Other Science News

“In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity.

“You’re going to learn how to heat water about ten degrees.”

As always, the data from this comes from Our World in Data, and it reflects the current data as of May 1st. 

It is hard to argue that sharing data to make your work more transparent and accessible to review is bad. Especially in science, where “show your work” has been in various forms a mantra for hundreds of years.

“Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same.

Let’s start with tritium and its source  

One of my favorite food memes is the distinction between fast and slow foods. But it seems the fast-slow argument between craft and utility may well apply to furniture as well. 

“The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species.

Those ubiquitous star ratings were supposed to help us separate the good from the better and best. But 90% of Yelp reviews are 5-star, 50% for Amazon’s products, and even then, the average star rating was 4.2.

One of the reasons there are concerns about privacy on the Net is that much of our data can be cross-reference, and what we thought was anonymous becomes attached to our names. Here is a great example involves our tech villain du jour, Google.