During the Super Bowl, you can predict there will be a lot of beer commercials. As a non-drinker, this always puzzles me - haven't fans already bought their beer? - but advertising is a trillion…

During the George W. Bush administration, American furniture makers had a crippling disadvantage. While American timber was tightly regulated, foreign supplies had no limitations on where their wood…

This is another of my articles to help people who get terrified by news stories, which often get exaggerated titles even by responsible journalists. In this case many are scared that withdrawal from…

In a recent experiment, participants were asked questions to gauge how religious they were and then about their willingness to purchase a fruit cup. Half were told the fruit cup was organic and half…

Brrr … it’s cold out there! Children are flocking to the television in hopes of hearing there will be a snow day; the bread and milk aisles at grocery stores are empty because of an impending snow…

For the last 20 years, insects have been touted as the next big thing in food, because they have a lot of protein and would be reasonable to produce at scale. And people who don't understand…

Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that are widely prescribed to patients at increased risk of heart attacks or strokes. Though evidence from randomized trials has shown that statin therapy…

Exercise is good for you but some people worry there can be too much of a good thing, especially for middle-aged athletes. Extreme running and high-endurance exercise were a concern to some…

In a multi-center trial of almost 900 smokers(1), e-cigarettes were shown to be twice as effective as pharmaceutical "gold standard" approaches like gums, lozenges, and patches. After one year,…

A school and symposium in Data Science in (Astro)-Particle Physics and Cosmology will be held on March 25 to 27 in Braga (Portugal). I am going to lecture on Machine Learning there, while prof. Glen…

Through our evolutionary history, change is the one constant. 99.9999% of species that have ever existed are extinct and new ones emerged that adapted to constantly changing environments. …

UPDATE - NO HIT - AS PREDICTED BY ASTRONOMERS - The red top tabloids were quoting from something astronomers said 16 years ago. They aren't like the false prophet date setters. If they give a date…

If you read media accounts, Republicans deny global warming and evolution while Democrats deny vaccines and GMOs. Republicans hate immigrants and Democrats hate unborn babies. Yet such simple 'us'…

Rembrandt van Rijn was a master of light and shadow and a characteristic plasticity generated by a technique called impasto. A new study shows he was also something of a chemist. An analysis of…

If you've read anything about computers for the last 25 years, you've read the hype about quantum computing and how it is going to be better and faster and with less heat and replace conduction-based…

On March 25 to 27 will be held the school titled "Data Science in (astro)particle physics and cosmology", in Braga (Portugal). The lecturers are prof. Glen Cowan (RHUL), who will cover Statistics,…

Do you prefer to rise early with the lark or stay up late with the owl? Your preference turns out to be partly decided by your genes. Our genetic study of nearly 700,000 people has revealed new…

Though our guts contain a trillion bacteria in various compositions, it's become popular to claim any detectable change is a bad thing. Unless it is to sell yogurt, where no detectable change is…

Nothing killed science culture more than Spock from the 1960s television show "Star Trek." He was wildly popular because he was so logical and reasoned. Emotions did not enter into his decisions.…

In 2015, I predicted that someone was going to end up in the hospital due to overdoses on supplements. But don't you always say they are useless placebos? a friend asked. No, they are not all…