Space weather and its changes to earth's magnetic fields has an outsized impact in Arctic regions through effects on electricity networks, mining operations and shipping.

A new technique called Fractional Derivative Rate (FDR) published in Space Weather has been used for analyzing fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field and found dramatic differences at different latitudes and different times of day.

The northernmost stations were more geomagnetically active at midday, while the activeness at the southernmost stations was highest at midnight. The largest differences between different times of day was observed in the northernmost measurement zone, in the Arctic Circle. 

It actually crossed our orbit already on the 8th. It is already moving upwards away from our orbit. Earth is catching up on it from behind and is closest on the 13th at 61 million kilometers. That's further away than Mars at its closest, and much further away than Venus at its closest.

The red top tabloids and other sensationalist press and YouTube videos are going wild about this, in many different languages too. It is my most often asked question at present from scared people, whether their lives are at risk because of this asteroid. It doesn't matter if they say it or write it in Russian, Spanish, or whatever language it is, or enlist the services of clairvoyants or astrologers to pronounce about it - it is still utter nonsense.

Given the use that people do of Google searches nowadays, and the rather special nature of my usual readership, I feel I may need to first of all apologize for the deceiving title of this post to the 80 to 90% of the visitors, who came to this page by searching for ways to become a member of a selection committee of miss Universe.  Sorry, you had it wrong - we are going to discuss parametric models here, not top models. But if you are happy to hear about the issues of fitting data with different functional forms, you are welcome to read on.

Drake’s Organic Spirits is touting it is the "first and only spirits line in the world to receive all five major health certifications." By "health", for four of them they simply mean manufacturing or cultural preferences; kosher, vegan, Non-GMO Project, and USDA Organic. (1) For the health-related one, gluten-free, there is no gluten in rum (sugar/molasses) anyway and since they use the same ingredients for their vodka as their rum, there is no gluten in that either.

And finally, by "spirits line" they mean the mixes that go in their rum and vodka, not the alcohol itself.

As the new Congress begins, it will soon discuss the comprehensive reports to the U.S. Senate on the disinformation campaign of half-truths, outright fabrications and misleading posts made by agents of the Russian government on social media in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Traveling to Mars is a ridiculous idea outside anything but "adventure" yet the U.S. administration under President Obama scrubbed his predecessor's return to the moon and replaced it with a program bearing his name, going to the red planet.

Whether or not that actually happens, science and technology are using that potential to experiment with growing food in space. 

A California lawmaker wants to ban paper receipts - those annoying long things that immediately get lost in a grocery bag - but instead of promoting the legitimate reason to get rid of them, they are useless, he invoked chemical scaremongering.

Death rates from cancer have been falling for 25 years, but the next generation may cause a tick back up.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death, behind heart disease. Both have age as risk factors but also behavioral components. For cancer, smoking has been the second greatest risk factor overall (and number one for lung cancer) but heart disease is also greatly impacted by fitness. And many cancers can be directly linked to metabolic problems. The current levels of obesity among young people mean that cancer deaths could be at a plateau and set to rise again in 20 years.

Bryn Jarald Henderson, D.O. (osteopath), claimed his stem cell treatments at Regenerative Medical Group and Telehealth Medical Group using amniotic fluid from women who have given birth via C-section could cause the lame to walk and cure kidney disease and whatever else. 

That was enough to get slapped down by the Federal Trade Commission and rightly so. Though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been forced to allow all manner of suspect claims in the food and supplement industry due to President Clinton's 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Law exempting supplement hucksters from any real oversight, overtly lying to  is another animal.