Bathynomus Vaderi: The Sea Bug Of Your New 'Star Wars' Nightmare

Jan 15 2025 | comment(s)

If a giant bọ biển (“sea bug”) in Vietnam hasn't been 'named' by an academic in a journal, does it really exist?

Yes, because they are impossible to miss. Isopods of the genus Bathynomus are 10 inches long so they are hard to miss, but discovery is a lucrative business in academia so a new one has been named and because the authors say it looks like Darth Vader from "Star Wars" they have deemed it Bathynomus vaderi.

Optimizing Nature: Biological Mechanism Could Lower Nitrogen Use

Jan 15 2025 | comment(s)

Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment.

That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.

Honeybees Are Boutique Agriculture: Here's What Keepers Want Almond Farmers To Do

Jan 13 2025 | comment(s)

Despite nearly two decades of marketing campaigns insisting bees are in decline and science is to blame, the data show otherwise. Bees are not entirely irrelevant in the food supply, and do valuable pollination work in nature, but there are 25,000 other species of bees that are important also, it is only in boutique agriculture that honeybees are meaningful to our food supply.

For crops like almonds, bees are rented. They are flown on planes or shipped on trucks and do their work and then go somewhere else. California only has 1.3 million acres of almond trees, which means about 2.6 million honey bee hives are needed every year. That is why 90% of rented bee colonies are in California. It's a lucrative market and they can ship bees elsewhere as needed.

Ants Are Like Philadelphia Eagles Fans: They Hold Grudges Forever

Jan 10 2025 | comment(s)

I'm a Steelers guy now but I was a late fan. Where I was young in Pennsylvania, three teams in New York and two in Pennsylvania were the same distance to drive - and we did not drive to any of them.

So I remained a Cowboys fan.(1) My brother, though, was an Eagles fan of early on. And he's never wavered.

Ants think that's the proper way to be. Eagle fans hold grudges and ants respect that, but there is no comparison between the level of grudge Philadelphia has against Michael Strahan or Terrell Owens or Kevin Allen or Jerome McDougle and what ants have against their enemies.

If they could write, it would be the stuff of legends.

Climate Shifts May Bring New Apple Growing Areas

Jan 06 2025 | comment(s)

Climate has always shifted but concerns about faster changes brought on by the modern world have led the authors of a new paper to worry that current high-volume sources of apples could lose their apex status to other areas.

The paper in the pay-to-publish journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed over 40 years of climate conditions they correlate to the growth cycle, bud break to fruit, of apple trees. They sound the alarm that the largest apple-producing counties in the US (Yakima in Washington, Kent in Michigan and Wayne in New York) have already been impacted.

Homeopathic Chemophobia - Pregnant Women Impacted Most

Jan 06 2025 | comment(s)

Blood samples of pregnant women have detectable levels of chemicals and that 'chemical cocktail' may pose "neurotoxic risk", according to a paper published in Science whose senior author is strangely on the board of reviewing editors at Science.

This "chemical cocktail" nomenclature has been popular among activists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other environmental lawyers for decades, because it needs no science, it instead means science 'needs more testing', and there will never be enough testing.

Holiday Chess Riddle

Jan 04 2025 | comment(s)

During Christmas holidays I tend to indulge in online chess playing a bit too much, wasting several hours a day that could be used to get back on track with the gazillion research projects I am currently trying to keep pushing. But at times it gives me pleasure, when I conceive some good tactical sequence.
Take the position below, from a 5' game on chess.com today. White has obtained a winning position, but can you win it with the clock ticking? (I have less than two minutes left for the rest of the game...)

Homeopathic Effects Of Pesticides? And Climate Change Will Make It Worse

Jan 01 2025 | comment(s)

A recent paper claims that even at low doses pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are changing the behavior of insects.

Though they are not able to show how it is happening, the authors use 'needs more testing' rhetoric to call on governments to ban chemicals until it is certain there is no unintended long-term ecological harm. If that sounds very Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that's because he and other anti-science progressives have been saying it for decades.

Why Measure The Top Quark Production Cross Section?

Dec 30 2024 | comment(s)

As part of my self-celebrations for XX years of blogging activities, I am reposting here (very) old articles I wrote over the years on topics ranging from Physics to Chess to anything in between. The post I am recycling today is one that describes for laymen a reason why it is interesting to continue going after the top quark, many years (10, at the time the article was written) after the discovery of that particle. The piece appeared in July 10, 2005 in my column at the Quantum Diaries blog (https://qd.typepad.com/6/2005/07/ok_so_i_promise.html).

Organic Believer Poisons Herself With A Copper Sulfate Rectal Enema