Science 2.0

Since the oldest millennials are now nearing 40 it may be time for sociologists and psychologists to stop writing papers on how much nurturing they will need when they arrive. They are already here. Yet papers will keep coming, perhaps until people stop wanting to read them.

Researchers show that how well parents or guardians support millennials' psychological needs prior to their transition to college is an important predictor of their psychological well-being as they adapt to college life.

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Last Monday and Tuesday I gave a few lectures on Machine Learning at a Data Science school (IDPASC) in Braga, Portugal. I think that this topic has received so much attention in the last few years, with heaps of excellent resources now freely available online, that it is very difficult to be original and provide useful information to any student who is proactive enough to google "auto-encoders" by herself.

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As if mothers don't get blamed for enough, a new paper claims attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)may have been caused by her diet during pregnancy.

The results of a study led by a team from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by "la Caixa", suggest that the risk of a child developing symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be modulated by the mother's diet during pregnancy. The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, analysed samples of umbilical cord plasma to quantify the levels of omega-6 and omega-3 that reach the foetus. The statistical analysis showed a higher omega-6:omega-3 ratio to be associated with a higher risk of ADHD symptoms at seven years of age.

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A woman in Scotland can feel virtually no pain due to a mutation in a previously-unidentified gene, according to a research paper co-led by UCL.

She also experiences very little anxiety and fear, and may have enhanced wound healing due to the mutation, which the researchers say could help guide new treatments for a range of conditions, they report in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

"We found this woman has a particular genotype that reduces activity of a gene already considered to be a possible target for pain and anxiety treatments," said one of the study's lead researchers, Dr James Cox (UCL Medicine).

"Now that we are uncovering how this newly-identified gene works, we hope to make further progress on new treatment targets."

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The more intensive and narrow the agricultural process, the more intensive the greenhouse gas emissions - which means your organic vegetables, wild-caught salmon, and free-range grass fed beef is a larger contributor to climate change than modern farming techniques.

And that means rich White people disproportionately affect the environment through their eating habits, according to a new report in the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

The report looks at what different demographic populations eat and was undertaken to get a better understanding of the environmental impacts of the food consumption patterns of major demographic groups.

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A Massachusetts-based company earlier this month cleared the last regulatory hurdle from the Food and Drug Administration to sell genetically engineered salmon in the U.S. Animal genomics expert Alison Van Eenennaam, who served on an advisory committee to the FDA to evaluate the AquAdvantage salmon, explains the significance of the FDA’s move and why some have criticized its decision.

1. How is AquaBounty’s salmon different from a conventional salmon?

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Since 1990, the U.S Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) has had NASA on its High Risk list due to persistent cost inflation and missed schedules.

Well, NASA is bold adventure, right? Doing things no one else can do? Bureaucratic timetables can't stand in the way of science. Except just the opposite is true. GAO regards NASA as a job works program for the opposite reason than that its missions are too bold for terrestrial accountants - it promises a lot and then once government is on the hook for the money, fails to deliver.

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Supplement distributor USA LESS has been forced to recall all of its LEOPARD Miracle Honey which touts itself as "an instant source of energy and enhancement of male vitality", from stores because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration discovered why it works for male vitality.

It's not their bogus mixture of rainforest herbs such as Tongkat Ali root, Ginseng root, Carob and Cinnamon, it's the presence of actual Sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra.

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When we think of racial bias we usually think about differences when being stopped by the police or being watched more closely in a small deli, but there is another facet of it, an indirect bias by people who otherwise behave in ways that seem diverse and tolerant. In a recent preprint paper, the authors concluded that white liberal politicians and individuals engage in "competence downshift" when talking to minorities while conservatives don't. Liberals downplay their own verbal competence and use more emotional language. It's like mansplaining, except for people of color.

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Science 2.0, a nonprofit science journalism group operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code that's educated over 300 million people, is soliciting evidence-based op-eds from PhDs with relevant expertise on the following topics. Write admin at science20.com if you want to submit 6-800 word articles related to:

1. 5G lawsuits. 

Lundy, Lundy, Soileau and South are soliciting plaintfifs to sue over 5G wireless, because it is so widely believed that any science that goes before a jury will lose, as seen in Johnson&Johnson baby powder and Bayer weedkiller cases.

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Survey results presented at the American College of Cardiology 2019 Annual Scientific Session led to a declaration that went well beyond the evidence - they said electronic cigarettes can lead to a dramatic increase in the odds of having a heart attack, coronary artery disease, and even depression and used that to state, "These data are a real wake-up call and should prompt more action and awareness about the dangers of e-cigarettes." 

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Stuck at home with a flu (great!, this way I miss the Neutel 2019 conference in Venice, among other things...), I spend an inordinate amount of hours in bed, with my brains boiling. This is no good, as typically I come out with weird ideas that, if later developed when I recover, would end up sucking more of my time. 

The example I can bring from last night is a potentially groundbreaking extension of the game of chess (or maybe not). During a couple of sleepless hours I came up with part of what I am writing up here; the rest was filled in during the following daily hours...

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In Washington state, once retail sales were legalized, marijuana use by 8th and 10th graders actually declined.

An obvious argument is that by legalizing it, the black market began to evaporate, and ethical vendors with legal businesses to lose are less likely to give it to children. Smoking is a "pediatric" disease because if people don't take it up early, they likely never will. But when criminals are the source of something, it becomes cool to rebellious teens, and consorting with criminals adds another layer of risk. 

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A pilot study using drug-resistant cancer cells in cell cultures and in mice has found that the compounds kahweol acetate and cafestol in coffee may inhibit the growth of prostate cancer. The results were presented at the European Association of Urology congress in Barcelona and published in The Prostate.

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It won't be a surprise if you believe that most surgeons promote surgery - for you. For themselves, they're a little more cautious. It's no different than a real estate person who tells you to list your house at a lower cost than they would list it for themselves - their commission is 2-5% on your sale so moving a house faster is more important to them than if it was their own home, where they'd get up to 100% of the additional revenue and wait a little longer to get the higher price.

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Semen stored in a laboratory in Sydney has been defrosted and successfully used to impregnate 34 Merino ewes, with the resulting live birth rate as high sperm frozen for just 12 months.

The authors believe the sperm used is the oldest viable stored semen of any species in the world and definitely the oldest sperm used to produce offspring.  The original semen samples were donated from sires owned by the Walker family. Those samples, frozen in 1968 by Dr Steven Salamon, came from four rams, including 'Sir Freddie' born in 1963, owned by the Walkers on their then property at Ledgworth. The Walkers now run 8000 sheep at 'Woolaroo', at Yass Plains, and maintain a close and proud relationship with the animal breeding program at the University of Sydney. 

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Many people don't realize July 4th, 1776 was not the day the war between America and Britain started, it's simply the day we traitorous colonists finally had enough of our own country's army attacking us, taking over our homes, stealing our food, locking up our guns, and throwing us in jail for no reason and we put the separation in writing.

It's why prohibitions against those actions, and other individual rights, ended up in the US Constitution in 1789. Thank you for noting that individual rights should be listed along with the powers of the federal government, Thomas Jefferson. 

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With a strange verdict by a jury in San Francisco, it became open season on glyphosate, a common weedkiller in use for generations. One new claim is that it leads to higher phosphorous levels.

Yet glyphosate only contains trace nutrients, nothing like what fertilizer has. Overuse of phosphorus-based fertilizer in some areas have led to a saturation of the soil’s capacity to hold the nutrient, which increases the likelihood that any additional phosphorus applied to the land will run off into waterways and cause of harmful algal blooms and deoxygenation leading to fish death.

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The U.S. college admissions scandal, where wealthy elites paid to circumvent an arbitrary entrance scoring system at some privileged schools by gaming it, has already led to lawsuits because the value of a degree from USC, Stanford, Yale and others involved has been devalued, students and their lawyers claim.

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Though the common refrain is that old growth rainforests are the only way to stave off global warming and must be preserved at all costs, a new analysis makes the case for logging and takes some hot air out of the environmental balloon. 

It found that the world’s largest carbon sinks are located in young, regrowing forests.

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