A Million-Year-Old Mammoth May Hold The Key...
By Irena Šoljić
Six-muon Events Probe Proton Collision Dynamics
Up-to-date With The Big Bang, Mass, And Protons
Inflaming The Myths Of COVID-19 Vaccines
By W. Glen Pyle
These days I am spending a few months in northern Sweden, to start a collaboration... Read >
When news about the climate is published, like the Intergovernmental Panel... Read >
A new study reports abnormalities in functional neural networks of dogs... Read >
A new small molecule may help people with benzodiazepine-resistant epilepsy... Read >
I) An article recently published in Nature concludes that the percentage... Read >
Athletes use custom-made insoles because they know a fraction of a second... Read >
Third MODE Workshop, Princeton July 24-26 2023
I am exploiting my column today to advertise a workshop that the collaboration I lead, MODE, is organizing at Princeton University this coming July. The workshop, the third of its series, aims to bring together physicists and computer scientists to join forces in the solution of complex optimization ...
Even Without Plate Tectonics, Venus Is Volcanically Active
Venus is similar to Earth in size and mass but does not have plate tectonics, which are the primary locations of volcanic activity. A lingering question has always been if there is volcanic activity anyway.A new paper says it has eruptions and lava flows; the evidence is a nearly one-square-mile ...
A Very Large Hadron Collider?
Frontpage image: Illustration of spherical explosion (kilonova) of two neutron stars (AT2017gfo/GW170817) made by Albert Sneppen.STRONTIUM is one of those elements that get less coverage in chemistry courses all the way up to undergraduate level. These days one is most likely to hear ...
More Ideas For Muon Tomography
Muon tomography is an application of particle detectors where we exploit the peculiar properties of muons to create three-dimensional images of the interior of unknown, inaccessible volumes. You might also want to be reminded that muons are unstable elementary particles; they are higher-mass versions ...
The Racism Of Virtual Pollution
When smog was prevalent, it was easy to see. Particulate matter 10 microns in size hover in the air, the famous London Fog was not natural moisture, it was PM10 pollution. In one event, nature combined with smog in London to kill 12,000 people.After that, wealthier nations engaged in pollution ...
Did The President Save Or Doom Alaska This Week?
President Biden issued another slap to those oil-guzzling Republicans intent on ruining Gaia, or he enraged environmentalists by letting oil-guzzling Republicans ruin bucolic Alaska, all in one day.Even in the same minute.Which was it? Neither, and that is a problem with corporate media. To get ...
Earth’s Water Did Not Come From Melted Meteorites
Water is over 70 percent of the surface of the earth but how that came to be, through what mix of random chance and extraterrestrial involvement, has been a debate. Earth is a relatively small planet and relatively near its star so creating large surface oceans is difficult.A new study analyzed ...
Solar Power May Get Environmentalists To Accept GMOs
Farms have a lot of open land and that has made them ideal for solar power installations. For example, though it is in defiance of the bucolic imagery sold by food and solar marketing groups, which show lush farms with an old tractor on one side and panels on homes charging an $80,000 Tesla on ...
SARS-CoV-2 Infection May Mean Need For A CD8+ T Cell Response Booster
A recent study found that vaccination with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine resulted in immune cell response considerably lower in people with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection than those without. The level of this key immune cell that targets the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, CD8+ T, was ...
Planes, Trains And Automobiles - How A 2014 Pest From Asia Spreads
In 2014, a new invasive species from Asia was detected in Pennsylvania, but by the time government knows about it, it is too late and spotted lanternflies have since spread to more than 100 counties across 14 states. Forests and cropland have paid the price, and a new study used agent-based ...
Neuroimaging: From Dead Fish To Diagnostics?
For decades, functional magnetic resonance imaging, looking at changes in the brain's blood oxygen, has over-promised and under-delivered, which made it a punching bag in the science community. People in the field tried to claim changes in pretty pictures meant more neurons working and suggested ...
Polio Still Exists And COVID-19 Showed Why WHO May Make It Impossible To Kill
Smallpox is no longer with us, but what gets left out of United Nations history is that smallpox was eradicated in spite of the World Health Organisation saying it could never happen, not due to UN leadership. It was driven by US advocates who went around UN bureaucracy, all while being told it ...
Ivermectin Same As Placebo In Clinical Trial
If you buy TheraFlu or some other product and swear it helps, you may be right. The placebo effect is real and while OTC "remedies" and supplements can be sold with no proof needed, to be called actual medicine it can't simply work as poorly as a sugar pill.Yet about 30 percent of the time, people ...
Reese's Is Making A Vegan Peanut Butter Cup - Here Are 3 More Ways To Make Candy Sound Healthy
Hershey is rolling out Reese’s Plant Based Peanut Butter Cups this month, and it is a great idea. Plant-based foods are all the rage - unless the entire market is about to collapse - and people who like vegan stuff are willing to overpay for food they can then annoy everyone at parties by going ...
Digital Content May Be Shaping Visual Perception Itself
To adult audiences in 1977, "Star Wars" was the most realistic special effects they had ever witnessed while to younger people of today, the defects are obvious. Some of that is due to better technology, a cheap TV has better clarity and resolution that an IMAX screen a generation ago, but some ...
Gadolinium Rare Earth Metal Used In MRI Contrast Agents Can Be Detected, But Is That A Problem?
If you have ever had a CT scan using a contrast material like iodine, you were probably told to drink plenty of fluids to flush it out of your system. It is one-size-fits-all advice more to protect people who may have received a lot of them, because the dose makes the poison, or those who have ...
Activists And Academics Really Want To Know If You Bought A Gun
The anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety says someone is fatally shot or injured in a road rage incident every 16 hours. Is that number real? Yes and no. The Gun Violence Archive they drew their claim from lumps criminals doing drive-by shootings and criminals being shot by police committing ...
Sheep Are Expensive Lawn Mowers - But Maybe Cheap Mental Health
If you have ever seen pictures of people doing yoga with goats or sunning their butt-holes(1), you may have assumed it is California, but that is unfair. It is just as likely to be any state on the west coast.In my town, people who claim they love poor people hate lawnmowers run by...poor people ...
Despite COVID-19, The US CDC Remains Unprepared For Zoonotic Diseases
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a great deal of weakness in the federal government's ability to control, much less prevent, any diseases at all. The concern had grown during the last decade, when it began to take 6 weeks for CDC to inform the public that lettuce was tainted with E. coli but found ...
For Valentine's Day, Academics Want More Women With God Complexes In Films
Films have been common for over a century and a new paper laments that for much of that time men have been the unhinged scientists with a 'God complex', because by not having more 'mad' women in the 1930s, modern Artificial Intelligence routines are perpetuating gender stereotypes.When you think ...
Government Lockdowns During COVID-19 Led To Less Activity
Some companies profited during the government lockdowns and then lingering social stigma about being outside the home. Exercise bikes, office furniture, and coffee machines all did well.It will be decades before we know how many have been impacted in ways that were unanticipated. Being at home ...
Obamacare Linked To Over-Prescribing Antibiotics
An analysis of over 4,300,000 patients in 8,119 161 primary care visits found that publicly insured people, those using the Affordable Care Act public exchanges subsidized by government, were more likely to be given inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in cases of upper respiratory tract infections ...
NIMBY: Superficial Allies Of Sexual Minorities, Unless They're Neighbors
NIMBY - not in my back yard - is an acronym for those allies who express support for a cause, as long as it is 'somewhere else.' Wind power, for example, is well-liked by people on the coasts of the US and Norway, until government decides to actually put wind power installations there. Then it's ...
COVID-19 Quarantine Adherence: 25% Lied About Complying, 70% Were Women
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of confusion about what would help mitigate risk and what would not, and when rules seemed arbitrary (e.g. you can go to a tattoo parlor but not get a haircut) it may have caused resentment - and therefore quiet dissent.A recent survey found that up ...
The Restrict Act would ban anyone from accessing a online service ran by a US adverssary, which... more »
I have recently watched two videos on climate change by Sabine Hossenfelder. The first one... more »
I am currently spending some time in South America, where I came to join my wife who was performing... more »
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