Science 2.0

For the first time in the United States, a gene editing tool has been used to treat advanced cancer in three patients and showed promising early results in a pilot phase 1 clinical trial. So far the treatment appears safe, and more results are expected soon.

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On November 19th, 1969, Apollo 12 landed on the moon, but most people from the era don't remember much about it. Apollo 11, sure, a giant leap for all mankind, and Apollo 13 was the most successful failure NASA ever had, it got a movie made about it, but that leaves Apollo 12 a memory.

And that's too bad. Because they were the funniest Apollo crew, according to this NPR spot.

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Want your food to contain a toxic chemical, as long as it's been given a wink-wink approval by industry lobbyists, trade groups, and manufacturers?

Of course not, yet that is exactly what you get when you buy Organic food. Inside USDA, the Organic industry has carved out a special niche for itself and it knights 80 groups that can sell organic certified stickers, allowing them to simultaneously monitor their clients while taking money from them and being reliant on selling stickers. Can you say 'conflict of interest'?

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More than 200 million people around the world suffered from malaria in 2017. Over 400,000 died. The vast majority – around 90% – were in Africa, where many are all too familiar with the devastating impact of the disease. Young children and pregnant women are the most vulnerable.

Protective measures can help significantly to reduce the burden. This includes spraying with insecticides and using mosquito nets. But 100% coverage using these methods is impossible. Until the disease is eradicated, availability of effective treatments is critical.

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For two-thirds of parents it can be hard to know the line between recognizing youth depression and making something special of teen moods, and perhaps enabling more problems.

But there is no question America is the most over-medicated in the world, and one the most anti-depressants, and therefore it is little surprising that 25 percent of parents say their child knows a teen with clinical depression while 1 in 10 believe a peer of their child has committed suicide. Obviously that can’t be true, even if the age is pushed out to 24 there are only 6,000 suicides per year, while there are 60,000,000 kids in school from ages 6-22.

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Forensic science does not prove guilt or innocence. It never has and it never will.

The next time you hear about DNA evidence, for example, proving the guilt or innocence of a suspect in a violent crime, rest assured that you are being misinformed. In courts of law, attorneys do the proving, not science.

Science, after all, has no real value until a human being can use it to solve a problem or answer a question of importance. People prove things; science provides help. Yes, science may exist to provide some clarity in support of or in contradiction to an argument, but science itself does not make arguments.

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An exploratory study in cell cultures and mice finds that in their rodents high-fat diets throughout pregnancy (rich in polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acids) impacted fetal brain development. 

Don’t be alarmed, mice are not little people so a mouse study can only ever disqualify an effect, it can never show one in humans. Mice studies (and epidemiology) are termed "exploratory" because they can only suggest a link and will need relevant study before they can relate to humans, regardless what Huffington Post or Guardian may forget to note in their articles.

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Right now all our missions to Mars are sterilized to protect it from any Earth life that could hitch a ride and confuse the searches. This report by the “Planetary Protection Independent Review Board” is a proposal to classify most of Mars as Category II for the purposes of the Outer Space Treaty, similarly to the Moon. This would mean there is no longer any need to sterilize rovers that we send to Mars to the regions classified as category II, just document what you do. It would mean that you have decided in advance that these are regions where there is only a remote chance that terrestrial microorganisms could proliferate there.

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Last month in Korea a computer scientist struck up a conversation on the subway. He told me in fractured English that he wants to take a PhD in theology. When I meet a theologian I usually ask, “Theoretical, or experimental?” This guy wouldn’t have understood, so I forbore. I did suggest, tongue in cheek, that he would then be uniquely qualified to determine whether A.I.s have souls.

“More than that,” he said, taking me seriously, “they could be intermediaries” between us and God. I allowed as that was an interesting notion.

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When Dr. Scott Gottlieb  was named as head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the pro-science community cheered. Gottlieb had both academic and private sector experience, he had been both doctor and patient, and he had been a Deputy at FDA in the past so he knew where all the bottlenecks remained.

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Myopia (nearsightedness) is the most frequent cause of correctable visual impairment worldwide.  It occurs when the eye grows too long from front to back (axial length). Instead of focusing images on the retina, images are focused at a point in front of the retina. As a result, people with myopia have good near vision, but poor distance vision that can be corrected with glasses or contact lenses. 

Now kids 8-12 have a new option that has been show to slow the progression of myopia at the initiation of treatment.

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Wealthy western academics working at billion dollar institutions funded by trillion dollar governments are frustrated that African countries don't want to give away their climate data.

They're not wrong for wanting a piece of the pie, especially from Europeans. Europeans often take data from Africa and use it for colonial purposes, like keeping Africa reliant on European goods by scaring people about science that would give Africans a level playing field.(1) 

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Most supplements that tout how much better they are than medicine but are "natural" and therefore superior, are selling to the P.T. Barnum audience - if you are willing to part with your money to believe in magic, someone will be willing to take it. 

Most often, if they work, it's because you have been gifted with the placebo effect or they contain actual medicine. Nature’s Rx Silver Bullet 10 Male Enhancement Capsules is following the path of LEOPARD Miracle Honey and putting actual drugs - Sildenafil (Viagra) - in its products.

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Last November 12 the city of Venice was flooded by the second-highest tide in recorded history. The sea level, pushed by 60 mph SE winds and intense rainfalls, surged to +187 cm above average, a mere 7cm less than the disastrous event of November 4 1966, which put the city and its surroundings to their knees.

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YouTube creators are panicking as YouTube classifies their videos as directed towards kids when they are not. It's a dumb algorithm. It would classify this as a comic book probably.

A human would never classify this channel as for kids under 13:

Vivziepop

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Communist dictatorships lack transparency, so if they don't want to be bound by the same ethical rules as everyone else, they won't be. Some in western countries gush about claims they make regarding solar power, for example, but only their CO2 emissions - highest in the world - can be verified from outside. 

It turns out their voluntary organ donation claims may be just as made up, and that is because the Chinese government is systematically misreporting data, according to new research.

A history of fraud and unethical behavior

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Jem Bendell’s “Deep Adaptation” is scaring many people, sometimes referred to as "The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It's Sending People to Therapy"- yet - it is not a published paper. It is an unpublished draft that has been rejected for failing the minimum standards of an academic paper. It is written by a sociologist, not a climate scientist. As its main cite, it uses a blog post by a system analyst recording a talk he gave to a group of businessmen. When he submitted this draft to a journal, they requested major revisions because it didn’t meet the minimum standards for an academic paper.

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By Shefali Luthra, Kaiser Health News.

Promoting her much-discussed plan to create a single-payer “Medicare for All” health system, Sen. Elizabeth Warren emphasized a striking figure.

“If we make no changes over the next 10 years, Americans will reach into their pockets and pay out about $11 trillion on insurance premiums, copays, deductibles and uncovered medical expenses,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an Instagram video posted Monday.

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Though activists oppose Golden Rice, essentially a vitamin-fortified food staple, on ideological and economic grounds, Vitamin A deficiency affects hundreds of thousands of kids each year, and a progressive tool that feeds people and prevents disease is welcome. 

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As women started counting steps and walking to work wearing running shoes and fitness trackers, there was one work-related item that had to change: the briefcase. It’s not suited to walking fast and gets in the way of drinking coffee en route to the office. Enter the working women’s backpack. It’s a trend.

The Atlantic announced that this is the year professional women started wearing backpacks, even though some of us swear it’s been going on for a while. The sale of women’s backpacks is up by more than 20 per cent in the past year, but the sale of men’s backpacks has flat-lined.

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