Mosquitoes spread malaria but because wealthy nations wiped it out before declaring insecticides bad, it's easy to forget that insecticides are the only effective way to control the mosquitoes that spread a disease which still kills 400,000 each year in developing nations.

For poorer countries, there is good news. Scientists have created a new crystal form of the pyrethroid pesticide deltamethrin that is up to 12 times more effective against mosquitoes. Insecticides such as deltamethrin and DDT can prevent the spread of diseases carried by mosquitoes and are often sprayed indoors and on bed nets. Though DDT, for example, is banned in the United States for political reasons, our EPA writes the book on how to spray it indoors where malaria still exists. 

This year’s Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for a genuine revolution in modern science. The Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing tool allows scientists to precisely alter DNA by cutting and pasting sections of it.

A study using Ontario's 34 Public Health Units over the course of two months found that wearing a mask can have a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19.

No argument there, anyone would be worried if their surgeon showed up in the operating room without a mask on, but the economists go a little further and claim mask mandates are the reason. They statistically associate mandates with a 25 percent reduction in COVID-19 cases.

For some reason today I remembered that 11 years ago (wow time flies) I wrote a two-parts piece on advices for PhD students doing a thesis in experimental particle physics. As I checked it out, I found that I mostly share the views I had back then (TBH that's not necessarily a good thing - consistency requires you to be as ignorant as you were earlier on). Since I think that stuff I posted over 10 years ago are otherwise lost in oblivion and not picked up by generic google searches, I decided it is time to recycle that text - here it is below, unamended but collated into a single longish article. Enjoy!

A new paper seeks to take some of the guesswork out of subjective "sustainable" diets. Activists like True Health Initiative try to claim that a meatless diet is better for human health and the environment, for example, but their corporate sponsorships lead to skepticism. Claims about the emissions impact of meat production are often exaggerated by 700 percent. Environmentalists have never visited a farm if they think all grazing land could be growing tomatoes.

Have you been told you have a greater risk of heart disease based on family history? What does that even mean?

A small percentage of farmers engage in an alternative form of agriculture termed "organic" because they believe it is a more natural manufacturing process, since it was used in the past.

The scientific flaws in that logic are well known, but the higher profits and environmental effects are real. Though California has only a tiny amount of organic produce, it requires 300 percent more pesticides to grow the same food as it would if they used regular farming. Organic farmers believe the higher profits are worth the higher economic and environmental costs.

Like with kids, when it comes to galaxies adolescent blemishes disappear over time.

Exponential disks, common in spiral galaxies, dwarf elliptical galaxies and some irregular galaxies, appear smooth and have an exponential fade. How did they get it way?

It's not possible to know but using inference, simulations help provide insight. 


Graohic showing how two sample star orbits are scattered from nearly circular orbits by the gravity of massive clumps within galaxies. Image: Illustration by Jian Wu/Iowa State University. Galaxy image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Marco Fulvio Barozzi (b.

Bristol-Meyers Squibb has received the first drug regimen approved for mesothelioma in 16 years and the second FDA-approved systemic therapy for mesothelioma has gotten U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

The combination therapy is Opdivo (nivolumab) and Yervoy (ipilimumab) for the first-line treatment of adults with malignant pleural mesothelioma that cannot be removed by surgery.