As anti-smoking groups like the American Council on Science and Health have long contended, while nicotine may be addictive, so are lots of things, from video games to coffee. It's the toxins in cigarette smoke that will kill you.

For that reason, public-health oriented anti-smoking groups have embraced nicotine vaping devices ("e-cigarettes") as one tool in the tool chest of harm reduction and (preferably) smoking cessation. Yet some smoking groups, and even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have migrated from being a war on cigarettes to being in war on some tobacco products, including nicotine vapor yet, oddly, not nicotine gums and patches.

Data from online video games has been used to study what kinds of practice and habits help people acquire skill. Basically, what does it take to get good? 10,000 hours, as Malcom Gladwell said? Nope, not even close. But there are reasons why some people are great in The Division and you die in the Dark Zone within seconds after meeting another player. Basically, they learned shortcuts and before they ever met you, they warmed up.

Decision trees are one of the many players in the booming field of supervised machine learning. They can be used to classify elements into two or more classes, depending on their characteristics. Their interest in particle physics applications is large, as we always need to try and decide on a statistical basis what kind of physics process originated the particle collision we see in our detector.

Some people have an extreme fear of spiders or other objects while others have breathing difficulties and accelerated heart beat in small rooms or large gatherings of people. Some anxiety attacks occur for no apparent cause. Some patients suffer from the detrimental impacts on their everyday lives, they have problems at work and withdraw from social contacts.

Adolescents with autism spectrum disorder use 400 percent more emergency room services than peers without it, which puts more strain on an over-burdened health care system and may mean that they need better access to primary care.

The line between deliberately manipulating a story and poorly reporting the facts is perilously thin.

During Sunday’s Oscars, what is colloquially called the United States’ ‘paper of record’, the New York Times, launched an advertising blitz positioning itself as the highbrow ethical responder to the spate of so-called ‘fake news.’

“The truth is hard…to find…to know,” the ad, widely circulated now on YouTube, proclaimed somberly.

Genetic variants linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) contribute to enhanced cognition and are therefore positively selected in spite of the problems they also bring along – new evidence has just been published in PLOS Genetics [1]. The problems these genes bring along are the price to pay for relatively rapid evolutionary advancements. It needs a much longer time for further natural selection to smooth the bugs out – this is all obvious, simple science. Another example is the genetic predisposition of Ashkenazim Jews to diseases such as Tai-Sachs, which comes along with their high average verbal IQ, also a relatively recent evolutionary advancement.

American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter.   

The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once grew throughout the Appalachian mountains. They provided habitat and a mast crop for wildlife, a nutritious nut crop for humans and a source of valuable timber. Because of their rapid growth rate and rot-resistant wood, they also have significant potential for carbon sequestration, important in these days of climate change.

I was not supposed to start this piece using the pronoun ‘I’.