Anonymous, the proper name given to a secret, loose band of Internet hackers famous for taking out sites they do not like (here's hoping they like Science 2.0) didn't think much of a NATO report on their activities."Can one invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty after a cyber attack? And what response mechanisms should the Alliance employ against the attacker? Should the retaliation be limited to cyber means only, or should conventional military strikes also be considered?"
The organic food crisis in Europe has caught popular attention even in America - dozens dead and thousands sickened due to another E. coli occurrence in organic produce - but America has another issue that could harm people who have been educated by advertising into believing that raw and organic is nutritionally different and just as safe.Raw food, in particular unpasteurized milk and juice, poses a very specific public safety risk that is unrelated to dietary concerns. Consuming a diet loaded with fat and salt is unhealthy, but the government has no business regulating that. Raw milk, however, is different. Unpasteurized milk has a greater chance of being contaminated with disease-causing bacteria than pasteurized milk.
That whole "Facebook of..." thing is a pretty common description these days. It makes sense, Facebook is wildly popular (even we have a Facebook page) and 4 years ago we were called Facebook for Scientists, which didn't make a lot of sense at the time since writing science on the Internet existed before Facebook.And if scientists were that social they would be on the actual Facebook more. They just aren't, as a bloc. Regardless, IBM thinks if they build it, scientists will come and their sweetener is it will help researchers get funding.
The EPA believes it has the ability to impose new regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants including mercury and arsenic without Congressional approval.Oddly, both Republicans and Democrats are against a sweeping power grab by unelected officials who have no accountability and no oversight. Regardless, until it is resolved, new rules are driving power plants out of existence.If you think energy prices are too high, wait until more power plants close. American Electric Power said yesterdsy that it will shut down five coal-fired power plants and have to spend billions of dollars to comply with a series of pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Who's going to pay for that? Consumers.
Mauro Rubini and Paola Zaio studied skeletons from 234 graves in an early Medieval (6th-8th century) cemetery in Molise (south-central Italy). Based on grave goods, they suggest that the people buried in the cemetery were of different ethnic backgrounds - the Eurasian Avars, Lombards, and indigenous Italians - and were semi-nomadic. Three of the skeletons appear to have warfare-related wounds, and one of the three also suffered from leprosy in life.
Francis Crick was a polymath - a literate guy who crossed from the physical sciences to help solve one of the great mysteries of 20th century biology, the double-helix of DNA. There are numerous others but science has become increasingly specialized and that is essentially, it is said, in a more complex world.In "It's Sad But True That Most Discoveries In Biology Are Made By Physicists" - Freeman Dyson it was discussed that more and more complex problems would be ill-suited for just one field, biology being an example, and polymaths are becoming more prominent again.
The new food pyramid is no longer a pyramid, it is shaped more like a pie...but they don't want you to call it a pie, because that isn't very healthy, so they call it a plate.And it is better than that crazy pyramid (see Obama Administration Replacing A Pyramid With A Pie To Combat Obesity) but is it natural or the result of more consensus due to lobbying by big corporations in the various food segments?
I don't use auto-correct and you know why? Because I am never wrong, sure, but also because it is rarely right.damnyouautocorrect.com has their 15 most popular auto-correct errors from last month and you will fall off your chair laughing. Here is a sample:
Does positive psychology explain the happiness of Danes? Granted, surveys are not perfect, but they can be telling; Denmark enjoys the highest "wellbeing" of the countries surveyed and an article in The Atlantic claims its because people trust the government, which seems a little self-serving to the sociologist who might like big government. The Germans trusted their government also but occupied Denmark in World War II.What happened next was distinct, though. When the Danes learned the Germans planned to round up the Jews and send them to camps, they quickly mobilized a plan to get them to Sweden, which enjoyed friendly relations with the Germans and had neutral status.
No one seems to know which organic food has killed 22 people and sickened thousands due to E. coli bacterial contamination. A day after blaming German sprouts - not a bad guess, sprouts have been the cause of 30 food scares just in the US since 1996 - and a few days after blaming Spanish cucumbers, investigators are admitting they may never know.It's probably wiser to just not shop in the organic supermarket for a while."We have to be clear on this: Maybe we won't be able anymore to identify the source," said Andreas Hensel, head of Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a further sign that this outbreak of E. coli has done to organic food what the earthquake at Fukushima did to nuclear power plants.
