Written by PSI contributors
What would happen if it were proven that “fossil fuels” weren’t the result of decaying plant and animal matter, were actually created within the Earth due to simple chemistry and you could not be scared into believing that we were “running out” of oil and natural gas?
Written by Kevin Dural
Learning can result in the increase of how much information our brains can hold, researchers have found.
Researchers at UT-Austin, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of Otago in New Zealand discovered that the capacity of a synapse, the junctions between brain cells, expand in response to learning.
“Our most recent finding found that the range of a synapse is not fixed,” said Kristen Harris, a UT neuroscience professor. “On the other hand, if you buy a flash drive, the factory determined how much info you could store; it’s at a fixed level. Our brains are not like that.”
Written by Deborah Netburn
Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet.
The finding, published Thursday in Science, represents the first detection of naturally occurring ice-VII ever found on Earth. And as sometimes happens in the scientific process, it was discovered entirely by accident.
Written by John Horgan
I work hard to maintain my optimistic outlook. Wishful thinking works. The first step toward building a more healthy, peaceful, just world is to believe we can do it. So how do I deal with all the bad news about climate change? U.S. officials are rolling back regulations designed to curb global warming even as reports flood in about its scale and potential consequences.
Written by John Staddon
Editor’s Note: This is part II; part I can be found here.
Professor Brian Wansink is head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. The lab has had problems, some described in an article called “Spoiled Science” in the Chronicle of Higher Education early in 2017:
Four papers on which he is a co-author were found to contain statistical discrepancies. Not one or two, but roughly 150. That revelation led to further scrutiny of Wansink’s work and to the discovery of other eyebrow-raising results, questionable research practices, and apparent recycling of data in at least a dozen other papers. All of which has put the usually ebullient researcher and his influential lab on the defensive.
Written by Pierre R Gosselin
A new study shows that the Antarctic Ice Shelf has been thickening – in times of global warming. Logic: Global warming cannot be the driving factor for Antarctic ice shelf mass, let alone CO2.
Written by Chris McGovern
Homework
You are going to write a short story about Wilfred the Water Droplet’s journey through the water cycle:
Where does he go?
Who does he meet along the way?
Written by Raymond HV Gallucci, PhD, PE
In an expanding universe, as postulated by mainstream cosmology, the farther away we look at galaxies, the further back in time we are also looking.
Therefore, we would expect to see galactic density increase with distance, since the volume of the early universe would have been smaller such that galaxies would have been more closely packed. Astronomical observations appear to show relatively constant galactic density vs. distance, inconsistent with the concept of an expanding universe started from a Big Bang, but not inconsistent with one that has existed indefinitely in a steady state.
Written by M.A.Padmanabha Rao, PhD (AIIMS)
Abstract: The measurements of gravitational waves, γ- rays, X-rays, UV, blue light, and red light from collision of neutron stars on 17th August 2017 opened a subject of gravitational wave astronomy.
As these emissions are found similar to radioisotopes and solar emissions caused by 235uranium fission, fission is reported to be taking place during collision. Therefore, fission could be the source for gravitational waves (GW170817). Early arrival of blue light than red light is attributed to its high energy and signifies reliability of measurements.
Written by Viktor Katuna
Whenever you see a headline like this, you know it will go along the lines of “did you know that petroleum stands for rock oil?” Yes you did, goes the reply of an overwhelming majority of readers.
For this reason, the list below is one which holds the reader in high esteem, as a dear colleague on the road to broaden our knowledge of the oil industry. So here we go…
Written by Pat Brennan
A new study has, for the first time, cut a clear path through a nettlesome problem: accurately measuring a powerful effect on global sea level that lingers from the last ice age.
Just how quickly Earth’s deep, rocky mantle is rebounding from the heavy burden of ancient ice sheets and oceans remains somewhat uncertain. But this rebound effect, known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), is critical to properly understanding the causes of sea level change.
Written by Fergus Walsh
Doing lots of exercise in older age can prevent the immune system from declining and protect people against infections, scientists say.
They followed 125 long-distance cyclists, some now in their 80s, and found they had the immune systems of 20-year-olds. Prof Norman Lazarus, 82, of King’s College London, who took part in and co-authored the research, said: “If exercise was a pill, everyone would be taking it.
Written by Jon Rappoport
Breaking: In Australia, an effort to label all alternative (traditional, complementary) medicine products as “based on pseudoscience” has failed.
Traditional remedies (much older than mainstream medicines) are defended as appropriate, and can include health claims.
The Crazz Files, a major defender of health freedom in Australia, reports: “In a major win, the Federal Government has ignored the Australian Greens and anti-complementary medicine activists like Doctor Ken Harvey…and passed a reform package that protects traditional medicine.”
Written by Nathan Schwadron, Ph.D., Physicist, Univ. of New Hampshire
March 8, 2018 Durham, New Hampshire – In mid-February 2018, solar activity was as low as 2007 levels, which was one year before that solar minimum began. That’s why solar physicists now project that the Solar Cycle 24 minimum leading up to Solar Cycle 25 will begin a year from now in the spring of 2019.
Some solar physicists have even placed bets about whether low energy Solar Cycle 24 will keep extending into Solar Cycles 25 to 26 ending up in a Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when our Sun was blank without sunspots most of the time and coincided with a Little Ice Age.
Written by Richard Chirgwin
If you read the New Zealand Herald, you’re (a) probably a Kiwi, and (b) building a bunker because you expect a Chinese space station to drop on your head.
Or you could be a Newsweek reader, in which case you’re digging bunkers because it’s going to drop on your head, not some Kiwi’s. If you’re in Western Australia, you’re probably hoping to issue China’s space agency with a littering fine (that’s happened before).
Written by Katyanna Quach
A team of researchers carried out a series of experiments to study how complex hydrocarbons, an important class of molecules needed to create the building blocks for life, formed in space.
Hydrocarbons (“fossil fuel”), compounds made up of differing amounts of carbon and hydrogen, are common on Earth but also outside it. Some hydrocarbons, such as benzene or naphthalene, have been detected in meteorites floating around the solar system, leading scientists to wonder how they might have formed.