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E-Cigarettes Lead To 800% Increase In Quitting Cigarettes In The Most Important Demographic

E-Cigarettes Lead To 800% Increase In Quitting Cigarettes In The Most Important Demographic

Dec 28 2021 | comment(s)

Smoking remains the most prevalent lifestyle disease in the world, and for people who want to quit, there are lots of options, from "cold turkey" to vaping to patches and gums.

But among smokers who don't intend to quit, there is a clear winner in getting them to stop smoking anyway: vaping.

A nationally representative cohort study of 1,600 adult regular cigarette smokers who did not use e-cigarettes and did not plan to ever quit smoking did - e-cigarettes as smoking cessation tools led to 8-fold greater odds of cigarette discontinuation.
Greenlanders Have Lower BMI, Fat Percentage And Cholesterol - Evolution May Be Why

Greenlanders Have Lower BMI, Fat Percentage And Cholesterol - Evolution May Be Why

Dec 28 2021 | comment(s)

Over the course of evolutionary history, Greenlanders have benefited from a genetic variation that offers an incredible advantage; two copies of a gene variant make it so that they absorb sugar differently than other people do.

A new study finds that up to 3 percent of Greenland residents, based on analyzed data from 6,551 adult Greenlanders, have the sucrase-isomaltase variant, and experiments on mice may fill in reasons why those with the variant have lower BMI, weight, fat percentage, cholesterol levels and are generally significantly healthier.

For those that do, more sugar is not less healthy.

Dinosaurs Weren't Green, Some Even Had Colors Like Peacocks

Dinosaurs Weren't Green, Some Even Had Colors Like Peacocks

Dec 28 2021 | comment(s)

Popular imagery is that dinosaurs were a bland color, but most birds are have bland color palates as well. Then you have parrots or peacocks. In between the extremes of bland and flamboyant, there are pink pigeon feet, red rooster combs and yellow pelican pouches.

That may have been the case for dinosaurs as well. There’s a good chance that extinct dinosaurs rocked pops of color on similar body parts and may have flashed their colors to entice mates, just as birds do today, according to a study in the journal Evolution led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Marijuana DUI Car Crashes Have Doubled

Marijuana DUI Car Crashes Have Doubled

Dec 28 2021 | comment(s)

A new study finds that what once were just alcohol-related car crashes have now involved marijuana as the former illegal drug has been legalized and normalized in the last 20 years.  Fatal car accidents involving alcohol have remained relatively constant over the last two decades, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with 2019 reaching the lowest levels since 1982.
Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff, Of the Infamous Physics Bogdanoff Affair, Dead Of Covid Within Days Of Eachother at 72

Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff, Of the Infamous Physics Bogdanoff Affair, Dead Of Covid Within Days Of Eachother at 72

Dec 28 2021 | comment(s)

Breaking Grichka Bogdanoff one of two brothers who attained a PhDs in questionable circumstances and went on to popularize their views has died of COVID 19.  He was not vaccinated against Covid 19 according to a statement released by his agent. 
In About A Month NASA Will Go From Webb Telescope Hype To Reality

In About A Month NASA Will Go From Webb Telescope Hype To Reality

Dec 25 2021 | comment(s)

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched earlier today from French Guiana, ending years of doubt and skepticism that the successor to Hubble would ever be finished. 
The Europeans did their part with Ariane 5 and now it's up to a NASA that's been under constant criticism about overruns and a low joint confidence interval since the first delays were announced in the early part of the century and routinely since. 
Reflection On The James Webb Space Telescope. 30 Years From Concept To Reality.

Reflection On The James Webb Space Telescope. 30 Years From Concept To Reality.

Dec 25 2021 | comment(s)

The James Webb Space Telescope has taken longer to reach this point than it took to build a great Egyptian pyramid. A pyramid had to be built in at most 20 years to be ready to act as a burial site for a Pharaoh of old Kingdom Egypt. At a time when forty was old age, even for the ruler of a nation who took the throne at about twenty that was the deadline. JSWT has taken longer and in that respect has been a greater challenge and as great of an achievement. Even if one of over one hundred single points of failure in the process from launch to full deployment goes wrong it is an achievement. There are scientists and technicians who are my age now who started work on aspects of JWST as fresh undergraduate students in the early 2000’s.

Science Is Not A Moonshot Or A Manhattan Project And Government Should Stop Using That Rhetoric

Science Is Not A Moonshot Or A Manhattan Project And Government Should Stop Using That Rhetoric

Dec 23 2021 | comment(s)

Would you spend $12,500 for a hearing aid? I hope not. Yet in the Biden administration's latest stimulus plan, they were counting on the fact that centrist Democrats and Republicans would want so badly to include hearing aids in Medicare that they'd give giant subsidies to electric car companies and the wealthy Democrats who buy them.
RFK Jr. Is 'A Very Disturbed Individual' - Dr. Anthony Fauci

RFK Jr. Is 'A Very Disturbed Individual' - Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dec 22 2021 | comment(s)

If you have been in the pro-science community for even a short while, you know that the anti-agriculture and anti-vaccine and anti-natural gas contingents have tremendous overlap. Take a compass and draw a circle around a Whole Foods and you are going to find a nexus of people believe their Tesla uses electricity, but not fossil fuels, for energy, that organic food and supplements make medicine unnecessary, and that cancer is caused by things like cell phones, formaldehyde, or other supernatural things.
Will It Be A Happy Christmas For The James Webb Space Telescope?

Will It Be A Happy Christmas For The James Webb Space Telescope?

Dec 21 2021 | comment(s)

After nearly two decades of budget overruns, delays, and technical glitches, the James Webb Space Telescope is almost ready to launch. Its latest delay is just for one day, which means it could launch on Christmas.
Science-Based Last Minute Stocking Stuffers For A Pandemic Christmas

Science-Based Last Minute Stocking Stuffers For A Pandemic Christmas

Dec 21 2021 | comment(s)

It's that time of the year, a few days until Christmas and you bought everything on that Amazon wishlist but it doesn't feel all that creative. If you are like me, masks everywhere can be a bit of a downer, so you want things you can order. These are not what I like to call "aspirational" gifts, the kinds of things parents want their children to want in order to feel like better parents. They are all good, I have watched, read, or used them all this year, so they aren't yet another 'how to make a piece of paper turn using flame' experiment science, they are actually enjoyable science. And technology. And science-fiction.
The Search for a Theory of Everything

The Search for a Theory of Everything

Dec 19 2021 | comment(s)

A theory of everything has been the Holy Grail of some of the greatest physicists of the last century, from Albert Einstein to Stephen Hawking. A theory of everything, a single, all-encompassing theoretical framework which would be able to explain, coherently explain and link together all the physical aspects of the universe, from the atomic scale to galaxies, from the choppiness of the quantum world to the smoothness of relativity.
The Hawkeye Easter Egg No One Noticed

The Hawkeye Easter Egg No One Noticed

Dec 18 2021 | comment(s)

If you are reading this, you have already seen the Disney+ series "Hawkeye" episode 5, and you may have seen any number of articles pointing out all of the "Easter eggs" - hidden hooks - to other Marvel stuff, but if you have been around for a whole, you know they are not really Easter Eggs at all.
New York City Bans New Hookups

New York City Bans New Hookups

Dec 18 2021 | comment(s)

In a last act of defiance against science and reason, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the politician who told residents to rush to bars for one last evening because the Trump administration was forcing him to close them down during the pandemic, requiring a Navy hospital ship to be sent weeks later to deal with all of the ICU patients, has now decreed that no new gas stoves, boilers and heaters can be installed in new buildings or any that undergo renovations.
COVID-19 Caused Trust In Government To Plummet

COVID-19 Caused Trust In Government To Plummet

Dec 17 2021 | comment(s)

When 40 million people were unemployed while government employees negotiated with themselves on ways to give a trillion dollar stimulus package to government employees, to independent experts that was just politics as usual.
CDC Boondoggle: First Career Bureaucrats Didn't Want To Send Coronavirus Tests, Then They Sent Faulty Ones

CDC Boondoggle: First Career Bureaucrats Didn't Want To Send Coronavirus Tests, Then They Sent Faulty Ones

Dec 17 2021 | comment(s)

It is common in a polarized political climate to try and blame the other political party when missteps happen but most government employees are not political appointees, they are career bureaucrats, and sometimes care more about protecting their fiefdoms than in helping the public. 
Veritasium Is Wrong. The Energy Probably Flows Through The Wires. Quantum Field Theory Says So.

Veritasium Is Wrong. The Energy Probably Flows Through The Wires. Quantum Field Theory Says So.

Dec 16 2021 | comment(s)

A couple of weeks ago Derrick Muller of the YouTube Channel Veritasium made a video asserting that the electrical energy in a circuit does not flow through the wires but through the fields. This is true and yet also a misleading misconception. This misconception in his problem arises because it deals with a circuit loop that reaches from the Earth to the Moon and back with a one-meter gap between the wires. He also uses a definition of the light being “on” which seems to be having any minuscule amount of current flow through the bulb. Then he justifies this will completely correct classical, non-relativistic electromagnetic theory.

Warming And Clean Air Caused The Little Ice Age During The Renaissance

Warming And Clean Air Caused The Little Ice Age During The Renaissance

Dec 15 2021 | comment(s)

The Little Ice Age, lasting from early 15th to mid-19th centuries, was one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years - since the last real Ice Age ended.

Why it happened is one of the persistent questions in historical climatology.

The cold spell set in around 600 years ago and was responsible for crop failures, famines and pandemics throughout Europe, resulting in misery and death. A sudden change from very warm conditions in the late 1300s switched to unprecedented cold conditions only 20 years later.
Radiation Zero

Radiation Zero

Dec 15 2021 | comment(s)

Interference is a fascinating effect, and one which can be observed in a wide variety of physical systems - any system that involves the propagation of waves from different sources. We can observe interference between waves in the sea or in a lake, or even in our bathtub; we can hear the effect of interference between sound waves; or we can observe the fascinating patterns created by interference effects in light propagation. In addition to all that, we observe interference between the amplitudes of quantum phenomena by studying particle physics processes.
How To Predict Lightning Using AI

How To Predict Lightning Using AI

Dec 15 2021 | comment(s)

There is a saying that goes 'lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice' but it was never wise to bet your life on it. What it means is that getting hit at all is rare, for a human well over a 1 in 1,000,000 chance, but even if only 300 people are hit and under die, it still happens a lot to other things. The Empire State building in New York City gets hit 25 times each year.