Science 2.0

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation was created by a hedge fund magnate to devote some of their Wall Street wealth to education reform, public pension reform, criminal justice reform, dietary policy, and improving reproducibility in science. 

Those are all positive things, so why last year did they also give money to one of those most corrupt, hate-filled, lying, mercenary organizations in America. U.S. Right To Know is an industry front group that exists to attack scientists and undermine public confidence in food and medicine for their donors/clients, who sell unfailingly "alternatives" to the science and health consensus. They even launder dark money payments to outlets willing to help. More on that below.

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What is dark matter (DM)? This is one of the most pressing questions in fundamental science nowadays. We have observed that only one fifth of the matter that exists in the Universe clusters into stars and emits light - the rest appears to only interact gravitationally, producing phenomena we can study through the dynamics of galaxy rotation or by observing the deflection of light passing through it.

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Nima Arkani-Hamed needs no introduction - he's a superstar theoretical physicist, and whenever he speaks, his colleagues listen - so much so that his seminars regularly overrun twice past their scheduled duration, without anybody blinking. 
And today it's your lucky day (and mine), as you get to listen to a clear thinker explaining what really is the status of research in fundamental physics, and why it is actually extremely exciting, much to the discomfort of those who would prefer that public money were spent to reduce taxes (if you don't get the pun, please leave).

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Legendary "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek recently announced that at age 78 he has been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Then he stated he was confident he was going to beat the odds. Was he just engaging in positive thinking publicly while getting things in order privately? Nearly 80, with stage IV cancer, and in the pancreas? Aren't those all really bleak from a prognosis point of view?

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Today through March 19th (or 19 March, since the British like to do things wrong even if they make more sense) is British Science Week, where they celebrate Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in a formal way. Informally they celebrate it every day, since they use cell phones, televisions, mass transit and residents of London are photographed by government 300 times each day. 

They have citizen science programs, activity packs for all ages and even a 5K run. I don't know how running a 5K fits into science but neither does dancing your PhD, and that's still pretty cool.

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Today's news is that five months after Alessandro Strumia's controversial talk at a conference on "Theory and Gender", CERN decided to terminate the Italian theorist's status of "guest professor", effectively cutting its ties with him. The decision certainly affects the ability of Strumia to further his research in particle phenomenology, which centered on models of physics beyond the Standard Model, and is rather unprecedented. 

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First this site has never been used for missile launching. It has only been used for satellites as part of North Korea’s ambitious civilian space program. They want to become one of the few countries able to launch satellites to geostationary orbit.

Although it could be used for a missile test, this seems unlikely. One suggestion is that it is to have more things to offer to demolish as part of future negotiations. Other suggestions include signaling impatience with the pace of negotiations, and a chess move to ratchet up pressure on Washington. It is not an attempt to do anything in secret as they know the world watches everything they do here. Whatever their reasons, they are doing it intentionally for show.

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An exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of the Cambridge Philosophical Society begins tomorrow and will run  until August 31, 2019 at Cambridge University Library.

"Discovery: 200 years of the Cambridge Philosophical Society" notes its role in some of the most significant scientific advances of the period, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, Lord Rayleigh’s seminal work on waves (Cambridge’s first Nobel Prize - they've now had 107 reside there), and the birth of ‘Big Data’ experiments from the 19th century.

One display especially relevant for International Women’s Day is the chart which captures the moment pulsars were discovered by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. It will be on display for the first time.

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Two generations ago, it was normal for kids to play out on the street. But trust in media was high then and sensationalized accounts of kidnappings and white vans and accidents led to helicopter parents worried that their children would be kidnapped.(1) Today, unless there is an organized play date scheduled well in advance, kids are likely to stay indoors. Sports will cause concussions, after all.

That has led to kids being isolated and often obese.

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A paper in Current Anthropology uses writing to distill what the authors believe are seven rules of morals common worldwide. 

It's certainly a catchy idea for people who sit at the bar asking why Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East can't get along but there is a big problem putting them into practice. Some morals aren't creating common ground because they are in opposition to each other. 

The seven common moral beliefs Drs. Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse, all of Oxford, list are: helping your family, helping a larger cause, reciprocity, being brave, respecting authority, dividing resources equally or by splitting the difference, and respecting the property of others. 

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A new paper says that how much you look racially stereotypical, like other members of your racial group, influences how likely you are to get a degree in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) fields.

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A picture is worth a thousand words, and a simple chart of pedestrian deaths is worth 6,227 - that is the number of pedestrian deaths last year, not the length of this article.

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Short summary. The journalist stories often don't even mention that studies are not agreed on whether it is carbon positive or even perhaps carbon negative. The amount in the worst case is around an extra quarter of a degree rise by 2100, a slow burner through to the next three or four centuries. That is for “business as usual”.

For 3°C which we are close to already and easily achievable, then it is possible that it remains carbon negative and removes the equivalent of CO2 a fifth of a degree by 2299, and at most it is a fifth of a degree increase by 2299.

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If you are in a hurry, I will save you some time. Do not walk, fly at 20,000 MPH to your nearest theater or Fandango or however you get IMAX tickets and see "Apollo 11."

I want to be the first to congratulate Todd Douglas Miller on his 2020 Academy Award, because unless someone pumps out a documentary about a minority transgender person with their heart on the outside who escapes North Korea and wins the Olympics, this is going to win.

And for good reason. It looks glorious, it feels glorious, it hearkens back to a time when NASA was bold and not a job works program. As a kid who lived a short distance from Cape Canaveral, I was fortunate to see an Apollo launch in person, and I have to tell you this is better. 

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It will likely come as no surprise that the large majority of – if not all – people in Wales can speak English. While Welsh is one of the oldest living languages in Europe, English, along with Flemish, first rooted itself in small enclaves in southwest Wales as far back as the 12th century.

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Megachile pluto, Wallace's giant bee, is the world's largest, with a wingspan more than 2.5 inches. Though it should be easy enough to see, some had believed it was extinct because it hadn't been seen by western scientists since 1981.

In January, a search team set out to photograph Wallace's giant bee and successfully did so, declaring in a documentary they have "rediscovered" the species in the North Moluccas, an island group in Indonesia.

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One of the problems that led to both opioid and medical marijuana overuse has been that the notion of pain is subjective. If someone claims they are in pain, a doctor has no way to know how much of it is real and how much is psychological.

A new test can identify biomarkers in the blood that can help objectively determine how severe a patient’s pain is. The blood test, the first of its kind, would allow physicians far more accuracy in treating pain—as well as a better long-term look at the patient’s medical future.

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Croatian scientists have been engaged in scientific work at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) for close to 40 years. Croatian scientists worked on the SPS heavy-ion programme and in 1994, research groups from Split officially joined the CMS collaboration. One year later a research group from Zagreb joined the ALICE collaboration, working with Croatian industry partners to contribute to the construction of the experiments’ detectors.

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It is reasonably good news. Kim wanted the US to drop all sanctions in response for dismantling the publicly disclosed plant to make nuclear weapons materials. They weren't ready to do that. The US were willing to drop all sanctions in response to him completely denuclearizing but he wasn't ready to do that. He has a vision but not the same as the US vision but closer than it was a year ago.

Trump talked about them knowing the country very well (including nuclear facilities that NK has not disclosed). And that he wasn't willing to do enough.

Not a big disagreement. More that they were on the point of a big agreement but it fell through. And as Trump said he is not afraid to walk away from a deal.

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Short summary - NASA did not warn about this - it’s only at warning level 0 and has to be 5 or above to be of public concern. The best fit projected orbit takes it to somewhere out beyond Mars's orbit in December, and what's more, at the opposite side of the sun from Earth on that date. But based on only three and a third days of orbit. If it was going to hit then our telescopes should have spotted it by now. In particular, the new ATLAS early warning system has a warning time of a year for one kilometer or larger asteroids with 100% confidence. So I think we are pretty safe from this one.

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