HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
Over 700 women in the US die per year from (sometimes unknown) causes that involve pregnancy or childbirth and the same Republican Congress we are often told doesn't care about pregnant women just devoted $60 million to finding out why it's happening. Good for them. The bill defines a "pregnancy-associated death" as death while pregnant or with a year after. A "pregnancy-related death" is while pregnant or within a year after from any cause related to the pregnancy unless it's accidental.
At insect size, miniature superheroes Ant-Man and The Wasp should be dead in minutes. Since they did not train on the top of Mt. Everest, they would be unable to overcome the atmospheric density they would have to face at tiny size, and that's without getting into the metabolism issues.Ant-Man clearly didn't have a lot of scientific thought that went into him when he was created by a combination of Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber, plus artist Jack Kirby. But superheroes are big science business now. Billions and billions of dollars in box office will do that. They even have their own science publication, the Journal of Superhero Science.
Does the world need another sweetener? With debates raging over cane sugar, corn sugar, beet sugar, raw sugar, and numerous zero-calorie alternatives to sugar, new products would seem to be just another thing for Center for Science in the Public Interest to manufacture lawsuits about.The debate may be why Brazzein, from the fruit of the West African Pentadiplandra brazzeana plant, never got any commercial traction despite being 2,000 times sweeter than sucrose but with zero calories. It's not a sugar at all, it's a protein. For 25 years it's remained a novelty. (1)Modified bacteria may be the key
If you are reading media claims about President Trump and the Waters of the United States, they are using terms like "unprecedented" and "sabotage" regarding rollback of some 2015 Obama restrictions that environmentalists had lobbied for and won. Yet these new regulations never took effect, so how can it be sabotaging us?Were we really in danger and only a set of regulations never enacted would save us? Are close-ups of frogs in pea-soup-looking water (obviously to evoke images of chemical sludge for readers who may have never seen a frog in a pond) real or fake news? Non-profit, non-ideological science media can help un-muddy the waters.
NASA's InSight experiment landed on Mars November 26th after traveling 300 million miles over seven months. Though it is there to analyze seismic activity. its seismometer and air pressure sensor and picked up different vibrations on Dec. 1st. The slight hum turned out to be 10-15 mph winds as they blew across Mars’ Elysium Planitia. We can now hear sound on another planet."Capturing this audio was an unplanned treat," said Bruce Banerdt of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in their press release. For you and me both.There's not a lot I can add to that so I will just be awed.
The Mayo Clinic is a health organization, but they know that marketing works. And so just in time for the holidays they have a new video out trying to scare us about...the holidays.It's not about your 100 percent organic dinner, like that every food you eat will have chemicals known to cause cancer in rats, it is about everything you might binge on during the holidays. They allege it causes a condition called "holiday heart."
Like that your child's modern baby seat can't erupt in flame? Thank the Roman military of almost 2,000 years ago. Like heating up your recyclable pouch of avocado toast points in the microwave? Thank the American military of World War II,(1) when Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer discovered their culinary benefit while working on RADAR.(2)
The Guardian, official newspaper of those in the anti-science left who still like to pretend they love science, knows what pays the bills...and it ain't science.Yes, some real scientists write there, because it's mainstream media and scientists who do outreach want to be in as many publications as they can, but for the most part Guardian editors distrust science, because their audience does. And they love celebrities, for the same reason.
A new sewage treatment project in London discovered something in the mud of the Thames; the remains of a human, leg bones still covered by thigh-high leather boots.When you say thigh-high leather boots it sounds much sexier than fishing waders, which are not made of leather any more because, let's face it, leather is useless in water and science improved fishing a lot. Archaeologists analyzing the remains say the grooves in his teeth were likely caused by rope, and that, plus his build, suggests his trade was fisherman. He was in his mid-30s, they estimate, so his death was not natural.
In 2006, former Vice-President and global warming clarion Al Gore said we only had 10 years to stop CO2 emissions or it would be too late. More cynical people noted that he came up with that 10-year figure because it was two years from his rematch contest for U.S. President plus eight he expected to be in office. It's beyond me to know if that was ever his intent, but if it was, perhaps a Peace Prize and an Academy Award made political campaigning too petty. He never ran again.
In Science Left Behind I showed that in America it was easy to accurately correlate beliefs about science to political viewpoints. If you believed in psychics, witchcraft, organic food or homeopathy, statistically I could be determine how you voted. If you believed in GMOs and vaccines I also knew how you voted. But everyone hates the word "chemical."That is why it is fertile ground for scaremongering. As soon as you use the word chemical, people are scared, and if you throw the word "toxic" in front of it, like activist academics and $2 billion per year in environmental groups do, dollar signs are sure to follow.
It may not feel like science wins often in court but it beat out activists last week. Not only did science, and Science 2.0, win, it was a unanimous decision at the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States. And the ruling dealt a serious blow to "sue and settle" agreements with trial lawyer groups, in this case Center for Biological Diversity, along with limiting the power of the federal government to bully and intimidate landowners.
