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    President Biden and his economists don't really believe in the free market, they instead believe that government 'primes the pump' of the economy, so if they subsidize and mandate something, like ethanol in gasoline or electric cars or solar panels, a miracle of capitalism will occur and the industry will take off. If they create inflation by giving $5 trillion in money to government union employees and political allies, they will curb it by raising interest rates. 

    If bankruptcies double and people have to work two jobs to afford off-brand toilet paper, they reframe that as a booming employment market.
    In a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, I brought a "genetically rescued organism" some popular attention. It was the American Chestnut, which had been devastated by a blight that conventional techniques and chemicals could not stop.
    In 1969, a fellow who felt that the eugenicist founders of Sierra Club were not militant enough in their war on brown and black people under the guise of 'population control' set out to create his own organization. He latched on to the most popular progressive positions of the day - nuclear power etc. - but declared the group to be in opposition to all science.
    When we created the Science 2.0 movement, it quickly caught cultural fire. Blogging became the thing to do, to such an extent that corporate media entered with contracts for scientists while outlets like the BBC began to explore publishing user-generated content.

    Social media filled the void when the blogging movement faded and while it changed journalism - articles about social media responses became common - it did nothing for knowledge creation and scientific peer review. Instead of blogging being a firewall for the public regarding science content, pay-to-publish journals claiming to be peer-reviewed instead overwhelmed the ability of scientists to look at it all.
    Tirzepatide facilitates weight loss in obese people with type 2 diabetes and therefore improves glucose control and also results in improved cardiovascular disease outcomes.

    A recent analysis compared a group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were prescribed tirzepatide (off-label) to a control group of adults with type 1 diabetes who were not using any weight-loss medication. The investigators reported significantly larger declines in body mass index (BMI) and weight in the treated group compared to controls. HbA1c decreased in the treated group as early as three months and was sustained through a one-year follow-up.
    One of the now rare species of oysters in the Pacific Northwest is the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida, (Carpenter, 1864). While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. 

    Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Vancouver Island's norther tip to California are built from Ostrea lurida.
    Zenapsis Devonian Bony Fish UkraineA Devonian bony fish mortality plate showing a lower shield of Zenaspis podolica (Lankester, 1869) from Lower Devonian deposits of Podolia, Ukraine.

    While war rages on in the Ukraine, our hearts go out to those who live and work here contributing much to our understanding of Podolia, a historic region in Eastern Europe, located in the west-central and south-western parts of Ukraine, in northeastern Moldova. 
    Hallstatt Salt Mines, Austria / Permian Salt DiapirThe Hallstatt Limestone is the world's richest Triassic ammonite unit, yielding specimens of more than 500 ammonite species.


    Along with diversified cephalopod fauna  — orthoceratids, nautiloids, ammonoids — we also see gastropods, bivalves, especially the late Triassic pteriid bivalve Halobia (the halobiids), brachiopods, crinoids and a few corals. We also see a lovely selection of microfauna represented. 
    A Tapir showing off his prehensile nose trunkDriftwood Canyon Provincial Park covers 23 hectares of the Bulkley River Valley, on the east side of Driftwood Creek, a tributary of the Bulkley River, 10 km northeast of the town of Smithers in northern British Columbia. 
    About a month ago I was contacted by a colleague who invited me to write a piece on the topic of science outreach for an electronic journal (Ithaca). I was happy to accept, but when I later pondered on what I would have liked to write, I could not help thinking back at a piece on the power and limits of the use of analogies in the explanation of physics, which I wrote 12 years ago as a proceedings paper for a conference themed on physics outreach in Torino. It dawned on me that although 12 years had gone by, my understanding of what constitutes good techniques for engagement of the public and for effective communication of scientific concepts had not widened very significantly.