I was not on the Nate Silver fan train the way many people are, I thought it was wishy-washy to predict a presidential race with 68 percent confidence in October of 2012 when I called it 100 percent in July. His stats averaging led him to be no more accurate than a European betting service using nothing but money and every other statistical modeler was correct also, so technically he was nothing special. In this segment, he was latched onto by people who were just looking for new ways to affirm their political bias, a common plight among science media.

Impact factor, the relative authority of a journal based on article quality, is maligned by people who can't get into top-tier publications but though it was originally created to help libraries know which journals are worth paying for, articles in high impact factor journals are now considered a barometer of quality for government funding agencies, who can't be tasked with analyzing the merits and editorial policies of 25,000 different publications.

New York environmental activists, including those employed by the state of New York, said Indian Point nuclear power plant should close for 42 days this summer to protect fish.

Since New York is already concerned about brownouts and blackouts, closing a reliable source of clean energy is one of the stranger environmental plans this year. 

Nuclear plants recycle water, of course, and environmentalists are worried fish will die in warm water. Engineers proposed putting up screens to keep fish away but that made too much sense for the Department of Environmental Conservation, which thinks overpaying for fracking-derived energy from neighboring Pennsylvania at high spot market prices is better for its citizens when they run out of electricity.

55 million years ago when the Earth was in a near-runaway climate state, dangerously overheated by greenhouse gases, the Arctic Ocean was a large lake connected to the greater oceans by the Turgay Sea.

Then 50 million years ago, the channel was blocked and that body of water suffered from a lack of exchange with outside waters and became a hot lake. But its waters were also then loaded with excess nutrients and that became the perfect habitat for a small-leaved fern called Azolla. 

Millions of years ago, the rivers flowing westward across northern Brazil reversed course and began to flow toward the Atlantic. Thus the mighty Amazon was born.

Some have suggested that the about-face was triggered by gradual changes in the flow of hot, viscous rock deep beneath the South American continent. But new computer models hint that the U-turn resulted from more familiar geological processes taking place at Earth’s surface—in particular, the persistent erosion, movement, and deposition of sediment wearing away from the growing Andes.

AstraZeneca has probably the best antibiotic pipeline in the industry.  It's also a business they no longer want to be in.

Their departure would follow on the heels of Pfizer exiting that segment, leaving GlaxoSmithKline and Merck. 

Why? Well, pharmaceuticals in general in crisis. I have likened it to the US steel industry in the 1970s. Critics think if they are still making money, it must be okay and they can hammer on them indefinitely. But that isn't how business works. If government-controlled academia has to take over pharmaceutical development, we are doomed. 

Nothing is stranger than watching environmental journalists rationalize why they are flying off to yet another conference on climate change. They have to weigh it carefully, they say, and agonize over it, but eventually they determine the 'relationships' are worth the emissions damage they cause.

Then they will munch on catered food and write articles insisting business people should not fly so much. It's 'Why it's right for Sting's wife Trudie Styler to take helicopters 80 miles to visit organic farms' rationalization that Big Green tends to do when it suits them. 

The government set out to fix health care a few years ago - and what everyone feared about government making things worse has come to pass. They made it impossible for anyone except the government and entrenched businesses to exist.

That means some of the brightest minds in the world won't bother to try and help.

At his yearly CEO summit, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla spoke with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and touched on what Google might do in health care, since that is a hot topic.

Viruses, pesticides, beekeeping practices, pollination service and varroa mites all contribute to managed commercial honeybee colony health.