The Virus That Turns Physicists Into Crackpots
Getting To The Heart Of The Coronavirus Pandemic
By W. Glen Pyle
Nitrogen For Crops From Gene-Edited Microbes...
Formaldehyde: The Carcinogen That Wasn’t
A high-tech jamming session, through which a blend of live human and computer... Read >
A new operating mode for fusion power avoids instabilities in the plasma that... Read >
Many illusions are like spherically curved space. Below on the left (fig. 1... Read >
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a prevailing issue in the... Read >
There's a mythology about the native Americans, that they were all peaceful... Read >
There are more women getting degrees in the life science, social science, and... Read >
Blatant Opportunism: EDC Believers Exploiting Covid-19 Pandemic Further Erodes Trust In Science And Health Efforts
As a semi-retired epidemiologist, in a higher risk age group
and with attendant co-morbidities, I have followed the Covid-19 pandemic with scientific
curiosity mixed with a tinge of personal anxiety. Much of the data being reported is of abysmal
quality, and it’s a major professional ...
Goldilocks Planet: Being Just Right Is Why Earth Provided The Ingredients For Life
When it comes to evolutionary biology and life on other planets, there is talk of amino acids, the building blocks of our existence.But for any of that to work we first needed magnetic fields and plate tectonics, and a new paper finds that Earth became a "Goldilocks planet" by getting to the right ...
Mass Gap Discovery: A Missing Link Between Neutron Stars And Black Holes Found
When the most massive stars die, they collapse under their own gravity and leave behind black holes while when stars that are less massive reach their end, they explode in a supernova and leave behind dense, dead remnants of stars.Those are called neutron stars and heaviest known neutron star is ...
Sunsets On Other Worlds
How a sunset would appear on other planets is a staple of science-fiction. The sun is as fundamental to grounding our existence as the earth, for most of us. Yet lots of people go months without seeing a sunrise or sunset.That's extreme, but even more extreme is how it would look on Titan. ...
Global Warming Reversed 6,500 Years Of Cooling
In geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years has been ice ages, and it has been 12,000 years since the last one. In a 'glass half full' optimistic take on emissions, the Industrial Age put a halt to a 6,500 year cooling trend and the ice age for which we are overdue, but just like salt ...
Coronavirus Has Shown Alternative Energy Is Luxury Spending, Not Part Of A Realistic Strategy
If you know the government is going to subsidize your business, you are a lot more agreeable to starting a company with questionable prospects than if you have to compete in the free market. If government subsidies decline, you are in real trouble if you have not shown your business model works ...
Buying Carbon Offsets For Climate Emissions Is Not Realistic Without Understanding Their Risk
When called on to explain why he lives in a gigantic mansion with its resulting environmental cost, Academy Award winner, Nobel laureate, and U.S. Vice-President Al Gore said he bought carbon offsets from a company he owned that sold carbon offsets.Paying himself to emit greenhouse gases sounded ...
The Kerguelen Plateau And Formation Of Continents
How did the continents form? It's a complex question, and no firm answers will be coming soon, but the oceanic plateau of the Kerguelen Islands may provide part of the answer, according to a new paper. From a geological point of view, it is the Earth's outermost layer that distinguishes the continents ...
Amodal: We Begin Linking Vocal And Facial Emotion At Age 8
Emotions are an integral part of our lives. They influence our behavior, perceptions, and day-to-day decisions. The spontaneous amodal coding of emotions - independent of perceptual modalities like the physical characteristics of faces or voices - is easy for adults, but how does the same capacity ...
Measles Has Been With Us For At Least 8,000 Years - And Cities May Be Why
Environmental groups believe that living in cities is better for the environment but if there is one thing that COVID-19 has made clear, it's that living in cities is better for spreading infectious disease also. Despite having numerous large cities, the U.S. was on the verge of having measles ...
Mosquito Diseases Kill Tens Of Millions Per Year Worldwide But American Parents Worry More About Ticks
A few species of mosquitoes are nothing but carriers of disease, so pesticides were used to wipe them out in much of North America. Worldwide they remain a public health problem and while some ecologists claim a mythical (and scientifically debunked) 'balance of nature' and therefore insist Aedes ...
QIH: Mice Don't Hibernate, But Now They Can - And What That May Mean For Human Space Travel
Humans do not hibernate, but in science-fiction films long-distance travel often involves "suspended animation" where muscular atrophy, starvation, and oxygen deprivation don't occur. Mice don't hibernate either but they just did in experiments. Mice are obviously not little people, that ...
American Cancer Society Nutrition Statements Are More Aspirational Wellness Than Evidence-Based Guidelines
Can you prevent cancer? Not really. The number one risk factor for cancer is old age, if you live long enough you are likely to get some form or another. Despite the beliefs of the Longevity crowd, we are biologically self-terminating.Can you lessen your risk of getting some types of cancer? Absolutely ...
New Study: Beef In A Healthy Diet Does Not Increase Risk Of Heart Attacks
For decades there has been a statistical controversy about meat. By statistical I mean it was never a real health issue. Instead, though we clearly evolved to eat it, epidemiologists statistically correlated meat to dying and said therefore we shouldn't eat it. Though such studies noted down at ...
Cholesterol Is Rising In Asian Countries, Dropping In The West
A few decades ago, Asian diets were regarded as superior because lower incomes meant they ate less meat - and those who were tested had less cholesterol, a substance found in the blood that the body uses to build healthy cells, but which can lead to a build-up in blood vessels. Cholesterol has ...
One Hydroxychloroquine A Day Does Not Keep The Doctor Away
As the search for an effective COVID19 treatment goes on, one therapy keeps re-appearing in the headlines: hydroxychloroquine. Early, observational studies on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat patients with COVID19 failed to show any real benefits of the drug. The ability of hydroxychloroquine ...
Free-Range Kids: Why Lack Of Adult Supervision Matters
The recently released 2020 ParticipACTION Report Card revealed that Canadian children scored a D+ for “daily physical activity,” an F for “active play” and a D- for “active transportation.” Only 39 per cent of Canadian children and youth achieve recommended physical activity levels ...
'Stars With Flames Like Hair' - Comets As Portents Of Doom In The Middle Ages
On August 30 2019, a comet from outside our solar system was observed by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov at the MARGO observatory in Crimea. This was only the second time an interstellar comet had ever been recorded. Comet 19 or C/2019 Q4 , as it is now known, made its closest approach to the ...
The Science Reason Businesses Should Provide Free Trials
Netflix is the big name in streaming, virtually everyone who has any interest in digital shows has heard of them, but they still give you a free trial.No matter your size, and even if it's an existing customer, it makes good business sense, finds a new paper.Give an existing company something free ...
At 13,500 Years Old, This Songbird Is The Oldest Known Figurine
(Inside Science) - An ancient bird statuette recovered from a refuse heap is the oldest known figurine discovered yet in China, shedding new light on how our ancestors created 3D art, a new study finds.Scientists unearthed the miniature carving at the site of Lingjing in China, where previous excavations ...
Will The Media Retract Their 'Breathless' Warnings Of Insect Armageddon?
Are insects facing survival challenges? Of course, the evidence in support of reasonable concerns is overwhelming. The important questions are: how serious is the decline; is it accelerating; what are its causes; and how can we address them?Those are not the questions the media have been asking ...
To Have Great Science Literacy, We Must Have Greater Digital Literacy - An Experiment Shows How
The anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements are products of the digital age. While there were always vaccine deniers, they were a tiny religious fringe until the 2000s, when it took England and the coasts of the U.S. by storm. Similarly, odd beliefs about food always existed but they were relegated ...
Would More Women In Academic Medicine Leadership Roles Have Improved Coronavirus Response?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were shown to be a bureaucratic mess when the coronavirus pandemic hit - refusing to send coronavirus tests unless hospitals first proved proved patients had coronavirus, then sending faulty reagents - and academic epidemiologists often ...
Coronavirus Has Seen A Surge In Phone Scams: Here's How To Spot And Foil Them
Most of us have experienced unwanted calls at home. This is in spite of efforts by regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom, whose most recent report shows that around half of the UK population still receive nuisance calls. Many of these unsolicited calls annoy us ...
Flat earthers are a thing in 2020. Here is a simple do at home proof it is round given a... 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 »
Jupiter has captured an icy comet from the outer solar system in a bizarre orbit that will bring... more »
Travelling by YouTube during the Lockdown
During the lockdown, and not even able to take a... more »
