A spectacular find of some 1,800 fossilized mesa chelonia turtles from the Jurassic era has been uncovered in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang.

Today one of the world’s driest regions, 160 million years ago Xinjiang was a green place of lakes and rivers, bursting with life. Since 2007, researchers have found fossil sharks, crocodiles, mammals and several dinosaur skeletons. 

Kroger, America's largest supermarket chain, announced it will stop selling sprouts because of their "potential food safety risk". It joins retail behemoth Walmart, which stopped selling them way back in 2010.

"After a thorough, science-based review, we have decided to voluntarily discontinue selling fresh sprouts," Payton Pruett, Kroger's vice president of food safety, said in a statement that USA Today got.

Where will you find gypsum rocks forged by fire and water millions of years ago?

While New Yorkers (and others on the east US coast) prepare to deal with hurricane Sandy and the possible water surge resulting from the very strong winds and low pressure of the system, a similar situation is expected in Venice on Wednesday; unlike New Yorkers, Venetians are rather accustomed to the phenomenon - familiarly called "acqua alta" (high water) by residents. However, when the level of water is exceptionally high, normal protection systems to shops, offices, and ground floors of homes prove insufficient.

That is probably going to be the case in the evening of October 31st, when the tide is expected to reach to the level of +1.40 meters above average sea level, due to a combination of factors -low pressure, full moon, winds.

So far in this series we have examined Robert Batterman’s idea that the concept of emergence can be made more precise by the fact that emergent phenomena such as phase transitions can be described by models that include mathematical singularities, as well as Elena Castellani’s analysis of the relationship between effective field theories in physics and emergence. This time we are going to take a look at Paul Humphreys’ “Emergence, not supervenience,” published in Philosophy of Science back in 1997 (64:S337-S345).

As I reported in a post a few days ago, the Italian sentencing of seven scientists to 6-years imprisonment for their misassessment of the risks of the population of L'Aquila, soon thereafter struck by a powerful earthquake which killed 309 and injured 2000, raised interest and disconcertment worldwide and spurred a debate which is not likely to end soon.

Who is guilty ?

Since spot weather events are once again proof of global warming, reversing the trend of 2007 to 2011 when we were told that local weather was not evidence against global warming, it's time to think about the upcoming Ice Age - because we are having a big storm in the northeast, weeks later than when we had a giant snowstorm in 1980 Pennsylvania that knocked out our power for a week, so NYC media writers desperate for pageviews say it must be due to climate change.  

Nuclear reprogramming is changing one kind of cell to that of another unrelated cell type. Techniques have included direct reprogramming, somatic cell nuclear transfer, cell fusion and induction of pluripotency by ectopic gene expression.

Hurricane Sandy, 2012:

Massive and dangerous Hurricane Sandy has grown to record size as it barrels northeastwards along the North Carolina coast... -Jeff Masters, Weather Underground, Oct. 28 2012.

Science paper, 2010:

Fewer but fiercer and more-destructive hurricanes will sweep the Atlantic Basin in the 21st century as climate change continues, a new modeling study by U.S. government researchers suggests. -commentary by Richard Kerr on Bender, M.A. et al., 2010. Science, 327(5964), pp.454–458.

Hurricane Sandy, 2012

They are not buying into global warming except they care about the environment more than anyone ever did before. They will eat healthier than previous generations, provided the products are in pouches and not cans and can be purchased in vending machines and be...microwaveable. Except it needs to be slow food and locally grown.

What's up with Millennials? More importantly, what is up with marketing people and all their conflicting beliefs about Millennials?