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Black People Have More Premature Births – Cardiovascular Health Implicated

Posted by on Aug 8, 2023 in Public Health | Comments Off on Black People Have More Premature Births – Cardiovascular Health Implicated

 In 2019, nearly 12 percent of Black individuals experienced pre-term births compared with 7 percent of White individuals, according to a new demography paper.

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Fentanyl Addicts Rarely Take Prescription Medication To Combat It

Posted by on Aug 7, 2023 in Psychology | Comments Off on Fentanyl Addicts Rarely Take Prescription Medication To Combat It

Most opioid addicts are recreational users, not those who started on prescription pain medication and continued to have pain and migrated to illegal routes when doctors behaved ethically and shut them off. It just makes people feel good. It is no surprise that opioids are involved in far more deaths each year than guns. If opiods were legally available without a prescription, they'd be in the same category as alcohol when it comes to lifestyle killers. That is what addiction does.

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Truth Sandwich: Strategies For Refuting Science Myths And Fake News Tested

Posted by on Aug 2, 2023 in Psychology | Comments Off on Truth Sandwich: Strategies For Refuting Science Myths And Fake News Tested

Prior to 2021 and the COVID-19 pandemic, American Democrats led the anti-vaccine movement. They couched it in anti-corporate terminology and that let politically allied academics and journalists turn a blind eye to the harm their thinking caused. In 2015, after a decade of effort by Science 2.0 and many others, California passed a law banning 'philosophical' objections, a haven that had only been used by fringe religious groups before the 1990s, but in California had led to more un-vaccinated children on the coasts, in places like Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Marin County, than the entire rest of the United States combined.

It was a struggle to educate parents that vaccines were safe and necessary when they instead believed in supplements, organic food, and solar power.

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New Survey Says People Want To Buy ‘Healthier’ Subssitutes – Science Says Save Your Money

Posted by on Jul 31, 2023 in Public Health | Comments Off on New Survey Says People Want To Buy ‘Healthier’ Subssitutes – Science Says Save Your Money

A new survey says lots of people opt for 'healthier' substitutes like chicken instead of beef and vanilla-flavored plant juice instead of milk, and 56 percent of them claim to feel better doing so.

Well, they probably do feel better. The reason is not the food, it is that they changed their diet and it is a psychological adjuvant for lots of other positive things, like fewer calories or more exercise or just feeling like they are 'doing' something by getting on a scale. 

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Kenyan Government Needs To Listen To Farmers – That Will Make Pesticide Usage Safer

Posted by on Jul 28, 2023 in Environment | Comments Off on Kenyan Government Needs To Listen To Farmers – That Will Make Pesticide Usage Safer

In wealthy western breadbaskets like France and the United States, environmental groups who get donations from the $130 billion organic food industry claim it is viable everywhere else too. It's not just that they don't understand agriculture or science, though that is most of it. It is that they don't realize their modern White Savior Colonialism puts Africans at risk.

There is a reason that as Kenya has gotten better about feeding itself, none of it is using the "organic" process - that whole market is just 0.69% and is mostly people who wish they had the money for pesticides. The reasons organic food don't work outside places where food is easy to grow involve climate, poor soil, limited water, and pests and diseases that ruin crops.

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Weekend Science: In Vitro Tests Show Espresso Prevents Alzheimer’s Protein Clumping

Posted by on Jul 19, 2023 in Chemistry | Comments Off on Weekend Science: In Vitro Tests Show Espresso Prevents Alzheimer’s Protein Clumping

Espresso is a coffee extraction process where hot water is forced through finely ground coffee at a barometric pressure of nine - which means nine times the usual pressure you feel at sea level, which translates to about 130 pounds per square inch, about 400 percent of your car tires.

Some people drink it diluted with water, an Americano, or with milk, as a latte. In modern times, some people even drink it cold. If an in vitro (cell culture) study holds up, people may even drink it to help ward off Alzheimer's disease. 

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With No Evidence Of Harm, Taxpayers Will End Up Paying Environmental Lawyers For PFAS Litigation

Posted by on Jul 18, 2023 in Environment | Comments Off on With No Evidence Of Harm, Taxpayers Will End Up Paying Environmental Lawyers For PFAS Litigation

With No Evidence Of Harm, Taxpayers Will End Up Paying Environmental Lawyers For PFAS Litigation
With allied epidemiologists placed inside the US Environmental Protection Agency, and scientists pushed to the side, environmentalists feel like they are about to get a win when it comes to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that have been common for 80 years.

And it will be a win - for the yacht payments of their lawyers. For the public, we will be no safer, we're not being harmed now, but the costs to 'clean up' a problem we don't have will be onerous. And we're all going to be harmed by that.


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The Activist War On PFAS: Anti-Science Populism Or Should You Be Worried?

Posted by on Jul 12, 2023 in Chemistry | Comments Off on The Activist War On PFAS: Anti-Science Populism Or Should You Be Worried?

A new case study sounds the alarm that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are detectable in Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The authors say the levels are alarmingly high.

What does that mean? No studies have shown health issues related to PFAS yet and if they were a health concern, it would be known after 100 years. Yet cancer is not up, no environmental or lifestyle health issues are up except obesity, and that is due to an abundance of affordable food even for the world's poor.

PFAS are so ubiquitous they are detectable in the Ittoqqortoormiit villagers of East Greenland, which means if they are harmful people should be dropping left and right, yet the only casualties so far are mice who get 10,000 times the exposure humans will get in their lives.

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Asia Shouldn’t Worry About PM2.5 When The Killer Is PM10

Posted by on Jul 11, 2023 in Public Health | Comments Off on Asia Shouldn’t Worry About PM2.5 When The Killer Is PM10

A new paper laments fine particulate matter in Asia. which is like worrying about third-hand smoke when actual smoking is still killing people there.

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NRR May Finally Put Haber-Bosch On The Back Burner

Posted by on Jun 30, 2023 in Chemistry | Comments Off on NRR May Finally Put Haber-Bosch On The Back Burner

Most of the world relies on a 113-year-old chemical reaction used every day. It is the Haber (or Haber-Bosch) process and while its contribution to energy usage and emissions is negligible compared to its benefits, the private sector is always looking for ways to keep things affordable. That means trying to come up with a fundamentally better way to fix nitrogen than the one invented before The Great War.

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