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Ozempic Is A Kickstart, Not Magic - Here Is How To Make Weight Loss Stick

Publicly doctors say all of the things you'd expect a group with heavy state and federal scrutiny...

Spring Forward Fall Back: We Hate Changing Clocks But Hate One Change Most

In 1918, with Gen Black Jack Pershing off to France to stop the Germans in World War I, the United...

Canadian Epidemiologists Claim Processed Foods Cause Bad Kids

A cohort analysis of preschoolers in Canada has led the authors of the paper to call for bans...

What AI Can't Do: Humanity’s Last Exam

By this time 26 years ago, the "Dot-Com Bubble" was ready to burst. People who wanted to raise...

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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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Weekend Science: Learn To Echolocate Like A Bat

Weekend Science: Learn To Echolocate Like A Bat

Sep 01 2013 | comment(s)

Okay Daredevil, this will take some time and some work, but so does playing a guitar - a group of biologists have determined that humans can learn to echolocate the way bats do.

It's well known that blind people develop keener hearing and they even learn to help navigate using echoes of sounds, but that ability to determine locations spatially is suppressed by the 'precedence effect' - which occurs when a second sound arrives rapidly and becomes fused with the first so that the first is dominant.  
Weekend Science: Women Are Better Off Without Bras, Says Male French Scientist

Weekend Science: Women Are Better Off Without Bras, Says Male French Scientist

Aug 31 2013 | comment(s)

It's time to stop oppressing breasts, according to a massive 15-year investigation by professor Jean-Denis Rouillon, from the University of Besançon in eastern France.

Bras are a false necessity, he said in April, and his evidence was gained by carefully measuring changes in the orientation of breasts belonging to hundreds of women aged between 18 and 35 using a slide rule and a caliper. At least we think. The results weren't published, he just said them on a radio show, but that was enough to get him covered in misogynistic sites like the New York Times and Reuters. Oh, and most importantly, my blog.
Weekend Science: The Sunscreen Value Of Beards

Weekend Science: The Sunscreen Value Of Beards

Aug 30 2013 | comment(s)

Facial hair can be a status symbol - as Sikh women say, they know their men have a full motor under the hood - but does it protect against sun damage, as commonly believed?

The sun's most harmful rays are UV - ultraviolet - radiation. Though they are too high in frequency for us to see, that they are still hitting you is why you can still get burned on a day when the sun is not shining brightly. In Australia, which has "one of the world's highest incidences of UVR-related conditions and illnesses", like skin cancer and melanoma, researchers did a study to examine the truth of that hair-protection business.
EPA Sued By Animal Activists - But Is It Real?

EPA Sued By Animal Activists - But Is It Real?

Aug 29 2013 | comment(s)

Friends don't sue each other, right?

So it would seem to be a bad idea for animal rights groups to sue the EPA because the EPA is going to not do something they never started doing anyway. Activists need the EPA to enforce their goals, they have no authority without the EPA or various other federal laws and bodies to oversee laws that highly-paid lobbyists convince lawmakers to pass.

While it might lead to hurt feelings if you and I sued each other, for activist groups and the government, it is not only smart strategy, they sometimes plan it together in advance. Why? Once a lawsuit is filed, the EPA can 'settle' - since the EPA is an appointed body outside lawmakers and the public, as long as the White House does not object to their settlement, it will be fine.
Organoids Get Cerebral

Organoids Get Cerebral

Aug 29 2013 | comment(s)

Organoids, those laboratory-created tissue structures designed to mimic human organ functions, are now getting into your head.
Undermine Science By Redefining It

Undermine Science By Redefining It

Aug 29 2013 | comment(s)

A common technique of activists and people who generally distrust science and want to undermine it is to clog up the discourse with sophistry, like "it depends on how you define X", or they claim that their personal belief means science is not science, but rather morality.