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Peanut Allergy? It May Be How They Are Cooked

Peanut Allergy? It May Be How They Are Cooked

Sep 25 2014 | comment(s)

East Asians and Westerners tend to suffer the same types of food allergies in about the same proportions. But there is an exception. Westerners are roughly twice as likely as East Asians to be allergic to peanuts.

Why gives? And why are people allergic to peanuts at all? Writing in The Economist, Alex Berezow dives into clinical immunology and discusses a study finding that mice were also more likely to develop a peanut allergy - if the peanuts were dry-roasted.
Literary Wanderlust - 24 Chosen For The First Amtrak Residency Program

Literary Wanderlust - 24 Chosen For The First Amtrak Residency Program

Sep 25 2014 | comment(s)

Nothing says romantic nostalgia like the idea of riding a train - it's slow, it is serene. I'd do it more often but it takes 21 hours to go from my home in California to Seattle - and the last time I went the power outlets hadn't been updated since about 1975, so you could use an electric shaver but not a laptop.

That means 21 hours of doing nothing, unless you write longhand. Or you carry a manual typewriter and want to annoy the entire car. 
The 'Green Blob' Is A Bigger Threat To Bees Than Neonicotinoids

The 'Green Blob' Is A Bigger Threat To Bees Than Neonicotinoids

Sep 25 2014 | comment(s)

Neonicotinoid pesticides were invented because there was concern that they could have an effect on bees.

Colony collapses have happened all throughout recorded history, of course, but in an immediate news cycle when every blip leads to gigantic fundraising opportunities, it is customary to hyperventilate and mobilize the donor base against science. 

Yet despite the beliefs of environmentalists, a 1980 PC is not better than a PC made today and legacy pesticides are not superior to neonicotinoids.
Organic Kale Is A GMO

Organic Kale Is A GMO

Sep 17 2014 | comment(s)

It's no secret by now how prescient Science Left Behind was in noting the anti-science beliefs of the left, at a time when science media insisted being anti-science was solely an inherent trait of being a Republican, were going to become a huge problem for public acceptance of science.
Science Magazine Creates 50 Twitter Science Stars

Science Magazine Creates 50 Twitter Science Stars

Sep 17 2014 | comment(s)


On Twitter, you follow and are followed, so if you are going to create a list of most impactful science people, there is only one valid metric - the number of "followers" who are going to see what they write.
California: Prop 65 Is Coming For Your Coffee

California: Prop 65 Is Coming For Your Coffee

Sep 16 2014 | comment(s)

Proposition 65, which mandates warning labels on just about every product in every store in the state, insures that Californians have no clue what actually can be harmful or not. What doesn't 'cause cancer' if an epidemiologist can torture data long enough that it confesses?
NIH Wants To Know Why So Many Lesbians Are Obese

NIH Wants To Know Why So Many Lesbians Are Obese

Sep 02 2014 | comment(s)

Did you know that “nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese,” and that gay males are not? I confess I didn't, though it may be because, outside a relative, I am not sure I know any lesbian women, due to my "I don't give a crap" policy which causes me to forget to assume two women together are lesbians and wonder what it has to do with their waistlines. 

Government Science Advisors Are An Extension Of Politics, It's That Simple

Government Science Advisors Are An Extension Of Politics, It's That Simple

Aug 27 2014 | comment(s)

Dr. Anne Glover, chief scientific adviser to the president of the European Commission,  was a welcome event for the science community when she got that job. Perhaps Europe would finally revisit the Science Enlightenment, and stop finding experts to endorse whatever polls say science policy should be.

It hasn't been easy. She has been targeted by both Greens and her boss for supporting the overwhelming consensus on biology. Her boss even publicly said when it comes to science, she is speaking her opinion - it's weird when a scientist only has an opinion...unless it matches political beliefs.
Hawaii Driving Out Anti-Science

Hawaii Driving Out Anti-Science "Haole Activists" In The Democratic Party

Aug 23 2014 | comment(s)



You'd think Hawaii would be really supportive of science.

Without genetic modification and the GMO Rainbow papaya crop, papaya on Hawaii would be extinct due to the ringspot virus, but everyone in Hawaii hates science. Naked girls sell calendars of cheesecake under the pretense that it will save Hawaii from science, a politician drafted a bill to ban all GMOs except the GMO Rainbow papaya.
50 State Index of Energy Regulation

50 State Index of Energy Regulation

Aug 19 2014 | comment(s)



Pacific Research Institute Fellows Dr. Wayne Winegarden and Dr. Marc Miles have created the 50 State Index of Energy Regulation, which covers the various regulatory climates for energy consumption, production and distribution. 

It's no secret that energy is the great equalizer. We have written numerous articles showing that with clean energy - not by penalizing everything but the pet projects of politicians and the lobbyists paid to support some schemes - everything is possible. Cheap energy is the road from poverty and makes everything else possible.
Glass Half Full: 6 Lessons From The Ebola Outbreak

Glass Half Full: 6 Lessons From The Ebola Outbreak

Aug 16 2014 | comment(s)

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa continues to rage and has now claimed the lives of more than 1,100 people. Is that a lot? It depends. In context, that is 10 percent of the lives France lost during a heatwave in 2004 while they protested American foreign policy in the streets, so clearly it is a matter of priorities. Unlike France, Africa regards preventable deaths as a priority but there are lessons for developed nations in there also.

First, and most importantly, is that American health care is quite good. Yes, it's expensive, but this outbreak really can't happen here, no matter how much the instant news cycle wants to hype it up.
4.4 Trillion Frames A Second: The World's Fastest Camera

4.4 Trillion Frames A Second: The World's Fastest Camera

Aug 16 2014 | comment(s)



The University of Tokyo and Keio University have unveiled the world’s fastest camera - its Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography makes it 1,000 times faster than other cameras. So fast it can catch catch the conduction of heat as it happens.

That's a speed equivalent to one-sixth the velocity of light.

World’s Fastest Camera Captures Chemical Reactions in Single Shot By Megumi Fujikawa, Wall Street Journal
Science For Shaming: Feminists Should Be Concerned About Epigenetic Claims

Science For Shaming: Feminists Should Be Concerned About Epigenetic Claims

Aug 13 2014 | comment(s)



Way back in the early days of Science 2.0, we carried an interview with journalist Gary Taubes in which he said the best way to weed out bad scientists was to let them chase something fashionable for attention.
In One Widely-Trumpeted Colony Collapse, The Beekeeper Did It

In One Widely-Trumpeted Colony Collapse, The Beekeeper Did It

Aug 12 2014 | comment(s)

Police know that when a mysterious death of a married woman or man occurs, look at the spouse first. That apparently applies to beekeepers too. 

A lot has been made of colony collapse disorder and despite science studies showing it can't be the modern neonicotinoids that were invented to replace pesticides the last time they were blamed for bee deaths, activist groups have made a lot of money and gotten a lot of press promoting that bees are dying due to chemical corporations. 

10 Misconceptions About Big Data

10 Misconceptions About Big Data

Aug 07 2014 | comment(s)



Big Data And The Internet Of Things are all the rage, to such an extent they have become anything people want them to mean - they are becoming Smurfs of the technology lexicon. 
Swansea Physics Student Goes On Vacation, Becomes Adult Film Star

Swansea Physics Student Goes On Vacation, Becomes Adult Film Star

Aug 03 2014 | comment(s)


Luke-Kristopher Davis. Credit: wales Online

College students in a porn film? Nothing special about that.

Actually, it is when the college student is a man. Adult films are all about hot young women but it's not easy breaking in if you are a guy. Usually it happens because you show up with a hot young woman.

Brainbox Swansea University physics student Luke-Kristopher Davis was on holiday in Barcelona when he was approached by director Erika Lust. Lust says she and her firm XConfessions are pioneers of so-called “feminist porn.”
Green Mountain College Students Protest Commodification Of Water, Endorse Social Authoritarianism

Green Mountain College Students Protest Commodification Of Water, Endorse Social Authoritarianism

Aug 03 2014 | comment(s)



Green Mountain College students care so much about the environment and freedom of choice they have forced a ban on bottled water on the Poultney campus.

"The more we buy and sell bottled water, the more we engage in a culture of treating water as a commodity, incentivizing businesses to extract it from the ground in one community and selling it elsewhere, with little benefit to the people or ecosystem in the community from which the water was extracted," says the College's sustainability coordinator Aaron Witham.
Roger Pielke, Jr. Takes Down Nate Silver

Roger Pielke, Jr. Takes Down Nate Silver

Jul 30 2014 | comment(s)



I was not on the Nate Silver fan train the way many people are, I thought it was wishy-washy to predict a presidential race with 68 percent confidence in October of 2012 when I called it 100 percent in July. His stats averaging led him to be no more accurate than a European betting service using nothing but money and every other statistical modeler was correct also, so technically he was nothing special. In this segment, he was latched onto by people who were just looking for new ways to affirm their political bias, a common plight among science media.
21st Century Affirmative Action: Predictive Analytics

21st Century Affirmative Action: Predictive Analytics

Jul 30 2014 | comment(s)



While the University of Texas at Austin spends a lot of money in court defending racism in its college admissions policies, Big Data may help solve the real problem in colleges: not who they exclude in their secret admissions sauce but the two-thirds of freshmen students that will not graduate because admission department methods are trapped in the past.