Science 2.0

Eight years ago I wrote about how environmental lobbyists working for environmental lawyer groups kept the federal government in such a tail-chasing frenzy nothing could ever really get accomplished.

My frustration was over the Paiute cutthroat trout, a rare High Sierra fish that everyone agreed needed help. The government agreed, sportsmen agreed, the courts agreed, environmentalists agreed, but then it was environmentalists preventing it from happening.

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Though there is far less economic equality in America than at any point in history - poor people in America live in more square footage per person than the middle class in France, not to mention the low cost of food, TVs, and cell phones - there is a longing in some quarters to reduce it at the fringes. There are complaints, for example, that the .00001 running companies make high multiples of what the average employee gets.

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An alarming number of young, white, poor men who abuse recreational opioids are developing infections of either the heart's inner lining or valves, known as infective endocarditis This new trend predominantly affects men who also have higher rates of HIV, hepatitis C and alcohol abuse, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Infective endocarditis occurs when bacteria or fungi in the blood stream enter the heart's inner lining or valves. Nearly 34,000 people receive treatment for this condition each year, of which approximately 20% die. One of the major risk factors for infective endocarditis is drug abuse.

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Biogenic volatile organic compounds produced by the cannabis plants during growth and reproduction, the same chemicals responsible for the pungent smell of a cannabis plant, also contribute to air pollution on a much larger scale, according to new research.

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On Slate, Rich Juzwiak recounts a situation where a man with a persistent depressive disorder who had sex with a transgender guy said the transgender man worried about sexual transference of gut microbes and transmittal of depression thereof.

Well, it's on YouTube and that has authority to a lot of people, and it involves gut microbes and claims of studies in mice, both of which are so abused by (a) unethical researchers and (b) hucksters selling fancy supplements it's hard for the public to know what to trust.

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For years, California has been able to act in defiance of federal standards because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given them a waiver to do so. Today, EPA revoked that waiver, signaling that California will no longer be able to unilaterally intimidate companies into creating special standards that are not warranted by evidence.

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"Numerous studies have indisputably demonstrated that particulate inhalation results in health problems far beyond the lungs," write the authors of an article in Nature Communications saying they can detect small micron particulate matter in a few placentae and therefore, what, that birth defects are probably happening?

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Cuticular structure in a Late Maastrichtian crab, Costacopluma mexicana, from deposits near the town of from near Paredón, Ramos Arizpe in what is now southern Coahuila (formerly Coahuila de Zaragoza), north-eastern Mexico. We see this same species in the Upper Cretaceous Moyenne of Northeast Morocco and from the Pacific slope, Paleocene of California, USA. This beauty is in the collection of José F. Ventura‎.

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Diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases are challenging medical and social problems. Patients with diabetes mellitus are at a higher risk of developing vascular dysfunction and hypertension. Cumulative evidence suggests that oxidative stress may play a key role in the development of diseases.

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In France, 30 percent of organic food was recently found to be nothing of the kind.

Consumers did not know, it was surprise spot inspections that busted the farmers, which tells you two things: (1) There is no difference in the food quality, it is an intellectual placebo for wealthier people and; (2) the problem is probably much worse in the U.S., since we don't have surprise inspections at all, instead we turn over organic "certification" to 80 private organizations that rely on selling organic stickers for their livelihood. 

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This fall we will get a new "Teminator" movie, marking 35 years that a dystopian nightmare about robots taking over and killing us all has been front and center in pop culture awareness. 

The dystopian nightmare may happen to fish first. Swimming terminators could be ready to fight against one of the world's most problematic invasive species, the mosquitofish.

Found in freshwater lakes and rivers worldwide, soaring mosquitofish populations have decimated native fish and amphibian populations, and attempts to control the species through toxicants or trapping often fail or cause harm to local wildlife.

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When it comes to getting treatment for cancer treatment, your marital status could be making a significant difference in the level of medical care you get, finds a new analysis.

The stakes are high, given that 45 percent (<111 million) U.S. adults are unmarried and given the demographic trend among young people that number is likely to rise.

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The weather has always been political, writes Jeva Lange in The Week. The ability to anticipate and react to weather-related events separate leaders from has-beens.

But only very recently has the uncertainty of weather prediction also started to be exploited for political gain. And both sides do it. Warmer than 1980? Blame climate change. Fewer hurricanes? Blame climate change. And opponents of climate science engage in the same cherry-picking.

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After Friedrich Wohler accidentally synthesized urea in 1828, chemical synthesis - and organic synthesis for that - has been a driving force in pharmaceutical innovation.

We live longer and better than ever and we can thank the continuous advancement of synthetic chemistry, which allows scientists to design and build new molecules.

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My teenage son believes I am reasonably astute for an old guy. My kids can recall that when Minecraft was released I downloaded it because I wanted to show them how elegant code works.(1) I paid for Fortnite before it was available for free, and then when they introduced a Battle Royale mode I wondered if PlayerUnknown's Battleground was going to be harmed by this new competition or, as often happens, they create bigger markets.(2)

So maybe it was only a matter of time before the grand-daddy of turn based civilization games, Sid Meier's Civilization, jumped into Battle Royale with the free Red Death update.

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On December 21st of 2018, President Trump signed the First Step Act of 2018, which made significant changes to drug sentencing laws.

Now Michigan is going to replace drug dealers in prisons with minors who have flavored vaping products. Under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's recent executive order, anyone found with four or more flavored vaping products is “presumed to possess said items with the intent to sell”, punishable by imprisonment of six months and a fine per item. 

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Just five short years ago, there was no real market leader in e-cigarettes, it was a grassroots solution for smokers who wanted harm reduction and smoking cessation and didn't like Big Pharma. Patches and gums certainly did not work very well and the wisdom of crowds invented something better. It was a tiny fraction of the tobacco market, but growing to where FDA wanted to regulate it.

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A recent analysis of 204,796 news articles about 204 mass shootings over a 40-year period found that President Trump is not inventing things when he mentions a link between shootings and video games. He got it from mainstream media.

Is corporate media racist? 

Video games were 8X more likely to be mentioned in media accounts when the shooting occurred at a school and the perpetrator was white male than when the shooter was African American, found the authors. 

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The festive lassie you see here is an Anglerfish. They always look to be celebrating a birthday of some kind, albeit solo. This party is happening deep in our oceans right now. The wee candle you see on her forehead is a photophore, a tiny bit of luminous dorsal spine. In anglerfish' world, it's dead sexy. It's an adaptation used to attract prey and mates alike.

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Nationalist politics continue to gain support across the European continent, from the UK to Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, the concept of “Europe” has become a rallying cry for those who want to resist what they see as a constraining, inadequate or conservative vision for the future.

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