On The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (which you can view a video of below, because podcast doesn't mean what it used to mean) Senator Bernie Sanders pledged to release government information about aliens. He says it's an issue for his wife.

It's also an issue for Democrats. When I wrote Science Left Behind with Dr. Alex Berezow in 2011 there was a lot we had to leave out. Why, I had wondered in articles in 2008-9, did our Scientist In Chief in President Obama surround himself with UFO believers, a vaccine denier, and a guy who thought girls couldn't do math?

The 'mind-muscle connection'. Ancient lore for bodybuilders, latest buzz for Instragram fitness followers, or more for aesthetes than athletes?

A new analysis in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living suggests that to lift heavier, or longer, it is better to focus on moving the weight itself - not your muscles.

It's a mystery why humans would go to a place even colder during an ice age, and live on giant rats. Yet they did. Most people don't associate Africa with mountain living today, but Ethiopians moved to the Bale Mountains during the Palaeolithic period 45,000 years ago.

At around 4,000 meters above sea level, the Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia are inhospitable region. There is a low level of oxygen in the air (making activist protests against astronomy by claiming sacred heritage on Mauna Kea in Hawaii even more silly, since it's higher) temperatures fluctuate sharply, and it rains a lot.

Does it work to communicate the scientific consensus to the public?

If anti-science beliefs about energy, medicine, and agriculture are any indication, sure.  We don't get bans on science in the U.S. the way Europe aggressively denies the consensus precisely because the American science community does a great job at talking with the public about data, exporting critical thinking is a big reason we are creating Science 2.0 Europe. European scientists have been impressed at how well we have beaten back ban-happy activists. They want to make positive changes there as well.

In 2012 we had an uneventful election which was so easy to predict absolutely no one neutral got it wrong. But it was heralded as a victory for scientific polling and a new era for predictive analysis.

You can always find bad news if you look for it.With the internet and social media we learn about every bad thing that happens throughout the entire world almost instantly. However the good news doesn't get shared so much. For instance how many of you are aware of the vast amount of work being done worldwide to restore eroded damaged landscapes (see below). How many people share them? Hardly anyone.

While working on my posts for the Debunking Doomsday blog, I come across a lot of good news that never gets into the mainstream media. Sharing some of them may help those of you who get depressed and scared by the journalist exaggerations and pessimism.

Restless Legs Syndrome is a condition that causes an overwhelming urge to move the legs. Patients complain of unpleasant symptoms such as tingling, burning and painful cramping sensations in the leg and more than 80 people of people who report restless legs syndrome say they experience their legs jerking or twitching uncontrollably, usually at night.

After California realized that their coastal counties not only led the country in vaccine denial for personal preference, they actually had more than the rest of the U.S. combined, the legislature passed a law eliminating exemptions for all but medical reasons. Sure enough, those same counties where rich white people believed vaccines cause autism suddenly had a surge in medical exemptions. Wealthy people found doctors willing to agree that their child needed a medical exemption even if they were not immune compromised.

Palaeontologists have discovered the world's largest parrot, standing up to 1m tall with a massive beak able to crack most food sources, and given it the name Heracles inexpectatus to reflect its Herculean myth-like size and strength and the unexpected nature of the discovery.

Being a giant in a country like New Zealand, well known for giant birds, is common. Moa dominated avifaunas but giant geese and adzebills shared the forest floor, while a giant eagle ruled the skies. But a giant extinct parrot? That is special. 

Mammals living in diverse types of environments, from ocean swimmers to mountain dwellers, have a diverse variety of protective skins adapted to the elements and now one of the largest comparative genomic studies to help determine the key molecular and evolutionary origins of mammalian adaptations seen in skin proteins found which genes, among the dozens of mammalian keratin genes, are required for living on land or in the sea.

The products of these keratin genes assemble to form the girders of the cytoskeleton in skin cells, called keratinocytes, that maintain a tight barrier between the body and the outside world.