Netflix is the big name in streaming, virtually everyone who has any interest in digital shows has heard of them, but they still give you a free trial.

No matter your size, and even if it's an existing customer, it makes good business sense, finds a new paper.

The last three years have been a banner time for environmental crisis hyperbole, especially when it comes to reporting about insects and agriculture.

For decades there has been a statistical controversy about meat. By statistical I mean it was never a real health issue. Instead, though we clearly evolved to eat it, epidemiologists statistically correlated meat to dying and said therefore we shouldn't eat it. Though such studies noted down at the bottom that the relationship was not causal, they wanted the public to believe it because they highlighted the causal inference in press releases, and so media rushed to claim that meat causes heart attacks.

A few years ago, epidemiologists at France's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) joined in, using their own meta-analyses to declare that meat was just as hazardous to health as plutonium. And smoking. And mustard gas.

A few species of mosquitoes are nothing but carriers of disease, so pesticides were used to wipe them out in much of North America. Worldwide they remain a public health problem and while some ecologists claim a mythical (and scientifically debunked) 'balance of nature' and therefore insist Aedes aegypti might have some benefit, if we turned them extinct we'd have nothing but less  yellow fever, dengue fever, and Zika worldwide, the way we do in the U.S.

How big is the universe? No one really knows, but since we are in just one Orion spur of the arm of Sagittarius in one galaxy, and there are an unknown number of galaxies, it's big. So big our galaxy alone could have 6,000,000,000 planets like ours, according to a new estimate.

To be a potential planet like Earth, the new model estimating the number of planets like ours must be rocky, roughly Earth-sized and orbiting Sol-like (G-type) stars. It also has to orbit in the habitable zones of its star, which is the range of distances from a star in which a rocky planet could host liquid water  on its surface.

Fundamental science works by alternating phases of interpretation and refutation. When interpreting the result of experiments, physicists spend their time sweating shirt after shirt in the attempt of formulating economical and coherent explanations of observed phenomena. If the process converges, they formulate a theory which works well, whereby they celebrate for a little while. Then a second phase starts, when hypotheses are formulated on how to refute the shiny new model, finding effects and observatons that do not fit in the formulated framework. And so on.

A few decades ago, Asian diets were regarded as superior because lower incomes meant they ate less meat - and those who were tested had less cholesterol, a substance found in the blood that the body uses to build healthy cells, but which can lead to a build-up in blood vessels. Cholesterol has been correlated to a risk factor for a risk factor for heart attacks.

The math used to analyze cyclic phenomena like the ebb and flow of ocean tides has been applied to Sol, the star we orbit. While it can't do anything to flatten its irregularities, or the impacts it has on communications, temperature, and weather, the "Sun clock" created by scholars shows it starts and stops on a much more precise schedule than can be discerned by observations plotted linearly over time.

(Inside Science) - An ancient bird statuette recovered from a refuse heap is the oldest known figurine discovered yet in China, shedding new light on how our ancestors created 3D art, a new study finds.

Video of police in riot gear clashing with unarmed protesters in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has filled social media feeds. Meanwhile, police surveillance of protesters has remained largely out of sight.