Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety...

Rutgers Study - Forcing DEI Programs On People Increases Hostility

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

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The Toxic Masculinity Of Disney Movies

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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 »

Atheist discrimination? Astronomer says he was denied a job because of religion

Dec 17 2010 | comment(s)

Martin Gaskell did not get a job as the director of a new student observatory at the University of Kentucky and says he thinks his religion is behind it.

So for all those who say academia is too politically correct, take heart - if this is true, academics can be bigots just like anyone else, at least as long as it's a Christian being denied rights.

One member of the hiring board described his qualifications as "breathtakingly above the other applicants" but there are lots of things that go into hiring so that can't be the only factor and if it turns out to be other issues, that is okay. Yet it looks bad, since apparently others worried his being a Christian would conflict with his science.

Synthetic Biology: Just This Once, Government Decided No New Regulations Are Needed

Dec 17 2010 | comment(s)

It's rare that a government commission won't take the opportunity to increase its authority and its importance. It's good job security and makes people feel relevant, even if it's not only unnecessary but being resisted by virtually everyone outside the commission, like in the case of the FCC trying to take over the Internet.

Yet The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, created by executive order in 2009, released its report on synthetic biology yesterday and said, just this once, things are okay without more rules.

ITER fusion: Governments taking a hard look at budget overruns and delays

Dec 16 2010 | comment(s)

It's become so commonplace for large science endeavors to be over budget and long-delayed that both budgets and time frames seem almost meaningless. The James Webb Space Telescope might as well just be issued blank checks and, in Europe, the ITER nuclear fusion reactor project is making the overruns and delays of even the LHC look modest.

HIV-Positive Patient Cured by Adult Stem Cell Transplant

Dec 15 2010 | comment(s)

Writing in Blood, a group says that a 2007 adult stem cell transplant cured a patient of both his HIV and his leukemia. Up to 33 million people worldwide have HIV/AIDS.

How did it work and what does it mean? It was a perfect storm of good fortune for the patient so it's an interesting medical starting point but not really a cure-all just yet. Timothy Brown, an HIV-positive man in Germany, also had leukemia and was undergoing chemotherapy but he got a bone marrow transplant from a donor who carried an inherited CCR5 gene mutation that seems to make carriers immune to HIV.

Ancient Chinese Secret - Soup From 400 B.C.

Dec 14 2010 | comment(s)

If you think people in your family can't cook, imagine how bad the soup must have been to bury it and leave it untouched for 2,400 years.

Chinese archaeologists say a bronze cooking pot dug up near the former capital Xian (for 1,100 years - go see the terracotta army at the burial site of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor, there) contains bone soup. They found it while excavating a tomb because they need an extension of the airport - nothing new, China is sort of like a "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" opening when it comes to history getting in the way of Progress.

Choose Your Own Adventure - But For Movies, In Real Time

Dec 13 2010 | comment(s)

When I was a lad, a fellow named Edward Packard came up with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, books where you read until an action point and you had to make a decision - your decision determined the plot of the book from there on out by sending you to a specific page where things continued.

Using real-time video coding procedures, a group of researchers have created a similar approach that is interactive for movie watchers, so if you're one of those annoying French nihilists and like movies that end with a crying clown or whatever, okay, it can happen, but if you're an outrageously optimistic American and like happy endings, that could be possible also.