How will the Universe end? And when? It's been speculation in religion and philosophy since man realized he was special. Can physics offer anything new?
Let's go to the Dark Energy hypotheses and see. 1998 really messed us up, theoretically. Until then, we knew the Universe had to slow down - well, theoretically. But then the Hubble showed us truly distant supernovae and we got the uncomfortable reality that the Universe was actually expanding more slowly in the past than it is now. That meant gravity has not been slowing Universal expansion, it has been accelerating.
No one is asking the Department of Energy
to play venture capitalist with taxpayer money again, but basic research in
dye-sensitized solar cells may bring the cost of solar down enough to allow for mainstream acceptance - primarily because dye-sensitized solar cells (also known as DSCs) are less fragile than panels that use crystalline silicon, also a benefit of thin-film panels, and don't require a clean room.
Temperatures above 100 degrees and drought-like conditions have taken a toll on corn and soybeans in the upper Midwest for weeks but it has brought a benefit to peppers and other crops: Their flavors have become unusually concentrated, producing some of the most potent-tasting produce in years.
"Peppers really like hot weather," said Irwin Goldman, a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "When it's dry and hot outside, you'll get a higher concentration of alkaloids."
In 2010, when
Dr. Paul Muizelaar of U.C. Davis began performing illegal experimental treatments on terminally ill brain cancer patients, he earned over $800,000. (1)That's pretty good money for an academic, especially while we are enduring the political theater of universities canceling core curriculum classes to try and pressure taxpayers into agreeing to tax increases if we 'care about education'.
Have you noticed a huge increase in the price of pork chops or bacon or hot dogs?
Neither have I, despite the fact that sow gestation stalls, or crates or whatever you may call them in your neighborhood, are disappearing. The stalls are basically where pregnant sows are kept. Anti-science hippies who are always looking for ammunition in their war on human food contend big business uses these crates because they are, you know, eeeevil, but that isn't true. Long before Big Pork even existed farmers kept sows apart because they fight. And during pregnancy, if you screw with a female pig, you are asking to roll in the mud. The American Veterinary Medical Association says stalls are safer and therefore better than pens(1).
The
Los Angeles Times got a little
Huffington Post-ish
in an article July 17th about Oxitec's genetically modified mosquito to control dengue outbreaks in various poor countries - and perhaps even in the Florida Keys.
Cancel Culture Prevents The Best Researchers From Engaging With The Food Industry
Vermont Should Stop Showing Leadership In Overruling Scientists On Farming
Evolutionary Psychology: Your Parents Income During Pregnancy Made You Gay
Oil Kept Congo From Starving - Western Academics Don't Seem To Like That
