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Nonsense From Zuckerman

Sociologist Phil Zuckerman of Pitzer College has been a hero of mine ever since he published (in 2008) an excellent book called Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. He studied Sweden and Denmark, where atheists predominate, and showed rather effectively that when religious demagogues wail about the pernicious moral effects of a society losing its faith they are just making stuff up. So you can imagine my disappointment at reading this asinine essay over at HuffPo. It's a poor representative of a tiresome genre: An atheist lectures his flock…

Second-Hand Second-Rate Culture War Hackery

Dave Munger on Twitter drew my attention to this blog post on college costs, and I really wish he hadn't. The post in question is really just a recap-with-links of an editorial by John Zmirak, blaming the high cost of college on an unlikely source: [W]hat if universities began to neglect this basic charge, and instead turned into featherbedding, unionized factories that existed to protect their overpaid workers -- who were impossible to fire? What if these factories botched the items customers paid for, and spent their energy generating oddball inventions no one wanted? That is exactly what…

In which I return, and just in case you've forgotten (or don't frankly care), a few words about me - a dude with a name that appears to be everywhere.

So it turned out that my back to school crunch was even crunchier than expected, no doubt brought upon by the fact that my daughter had just started Kindergarten (talk about the sense of relativity and time flying), and the usual chaos associated with a new semester starting. As well, I've been procastinating lots on a book project where the first two chapters are entitled "A is for ASS," and "B is for BEETON," a process I hope to be able to discuss more fully if I have the luxury of certain things being finalized. But no matter, back to the blog. And I thought easing in would be the best…

Cultural Evolution from Mosquitos to Worm Grunting

A very good day of grunting worms. Credit: Ken Catania So-called Gene-Culture Co-Evolution can be very obvious and direct or it can be very subtle and complex. In almost all cases, the details defy the usual presumptions people make about the utility of culture, the nature of human-managed knowledge, race, and technology. I would like to examine two cases of gene-culture interaction: One of the earliest post-Darwinian Synthesis examples addressing malaria and sickle-cell disease, and the most recently published example, the worm-grunters of Florida, which it turns out is best…

Does thinking make it so?

Last week, I wrote about how advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integtrative medicine" (IM), having failed to demonstrate efficacy for the vast majority of the unscientific, anti-scientific, and/or pseudosciencitific treatment modalities, many based on prescientific concepts of how human physiology and disease work, have started trying to co-opt placebo effects as their own. In essence, given that the larger and better designed the study the more it is obvious that most CAM therapies do no better than placebo, CAM/IM advocates have decided to embrace their inner…

Bathtubs: A Theory of Community Relations

Let us imagine that you are MacGyver, that 1980s tv guy who can build an atomic bomb out of gum and duct tape. You are facing a world-shattering crisis. You have a pile of scrap materials out of which you must build a high speed vehicle to effect your escape from this crisis, which will certainly involve you outracing a dramatic explosion. There are wheels, gears, sticks and the all-important duct tape. There's also a big claw-footed bathtub. Now, when your need is for lightness and speed, do you attach the bathtub, just because you've got one lying around? This analogy was used to me…

Behe Disproves Irreducible Complexity

One of the interesting segments of the Michael Behe cross examination begins on page 42 of the Day12AM transcript, and it concerns a paper that Behe wrote with David Snoke. That paper, called Simulating Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Feature that Requires Multiple Amino Acid Residues, was based upon a computer simulation that attempted to answer the question of how long it would take cumulative point mutations in a single gene to produce a new trait - the interaction of two proteins - requiring a change in multiple amino acid residues if there was no selective advantage to preserve…

Charles Jackson: Expert on ERVs

There is nothing wrong with not knowing something. I dont know lots of stuff. You dont know lots of stuff. Its okay-- we share knowledge with each other. I dont *have* to be an expert in car repair. I dont *have* to be an expert in particle physics. You dont *have* to be an expert in retroviruses. We are a hippy commune of knowledge. Seems like the only people who *have* to know EVERYTHING are Creationists. Pressures not on them from our end-- I dont expect Creationists to know how to feed themselves without assistance, much less the details of ERVs. No, its the Creationists who insist…

Did getting vaccinated for seasonal flu up the risk of pandemic flu infection?

This week Canadian public health researchers published the long awaited paper on possible association between vaccination for seasonal influenza the previous flu season and risk of having a medically diagnosed infection with pandemic influenza during the first wave of infections (April to July) just as that season was ending. When preliminary results were first announced there was only vaccine against seasonal flu, which was still being given, and the results were contrary to what we thought we knew about flu biology and the immune system. Inevitably it became caught up in the wider anti-…

A strategic response to Trump’s “ripping off the Band-Aid” to workers’ health and safety: Defense of the status quo ante is not enough

By Garrett Brown, MPH, CIH and Deeg Gold, MPH CIH In late January, Donald Trump’s press secretary described his immigration and refugee Executive Order as “ripping off the Band-Aid” to get at immigrants.  The next week, Trump issued another Executive Order on regulations and is preparing other measures to “rip off the Band-Aid” to get at worker health and safety.  Our strategic response has to be more than simply defending the status quo ante; we have to rebuild the social movement that was powerful enough 50 years ago to force another right-wing Republican president, Richard Nixon, to…

Back to reality after The Amazing Meeting: Now what?

Rerun time is over. Very early Monday morning, a plane touched down, a car drove along a dark and deserted freeway, and my wife and I found ourselves finally back at home. True, we did have a late night diversion to Denny's because we were starving, but by 2 AM or so we were back home. Time to go to bed. Time to go back to work. No more Las Vegas. No more The Amaz!ng Meeting. Now what? I probably should have written this yesterday, or on the plane. It's really amazing how fast impressions become memory and memory morphs and fades. But I was simply too tired. I used to be able to adjust to a…

The Three Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Natural Selection

Natural Selection is the key creative force in evolution. Natural selection, together with specific histories of populations (species) and adaptations, is responsible for the design of organisms. Most people have some idea of what Natural Selection is. However, it is easy to make conceptual errors when thinking about this important force of nature. One way to improve how we think about a concept like this is to carefully exam its formal definition. In this post, we will do the following: Discuss historical and contextual aspects of the term "Natural Selection" in order to make clear…

How To Take a Crap ...or The Most Important Parenting Advice I can Give Anyone

Are you new to this parenting gig? About to give birth or adopt or take on a foster placement? Or maybe you've had one easy kid, and are about to go to two and sense that things are about to change radically. Or maybe you have them, but you feel like you are missing something in the "how to stay sane and meet everyone's needs" department. I want to give you the single most important piece of advice I have - which is about how not to lose your mind as a parent. I know, I know the title isn't all that prepossessing, but stick with me. Let's say you just had or adopted a beautiful baby.…

Theological inanity

Someday, I'm going to have to get John Wilkins to explain to me why we still have universities with theology departments, and haven't razed them to the ground and sent the few remaining rational people in them off to sociology and anthropology departments where their work might actually have some relevance. It's terribly uncharitable of me, but after reading this interview with John Haught, a Georgetown University theologian, I'm convinced that the discipline is the domain of vapid hacks stuffed full of antiquated delusions. I also feel bad for the guy since he did testify on the side of…

Where's that Doctor Doom mask again?

As I sat down on the couch in front of the TV last night to do my nightly blogging ritual, trying to tickle the gray matter to come up with the pearls of wisdom or insolence that my readers have come to know and love, I had a fantastic idea for a serious consideration of a question that comes up in the discussion of science and pseudoscience and how to combat pseudoscience. It would be serious and sober. It would be highly relevant to the interests of my readers. It would rival anything I've ever written for this blog before. I ended up writing this instead. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow. Besides…

The Biology Of Why Coronavirus Is So Deadly

COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses belong to a group of viruses that infect animals, from peacocks to whales. They’re named for the bulb-tipped spikes that project from the virus’s surface and give the appearance of a corona surrounding it. A coronavirus infection usually plays out one of two ways: as an infection in the lungs that includes some cases of what people would call the common cold, or as an infection in the gut that causes diarrhea. COVID-19 starts out in the lungs like the common cold coronaviruses, but then causes havoc with the immune system…

AI Will Revolutionize DNA Evidence – Once We Can Trust The Results

DNA evidence often isn’t as watertight as many people think. Sensitive techniques developed over the past 20 years mean that police can now detect minute traces of DNA at a crime scene or on a piece of evidence. But traces from a perpetrator are often mixed with those from many other people that have been transferred to the sample site, for example via a handshake. And this problem has led to people being wrongly convicted. Scientists have developed algorithms to separate this DNA soup and to measure the relative amounts of each person’s DNA in a sample. These “probabilsitic genotyping”…

Growth hormones in milk: myth/fact

This is the ninth of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Jaspreet Gill.  It’s been over a decade since FDA approved use of artificial (recombinant) growth hormones in dairy cows. This topic remains controversial till this date. Not everyone is well educated on this subject and questions often come to people’s mind; what is this BST or growth hormone? Is there any link between milk artificial growth hormones and human biology??? Does it cause adverse effects on human health? All milk contains small amounts of naturally-occurring hormones. Bovine somatotropin (BST) or bovine growth hormone (…

Coronavirus Isn't a Pandemic, But That Doesn't Change Its Relative Risk

Is the coronavirus a pandemic, and does that matter? 4 questions answered The new coronavirus has now affected more than 20,000 people in China and claimed more lives as of Feb. 4 than the SARS epidemic from 2002 to 2004. Hong Kong has reported its first death. Some public health officials have said the outbreak is likely to soon be a pandemic, but the World Health Organization said Feb. 4 that it isn’t, yet. Just what is a pandemic anyway? An epidemiologist and public health researcher explains. 1. What is a pandemic? When a disease outbreak, or epidemic, crosses international boarders…

The End Is Not Near, But If An 'Insect Apocalypse' Ever Happens, How Would We Know?

Insects scuttle, chew and fly through the world around us. Humans rely on them to pollinate plants, prey on insects that we don’t get along with, and to be movers and shakers for Earth’s ecosystems. It’s hard to imagine a world without insects. That’s why news reports in recent months warning of an “insect apocalypse” sparked widespread alarm. These articles, which were based on long-term insect collections and a review of past studies, suggested that people alive today will witness the indiscriminate extinction of insect-kind. I study fungi that can be used to control harmful insects, such…

Winter: Why You Need More Vitamin D

Winter is upon us and so is the risk of vitamin D deficiency and infections. Vitamin D, which is made in our skin following sunlight exposure and also found in oily fish (mackerel, tuna and sardines), mushrooms and fortified dairy and nondairy substitutes, is essential for good health. Humans need vitamin D to keep healthy and to fight infections. The irony is that in winter, when people need vitamin D the most, most of us are not getting enough. So how much should we take? Should we take supplements? How do we get more? And, who needs it most? I am a medical microbiologist and immunologist…

Liangzhu, Venice of the Stone Age, Collapsed Due To Climate Change

In the Yangtze Delta, about 160 kilometres southwest of Shanghai, the archeological ruins of Liangzhu City are located. There, a highly advanced culture blossomed about 5,300 years ago, thanks to the engineering of large hydraulic structures. The walled city had a complex system of navigable canals, dams and water reservoirs. This system made it possible to cultivate very large agricultural areas throughout the year. In the history of human civilization, it is one of the first examples of highly developed communities based on a water infrastructure. And they did it all without metal. Long…

No Secretary Kennedy, The MMR Vaccine Does Not Contain 'Aborted Fetus Debris'

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the United States’ top public health official, recently claimed some religious groups avoid the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it contains “aborted fetus debris” and “DNA particles”. The US is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states. At the same time, Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines. So what can we make of his latest claims? Credit: Annie Rice/AP, provided by The Conversation There’s no fetal…

The Increase in Infant Milk Formulas and Why It Matters

Breastfeeding can play an especially important role in early-life nutrition. It can benefit children’s future school performance and economic prospects in later life, as well as the mother’s health. Health authorities across the world endorse the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation that newborns should where possible exclusively breastfeed from the first hour of life until six months of age, and thereafter receive safe and nutritious foods with continued breastfeeding up to two years of age or beyond. Despite this, our recent study shows that global commercial milk formula…

Crank HOWTO

Who wants to know how to be an effective crank? Well, I've outlined what I think are the critical components of successful crankiness. Ideally, this will serve as a guide to those of you who want to come up with a stupid idea, and then defend it against all evidence to the contrary. Here's how you do it: Step one: Develop a wacky idea. It is critical that your wacky idea must be something pretty extraordinary. A good crank shoots for the stars. You don't defend to the death some simple opinion, like Coke is better than Pepsi. You've got to think big! You've got to do something like…

The Ubuntu 14.10 Upgrade: What to do

The Ubuntu 14.10 Release October 23, 2014 Ubuntu 14.10 will be released shortly and I know you are chomping at the bit and want to know all about it. There is some important news, for some, and there is some exciting news for others, and there is some boring news, and frankly, some bad news. Before diving into the shallow pool of Ubuntu 14.10 (shallow in a good way) I want to go over some other ground first. I want to address this question: "I have installed Linux and I don't like the default desktop. How do I change that without ruining stuff?" If you are a long time Linux user you know…

How genetic is obesity?

The NYTimes ran an excerpt of a book called Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. Having read the excerpt -- I haven't read the whole book -- I take issue with how Kolata frames the issue of the genetics of obesity. My problem with most articles and books discussing genetics -- particularly with respect to behavior -- is that they don't emphasize the concept of an environmental X genetic interaction in determining outcome. It's either all genetics or all environment. Before, I talk about the genetics of obesity and the…

El Niños have become more intense in the industrial age

The El Niño Southern Oscillation, swings of heating and cooling of equatorial Pacific waters, occur every two to seven years in spring, when the warm phase swells into a long heat blob in the tropical Pacific, typically peaking in early winter. It blows through oceans and air around the world, ginning up deluges, winds, heat, or cold in unusual places. Once El Niño passes, the cycle reverses into La Nina, when airstreams push hot water westward and dredge up frigid water in the equatorial Pacific. This triggers a different set of global weather extremes. Tropical Pacific corals record the…

Coronavirus Is Not Passed From Mother to Child Late In Pregnancy

After a newborn (born to a mother infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing positive for COVID-19 infection within 36 hours of birth, there were concerns about whether the virus could be contracted in the womb. A new study finds that COVID-19 does not pass to the child while in the womb. The women in the small study were from Wuhan, China, in the third trimester of pregnancy and had pneumonia caused by COVID-19. However, it only included women who were late in their pregnancy and gave birth by caesarean section.  There were two cases of fetal distress but all nine…

FHR4: Age-Related Macular Degeneration Breakthrough

Almost 2 million Americans have age-related macular degeneration (AMD), where the cells in the retina, which is the layer of tissue in the back of the eye, break down, causing central vision to become blurry. Over time, 100,000 of those will become blind. An international team of scientists has identified a protein, FHR4, which is strongly linked to AMD when its levels are raised in the blood. The findings were confirmed in 484 patient and 522 control samples from two independent collections across Europe. FHR4 is one of a group of proteins that regulate the complement system and the genes…

To Reduce Risk of Coronavirus and Flu, Wash Your Hands

A new study finds an easy way to reduce the spread of many infectious diseases, from coronavirus to influenza; washing hands more frequently in just 10 airports.  Though the findings were published in late December, just before the recent coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, the study's authors say that its results would apply to any such disease and are relevant to the current outbreak. The methods included epidemiological and data-based simulations. People can be surprisingly casual about washing their hands, even in crowded locations like airports where people from many different…

Statistics, seals and sea monsters in the technical literature

By complete coincidence - honestly! - we looked yesterday at discovery rates among terrestrial mammals. All indications are that many species remain to be discovered. It should also be well known, and I hope it is, that the same is true for large marine vertebrates: recent discoveries, and extrapolations based on discovery rates, indicate that there are still new, large marine animals to find. Today sees the publication of a new paper by myself and two colleagues, Michael Woodley and Hugh Shanahan, in which we attempt to estimate the number of pinnipeds that might remain undiscovered (…

Should A Doctor Prescribe A Walk In The Park?

Has your doctor recommended you go for regular jogs in the park, countryside walks, community food growing sessions, or some other nature-based activity? These so-called “green prescriptions” are typically given alongside conventional therapies and have existed in various forms for a number of years. In recognition of the potential health benefits of green prescriptions, the UK government has just announced a £4 million investment in a two-year pilot as part of its post-COVID-19 recovery plan, with plans to scale up in the future. There is increasing evidence of the benefits of contact with…

Fork-Tailed Flycatchers Make Sounds With Their Feathers in Different Accents

(Inside Science) -- The fork-tailed flycatcher whistles with its wings in two different accents, potentially more evidence this bird is splitting into two species, a new study finds. Birds are known for the songs they can sing, but dozens of species also use their feathers to generate sounds. For instance, peacocks can rattle their quills together, and the crested pigeon's wings whistle when they fly. In the new study, researchers investigated fork-tailed flycatchers -- 1-ounce birds found throughout the Americas that resemble black-and-gray swallows. The males sport foot-long scissor-…

George Monbiot Q + A – How rejuvenating nature could help fight climate change

Natural climate solutions let nature do the hard work in the fight against climate change by restoring habitats such as forests and wetlands. This could absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help biodiversity thrive. Stephen Woroniecki – a PhD Researcher in Climate Change Adaptation from Lund University in Sweden – discusses how this approach could address the ecological crisis with Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner George Monbiot. Q: What has inspired you about natural solutions to climate change and what are their chief advantages over other approaches? They bring…

Appreciating van Leeuwenhoek: The Cloth Merchant Who Discovered Microbes

Imagine trying to cope with a pandemic like COVID-19 in a world where microscopic life was unknown. Prior to the 17th century, people were limited by what they could see with their own two eyes. But then a Dutch cloth merchant changed everything. His name was Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and he lived from 1632 to 1723. Although untrained in science, Leeuwenhoek became the greatest lens-maker of his day, discovered microscopic life forms and is known today as the “father of microbiology.” Visualizing ‘animalcules’ with a ‘small see-er’ Leeuwenhoek opened the door to a vast, previously unseen…

Coronavirus: Less Hype, More Perspective, Worry About The Flu Instead

With a new infectious disease outbreak on our doorstep, we might ask ourselves: are we reacting to the coronavirus in a way that is proportional to the threat? The problem is that when it comes to infectious disease epidemics, we have a strong tendency to overreact emotionally and under-react behaviorally. The overreaction aspect may be attributable to the fact that we are primed to fear infectious diseases appearing suddenly within our population, in the same way that we are evolutionarily prepared to fear snakes and spiders. Most of us fear snakes and spiders without ever having been…

NVX-CoV2373: Here's How The Coronavirus Vaccine Based On A Flu Shot Works

A new trial has begun in Victoria this week to evaluate a potential vaccine against COVID-19. The vaccine is called NVX-CoV2373 and is from a US biotech company, Novavax. The trial will be carried out across Melbourne and Brisbane, and is the first human trial of a vaccine specifically for COVID-19 to take place in Australia. This vaccine is actually based on a vaccine that was already in development for influenza. But how might it work against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19? What’s in the mix? Vaccines trigger an immune response by introducing the cells of our immune…

CRISPR Immune Cells Not Only Survive, They Thrive After Infusion Into Cancer Patients

In the first-ever (sanctioned) investigational use of multiple edits to the human genome, a study found that cells edited in three specific ways and then removed from patients and brought back into the lab setting were able to kill cancer months after their original manufacturing and infusion. This is the first U.S. clinical trial to test the gene editing approach in humans, and the publication of this new data today follows on the initial report last year that researchers were able to use CRISPR/Cas9 technology to successfully edit three cancer patients' immune cells. The ongoing study is a…

Genetically Rescued Organism: Toward A Solution For Sudden Oak Death

Sudden oak death, caused by the pathogen Phythophthora ramorum, is one of the most ecologically devastating forest diseases in North America, responsible for the deaths of millions of oaks and tanoaks along the coast. Science to the rescue? After the success of genetically modified organisms in things like insulin and food, a recent trend is Genetically Rescued Organisms. These GROs would use science to create natural resistance, like a vaccine for plants, and reduce the impact of altered species composition, released carbon pools, and greater fire risk the deaths bring. Before that can…

Greenland Could Lose Ice Faster Than Any Century Since The Last Ice Age Ended

A new estimate using sheet modeling finds that Greenland's rate of ice loss this century could outpace that of any century over the past 12,000 years, when the last Ice Age ended. Scientists used reconstructions of ancient climate to drive the model, and validated the model against real-world measurements of the ice sheet's contemporary and ancient size. The study brought together climate modelers, ice core scientists, remote sensing experts and paleoclimate researchers. The team used an ice sheet model to simulate changes to the southwestern sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet, starting from…

How To Spot Coronavirus Fake News

The proliferation of fake news about the COVID-19 pandemic has been labelled a dangerous “infodemic”. Fake news spreads faster and more easily today through the internet, social media and instant messaging. These messages may contain useless, incorrect or even harmful information and advice, which can hamper the public health response and add to social disorder and division. Confusingly some fake news also contains a mixture of correct information, which makes it difficult to spot what is true and accurate. Fake news may also be shared by trusted friends and family, including those who are…

The 'Uplift of the Tibetan Plateau' Myth

'The uplift of the Tibetan Plateau' is invoked to explain various phenomena, from monsoon dynamics to biodiversity evolution and everything in between. It's not accurate, finds a new paper. The orogeny of the Tibetan region (Tibet, The Himalaya and the Hengduan Mountains) dates back approximately 200 million years, long before the arrival of India, and was the product of earlier Gondwanan tectonic block collisions that produced a complex of mountain chains and valleys. The review finds that the concept of an extensive low-relief Tibet, rising in its entirety as a result of the India-Eurasia…

Crowdsourced Geospatial Data Will Mean A 'Seismic Shift'

Astronomy has long been dominated by expert amateurs but with geospatial data everywhere, thanks to widely available internet and smartphones, it is not just that directions that were once only available in a paper map are now updated on your phone in real time to account for traffic. It is changing the relationships of science also. Crowdsourced scientific data will go from obscure folding protein folding of 15 years ago to relevance everywhere. That evolution will continue to be driven by how the data is gathered. Credit: Xiao Huang, Emory University   According to the authors, urban…

Ray Comfort: Utter Fucking Moron

This kind of illogic is breathtaking even from a clueless git like Ray Comfort: In a new book sure to push the buttons of atheists, one of the most prominent evangelists in the world today charges God deniers actually know they are wrong. Ray Comfort, in a book scheduled for release today, the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, contends atheists hate God because he does exist. "Atheists don't hate fairies, leprechauns, or unicorns because they don't exist," writes Comfort. "It is impossible to hate something that doesn't exist. And that makes the point."   A complete and total fucking…

Curiosity Found New Carbon Molecules On Mars. What Does It Mean For Alien Life?

Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells.   Scientists think that, if life ever emerged on Mars, it was probably microbial in nature. Because microbes are so small, it’s…

What is an electron?

As surprising as it may sound, no one really knows what an electron is, and it is this fundamental question that has been the driving force for much of modern physics and eventually led to the development of quantum field theory. To answer the question “What is an electron?”, you would think the first step would be to observe it. However, that is easier said than done. Electrons are simply too small for us to observe - the smallest thing we can observe is an atom and even that is not observed with a traditional microscope. So, we can’t observe an electron, however we can observe its…

Red Light Myopia Therapy Can Injure Your Retina

Over the last few years, low-level red light (LLRL) therapy has become popular to control myopia, or nearsightedness, especially in children. In LLRL therapy, children are instructed to look into a red light-emitting instrument for three minutes, twice a day, five days a week, for the duration of the treatment period, which could last years.    Studies reported the treatment as effective and responsible for significant reduction in myopia progression and it is already being used to address myopia in over 100,000 pediatric patients.     Despite passing clinical trials it's not safe in all…

Doomscrolling COVID-19 News Takes an Emotional Toll - Here is How to Prevent That

Picture this: it’s April 2020, you’re between Zoom meetings, and scrolling through your social media newsfeed. Headlines like “Death toll continues to rise”, “COVID-19 may cause long-term health implications” and “Health-care systems overwhelmed” flash across your screen. Your mood takes a dive, but you can’t stop scrolling. If this scenario rings true for you, you’re not alone. Research shows people have a tendency to seek out information during uncertain times – it’s a natural coping mechanism. But is persistent information-seeking on social media, sometimes called doomscrolling, helpful…

Fireflies Face Extinction Threat Due To Pesticides, Habitat Loss, And Light Pollution

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a coalition of activist groups which recently charged that climate change is contributing to exploitation of women, is now arguing that various factors are causing 2,000 species of fireflies to go extinct.  They came to the conclusion by surveying affiliates to ask them what is driving fireflies to extinction.  According to survey respondents, habitat loss is the most most critical threat to firefly survival, followed by light pollution and pesticide use. "Lots of wildlife species are declining because their habitat is shrinking,"…