Science 2.0

A new study examined the effects of marijuana use of 1,003 adults aged 22 to 36 from the Human Connectome Project collected between August 2012 and 2015 and found that 63% of heavy lifetime cannabis users exhibited reduced brain activity during a working memory task, while 68% of recent users also demonstrated a similar impact.

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While off-label uses of medication may be controversial in political media, in science and health they lead to important gains. A new example is  the cardiac disease drug digoxin used at a low and safe dosage for one week for nine patients with metastatic breast cancer.

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An analysis of 300 million United Kingdom Ministry of Transport test records, which tries to estimate the ‘health’ of every vehicle on UK roads between 2005 and 2022 and determine potential vehicle longevity (basically survival rates for different powertrains) has concluded that electric vehicles now match the lifespans of conventional counterparts and may even be more reliable.

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When people see labels or menus listing the calories in their food, it doesn't change their consumption in any way beyond what experts call "statistical wobble." About two fewer almonds worth of calories per meal. But two almonds over time can add up to a lot.

That's the conclusion in the data of a systematic review by The Cochrane Collaboration. The team of academics reviewed 25 papers which discussed the impact of calorie labeling on consumption and found a minute reduction in the foods selected - about 11 calories.

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"Long Covid", the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in Wuhan, China in 2019 and spread worldwide, causing millions of deaths, is difficult to pin down.

Pediatricians report it affects on average 0.5% of children who got the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that caused COVID-19. It has a few names, like Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, but Long Covid is the common term, and is generally characterized as persistence of COVID-19 symptoms 12 weeks or more weeks after the disease. 

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Science is always looking for new ways to protect plants and the environment. In Hawaii, for example, when their staple papaya was under attack by aphids that transferred the "papaya ringspot virus" to plants, legacy breeding and pesticides did not work. A gene gun sending in a GMO did.(1) In the Wall Street Journal, I discussed how a non-corporate, free modification by academics could save the American Chestnut from the natural blight that had devastated billions of trees.(2)

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With Burns Night this weekend,  Scotland will celebrate its heritage. In the First Among Equals country to the south that controls them, Scottish accents used to mean trouble. Now, it is the sound of safety for both English men and women.

A new study finds that the English, even some Welsh and Scottish, associate a "working-class" accent with criminal behavior. In a jury trial, that could have serious ramifications, but it likely also matters before that. Arrests and voice identification, for example. You're more likely to be one of The Usual Suspects(1) if your accent is criminal.

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Doctors who would never tell a patient to smoke cigarettes in moderation, they are a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, oddly say just that about an identical class 1 carcinogen, alcohol, and as recreational marijuana has become legal they have given it the same umbrella.

Legal or not, marijuana is a drug just like alcohol, and it includes the toxic smoke of cigarettes.

I am not a social authoritarian progressive so I won't tell you how to behave just because my health insurance premiums went up so 50,000,000 others could get it cheaper, but you absolutely should not be smoking marijuana around kids. It ain't the 1980s, hippie.

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PFAS, called "forever chemicals” by activists, are about 12,000 compounds, 11,993 of them found in nature, yet environmentalists in their Forever War On Science have been targeting them based on epidemiological correlation. You know, that same "science" that claimed chocolate is health food, butter is bad and trans fats are good, and that a parasite medication cured COVID-19.

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Children's Defense Fund and his work as a trial lawyer for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has always been in a war against science. He has been at war for decades. He sued over the COVID-19 vaccine, as you'd expect from his wealthy white perch where organic food and supplement shoppers also reside, but really only shot to prominence outside the anti-vaccine and organic food industry when he abandoned his presidential campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump.

His goal, he claimed, was a spin on Make America Great Again - Make America Healthy Again.

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Have you purchased organic food and wondered what the chemical is that you need to wash off?

Those are alkaline wax-based coatings, designed to preserve food so it looks nice longer. Just like conventional growers use. But chemicals made using olive bud oil don't prevent fungi and bacteria common in organic food, and a new program would like to change that.

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Soybeans greatly benefit from nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which reduces the need for fertilizer, and a new study shows that gene-edited bacteria can supply the equivalent of 35 pounds of nitrogen from the air during early corn growth as well. 

Agricultural scientists tested products from Pivot Bio called PROVEN and PROVEN 40, which includes one and two species of soil bacteria, respectively, that turn atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available forms. An edited gene involved in nitrogen fixation makes more of it available so more of it at planting means the bacteria colonize plant roots.

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If you want to avoid ticks in the woods, wear long clothing or use a scientifically-proven repellent like DEET,  IR3535 , or picaridin. Forget products claiming they are 'green' or have citronella, there is a reason that people who buy alternatives to DEET are over-represented in getting lyme disease. Alternatives don't work and, if you are in the northeast, 50% of adult ticks will carry Lyme disease bacteria so you are flipping a coin by avoiding science.

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The Biden administration recently issued a new report showing causal links between alcohol and cancer, and it's about time. The link has been long-known, but alcohol carcinogenic properties have been waved away with 'use in moderation' rhetoric. We don't tell young people to use cigarettes 'in moderation', even though nicotine doesn't cause cancer, only cigarettes smoke does, so that alcohol has gotten political free pass shows science is always second to politics.

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In British Iron Age society, land was inherited through the female line and husbands moved to live with the wife’s community. Strong women like Margaret Thatcher resulted.

That was inferred due to DNA sequenced from members of a single community, over 50 ancient genomes from a set of burial grounds in Dorset, that were in use before and after the Romans tried to do in AD 43 what they did to Israel a few decades later. They reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman from centuries before while relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.

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If a giant bọ biển (“sea bug”) in Vietnam hasn't been 'named' by an academic in a journal, does it really exist?

Yes, because they are impossible to miss. Isopods of the genus Bathynomus are 10 inches long so they are hard to miss, but discovery is a lucrative business in academia so a new one has been named and because the authors say it looks like Darth Vader from "Star Wars" they have deemed it Bathynomus vaderi. 

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Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment. 

That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.  

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In 2018, two black men were arrested in Philadelphia because that Starbucks store had a policy that did not allow people to use their facilities without purchasing something. Social Justice Warriors declared that racist and Starbucks changed their policy. Anyone could use the restrooms and anyone could take up seats, or smoke, or drink alcohol out of a paper bag.

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In a world where food is affordable and choice is high, some people will not have impulse control. Forget conspiracy mumbo-jumbo about corporations and ultraprocessed foods and addiction, some human somewhere will have fetishized everything so such an "addiction" means nothing, what is true is that foods are more delicious than ever and some people will eat too much.

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Despite nearly two decades of marketing campaigns insisting bees are in decline and science is to blame, the data show otherwise. Bees are not entirely irrelevant in the food supply, and do valuable pollination work in nature, but there are 25,000 other species of bees that are important also, it is only in boutique agriculture that honeybees are meaningful to our food supply.

For crops like almonds, bees are rented. They are flown on planes or shipped on trucks and do their work and then go somewhere else. California only has 1.3 million acres of almond trees, which means about 2.6 million honey bee hives are needed every year. That is why 90% of rented bee colonies are in California. It's a lucrative market and they can ship bees elsewhere as needed.

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