Science 2.0

To make solar power viable, there need to be gigantic installations in remote locations. Then there need to be new power lines equivalent to every paved road in America. Then the grid needs to be modernized with battery storage.

None of that is happening any time soon but what may spur at least grid improvements is the reliance on natural gas. Though alternative energy gets mandates and subsidies conventional fuel supplies 80 percent of American energy, but natural gas needs energy to get from place to place. While most of that is still, fittingly, supplied by natural gas, in places where it is supplied by electricity, or even less reliable solar electricity, pipelines are far more subject to outages.

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The imagery of Millennials as employees is that they care more about vacation policy and how much the company promotes a social agenda than trading value for income. The imagery Gen Z as employees is that they just won't show up to work at all.

Both may feel superior to older generations, they may brag they are not slaves to their work, they have more balance, they can invoke a recession from 2008-2016 and then a pandemic in 2019, but the older generations are the older ones bankrolling their insouciance. A survey of 2,346 U.S. adults found that 68 percent of parents with adult children have bailed them out, often substantially.

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In what they are calling the first study to systematically identify aggressive driving behaviors, a team believe they have measured the changes in driving that occur in an aggressive state.

Obviously non-professional aggressive drivers drive faster and make more mistakes than non-aggressive drivers, they put other road users at risk. They also pose a challenge to engineers working on self-driving car technology. UK officials claim that 80 percent of UK road deaths are “predominantly caused by dangerous and reckless drivers.”

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Natural events like solar cycles, wildfires, and volcanoes have created dramatic shifts in climate throughout history. Sometimes they even have cultural impact, such as the 'year without a summer' in Europe due to a volcano on the other side of the world, which helped inspire Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Less understood have been underwater events. A new analysis of bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, which will mean more accurate climate simulations in the future. 

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Using data on the structure of galaxy clusters, a recent study made detailed measurements of X-ray emission from galaxy clusters, which revealed the distribution of matter within them. In turn, the data helped the scientists test the prevailing hypothesis of the structure and evolution of the universe, known as Lambda-CDM.

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In 1970, Denis Hayes, former student body president at Stanford and an avowed communist, was the driving force behind the first Earth Day, to help students protest what he called a collapsing environment. One that could only be saved by more centralized government control.

To make sure it had as much participation from students as possible he chose...a Wednesday in late April?

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If you're a wealthy homeowner who wants a government handout paid for by the state's poorest consumers, you'd better get your solar panels ordered this week.

With $500 billion in unfunded liabilities, a $30 billion deficit just this year, and the nation's most expensive energy costs, the state is finally reducing subsidies that are paid for using added costs borne by everyone who couldn't afford solar panels. It's been an embarrassment for a decade but rich people pretended the money was coming from a magical place - "corporations."

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A long time ago, this column used to report a lot of detail of my personal life and of daily news about my work-related travel and activities. The site does offer two modalities for posts: article-type and blog-type; this determines where they appear in the main science20 site (this text is classified as blog-type, so it will be listed in the column on the center-right in the main page of Science20). This built-in feature invited the kind of blogging style I already had before, so when I moved here in April 2009 (gosh, it's been a while!), it was a seamless manouver.

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America doesn't have a science literacy problem, at least in a relative sense. Though only 29 percent of American adults can demonstrate good science literacy, that is still enough to be number one in the world.(1)

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Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of ~9,000 common chemicals that became popular as countries moved away from plastic. Like BPA, they keep food safe in ways that paper or metal cannot. Like BPA, they became a target of environmental lawyers because chemical names always sound scary to people who don't understand science.

Unlike BPA, this time lawyers won.(1) They got the Biden administration to create a regulation that had nothing to do with science. Instead, it seems to have been 'what is the lowest level that can be detected at all? and when the answer was 4 parts per trillion, EPA was told to use that. With that in place the Biden administration can now approve it and say 'the science is settled.'

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A recent paper estimates that vertical wind shear over the North Atlantic has increased 15 percent during the last four decades - but it is hard to know how much because it's only since the 1980s that we've had accurate measurements, even of things like temperatures.

Models say climate change will lead to an increase in clear-air turbulence, invisible to both pilots and weather radar, and planes will be fine structurally but if you are moving about the cabin when it happens, you will get knocked around.

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Mobile homes are only 6 percent of US housing, but they are a 6 percent overwhelmingly dominated by the poor and seniors on fixed incomes. When the Biden administration forced new regulations on the sector in 2022, the argument was that it would curb emissions and save poor people money.

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A UK start-up named WNWN is making alternative chocolate using fermentation. Great, I am already a fan. If I had my way my full Easter meal would be GMOs just to stick it to anti-science hippies and the various trade groups they fund to tear down regular food.

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Behavioral data often reveal differences that don't show up on surveys, where answers are free and often aspirational. Data show, for example, that men donate more than women while people who support charities more also have more conservative political stances. The rational is they choose the organizations they want to help, the ones doing work they like. Yet if you get a coffee paid for by the person in front of you at Starbucks, it is likely someone on the left. Charity and generosity are often distinct. 

A new survey isn't actual behavior but it does lend to the belief that left wing people feel like they are more altruistic. 

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If you’re a gardener, you may use peat moss - decomposed Sphagnum moss - in soil because it helps retain moisture. 

Peatlands, wetlands characterized by a thick layer of water-saturated, carbon-rich peat beneath living Sphagnum moss, trees, and other plant life, cover just 3 percent of Earth’s land area but may store a third of all soil carbon. That's made possible in large part by microbes. Two microbial processes in particular — nitrogen fixation and methane oxidation — strike a delicate balance, working together to give Sphagnummosses access to critical nutrients in nutrient-depleted peatlands. 

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In 2014, during the previous recurring drought in the state, California voters bypassed the legislature and the Governor by passing a referendum to build water storage.

Unfortunately, unlike pointless cancer warning labels on virtually every product, building lakes and dams and reservoirs still requires government so the same government - different leader, a few different names in the legislature, same one-party control - has shown voters who is boss by doing nothing.

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The Swedish Institute for Space Physics (IRF) is located in Kiruna, a minerary town close to the northern tip of Sweden, above the arctic polar circle. The institute is home to three different centres - the IRF space lab, the EISCAT center, and the Lulea University of Technology department of Space Technology and Atmospheric Science. Close to it is the Esrange space center, a multipurpose launching base benefiting from a large unpopulated impact and recovery area.



Above: the IRF from the visitor parking

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A recent op-ed in JAMA has an epidemiologist and a lawyer claiming that the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has meant the death of science at the Supreme Court. While common in the "Notorious RBG" era(1), especially as epidemiologists have become more like humanities scholars than scientists, it is in defiance of facts.

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In the last couple of days I have been busy writing a project to explore the potential of artificial intelligence to extract more information from particle detectors. In fact, while the development of these instruments in the course of the past 80 years has closely followed, and sometimes been a driver, of technological developments, I can see the issue of a progressive mis-alignment of detector design with the ultimate potential and final goals of large experiments. 

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For eight years I have studied digital nomadism, the millennial trend for working remotely from anywhere around the world. I am often asked if it is driving gentrification.

Before COVID upended the way we work, I would usually tell journalists that the numbers were too small for a definitive answer. Most digital nomads were traveling and working illegally on tourist visas. It was a niche phenomenon.

Three years into the pandemic, however, I am no longer sure. The most recent estimates put the number of digital nomads from the US alone, at 16.9 million, a staggering increase of 131% from the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

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