Science 2.0

Weekend Science: Coffee And Static Electricity - Is Water The Answer Or A Grinding Mess?

Science 2.0 - Dec 26 2023 - 14:12
In some homes, it is believed that static electricity can lead to inferior grinding, and that has coffee connoisseurs searching for answers.

Will water help, or is it just making a mess because while a little may help, people will use too much? 

Coffee is prone to fads the way athletics - nasal strips, cryo-therapy, those weird blue-light filter glasses - and certainly nutrition is. A study may create a correlation and people sell a produce. Giving coffee acupuncture before tamping in espresso was all the rage starting in 2020 and for the last year some have sworn by adding water to reduce static electricity.


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If You Fear Dementia In A Relative, Ask Awkward Questions About Money

Science 2.0 - Dec 26 2023 - 12:12
No one likes to talk to elder family members about money, it can come across as greedy, but a sign of cognitive impairment that isn't obvious, like drastic memory loss, is 'wealth shock' - a sudden loss of savings.

Wealth shock does not cause dementia or Alzheimer's, sorry IARC epidemiologists, it does not cause cancer either, but it is a symptom of a decline. 

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Fallen Tech Heroes Miss Chance At Redemption

Science 2.0 - Dec 24 2023 - 14:12

Jobs. Gates. Berners-Lee. They opened our worlds to wonders: Graphical user interfaces, PCs, the World Wide Web. They were my heroes, and probably yours, deservedly so.

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Herds And Shepherds In Cosmology

Science 2.0 - Dec 22 2023 - 11:12

The Universe is very large, and we are very small compared to it, not only in size. Creating a cosmology that attempts to explain the whole existing Universe is an obsession shared by all cultures. We think we now have the true cosmological model, like many civilizations that have come before us. There are, however, reasonable grounds for thinking that the total truth about the origin and evolution of the Universe is beyond our reach.

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Critical Thinking Vs Rote: Why Asia Leads In Student Standardized Tests But Not Adult Science

Science 2.0 - Dec 21 2023 - 18:12
Once per year, America goes through cultural spasms over international standardized tests. One group says only more money for government union employees will fix it while another claims young people are just dumber today while another claims that only dismantling education will restore America to its former glory.

They all claim they are being critical because they care; "it's for the children."

It really isn't, it is just politics.

Sorry Boomers, you didn't lead the world in standardized tests. Neither did you, Gen X. Standardized tests were not your thing either, Millennials.

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Government's Electric Car Mandate Is So Profitable GM Is Buying Out Dealerships Who Don't Want To Sell Them

Science 2.0 - Dec 20 2023 - 13:12
The federal government now mandates and subsidizes electric cars. Like with similar solar panels, ethanol, and compact fluorescent light bulb schemes, science shows it isn't helping anything except the companies getting taxpayer money.

With government providing corporate welfare, companies can cut lower-profit lines, including of electric cars, and focus on the fattest margins. Government funding is so lucrative that Buick dealerships are...plummeting?

Yes they are, they have declined 47 percent this year. The reason is because General Motors is buying out anyone who does not want to 'play ball' and invest heavily, about $400,000 of their own money, in electric car service and support.

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A Pattern Recognition Problem

Science 2.0 - Dec 20 2023 - 11:12
Next month I will be giving three lectures to high-school students on using artificial intelligence for research in fundamental physics, and as usual I am not yet worried by the schedule enough to start thinking at the presentations. Except that in one case the school professor who organizes the event asked me for some preliminary task for the students "to get them in the mood" of the contents of the lecture. 

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Practice Parameter On Anaphylaxis Changes

Science 2.0 - Dec 18 2023 - 18:12
The Joint Task Force between the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology have released two new guidelines for allergic reactions.

The new recommendations are that calling an ambulance after use of an epinephrine auto injector  is not required if the patient experiences prompt and complete, and response to treatment. Paramedics should be called  for severe anaphylaxis, symptoms that do not resolve promptly, or nearly completely, or symptoms that return or worsen.

The recommendation remains not to give epinephrine preemptively to an asymptomatic patient.

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Golden Fleece: California High Taxes Offset By Designating A State Bat

Science 2.0 - Dec 15 2023 - 23:12
In arguably their most important 2023 legislative move, Democrats have given California a state...bat.

The rationale was that bats are 'as diverse as California' so why government immediately chose an official government winner, the pallid bat, is as mysterious as why we have a state goldfish, a state marine mammal, and a state butterfly.

There are overwhelmingly 4,000 species of mammals so California has a way to go before they pick an official member of each.
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COP28 Was Less About Climate Change Than Dismantling Democracies

Science 2.0 - Dec 15 2023 - 16:12
Climate changes are always ironic. Wealthy celebrities flying in on emissions-belching planes while claiming they bought 'carbon offsets' from companies that made Al Gore so rich he is the kind of oligarch Republicans only wish they could be is always going to create skepticism.

Having it in a mideast dictatorship that funds terrorism using wealth it derived from oil is next level.

It's more ironic this year, that's harmless enough, yet more worrisome, because climate activism has increasingly been taken over by socialist activism, and a quasi-feudal belief in agricultural mysticism. 

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With Electric Cars Mandated By The Biden Administration, Activists Target Prius Owners As Bad For Climate Change

Science 2.0 - Dec 15 2023 - 14:12
We all remember when progressives gushed over the Prius as the car that was saving the planet. In standard 'endorse the alternative until it becomes the standard and then sue them and collect checks along the way' fashion, environmentalists have no turned on them.

They are being declared NRE - which in this case isn't Not Really European, the NRE that white liberals on The Continent use to refer to immigrants, but Not Really Electric.

Electric Car Government Relations get paid to pave the road for their clients/employers, so they do what you probably expect; create trade groups and even entire nonprofits to advance their agenda. And pay those naturally inclined to help, or even those who are 'useful idiots.'(1)

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Congress Undoes The Obama Administration War On Normal Milk - Now Restore Other Standards Of Identity

Science 2.0 - Dec 15 2023 - 11:12
The House Agricultural Committee has undone a decade-long travesty brought on by the Obama administration, where they decided in defiance of the entire science community that low-fat and non-fat milk would lead to healthier outcomes in children.

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Voyager Is Having A Computer Issue; What That Means

Science 2.0 - Dec 14 2023 - 18:12
NASA’s Voyager spacecraft is 15 billion miles away, out beyond Pluto, which means it can't be fixed if there is a mechanical issue. But FORTRAN is pretty elegant code, and it's self-powered, so if the CMOS isn't messed up and the telemetry modulation unit gets going it should be communicating fine for decades.

Maybe even long enough to leave the solar system - in 25,000 years.


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FDA Seizes $18 Million In Chinese Vape Devices But It May Not Be About Kids

Science 2.0 - Dec 14 2023 - 12:12
The the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized $18 million in vaping products from China.

They're cheering that they are protecting American youth but...from what? $18 million is nothing, and yet the Biden administration spent three months preparing to nab it. All because on surveys, if you count any young person who claims to have used a vaping tool, and massage the numbers, you can manufacture an 'epidemic.'

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Hearing Aids and Dementia: Another Epidemiology Paper Retracted

Science 2.0 - Dec 13 2023 - 17:12
With so many epidemiology papers published each month, everyone in a giant academic industry essentially created by Harvard School of Public Health in the 1980s is pushing out "correlation" between some common food or chemical and some disease or health benefit, it is hard to get noticed.

One way corporate journalists will notice is if a Republican says it. A WHO "miracle drug" was dragged through the mud for suggesting it might be a therapy for COVID-19 - after a Republican listed that peer-reviewed research.

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Happy Festivus - Here I Air My Anti-Science Grievances

Science 2.0 - Dec 13 2023 - 17:12
December 23rd is 'Festivus', a not-real holiday invented by the father of George Costanza on the hit television show "Seinfeld", involving an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and, most fun, an airing of grievances.(1)

It's the airing of grievances I want to address.


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Google's Top Searches Of 2023 Have No Science, But At Least One Is Health Related

Science 2.0 - Dec 11 2023 - 15:12
The Hamas terrorist attack is the top news search, according to Google, while in cinema the top searches were about "Barbie" and in music Yoasobi's "アイドル (Idol)" wins the prize.

There was a health-related win. Among people, Damar Hamlin's near-death cardiac arrest on the field during a Buffalo Bills NFL game in January ended up being the top for the year. 
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Bringing Climate Change Into Physics Classrooms

Science 2.0 - Dec 10 2023 - 09:12

In a recent issue of

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We're So Wealthy Even Poor People Can Afford To Be Fat - Ask For Less Fatty Liver Disease For Christmas

Science 2.0 - Dec 09 2023 - 11:12
The upside to greater wealth equality than at any point in human history is that nearly everyone can afford food for the first time ever. The famines of the 1980s have been effectively eliminated by science. The downside is that cultural maturity has not kept pace with our biological mandate to eat like we may not have food next week.

That is why obesity could soon overtake alcohol and even cigarettes as the top lifestyle disease source. Up to 20 percent of people could soon have fatty liver disease and a third of those may develop non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) that can progress to cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease, or even liver cancer.

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