Science 2.0

Every day we read a new headline warning us that American leadership is about to erode because of budget cuts to 'science.'

We have been told tuberculosis was about to be cured but a grant got cut and, gosh darn it, now Republicans ruined it. We have been told we'll be set back for generations.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time reading more, I can tell you plainly that after two decades of covering science in a way 'post whatever is new every day to sell advertising' corporate media will not; government is never why America leads in science. Government is barely even why America leads in Nobel Prizes.

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Tumors can destroy the blood vessels of muscles even when the muscles are nowhere close to the tumor. That is the key finding of a new study that my colleagues and I recently published in the journal Nature Cancer.

Muscle loss in cancer patients is a major health problem, but the exact causes of how precisely tumors affect muscles remain an active area of research.

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Imagine walking into your doctor’s office feeling sick – and rather than flipping through pages of your medical history or running tests that take days, your doctor instantly pulls together data from your health records, genetic profile and wearable devices to help decipher what’s wrong.

This kind of rapid diagnosis is one of the big promises of artificial intelligence for use in health care. Proponents of the technology say that over the coming decades, AI has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives.

What’s more, a 2023 study found that if the health care industry significantly increased its use of AI, up to US$360 billion annually could be saved.

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Flash floods like the one that swept down the Guadalupe River in Texas on July 4, 2025, can be highly unpredictable. While there are sophisticated flood prediction models and different types of warning systems in some places, effective flood protection requires extensive preparedness and awareness.

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A new paper from Ohio State University can be considered a giant endorsement for yogurt that makes you poop - but unfortunately for giddy food corporations hoping to gain some scientific credibility it is only in mice, and therefore EXPLORATORY.

Because mice are not little people.

You just wouldn't know that from the school's press release, which alleges pesticides are ruining your microbiome and probiotics may save us, a leap so far beyond the scope of the study we have to wonder if the academics involved are about to launch a new line of supplements.

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In the modern era we can detect anything in anything. Being able to detect in parts per billion, trillion and even quadrillion means that if an epidemiologist can "correlate" a chemical to harm in a spreadsheet, someone raising money opposing science can weaponize the result.

A new paper finding that they can detect chemicals linked to harm in rats with the urine of 201 preschool kids is a new battle in the War on Moms that activists continually wage, but there is no reason for parental concern. Unless you believe in homeopathy.

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After a month of intense travel, which among other things included attendance to the MODE Workshop in Crete and the EUCAIF conference in Sardinia, I am back to northern Sweden. Besides significantly improving my well-being, given the horrible heat wave that hit Southern and Central Europe in the past few weeks, the move north allows me to finally give a relaxed look back at the most relevant information I gathered at those events, and other relevant things.

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My June 28 column on the Middle East drew a comment concerning Palestinians ejected from their homes by the post-WWII influx of European Jewish refugees to what’s now Israel. Eighty years after the fact, descendants of those displaced still feel much anger.

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My June 28 column on the Middle East drew a comment concerning Palestinians ejected from their homes by the post-WWII influx of European Jewish refugees to what’s now Israel. Eighty years after the fact, descendants of those displaced still feel much anger.

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If you need any new evidence that science is just another arm of politics, look to the switch in the Republican party once President Donald Trump embraced former Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer, friend of Obama, and anti-science zealot Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.(1)

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Colleges and universities are struggling to stay afloat.

The reasons are numerous: declining numbers of college-age students in much of the country, rising tuition at public institutions as state funding shrinks, and a growing skepticism about the value of a college degree.

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Once a decade, I buy a pair of good sunglasses. I didn't know I was doing that, it wasn't intentional, I only realized it when I bought a pair of Persol sunglasses in 2005 that my wife mentioned it seemed to be a pattern. It really wasn't. I still had a pair of Aviators from the 1980s and she bought me a pair of sunglasses in the 1990s so it wasn't really a trend, it was coincidence. In 2015 or 2016, while living in New York City due to running a nonprofit there, I was tired of my old glasses and walked into a Sunglass Hut on Fifth Avenue and bought a new pair.

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More than 60% of traffic collisions at intersections involve left turns. Some U.S. cities – including San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Birmingham, Alabama – are restricting left turns.

Dr. Vikash Gayah, a professor of civil engineering at Penn State University and the interim director of the Larson Transportation Institute, discusses how left turns at intersections cause accidents, make traffic worse and use more gas.

How dangerous are left turns at intersections?

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