feb 06 2025 | comment(s)

A new analysis claims that crown volume of stream-side shrubs is a key metric for evaluating trophic cascade strength and they attribute the 1,500% increase in a small number of sites to increased numbers of wolves.

The data they used were collected from 20 streams during the years 2001 to 2020 and they note the aboveground biomass increase is due to a lot fewer elk, which was caused by a lot more wolves. "Balance of nature" wins.
Hims Telehealth Company Under Fire For Super Bowl Ad

Hims Telehealth Company Under Fire For Super Bowl Ad

Feb 06 2025 | comment(s)

Hims Inc., rebranded as Hims  &  Hers Health, Inc. after they went public in 2020, began as a telehealth company for erectile dysfunction and hair loss products.

No real issue there, the products are well-established and a phone call or website consultation is more convenient and far faster than visiting a doctor's office in the modern Obamacare milieu. It's entering the compounded glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists (GLP-1) injections market that got them new scrutiny.
Bad News For Big Alcohol: Half Of Valentine's Day Celebrants Will Abstain

Bad News For Big Alcohol: Half Of Valentine's Day Celebrants Will Abstain

Feb 06 2025 | comment(s)

A new survey created by marketing insights company Tastewise finds that half are not going to drink alcohol on Valentine's Day - for health reasons.

They're not wrong. During the waning days of the Biden administration, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy did something for science and public health that was grounded in science - he issued a report encouraging people to get off alcohol.