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Cancel Culture Prevents The Best Researchers From Engaging With The Food Industry

After Chris Wild took over the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a UN-funded...

Vermont Should Stop Showing Leadership In Overruling Scientists On Farming

Despite Vermont's Agricultural  Innovation Board (AIB), created to inform regulatory recommendations...

Evolutionary Psychology: Your Parents Income During Pregnancy Made You Gay

Evolutionary psychology, the discipline that claimed we're being manipulated by flowers and evolved...

Oil Kept Congo From Starving - Western Academics Don't Seem To Like That

If even a wealthy like Germany has to lie about emissions to placate government-funded environmentalists...

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I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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After The Singularity, Music Quality Will Be Even Crappier Than It Is Now

After The Singularity, Music Quality Will Be Even Crappier Than It Is Now

Aug 20 2010 | comment(s)

I took a moment to look at Ray Kurzweil's response to PZ Myers' second-hand dissection of his talk at the Singularity Summit(1) I attended last weekend (see The Singularity Stole My ATM Card) because Andrea Kuszewki is on the case and trying to keep things on track (like, can we reverse engineer the brain?
The Science Of The Root Beer Float

The Science Of The Root Beer Float

Aug 19 2010 | comment(s)

A few days ago, while talking about mundane business issues, I learned that today, August 19th, was the birthday of that famous childhood delight, the 'black cow', what would later be called a root beer float.

If you are not up on your carbonated beverage lore, root beer hails from the root of the sassafras tree or the sarsaparilla vine.  When the root mixture is mixed with water, sugar and yeast, it is sweetened and the yeast generates carbon dioxide and carbonates the water.
Evolutionary Psychologists Sex Up Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

Evolutionary Psychologists Sex Up Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs

Aug 19 2010 | comment(s)

Despite being one of psychology's most memorable concepts and a genuinely good idea, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, immortalized in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" and later Motivation and Personality, needs a makeover, say some researchers.  

Maslow's hierarchy says humans will fulfill basic needs before moving on to higher level ones.    If you're unemployed and losing your house because fuzzy 'jobs saved or created' statistics have no real value to you, for example, global warming will not be your biggest concern.   
An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

Aug 18 2010 | comment(s)

Anthropology rules!   

If a physicist tried to do a research study playing "World of Warcraft" for 3 years his peers would say, "Don't try to church it up, Tommaso, you're just playing World of Warcraft" but when an ethnographer does it, they get funding from the National Science Foundation, Intel, and write a book about it.
Scottish Researchers Get It Backwards, Turn Whisky Into Biofuels

Scottish Researchers Get It Backwards, Turn Whisky Into Biofuels

Aug 18 2010 | comment(s)

Researchers at Edinburgh Napier’s Biofuel Research Centre have done something unthinkable - they have used Scotch to fuel cars instead of violence-filled weekends.

Well, not Scotch specifically, rather whisky manufacturing waste from Glenkinchie Distillery (The Edinburgh Malt). Whew, the culture dodged a bullet there.     But it's also a good idea.  Scotch is a $5.5 billion industry in Scotland and Edinburgh Napier hit on the idea that whisky by-products could be an excellent resource for developing biobutanol, a next-generation biofuel with 30% more output power than ethanol. 

To understand how it works, you need a quick primer on whisky.
While Webb Bleeds, Space Science Hemorrhages

While Webb Bleeds, Space Science Hemorrhages

Aug 16 2010 | comment(s)

If Big Science complains about U.S. budget skepticism in the future, they are going to have to answer questions about the James Webb telescope.  It is currently 3 years and $1.5 billion over budget with no end in sight.   The latest projection, 2014 and $5 billion, has been greeted with so much derision that even the people behind the project in government have demanded an outside panel to oversee the boondoggle.