In a recent study, scholars did a prospective review of charts of nearly 300 adult patients hospitalized for COVID-19 at Michigan Medicine during the pandemic's first wave between March and April 2020. They analyzed discharge locations, therapy needs at the time of release and if they needed durable medical equipment or other services..

The investigators found that 45 percent of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 experienced significant functional decline after being discharged.

An analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BC) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 AD) finds that Judeans commonly ate non-kosher - lacking scales or fins - fish.

This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today - and how well people adhered. Some things become part of culture because they are common. If people in Tennessee banned eating sharks it wouldn't be a huge loss. The ban on finless and scaleless fish deviated from longstanding Judean dietary habits, the authors note.

If you are still being paid and your job is so secure you can go on strike to demand that your employer not ask you to come into the office, you might think getting a vaccine is not only no big deal, but is a moral mandate more important than any other. You can dismiss people who are less enthusiastic(1) as vaccine deniers or something even worse for journalists and 94 percent of science academics; Republicans.

That's privilege talking. It's also untrue.

A recent report by the World Health Organisation on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and resulting disease COVID-19 glossed over China - the country is not even mentioned until page 15 - but the rest of the world is not so easily bullied.

The Mars Curiosity rover has been on the job since the summer of 2012, exploring Gale Crater on the red planet. It's slow going, it has driven only 25 kilometers to date.  

But it can be fun to watch, like its ascent of Mount Mercou, a broad outcrop of rocks on the northern flank of Mount Sharp near the center of the crater, on April 18th 2021.

Mt. Sharp is over 2 miles high and Curiosity is the size of a small car. In the picture, it is above a 20-foot-high cliff where it examined the exposed rocks.


Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Last year it was announced that the Chinese government was going to pay for a third season of the Russian TV show "Better Than Us", a drama about an advanced AI robot that has a neural network bordering on free will, no limitations on killing, and drops terminology about family so often it could be in a Vin Diesel movie.(1) It was an odd move for a totalitarian regime historically afraid of culture they don't control centrally.

When one thinks about chemistry, one doesn't usually consider quantum mechanics to play a part. Yet it does. When it boils down to it, all matter is a combination of a handful of subatomic particles and the forces holding them together. Chemistry, is in essence, applied physics. For decades, scientists have been trying to determine how to follow a chemical reaction from its initial state through all of its quantum states to its products. The hope was that, by doing so, researchers could understand the quantum dynamics that drive these reactions. Until now, it has mostly been speculation. However, a recent paper published in Nature by Liu et al. suggests that this may be possible.

The title of this post coincides with the one of a scientific report which was submitted for publication in Reviews in Physics last Sunday; and it is also the meaning of the acronym "AMVA4NewPhysics", the name of an European Union-funded Innovative Training Network I directed as scientific coordinator from 2015 to 2019. 

In the bizarre maze of modern cultural geopolitics, European progressives spend a lot of time rending garments about their history of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation while engaging in it - using financial blockades if former colonies do not comply.

If a small trading partner wants to export food to Europe, it cannot use any science that Europe bans, and European progressives have a level of control over science that American activists only wish they could attain.

There's one big big problem with that; it cripples small countries. They are already at a disadvantage that science can fix. Europe prevents them from using it.

When eco-terrorists destroyed a sugar beet field in Oregon a few years ago, the local organic industry group there said they were shocked anyone would be violent, even though the organic industry there demonized science daily. The attackers could not have been unknown to local groups, it is certain they were part of the community.

But how did they switch from misguided - mutagenesis chemical and radiation baths can be certified organic but GMOS are an abomination of nature - to violent?