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So Good Badminton Banned It: The Spin Serve Gets A CFD Analysis

So Good Badminton Banned It: The Spin Serve Gets A CFD Analysis

Aug 19 2025 | comment(s)

In all racket sports, a well-executed serve can establish a real advantage. Badminton is played by around 220 million people across the globe and a“spin serve” took badminton by storm when a Danish player at the Polish Open 2023 badminton tournament used it to dominant effect.

Like in table tennis, a spin-serve in badminton adds pre-spin before the racket touches the shuttlecock and the natural spin determined by its feathers’ inclination angles plus the pre-spin makes the flight trajectory even more unpredictable.

Naturally, instead of expecting players to adjust and improve, the community demanded the Badminton World Federation ban it. Coaches and players said extended rallies were more exciting for fans than good serves.
Blocking IL-23 May Keep HPV From Helping Cancer Grow

Blocking IL-23 May Keep HPV From Helping Cancer Grow

Aug 19 2025 | comment(s)

The most common cancer-causing strain of human papillomavirus, HPV16, can reprogram immune cells surrounding the tumor to help cancer grow, and new work in mice blocking this process helped treatments prevent the spread of cancer.

HPV is common in humans and in most cases clears naturally but HPV16 is linked to over half of cervical cancer cases and roughly 90% of HPV throat cancers. The HPV vaccine can prevent those cancers if vaccination occurs prior to HPV exposure but young people are the first generation to have the vaccine readily available.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease May Accelerate Dementia

Inflammatory Bowel Disease May Accelerate Dementia

Aug 18 2025 | comment(s)

You have probably heard the phrase “follow your gut” – often used to mean trusting your instinct and intuition. But in the context of the gut-brain axis, the phrase takes on a more literal meaning. Scientific research increasingly shows that the brain and gut are in constant, two-way communication. Once overlooked, this connection is now at the forefront of growing interest in neuroscience, nutrition and mental health.

How Trump Is Making Taiwan Safe(r)

How Trump Is Making Taiwan Safe(r)

Aug 15 2025 | comment(s)

       Let’s write a letter to Donald Trump. Trigger warning: Lots of sarcasm here.

Not-so-dear Don,

USDA Results Show Science Can Feed The World If Governments Get Out Of The Way

USDA Results Show Science Can Feed The World If Governments Get Out Of The Way

Aug 12 2025 | comment(s)

Until the 1980s, the modern-day Malthus acolytes like Drs. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren predicted Population Bombs and advocated for government-mandated sterilization and abortion to prevent it.(1)

Science didn't buy into the doomsday narrative and the poor have benefited.

Rather than the world starvation social authoritarians claimed only they could prevent, food has become so plentiful and affordable that modern social authoritarians now demand poor people be banned from buying food that government panels segregate. For the first time in the history of planet earth, the poorest people can afford to be fat.(2)

That was not a problem for the poor even 50 years ago.(3)
We Won't Lose Vaccine Leadership Due To Less Government, Government Has Always Done Little

We Won't Lose Vaccine Leadership Due To Less Government, Government Has Always Done Little

Aug 12 2025 | comment(s)

"If it was up to the NIH to cure polio through a centrally directed program instead of independent investigator driven discovery, you'd have the best iron lung in the world, but not a polio vaccine." - Dr. Samuel Broder, M.D., former Director of the National Cancer Institute
Air India Crash: Update #2 - The AAIB Report Revisited

Air India Crash: Update #2 - The AAIB Report Revisited

Aug 12 2025 | comment(s)

Air India Crash: Update #2 - The AAIB Report Revisited

This is another update to my article Air India Crash: When 2 + 2 Does Not Compute, with evidence and argument in support of my assertion that the AAIB Preliminary Report is worthless.

"It is hard to imagine a text more likely to sow confusion and encourage speculation than the partial summary of the fate of the Boeing 787 in Ahmedabad" 
The Times, India1.
Air India Crash: Update #3

Air India Crash: Update #3

Aug 11 2025 | comment(s)

Air India Crash: Update #3

This is another update to my article Air India Crash: When 2 + 2 Does Not Compute with fresh evidence and arguments.

Many people assume, wrongly, that the chance of two identical engines losing power at the same time due to a component or systems fault must be billions to one.  Such occurences are indeed rare, but they do happen.

Deja Vu - A Warning About Possible Twin Engine Rollback At Takeoff

In 2009 there were two Boeing 777 incidents which resulted in no damage or injury, hence they did not gain much public attention.
Age 60 And Up: Walk Faster To Reduce Risk Of Stroke

Age 60 And Up: Walk Faster To Reduce Risk Of Stroke

Aug 11 2025 | comment(s)

Epidemiologists correlate inputs to outcomes by looking at surveys and diaries and then seeing what foods, products, or behaviors to outcomes, like better or worse health.

It isn't science and is often exploited but it has led to big public health wins, like showing that cigarettes and alcohol cause cancer - instances were human clinical trials would be unethical. Recommendations like not adding salt or not eating eggs became fads because epidemiologists claimed it and media highlighted it, the same way the Mediterranean Diet and buying organic food did. There are so many confounders scientists throw up their hands and walk away but corporations exploit it to billions of dollars in revenue.
Swedish Physics Days

Swedish Physics Days

Aug 11 2025 | comment(s)

On August 13-15 I will attend for the first time to the Swedish Physics Days, an important national event for Swedish physics. This year the congress takes place at Lulea University of Technology, the institute where I am currently spending some time, hosted by the Machine Learning group through a Guest Researcher fellowship granted by WASP (Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program).
A Sad Semiconductor Circus

A Sad Semiconductor Circus

Aug 10 2025 | comment(s)

Donald Trump, alleged by many to be President of the United States, has demanded that Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign immediately. Thanking the American public for our “attention to this matter,” Trump claims Tan is “conflicted” due to his investments in China.

I dare suggest that Tan respond as follows:

I Made An AI Clone Of Myself And Now I Am Going To Live Forever

I Made An AI Clone Of Myself And Now I Am Going To Live Forever

Aug 08 2025 | comment(s)

"I made an AI clone of myself and now I am going to live forever" is not a joke.

My AI twin, Bloombot, created by Ryan Dean, the Chief Technology Officer of the Howard Bloom Institute, is designed to carry on my way of thinking after I shuffle off this mortal coil.
In other words, it is going to do its best to replace me.

No, the BloomBot is not exactly me. But it defies belief. The Bloombot is nimble on its digital feet, can do research that would take me a month in seconds, and can write phrases I wish I had written myself.

And sometimes the BloomBot goes even farther. It uses my ideas as seeds and erects trees of imagination and reasoning that rise to rapturous heights.
RFK Jr Is Wrong About MRNA Vaccines - They Make COVID-19 Less Deadly

RFK Jr Is Wrong About MRNA Vaccines - They Make COVID-19 Less Deadly

Aug 08 2025 | comment(s)

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced he is cancelling US$500 million (£374 million) of research into mRNA vaccines, citing unproven concerns about their safety and long-term effects.

Kennedy has claimed that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics” – a misleading statement that contradicts the scientific consensus on viral evolution and effects of vaccination.


Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock

But scientific research shows that mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives.

NSF Gives 5 Teams $32 Million For Protein Design Initiative

NSF Gives 5 Teams $32 Million For Protein Design Initiative

Aug 07 2025 | comment(s)

The U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships is giving $32 billion to five teams involved in using artificial intelligence-based approaches to protein design.
The goal is to speed up design of novel proteins with specific, desirable characteristics.



The new funding will be for:

Purdue University — Programmable Small Molecule Biosynthesis

UC Santa Barbara — De Novo Design and Evolution of Enzymes for Biomass Upcycling to Surfactants and Fuels

Arzeda Corp. — AI-designed Enzymes using Non-natural Cofactors for the Production of Bio-based Acrylates
California Wildfires Linked To Suicide And Harms From PM10

California Wildfires Linked To Suicide And Harms From PM10

Aug 06 2025 | comment(s)

California has an environmental problem. The state is overwhelmingly desert and rain is scarce for 10 months out of the year. Water instead arrives from the mountains. Yet the state legislature and government are allied with environmentalists. They want dams torn down, which means water from the mountains that melts in the spring and summer can't be gathered. Not only do environmentalists now hate dams, their political supermajority has even stalled the water infrastructure improvements voters demanded over 10 years ago, using endless government panel reviews.
El Niño May Cause Spider Declines

El Niño May Cause Spider Declines

Aug 06 2025 | comment(s)

The El Niño climate phenomenon is consistently inconsistent, which plays havoc with computer models hoping to anticipate the effects of increased emissions from large polluting countries like China.

It may even be causing periodic booms and busts in spiders and overall insects.
The Mysterious Humans Near ‘Hobbit’s Island'

The Mysterious Humans Near ‘Hobbit’s Island'

Aug 06 2025 | comment(s)

Over 1 million years ago, early hominims made a treacherous deep sea crossing to reach the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and in a modern corn field local people discovered what looked like stone tools in the sedimentary layers and called in archaeologists.

What they found in the Early Pleistocene site of Calio reset the date for colonization of the island; seven stone artifacts. Because this was near a river channel, the researchers believe this would have been the hub for hominin tool-making and other activities such as hunting.
Air India Crash: Update #1

Air India Crash: Update #1

Aug 01 2025 | comment(s)

Air India Crash: Update #1

This is an update with fresh evidence and arguments to my article Air India Crash: When 2 + 2 Does Not Compute .


The "smoke" at liftoff
Methanetetrol: We're In A 'Super Alcohol' Timeline Now

Methanetetrol: We're In A 'Super Alcohol' Timeline Now

Jul 31 2025 | comment(s)

Methanetetrol, the only alcohol which has four hydroxyl groups (OH) at a single carbon atom, is out of this world.

Scientists meant that literally, it had been only theorized because it cannot occur naturally in Earth's everyday conditions but in extreme conditions of space it was assumed to exist. Now after a century of hypothetical existence, ultra-cold temperatures, near-perfect vacuum and high-energy radiation to simulate the environment inside interstellar clouds have combined to make it real.

The scientists from institutions in Russia, communist China, Hawaii, and Mississippi, believe their work could reshape our understanding of chemistry in the universe and shed light on the complex reactions happening in deep space.
Extrasensorial Plot Premonition

Extrasensorial Plot Premonition

Jul 31 2025 | comment(s)

In the previous article here, I tangentially examined a situation that arises often in collaborative data analysis: the digestion of the results in scientific graphs. The focus of that discussion was the building of a sceptical thinking attitude in my student - it is a really important asset in experimental science.