DDT, the first modern pesticide, has been banned in the United States since 1972 but it is still commonly used in places where malaria is prevalent. The United Nations recommends it because it is far less harmful to people than malaria is and remains superior to replacements. Malaria drugs have become less effective over time so it's better kill pests before they infect people. read...
read moreCharles Hard Townes (AP Photo) Charles Townes has a lot going for him; he just saw his 99th birthday and 500 people showed up to cheer for him. He has a Nobel prize and a younger wife - Frances is 98.Oh, and he invented the laser, which just about everyone on planet Earth has heard of. read...
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I was not on the Nate Silver fan train the way many people are, I thought it was wishy-washy to predict a presidential race with 68 percent confidence in October of 2012 when I called it 100 percent in July. His stats averaging led him to be no more accurate than a European betting service using nothing but money and every other statistical modeler was correct also, so technically he was nothing...
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While the University of Texas at Austin spends a lot of money in court defending racism in its college admissions policies, Big Data may help solve the real problem in colleges: not who they exclude in their secret admissions sauce but the two-thirds of freshmen students that will not graduate because admission department methods are trapped in the...
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Impact factor, the relative authority of a journal based on article quality, is maligned by people who can't get into top-tier publications but though it was originally created to help libraries know which journals are worth paying for, articles in high impact factor journals are now considered a barometer of quality for government funding agencies, who can't be tasked with analyzing the merits...
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