This is an update to my article: How A "Dwarf Planet" Gas Giant Could Challenge IAU Definition - Pluto, Ceres, Haumea Etc Can All Be Planets. That article pointed out that we could discover a gas giant in our own solar system that satisfies the IAU definition of a "dwarf planet" as it wouldn't clear its orbit if it was far enough away. First, I should have pointed out there that the WISE search has not ruled out gas giants in the remote parts of our solar system.

A new paper claims the size and shape of your nose evolved in response to local climate conditions. 

The nose is one of our distinctive facial features. It conditions the air we breathe so it is warm and moist when it reaches the lungs, which helps prevent infections. And that may be why people whose ancestors lived in hot, humid places tend to have wider nostrils than people whose ancestors came from cold and dry environments.

In case you haven’t been keeping up-to-date with the latest news in the biotechnology regulatory system (and how could you not?), the system is under revision. As part of the new Coordinated Framework the FDA stated it would clarify how it will deal with the hot-button topic of genome editing, and update its guidance documents accordingly. As part of this process the FDA opened a docket on regulations.gov to receive public comments about the issue. As you might expect, a large majority of the comments have been less than scientific.

They are asking for your evidence-based input.  Please give it to them!

ECHA, the European Chemicals Agency, has released findings from its Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) which concluded that glyphosate (e.g. Roundup, by the agriculture company Monsanto, though it's been off-patent for 17 years) is not a carcinogen, nor is it a mutagen, nor is it toxic for reproduction.

I think the chances of the SpaceX mission around the Moon going ahead on schedule in 2018 is tiny. But on the remote chance it does, I would not fly on that mission, if you paid me a billion dollars. The problem is that they have to rely on many innovations working just right that are hardly tested. Their current Dragon spacecraft is only rated for re-entry from LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and not for the much faster re-entry from a trip around the Moon. That’s why they plan to use the larger Dragon 2 which has its first flight in 2018.

President Trump says he came to Washington to “drain the swamp,” and now his administration is looking for wasteful programs to cut. A great start would be pulling the plug on numerous federal “research” programs that, frankly, have been captured by Washington special interests.

In fact, much of taxpayer-funded research serves ideological agendas—especially environmental activism—at the expensive of legitimate scientific inquiry. Consider a few examples.

By using lasers to manipulate a superfluid gas known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, the team was able to coax the condensate into a quantum phase of matter that has a rigid structure — like a solid, and can flow without viscosity, a key characteristic of a superfluid.  Basically, they have created a supersolid, a new form of matter which combines the properties of solids with those of superfluids. 

Isn't that a contradiction? 

“It is counterintuitive to have a material which combines superfluidity and solidity,” says team leader Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT. “If your coffee was superfluid and you stirred it, it would continue to spin around forever.”

Metabolism, the set of processes through which we gain energy from food and produce the biomolecules we need in our body's cells, is universal to life. The biochemical pathways that underpin these processes are highly similar across all organisms and species. 

The first day of the Neutrino Telescopes XVII conference in Venice is over, and I would like to point you to some short summaries that I published for the conference blog, at http://neutel11.wordpress.com. 
Specifically:


- a summary of the talk on Super-Kamiokande
- a summary of the talk on SNO
- a summary of the talk on KamLAND
- a summary of the talk on K2K and T2K
- a summary of the talk on Daya Bay

You might have noticed that the above experiments were recipients of the 2016 Breakthrough prize in physics. In fact, the session was specifically focusing on these experiments for that reason.

Ethan Siegel has just written an article, "The Science Has Spoken: Pluto Will Never Be A Planet Again", so this is a response to it. I'll argue that far from "story over", actually we could make a discovery tomorrow that would turn the whole thing on its head and make their definition untenable.  This will become particularly acute if we ever find a gas giant in the outer reaches of our solar system, too far away to clear its orbit. And we could find such a planet.