Science 2.0

Maria-Rosa was a robust woman in her late forties with a loud voice and an infectious laugh. She was a project manager at a local contracting firm, a grandmother, and a born nurturer. During her multiple visits to the emergency department, she got to know some of the staff and was constantly asking after their little ones and offering them her brand of “take-no-prisoners” life advice.

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The Scream is not one work of art but several; two paintings, two pastels, several lithographic prints and a few drawings and sketches. Edvard Munch  was a practical artist so if the check cleared he would make another.

His original Tempera on Cardboard is the most well-known version and can be found in Oslo’s National Gallery (Nasjonalmuseet) while his least liked version is crayon on cardboard. After the first was sold he made another two years later, in pastel on cardboard, and it is a lot less gloomy than the original. Probably because of the money he was getting. He then painted another Tempera on Cardboard in 1910 because the others had sold.

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One of the biggest hoaxes of the coronavirus period has been tinctures, such as those promoted by CNN journalist Chris Cuomo and his wife on her website. They don't do anything, but like most naturopathy they let you feel like you are doing something while you wait.

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The biggest cause of bee die-offs is just random luck. For as long as bee numbers have been reported there have been reports of sudden, large-scale die-offs. Nature is out to kill them like it is all of us. Yet more recently, it has been found that we can help bees make their own luck. Pesticides wipe out varroa mites, the greatest enemy bees have.

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The text below is the fourth part of what could have become "Chapter 13" of the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", which I published in 2016. For part 1 see here; for part 2 see here; for part 3 see here.

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The WHO have been hugely misreported by the media. Mike Ryan said that if we develop a safe and effective vaccine for COVID19 we also have to deploy it. We can do this. If we vaccinate enough people to eradicate this virus, it is a "beacon of hope" for the way we care about our world citizens.

Mike Ryan points out that we have a safe and effective vaccine for measles but haven't eliminated it from the world although we know how to do this.

[We have eradicted it from the Americas, last case July 2015 in Brazil. Measles elimination in the America]

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Though coronavirus is a new name for much of the world, microbiologists have worried about it for half a century. It is in the same family as the common cold virus but with the right mutation it can be deadly to those with risk factors for respiratory diseases because it is common like the common cold.

To microbiologists, the world is filled with pathogens so predicting the next plague when nature is always out to kill us can verge on paranoia; instead we are fortunate most new crises never happen. Let's hope that worry about global spread of the multi-resistant pathogen Stenotrophomonas maltophilia fizzles out also.

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A new paper has implicated a physiologic mechanism in vegetation as a cause for Arctic warming.

The "greenhouse effect" is well-known by now, water vapor that plants emit during photosynthesis serves to lower land surface temperature, similar watering the yard on a hot day, but it can lead to a rise in air temperature.

The new paper finds that the Arctic temperature rises when the moisture released by plants is reduced due to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in the atmosphere. The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration closes the pores (stomata) of plants in high-latitude areas and reduces their transpiration, which they find ultimately accelerates Arctic warming. 

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Conservation groups have frequently sued the U.S Army Corps of Engineers claiming that government scientists do not "properly" evaluate the environmental impacts of its plans to mitigate flood risk.

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When states and nations began to implement forced lockdowns to combat COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that has now killed 20,000 more people than the flu did two years ago, there was relatively little mention of mental health. For those who wanted to stay home and learn to bake bread, it was a paid vacation, but for those more susceptible to psychological stress it is a risky time.

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During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, when disease epidemiologists want to be taken seriously by the public, they face an uphill battle. Blocking their progress are epidemiologists who casually link everything to diseases, often using food frequency questionnaires which have no scientific legitimacy.

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Young people who are “hooked” on watching fantasy or reading science fiction may be on to something. Contrary to a common misperception that reading this genre is an unworthy practice, reading science fiction and fantasy may help young people cope, especially with the stress and anxiety of living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Anxiety-prone people can blame serotonin cleanup proteins gone awry in their amygdala, according to research in marmosets recently published in JNeurosci. Targeting the amygdala with anti-anxiety medication could provide quicker relief.

The same event or set of life circumstances could send one person into the depths of anxiety or despair while leaving another unaffected. This distinction, called trait anxiety, arises from the proteins involved in serotonin signaling, a neurotransmitter implicated in anxiety and depression.

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A person with Type 2 diabetes is three times more likely to break a bone than a nondiabetic. Since the number of people with diabetes is increasing rapidly in the United States, skeletal fragility in patients with Type 2 diabetes is a growing, but little-known, public health issue.

Usually poor bone density is the culprit behind fragile bones, but that is not the case with Type 2 diabetics, who tend to have normal to high bone density. Yet, they still suffer from fractures at an alarming rate. Nobody knows why.

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The offer of Ph.D. positions in Physics at the University of Padova has opened just a few days ago, and I wish to advertise it here, giving some background on the matter for those of you who are interested in the call or know somebody who could be.

The Ph.D. in Italy In Italy, Ph. D.s last three years (the duration can be extended but this is not recommended). Courses start with the first academic semester, so the calls typically open in the spring, and admission tests are run in the summer. The system is not too different from that of other countries, but there are peculiarities of which you might want to be aware.

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The text below is the third part of what could have become "Chapter 13" of the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", which I published in 2016. For part 1 see here; for part 2 see here.

Giromini joins Run 2

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In 2000, vaccines led to the measles virus being declared eliminated from the United States yet in 2019 there were 1,282 confirmed cases in 31 states - the greatest number reported since 1992.

Unsurprisingly, nearly three-fourths originated from New York which, along with the west coast, has long been a hotbed for vaccine denial. And the cases occurred in people not vaccinated against measles. 

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There is a popular saying in statistics - "Everyone believes the data except the collector. No one believes the model except the modeler."

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When President Trump said he was going to restrict travel from China earlier this year due to coronavirus, I didn't engage in the reflexive politics of corporate journalists and call him a racist, I just though it an overreaction. After all, the Whole Health Organisation did not consider it a pandemic and they usually hyperventilate about everything. They had even assured us it could not be transmitted human to human.

Their source for both; the communist party in China. 

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A homeopath, an economist, and a psychologist walk into a homeopathic ER...

That is not the start of a joke, in Stockholm those three did start a homeopathic Emergency Room, as I was reminded by a 2014 Debunking Denialism post, so I went to see if they are still around, and sure enough and it still exists. 

They claim homeopathy "strengthens the immune system" whatever that means, and for people who believe Science Is A Vast Corporate Conspiracy, that promises to get them off the treadmill of actual medicine.

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