In the modern world of chemistry, where we can detect parts per billion, trillion, and even quadrillion, we can detect anything we want in anything else. In the modern world of epidemiology, we can also link anything to anything we want, as Harvard School of Public Health does often with its claims that some food or trace chemical is either curing or causing cancer when grant application season rolls around.

A billion people still use wood for cooking and heating - and western countries are to blame. In the last decade, centralized energy production for developing countries was derailed unless they used solar or wind - neither of which are viable on their own.

That leave families cutting and burning wood or dried dung for fuel, both of which are far worse for the environment than coal. 

Yet there are other obstacles that even prevent people from even switching to local Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) - a belief that local firewood increases "wellbeing" for their families.

With the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 17 years, and this one worse than ever, there is a great deal of talk about a vaccine. Pfizer set off a lot of excitement with its preliminary results, which exceeded the 50 percent scientists expected. And there are 197 other vaccine candidates in the pipeline.

Yet by the time government, which will now want to be involved more than ever, gets any vaccine into the hands of people, the virus may have mutated. Like a flu vaccine, instead of having this go away, scientists may have to deduce what mutations will occur and create an annual vaccine based on that - because SARS-CoV-2 may develop resistance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has sent both political parties rushing to wrap themselves in the flag of science - even those voters who were historically more inclined to oppose vaccines and medicine and purchase organic food.

They should have been on Team Science all along, and a new analysis shows why; in a recent 16 year period, over 1.2 million people were saved thanks to 106 new treatments approved across 15 common tumors from 2000 to 2016 - including colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia, melanoma, gastric cancer, and renal cancer.

Everyone recognizes that less less food means fewer pests but when you have to grow food to keep billions from starving, yields matter. Farming has gotten more efficient, thanks to big data tools leading to targeted pesticide use and modern pesticides that are less toxic to the environment while still getting rid of pests, such as neonicotinoids. 

That's important. Even with modern science, insects cause losses of up to 18 percent and in older practices that use less-effective pesticides like the organic manufacturing process, those yield losses are even higher - along with food costs.

That gooey cheese you see in pizza advertising is actually glue. That's probably not a surprise. Consumers understand that with choices, marketing matters. With over 20 food ads seen per day, educated people recognize that though organic food contains toxic pesticides their advertising will have images of produce weeded by hand on tiny plots, while fast food looks both huge and savory and is likewise disappointing in reality.

Less clear is why people think prettier food is actually healthier.

Well-meaning advice for people freaking out about current events often includes encouragement to be patient, stay calm and keep the faith… but how on Earth are you supposed to do that amid the insanity of 2020?

As a practicing clinical psychologist and professor who studies how to manage anxiety and tolerate uncertainty, I offer 10 suggestions to make it through this highly stressful election period.

Tomorrow - that is, November 8th, at 8AM GMT - I am chairing a session titled "Artificial Intelligence for Physics Research, and Physics Research for Artificial Intelligence" at the Vth USERN Congress. The event takes place in Tehran, and is broadcast via zoom. If you are interested in the talks, of which I give some detail below, you will be able to connect through this link.
The agenda of the workshop is as follows (those shown are are Tehran times):

11.30-11.55 Tommaso Dorigo, “Artificial intelligence and fundamental physics research”

In its 47 year history, the Endangered Species Act went from an essential law to protect actual endangered species to a hammer with which to pummel companies and landowners. What started with an American bald eagle became holding housing development projects hostage by getting an obscure endangered designation for some creature and then demanding huge settlements and fees to 'protect' it.

If there is one lesson that political experts may have finally gotten in 2020, it's that polls are shockingly inaccurate.