It could be a neutron star or it could be a white dwarf with an ultra-powerful magnetic field but something is releasing fantastic bursts of energy at periodic intervals.

When the burst happens, it is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.

Objects that turn on and off aren’t new to astronomers, they're called ‘transients’, and they are the death of a massive star or the activity of the remnants it leaves behind. ‘Slow transients’, like supernovae, might appear over the course of a few days and disappear after a few months. ‘Fast transients’, like a type of neutron star called a pulsar, flash on and off within milliseconds or seconds.

As of now, 18 states have legalized recreational marijuana use while 36 have 'medical' cannabis laws but there is still debate about how cannabis may affect the abilities, real and perceived, of drivers under the influence.

A two-year randomized trial, conducted at the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) at University of California San Diego School of Medicine hopes to add some science to the anecdotes. Researchers recruited 191 regular cannabis users to partake of cannabis containing different levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in cannabis or a placebo immediately before a series of driving simulation tests over several hours.

Long before there were Israelites, Sumerians, or Egyptians in the world, the people living in Israel experienced a boom in food quantity and diversity, and a new study finds that the reason was climate change 23,000 years ago.

Ohalo II is a submerged archaeological site on the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee in Israel and in it are preserved extensive evidence of human occupation about 23,000 years ago. Climate change was a given, the world was exiting its latest periodic ice age. Humans diversified their dietary habits. Some have posited that the changes in food were due to decreasing food availability, while others suggest the change was thanks to increasing food abundance.

A lot of media articles a decade ago worried about risk to honeybees from crop protection products while science should have been worried more about the viruses they carry that put plants at risk of disease.

A recent study sequenced the genetic material present on the pollen grains of 24 plant species across the U.S., the group found signs of many of the plant viruses already shown to travel on pollen—along with six new species, three new variants of known species and the incomplete traces of more than 200 more that have never before been identified.

Several international airlines recently canceled flights into certain US airports over concerns the rollout of 5G mobile communication technology could interfere with some planes’ equipment.

After warnings about the potential problem from aviation bosses and the Federal Aviation Administration, telecommunications companies AT&T and Verizon delayed activating some 5G masts around US airports.

In a pilot study, a fat injection procedure improved symptoms of plantar fasciitis in patients, and the authors of the paper hope it will get a company or NGO interested in a clinical trial. 

Dark matter is one of the most fascinating concepts in physics and is thought to account for 85% of the universe’s matter. They have been so talked about that they have taken on a semblance of fact, even though at this stage their presence is purely hypothetical.

Epidemiology pushes out a lot of dumb papers. Not as many as social psychology per capita but in volume a whole lot more. It's easy to see why the public believes horse de-wormer cures COVID-19, it was in an epidemiology paper, and that methodology was just as valid as a paper this week 'linking' olive oil to longer life. 

Do be careful, masks, distancing, get vaccinated, ventilation, avoid crowded places, test, trace, isolate, quarantine. #DOITALL - BE CAREFUL

I am posting this after Boris Johnson announced - to much celebration - that the UK will end its mask mandate again because cases of Omicron are falling.

This is not about the economy. Wearing masks has zero economic impact - who is going to be impacted economically by you wearing a mask in public transport or in a shop? It seems to be more about a concept of freedom that some have, that we are more free if we don't use masks to protect others from a sometimes deadly disease. How is that freedom?