Science 2.0

This is a companion piece to “Enough: Toward A Sustainable Economics” 

https://www.science20.com/fred_phillips/enough_toward_a_sustainable_economics-256755.

read more

It is commonly said that Neptune is azure blue and Uranus pale cyan green – but a new study shows the two ice giants are actually far closer in color than typically thought. Because Uranus’ appearance and color has changed over the decades in response to the weirdest seasons in the Solar System.

read more

We're only two weeks into winter and a New York university is already declaring above-average temperatures in 2023 a result of global climate change. 

read more

If you're holding back on revealing negative secrets about yourself, new survey results in a social psychology journal say you can relax; most people don't care.

When study participants pushed through fear to reveal a secret, those in whom they confided were significantly more charitable than they expected. This was a marketing experiment, not real life, but the authors say recipients appreciated the trust, honesty, and vulnerability needed to reveal secrets.

Here are some findings.

read more

Bipolar disorder, a mental illness with both manic and depressed moods, is often resulting in earlier death than others, by up to 15 years. In two groups, people with bipolar disorder were four to six times more likely as people without the condition to die prematurely, while people who had ever smoked were about twice as likely to die prematurely than those who had never smoked – whether or not they had bipolar disorder.

When it comes to bipolar disorder, the differences in health and lifestyle change mortality a lot.

read more

An examination of more than 300 sudden, unexpected deaths in young children, which usually occur during sleep,  commonly known as SIDS in babies or SUDC in toddlers, including extensive medical record analysis and video evidence donated by families to document the inexplicable deaths of seven toddlers between the ages of 1 and 3 finds they were potentially attributable to seizures. 

These seizures lasted less than 60 seconds and occurred within 30 minutes immediately prior to each child’s death, say the study authors.

read more

How much corporate journalism health informations published each day is as evidence-based as the graphic on my coffee cup below?

Nearly all of it. And like 100 years ago, it was designed to advance an agenda, not inform public health, but journalists promoted it because they were part of the tribe saying it. In this case, there was an effort to push back the 'coffee invasion' in Britain. Coffee houses were all the rage on the continent and Big Tea was scared.

Nothing drove that home like saying British men would become French.

read more