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Europe Ponders Another Year Trying To Combat Fall Armyworm Without Modern Pesticides

The polyphagous Spodoptera frugiperda (fall armyworm), a Lepidopteran pest, has European farmers...

The End To Universities Using Graduate Students As Piggy Banks Is Near

In the 1980s, the majority party in Congress saw demography claims that people with college educations...

Contrary To The Poltical Narrative, A Lot Of Government Science Funding Doesn't Go To Science

Every day we read a new headline warning us that American leadership is about to erode because...

Ohio State Endorses Probiotic Yogurt - Using Mouse Studies

A new paper from Ohio State University can be considered a giant endorsement for yogurt that makes...

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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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Does Global Warming Cause War?

Does Global Warming Cause War?

May 20 2025 | comment(s)

A new paper suggests that the world's largest polluters remain safe from the environmental damage they help create and the countries least to blame face the greatest threats because of, oddly, violent conflict.

This is counter-intuitive but it is the same argument we used to read about "virtual water". Those arguments are fine in a spreadsheet, it gets advocates worked up, but fails in the real world as readily as most economic projections do.(1) The authors argue that they correlate armed conflict and the environment.
Instead Of Genetically Engineering Bedbugs, EPA Should Re-Evaluate DDT

Instead Of Genetically Engineering Bedbugs, EPA Should Re-Evaluate DDT

May 19 2025 | comment(s)

In the 1950s, the global infestation of bed bugs was nearly eradicated, thanks to the pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, popularly known as DDT.

Due to outcry from environmentalists and concern about Rachel Carson's Silent Spring(1), and over the objections of scientists, the attorney who had been appointed to run the new Environmental Protection Agency created by President Nixon, William Ruckelshaus, banned it.(2)
Drones Work For Pesticide Applications

Drones Work For Pesticide Applications

May 14 2025 | comment(s)

Though organic™ farmers sell bucolic imagery of hoeing by hand and sunsets over fields of corn, it is just marketing to the gullible. All farmers who make more than enough money to pay their real estate taxes(1) are high-tech gurus. They use real-time data on the health of their land and their crops, they want to use just enough product to get the most food with the least environmental strain.

It's a long way from the $3 billion environmental imagery of farmers with leaky backpacks drenching plants in science and cackling like Scrooge McDuck on a pile of coins about it.
Pesticides: Environmental Threat Or Anti-Science Populism?

Pesticides: Environmental Threat Or Anti-Science Populism?

May 13 2025 | comment(s)

With former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dictating a lot of science policy for the Trump administration, anti-science activists have been quietly cheering even though they uniformly voted for his opposition.

They need a win. Claims that bees are dying off have been met with a resounding thud, we have more bees than at any time since records have been kept. Concerns about GMOs have fared as poorly. Trillions of animals have been fed using GMOs and neither any of them or the billions of people who ate food grown using them have gotten so much as a stomachache. Food activism likes to gloss over how often organic lettuce gives consumers E. coli.
If You Buy Magic Rocks, You're The Target Market For HoLDI-MS To Detect Nanoplastic

If You Buy Magic Rocks, You're The Target Market For HoLDI-MS To Detect Nanoplastic

May 09 2025 | comment(s)

Homeopathic levels of plastic are the latest environmental scaremongering fad (Nanoplastics! Microplastics!) dominating partisan corporate media when they are not suddenly simping for Trickle Down Economics, Vaccines, and Capitalism they distrusted just a short while ago.

Naturally, companies are rushing to keep you safe from plastic which can be detected in everything. If you want to detect it in your home and annoy your family talking about how much virtual cancer you want to avoid, A McGill team fired up the 3-D printer and made the hollow-laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (HoLDI-MS) test platform.

That's right, a plastic detector made from...plastic.
Only Polarized People Want Companies In Polarized Political Issues

Only Polarized People Want Companies In Polarized Political Issues

May 08 2025 | comment(s)

Last year, companies began to pull back from promoting their Diversity Equity Inclusion efforts and social justice activists blamed the incoming Trump administration. It has been a violation of federal law to discriminate for 60 years so to moderates it seemed odd to add a layer of discrimination in hiring, even one deemed positive. And they never considered it may have instead been done at all due to pressure from the previous administration.

The backlash was entirely predictable, but in both cases it was on the fringes. For no benefit, corporate CEOs were ignoring the 'stay out of it unless your customers are dominated by it' mantra.