An LD50 is a ratio of in milligrams (mg) of pesticide per kilogram (kg) of body weight that kills 50 percent of test animals - mice, bees, frogs, whatever. So it literally is Lethal Dose of 50 percent of the critter.Because it is a ratio, that means low is bad. Vitamin D is all the latest craze among supplement salespeople, for example, supposedly curing everything from autism to AIDS. It has an LD50 of 10 mg/kg. Table salt has an LD50 of 3,000 so if a James Bond or Mission Impossible villain ever gets you the option of choosing which chemical to drink, take the salt rather than the vitamin.
Commercial beekeeper Lee Townsend of metropolitan Edmonton found out Club Sierra - I mean Sierra Club (if you've been to their offices you know why it is easy to conflate the two) - was stopping by on its “Protect the Pollinators Tour“. He wanted to know their thoughts on pollinator awareness so he stopped in. The scientist speaking was not an expert on bees but checked off the correct neutral boxes ('complex issue', 'multi-factorial') but it was Sierra Club of Canada Executive Director John Bennett would really got him wound up.
Evolution is messy, it happens in bursts some of the time and is painfully slow at others. On occasion, it is brilliant but sometimes, like in the human male reproductive layout, you have to wonder if it was drunk.Dr. Carin Bondar shows both in a video about evolution, to the tune of "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus. It is at times hilarious, poignant and informative - just like biology itself. Kudos to Carin, Emily Hammel-Brisson (vocals) and Jordan Oram (everything else) for making natural selection fun.
National Geographic got some attention for comparing global warming denier to anti-vaxxers, moon landing conspiracy theorists and the followers of Brother John Birch who are against water fluoridation.There were objections to the characterization. Science Left Behind showed that not only were the anti-vaccine, anti-energy and anti-food beliefs dominated by the left-wing political demographic and partisans immediately scrambled to show those were all bipartisan.
During World War II, the Nazis built hideouts all over friendly territories, in hard-to-find places like deserts, mountains and jungles. One such jungle was Teyu Cuare in Argentina and scholars recently explored it.
The International Astronomical Union has been critical of groups that allow you to name asteroids or planets, insisting that it was only their realm as self-appointed gatekeepers.Now they seem to have changed their minds and recognize that getting the public involved is the only way the public will care - people like cute robots on Mars because NASA makes them feel involved. Ironically, the IAU are doing it with the planet that got the public most dismissive of the IAU - Pluto, where 237 members outvoted a few others and decided was not a planet at all before it became one of about 50,000 dwarf planets.
New York Times Style columnist Nick Bilton worries the Apple Watch might give you cancer, so he consulted...Joe Mercola.Yes, that Mercola, the famous homeopath who has been fined by the federal government for making bizarre unsubstantiated medical claims that probably sound legit to osteopaths and residents of Marin County, California, but make no sense in the evidence-based world.
Michael Hofmann Winer just won a $150,000 first-place prize for innovation, based on quantum condensed matter physics work he did in collaboration with U-Md. physics professor Victor Galitski and graduate student Justin Wilson - and he hasn't finished high school yet.
Winer is the winner of this year's Intel Science Talent Search. Obviously he did a lot of work but he also credits the math, science and computer science magnet program at Montgomery Blair, as well as teacher James R. Schafer, whom he called “one of the best teachers in the universe.”
Pity poor Albert Einstein. He is on more Facebook posters endorsing more causes and claims than he could ever have dreamed possible; sometimes he even uses modern colloquialisms in the quotes.He's Einstein - if he said it, it must be smart.There is just one problem, aside from the fact that he never said most of the things those glorified infographics claim he said - he was only smart about one thing. If you are taking his word about anything else, you are no different than if you take a Starbuck's barista's word on bST in milk.
Do you want to inhale your whisky rather than drink it, or maybe print a smell? Harvard professor David Edwards can make it happen.More intriguingly, he has created an edible skin meant to replace traditional food packaging, as part of his Wikifoods effort. Skin on ice cream sounds kind of gross, except an apple has skin, a banana has a skin, an orange has a skin. He is just replacing regular packaging with an edible container.
