Written by Maria Popova
A slim and near-forgotten but altogether fantastic 1991 book by Denise Shekerjian titled Uncommon Genius: How Great Ideas Are Born (public library | IndieBound) synthesizes insights on creativity from conversations with 40 winners of the MacArthur “genius” grant — artists, writers, scientists, inventors, cultural critics.
Written by Jerry L Krause PhD
Principia Scientific International (PSI) is ostensibly a scientific news site which allows readers to comment upon what they read. But if you read what it is about, its objective is to return the practice of science to that founded by Galileo with the support of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.
And to that of Sir Isaac Newton who built on the new intellectual foundation prepared by the efforts of these three men. But before Galileo there was Nicholaus Copernicus who dared question the wisdom of Aristotle which had been accepted for nearly 2000 years.
Written by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser
A generation ago, few people had tattoos and those were mostly hidden beneath clothes. More recently, tattoos (both having and showing them) appear to have become common accoutrements of parts of modern society. Just walk down any street in summer temperature and you’ll see all kinds of personal embellishments “engraved” on skins of various ages and colors.
Some of these ancient designs are going to be replaced (??) soon by more modern designs, like those also functioning as electronic signaling devices for your hand-held phone, tabloid, or whatever. Their big feature is supposed to be your ability to control your fridge, home lights, or other electric home gadgets – just by touching your shiny gold-leaf-tattoo as in the pics below.
Written by Tom D. Tamarkin
Proposal for privately funded fusion energy experimental science, R&D leading to commercialization
The world will soon face an energy crisis of monumental proportions which many ignore. By 2050 we must significantly increase total energy production or face a need for worldwide redistribution of wealth and energy allocation coupled with population reduction. The only realistic solution to the production of much higher amounts of energy is the development and commercialization of fusion energy from which both electricity and synthetic liquid and gaseous fuels may be produced. 
This has been known for many years but contrary to public and political body’s misconceptions, comparatively little investment and effort has been made in the field since the mid to late 1970s. Government sponsored fusion programs have followed two “mainline” approaches; civilian controlled magnetic confinement and NNSA managed weapons based inertial confinement.
Whereas the United States was the world leader in fusion in the 1975-80 time frame, the U.S. gave up its lead and most of its fusion programs in 1985 based on the agreement between President Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in support of the Soviet Union’s suggestion of an international cooperative fusion effort which took 20 years to take shape as ITER in Southern France.
In the mid-1990s Drs. Irv Lindemuth, Richard Siemon and Kurt Schoenberg proposed a new way forward to much quicker and lower cost fusion development along with Dr. Francis Thio of NASA’s Marshal Space Labs. Today several private enterprise companies in the U.S. and Canada are pursuing this approach and other non-mainline approaches with financial funding from venture capital companies and a few national governments.
Given the time required to successfully demonstrate a sustained controlled fusion reaction producing net energy gain followed by the commercialization of “utility ready” regulator approved product, a new collaborative approach is needed. Funding must be significantly increased for all these private companies. This author is calling for the formation of a fusion consortium to be funded by the public and the utility industry. A comprehensive plan has been set forth to accomplish this and make the exploration of “inner-space” and fusion energy development America’s 21st Century moonshot project. The need and justifications are summarized in the concluding “Fusion Energy Elevator Pitch.”
Written by www.yahoo.com
Its core collapsed within seconds, fused heavy metals, and hurled them into outer space in a cataclysmic blast. A supergiant — reduced to a cloud of dust and gas.
The crime went unreported for eons. Then, about 2.6 million years ago, evidence began to land on Earth. Heavy atoms ejected from the supernova broke through the planet’s atmosphere and settled on its surface as isotopes.
Now, scientists say they’ve uncovered clues to the crime. But something seems suspicious. Soon after the aftermath arrived on Earth, our planet fell into a major ice age — leading many investigators to see the supernova as both victim and accomplice.
Written by Alex Berezow
When I was still in school, the rule-of-thumb for the human microbiome — the sum total of microbes that live in and on our bodies — was that bacteria outnumbered human cells 10 to 1. Specifically, it was believed that the average person has 10 trillion human cells and carries 100 trillion bacteria.
Not so, say the authors of a new PLoS Biology paper, who re-crunched the numbers. According to their estimate, the human body actually consists of 30 trillion cells, and our bacterial allies only number 38 trillion. The ratio, therefore, is much closer to 1 to 1. The authors explain that the original estimates were little more than “back-of-the-envelope” calculations. As such, they served as useful reference points, but more accurate data is now available.
Written by Josef Kowatsch and Sebastian Lüning (Translated/edited by P Gosselin)
According to the German DWD national weather service August 2016 recorded a mean temperature of 17.7°C. The start of the month was really cool, but the last part of the month the temperature climbed to peak summer levels, and thus compensated for the otherwise sub-par summer. No record temperature was set, with the month’s high some degrees below the record of over 40°C set for a few minutes in 2015.
Written by The Star Online
PARIS: A toothy, dolphin-like predator which prowled the oceans in the Jurassic era, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, has been uncovered in a Scottish museum where it lay buried for 50 years, scientists said Monday.
First discovered in 1966, the fossil has at last been freed from its prehistoric sarcophagus to reveal a chunky, four-metre-long (13 feet) deep-sea killer — its pointed mouth bristling with hundreds of cone-shaped teeth.
“It is spectacular,” said palaeontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences, who helped expose the 170 million-year-old remains.
Written by Michael Crichton (September 15, 2003)
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
Written by PSI staff
In this latest of a series of articles about retired science writer, Edsel Chromie, we feature a further example where Chromie demonstrates that natural phenomena can be neatly explained by strong magnetic field current flow, as proven in 1900’s laboratory experiments overlooked today: Electromagnetism on Saturn.
From those same laboratory experiments Chromie has identified how Saturn’s rings and “geysers” of Enceladus also exhibit strong magnetic field current flow that is consistent and reproducible.
In 1980 when the dark fingers within the rings of Saturn were first discovered, Dr. Bradford Smith said: “We just don’t know what to make of them, except they look dark. And that would suggest that it’s a diminution of material”
Written by www.lifesitenews.com
(Life Issues Institute) — All along I’ve felt somewhat suspect that the Zika virus is linked to microcephaly. The US Centers for Disease Control and the New England Journal of Medicine both concluded the link is there. Both are heavy hitters in the realm of research, however, they admit there’s no studied verification. 
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry were quick to jump on the abortion bandwagon for pregnant women with confirmed or suspected cases of the Zika virus.
But a recent, expansive study has cast legitimate doubt on the Zika/microcephaly connection.
Written by www.economist.com
THREE years ago Thomas Herndon, a young graduate student from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, made a splash among economists. Given an assignment to replicate the analysis behind a published academic paper, he pored over the data used for an influential study on government debt written by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, both professors at Harvard. Much to the authors’ embarrassment, Mr Herndon found the most elementary of mistakes: they had accidentally omitted five rows of their spreadsheet when calculating an average. When included, the missing figures weakened the paper’s conclusion substantially.
Written by risk-monger.com
Here we go again!
Written by Oliver K. Manuel
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to allow the public to understand better, and reap benefits from, Einstein’s 1905 discovery that rest mass (m) is energy (E) and to explain the chain of events in 1905-1945 that obscured knowledge of a power offering these benefits to all humanity:
1. Abundant energy to sustain human life and to advance human civilization;
2. A better understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe, the chemical elements, the solar system, and life on Earth; and
3. Empirical confirmation – in rest masses of ordinary atoms -of many earlier spiritual and scientific insights, including Aston’s 1922 promise of “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction,” Max Planck’s 1944 assertion that the force creating atomic matter was guided by “a conscious and intelligent Mind” (commonly attributed to God), and Kuroda’s 1945 insight into the “beginning of the world” from Hiroshima’s destruction.
Written by Robert Felix
During the last ice age almost all of Canada, along with parts of Europe and Asia, were buried beneath one to two miles of ice. At the same time, sea levels stood 350 to 400 feet lower than today.
Sea levels were so low that the entire continental shelf, at least in eastern North America, was above water. Many states on the eastern seaboard were twice as big as today. New Jersey’s shoreline, for example, stood 60 to 100 miles east of its present location.
Same in the west.
The land between Alaska and Asia rose out of the sea like a bridge (or rather, the sea dropped away from the land), and the Bering Strait, which today is only 18 stories deep at its deepest point, was above water. Our ancestors could have walked to Siberia. (The word bridge is misleading, because the land connection between Alaska and Siberia was almost as wide as Alaska itself.)
Written by New York Times
Climate alarmists claim increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause oceans to become more acidic which, when combined with ocean warming, will decimate coral reefs unable to adapt to climate change. Time and again this fear has been shown to be misplaced. Most recently, The New York Times reported the Coral Castles reef between Hawaii and Fiji, which had been declared dead in 2003, is now teaming with life.