Science 2.0

Comments opened on the recent EPA nominations to serve on the Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) established under section 25(d) of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), since three member terms will expire during the next year.

Decades ago, Velveeta had to be labeled “Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product" so that customers could have truth in labeling. It was not "cheese", said the government.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission even even told Kraft they could not even advertise that their "singles" contained five ounces of milk because of the implication the cheese might have as much calcium as 5 ounces of milk when it only had as much calcium as 3.5 ounces of milk.  Government was all about mandating consumer trust in labels then.

Smoking kills, there is no question on that, but as the smoking rate began to drop and the settlement with cigarette companies due to expire, trial lawyers turned to secondhand smoke as a new target. But they needed real evidence, not statistical correlation. Though asthmatics and people with respiratory issues suffer during any air quality change, from wildfires to heavy perfumes, the most authoritative study of secondhand smoke ever done couldn't document a greater risk of death.Though the effort failed (you still shouldn't smoke around kids, for other reasons) that didn't prevent the migration a few years later to thirdhand smoke - the belief that particulate matter left behind from smoke could cause cancer. 

If you are a soldier, you may believe the worst thing that can happen is being shot. There is no upside to it, you are wounded or die.A new psychology paper says soldiers who've actually been shot are not as traumatized as other soldiers who either saw it or heard about it. They contend that soldiers who experience suffering and death without being in any danger report more post-traumatic stress symptoms  than soldiers who were actually in life-threatening situations.

Fibromyalgia is an ill-defined chronic pain condition and claims around the gut microbiome are the latest craze in science-y sounding speculation about lots of health issues, following the fad of linking everything to what your grandparents ate at dinner, epigenetics. While in severe cases, microbiota are obviously important, last week the FDA warned the public about fecal transplants when a person died. The agency suspended clinical trials.Chronic pain sufferers who can't get a specific diagnosis have dealt with woo promises from corporate marketing for a lot longer.

"Lebensraum" said German Chancellor Adolf Hitler when he appealed to citizens for why they needed to expand. A new computer simulation says climate change may have been a factor, and it could get even worse this century. The authors of the numerical model estimate between 3 percent and 20 percent of armed conflict risk during the last hundred years was caused by climate and that its influence will increase dramatically in the 21st century.

https://www.sciencecodex.com/study-finds-collaborating-business-contribu...

nteraction between universities and companies in Brazil has societal, economic and environmental impacts, as well as positive effects on academic productivity. Researchers and research groups who collaborate with business organizations are scientifically more productive. The intellectual and scientific impacts of the partnership are positive.

This is the main finding of a study conducted by Renato de Castro Garcia, a professor at the University of Campinas Economics Institute (IE-UNICAMP), and presented to the 8th Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC).

The GRC summit was attended by heads of research funding agencies from dozens of countries around the world.

A paper from academics says that the final goal of the Affordable Care Act - Medicare For All - won't lead to more hospital stays. This is in defiance of data during ACA, where it led to higher costs for minor injuries because Obamacare made ambulances cheaper than Uber.How will more free medical treatment not lead to more medical treatment? The British NHS is an example. Though it is free, doctors are underpaid, morale is low, and wait times are high. They are not putting you in the hospital unless it is beyond necessary and end-of-life care may be...accelerated. 

Economic losses from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and 76 wildfires in nine Western states could total nearly $300 billion in damage and if you believe those fires would not have happened without human-induced climate change, or at least aggravated by it, then there is an economic case to make for climate action.https://www.sciencecodex.com/economic-case-climate-action-united-states-...

Raw dairy is diarrhea and vomiting waiting to happen, there is a reason heat pasteurization is credited with saving a billion lives, but a company in Australia has used a legal loophole to milk raw believers into buying their un-pasteurized product.

A new survey took a premise that is casually accepted by the university sector - that conservatives' trust in science has eroded - and goes beyond the usual claim that trust has eroded because American conservatives are less scientific.Trust in science has eroded among conservatives...but it has also eroded among progressives. Only a narrow band of self-identifying liberals maintains the same level of confidence in science as they did 40 years ago. And 40 years ago conservatives had the most trust of all.(1) 

On surveys, parents believe they are doing a great job helping teens be more independent, but today's kids are just too immature.That last part is probably not true. It was overwhelmingly people in their mid-20s who won World War II and put man on the moon, we're the ones who've now decided that age is not mature enough to buy health insurance. If we want to do the dishes it is the nature of other human beings to let us do the dishes, because other people think that makes us happy. Believing that someone else will eventually want to do the dishes when they mature is wishful thinking.