Science 2.0

Duckweed split into different species 59 million years ago, when the climate was more extreme than even the most aggressive climate simulation produced now.

A new study, genome sequences for five duckweed species, reveals how duckweed can essentially farm itself, and because it can double in mass after two days what that might mean for the future of food science.

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A French team conducted experiments using sparrow chicks and write in Environmental Research that their tests led to slower growth, with females impacted most. 

They targeted the common fungicide tebuconazole, popular on food crops because it can stop everything from necrotic ring spot to blights, mildews, and smuts. They compare it to the popular weedkiller glyphosate, which they claim has caused a decline in birds in Europe, despite scientists showing the top reason for bird population changes in various areas has been land use changes and not the use of pesticides lacking an Organic™ label.

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Visitors to the site of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town buried (and so preserved for thousands of years) by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, don’t often think to look beyond the city walls. And it’s easy to understand why: there’s plenty on offer within this monumentally well-preserved town, from jewel-like wall paintings of myths and legends like Helen of Troy, to the majestic amphitheater and sumptuously stuccoed baths.

But step outside the gates for a moment, and you’re in a very different – yet no less important – world.

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In a world where misinformation, voluntary or accidental, reigns supreme; in a world where lies become truth if they are broadcast for long enough; in a world where we have unlimited access to superintelligent machines, but we prefer to remain ignorant; in this world we are unfortunately living today, that is, the approach taken by scientists to accumulate knowledge - peer review - is something we should hold dear and preserve with care. And yet...

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For decades, natural history books have taught that when a catastrophic asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, it wiped out the dinosaurs and gave mammals – until then mostly small, tree-dwelling creatures – a chance to flourish on the ground​. It’s the classic “mammals rise after dinosaurs fall” narrative.

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In the past few years my activities on this site - but I would say more in general, as the same pattern happened also on social media - have progressively shifted away from pure casual blogging and reporting of personal matters to a more focused discussion of scientific topics, always lingering around my research interests. 

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What are sustainable cities, and can we build them? I put my Institute Fellows’ decades of experience together with the content of this fine conference, and conclude: (1) A sustainable city will attend equally to innovation, to human opportunity and dignity, and to the Earth. (2) Cities are not yet doing that. (3) There are obstacles.

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When asked about an effort to ban fluoride in drinking water, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said, "It’s not a bill I care that much about” but he still signed it, despite the health benefits being well-established and claims of harm being the kind of slimy epidemiology that claims "risk" of BPA, weedkillers, PFAS, and too many products to count.

Utah wants to be the California of the right-wing; ban things because it matches the politics of their voters and science will be marginalized.(1)

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In 1961, less than one per cent of Canadians identified as having no religion. In 2021, 43 per cent of those between 15 and 35 considered themselves religiously unaffiliated.

Organized religion — and especially Christianity — is in decline. Secularization is advancing apace. Most sociologists of religion agree on this. What they disagree about, however, is why.

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It's easy for Greenpeace employees in cities to talk about farming but in the real world, without pesticides we'd lose 78 percent of fruit, 54 percent of vegetables, and 32 percent of cereal crops.

Most farmers want to optimize razor-thin margins and protect their biggest asset, land, so they are cautious about spraying too much, but the organic process leads to startling amounts of nitrogen runoff into rivers and ground water. A study claims 31 percent of agricultural soils around the world were at high risk from pesticide pollution while the old ways of German farmers recently showed they were exposing everything to wasted chemicals. Seed treatments like neonicotinoids have gone a long way to reducing runoff but some products can only be sprayed. 

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Greenpeace is facing bankruptcy after a $667,000,000 judgment. For the first time ever, the number of U.S. federal employees declined. Democrats have begun to consider they might be wrongly defending terrorists. They even became pro-vaccine for the first time this century. 

The best thing President Donald Trump may have done for science and political sanity is to switch from Democrat to Republican and bring Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk along with him. It forced Democrats, who are nearly 90% of career government employees, to suddenly defend things they had opposed for decades.(1)

Like nuclear energy. Which means we could usher in a new Golden Age of Science.

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In this article I'm going to examine how student feedback plays a pivotal role in enhancing learning design and engagement, particularly in online education environments. I will explore the mechanisms by which timely, constructive feedback not only improves course content and delivery but also empowers students as co-creators in the learning process.

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If you insist you will only eat berries picked by hand near a stream, you are virtue signaling to other wealthy people that you have more money than than they do, while masking it in a halo of claiming to care about taste or renewability or other nature.

No one is fooled. That is why restaurants and consumers who fetish-ize wild caught fight while claiming it is more nutritious or tastes better are so cloying. Sure, there can be differences in taste, just like if you give a chicken different feed, but that is easily solvable, and has been, like in the chicken industry.

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The world is producing more food using fewer pesticides than ever, thanks to modern science. The gap between modern pesticide usage and organic food pesticides needed per calorie of food got so large, up to 600% more organic pesticides used, that California stopped itemizing organic pesticides separately to improve the optics of the organic industry.

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Perhaps the most important thing to get right from the start, in most statistical problems, is to understand what is the probability distribution function (PDF) of your data. If you know it exactly -something that is theoretically possible but only rarely achieved in practice- you are in statistical heaven: you can use the maximum likelihood method for parameter estimation, and you can get to understand a lot about the whole problem. 

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It's no secret that cats have the same α2,3-linked (SAα2,3) sialic acid receptor as birds, which means their mortality from bird flu which acts via that receptor is 50%. Or that raw pet food, raw milk, and organic chickens that refuse medicine are key transmitters of the disease outside the wild.

Why are you still buying that stuff? Why did you ever? 

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Environmental lawyers, especially lawyers at Natural Resources Defense Council, exist to sue companies and to have casus belli they need to suggest corporations are killing us all. It is no surprise that NRDC has hired lots of lawyers who are anti-vaccine, anti-cell-phone, anti-food (ingredients, colors, the type of seed), anti-nuclear, etc.

If you don't know any scientists or Republicans, and NRDC employs neither, it is easy to demonize them because you never have them looking at you over lunch.(1)

NRDC knows a Republican insider now. Their former lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is part of the Trump administration and the "mainstream" positions they prize, that food science is evil, medicine is evil, technology is evil, are becoming government policy.

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       The book is author Alex Hannaford’s lament about changes in Austin, Texas, since his initial visit to the city in 1999. This at first spurred your reviewer, who moved to Austin in 1969, to think, “1999? Well, isn’t that just too precious?”

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