NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine laid it on the table recently; to him, Pluto is a planet. News outlets are calling him out, saying the "official governing body" does not agree.The Paris-based International Astronomy Union (IAU) is not really astronomy’s official governing body any more than NASA is. They often claim to be but they are a few hundred astronomers. They do not determine official designations any more than a few scholars with expert in CRISPR at a National Academy can tell FDA to stop treating harmless gene editing in plant varietals as a new drug in the regulatory scheme.
Over 200 children were sacrificed by the Chimu culture in Peru to try and appease the gods and stave off, you guessed it, climate change, according to a recent find. Experts say the remain found from between the 13th and 15th centuries in the Pampa La Cruz sector of the Huanchaco beach area over 300 miles north of Lima, make it the world’s largest child sacrifice site.
At the beginning of this decade, there were clear lines in science denial. If you denied evolution or global warming, you were more likely to vote Republican, and if you denied medical, agricultural, or energy science, you were more likely to vote Democrat.The evidence was clear; if you took a compass and drew a circle around a Whole Foods store, you were going to find anti-vaccine beliefs, organic food, and insistence that solar power would keep the lights running. And Whole Foods stores were only in wealthy areas, 80 percent of whom had voted for President Obama.
Decades ago, before the Human Genome project, there was speculation there might be a gay gene. While some applauded the idea - sexuality wasn't a choice - others were concerned that future science might start switching such genes off.Neither extreme turned out to be valid and a new study affirms what scientists have long said; there is no "gay" gene. The genome-wide association in Science used 477,522 people, 26,827 reported same-sex sexual behavior. Even when all tested genetic variants were taken into account, they collectively accounted for no more than a quarter of the same-sex behavior reported by the study participants.
White rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) are the second largest land mammal after the elephant. Adult males weigh up to 3.5 tons.Called by some the square-lipped rhinoceros due to their square upper lip, they have a longer skull than black rhinos and a larger shoulder hump. They have two horns. There are over 20,000 of them left, a big conservation win, but if you read environmental accounts they are going extinct, only two remain. How can there be 20,000 of a species and yet only two?
Jessi Combs, age 36, the "fastest woman on four wheels" after setting a record of 398 mph in her jet-powered North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger in 2013, was killed yesterday in a crash while attempting to break her own land-speed record in southeast Oregon. She was 36.The crash occurred on the Alvord Desert, a dry lake bed where several land-speed records have been set.
In 1979, the United States Department of Education was created and no one was sure why, since education is done at the local level. But both chambers had a Democratic majority and Carter was a Democratic president and they said it was for the children so they split up the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two Cabinet level departments.(1)
The first double-blinded, placebo-controlled re-challenge trial investigating gluten-related symptoms found that ingesting 14 g/d of gluten did not induce gastrointestinal symptoms or fatigue in healthy people. There were no different effects than with a gluten-free placebo.Which means if you gave up gluten and felt less fatigue, and you are not actually diagnosed with a gluten issue, it is likely other lifestyle changes that made you feel better.
In science, the saying goes, if it can happen in nature it will. This Totalitarian Principle expressed by Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann actually originated with Plato. Nothing new there, what is interesting in a recent article by by Tom Siegfried in Science News is that Gell-Mann doesn't seem to have been inspired by T.H. White of "The Sword In The Stone" fame.White did have that statement in the 1958 edition of "The Once and Future King" compilation but not in the prior books leading back to 1938. Gell-Mann had placed it in a strong nuclear force paper in 1956.
Red Bull GmbH has agreed to pay $640,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by lawyers for Canadian energy drinkers who insist they bought a can of Red Bull in the last 12 years thinking that Red Bull would literally give them wings.Decisions like this are why states are creating truth in labeling laws for broccoli that wants to claim to be rice and plant juice that claims to be milk. While the companies argue no one is fooled by such marketing, and governments argue that if no one believes it the companies shouldn't lie, this settlement shows again it is lawyers who will win at the end.
