Astronomers at the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have

Rachel Carson, who launched the modern environmental movement with her 1962 book “Silent Spring,” was a highly private person. But on one occasion she allowed an interviewer to ask, “What do you eat?” Her sardonic answer: “Chlorinated hydrocarbons like everyone else.”

Carson was referring to a family of chemicals used for insect control that included DDT, the principal target of her book. Even though Carson tragically died of cancer just 18 months after publication of “Silent Spring,” her best-seller had powerful and lasting effects. Congress moved to create a new federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and two years later that agency banned DDT for agricultural use.

New food surveys show what you probably knew; if you eat too much, you will get fat, and obesity is a risk factor for numerous health issues.

There were 93 school shootings in the US in a recent two-year period but they were rarely committed by students. Sometimes they were former students of the school but new a survey analysis say their mental health issues may have been aggravated by memories of bullying.

A wearable, pocket-sized, automated insulin delivery device has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company calls is the iLet Bionic Pancreas but it's obviously not bionic any more than String Theory is a scientific theory. However, it is now available in this universe for the almost two million Americans with type 1 diabetes.

Sepsis causes 11 million deaths annually so preventing that requires prompt recognition, source control, antibiotics, fluids and vasopressors.

Sometimes adjunctive therapies such as orticosteroids help but the science is inconclusive. A recent study was designed to evaluate the role of corticosteroids in the management of patients with septic shock and the contradictory effects on mortality as recorded in past research and treatment.

The recent developments in artificial intelligence, most notably the demonstration of the weird power of GPT4 and other large language models, have brought the scientific community to ponder on some very foundational questions - What is conscience? What is intelligence? Can machines really think? Can machines really become conscient? 
(Below, the answer of ChatGPT to my silly question on self-awareness.)

In the 19th century, charlatans traveled around selling magic potions, tonics, and salves but to stop them no one decided to ban actual medical research.

The issue facing "AI", which is short for Artificial Intelligence, is that the only people who will feel bound by top-down control were never going to be a problem in the first place. Large Language Models, termed Generative AI, can be a huge positive in health care, but because it is misunderstood and there is a lot of exploitative media coverage there are ongoing efforts to kill it before it really gets going.

In recent geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years have been ice ages. It's been 12,000 years since the last one so we may be due.

Or not. Climate science has a few rules but a lot of exceptions and 700,000 years ago a big exception occurred. At that time the planet experienced a “warm ice age” and it permanently changed the climate cycles on Earth. Though it became warmer and with more rain, the polar glaciers also expanded. Geological data in combination with computer simulations published in Nature Communications hopes to lend insight into this paradox.

Saturn’s rings are one of the jewels of the solar system, but it seems that their time is short and their existence fleeting.

A new study suggests the rings are between 400 million and 100 million years old – a fraction of the age of the solar system. This means we are just lucky to be living in an age when the giant planet has its magnificent rings. Research also reveals that they could be gone in another 100 million years.

The rings were first observed in 1610 by the astronomer Galileo Galilei who, owing to the resolution limits of his telescope, initially described them as two smaller planets on each side of Saturn’s main orb, apparently in physical contact with it.