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Polar Regions Of Mars Of Outstanding Interest For Astrobiology - Why We Haven't Searched For Life There Yet

Polar Regions Of Mars Of Outstanding Interest For Astrobiology - Why We Haven't Searched For Life There Yet

Apr 26 2018 | comment(s)

The reason we know so little about the polar regions is not lack of interest. The polar regions are of great interest, for instance the Martian dry ice geysers in Richardson crater, one of the most interesting dynamic processes on Mars and the polar regions also have astrobiological interest too. There are potential habitats there that might even have fresh liquid water within 7 cms of the surface, beneath clear ice - of all the unexpected things to find on Mars with its near vacuum atmosphere!

Correct Blitz Chess - A Nice Miniature

Correct Blitz Chess - A Nice Miniature

Apr 26 2018 | comment(s)

Playing chess games flawlessly is a super-human endeavour, which even machines are still having a hard time achieving. However, the occasional flawless game does arise in human practice, albeit rarely. Usually it is a grandmaster who pulls it off. The absence of sub-optimal moves can be ascertained by extensive computer analysis these days, so the quality of the moves is not in question. 
Improve Mitochondria And You May Improve Heart Health

Improve Mitochondria And You May Improve Heart Health

Apr 25 2018 | comment(s)

A small study published in Hypertension resurrects the notion that oral antioxidants, broadly dismissed as ineffective, could reap measurable health benefits if they are bioavailable. And it was in older people.

The study consisted of 20 healthy men and women age 60 to 79 from the Boulder area. Half took a placebo and half took 20 milligrams per day of a commercially available supplement called MitoQ, which is Coenzyme Q10 which uses chemistry to allow the antioxidant to penetrate the membrane of mitochondria, the energy factories of our cells. 
Violent People With Less Access To Guns Would Be A Homicide Deterrent

Violent People With Less Access To Guns Would Be A Homicide Deterrent

Apr 24 2018 | comment(s)

While criminals will get guns illegally, and people who use guns to commit suicide may not be deterred by anything, people who are already prone to violence would be deterred from homicide by gun law changes, according to a new article which argues that federal and state laws should include people who abuse their partners regardless of whether they are married to them or not. And findings of abuse should be grounds for not being allowed access to guns. 
Mental Fatigue May Be A Key Issue In Seniors' Walking Ability

Mental Fatigue May Be A Key Issue In Seniors' Walking Ability

Apr 24 2018 | comment(s)

Today at the American Physiological Society (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2018 in San Diego a group of scholars posited that low "mental energy" may affect walking patterns in older adults more than physical fatigue. 
Youtubers Earn $1 Million A Year (Estimate) For Doomsday Videos - Teens Panic And Become Suicidal - Time To End Ad Support

Youtubers Earn $1 Million A Year (Estimate) For Doomsday Videos - Teens Panic And Become Suicidal - Time To End Ad Support

Apr 23 2018 | comment(s)

These channels specialize in uploading evidence of 'Nibiru', a modern myth, a planet that supposedly is about to hit Earth or fly past, always in the near future. This will seem absurd to you if you have a decent scientific background, but these people do not. They missed out on astronomy or science at school and some are very young. Some teenagers as young as 13, the minimum age for Facebook are in a perpetual panic over these videos, and we hear from their parents of even younger children who got terrified by these videos, sometimes as young as 8 years old.

The T-Index: More Meaningful Metrics For Scientists

The T-Index: More Meaningful Metrics For Scientists

Apr 23 2018 | comment(s)

Academics direly need objective, meaningful metrics to judge the impact their publications have on their field of expertise. Nowadays any regular Joe will be able to show many authored papers in their CV, and it will be impossible to objectively assess the relative merits of each and every one of them, if you are trying to rank Joe in a list of candidates for tenure, or just a research job at a University. 
Defining Man and Woman In The Age of Transgender Self ID Absolutism.

Defining Man and Woman In The Age of Transgender Self ID Absolutism.

Apr 23 2018 | comment(s)

Transgender activism must not prevent people from using their common everyday senses to tell who is who within reason.   We now live in a world where someone can insist that they are a transgender woman with their ID changed.  Yet insist that if any image of them is used it should be a very, rather, unflattering one for any woman.    Clearly self ID in the absence of concrete and substantial measures to live the life of the identified gender is meaningless.  At the same time a biological definition isn't fool proof either. 
Neonics: Environmental Groups Get 219,000 On A Petition Against EPA Science

Neonics: Environmental Groups Get 219,000 On A Petition Against EPA Science

Apr 21 2018 | comment(s)

A week after the Science March, environmental groups have turned up the heat on politicians, hoping to use the famous DDT strategy (ignore scientists, get a politician to do the work) to get a ban on a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics), which are sprayed on seeds so that there is less environmental strain and food waste.

Despite being in use for decades, during which bee levels have not gone down, anti-science groups like Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Union of Concerned Scientists have continued to raise money promising donors they will get them banned. They have been using a variety of techniques to reach their target goals. 
People Who Smile Are Regarded As Cooler

People Who Smile Are Regarded As Cooler

Apr 20 2018 | comment(s)

Imagine one person walks into a room and they are smiling and saying hello to everyone. Then imagine another person who walks in quietly, looks grim, and heads to a corner.

Rapper Kanye West once told the press he doesn't smile for photos because "it just wouldn't look as cool," and humanities scholars who have to write about something have written that the reason Dean became cool was because he didn't smile. But is it true? 
Food Waste Is Why Vegetarians Are Harder On The Planet Than Meat Eaters

Food Waste Is Why Vegetarians Are Harder On The Planet Than Meat Eaters

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

A new study finds that Americans waste nearly a pound of food per person per day. And at the top of it is fruits and vegetables. Way below those is dairy, and meat waste is almost a third of what fruits and vegetables are.

People who believe they "eat more healthy" than others - the organic elite and vegetarians - have a food fetish for fresh vegetables. And Americans are told by government committees and pyramids they should want to eat vegetables, so they buy them and then throw them out when they start to spoil. When is the last time you threw out moldy pizza?
Asperger Killed Disabled Kids For The Nazis

Asperger Killed Disabled Kids For The Nazis

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

All of the people who joke they have Asperger's or are "on the spectrum" as an excuse for behavior they know is simply annoying or weird are probably going to want to stop. It's going to be a lot cooler to just admit they are annoying or weird.

The reason is because a new analysis in Moleular Autism finds that Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician for whom a mild segment of the autism spectrum is named, collaborated with Nazis and helped kill disabled children.
If Your Doctor Talks About Homeopathy, You Have A Terrible Doctor

If Your Doctor Talks About Homeopathy, You Have A Terrible Doctor

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

Homeopathy, a belief from 200 years ago that if you took something that mimicked the symptoms of a disease you could prevent a disease, or that extremely diluted water with a molecule of something will be curative, has never been shown to work in any clinical trial.

Nonetheless, some people swear by it, much as people believe other placebos. What to do if your doctor recommends it? In the United States, a doctor is ethically forbidden from prescribing a placebo outside a clinical trial, but it is known some do. And lots of folk medicine/alternative medicine/integrative medicine people will claim it works if you believe it works. 
The Wisdom Of Crowds - Now With Even More Wisdom

The Wisdom Of Crowds - Now With Even More Wisdom

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

In 1907,Francis Galton recorded the entries from a competition where people guessed the weight of an ox. After analyzing hundreds of estimates the statistician found that while individual guesses varied wildly, the median of the entries was surprisingly accurate, within one percent of the ox's real weight.

Galton published the results and his theory of collective intelligence, the "wisdom of crowds," became part of the lexicon.

Medical Marijuana Won't Help Fight The Opioid Epidemic - It May Enable It

Medical Marijuana Won't Help Fight The Opioid Epidemic - It May Enable It

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

Advocates are claiming medical marijuana can help to fight the opioid epidemic but data show the opposite. Rather than being at lower risk, people who use medical marijuana may be at higher risk for non-medical prescription drug use.
Much of medical marijuana usage was always recreational and a new study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine finds that people who use medical marijuana have higher rates of prescription drug use - including pain relievers.

Does Use of Medical Marijuana Increase or Decrease Prescription Drug Use?

Mass Hysteria: Are You One Of 10,000s Celebrating Surviving End Of World? - It's Normal To Still Get Panic Attacks For Weeks

Mass Hysteria: Are You One Of 10,000s Celebrating Surviving End Of World? - It's Normal To Still Get Panic Attacks For Weeks

Apr 19 2018 | comment(s)

This is another of my posts to help victims of fake doomsdays. For the last three weeks we've had constant PM's and comments on Doomsday Debunked as a result of a viral hoax that pranked probably hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Many of them are young children still at school who came across it on social media, on twitter, Facebook, reddit or YouTube, or as a result of the sensationalist press.

Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Species Never Knew It Was Extinct

Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Species Never Knew It Was Extinct

Apr 18 2018 | comment(s)

Though we read a lot of claims about impending extinction, the biological reality is that we don't know anything about 99.9999999 percent of species that have ever lived. And then there are species only newly discovered that are immediately declared endangered because an academic only recently named them in a print journal.
Moving The Goal Posts On Bees: Now Their Microbiome Is At Risk

Moving The Goal Posts On Bees: Now Their Microbiome Is At Risk

Apr 18 2018 | comment(s)

The mix of bacteria (microbiome) of bee bread, the long-term food supply stored within a hive for young bees, is now at risk, according to a new estimate.

The scholars are blaming modern monoculture farming, commercial forestry and gardeners could be making it harder for honeybees to store food and fight off diseases, a new study suggests. Human changes to the landscape, such as large areas of monoculture grassland for livestock grazing, and coniferous forests for timber production, is affecting the diversity of the ‘microbiome’ associated with honeybees’ long-term food supply, the authors claim. 
Chasing Evidence Of A Black Hole's Shadow

Chasing Evidence Of A Black Hole's Shadow

Apr 17 2018 | comment(s)

One of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of relativity is the existence of black holes.

Although gravitational waves from binary black holes have been detected, direct evidence using electromagnetic waves hasn't happened and astronomers are searching for it with radio telescopes.  But then how can you tell them apart? Radio images have a limited resolution and image fidelity and at realistic image resolutions, even highly non-Einsteinian black holes seem like normal black holes.
TROLL ALERT: Thousands Panic Over Fake Voice Mail - Warning Alien Invasion On April 18 - Alleged From MH370 Black Box‽

TROLL ALERT: Thousands Panic Over Fake Voice Mail - Warning Alien Invasion On April 18 - Alleged From MH370 Black Box‽

Apr 17 2018 | comment(s)

This is going viral on Facebook and scaring thousands of people, many panic attacks, some suicidal. This is another of my Doomsday Debunked posts to help these vulnerable people, many of them young children, still at school, who read about this on their mobile devices. Ever since March 14th I've spent hours every day reassuring very scared and panicking people that the MH 370 flight recorder did not send a voice mail message to a random twitter user warning us of an alien invasion on 18th April. Honestly‽

This is a piling heap of stinking horse dung that attracts trolls like flies and beetles from thousands of kilometers away. Like the Titan Arum or Corpse Flower.