On Chance
Encounters With Giant Sharks In The Arctic
Guardian Science Blog Deserved Death
By Alex Berezow
Silence on BPA is Deafening - Let's Get Clarity
Casual reader, be warned - the contents of this article, specifically the second... Read >
Plants can do it: they simply grab carbon dioxide out of the air and covert... Read >
I'm here today to talk about a very strange paper: Penetration of the... Read >
Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have announced... Read >
The number of articles retracted related to nutrition now numbers unlucky 13... Read >
We take "self-assembly" for granted when it is carried out by the biopolymers... Read >
'How Close To Sending Humans To Mars?' Should Ask '... To Moon?' Right Now No-one Can Repeat Apollo, Including The US
People often ask, "How close are we to sending humans to Mars" and it's not surprising given the optimistic presentations by Elon Musk and others. However, Mars is just too far away to send humans at this stage. As the Canadian astronaut and former ISS commander Chris Hadfield has ...
BPA Causes Diabetes? Fred Vom Saal Is Proof Aging Researchers Sometimes Lose Their Minds
Dr. Jane Goodall is in a panic about GMOs and all of modern agriculture. What isn't plagiarized in her screeds about food is a mishmash of conjecture, anti-science mysticism, and lack of a clue about biology. She is not alone in losing her mind a bit with age. Dr. Linus Pauling became obsessed ...
The ATLAS Quest For Photon Jets
What is a photon jet? Despite their exotic name, photon jets are a well studied thing nowadays. The original studies were performed by experimentalists who aimed to test quantum chromodynamics: they used to spend their time discriminating prompt photon production in hadron collisions from backgrounds ...
Solar Energy Gets A Golden Sandwich
A new photoelectrode can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods, another step on the road to turning solar power from an expensive subsidized sideshow into ...
After The Trans Mountain Court Ruling, Is The Canadian Energy Sector Doomed?
The Federal Court of Appeal decision that halted construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has thrown Canada into a tizzy.While British Columbia First Nations and environmentalists are celebrating a rare court victory on this project, industry representatives, trade unions and many ...
Centralized Energy Will Be Better For Emissions And Health In Poor Countries - Even If It's Coal
In countries that have embraced centralized energy and migrated away from individual cooking with dung or wood, both public health and the emissions have improved. So why not pay for all developed countries to switch? The World Bank wanted to do that half a decade ago but it became political; countries ...
The Cooling Effect Of Historic Wildfires
Historically, large atmospheric events like fires and volcanic eruptions have had cooling effects. It is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", for example, part of which was inspired by the gloom from a volcanic eruption that led to 'a year without a summer' in Europe of 1816 ...
Not As Scary As It Seems: Planet At Risk Of Heading Towards “Hothouse Earth” State
This is scaring some people - because they describe dramatic things that could happen like floods tens of meters deep, and the world too hot for humans. Most of this is for far into the future. The sea rising 10s of meters would be thousands of years into the future - many of the news stories ...
3 Million Year Old Footprints Suggest Human-Like Walking Evolved Long Before Humans Did
The transition from ape-like shuffling to upright walking (bipedalism) as we do has long fascinated scientists. Why did it happen? When? The second question is a little closer to being solved. An analysis of 3.6 million year old hominin footprints in Tanzania suggests our ancestors evolved ...
Bahama Nuthatch Is Not Extinct
The Bahama Nuthatch, native to a small area of native pine forest on the island of Grand Bahama, was feared extinct after Hurricane Matthew in 2016, but researchers are pleased to announce that the little-known bird is still out there.But there may be only two left, they worry. The Bahama Nuthatch ...
Denisova 11 - Girl Had A Neanderthal Mother And Denisovan Father
In the 1800s, critics of evolution insisted there had to be fossil evidence for everything, which neglected the idea that fossilization is already difficult, finding the fossil is even more difficult, and something like an eye will not fossilize at all.But detractors who insisted they would not ...
Modern Human-Like Gripping Capabilities Existed In Ancestors 500,000 Years Ago
A technique used to produce stone tools that were first found 500,000 years ago is likely to have needed a modern human-like hand, according to new research.The technique is called 'platform preparation' - preparing a striking area on a tool to remove specific stone flakes and shape the tool into ...
Whole Grains Can Help Prevent Type 2 Diabetes - As Long As They're Coupled With Fewer Calories
A new paper declares that whole grains can help prevent type 2 diabetes but a quick glance at the methodology will show you why you need to be skeptical. It doesn't matter if it’s rye, oats, wheat, wheatberries, bulgur, or couscous, any whole grain will do. Which is like declaring ...
Low Carbohydrate Diets Are Unsafe
People who go on low carbohydrate diets often report that they lose weight. And they do, because it is a crash diet. But as a long-term solution that and other fad diets are unsafe, as shown in a large study presented today at the European Society of Cardiology today.The study prospectively ...
The War On Sugar: Science Or Hype?
Some researchers, clinicians, professional organizations, and health charities have been waging a war on sugar, calling for dietary recommendations to be changed and even for a sin tax on sugar, all claiming it will reduce obesity and cardiovascular diseases. In 2014, the World Health Organisation ...
Pfizer Drug Tafamidis Reduces Risk Of Rare Heart Disease 30 Percent
Tafamidis meglumine (trade name: Vyndaqel®) was approved in November 2011 for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis in adults, a rare disorder ("orphan disease") caused by a defective gene and is associated with progressive nerve damage. Now it has been shown to improve survival and reduce ...
How To Choose Your Restaurant Or Hotel
So you're planning ahead for your next trip to a remote location, and you try to make sense of those TripAdvisor listings. Great tool - there's a bunch of there around, but let's focus on that one here. It allows you to type in your preferences, location, restrictions, and it dumps a list of facilities ...
Where Did The Jewish People Come From? Ancient DNA Of Ashkenazic Jews Sheds Some Light
Where do the Jewish people come from? This is a question that anthropologists, historians and theologists have studied for millennia.According to mythology, the Judaeans descended from three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (Cave of Machpelah) ...
Teen Dating Violence: Girls Are More Likely To Attack Than Boys
Though sexual assault and dating violence in the academic and cultural world focuses most heavily on men, among teens there are more Asia Argento's than Twitter recognizes.In recent findings, 5.8 percent of boys and 4.2 percent of girls said they had experienced dating violence in the past year ...
Three New Ancient Primates Identified From 46 Million Years Ago - In San Diego
Three new species of fossil primates have been named, residents of San Diego County from a time when southern California was filled with lush tropical forests.The three previously unknown omomyoid primates lived 42 million to 46 million years ago. The researchers named these new species Ekwiiyemakius ...
Easy To Improve On Wikipedia In Topic Focused Encyclopedias (Ours: Astrobiology, Microtonal Music, Doomsday Debunked & Buddhism)
This originated as my answer to a question on the Quora question and answer site: "In what general knowledge domains do alternatives to Wikipedia exist that are significantly superior?". Of course there are examples of much better specialist encyclopedias for various knowledge domains ...
AI GAN Will Boost Credibility Of Fake Videos
Researchers at Carnege-Mellon University have found a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) schemes to transfer content from one video to the style of another. So they can make a daffodil bloom like the way a hibiscus bloom does or make clouds that are crossing the sky rapidly on a ...
Instagram's Positivity Problem - Even When Comments Are Good They're Bad
There is a vicious cycle of vanity on social media, according to new results. College-age women who viewed positive feedback on Instagram selfies then experienced greater body dissatisfaction - because they put more focus on appearance and in the end fueled body dissatisfaction among viewers.128 ...
Censorship Throughout History
Once upon a time we all knew what censorship was, who the good and bad guys were, and what could be done to make the world a better place. Look up the noun “censor” in the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find an outline of a much-told story under definition 2 (b):“An official in some ...
Dear Mr Musk, you should hire me to fly Yusaku Maezawa to
the moon and back. Especially if you... 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 »
The ICHEP conference opened today in Seoul. This is the most well-attended conference in particle... more »
Emperor Meiji (明治天皇, the 122nd Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order... more »
