Other Science News

The value of limitation The cost of speeding What’s to eat? How the media portrays us
In the Northeast, honeysuckle – perhaps the sweetest smelling flower around – is blooming. It's not just sweet it’s also easily identified. What chemicals make honeysuckle smell so good? You may be surprised.
On May 29, the Vogtle 3 nuclear reactor was brought to 100% power for the first time. It's getting closer to adding another 1100 MW to the grid, with its sister plant, Vogtle 4, not far behind. This is significant because the Vogtle reactors are the first new nuclear power plants built in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown.
Chatbots – trainable software applications capable of conducting intelligent, informed conversations with users – have tremendous potential for vast societal benefits but also tremendous mischief. We are at the earliest stage of the learning curve.
When a guy is standing at a urinal in a public men’s room how do subsequent urinators choose where to stand? This vital matter is the subject of an academic paper which I will try (but fail) to explain. Who cares? We both know this is thinly-disguised juvenile (and hopefully offensive) humor. In honor of June 21st - National Urine Day!
The chemistry of global warming (GW) driven by heat-trapping air pollutants is measured and reported. Various mathematical models have been used to project future global scenarios. Since natural sources of greenhouse agents are largely beyond our control, here we focus on anthropogenic sources mainly involving combustion – typically byproducts, rather than end products. I use statistical methods to estimate the situation in 2050.
Both political parties use misinformation Feynman’s learning technique Anxious carnivore? Car Dealers “one of the most important secular forces in American conservatism”?
The Agency's drug approval and enforcement actions are falling through the cracks, while regulators are squandering time and resources on insubstantial trivia.
The media have sounded smoke alarms throughout the Northeast this week, for good reason. We haven’t seen air this bad since the 1960s when heavy (and dirty) fuel oil was the heating medium of choice. The main culprit was particulate matter from black smoke, especially severe in the winter heating seasons. Now we see dirty skies emanating from Canadian forest fires transported by unfavorable wind conditions.
Color me concerned? Walking About What does Saudi Arabia have in common with Arizona? Does the duck-rabbit illusion explain our polarization?
The nightly news often brings a surfeit of environmental disasters: forest fires, floods, tornados, drought, iceberg melting. What have we done to deserve them? Here I draw on various sources of climate change data to provide some understanding of what may lie ahead.
Science and law are both relatively recent human creations. Applied science made its appearance well before its written version. The people of the British Isles erected Stonehenge, and the Egyptians built the pyramids. The science of that time was goal-directed, finding a better way to live in the world and connect with the controlling powers of their gods. Today, science has taken on new roles, especially in understanding those controlling powers and seeking ways to better predict and manage them.