Science 2.0

Vaping in kids had its day. While useful before and since for smoking cessation and harm reduction in cigarette smokers, vaping only became a fad in teens when, as predicted, social authoritarians in the Obama administration declared it an epidemic - if on a survey a young person claimed to have tried one in the previous year and began rolling out commercials of children filmed in black and white looking like zombies.(1) 

It was Reefer Madness for the 2010s and did the same thing Reefer Madness did; it caused teens to think it was cool to outrage their elders.

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Vaping in kids had its day. While useful before and since for smoking cessation and harm reduction in cigarette smokers, vaping only became a fad in teens when, as predicted, social authoritarians in the Obama administration declared it an epidemic - if on a survey a young person claimed to have tried one in the previous year and began rolling out commercials of children filmed in black and white looking like zombies.(1) 

It was Reefer Madness for the 2010s and did the same thing Reefer Madness did; it caused teens to think it was cool to outrage their elders.

read more

The 'natural' movement is not evidence-based but the beliefs of progressives that modern science is killing us and ancient ways are more nutritious usually aren't harmful. Your risk of E. coli and higher levels of toxic pesticides from organic food is certainly greater, but in a relative risk sense all food is safe.

Except raw milk. Like sushi when you are pregnant, the risks, in this case 700X the harmful outbreaks of pasteurized milk, are not worth it, and anyone who has seen a dairy farm and isn't selling raw milk to rich coastal elites knows it.

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The 'natural' movement is not evidence-based but the beliefs of progressives that modern science is killing us and ancient ways are more nutritious usually aren't harmful. Your risk of E. coli and higher levels of toxic pesticides from organic food is certainly greater, but in a relative risk sense all food is safe.

Except raw milk. Like sushi when you are pregnant, the risks, in this case 700X the harmful outbreaks of pasteurized milk, are not worth it, and anyone who has seen a dairy farm and isn't selling raw milk to rich coastal elites knows it.

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If you read Twitter, and probably Bluesky, if anyone reads that, Republicans are in a War On Science and the proof is (1) being Republican and (2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former darling of Democrats and once pushed to run EPA by President Obama, is in their camp.

Except he didn't take his allies against science with him. They are still firmly anti-science progressives, which means they still vote Democrat, and they are still cheering every time science is suppressed.

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If you read Twitter, and probably Bluesky, if anyone reads that, Republicans are in a War On Science and the proof is (1) being Republican and (2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former darling of Democrats and once pushed to run EPA by President Obama, is in their camp.

Except he didn't take his allies against science with him. They are still firmly anti-science progressives, which means they still vote Democrat, and they are still cheering every time science is suppressed.

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Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.

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Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.

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Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. 

Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.

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Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. 

Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.

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“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.

Epidemic? Again? No.

Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.

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“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.

Epidemic? Again? No.

Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.

read more

At the IV Workshop in Valencia a student from my group, Emanuele Coradin, presented the results of a novel algorithm for the identification of charged particles in a silicon tracker. The novelty is due to the use of neuromorphic computing, which works by encoding detector hits in the time of arrival of current impulses at neurons, and by letting neurons "learn" the true patterns of hits produced by charged particles from the noise due to random hits.

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At the IV Workshop in Valencia a student from my group, Emanuele Coradin, presented the results of a novel algorithm for the identification of charged particles in a silicon tracker. The novelty is due to the use of neuromorphic computing, which works by encoding detector hits in the time of arrival of current impulses at neurons, and by letting neurons "learn" the true patterns of hits produced by charged particles from the noise due to random hits.

read more