A new study worries that teabags containing plastic come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics.

Opposing views on e-cigarettes, witnesses interrupting members of Congress and even a wink. A hearing Tuesday on the epidemic of respiratory injuries linked to vaping was one unusual show.

Since the spring, hundreds of reports have surfaced about severe lung injuries associated with vaping and using e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified at least 530 cases, including at least seven deaths, and states have reported two others.

In recent weeks, as the news crept wider into the headlines, it galvanized state and federal public health officials to warn people against vaping until the crisis is better understood.

Everyone is a mutant but some are prone to diverge more than others. The difference is largely based on two influences. One is the age of a child's parents. A child born to a father who is 35 years old will likely have more mutations than a sibling born to the same father at 25. 

The second is that the effects of parental age on mutation rates differ considerably among families -- much more than had been previously appreciated. In one family, a child may have two additional mutations compared to a sibling born when their parents were ten years younger. Two siblings born ten years apart to a different set of parents may vary by more than 30 mutations.

Impostor syndrome is where people feel like frauds even if they are actually capable and well-qualified. A new group of interviews finds that impostor syndrome is quite common and uncovers one of the best -- and worst -- ways to cope with such feelings.

If human beings go to Mars, they need food - and that means macaroni and cheese. 

Currently, plastic packaging can keep food safe at room temperature for up to twelve months but a new paper in the journal Food and Bioprocess Technology could keep ready-to-eat macaroni and cheese safe and edible with nutrients for up to three years. It's proof-of-concept but they may have time to get it right, if delays and development of the James Webb Space Telescope are an indication of the glacial timescale that NASA will need to send humans back to space.

Though the $35 billion supplement industry claims to be superior to vaccines and other medicine, the unknown constituents of shady health products could be causing cognitive defects, finds a new study.

Turmeric, a commonly used spice sometimes even injected by Americans who don't understand medicine, is sometimes adulterated with a lead-laced chemical compound in Bangladesh, one of the world's predominant turmeric-growing regions.

As young children worldwide protest over climate change, I thought I'd do a post about Bernie Sanders' Green Climate Change plan.

(click to watch on Youtube)

Bernie Sanders' idea is one of many ideas but one of the ones that promises the most radical action most quickly. He plans to spend $16 trillion on it, and claims that all of this will be recovered, that it will pay for itself.

This is another study that has hit the news, this time scaring people with the idea that the whole of the US may lose all its birds rapidly in the near future.

Short summary - studies like this are hard to do and the 3 billion figure should be treated cautiously - there can be observer effects. If accurate, the reductions are mainly in the most common birds, and some of them nuisance species such as the starlings. There is no possibility of the most common birds in the US going extinct.

This is a story that is scaring some people. New research that is suggesting that perhaps the climate is more sensitive to CO2 than previously thought - but this is way jumping the gun. We get many results like this sometimes running too hot, sometimes too cold. Only the ones that go too hot hit the headlines. But the IPCC will look at all the evidence with their next high level review in 2021. Meanwhile we should use the values for the high level review in 2018 which remains our best estimate to date.