On Chance
The James Webb Space Telescope Continues To...
Silence on BPA is Deafening - Let's Get Clarity
Encounters With Giant Sharks In The Arctic
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, there is a workshop going on this week... Read >
As I write this, our local school is closed due to concern about smoke inhalation... Read >
By Nala Rogers, Inside Science -- When do you need a broadsword, and when would... Read >
Smirnoff, a vodka brand, has tried to place itself under a health halo by claiming... Read >
Many scientists have expressed the belief that if they only had a chance to... Read >
Though anaphylaxis is rare, you are more likely to be murdered this Thanksgiving... Read >
Machine Learning For Jet Physics At Fermilab
I flew to the US yesterday to get to Fermilab, where I am following a workshop titled Machine learning for jet physics". My goal of this post is to explain what this is about in general terms, such that if I have enough stamina I will give, in follow-ups to it, a few examples of the status of this ...
Was Oumuamua A Solar Sail From An Alien Civilization That Flew Past Earth Last Year? Entertaining But Implausible Suggestion
Short summary: it's an entertaining but rather far fetched proposal in an arxiv preprint not published anywhere but mentioned in a Scientific American op ed. Implausible for many reasons including its spectrum which is not the shiny spectrum you'd expect from a solar sail but the red of tholins ...
2002 NT7 Will NOT Hit Earth Feb 1, 2019 - Known Since Aug 1, 2002 - Normal For Asteroids To Be Removed From Sentry Impact Table
I am getting many people contacting me scared of this asteroid, which was proved to miss Earth back on 1st August 2002! Right now, it is coming from below Earth's orbit, but not directly towards us. We are circling the sun at the same time. It crosses Earth's orbit ahead of us. By the time we ...
How To Interact With Dark Matter
What is Dark Matter (DM) and why should you care? I feel I should start this article by explaining these two things first, as we live in an age when nobody has time for long historical or context-setting introductions. We do not know what dark matter is, but we know it exists. When Newton's ...
Why Activists Changed Their Tunes On Dams And Reservoirs
Dams keep the boom and bust of flooding from being too severe, they prevent water shortages, they make human existence better. But they clearly change nature.Why is a human building a dam unnatural but a beaver building a dam natural? Only an environmentalist can figure that out, but what was a ...
Global Warming May Be Damaging Sperm
A new study in Nature Communications suggests that climate change could pose a threat to male fertility by increasing the number and severity of heat waves which damage sperm.The authors contend that climate change is already having an impact on species populations, including climate-related extinctions ...
Former NRC Head Gregory Jaczko Says Union Of Concerned Scientists Is Wrong On Nuclear
Gregory Jaczko, Ph.D., has a degree in theoretical physics, a hatred for nuclear power, and a love for his former boss Senator Harry Reid of Nevada - which is why Reid lobbied so heavily to get him placed as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Chair of the NRC, tasked ...
Marine Policy Journal Refuses To Retract Article They Must Know Is Bogus
If the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), independent scientists, and fisheries experts all know a claim in an article is hopelessly flawed why would the journal Marine Policy dig in their heels, doing irreparable harm to the marine conservation they claim to care about ...
Brains Of Teenage Girls Who Engage In Cutting Are Similar To Those With Borderline Personality Disorder
A pilot study in Development and Psychopathology concluded that teenage girls who engage in self-harm like cutting often have brain features like adults with borderline personality disorder. Often is relative, since this was only 40 individuals.Cutting and other forms of self-harm are warning signs ...
Organic Certification Is Not A Food Safety Standard
When Miles McEvoy became Deputy Administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) he set out to do something in the Obama administration that Science 2.0 long had called for, and Consumers Union had been calling for a decade before us; spot field testing of organic food so their customers ...
New Molecules Similar To Carbohydrates Can Inhibit Enzymes In Infectious Diseases
New molecules similar to carbohydrates have showed the capacity to inhibit the activity of a specific type of glycoside enzymes - and that means inhibiting infectious diseases.Glycosides are essential enzymes to digest carbohydrates but they are also key players in infections caused by pathogens ...
Your Poop Is Alive. Here's What's In It
If you’ve ever thought your poo is just a bunch of dead cells, think again. Most of it is alive, teeming with billions of microbes. Here’s what studies in healthy adults reveal makes up our poo.WaterOur feces is largely (75%) made up of water, although this differs from person to person. Vegetarians ...
Compounds From Coffee Offer Hope For Alzheimer's And Parkinson's Diseases.
An exciting new class of potential inhibitors of both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease has been isolated from coffee. Dr. Donald Weaver, co-director of the Kembril Brain Institute in Toronto, Canada explains: “The consumption of coffee seems to have a correlation to a decreased ...
You, 50 Years Later - New Study Says Your Personality Does Change
Is your personality set in stone at a young age? If you were a jerk in high school will you still be a jerk at 60? Not necessarily. And what changes there are may not be defining. The only time you might see a big disparity could be when comparing yourself to others.Social psychologists consider ...
NanoFlu And ResVax: Make Or Break For Novavax
In 2016, a Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine candidate named the RSV F Vaccine failed in Phase III trials, which could have been a crippling blow for Novavax, but they may be on the road to recovery. Companies have to have Phase III trials before they can get approval. Phase I proves safety ...
How AMPK, Thought To Suppress Cancer, Actually Helps It Survive
The protein complex AMPK is thought to suppress cancer, by slowing cellular metabolism, but it can also help some tumors grow.But why? A new study says it has solved the mystery. AMPK acts as a fuel gauge for the cell, overseeing energy input and output to keep the cell running smoothly. Similar ...
If You Hate Trump Thank...1960s Canadian Urban Planning Policy?
A new analysis links urban planning decisions - the freeways and local schools outside cities that made the suburbs possible - from decades past as why right-wing populism exists. They created their correlation by looking at voting trends up to 2010 in in the Toronto area and matched ...
Ancient Andeans Modified Wild Tubers Into Potatoes, Then The Potatoes Modified Them Back
Recent DNA analyses show that ancient populations in the Peruvian highlands adapted wild tubers into potatoes - and then those potatoes in turn modified them in ways distinct from other global populations.Potatoes are native to South America and became an agricultural crop in the Andean highlands ...
There Was No Blue Wave In The Mid-terms, Nor Was There A Green One, But There Was A Youth One
Many trial lawyers hoping for new revenue streams suing over increased regulations woke up disappointed Wednesday morning, as were politicos and journalists hoping for a stern rebuke of President Trump. There was no Green Wave, nor was there a Blue one.Yes, Democrats won back the House but ...
How My Research On Ancient Egyptian Poetry Led To An Amazing Great Pyramid Discovery
What began as an expedition to record the inscriptions of ancient Egyptian quarry workers produced a remarkable discovery about the Great Pyramid at Giza. My colleagues and I in the Anglo-French joint archaeological mission to the ancient quarry site of Hatnub recently revealed the existence of ...
RIP Dr. Herb London: A Fine Conservative, A Great Man
In late 2014 I came downstairs from my home office and said to my wife, "Herb London just left me a message.""Is he any relation to Stacy London?" she asked in her offhand humor way. Well, yeah, she is his daughter, if you are from California, but if you are of my generation and from anywhere near ...
To Make Better Translation Algorithms, Look To The Bible
Medicine uses Latin because it is a 'dead' language - the meanings of the words will not change over time. But if you want to modernize translations to different languages, an ancient book may help: The Bible.Tools to translate text between languages are widely available - and rather awful. While ...
Stephen Hawking: 'There Is No God' - God: 'There Is No Stephen Hawking'
In his just published final book, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," physicist Satephen Hawking wrote, "There is no God. No one directs the universe" but in a universe where only 6% of what must exist is even matter that can be detected, the science community is unwilling to be as definitive ...
6 Essential Comic Books For Halloween
Comic books of the 1950s and 1960s made a point of their potential to terrify, with anthologies from Entertaining Comics, such as Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, and Tales of the Crypt, boasting covers with straplines such as “Within these pages dwell creatures from the terrifying beyond!” ...
When I took Hwy 88-E toward Fermilab, shortly after landing at the Chicago O' Hare Airport... more »
Whether you believe transgender men are men or transgender
women are women you cannot deny the... more »
In my back yard I have three bluebird houses and a Koi pond which over the years have brought my... more »
Planet dwellers like us naturally look first to other moons and planets for colonization. Yet,... more »
Consider the statistical challenges around Dysonian SETI. The standard approach (for searches... more »
