Science 2.0

Sweden did not lock down during COVID-19 and while aggressive epidemiological models promoted by bloggers wildly overstated the deaths that occurred, by an order of magnitude, it did produce more per capita deaths and greater healthcare demand than seen in countries with earlier, more stringent intervention.

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When well-meaning people in Madagascar, urged on by poorly-informed environmentalists and carbon credit companies, rushed to plant a million trees in one January day, scientists were outraged. They were planting them in the country’s barren Central Highlands - and destroying an ancient ecosystem.

Ancient Madagascan grasslands fell victim to a modern frenzy to afforest the world that has gripped political leaders - and that is thanks to lobbyists paid by environmental lawyers.

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On July 6th, at 7PM CET (1PM in NY, 10AM in California) I will be chatting online with David Orban on his show Searching For The Question Live (#sftql) about the present and future of particle physics, artificial intelligence and its applications to research, science communication, and the whereabouts. I hope you will be joining us, it should be fun!

For those of you who do not know who David Orban is:

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A new operating mode for fusion power avoids instabilities in the plasma that place a heavy load on the vessel wall and to remove heat and particles from the plasma more gently.

The aim of fusion energy is to tame atomic nuclei the way the sun does. Because the fusion fire only ignites at temperatures above 100 million degrees, its low-density hydrogen plasma fuel must not come into contact with the colder vessel walls. That is achieved using magnetic fields inside a ring-shaped vacuum chamber. The international experimental reactor ITER, currently being built in Cadarache, France,will show feasibility by generating fusion power of 500 megawatts.

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There are more women getting degrees in the life science, social science, and pre-med fields, while more men graduate in engineering and physics. Some contend that is gender bias introduced at a young age, but since education is 70 percent women it is difficult to charge them with sexism against females. 

Regardless of why, whether it is just that women prefer fields like medicine, where they can help people instead of doing theoretical physics, the data show fewer women than men get degrees in overall Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields.

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A high-tech jamming session, through which a blend of live human and computer-generated sounds came together to create a unique performance piece, has been created thanks to "spooky action at a distance."

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Emotions are an integral part of our lives. They influence our behavior, perceptions, and day-to-day decisions. The spontaneous amodal coding of emotions - independent of perceptual modalities like the physical characteristics of faces or voices - is easy for adults, but how does the same capacity develop in children?

Recent experiments using kids ages 5, 8 and 10 years sought to find out when children began to recognize happiness or anger depending on whether it is expressed by a voice or on a face.

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In geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years has been ice ages, and it has been 12,000 years since the last one. In a 'glass half full' optimistic take on emissions, the Industrial Age put a halt to a 6,500 year cooling trend and the ice age for which we are overdue, but just like salt, sugar, or Avengers movies, there can be too much of a good thing and now there are worries that climate is going out of control the other way.

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As a semi-retired epidemiologist, in a higher risk age group and with attendant co-morbidities, I have followed the Covid-19 pandemic with scientific curiosity mixed with a tinge of personal anxiety.  Much of the data being reported is of abysmal quality, and it’s a major professional disappointment to me that, after more than four months, the situation hasn’t improved much.

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The recently released 2020 ParticipACTION Report Card revealed that Canadian children scored a D+ for “daily physical activity,” an F for “active play” and a D- for “active transportation.” Only 39 per cent of Canadian children and youth achieve recommended physical activity levels.

A decline in children’s physical activity isn’t a new trend. However, with COVID-19, there has been further decline in physical activity resulting from public health protocols aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

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Can you prevent cancer? Not really. The number one risk factor for cancer is old age, if you live long enough you are likely to get some form or another. Despite the beliefs of the Longevity crowd, we are biologically self-terminating.

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Are insects facing survival challenges? Of course, the evidence in support of reasonable concerns is overwhelming. The important questions are: how serious is the decline; is it accelerating; what are its causes; and how can we address them?

Those are not the questions the media have been asking over the past three years, as a spate of Armageddon-like studies has been hyped by breathless reporting in such mainstream outlets as CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times. They’ve uniformly maintained the insect Armageddon was already upon us, and the culprit identified: modern agriculture steeped in the use of agro-chemicals.

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On August 30 2019, a comet from outside our solar system was observed by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov at the MARGO observatory in Crimea. This was only the second time an interstellar comet had ever been recorded. Comet 19 or C/2019 Q4 , as it is now known, made its closest approach to the sun on December 8 2019, roughly coinciding with the first recorded human cases of COVID-19.

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The anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements are products of the digital age. While there were always vaccine deniers, they were a tiny religious fringe until the 2000s, when it took England and the coasts of the U.S. by storm. Similarly, odd beliefs about food always existed but they were relegated to obscure stores. 

Social media changed all that. Facebook and Twitter became hotbeds of misinformation because anti-science activists mastered creating 'buzz' by getting cabals of individuals, sympathetic journalists, and groups who capitalized on it to swarm around bombastic claims. Now those tweet storms become 'and here's how Twitter reacted' articles by lazy media outlets.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were shown to be a bureaucratic mess when the coronavirus pandemic hit - refusing to send coronavirus tests unless hospitals first proved proved patients had coronavirus, then sending faulty reagents - and academic epidemiologists often seemed to be just making things up, but one area came through nicely; academic medicine.

Medicine, along with the life sciences and social sciences, are areas where women dominate in graduates but because leadership positions are often held for lengthy periods, when it comes to the top levels the numbers aren't the same. Men are in control.

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Most of us have experienced unwanted calls at home. This is in spite of efforts by regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s Office and Ofcom, whose most recent report shows that around half of the UK population still receive nuisance calls. Many of these unsolicited calls annoy us because they interrupt our dinner or favorite TV show – but some, such as sales or scam calls, can cause distress or even harm.

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Attorney Timothy Litzenburg, a collaborator of discredited former journalist Carey Gillam, who now runs "research" for the organic food PR group US Right To Know, was arrested last week on extortion charges related to a common weedkiller which US Right To Know and other groups helping attorneys insist can cause human cancer.

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, Berkeley psychologist Joel Moskowitz, and other anti-science conspiracy theorists use the language of science against it to advance their beliefs that we're all being harmed by the modern world.

So when they see a scientific statement like "very low risk" of harm from any cell phone service, including 5G, they have a ready retort to mobilize the coastal Karens and Darrens who make up their ranks; that's not no risk.

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When it comes to evolutionary biology and life on other planets, there is talk of amino acids, the building blocks of our existence.

But for any of that to work we first needed magnetic fields and plate tectonics, and a new paper finds that Earth became a "Goldilocks planet" by getting to the right place at the right time. So if we want to find other forms of life, we need to look for exoplanets that developed earlier rather than later.

Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars in other solars around distant stars and with thousands now known, there is a lot of speculation about how to detect life. It will start with narrowing down the possibilities; position, temperature, and geochemistry.

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If you know the government is going to subsidize your business, you are a lot more agreeable to starting a company with questionable prospects than if you have to compete in the free market. If government subsidies decline, you are in real trouble if you have not shown your business model works.

That is the plight of alternative energy like solar and wind and ethanol today. Though pundits have insisted their economic models show it works, you can't spend virtual money. Financial reality is that without subsidies funded by governments who force conventional users to pay for those $25,000 solar installations, the industry will collapse.  Governments can't tax economic models. They can't tax an expense.

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