When a giant chunk of the work force is told to stay home, and even paid to do it, the results can be felt for years. The US is facing supply chain issues due to conflicting stances like politicians demanding prices be kept low while workers must be paid more. Few areas have felt the pinch like agriculture. Food is simultaneously a strategic resource, a commodity, a values issue, and a commodity.

Labor costs have gone up across the spectrum, including fertilizer and crop protection tools, while politicians in states like California say if farmers, processors, and stores raise prices they are price gouging and will face lawsuits.

Random violence is obviously a psychological problem. Every mass shooting has a link to psychiatric medication but medicine doesn't cause shootings any more than guns do. Yet we know that together there may be warning signs because number one in firearm deaths is not mass gun shootings, those are so rare they are big news, it is suicide. (1)

Discouraging gun purchases among people with major depressive symptoms may be an opportunity to diminish suicide risk while help is obtained. A new cross-sectional survey found that people with moderate depressive symptoms were more likely to have recently purchased a first firearm.

No one will miss the COVID-19 pandemic. Except maybe greenhouses.

New surveys show about one out of every three people began gardening in 2020 because they were home more due to SARS-CoV-2 restrictions and worries. Many also put in new grass lawns and did outdoor renovations, such as installing new plant beds and other landscaping.

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope peered into the universe and captured one of the most stunning images you will ever see.

Putin’s Information War: Winning or Losing?

Remarks for World Talent Economy Forum, March 21,2022

Fred Phillips

 

With war in Ukraine, Europeans are worried a key source of their food, Russia and Ukraine, is at risk.

They are right to be concerned. Food is a strategic resource but European countries chose to embrace higher cost lower yield alternatives to modern agriculture at home because they got cheap food from the east.

If an additional 290,000,000,000 loaves of bread were available, that would ease the strain worldwide. That is how much wheat is lost each year due to pests and diseases that the so-called organic process can't prevent. But science can.

"Live cold, die old" may soon become folk wisdom if a new study holds up in mice is true for people.

Most of us have heard some form of the phrase "live fast, die young" and take it to mean reckless behavior leads to premature death. It certainly does in epidemiology but in science it means that animals with high metabolic rates ("living fast") tend to die sooner than those with slow metabolism. They burn out rather than fade away.

The public are often baffled why environmental journalists attend climate conferences in person, using the rationalization that they do their jobs better if they can talk to people outside formal interviews.

What salesperson doesn't feel the same way? 

Science conferences are also well-attended, groups hosting them even note their high attendance, but the belief that any benefit from flying there and staying in a hotel is meaningful is usually held by people who enjoy going to conferences rather than empirical data. 

A small pilot study has concluded that even one night of exposure to moderate room lighting during sleep can impair glucose and cardiovascular regulation.

In the experiment, 10 people slept for one night in dim light followed by one night with overhead room lighting while another 10 slept for two nights in dim light.

I make macaroni and cheese quite a lot. I like to eat it on Fridays and for friends and family on holidays. I have sampled mac and cheese all across the country. I am no Guy Fieri, but I have gotten around, and I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that most elite - which is to say costly - macaroni and cheese uses Velveeta. Or at least a key chemical in it.

The reason is not flavor. It is science.