Written by Dr. Sebastian Lüning & Josef Kowatsch (Translated & rewritten by P Gosselin)
At the Hamburg Binnenalster near the Lombard Bridge, one finds a particular patch of forsythia, which blossoms every year when spring arrives at the north German port city. And just days ago on March 24, 2017, the famous patch blossomed again as it does every year.
So what’s the big deal about a spring flower patch blossoming in the spring?
Written by Jessica Hamzelou
Blind tadpoles have learned to see again, using eyes implanted on their tails. With help from a migraine drug, these eyes were able to grow new connections to the tadpole’s nervous system. The same approach may work in humans, allowing the body to integrate bioengineered organs, say the team behind the work.
“If a human had an eye implanted on their back connected to their spinal cord, would the human be able to see out of that eye? My guess is probably yes,” says Michael Levin, at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Written by Kenneth Richard
For decades scientists have suggested that the effects of a climatic warming would likely lead to an increase in Antarctica’s surface mass balance (i.e., mass gains exceed losses), and this would lead to a concomitant lowering of sea levels.
“Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away”
Written by Sid Perkins
Huge ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called Rossby waves help to steer the planet’s jet streams and weather patterns. Now, a study in Nature Astronomy offers the best evidence yet that similar large-scale features also exist on the Sun.
Written by Rhett Allain
I teach an introductory physics course to elementary education majors, but my lessons aren’t really about physics. At first glance, it might seem that they are, but it’s a trick. The course examines the nature of science. That’s what makes it so awesome.
When I talk about the nature of science, I don’t mean the list of steps outlined on that poster in your fourth grade classroom—that’s not how science works. Instead, think of the nature of science as both the process and the limitations of the scientific endeavor. Let me explain with an example from my class.
Written by Dr Itay Gal
Ynetnews reports: Israeli scientists from the Rehovot-based company Nucleix succeeded in developing a first of its kind blood test to diagnose lung cancer.
The new test is able to diagnose the disease long before it spreads in the body, thus increasing the chance of survival, as many patients usually die within a few months of the diagnosis.
Written by Julie Kelly
If the climate-change evangelist can’t be bothered to take a House hearing seriously, why should anyone take him seriously?
In his testimony to the House Science Committee on Wednesday, Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, told the story of Trofim Lysenko, a plant scientist who worked for Stalinist Russia. Lysenko was a Russian agronomist and it became Leninist doctrine to impose his views about heredity, which were crackpot theories, completely at odds with the world’s scientists.
Written by Judicial Watch
(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch today announced it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia asking the court to compel the U.S. Department of Commerce to turn over all records of communications between a pair of federal scientists who heavily influenced the Obama administration’s climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement (Judicial Watch v. Department of Commerce (No. 1:17-cv-00541)).
Written by Viv Forbes et al.
Every day some green energy promoter or a battery salesman tells us how green energy with battery backup will supply Australia’s future electricity needs.
A battery stores energy. Energy can be stored using lead-acid, nickel/cadmium, lithium, molten salt, pumped hydro, hydrogen, flywheels, compressed air or some other smart gizmo. But NOT ONE battery produces new energy – they simply store and discharge energy produced by other means. They all deliver less energy than they consume. Moreover, to manufacture, charge, use and dispose of batteries consumes energy and resources.
Written by Ben Southwood
Written by Werner, J. P., Divine, D. V., Charpentier et al.
Abstract. In this article, the first spatially resolved millennium-long summer (June–August) temperature reconstruction over the Arctic and Subarctic domain (north of 60° N) is presented. It is based on a set of 54 annually dated temperature sensitive proxy archives of various types, mainly from the updated and revised PAGES2k database supplemented with 6 new recently published proxy records.
Written by Dr John Christy
“Science” is not a set of facts but a process or method that sets out a way for us to discover information and which attempts to determine the level of confidence we might have in that information. In the method, a “claim” or “hypothesis” is stated such that rigorous tests might be employed to test the claim to determine its credibility.
Written by Pierre L. Gosselin
As wind projects continue to get planned throughout Germany, concerns over their effects on nature, wildlife and human health are growing more than ever.
The online Sächsische Zeitung (SZ – Saxony News) reports how one locality in Germany held a public forum on the subject of low-frequency infrasound earlier this year. Infrasound generated by wind turbines is low-frequency at a range that is not audible to the human ear (< 20 Hz), but the air pressure waves are in fact registered by the inner ear. For a fair amount of people these pulsing pressure changes can trigger a variety of physical discomforts, and over the long term to severe health risks, a growing body of literature shows.
Written by Jack Hadfield
Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute have created artificial heart tissue with functioning vasculature by stripping a spinach leaf of its original cells and replacing them with human cells.
The spinach leaf was used to solve a problem faced by biological engineers when creating artificial tissues and organs. Methods such as 3D printing that generally make good copies do not have the ability to recreate the complicated vascular systems that are needed to ensure the success of any bioengineered tissue. If oxygen and nutrients cannot be transported to the cells, then that organ will fail and die.
Written by Andrew Follett
Britain’s government seems to have specifically removed quantitative estimates of the costs of wind and solar power from an official report.
The report was published roughly one year late and has seemingly had most of its cost estimates removed. The few stats that remain are entirely qualitative and do not include numerical approximations, like dollars per megawatt hour, which would normally be considered the principal output of such research.
Written by Ethan Barton
From the Daily Caller:
Six nonprofit groups that criticized President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts failed to mention the nearly $179 million in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants they’ve received since 2009, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group (The DCNF) analysis of federal spending data.