Science 2.0

Cigarettes are a known carcinogen because you are inhaling smoke. Any time you inhale smoke, PM10 from fires or marijuana or anything else, you are rolling the dice of your future.

Decades of health awareness campaigns by us and groups like us have made a difference among the young, just like smoking cessation and harm reduction tools such as nicotine vaping, gums, and patches have helped older people mitigate harm. Recent data show our "5 by 35" campaign begun in 2008 - down to 5% of Americans smoking cigarettes by 2035 - seems to be on track. 

read more

The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report card saw a worrying trend that has existed since President Obama gutted the successful No Child Left Behind educational program (at the request of education unions) and replaced it with the ill-advised Common Core. Reading scores for kids remain really low for as much as we spend on education. Reading, the most basic thing we do.

read more

Honeybees are important pollinators for agriculture like the sweetener and almond industries but are also invoked by environmentalists targeting pesticides.

It's hard to separate marketing hype from reality but scholars believe simulations and a monitoring system could see if activists who target seed treatments like neonicotinoid pesticides have science or just-so stories.

read more

Image credit: Depositphotos

In 2025 it’s hard to argue that social media are not to blame for much antisocial and suicidal behavior among preteens and teens (e.g., Orben and Matias 2025). The harms of online bullying, deepfake nudes, and fringe conspiracies, all present on social media, were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, years in which young people were buried in their screens.

read more

For farmers, land is their most valuable asset so they protect it in ways environmentalists do not understand. By using science whenever possible, to reduce water, energy, and environmental strain.

Even organic farmers use toxic pesticides but because they are older and less effective they must use a lot more. A new literature review posits that organic farmers, and conventional as well, can reduce effects on soil using cover plants. Most farmers grow cover plants, animal feed or just plants to remain, between main crops to supply the soil with nutrients before the next planting. They also protect against erosion and may increase biodiversity above and below ground. 

read more

Greenpeace is in a longstanding campaign to oppose a public domain Golden Rice created by scientists so that it can be grown to create more Vitamin A and prevent blindness in children of poor countries.

It is part of their long history of promoting claims farming is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The reality is that farmers simply want ways to safely and affordably improve yields. Science is the best way to create that and corporations are the best way to make it scale. No conspiracy needed.

read more

Without informing users or moderators on Reddit, the University of Zurich used AI to manipulate users in the Reddit group ChangeMyView.

read more

The drinking water treatment process is designed to remove harmful pathogens that are prevalent in nature, but a new study suggests that it may be harmful also.

Scientists know that inert ingredients are not harmful you but the authors of the new paper invoke the environmental "chemical cocktail" MacGuffin. Since every harmless product has not been tested in every possible combination with other inactive ingredients, they suggest agricultural, pharmaceutical and other common products could be hazardous to our health in ways that scientists don't know about.

read more

A new study of light anomalies combined with results from a Korea Microlensing Telescope Network microlensing survey show that super-Earths exist as far from their host star as our gas giants are from the sun. Which means that Earth-like exoplanets are a lot more common NASA press releases over every new statistical wobble suggest.

read more

Trial lawyers hate when scientists note that animals are not tiny people, so their claims PFAS which harms animals in high doses does not mean it impacts humans at all. That animals are not little people are why drugs and medical devices must survive human clinical trials. There would be 10,000 cures for cancer being sold if effectiveness in a mouse was enough.

Animal activists also hate animal trials. They will be happy about bioprinting organic tissue models that function like living organs. 

read more

America has the strongest environmental protection in the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and government scientists showed that the Keystone XL pipeline was much better for the environment than shipping by rail. Their data were sound. With 20,000 miles of pipeline zipping across the Ogalalla acquifier, leaks were rare and only a few gallons before they were fixed.(1)

Weird progressive rants about energy, vaccines and food aside, Americans know science is often right, and the science shows that American regulations keep the environment safe by a very conservative margin.

read more

An algorithm that maps individual brain activity can reveal a “neural fingerprint” of  transient brain states during social interactions. 

The authors of the new paper believe their work demonstrates that individuals whose neural fingerprints are more aligned tend to more readily enter a shared state of deep focus—commonly known as team flow—which has profound implications for enhancing teamwork and performance across various high-stakes environments.

read more

On this day, April 25, in 1929, the world learned how astronomer Edwin Hubble had discovered that the universe was much larger than we had believed. On this day in 2025, you can preorder a book and on the 29th learn about this and four other Astrophysics discoveries that changed how we see the universe - and ourselves - in The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions.


By Ersilia Vaudo, translated by Vanessa Di Stefano. If you use this link we get a penny or something.

read more

The Organic Consumers Association, the embarrassing stepchild of the organic industry founded by the late Ronnie Cummins in 1998, has a positive name but has been nothing except negative for science and the public. Though the United States Department of Agriculture calls them an "organic agricultural products marketing and trade resource" organization they have really just been fifth columnists against vaccines, affordable food, and everything else that helps the modern world.

read more

Epidemiologist, nutritionists, and food fad profiteers love to talk about the benefits of fish, yet they weirdly believe only wild caught fish is nutritious. This sort of scientific confusion by people who don't know any science isn't really new, they also babble on about "antioxidants" when trying to claim high fructosr levels in honey are health food while high fructose levels in corn sugar will give your child autism.

read more

I get pitches for stories every day and sometimes I want to see if the world that opposes science has made any progress now that a member of a Republican administration who was formerly one of their own, former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is being helped by their rhetoric.

So when I got a message from a PR rep for the Real Organic Project™ about their client, I wanted to know if they still oppose hydroponic food. Hydroponic food uses no soil, which means in a controlled environment it needs no pesticides. The public loves that idea. The last time a survey was done, only 7% of the public wanted to know about GMOs in their food unsolicited while over 70% wanted to know what pesticides are used in food production.(1)

read more

The cochlear implant has helped many regain hearing functionality and a new study shows a potential roadmap for those whose cochlear nerve is too damaged; the auditory brainstem implant.

Not the current auditory brainstem implant, rigid structure does not allow for good tissue contact, which means a majority of the electrodes must be switched off due to unwanted side effects such as dizziness or facial twitching, a soft, thin-film version with electrodes embedded in silicone, making a pliable array less than a millimeter thick.

Superior conformity means patients will no longer get vague sounds and little speech intelligibility - and fewer side effects.

read more

K2-18b, detected in 2015, orbits a star 124 light years away. Though it is over 800% as large as Earth, its space in the habitable zone of its star, like where we are, means the possibiliy that liquid water could exist on its surface.

The science community calls it The Goldilocks Zone. Like the character in the children's story who wanted porridge neither too hot nor too cold, a Goldilocks planet that might have life we could recognize would need to be in a similar narrow band.

read more

Under the Equality Act of 2010, 'woman' refers to individuals based on their biological sex at birth, according to a unanimous ruling at the UK Supreme Court.


The case has been a David vs. Goliath story. Three Scottish women up against the Scottish government, which had made policy stating that a gender recognition certificate could go anywhere that those deemed biologically female at birth could go. What got it to the Supreme Court was a 2018 law mandating gender balance on public sector boards. Women noted that gender included the trans community and that created a 'shackled man' competition.

read more

What? Another boring chess game?


Buzz off, this is my blog, and if I feel like posting a chess game, that's what is going to happen. But if you like the game, stay here - this is a nice game.

Again played after hiours today, and again on a 5' online blitz server (chess.com). What amazes me is that these days I seem to have a sort of touch for nice attacks and brilliant combinations. Let me show you why I am saying this.

The starting position arose after the following opening sequence:

tommasodorigo - UTOPII841, chess.com April 16 2025

read more