Science 2.0

Experimental physics is about investigating the world in a quantitative manner, by exploiting our technology to carefully map the wealth of phenomena that make planets turn around stars, atoms stick together, and hearts to beat. All of that can be understood by creating models of the underlying physics processes. These models need to be fed with input parameters which we must measure.

read more

Though there is concern about inequality in outcomes when it comes to medicine, how much is due to lifestyle choices and the co-morbidities they bring and if any is prejudice by care providers is unclear.

Yet data can inform smaller populations. And an analysis of women with the SARS-CoV-2 infection who gave birth at two hospitals in northern Manhattan during the height of New York City's COVID-19 pandemic, the national epicenter, did not find a difference in impact on obstetric complications and symptoms of COVID-19 in different groups of women, regardless of income, race or ethnicity. 

read more

Leeches are found on every continent in freshwater habitats where there is little flow. They are popular bait for fishing, and doctors continue to use them in medical treatments. Environmentalists have even been using them to advance their beliefs that trace levels of "endocrine disrupting" chemicals are harmful.

read more

by Gurkiran Dhuga & Glen Pyle

The fight for equality between the sexes has undoubtedly made significant advances recently. But a new meta-analysis examining sex differences in treatment for cardiovascular risk factors presents a depressing snapshot of the current state of medicine. In fact, it suggests that in order to make progress, we may need to go all the way back to the beginning. Back to primary care.

A Primary Deficiency

read more

Music is in most aspects of our lives we probably don't even notice it - but it can be noticed in our brains.

A new study examined the brains of non-musicians, western classical musicians, and eastern classical musicians, as they were exposed to unfamiliar rhythms and non-rhythmic patterns. As you would expect, trained musicians have mastered auditory statistical learning, so they showed greater powers of rhythmic prediction compared to non-musicians, but what was intriguing were differences between those trained in Japanese and Western classical music. 

read more

Dermatopathologists, skin cancer specialists, may be ordering additional tests or second opinions out of caution but they may also be thinking about checking off boxes to prevent malpractice lawsuits.

read more

After centuries of converging on balanced, smooth beers, the industry suddenly lurched sideways in the 21st century. While large brands now have to fear for their existence, men in beards are making a fortune selling pronounced, bitter craft brews.

The business segment may have been with us all along, according to a new analysis. The survey of 109 beer consumers in a blind experiment found that greater perceived bitterness increased the appeal of beers. This is the opposite of most foods.

read more

In some good news for 2020, it is confirmed that SARS-CoV-2, the 2019 form of coronavirus that has led to worldwide COVID-19 disease, is not transmitted by mosquitoes, so ecologically useless disease vectors like Aedes aegypti, that carry so many other diseases, can't get blame for the spread of this one during the summer season.

The World Health Organisation had already said mosquitoes did not transmit it, but they also claimed that it did not spread human-to-human and that China was a reliable source of data, so their credibility is suspect. While their hand-picked epidemiologists may trust the word of dictatorships, scientists elsewhere don't, so the new study is the first independent assurance that mosquitoes won't make this worse.

read more

A new Hastings Report compilation is based on the notion that genomics are the reason we still have medical inequality. Since genomics is a field that exists to sequence our DNA content and therefore help understand disease, it seems odd to posit that it could promote inequality when studying biology we all share.

read more

In 1787, U.S. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wrote "Notes on the State of Virginia" and included five chapters relating to science. Of its climate he wrote a note about warming: "From the year 1741 to 1769, an interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of fruit killed by the frost in the neighborhood of Monticello."

A short while later, Noah Webster, later famous for his dictionary, went after Jefferson, noting that thermometers, which Jefferson loved, were terrible ways to record data and his micro-climate observations didn't mean anything.

read more

TikTok, the short video sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has already been banned by the United States military, Wells Fargo, and the nation of India. A new report says no corporate phone, or private devices that may access secure information, should install it. 

read more

From July 24, people in England will have to wear a face mask when inside shops, as well as on public transport. This brings England in line with many other countries that have similar rules already in place.

read more

Bad things come in threes, it is said, and nothing shows that more than The Carnian Age; the first stage of three in the mass extinction era of the Late Triassic Epoch 228 to 217 million years ago.

It had three features; dramatic climate change with much higher humidity, the first dinosaurs appeared, and gigantic volcanic eruptions called the Wrangellia large igneous province spewed out greenhouse gases.

For dinosaurs, climate change was a good thing because plant life grew, thanks to the humid conditions and higher carbon dioxide. That event, now called the Carnian Pluvial Episode, may have been caused by the Wrangellia volcanic eruptions. The confluence of events seems to have spurred the early diversification of dinosaurs.

read more

Bring on the tanning lotion and cigarettes! No? Well, coronavirus has made the past cool again so it could be a matter of time. 

read more

By Gurkiran Dhuga and Glen Pyle

Throughout the last few decades health concerns related to air pollution have been rising. Despite this focus there has been little research on the impact of air pollution on specific health conditions and mortality, even though there is a strong association between air pollution and overall life expectancy. A global study lead by researchers in Germany outlines the detrimental changes air pollution can have on human life expectancy. One surprising finding of the study was that cardiovascular disease, and not respiratory conditions, are the primary cause of early death from air pollution.

How Bad is Air Pollution?

read more

Social justice warriors in the feminist movement often fail to advocate for the rights of black women, according to new research, and it's for a reason that highlights hidden bias problems in modern performative activism - social justice for the Instagram photo - movement. Social justice warriors see black women as less like white women and more like black men.

read more

A theorized particle process, called neutrinoless double-beta decay, could revise our understanding of ghostly particles called neutrinos, and of their role in the formation of the universe. But there is no evidence it actually exists.

The CUPID-Mo experiment is among a field of experiments trying to see if it does and preliminary results based on data collected from March 2019 to April 2020 set a new limit for the neutrinoless double-beta decay process in an isotope of molybdenum known as Mo-100. But not a single event was detected in CUPID-Mo after one year of data-taking.

Isotopes are forms of an element that carry a different number of uncharged particles called neutrons in their atomic nuclei.

read more

One symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is intrusive visual reminders of a traumatic event. New research in Current Biology finds that the brain uses similar visual areas for mental imagery and vision, but it uses low-level visual areas less precisely with mental imagery than with vision.

read more

Some people would not or said they could not socially distance effectively during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019 coronavirus mutation that originated in Wuhan, China and spread worldwide. Is there scientific truth to why?

read more

In an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine, 152 writers, including JK Rowling and Margaret Atwood, claim that a climate of “censoriousness” is pervading liberal culture, the latest contribution to an ongoing debate about freedom of speech online.

read more