Honeybees die each year in great quantities and some years are worse than others. Since they are a big business, primarily as roving pollinators for crops that need them at a certain time (like almonds(1) there is always a concern about how to keep losses low.

Causes of death were once a moving target. For as long as records of bees have been kept, there have been reports of extraordinary die-offs, recorded all the way back to the Dark Ages. Now we know the big problem are pests like varroa mites but there are also concerns about harsh winters, land use, and some environmental groups even try to raise money claiming it might be pesticides used on crops.

(Inside Science) -- When you first hear it, a cicada chorus may sound like simple buzzing. But to a cicada, that cacophony is full of meaning. 

There are three species in Brood X, the cohort of 17-year cicadas now emerging in much of the eastern U.S. Members of each species congregate with their own kind and talk to each other with their own species-specific sounds. Males sing to court females and "jam" the songs of other males, while females make clicks with their wings to encourage or repel suitors. 

Humans can learn to decode these sounds. John Cooley, a biologist at the University of Connecticut, can speak cicada so well he can seduce insects of either sex. He uses his voice to imitate males and gentle finger snaps to imitate females. 

As Carl Sagan once said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

You may have recently read some extraordinary claims that total sperm count has dramatically declined among “Western” men and that endocrine disrupters - but only the synthetic kind, not natural ones - are the reason. The extraordinary evidence is lacking.

Scientists from the Harvard GenderSci Lab are putting the brakes on the alleged “apocalyptic” trends in male reproduction. 

When I was a child growing up in Kolkata, I would hear stories about the European colonisation of Bengal – the precolonial name of India’s West Bengal. These were selective narratives from a particularly male perspective, and presented colonisers as transforming social benefactors installed to provide a civilising influence. The rich histories of Indian philosophy that were once associated with religion, education and health were replaced by the colonial philosophy of conversion, modernising and improvement.

Many new mothers will become pregnant again, and given that a new paper argues for continue anti-smoking campaigns after children are born to reduce the risk of future preterm births.

The longitudinal analysis of surveys results examined the records and histories across 23 years, of 63,540 Australian women with more than one child, who smoked during their first pregnancy.

Due to unanswered questions into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, both the U.S. government and scientists have called for a deeper examination into the validity of claims that a virus could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Most people in the tech world are well aware of quantum computing. Sci-Tech Daily mentions that quantum computing utilizes the power of quantum mechanics to perform calculations exponentially faster than the processors we currently have today. Quantum computing uses elements smaller than an atom to complete its processes.

Activist groups that endorse the organic manufacturing and are opposed to agricultural biotechnology (GMOs and gene edited crops and animals) try to claim that the Genetic Literacy Project is a “corporate front group that was formerly funded by Monsanto” — a statement found on the SourceWatch site owned by Democratic political party activists is one example.

It’s not true but what is true is that these accusations are a collaboration between extremists financed by the far left fringe of the organic community in partnership with the Church of Scientology and anti-vaccine scaremongers like Robery F. Kennedy, Jr. 

As we exit the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health care community must consider how to apply lessons learned over the past year to improve quality of care and patient outcomes across the health care spectrum.  One critic

One little-known secret in the medical community is that it is not greedy doctors or insurance companies or hospitals that made health care so expensive. It is unnecessary tests and procedures doctors and hospitals must do in order to check off the boxes for the inevitable lawsuit. They are waiting to pounce on doctors and hospitals while wrapping themselves in the flag of 'holding the medical establishment accountable' and that keeps doctors and hospitals doing some things twice. And some things doctors know are unneeded but must do.

From neurosurgery to dermatology, nearly all doctors practice this "defensive medicine" and it isn't, as conspirators claim, to make more money - it is to avoid blame if something goes wrong with a patient that was basically unavoidable.(1)