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Rutgers Study - Forcing DEI Programs On People Increases Hostility

If you have done nothing wrong, do you want to be treated like a criminal? That was always the...

Minnesota Trial Lawyers Want To Ban Neonics - Here Is Why That Is A Mistake

Minnesota is having a challenging year, so challenging they are approaching California as the wackiest...

The Toxic Masculinity Of Disney Movies

Once upon a time, stories were just stories. They were fantasies that took people to a new world...

AI And The Poetry Problem

Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but...

Hank Campbell

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

Herd Immunity For Plants - How GMOs Can Save Agriculture

Oct 08 2010 | comment(s)

"Anti-science" or "cautious" ... how you regard skeptics of positions that are ethically or scientifically subjective is often a matter of how you already believe. If you are a Republican concerned about the ethical implications of human embryonic stem cell research, whole books can be written on how Republicans hate science. But if you are in astronomy and have watched every program started during the Bush years get gutted since Democrats took control of Congress, you might think Democrats hate Congress(1) more. In reality there are legitimate issues involved and it is up to policy makers to navigate them.

DIY spacecraft - a family adventure

Oct 08 2010 | comment(s)

Say you have a curious kid and you want to confirm the planet is round to, you know, show off how experimental results can verify mathematical ones. If you are with the Brooklyn Space Program group, you build your own spacecraft, of course.

But it isn't that easy. You can put a camera on a balloon, sure, but your camera needs to survive 100 MPH winds, temperatures of -60, speeds of 150 MPH and maybe a water landing. To find it if it does land safely, you need to have a GPS attached that transmits coordinates to a cell tower.

Here is their story:

Life From Space Redux? 65 Cybele Is Second Asteroid Found With Water

Oct 07 2010 | comment(s)

A persistent hypothesis is that perhaps life did not 'originate' on Earth at all, perhaps its building blocks came from space.

In April, the public, fed by astronomy's runaway hype train, were excited by the discovery of water on an asteroid - but it was exciting, it was just the conjecture that followed was a little cloying.

Elsevier Introduces Article-Based Publishing

Oct 07 2010 | comment(s)

Publishing is evolving and, of the big publishers (The Lancet, Cell, etc.), no one is more forward-thinking than Elsevier.

They recently announced Article-Based Publishing, their new way to publish articles as final (and citable) without needing to wait for the full journal to be complete. Article-Based Publishing is the assigning of final citation data on an article-by-article basis, separate from production of the journal issue.

Planet Hunters - How They Do It

Oct 07 2010 | comment(s)

The discovery of Gliese 581g was cause for rampant hype almost everywhere but here, along with some rather ridiculous claims that there was a 100% chance of life there.

The actual paper authors were more reserved, though astronomy is far bolder than biology in terms of its participants hyping findings and generally physics is pretty reserved (exception: LHC claims when it was being funded and built - now that the marketing is over, the call for perspective has set in) outside dark matter and dark energy, where anything goes.

Fountain of Youth created for mice?

Oct 07 2010 | comment(s)

A new study published in Cell Metabolism says it has increased the lifespan of middle-aged mice by 12% using a combination of three amino acids as supplements.

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) have extended life span in yeast but this is the first time these amino acids have been shown to work in mammals, the researchers say.