Epidemiologists assured us S-shaped curves would be the case for COVID-19, but many countries had decreases of infection numbers "social distancing" and a linear rise of infection curves after the first peak.

A new paper offers an explanation for the linear growth of the infection curve.

Traditional epidemiological models required so much fine-tuning of parameters that they became scientifically meaningless. Linear growth, with an R number at 1, in the epidemiology models that were being used would have to mean reducing contacts by the same exact and constant percentage. That was never going to happen outside the world of statistical hope.

There are disparities in many fields of academia; physics has fewer women, for example, while psychology has fewer men. Some contend that is due to discomfort in not having equal representation.

But fewer members of the same sex is assuaged if there is more money, and that is the case for female academic surgeons. They are outnumbered by men but get more NIH funding than men do. They get nearly 50 percent more R01 grants.

Historically, lung cancer incidence rates have been higher in Black people than White people among men of all ages and among younger women, likely reflecting historically higher smoking rates in Black adults.

That is no longer the case, and in women the trend has even reversed.

That is a big win for science and health nonprofit groups like ours, which have warned about the perils of smoking for our entire existence.

The majority of today's plant-based food was created using scientific optimization of traits - genetic engineering. Watermelons, bananas, tomatoes, lettuce, and corn are all great examples of genetically engineered foods that few realize are not natural even if they carry an "organic" manufacturing process sticker.

Despite that success, government-funded scientists are reporting less funding than ever and the reason is largely because the private sector has done so well. It may also be because the war against agriculture is being waged by those often in the same political tribe as those who want to pursue a career in academia. No one wants to be shamed at parties because they do science that a giant chunk of people educated by marketing dislike.

If you or someone you know have gotten a cancer diagnosis, you know one of the first tests is to see if it has spread to your lymph nodes.

That is because they will often be a harbinger of spread to distant organs. Most cancer deaths happen after cancer spreads to other parts of the body through a process known as metastasis. This occurs when cancer cells from the primary tumor spread through blood vessels or migrate through lymphatic vessels before entering the blood.

Are smiles, scowls, or sympathetic sighs universal across cultures? Studies from Namibia to Bhutan have attempted to find out, but the findings have been too inconsistent to take seriously.

It may be because asking asking participants in a remote culture to match depictions of Western facial, bodily, or vocal expressions to situations or words in their native language is not the way to go.