From an early age, my life’s goal was to get at “the truth.” There were only two obvious career paths: Science, or investigative journalism. I went the first route, becoming an academic researcher. Proud of the path I chose, and always admiring the other one.
Since 2022, when I got invited for a keynote talk at a Deep Learning school, I have been visiting with increasing frequency the northern Sweden town of Lulea, and its Technology University (LTU). In 2023 I spent three months there, invited by Marcus Liwicki and Fredrik Sandin to join the Machine Learning group for some studies of neuromorphic computing applications to particle detectors. Then toward the end of 2023 they were able to secure funding to invite me as a WASP Guest Professor. I thus spent at LTU some four months in 2024, but this year I have spent there over 6 months, as the research collaboration with the computer scientists of LTU has become more intensive.
A doctor who told you to smoke cigarettes "in moderation" would likely lose their license, but alcohol has long been known as a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, deemed such before the International Agency for Research on Cancer was hijacked by activist epidemiologists as likely as not to be caught signing contracts with predatort trial lawyers, and has gotten 'in moderation' hand-waving by the medical community.
Maybe it is due to the amount of money the American Medical Association gets from the alcohol industry, maybe it is because there are 6X as many alcohol drinkers as there are smokers, but one thing certain is 'in moderation' free passes have nothing to do with science.
Bleeding hosts and stigmatizations are the best-known medieval miracles but less known ones, like a scorched cherry twig miraculously sprouting, a diseased swamp becoming fertile land, and healing the broken leg of an ox, are getting a new look.
Environmental activists have claimed for decades that PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are "forever" chemicals that have been causing disease. Once former Natural Resources Defense Council environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. joined the Republican team, their belief in homeopathic effects and endocrine disruption was adopted by some on the right.
Remember when a small bacterium from California’s Mono Lake was supposed to rewrite the very definition of life? Headlines screamed: NASA finds “alien” life on Earth!
The organism reportedly swapped out precious phosphorus - one of life’s six essential building blocks - for arsenic, the toxic villain in murder mysteries. For science communicators and, let’s be honest, journalists hungry for clicks, it was a dream come true.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has signaled it will once again examine formaldehyde under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Due to the rising costs and inability of doctors to own hospitals since the Affordable Care Act (ACA), costs have ballooned. The ACA was passed because 750,000 people had pre-existing conditions that made private insurance unavailable, yet their incomes were too high for government assistance. The ACA bridged that gap, yet as government requirements increased the cost for everyone increased so much that 50,000,000 now need subsidies.
Nowadays researchers and scholars of all ages and specialization find themselves struggling with mailboxes pestered with invitations to conferences, invitations to submit papers to journals, invitations to participate in the editorial board of journals, invitations to receive prizes for this or that reason; and of course, 99% of the origin of these invitations are individuals running fake conferences, scam, or predatory journals. Spam filters are not extremely good at distinguishing good and bad invitations, so if one wants to avoid discarding prestigious opportunities the only option is a painful manual screening.
The inexpensive medication pantoprazole prevents potentially serious stomach bleeding in critically ill patients and can save consumers and the government thousands of dollars.
The results of a new study show that when prescribed in hospital for mechanically ventilated patients in the intensive care unit, where patients are on life support and at high risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding due to ulcers, the benefits are dramatic. So are the resulting savings, at a time when governments are struggling to contain costs during times of rising public criticism.
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