The federal government now mandates and subsidizes electric cars. Like with similar solar panels, ethanol, and compact fluorescent light bulb schemes, science shows it isn't helping anything except the companies getting taxpayer money.

With government providing corporate welfare, companies can cut lower-profit lines, including of electric cars, and focus on the fattest margins. Government funding is so lucrative that Buick dealerships are...plummeting?

Yes they are, they have declined 47 percent this year. The reason is because General Motors is buying out anyone who does not want to 'play ball' and invest heavily, about $400,000 of their own money, in electric car service and support.

Next month I will be giving three lectures to high-school students on using artificial intelligence for research in fundamental physics, and as usual I am not yet worried by the schedule enough to start thinking at the presentations. Except that in one case the school professor who organizes the event asked me for some preliminary task for the students "to get them in the mood" of the contents of the lecture. 

The Joint Task Force between the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology have released two new guidelines for allergic reactions.

The new recommendations are that calling an ambulance after use of an epinephrine auto injector  is not required if the patient experiences prompt and complete, and response to treatment. Paramedics should be called  for severe anaphylaxis, symptoms that do not resolve promptly, or nearly completely, or symptoms that return or worsen.

The recommendation remains not to give epinephrine preemptively to an asymptomatic patient.

December 23rd is 'Festivus', a not-real holiday invented by the father of George Costanza on the hit television show "Seinfeld", involving an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and, most fun, an airing of grievances.(1)

It's the airing of grievances I want to address.

Physics is one of the most remarkable scientific subjects there is. It incorporates many incredible discoveries, like The Quantum Leap, the Law of Falling Bodies, Universal Gravitation, and the Laws of Motion. 

The upside to greater wealth equality than at any point in human history is that nearly everyone can afford food for the first time ever. The famines of the 1980s have been effectively eliminated by science. The downside is that cultural maturity has not kept pace with our biological mandate to eat like we may not have food next week.

That is why obesity could soon overtake alcohol and even cigarettes as the top lifestyle disease source. Up to 20 percent of people could soon have fatty liver disease and a third of those may develop non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that can progress to cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease, or even liver cancer.

A new study re-examined these “plant” fossils from the mid-20th century and found that they weren’t plants at all: they were the fossilized remains of baby turtles.

Cosmetics have been used for millennia, and in every family, there are mythical beauty treatments, and all over social media, there are skincare routines that belong in a dystopian science fiction novel, and not on your skin. Dr.

A number of Master courses in the STEM area mandate students to find a research project abroad to which they participate for 3-6 months. Many of the students find projects that arise their interest through internet searches- at least this is the way I got to know a few of them: as I regularly put details of my research progress in this blog (among other places), I am evidently a visible target. I do not complain about this: many of the students who contact me end up contributing to the projects they get embedded in. In return, they usually get to add a few lines to their CV, and maybe authorship of one or two papers.