Other Science News

Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health. At issue is the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.
A walk on the thoughtful “wild side” of why old-school epidemiology has over-promised and under-delivered, discovering that population density is more than how tightly we are packed, an alternative hypothesis for how sleep refreshes our bodies and spirits, and an update on a maligned energy source, fusion.  
We tend to overlook how natural disasters like the coronavirus pandemic shape human behavior. Maybe that should change.
A “counterintuitive” view of ice sheet melts and sea level rises, the comfort of mac and cheese, often wrong, never in doubt, ignoring the marshmallow experiment, and an in-depth look at a painting of surgical care.
The satisfaction of handwork; as we reconsider our economy, is there still a place for small, rather than large; a musing on addiction's social component, and can the outliers of the herd teach us about how to return to social mingling.
Consumer labels for pot, epidemic "waves," are there "laws" to mankind's history, the Masque of the Red Death, and a bonus video of old-time New York City before COVID-19
Without complete testing, we will never have definitive numbers on how many died from COVID-19. Death certificates do not always capture truth, the underlying cause of death (UCOD), but they always capture the best story for connecting the dots. While the media points out that our statistics may be under-reported and therefore COVID’s toll is even higher, connecting the dots may also lead to over-reporting. From the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System Guidance.
Two great articles on what we really know about COVID-19 and a graphic explanation of vaccines, how government regulations are working against us, and having spent the last two months indoors, perhaps we should become a bit more serious about our indoor air quality.
The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has in the parlance of public relations, "sucked all the oxygen out of the room." And while the evidence shows that it is probably 5 times as lethal to its susceptible victims as seasonal flu, it is not the treatable disease that quietly takes 50% more lives every day
You know the admonition to drink eight glasses of water a day to remain hydrated. But the truth is when you consider the water needed to produce what we eat -- think of it as virtual water -- we consume a lot more.
Do genetics play a role in COVID-19's outcomes, does the herd know better than the experts, Chinese censorship, regulations can hamper even if well intended, and finally why many of us are gardening and what might a careful listener hear from plants?
COVID-19 has exposed fault lines in our healthcare system, often problems that physicians and nurses have been pointing out, to no avail, for years. New York City's mayor announced a plan to modify grading due to COVID-19 ignoring the fact that many of the school's graduates have significant functional illiteracies. The courts in Michigan are finally stepping up to address the real issues. Miasma is responsible for COVID-19's infectability. And finally, reshaping the economy involves more than a stronger safety net.