“It’s gotten so out of whack that we are now looking at survival for our children, not survival of our grandchildren.”, Peter Carter, M.D., – reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and founder of the Climate Emergency Institute. Dozens of scientists from Sweden, Russia, China, and seven other countries studied methane emissions from Siberia's shallow continental shelves….
Category: Science
The Pandemic is Over!!!!
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a press release today (see image above) touting the Pustulent Pusillanimous Perjuring Paleface’s “accomplishments” in science in the past 4 years. Top of the list: ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. Seriously. Maybe this is what CoS Mark Meadows had in mind when he said “We are…
Add a climate change enhanced fungal threat to this season's flu and COVID outbreaks.
Candida Auris is an emerging fungal disease that COVID 19 is threatening to force with additional infections because it is common in hospital settings. It is difficult to control the fungus as it primarily infects anything in hospitals, bedding, rails, and including patients' ears and open wounds. Patients that are on catheters and other tubes that…
Krugman: Denial of Covid-19 Is an American Tradition
Paul Krugman has done it again. His latest column combines the erudition of a Nobel laureate with the plain speaking of an excellent writer: A Plague of Willful Ignorance. A hundred years ago, he writes, there was a plague of pellagra disease in the South. A doctor working for the federal government diagnosed the problem…
Krugman Fixes COVID-19 Blame on GOP Denialism; I'll Add Fundamentalist Christianity
As usual, Paul Krugman makes an excellent point. Today’s column, This Land of Denial and Death, lays it out in clear and damning words: Incredibly bad leadership at the top is clearly an important factor. Thousands of Americans are dying, and the president is boasting about his TV ratings. But this isn’t just about one…
Stardust Found That's Older Than Earth
Scientists have identified ancient grains found in a meteorite as stardust — grains of silicon carbide formed in the gasses of a dying star — that are 7 billion years old, more than 2 billion years older than the solar system. 7-billion-year-old stardust is the oldest stuff on Earth Microscopic grains of dead stars are…
Signposts at the Intersection of Gender and Neurodiversity: Survey Results on the Autism Gender Rate
Short Summary A large majority of respondents believed current diagnosis rates are under-diagnosing women relative to men Respondents tended to cite social expectations and biased diagnosis tools for this The online autistic community seems fairly diverse in terms of gender identity and age, and in particular there's a very large transgender and gender non-conforming population…
A cure has been found for Ebola, vaccinations begin for the infected in the vulnerable city of Goma.
On July 17, 2019, the World Health Organization declared a confirmed case of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo major international trading and heavily populated city of Goma that borders Rwanda. Now, news out of the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health and medical researchers have found that the Ebola virus can be…
A dolphin adopted the orphan of a different species years ago and, still cares for it.
National Geographic has a fascinating story where a bottlenose dolphin adopted a baby of a different species, a melon-head whale, back in 2014 and is still caring for it today. The whale species are found throughout the tropics and are a close relative to pygmy whales and pilot whales according to Wiki. The baby whale…
Damage to the Ozone Layer, along with climate change, has formed a worrisome feedback loop.
The earth’s sunscreen is interacting with climate change and is affecting marine and terrestrial systems in the Southern Hemisphere according to new research published in the journal Nature. From The New Polytechnic at Rensselaer: Increased solar radiation penetrating through the damaged ozone layer is interacting with the changing climate, and the consequences are rippling through the…
Is teaching an art or a science?
I was asked that question a number of years ago, and wrote a brief piece where I explored the issue. As I now apply to independent schools for the possibility of teaching in one next year, this is one of the documents I include to give a sense of who/what I am as a teacher. …
The Coming Age of Ghosts: Elon Musk's “Neuralink” and Death
If you’re a nerd, you’ve probably heard of Elon Musk’s latest company, Neuralink, a company “developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.” If you’re really into this sort of thing, you might have run into the excellent (but extremely long!), 36000+ word article on what Neuralink is trying to achieve on Wait But…
So, Congress… About that Zika thing…
The Florida governor’s office has released—apparently quite reluctantly, given their earlier denial—a map showing a new region of probable local Zika transmission in Florida. The last such map outlined a small, primarily residential neighborhood, far from areas of concern to most tourists or even most local residents. And, clearly, even further from concern to members…
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Gives Us What We Really Want: Real Science
In the first two episodes of the reboot of Cosmos Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has done an excellent job laying down the basics of time, space, and how life developed on Earth. Because Cosmos is a show about science, Tyson clearly explains in the same engaging way Carl Sagan did almost thirty years ago that…
Welcome to the Growing Dome
Reed City High School has something special other schools would benefit from. Two years ago members of the Science department put together the Growing Dome Project. This hands on learning facility offers high school students a fantastic opportunity to grow their own food and learn about different methods of growing fruit, vegetables and even tropical…
