Broadly speaking, radioactivity is not something one should mess with just as a pastime. Indeed, ionizing radiation has the potential of causing carcinogenic mutations in your cells DNA, as well as produce damage to cell tissue. Indeed, it makes me chuckle that until 50 years ago or so kids could play with it by purchasing stuff like that shown below...



If you know what you are dealing with and take the necessary precautions, however, radiation _can_ be fun to study at home. The tools and the primary matter are not found at the corner grocery, though, so you need to have a specific interest in it before you get ready to start. 

How many emails are in your inbox? If the answer is thousands, or if you often struggle to find a file on your computer among its cluttered hard drive, then you might be classed as a digital hoarder.

In the physical world, hoarding disorder has been recognized as a distinct psychiatric condition among people who accumulate excessive amounts of objects to the point that it prevents them living a normal life. Now, research has begun to recognize that hoarding can be a problem in the digital world, too.

In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration went after  Valley Processing, Inc. of Sunnyside, Washington, along with the company’s owner and president, Mary Ann Bliesner, due to inorganic arsenic and patulin toxins at levels that can pose health risks to consumers. Arsenic can be found naturally in many fruits, of course, a known science fact to everyone but Dr. Oz, but at high doses can be harmful.

A new paper claims that people vaping instead of smoking are putting their hearts at risk but their study does not show that. Instead, they mixed chemicals in Petri dishes with heart cells and used mice. Both of those are fine exploratory experiments but they are scientifically invalid to make the conclusions the authors make in their press release.

A lot has changed since the age of dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago. Humans didn't exist and dinosaurs are gone. Yet crocodiles are still here and, unlike humans, have not evolved much by comparison.
They even look similar to ones from the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago. 

A new study find that it's due to a 'stop-start' pattern of evolution, governed by environmental change. This pattern of evolution known as "punctuated equilibrium" is generally slow, but occasionally means faster evolution because the environment has changed. This new research suggests that their evolution speeds up when the climate is warmer, and that their body size increases.

An American might ask if the mayonnaise is spicy while an Asian will warn them they only think they want the hot sauce on Asian food. A woman is more likely to be better at detecting bitter tastes than men.

The difference is not cultural, that some people are timid when it comes to food, is it anatomical. A new study found that Danes aren't quite as good as Chinese at discerning bitter tastes - and the reason is biology. So if you are more sensitive to the bitter taste found in broccoli, Brussels sprouts and dark chocolate, you now know why.

Smoking is on the decline, and that's a good thing. The evidence is clear that smoking kills. But what about tobacco? A few years ago groups like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control began to suggest nicotine was as harmful as smoking; meaning it was not the smoke at all. There was no evidence of that, it was only epidemiological correlation.

It's well-known that infectious disease mitigation worksl if people voluntarily follow the rules and guidelines of experts but what has happened instead is resentment of what some perceive as social authoritarian decision-makers calling the shots.

What would be better for everyone at risk of respiratory distress from COVID-19 is understanding why and how avoiding social contact and regular hand washing will help. Government can mandate things but we may be getting less adherence to guidelines because it is top-down rules, and in the case of some politicians hypocrisy after issuing them, rather than personal commitment.

It has been clear for a while that, at least in the U.S., the only way out of the coronavirus pandemic will be through vaccination. The rapid deployment of coronavirus vaccines is underway, but how many people need to be vaccinated in order to control this pandemic?

I am a computational biologist who uses data and computer models to answer biological question at the University of Connecticut. I have been tracking my state’s COVID-19 epidemic with a computer model to help forecast the number of hospitalizations at the University of Connecticut’s John Dempsey Hospital.