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Subsidy Stupidity - Smuggling Rice Into Thailand

Subsidy Stupidity - Smuggling Rice Into Thailand

Jul 16 2013 | comment(s)

How do you know subsidies are a dopey public policy? When it pays to smuggle rice into Thailand, even though Thailand already has enough rice to meet half the world's annual trade in the food staple.

The reason is that the Thai government is subsidizing production so heavily as part of a campaign platform that it is paying its farmers almost double the prevailing prices in Cambodia and Myanmar. Farmers in those neighboring countries are sending their grain across the border to be sold.

The equivalent of 750,000 tons of milled rice is being smuggled into Thailand a year, according to estimates of analysts and traders who have studied the illicit shipments.
Robot Farmers Would Solve A Lot Of Problems

Robot Farmers Would Solve A Lot Of Problems

Jul 16 2013 | comment(s)

Proponents of illegal immigration contend that they are doing jobs no one wants to do. Farmers worry about the cost of labor.

Both immigration and wage problems are solved by just using robots.  The Lettuce Bot, for example, can "thin" a field of lettuce in the time it takes about 20 workers to do the job by hand.

 A new generation of machines targets the last frontier of agricultural mechanization; fruits and vegetables destined for the fresh market, not processing, which have thus far resisted mechanization because they're sensitive to bruising.

And it would solve policy and labor issues too. Bring on the bots!
Doomsday Prophets Love To Believe Culling The Human Herd Is The Only Way

Doomsday Prophets Love To Believe Culling The Human Herd Is The Only Way

Jul 14 2013 | comment(s)

If environmental doomsday prophets had been around 10,000 years ago you would not exist.

Way back then, as a large tribe of people had begun to run out of food to hunt and berries to forage, some smart scientific person came up with the greatest idea anyone ever had - why don't we grow our own animals and vegetables?

A doomsday prophet in charge would have been talking about who they could kill off. They would have rationed and mitigated and legislated and agonized about who they could kill, preferably a bunch of people they did not like. Reason won out. Like the idea of a 1,500 calorie Big Kahuna Donut Burger? Thank science.
Chemist Takes Her Work Home - And Poisons Her Husband With It

Chemist Takes Her Work Home - And Poisons Her Husband With It

Jul 09 2013 | comment(s)

Who says the hard sciences lack female representation?

When it comes to murder using the awesome power of science, there is no gender disparity. 

Tianle Li, 44, a Bristol-Myers Squibb chemist for 10 years, has been found guilty of fatally poisoning her estranged husband, Xiaoye Wang, with thallium she got at work. She faces life in prison when she's sentenced Sept. 30th.

She was convicted of poisoning Wang with the highly toxic thallium while they were in the process of divorcing. He died early in 2011.
Throat Cancer Kills Former Fukushima Nuclear Plant Boss

Throat Cancer Kills Former Fukushima Nuclear Plant Boss

Jul 09 2013 | comment(s)

Masao Yoshida, 58, former boss of the Fukushima nuclear plant, "died of oesophagal cancer at 11:32am today at a Tokyo hospital," said a spokesman for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the group that owns the Fukushima plant which had meltdown concerns after towering waves from an earthquake and tsunami swamped cooling systems.

Despite panic stories and concern among the public and the media, Yoshida was a classical stoic Japanese and stayed at his post.  8 months later he was admitted to the hospital and was diagnosed with throat cancer. After surgery for that, he had a brain hemorrhage and surgery again.
Active Denial 2013 - The Military's Modern Microwave Pain Ray

Active Denial 2013 - The Military's Modern Microwave Pain Ray

Jun 27 2013 | comment(s)

In the 1980s, basic science super-advocate President Ronald Reagan got a pitch about creating a futuristic non-lethal way to subdue people without injuring them. He loved the idea and by the end of the decade it was being developed.

Most everyone has a microwave oven in their house. Its 2.45 GHz frequency gives it a long wavelength so it can cook your food by penetrating deeply. Obviously, cooking people is a bad idea so the microwave weapon they proposed had a much higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength. It would only only penetrate a little, where our layer of skin would absorb the microwaves and turn them into heat.
One True Pairing - A Paleontology Comic

One True Pairing - A Paleontology Comic

Jun 26 2013 | comment(s)

OTP is slang for One True Pairing, meaning your favorite combination of characters in a fandom.

Sci-ence.org does cool art about science and under the OTP heading they used a neat story about a mammal forerunner and an amphibian that lived (and died) together in an African burrow 250 million years ago. 
Is The Voynich Manuscript Not Gibberish?

Is The Voynich Manuscript Not Gibberish?

Jun 25 2013 | comment(s)

The Voynich manuscript has delighted conspiracy theorists and researchers since book dealer Wilfred Voynich found it in an Italian monastery in 1912. Its illustrations of naked nymphs, unidentifiable plants, astrological diagrams and pages and pages of text in an unidentified alphabet is considered gibberish, part of a Renaissance hoax to bilk rich, dumb people out of some money, by most, but an elaborate code by a persistent minority, mostly people who believe in "Chariots of the Gods" and Loch Ness Monster stuff.
Eco-Terrorists Destroy Beet Farm In Oregon

Eco-Terrorists Destroy Beet Farm In Oregon

Jun 25 2013 | comment(s)

 In what the FBI called “economic sabotage”, genetically modified 6,000 sugar beets from two fields in Southern Oregon’s Jackson County were destroyed this month.

Such modern hysteria makes the quaint clueless charm of the hipsters portrayed in "Portlandia" seem like a hundred years ago. At least in some counties these people are militant now.  The FBI isn't disclosing how the fields were destroyed - they know environmentalists lack imagination but love to copycat each other.

Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science

Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science

Jun 25 2013 | comment(s)

Modern science may seem slow and incremental but, as has always happened, small steps lead to awkward leaps and bounds - and revolutions. 

It's why we make goat noises at people who claim their bachelor's degree in engineering has led them to come up with a Theory of Everything.  You have to know a lot before you can even know what is missing, much less how to fill the gaps.
Don't Drink The Ancient Mine Water

Don't Drink The Ancient Mine Water

Jun 24 2013 | comment(s)

If you discovered water that could be millions or billions of years old, what would you do with it?

Drink it, of course.

A researcher who analyzed water found in a Canadian mine in Timmins, Ontario, did just that. The water is between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old, meaning it has been totally isolated for that long.

Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, geologist at the University of Toronto, dipped the tip of her finger in this water and tested it with her tongue. She found the ancient sample "very salty and bitter -- much saltier than seawater." No worries there.
The Junk Science Methods Of Wine Tasting

The Junk Science Methods Of Wine Tasting

Jun 24 2013 | comment(s)

While there's no question there is biology in taste buds, actual wine testing has proven to be in the astrology and psychological assessment range of accuracy.

Most people are not able to discern expensive wine from cheap and neither can wine sommeliers.  That's why various wine festivals rarely agree on wines - a gold medal at one can yield nothing at another.  It isn't just subjective, argues a small winery owner, it is almost random.
Cleanse Culture - It's Like The Opus Dei Of Medicine

Cleanse Culture - It's Like The Opus Dei Of Medicine

Jun 22 2013 | comment(s)

In the more urbane sectors of New York and Los Angeles and Austin or wherever you find Whole Foods–levels of gastronomic consciousness and sufficient disposable income (rich, liberal, anti-science) you'll find people on a cleanse diet.

Cleanses and their cousins, colonics, have about as much medical merit, declared Michael Gershon, a professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University’s medical school to The New Republic's Judith Shulevitz, as the acts of penance done by monks who’d “walk across Europe and hit themselves on the back to purge themselves of the plague.”
Machine Learning Using Artificial Neural Networks Predicts Advanced Brain Cancer Survival

Machine Learning Using Artificial Neural Networks Predicts Advanced Brain Cancer Survival

Jun 19 2013 | comment(s)

It's kind of meta that continuous "machine learning" using artificial neural networks (ANNs) may improve the ability to predict survival in patients with advanced brain cancers.

But there you go. 

The pilot study  used data on patients treated for advanced brain cancer at several hospitals. The results showed that ANNs beat standard prediction models for predicting patient survival - 84% versus 74% using statistical techniques. 

Artificial Neural Networks Predict Brain Cancer Prognosis - Science Codex
GMO Wheat In Oregon Isolated

GMO Wheat In Oregon Isolated

Jun 15 2013 | comment(s)

Not that most people were worried but the US Department of Agriculture has found that genetically modified wheat found in Oregon last month has remained in one field.

Genetically engineered wheat is not sold in the U.S. so the USDA is investigating how the engineered wheat got there. It is the same strain of Monsanto grain that passed tests a decade ago but it has never been submitted for approval to be sold.

Three countries, including Japan, suspended imports of western white wheat from the Pacific Northwest while the USDA investigates. That's okay, we don't buy produce from Fukushima prefecture either - at least our mutations are controlled.
2012 Drought Led To 2013 Nitrate Problem In Iowa

2012 Drought Led To 2013 Nitrate Problem In Iowa

Jun 07 2013 | comment(s)

2012 saw a drought in the American mid-west.  As a result, withered corn plants didn't suck up all the nitrogen spread on fields.  

But 2013 gave Iowa citizens the wettest April in 141 years, and that rain washed the unused fertilizer into rivers, the primary source of drinking water for 45 percent of the state's population. 

The problem will pass, but nitrate levels will always be a worry which has reached levels never seen in Iowa. Nitrogen is crucial because corn requires so much of it but Iowa is especially vulnerable to nitrate level concerns because about 90 percent of the state is dedicated to agriculture.
'Pinpoint Accuracy' Says The North Pole Will Soon Be At 40 Degrees South Of The Equator

'Pinpoint Accuracy' Says The North Pole Will Soon Be At 40 Degrees South Of The Equator

Jun 07 2013 | comment(s)

Have you heard of volcanoes, earthquakes and British weather?

If so, maybe you can blame the North Pole if you don't like any of those things. If you have been asleep for 110 years or never read anything about continental drift, you may not know the North Pole is moving.

This video alleges that the North Pole will soon be in Siberia at this rate. The video blogger says his calculations have shown it moving 161 miles in the last 6 months, a mile a day toward the south, and it will have migrated 40 degrees across the northern hemisphere soon. Then the poles will shift at high speed over the equator until it reaches 40 degrees south.
John Edward Mack's Weird World Of Alien Abductions

John Edward Mack's Weird World Of Alien Abductions

Jun 06 2013 | comment(s)

John Edward Mack, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, believed lots of people had been abducted by aliens.

Never heard of him? Most people haven't. His fame as an Ivy League believer in alien abductions was more novelty than anything enduring but 'experiencers - alien abductees don't want to be called abductees - said he was “the most important scientist ever to dare to admit the truth about the abduction phenomenon.” 
What Won't Fix Our Nuclear Waste Issue - Another Government Agency

What Won't Fix Our Nuclear Waste Issue - Another Government Agency

Jun 05 2013 | comment(s)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been stacked to make sure that nuclear power in America is hindered as much as possible. Without a proper storage policy, nuclear power is barely a blip on America's radar as a solution to creating clean energy.

And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is being run, for the second time, by a non-physicist who got the job because they were opposed to the solution that decades of scientists agreed was the best method for storage of nuclear waste.
Potato Science Will Help Feed Ethiopia

Potato Science Will Help Feed Ethiopia

Jun 05 2013 | comment(s)

With unpredictable annual rainfall and drought about once every five years, the potato is becoming a more important crop there.

Semagn-Asredie Kolech, a Cornell doctoral candidate, shuttles between Ethiopia and Ithaca to examine and research efficient agricultural practices. “The potato is a good strategy crop for global warming. It has a short growing season, it offers higher yields, it’s less susceptible to hail damage, and you can grow 40 tons per hectare. With wheat and corn, you don’t get more than 10 tons a hectare.”