After two percent of astronomers threw out one arbitrary definition of planet and replaced it with another arbitrary definition of planet, our solar system went from nine planets to eight. Pluto became instead a dwarf planet because the the International Astronomical Union said a planet must have "cleared its neighborhood" of other orbiting bodies and since Pluto did not clean out the entire Kuiper Belt full of asteroids it did not qualify.

A team of sociologists say they know of a sure way to hurt environmental protection: Elect a Democratic president. 

An analysis of over 20,000 people from the General Social Survey between 1973 and 2014 found that support for environmental spending consistently plummeted during the administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. There are other known factors in regulatory support; the older people get the less they support more regulations, but it is a surprise to find that relative support for environmental regulation changes depending on which party is in the White House.

In the previous post I discussed, among other things, a purely empirical observation on the mass spectrum of elementary particles, which I summarized in a graph where on the vertical scale I put the year of discovery, and where I only cared to plot particles with a mass above a keV - in fact, we know that neutrinos have non-zero masses, but we have not measured them and they are of the order of an eV or below. Okay, for simplicity I will re-publish the graph below.

Thanks to social media, advice on how to prevent a cold is everywhere and 51 percent of parents taking the  C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health admit to believing in folklore and homeopathy even though 99 percent of them accept scientific approaches as well. 

Welcome to 2019.

Colds are caused by viruses and spread most frequently from person to person. The most common transmission is mucus from the nose or mouth that gets passed on by direct contact, coughing, sneezing, doorknobs, etc. Therefore the most effective method for preventing colds is encouraging children to wash hands.

It won't work in stopping them all.  Kids will probably experience three to six colds each year. 

I have long been of the opinion that writing about science for the public requires the writer to simplify things down to a level which is sometimes dangerously close to mislead the uninformed readers. I think is a small price to pay if you want to keep open the channel of communication with the general public, but it is indeed a narrow path the one you sometimes find yourself walking on, and fallacy is always a possible outcome.

Another post to help people scared of perfectly normal harmless events because of the sensationalist press and false prophets. This is just the moon passing through Earth’s shadow as it does usually once or twice a year. It’s done it for billions of years. Usually it passes above or below Earth’s shadow at full moon, and occasionally it passes through it, and that’s the lunar eclipse.

Half the world can see a lunar eclipse, the entire night side of Earth at the time of the event. It is far easier to see than a solar eclipse which needs you to live on or travel to a narrow eclipse track where the Moon’s shadow briefly touches the surface of the Earth.

Here are some guides about how to observe it. In the US:

Is there sex-specific epigenetic regulation of fear memory?

A new study says yes, for mice anyway, and if it later is found to be similar in humans it could explain why fear and stress-related disorders affect men and women differently.

Fear and memory produce changes to genes that modulate gene expression, called epigenetic modifications, some contend. In a mouse model of traumatic memory, epigenetic activation of  gene important for creating fear memories and stress behavior, called cyclin dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) increased naturally in males, but not in females, after the mice recalled a fear-related memory.

Some indigenous peoples wear body paint, and most most of the indigenous communities who paint their bodies live in areas where there is an abundance of bloodsucking horseflies, mosquitoes or tsetse flies. 

Where insects bite people there is a risk of bacteria, parasites and other pathogens being transferred. More insects, more risk. Did paint come into popularity for protection it might offer? A new study set out to find if the two were linked, and not just cultural decoration. 

As the well-informed readers will realize, I am hat-tipping Hank Campbell and the catchy title of his best-selling book "Science Left Behind" with the title of this post, for lack of more imagination. What I want to discuss is, however, something only partly in line with the interesting topics of Hank's book. It is something that I see happening around these days, and which I ache for: the dumbing down of our decision making in science.

A recent study using deep learning algorithms and statistical methods discovered the footprint of a new hominid who cross bred with the ancestors of Asiatic individuals tens of thousands of years ago.

Modern human DNA computational analysis suggests that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans and cross bred with "Out of Africa" modern humans in Asia. This finding would explain that the hybrid found this summer in the caves of Denisova - the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father - was not an isolated case, but rather was part of a more general introgression process.