| Vaccinate Plants Against Insects And Disease |
Science is always looking for new ways to protect plants and the environment. In Hawaii, for example, when their staple papaya was under attack by aphids that transferred the "papaya ringspot virus" to plants, legacy breeding and pesticides did not work. A gene gun sending in a GMO did.(1) In the Wall Street Journal, I discussed how a non-corporate, free modification by academics could save the American Chestnut from the natural blight that had devastated billions of trees.(2)
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| Brits Associate Accents With Crime But Trust Scottish Accents Most |
With Burns Night this weekend, Scotland will celebrate its heritage. In the First Among Equals country to the south that controls them, Scottish accents used to mean trouble. Now, it is the sound of safety for both English men and women.
A new study finds that the English, even some Welsh and Scottish, associate a "working-class" accent with criminal behavior. In a jury trial, that could have serious ramifications, but it likely also matters before that. Arrests and voice identification, for example. You're more likely to be one of The Usual Suspects(1) if your accent is criminal.
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| Smoking Marijuana Is Both Smoking And Drugs - Stop Doing It Around Children |
Doctors who would never tell a patient to smoke cigarettes in moderation, they are a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, oddly say just that about an identical class 1 carcinogen, alcohol, and as recreational marijuana has become legal they have given it the same umbrella.
Legal or not, marijuana is a drug just like alcohol, and it includes the toxic smoke of cigarettes.
I am not a social authoritarian progressive so I won't tell you how to behave just because my health insurance premiums went up so 50,000,000 others could get it cheaper, but you absolutely should not be smoking marijuana around kids. It ain't the 1980s, hippie.
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| EPA Should Scuttle Anti-Science PFAS Claims |
PFAS, called "forever chemicals” by activists, are about 12,000 compounds, 11,993 of them found in nature, yet environmentalists in their Forever War On Science have been targeting them based on epidemiological correlation. You know, that same "science" that claimed chocolate is health food, butter is bad and trans fats are good, and that a parasite medication cured COVID-19.
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| Kennedy's MAHA Is A Solution With No Problem |
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Children's Defense Fund and his work as a trial lawyer for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has always been in a war against science. He has been at war for decades. He sued over the COVID-19 vaccine, as you'd expect from his wealthy white perch where organic food and supplement shoppers also reside, but really only shot to prominence outside the anti-vaccine and organic food industry when he abandoned his presidential campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump.
His goal, he claimed, was a spin on Make America Great Again - Make America Healthy Again.
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| USDA Awards Grant To Study Acidic Coatings To Protect Organic Food From Bacteria |
Have you purchased organic food and wondered what the chemical is that you need to wash off?
Those are alkaline wax-based coatings, designed to preserve food so it looks nice longer. Just like conventional growers use. But chemical wax coatings made including olive bud oil don't prevent fungi and bacteria common in organic food, and a new program would like to change that.
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| New Bacteria Optimization Could Boost Nitrogen-Fixing In Corn |
Soybeans greatly benefit from nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which reduces the need for fertilizer, and a new study shows that gene-edited bacteria can supply the equivalent of 35 pounds of nitrogen from the air during early corn growth as well.
Agricultural scientists tested products from Pivot Bio called PROVEN and PROVEN 40, which includes one and two species of soil bacteria, respectively, that turn atmospheric nitrogen into plant-available forms. An edited gene involved in nitrogen fixation makes more of it available so more of it at planting means the bacteria colonize plant roots.
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| Use DEET: Half Of Adult Ticks Carry Lyme Disease Bacteria |
If you want to avoid ticks in the woods, wear long clothing or use a scientifically-proven repellent like DEET, IR3535 , or picaridin. Forget products claiming they are 'green' or have citronella, there is a reason that people who buy alternatives to DEET are over-represented in getting lyme disease. Alternatives don't work and, if you are in the northeast, 50% of adult ticks will carry Lyme disease bacteria so you are flipping a coin by avoiding science.
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| The US Discourages Pregnant Women From Drinking Alcohol - Vegetarian Diets Are Worse |
The Biden administration recently issued a new report showing causal links between alcohol and cancer, and it's about time. The link has been long-known, but alcohol carcinogenic properties have been waved away with 'use in moderation' rhetoric. We don't tell young people to use cigarettes 'in moderation', even though nicotine doesn't cause cancer, only cigarettes smoke does, so that alcohol has gotten political free pass shows science is always second to politics.
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| In British Iron Age Culture, Margaret Thatcher Was The Norm |
In British Iron Age society, land was inherited through the female line and husbands moved to live with the wife's community. Strong women like Margaret Thatcher resulted.
That was inferred due to DNA sequenced from members of a single community, over 50 ancient genomes from a set of burial grounds in Dorset, that were in use before and after the Romans tried to do in AD 43 what they did to Israel a few decades later. They reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman from centuries before while relationships through the father's line were almost absent.
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| Bathynomus Vaderi: The Sea Bug Of Your New 'Star Wars' Nightmare |
If a giant bọ biển (“sea bug”) in Vietnam hasn't been 'named' by an academic in a journal, does it really exist?
Yes, because they are impossible to miss. Isopods of the genus Bathynomus are 10 inches long so they are hard to miss, but discovery is a lucrative business in academia so a new one has been named and because the authors say it looks like Darth Vader from "Star Wars" they have deemed it Bathynomus vaderi.
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| Optimizing Nature: Biological Mechanism Could Lower Nitrogen Use |
Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment.
That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.
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