Some news stories suggest that if Omicron is mild it is a “blessing in disguise”. Should we let everyone get it as fast as possible? It might seem it would help - if Omicron is indeed a little milder, this may reduce pressure on the health system for a few weeks. However, large numbers of cases can still overwhelm us very rapidly - if it's half the severity, just one doubling of cases (which might take < 3 days) overcomes all that advantage for the health systems.,

The ancient relative to modern humans Australopithecus sediba walked like a human, but climbed like an ape, filling in a gap in the fossil record long posited by biologists, finds a new analysis.

The recovery of new lumbar vertebrae from the lower back of a single individual of the human relative, Australopithecus sediba, and portions of other vertebrae of the same female from Malapa, South Africa, together with previously discovered vertebrae, form one of the most complete lower backs ever discovered in the early hominid record and give insight into how this ancient human relative walked and climbed.

In a new epidemiology paper, men taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs had different  prostate cancer screening results than non-users - in statin users, screening did not increase the incidence of prostate cancer as it did in other men.

The data came from the Finnish Prostate Cancer Screening Trial which started in 1996–1999. A total of about 80,000 men were included in the study, of whom just under 32,000 were screened with the PSA test every four years. 

Sometimes people ask me if there is an evidence-based way to manage the stress of dealing with difficult relatives at Thanksgiving, and my short answer is "chloroform."

In modern hippie dippie wellness culture, that may not be the response people are seeking, they may want validation of essential oils or an app, but one thing most people don't realize is that stress is not about fads or even other people. We manage stress, we only think it manages us. 

This year, you're going to pay 24 percent more for a turkey, a tough bite out of the wallet for poor people and a dose of reality for economists and armchair pundits who claimed prior to today's "stagflation" that higher prices are no concern.

Imagine how much higher prices would be if food suffered the yield losses that occur without modern pesticides. This year I am thankful for my health and my family but also science. Outside my house are signs thanking healthcare workers, delivery people, and farmers - and if they made one for science, including vaccines and pesticides, I'd own it.

A survey of 1,111 Americans who own houseplants wanted to find out which varieties are most popular and how much people spend on the hobby, but they also found out how much they anthropomorphize their leafy little friends.

During the pandemic, 68 percent of Millennials took up a new hobby and nearly as many grew their houseplant collection.

Perhaps that's become part of the new cultural dynamic. 57 said having a houseplant supported their mental health while 81 percent say houseplants are a reasonable substitute if they are far from nature. 

A demographically representative sample of 5,000 single adults between the ages of 18 and 98 finds a big switch in a post-pandemic world; only 78 percent believe being physically attractive is most important, compared to 90 percent in 2020.

And marriage is back. The number of singles who want a partner desiring marriage jumped from 58 percent  two years ago to 76  percent this year, with men and younger adults leading in the change.  Now, 42 percent of men are ready to find a long-term romantic relationship while women are just at 29 percent.


Not this year, men are leading the charge in heart's desire.

Recent survey results of 118 eight-to-twelve year-old children examined total hours of media consumed, hours of video game play, and number of media used concurrently. Then the authors correlated those to things like behavior, sleep, and psychological issues.

Do you remember the DAMA-LIBRA experiment? It is a underground detector made of sodium iodide crystals buried under the rock of the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy, which took data for over a decade in the search of the elusive signal that slowly-moving, massive particles would produce when they bounced off atoms of the active detector material. 

There is nothing even remotely resembling collapse of civilization in the IPBES or IPCC reports. So why do so many people say that’s what they are about?

I think it may be at least partly a misunderstanding of what the IPCC mean by “transformative change”, a misunderstanding which sadly is promoted in many articles in the mainstream media. If anyone says this, they haven't read the reports themselves, or at least not carefully.

The IPCC’s “transformative change” is not a collapse. Nor is it austerity. It’s positive, it’s growth in everything we value.