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Isoprene: Plants Can Make Their Own Pesticide But The Environmental Cost Is High

Isoprene: Plants Can Make Their Own Pesticide But The Environmental Cost Is High

Jun 16 2025 | comment(s)

As the developed world becomes more removed from science and health, it is easier to embrace beliefs that science and medicine are not needed at all, with some claiming that vaccines and pesticides are not really needed, the natural world can do it without modern tools.

Companies will cater to that also. If enough people mobilized by politicians and activists insist they don't want some harmless food coloring or BPA, companies will remove those and simply charge more. The products won't be healthier, just more costly. Yet sometimes mimicking the natural world can be beneficial, like with neonicotinoid seed treatments based on natural pesticide effects and have reduced mass spraying and off-target effects so well that bees have rebounded and now exist in record numbers.
The Thirty Meter Telescope May Be Cancelled Not by Ordinary People's Protest, but by Wealthy People's Whim

The Thirty Meter Telescope May Be Cancelled Not by Ordinary People's Protest, but by Wealthy People's Whim

Jun 16 2025 | comment(s)

Astronomy, it seems, finds itself at the mercy of political caprice and economic machinations yet again. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), once poised to revolutionize observational astronomy from the unparalleled vantage point of Mauna Kea, faces cancellation. Not due to heartfelt protest by everyday Hawaiians, but under the blunt axe wielded by the DOGE-driven economic philosophy championed by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, with Elon Musk's tacit endorsement (at least until his next ketamine-infused revelation).

Marshall McLuhan Hated TV But He Might Like AI

Marshall McLuhan Hated TV But He Might Like AI

Jun 14 2025 | comment(s)

Today’s large language models (LLMs) process information across disciplines at unprecedented speed and are challenging higher education to rethink teaching, learning and disciplinary structures.

As AI tools disrupt conventional subject boundaries, educators face a dilemma: some seek to ban these tools, while others are seeking ways to embrace them in the classroom.

Both approaches risk missing a deeper transformation that was predicted 60 years ago by Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan.

Yelling Fascism Is The Fashion, But The Left Is Actually Less Diverse

Yelling Fascism Is The Fashion, But The Left Is Actually Less Diverse

Jun 13 2025 | comment(s)

If you think you are in a totalitarian regime because the US President federalized National Guard troops, you may need to get a little more intellectual diversity. An experiment instead showed that those on the right are more likely to look into the facts and learn that federalizing the National Guard first happened in 1794. By order of President George Washington. Then it happened again in 1799, by order of President John Adams.
Meta-Analysis: Flower Strips With Two Or More Species May Reduce Pesticides

Meta-Analysis: Flower Strips With Two Or More Species May Reduce Pesticides

Jun 12 2025 | comment(s)

A new paper has found that flower strips along fields and ditches may be more than just a gimmick that lets people feel like they are improving the environment or saving bees. They may attract pests that eat pests that eat crops.

If so, this could help Europe, which has declared it wants to reduce pesticides 50% by 2030 but found its efforts stymied when they had to engage in limited boycotts of its primary food exporter, Russia. Even though they exclude Organic™ pesticides from their goals, despite those being up to 600% more chemicals per calorie produced.(1)
With New Acceptance Of Vaccines, The Left Needs To Rethink Pesticides Next

With New Acceptance Of Vaccines, The Left Needs To Rethink Pesticides Next

Jun 11 2025 | comment(s)

A few short years ago, the western left - America and Europe - had a holy trinity of things they opposed; medicine, food, and energy. There is no hope for energy, even 100% higher electricity rates in places like Germany and California won't get them to budge from insisting solar and wind are viable, but all it took for them to rethink vaccines was for one of their former chief evangelists, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to become a member of the Trump administration.
Nightshade: AI Scraping Arms Race Escalates

Nightshade: AI Scraping Arms Race Escalates

Jun 10 2025 | comment(s)

It's a good thing America is pivoting back to nuclear energy after a 30-year Clinton-induced hiatus because "AI" tools require a lot of energy, and a new tool to prevent scraping will make the cost for AI tools even higher.
Editorial: This Week’s LA Non-riots

Editorial: This Week’s LA Non-riots

Jun 09 2025 | comment(s)

A Facebook friend opined that Los Angeles protesters could “turn LA into another Portland.” I expand for you my rejoinder to his post:

The Lizard Poop Of Madagascar

The Lizard Poop Of Madagascar

Jun 09 2025 | comment(s)

Some 88 million years ago, Madagascar broke off from India.

Isolated from all other landmasses, plants and animals evolved in seclusion, creating a biodiversity hotspot unlike anywhere else on Earth. One way biodiversity spreads is by endozoochory, which is the process name for animals eating plant seeds and then pooping them out somewhere else, which may cause them to grow in the new location. Birds are an obvious mode of transport but a new study takes a look at the role lizard poop has played. 
Chinese Researchers Are Rewiring Brains Using Interfaces

Chinese Researchers Are Rewiring Brains Using Interfaces

Jun 09 2025 | comment(s)

Human evolution and culture have been shaped by our increasing ability to communicate.

A new review from China believes that brain-computer interfaces mark the next leap: a direct connection between mind and machine. They note breakthroughs in neural signal decoding, AI, and bioengineering but what should really worry residents of a communist dictatorship is how they believe it will shape autonomy, identity, and mental privacy.
Win A MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowship!

Win A MSCA Post-Doctoral Fellowship!

Jun 08 2025 | comment(s)

Applications for MSCA Post-doctoral fellowships are on, and will be so until September 10 this year. What that means is that if you have less than 8 years of experience after your Ph.D., you can pair up with a research institute in Europe to present a research plan, and the European Commission may decide to fund it for two years (plus 6 months in industry in some cases).

In order for your application to have a chance to win funding, you need to: 
  1. have a great research topic in mind, 
  2. be ready to invest some time in writing a great application, and 
  3. pair up with an outstanding supervisor at a renowned research institute. 
Soft Robot With Inflatable Actuators And Kirigami Skin Debuts

Soft Robot With Inflatable Actuators And Kirigami Skin Debuts

Jun 07 2025 | comment(s)

University of Southern Denmark recently demonstrated a soft robot capable of navigating complex terrains using a combination of inflatable actuators and a patterned "kirigami" skin, all moving via rectilinear motion.

You probably think it looks like a worm and it can certainly go places only small things could go.

It's not very fast, only 11 millimeters per second, but it can twist, turn, and navigate through tight spots thanks to its anisotropic anchoring and flexible skin.


Credit: SDU Soft Robotics
Decline In Male Fertility Linked To Getting Paid Family Leave

Decline In Male Fertility Linked To Getting Paid Family Leave

Jun 06 2025 | comment(s)

After Spain instituted paternity leave reform on 2007 - what the Spanish needed to help their highest unemployment in Europe was even fewer people working - male fertility went down, according to an analysis of birth records before and after the switch.

This is in contrast to some claims that maternity leave can boost fertility. 

Uptake of the new paternity leave was very high among new dads. Then something strange happened. 
Hurricanes: Water, Not Wind, Is Deadliest

Hurricanes: Water, Not Wind, Is Deadliest

Jun 06 2025 | comment(s)

When most people think of hurricanes, they imagine winds gusting over 100 miler per hour, but water has been responsible for 86 percent of all direct hurricane and tropical storm fatalities in the United States for almost this entire century.

Floods, rip currents, and storm surges are the big risk, with freshwater flooding inland accounting for over half of drownings. To help with real-time, the Southeast Atlantic (SEA) Econet network of atmospheric and hydrological monitoring stations provide the real-time data used by the National Weather Service.
Taurine’s Anti-Aging Hype Takes A Hit In Rigorous New Study

Taurine’s Anti-Aging Hype Takes A Hit In Rigorous New Study

Jun 06 2025 | comment(s)

Lemons To Lemonade Is Like Soda Cans To Hydrogen

Lemons To Lemonade Is Like Soda Cans To Hydrogen

Jun 05 2025 | comment(s)

An old adage goes that 'if life gives you lemons, make lemonade', which basically means turn something negative into something positive. 

Pollution is bad but a new study shows that it may some day be a net win for energy.
While Western Progressives Block Nuclear, China Builds 2 Coal Plants Per Week

While Western Progressives Block Nuclear, China Builds 2 Coal Plants Per Week

Jun 04 2025 | comment(s)

On this day in 1989, protesters learned what American sympathizers refuse to realize - a communist dictatorship is not just American politics in a different language. They do what they want and you will comply or else. Violently.

That is why China exempts itself from all climate treaties, claiming developing nation status, and western countries, and certainly the so-called United Nations, refuse to criticize them. 
WISEcode: Psychologist Proposes A New Way To Exempt Processed Foods From Harm Claims

WISEcode: Psychologist Proposes A New Way To Exempt Processed Foods From Harm Claims

Jun 04 2025 | comment(s)

Processed and Ultra-Processed™ foods have been heavy-rotation buzzwords in the food activist community since the Obama administration but gained increased attention once the Trump administration came into power and a chief evangelist against modern food, former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was placed in charge of the world's most important government science agency, the National Institutes of Health.

Now, epidemiology has become a Supreme Court over science and instead of evidence-based decision-making, the default has become that if a harm or benefit can be suggested using food or chemical surveys, government will ban it and then tell scientists to figure out why.
Phytosterols In Vegetarian Diets Linked To Lower Risk Of Diabetes

Phytosterols In Vegetarian Diets Linked To Lower Risk Of Diabetes

Jun 03 2025 | comment(s)

Diets high in phytosterols, such as vegetarian diets, have long been linked to lower risk of heart disease and diabetes by lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol but food surveys, questionnaires, and diaries are not reliable enough to make clinical determinations while in mouse experiments the doses were too human to be relevant in the real world.
The Way To Finally Make Organic Farming Sustainable Is To Allow Modern Gene Editing

The Way To Finally Make Organic Farming Sustainable Is To Allow Modern Gene Editing

Jun 03 2025 | comment(s)

The organic process is neither viable nor sustainable but a new paper would like to change that. By allowing modern gene editing. The only way Europe can reach the goal of 25% Organic™ farmland that its government-funded environmental groups demand, a 250% increase, is by moving into the 21st century, they argue.

When the organic process was the only thing available, the food-rich were rich and the poor were poor and the only difference was being born into a natural breadbasket. Cycles of famine were common.