"Oh Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ?"

Good old Shelley inspired me to start today's article with the above verse, taken from his magnificent "Ode to the West Wind". With the weather we are experiencing these days in Geneva and northern Italy, I found it a relieving thought...

So, winter conferences are over, and summer ones are still far away. This is therefore a nice moment to try an assessment on the quality of the results that the two competing CERN experiments have produced on the study of the Higgs boson. Why ? Because we are not going to have to change our conclusions in a short time scale caused by a result about to be published.

How to compare the results

Did you ever have breast milk or spinach? You might as well start shooting up heroin.

If dihydrogen monoxide doesn't scare you enough, food activists have been rehashing an old term - opiates. 

Before continuing, please bear in mind that :

“The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the US Department of the Army, the US Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy or naval services at large.”

As has been mentioned in other articles, evolution is one of the more misunderstood theories ‌in biology.  This isn't because it is complicated.  Its beauty derives from its simplicity, but often the nuances that are overlooked.  

We hear about "survival of the fittest" and many immediately think of strength.  We hear about natural selection and many immediately focus on speciation.  Yet, the first claim is simply wrong, while the second isn't the most important element of the theory.

So, if it's not about strength or how species originated, then what is important.

Social structure is an imposition, but by definition one that ‘should’ be imposed, meaning by the origin of the meaning of “should” in the co-evolution of the social with our language.

A 12-year study (1999 to 2010) analyzed fatality reductions in bicycle-car collisions to determine the effect of mandatory helmet laws. 16 states had bike helmet laws in the beginning or the study. The researchers identified all relevant fatalities, totaling 1612, in states with and without bike helmet laws.
  

Relevance was determined by adjusting for factors previously associated with rates of motor vehicle fatalities (elderly driver licensure laws, legal blood alcohol limit and household income) and, among those, they found that the adjusted fatality rate was significantly lower in states with helmet laws. On average, 900 people die annually in bicycle-motor vehicle collisions — three quarters of those are from head injuries. 

There are some really cool improvements coming along in several crops that have been developed using the tools of biotechnology - GMOs if you will.

Some of these innovations have consumer health benefits. Some expand ways to encourage greater produce consumption. Some reduce food waste. Some prevent crop losses through disease and reduce the need for copper sprays.

These traits represent an expansion of biotech beyond the major row crops primarily grown for animal feed or for fiber to crops like apples, oranges, tomatoes, pineapples and potatoes. Whether these new options actually make it to consumers depends a great deal on decisions that will be made by gorillas.

Calibration does not always mean fixing a device, it sometimes means adjusting to solve a problem.  In the early years of America, the famous Kentucky longrifles that conquered the frontier (and some British) had fixed sights. Since they couldn't be adjusted, frontiersmen - Kentucky was part of "The West" then - would adjust for wind, elevation and range by experience.  If their shot was hitting low and left, they aimed high and right. Inference helped them get a better result.

Saffron

In one of my school history books, as I remember, there is a story that saffron was introduced into Europe by a pilgrim from concealing some corms in his staff, to avoid the death penalty if found by the agents of the Sultans who controlled its export.  However, the history of saffron, including a 14-week ‘saffron war’, seems much more complicated that this.

A Green Step For Humanity


Under the headline: "Absolute emissions cap proposed for China",  Australia's Business Spectator reports that "According to local Chinese media, the government’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has proposed that China adopt an absolute cap on its greenhouse gas emissions by 2016."

RT (TV-Novosti) asks "Is China Going Green?" and notes that the initiative "must now be approved by the Cabinet before it is enacted."