Two years before SARS-CoV-2, the Alongshan (ALS) virus emerged in China. It was alarming because it was found to be a member of the flavivirus family along with the devastating tickborne encephalitis…

List most planets, Earth was once a newly formed, sterile planet, so a philosophical and scientific question is, how did that change? Its randomness is the best argument for why we may be the most…

A new process uses harmless viruses that eat bacteria to form microscopic beads that can safely be applied to food and other materials to rid them of harmful pathogens such as E. coli. Though tiny,…

A long while ago (my gosh, 13 years!!) I wrote on this site a two-post piece titled "Five Tips for Particle Physics Ph.D. Wannabes". At 43 years of age, I felt confident that I could look back to…

Ask some, and certainly companies selling remedies, and they will tell you there is so much depression during holidays that suicides rise noticeably. If someone believes it, a producer or editor in…

The title of this post is not of my making - it is something you may read in a list of recent ATLAS results, in one of the otherwise dry and business-like web pages of the experiment: Don't get me…

The most popular pets are cats and dogs but their origins as human companions are much different. Dogs became domesticated during the ice age 23,000 years ago as humans and wolves co-habitated in…

Distributive justice is the subject of social, and therefore political, debate, but like 'sustainability' no one really knows what it means so it can mean anything to anyone. And therefore be used by…

You wouldn't know it by deceptive marketing practices but it takes far more chemicals per calorie using "organic" certified pesticides than it does using modern ones.  The reason is simple;…

You wouldn't know it by deceptive marketing practices but it takes far more chemicals per calorie using "organic" certified pesticides than it does using modern ones.  The reason is simple;…

Imagine that a soldier has a tiny computer device injected into their bloodstream that can be guided with a magnet to specific regions of their brain. With training, the soldier could then control…

To help try and understand the evolution and origins of cell motility, researchers have created the smallest mobile lifeform ever.  Scientists introduced seven proteins, believed to be directly…

A new study shows that supply chain cost increases coupled with inflation due to leaders just creating more currency are not new; they have been happening since ways to trade began. Over 2,000 years…

A recent study revealed how the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S)-protein interacts with human Estrogen Receptor Alpha (ERα) in lung tissue, which may increase the pro-coagulation activity of endothelial cells,…

Calculating how many lives have been lost in the COVID-19 pandemic will be valuable for future epidemiological and policy decisions - in many cases telling the public what we should not do. A murder…

That's the title of a short article I just published (it is online here, but beware - for now you need to access from an institution that can access the journal contents), on Nuclear Instruments and…

Microtransactions in games don't really bother me. If it's taking away something tedious or just letting game players do something faster, no big deal.  Yet imagine you paid a small fortune,…

Microtransactions in games don't really bother me. If it's taking away something tedious or just letting game players do something faster, no big deal.  Yet imagine you paid a small fortune,…

People talk about how couples in trouble may be experiencing the seven-year itch. The rock band The Clash sings ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ It’s clear that some couples separate at this point in…

Very few people are average, that is the problem with using population level statistics in a clinical environment, and why few do it. Yet a population can show what questions to ask, like if there…