What It Means To Be Anti-Science
Formaldehyde: The Carcinogen That Wasn’t
Drugs For Different Bodies: The Female Side...
Getting To The Heart Of The Coronavirus Pandemic
By W. Glen Pyle
Every time I lecture my students about the static quark model I find that the... Read >
A recent paper finds that if just 15 percent of farmland reverted to nature... Read >
A computer that can learn? There hasn't been meaningful improvement in... Read >
Let’s give a big shoutout to Gawker . They really stuck it to the... Read >
In early 2020 the U.S. government reacted to worrisome death figures for COVID... Read >
I've never been much for the word "tribe." It sounds too insular in 2018, the... Read >
New Crystal Form Of Deltamethrin Insecticide Is Up To 12 Times More Effective
Mosquitoes spread malaria but because wealthy nations wiped it out before declaring insecticides bad, it's easy to forget that insecticides are the only effective way to control the mosquitoes that spread a disease which still kills 400,000 each year in developing nations.For poorer countries, ...
Five Tips For Particle Physics PhD Students, Reloaded
For some reason today I remembered that 11 years ago (wow time flies) I wrote a two-parts piece on advices for PhD students doing a thesis in experimental particle physics. As I checked it out, I found that I mostly share the views I had back then (TBH that's not necessarily a good thing - consistency ...
Why Disk Galaxies Look Smooth
Like with kids, when it comes to galaxies adolescent blemishes disappear over time.Exponential disks, common in spiral galaxies, dwarf elliptical galaxies and some irregular galaxies, appear smooth and have an exponential fade. How did they get it way?It's not possible to know but using inference ...
Marco Fulvio Barozzi: My Five Cents On Venusian Phosphine
Marco Fulvio Barozzi (b. 1955), a former Maths teacher and scientific blogger (https://keespopinga.blogspot.com), as well as a humorous poet, is a regular contributor to scientific and mathematics magazines. I read a very interesting piece he wrote on Phosphine, the substance recently discovered ...
Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction Triggered Switch To Warm-Bloodedness
ome 250 million years ago, in the time when life was recovering from The greatest mass extinction of all time, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, killed 95 percent of life, and the very few survivors faced a turbulent world, repeatedly hit by ice ages, rapid warming and ...
East Kootenay Geology
The East Kootenay region on the south-eastern edge of British Columbia is a land of colossal mountains against a clear blue sky. That is not strictly true, of course, as this area does see its fair share of rain and temperature extremes — but visiting in the summer every view is a postcard of ...
Did Climate Change Kill Off 5 Species Of Humans?
Once upon a time, there were six different species of early humans. That's not science fiction, and they all belonged to the genus Homo, but only we Homo sapiens have survived. What killed
H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis? Nature exists to ...
Eating Less Meat Won't Help Protect The Environment, Eating Less Will
A new paper seeks to take some of the guesswork out of subjective "sustainable" diets. Activists like True Health Initiative try to claim that a meatless diet is better for human health and the environment, for example, but their corporate sponsorships lead to skepticism. Claims about the ...
Dog Personality Traits Age Differently Just Like People
Every dog owner knows that personality changes over time, but these changes occur unevenly during the dogs' life, and each trait follows a distinct age trajectory, according to a new study. Human personality is characterized by a peculiar dualism: it is both stable and malleable, depending ...
We Don't Need Social Authoritarian Laws To Prevent Coronavirus Spread, We Need Empathy
A new study finds that people are more motivated to use face masks and keep our distance not because experts or government bureaucrats say we should, but because we have empathy for vulnerable people.In two surveys in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, participants were asked ...
Domesticated Wolves Suffer Separation Anxiety From Humans Similar To Dogs
It's no secret how dogs came to evolve. A wolf trusted a human, a human fed a wolf, and this happened enough times that hostile animals were killed off and friendlier ones were not and those traits were passed down.A new study finds it does not take generations. Tame socialized grey wolves ...
Masks Significantly Reduce Spread Of COVID-19 - Are Laws Needed?
A study using Ontario's 34 Public Health Units over the course of two months found that wearing a mask can have a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19. No argument there, anyone would be worried if their surgeon showed up in the operating room without a mask on, but the economists go a ...
Like Most Supplement Purchasers, Believers Think Cannabidiol Is Medicine Despite No Evidence
Cannabidiol, a chemical found in marijuana plants, is enjoying a wave of financial success due to strange prescriptions for "medical" marijuana, which ended up overwhelmingly being obtained for recreation.Yet belief in medicinal properties remain despite no evidence it does anything. The US ...
More Young Adults Are Abstaining From One Known Carcinogen - Alcohol
There are calls to ban vaping because it has pleasant flavors and an addictive component and that combination may lead to disease but while there are zero deaths attributable to nicotine so far, there is an actual socially acceptable carcinogen that also uses flavors to increase use - alcohol.Yet ...
High Dose Of Favipiravir Counters SARS-CoV-2 In Hamsters
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, the 2019 form of coronavirus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a rush of studies searching for a vaccine to prevent infection and testing existing drugs to see which one can reduce the amount of virus in infected people. Drug development usually starts ...
The Nobel Prize For CRISPR-Cas9: Here's Who Got Left Out
This year’s Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for a genuine revolution in modern science. The Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing tool allows scientists to precisely alter DNA by cutting and pasting sections of it. It has led to many discoveries in medicine, particularly in the development of new cancer ...
In Canada, 70 Percent Of Firearms Deaths Are Suicide
In a Canada analysis, suicide was the most common cause of death from firearms at 68 percent, and older men in rural areas were impacted most.To better understand injuries and deaths from firearms, researchers looked at data on all residents of Ontario with a valid OHIP number who were injured ...
I Was Homeschooled Until College: Here’s What To Expect
I was homeschooled for eight years, from age 11 through to college, before it was a novel way for tiger parents to show off their dynamic commitment to their children’s education. Now, if millions of parents and families are suddenly going to be homeschooling their kids for the coming weeks (and ...
The Funerary Incantations Of Neolithic Iberians Revealed
In the Cueva de la Dehesilla of Cádiz on the Iberian Peninsula, two human skulls and a juvenile goat were discovered in a funerary structure dating to the Middle Neolithic period, 4800-4000 B.C.The archaeological structures and materials from a funerary ritual tell a tale of human and ...
Psychopaths And Sadists: Why Do Humans Harm The Harmless?
Why are some humans cruel to people who don’t even pose a threat to them – sometimes even their own children? Where does this behaviour come from and what purpose does it serve? Ruth, 45, London.Humans are the glory and the scum of the universe, concluded the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal ...
Weekend Science: How Successful Golfers Stay Focused
Sporting history is littered with tales of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. Famously, the US golfer Doug Sanders was a three-foot putt away from winning the 1970 Open Championship in St Andrews. He missed. Not only did it lose him the championship, it cost him several sponsorship and endorsement ...
Though Center For Food Safety And Other Lawsuit Groups Want Otherwise, Americans Trust Science
At a time when sue-and-settle activist groups like Center for Food Safety continue to claim scientists - across the private sector, non-profits, and government agencies - are colluding to poison us by allowing safe pesticide use, their messaging is being ignored by more consumers than in decades ...
How COVID-19 Has Changed Language
In April, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary did something unusual. For the previous 20 years, they had issued quarterly updates to announce new words and meanings selected for inclusion. These updates have typically been made available in March, June, September and December.In the late ...
18 Percent Of Americans Don't Have Enough To Eat, Which Makes Them...Obese?
More than 18 percent of U.S. adults claim they do not have access to adequate food from day to day, according to a new paper, which more than doubled between 1999 and 2016. The result: Higher obesity.People got fat from not enough food?There are obvious confounders, namely recall bias - and it's ...
If graduation numbers are so important that they will give degrees to dead people,then don’t... more »
The Fossil Birds of the Jehol Biota have caused an international stir amongst palaeontologists... more »
Here are a few of the things I have been watching , while living a somewhat less active life due... more »
It is not a secret that I love chess, and that whenever I have the chance to play some online blitz... more »
Hello! Years and years have gone by without a blog. For reasons I do not understand, I appear to... more »
