The Analogy: A Powerful Instrument For Physics...
What Will It Take For Real Farming In Space?
Up-to-date With The Big Bang, Mass, And Protons
First Nation Shell Middens And True Oysters
Earlier this year I mentioned here that I would be writing an article on how... Read >
In politics, one way to make your belief in alternative energy seem feasible... Read >
If you read almost any science blog other than mine, you're probably aware... Read >
Minnesota is having a challenging year, so challenging they are approaching... Read >
Are you in the target market to eat insects? The easiest uptake will be by... Read >
Flying Drones With Particle Detectors
Nowadays we study the Universe using a number of probes and techniques. Over the course of the past 100 years we moved from barely using optical telescopes, that give us access to the flux of visible photons from galaxies, supernovae, and other objects of interest, to exploiting photons of any ...
The Nobel Prize And The Role Of AI In Scientific Advancement
The 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, who many have called “the godfather of AI”. The award seems apt for the time we are in. In the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’s press release, they explained their decision to award the prize to the pair ...
Understanding Expected Limits, Observed Limits, Exclusion Regions In Particle Physics Graphs
I recently got engaged in a conversation with a famous retired mathematician / cosmologist about the phenomenology of Higgs bosons in the Standard Model of particle physics, and very soon we ended up discussing a graph produced by the CMS collaboration at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, which details ...
Establishing Benchmarks For Use Of AI In Fundamental Science: Two Proposals To Move Forward
These days I am in the middle of a collaborative effort to write a roadmap for the organization of infrastructures and methods for applications of Artificial Intelligence in fundamental science research. In so doing I wrote a paragraph concerning benchmarks and standards. I thought this could be ...
Mercury Emissions Are In Decline Yet Doomsday Prophets Claim They Are Up
If you read environmental groups, we are closer to our doom than ever. Bees are nearly extinct, cell phones are causing cancer, and hydroelectric power is devastating the land.None of those are true yet they all have claims found in journals and in media. So it has been with mercury emissions, ...
Simulation Predicts 50% Of Recurring El Niño Events Could Be Extreme In 25 Years
The recurring El Niño phenomenon was in full force from mid-2023 to mid-2024 and as predicted it brought higher temperatures. In this case, it brought the highest temperatures since accurate records have been kept, for 12 straight months.A team of climate scientists created a numerical simulation ...
Lithium-Ion Batteries Need Help To Enter The 21st Century, Manganese May Be It
With a 4th generation nuclear plant finally getting built in the U.S., 30 years after the federal government blocked all advanced energy research, there are so few old environmentalists still in power that alternative energy wishful thinking can make way for science. They aren't going without a ...
Does Air Quality Cause Postpartum Depression?
New mothers are under a lot of pressure. They are told they have to breastfeed and if they don't, the formula they use may cause their child to have worse grades in school. And if the government shuts down formula factories for no coherent reason and imports aren't allowed because the identical ...
Non-Europeans Opt Out Of Genomic Databases, Leading To Lack Of Diversity
When Senator Elizabeth Warren had her claims of native ancestry debunked by DNA testing, it was a warning shot to everyone who identifies that way - don't take a test. Most native Americans had long said that anyway, they knew how biology worked better Washington DC staffers. After five generations ...
Smarter Soybeans Mean Affordable Food In Poorer Regions
It is easy for wealthy countries to spend $135 billion on an organic food process that uses higher quantities of older, more toxic pesticides at greater environmental strain, because it is a niche luxury item.In countries that are poor, which often means outside natural breadbasket climates ...
Bacterial Genes Can Be Genetic Shapeshifters
Prokaryotes, single-cell organisms such as bacteria, undergo inversions which cause a physical flip of a segment of DNA and change an organism’s genetic identity the way you might change a wig. They can occur within a single gene, in defiance of the more common 'one gene codes for one protein' ...
Wuhan Seafood Market: Evidence Of COVID-19 Origins Revealed
When COVID-19 broke out, it was a US election year and that meant a lot of common sense gave way to politics. Democrats charged that then-President Trump was putting lives at risk by telling FDA to fast-track a vaccine, after insisting that closing airports to China was racist and xenophobic because ...
What Next For Messenger RNA (mRNA)? Maybe Inhalable Vaccines
No one likes getting a needle but most want a vaccine. A new paper shows progress for messenger RNA (mRNA), that can be sprayed and inhaled thanks to improved lipid-polymer nanoparticle technology for holding mRNA that is stable when nebulized and successfully delivers aerosols, liquid droplets ...
Toward A Single Dose Smallpox And Mpox Vaccine With No Side Effects
Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his US followers over the last 25 years have staunchly opposed vaccines, latching on to any claim that they cause autism or should be available for lawsuits even if they harm no one.They really won't like a new experimental vaccine for Smallpox and Monkeypox ...
Even After Getting Cancer, Quitting Cigarettes Leads To Greater Longevity
Cigarettes are the top lifestyle risk factor for getting cancer, though alcohol and obesity have begun to close the gap as awareness of the risks of cigarettes, coupled with more nicotine smoking cessation and harm reduction tools, have caused cigarette use to decline.Even if you get cancer, quitting ...
Testicular Cancer Treatment: What Is The Gold Standard?
Testicular cancer is the most common solid tumor in young men, with approximately 10,000 diagnoses in the U.S. each year.New treatments are always in development, often with the goal of less open surgery, but a new analysis of 165 patients with clinical stage I or II testicular cancer and no prior ...
The Toxic Masculinity Of Disney Movies
Once upon a time, stories were just stories. They were fantasies that took people to a new world. In the 21st century, cultural pundits insisted that books, films, video games and television shape our personalities. It began in the 1980s when Democrats wanted to censor lyrics in music, and ...
Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela - The Secret History Of Organized Crime In 1343
Italy as we know it today had not been such since the days of the Roman Empire. You can see that last remnant today in the existence of The Vatican smack in the middle of Rome but at one point they held a substantial amount of territory. Like Americans, Italians are inherently rebellious. ...
The Notion Of Nations: Does A Nationalist Pol Know What A Nation Is?
Our outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is due to our
preference for democracy over autocracy, and to the danger of Russia
pushing further westward into Europe. Perhaps most of all, we abhor the
idea of one country violating the borders of another ...
Thanksgiving Science: Did COVID-19 Revive Family Dinners?
If cultural pundits can invent an Anthropocene Epoch then a Digital Epoch makes even more sense. In 2000, only in Japan did you see people on trains four inches from other humans chatting other humans on other trains, most of whom they'd never meet. Now that is everyone in the developed world.COVID ...
AI And The Poetry Problem
Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but it isn't happening soon, Large Language Models are fine for a few things but limited in most. That is why Ben Affleck can talk in a hurry and assure fellow film creatives that their jobs are safe. ...
And The USERN Prize Winners For 2024 Are....
USERN (Universal Scientific Education and Research Network, https://usern.org) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that supports interdisciplinary science across borders. Founded in 2015 by a distinguished Iranian Immunologist, Prof. Nima Rezaei, USERN has grown to acquire a membership ...
ChatGPT Is Cheaper In Medicine And Does Better Diagnoses Even Than Doctors Using ChatGPT
General medicine, routine visits and such, have gradually gone from M.D.s to including Osteopaths and now Physicians Assistants with no decline in quality, and Large Language Models, colloquially called "Artificial Intelligence", like ChatGPT can assist at very low cost.A recent experiment found ...
We Stopped RFK Jr When Obama Wanted Him, We Stopped Him With Trump, Let's Do It Again
In 2008, fresh off a decisive victory over Democratic establishment candidate Senator Hillary Clinton in the primary and one over highly-regarded Senator John McCain in the general election, President-elect Obama began to engage in worrisome behavior.His transition team, those who set the tone ...
Let’s get something straight: your obsession with trans people using bathrooms is a distraction... more »
This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture... more »
Sheer beauty — a beautiful Euhoplites ammonite from Folkstone, UK. These lovelies have a pleasing... more »
March is here, and with it begins a season of intense travel for me - something which for some... more »
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