Science 2.0

Casual reader, be warned - the contents of this article, specifically the second part of it, are highly volatile, speculative stuff. But hey, that is the stuff that dreams are made of. And I have one or two good reasons to dream on.


The environment

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The number of articles retracted related to nutrition now numbers unlucky 13 - and that bad lack shares one name in common: Brian Wansink, Ph.D.

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People often ask, "How close are we to sending humans to Mars" and it's not surprising given the optimistic presentations by Elon Musk and others. However, I think this is the wrong question to ask. It is just far too far away to send humans at this stage. What we need to know right now is, “How close are we to sending humans back to the Moon”.

It is of little importance to be able to send the mass of a spaceship with humans to Mars. We could have sent a dead astronaut to Mars decades ago. The challenge is to send a live astronaut there. And that’s much more than sending the mass of the human + food + life support, water etc.

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So you're planning ahead for your next trip to a remote location, and you try to make sense of those TripAdvisor listings. Great tool - there's a bunch of there around, but let's focus on that one here. It allows you to type in your preferences, location, restrictions, and it dumps a list of facilities together with easy access to the reviews of previous customers. How could we possibly live without it, twenty years ago?
Now, the point of this article is to make sure you can USE the data you are able to get on the web. I use to say "there's not such a thing as too much information", but then I shoud qualify that statement: it all depends on whether you have a brain and a will to put it to work. 

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This originated as my answer to a Quora question: "In what general knowledge domains do alternatives to Wikipedia exist that are significantly superior?". So - I think my own new wikis are, for a simple reason. Because they are based on Wikipedia, but set up to fix things that can’t be fixed in Wikipedia,. It's not hard to improve in topic areas where it has many errors, significant topics are ignored, and its out of date. Sadly, that is happening in many areas of the vast encyclopedia, though much of it is still excellent.

These are my new wikis:

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Dr. Jane Goodall is in a panic about GMOs and all of modern agriculture. What isn't plagiarized in her screeds about food is a mishmash of conjecture, anti-science mysticism, and lack of a clue about biology. She is not alone in losing her mind a bit with age. Dr. Linus Pauling became obsessed with Vitamin C as he aged, his claim that high doses would cure a cold is still promoted by supplement salespeople today. Dr.

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What is a photon jet? Despite their exotic name, photon jets are a well studied thing nowadays. The original studies were performed by experimentalists who aimed to test quantum chromodynamics: they used to spend their time discriminating prompt photon production in hadron collisions from backgrounds. I remember a lot of such studies were performed in the 80ies and 90ies by my CDF colleagues, especially within the "QCD working group".
The importance of the detection of single, isolated photons of high energy has risen enormously since then, given their role in the discovery of the Higgs boson. Photon jets are in fact the background to beat down if you want a neat peak of H --> γγ decays to pop out of a mass histogram constructed from events featuring two photon candidates.

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The transition from ape-like shuffling to upright walking (bipedalism) as we do has long fascinated scientists. Why did it happen? When? 

The second question is a little closer to being solved. An analysis of 3.6 million year old hominin footprints in Tanzania suggests our ancestors evolved the hallmark trait of extended leg, human-like bipedalism substantially earlier than previously thought. Many millions of years before humans. Like the chicken and the egg, there is a clear science answer about which came first even if philosophers are baffled.

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Researchers at Carnege-Mellon University have found a way to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) schemes to transfer content from one video to the style of another. So they can make a daffodil bloom like the way a hibiscus bloom does or make clouds that are crossing the sky rapidly on a windy day be slowed to give the appearance of calmer weather during movie shoots.

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There is a vicious cycle of vanity on social media, according to new results. College-age women who viewed positive feedback on Instagram selfies then experienced greater body dissatisfaction - because they put more focus on appearance and in the end fueled body dissatisfaction among viewers.

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A new photoelectrode can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods, another step on the road to turning solar power from an expensive subsidized sideshow into the default energy of the future.

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Once upon a time we all knew what censorship was, who the good and bad guys were, and what could be done to make the world a better place. Look up the noun “censor” in the Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll find an outline of a much-told story under definition 2 (b):

“An official in some countries whose duty it is to inspect all books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc, before publication, to secure that they shall contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the government.”

Attributing the first instance of this usage to the English poet John Milton, the lexicographers illustrated it with a quotation from his anti-censorship pamphlet, Areopagitica (1644):

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The famous paradox 'which came first, the chicken or the egg?' was created by philosophers to discuss cause and effect. Since chickens lay eggs, and eggs produce chickens...you get the idea.

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Since yesterday, and for almost a week, the literature festival in Mantova hosts "ScienceGround", a quite innovative initiative at the boundary between a science fair, a workshop, a library, and a place to hang around together and exchange ideas and information. The location is the beautiful hall of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, where a modular and dynamically configurable space has been set up.

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A new paper declares that whole grains can help prevent type 2 diabetes  but a quick glance at the methodology will show you why you need to be skeptical. It doesn't matter if it’s rye, oats, wheat, wheatberries, bulgur, or couscous, any whole grain will do. Which is like declaring that any pasta can reduce type 2 diabetes, which will also be true - if in either case the calories are reduced.

Type 2 diabetes, which unlike Type 1 does not involve an inability to produce insulin but rather involves insulin production being overworked, is overwhelmingly related to obesity. That is why unlike Type 1 it is more of an adult disease. To prevent it requires more than using a type of food, it involves consuming less of all foods.

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Where do the Jewish people come from? This is a question that anthropologists, historians and theologists have studied for millennia.

According to mythology, the Judaeans descended from three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (Cave of Machpelah) in Hebron – a city in the Palestine region and a world heritage site located in the southern West Bank, 19 miles south of Jerusalem.

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The worst effects of the UK’s housing crisis include rising levels of homelessness, and growing numbers of people being housed in unsafe or overcrowded conditions. According to the charity Crisis, 59,890 households were accepted as homeless in England in 2017. And according to recent statistics, 27% of privately rented homes and 13% of homes in the social housing sector are not classed as “decent”.

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The Federal Court of Appeal decision that halted construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion has thrown Canada into a tizzy.

While British Columbia First Nations and environmentalists are celebrating a rare court victory on this project, industry representatives, trade unions and many other First Nations who supported the expansion feel the decision is a nightmarish intervention in plans that were many years in the making.

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Though sexual assault and dating violence in the academic and cultural world focuses most heavily on men, among teens there are more Asia Argento's than Twitter recognizes.

In recent findings, 5.8 percent of boys and 4.2 percent of girls said they had experienced dating violence in the past year. The good news is that dating violence among teens has declined overall, from 6 percent of teens reporting dating violence in 2003 down to 5 percent in 2013.

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A fully 3D printed array of light receptors on a hemispherical surface is the first significant step toward creating a "bionic eye."

The project began with a hemispherical glass dome to show how they could overcome the challenge of printing electronics on a curved surface. Using a custom-built 3D printer, they started with a base ink of silver particles. The dispensed ink stayed in place and dried uniformly instead of running down the curved surface. The researchers then used semiconducting polymer materials to print photodiodes, which convert light into electricity. The entire process took about an hour.

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