fidzu : Science news

A study of the brains of more than 200 deceased football players - including 111 who played in the National Football League (NFL) - reveals that nearly 90 percent of the players had a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is likely caused by repeated blows to the head, according to the Mayo Clinic. But CTE can be definitively diagnosed only after a person has died, during an examination of the person's brain, according to researchers at Boston University's CTE Center, who conducted the new study.

26 Jul 2017 11:32pm GMT

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its new Tap Water Database today (July 26), a searchable database that allows users in the U.S. to enter either their ZIP code or their local utility's name to learn what's in their tap water. The database contains results from testing by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on drinking water from 2010 to 2015, which includes tests on water from nearly 50,000 water utilities in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. In addition, the EWG incorporated results from water tests done by state agencies. In total, the tests found nearly 270 contaminants in drinking water across the country.

26 Jul 2017 11:32pm GMT

To raise awareness about prediabetes, a new campaign features something most people can't resist - adorable animal videos. With videos staring puppies, hedgehogs and baby goats, the campaign aims to teach people about their risk of prediabetes by walking them through a brief, 1-minute prediabetes risk test. "So is taking a 1-minute prediabetes risk test," the ad says.

26 Jul 2017 11:31pm GMT

Bormes-les-Mimosas (France) (AFP) - Local residents joined firefighters in southern France Wednesday to battle blazes that have forced over 10,000 people to flee and left chunks of coastal forest a blackened mess. In some places, locals used spades, rakes and even tree branches in a desperate bid to beat back the flames until the firefighters arrived. Forest fires were also raging in parts of central Portugal, where several villages were evacuated and roads closed down.

26 Jul 2017 9:56pm GMT

The government's last witness testified on Tuesday, a day after a lawyer for the former biotech CEO told the court that his client had chosen not to take the witness stand. Closing arguments are set for ...

26 Jul 2017 6:28pm GMT

It's all part of his tunnel-digging company.

26 Jul 2017 5:20pm GMT

Scientists are redesigning the genetic code of yeast, aiming to produce strains that operate on custom-made DNA

26 Jul 2017 2:37pm GMT

New York police considering using device that can tell if a driver was texting at the time of a crash

26 Jul 2017 12:55pm GMT

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 26, 2017) - Appia Energy Corp. (CSE: API) (OTC: APAAF) (FSE: A0I) (MU: A0I) (BE: A0I) (the "Company or "Appia") is pleased to announce the completion of a 117 km ground prospecting and radiometric surveying program (the "Program") on the Company's Loranger property (the "Property"), located 28 km southeast of Cameco's Rabbit Lake mill, Athabasca Basin, northern Saskatchewan.Four priority drill target areas and the down-ice trends of those areas were investigated for radioactivity, ...

26 Jul 2017 12:11pm GMT

BEIJING (AP) - China is on track to lead the world in organ transplant surgeries by 2020 following its abandonment of the much-criticized practice of using organs from executed prisoners, the architect of the country's transplant program said Wednesday.

26 Jul 2017 7:17am GMT

Tiny Luxembourg has become a hub for an exciting new industry.

26 Jul 2017 4:01am GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown and his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, stood side by side Tuesday to cheer the extension of one of the most ambitious programs in the U.S. to reduce fossil fuel pollution, while condemning President Donald Trump's failure to see climate change as a deadly threat.

26 Jul 2017 12:52am GMT

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A man accused of accidentally sparking a massive Utah wildfire that forced some 1,500 people from their homes last month and cost about $34 million to fight was charged Tuesday.

25 Jul 2017 11:15pm GMT

Ever since Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt and other Trump administration officials raised the idea of putting climate science up for debate, it's been an open question as to where the participants who doubt mainstream climate science would come from. Now that is becoming clearer, and the answer is sure to further convince many that this entire exercise is a set up to discredit some of the most basic, rigorously studied climate science conclusions. SEE ALSO: EPA chief wants his useless climate change 'debate' televised, and I need a drink The Washington Examiner reported on Monday that the EPA has reached out to the controversial Heartland Institute for help in casting the so-called "red team" that would try to poke holes in the evidence presented by mainstream climate scientists. The Heartland Institute is a free market think tank that has received funding from the oil and gas industry and has spent that money to disseminate information to convince the public that the science linking human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels is flawed. This fall, the group began mailing 200,000 copies of a report entitled, "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming," to science teachers across the U.S. The report encouraged teachers to tell their students that climate scientists are still debating why the Earth is warming, when in reality the climate science community isn't debating that at all. The group's goal is to get the report in the hands of every single science teacher in the country, according to reporting from PBS's Frontline. The report asserts that even if human activity is contributing to climate change, such a development "would probably not be harmful, because many areas of the world would benefit from or adjust to climate change." Despite what Heartland's experts might say, the Earth is warming due to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the air.Image: nasa/mashable/bob al-greeneThe Heartland Institute is also the same group that has been holding annual meetings for climate deniers, with the most recent one taking place in Washington, D.C., in March. During the Obama administration, these were viewed as meetings of a desperate, irrelevant group of people who had virtually no influence on the federal government's agenda on climate and energy. But now, everything has changed under President Donald Trump. Suddenly Heartland is influential, and its experts are being tapped to advise the government. Heartland's president and CEO Joseph Bast opened the post-election D.C. meeting by saying that, "those of us in the room who have been working on this issue for a decade or longer can finally stand up and say hallelujah and welcome to the party," Frontline reported. Pruitt's outreach to cast the red team marks the clearest sign yet of Heartland's newfound influence. This is worrisome, because the group has ties to some of today's most ardent, and largely discredited, foes of climate science - and in some cases science in general. "The administration has reached out to Heartland since the early days of Trump's presidency for advice on energy and environment policy, and we've been happy to offer help," said Heartland spokesman Jim Lakely, in an email message. "As for the "red team" idea, that is also something The Heartland Institute has promoted for years. We are the publishers of the Climate Change Reconsidered series - four (and soon to be five) volumes by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) which examines the peer-reviewed literature in exactly that fashion. NIPCC is a "red team" of scientists that has been in operation since 2008," he said. "The administration is aware of this work, and the scientists who produced those volumes - more than 3,300 pages with many thousand more citations." According to Lakely, a climate science "red team" is needed because scientists have not sufficiently examined the causes of global warming - despite decades of studies published on exactly that topic. "The work of a "red team" is necessary because the IPCC's mandate was biased from the start. It was not tasked with discovering the causes - natural and anthropogenic - of climate change and the consequences of that change," he said. "Its mandate was to look at only human effects, which has led to dismissal of natural causes and increasingly alarmist conclusions. A sober examination of all the data by qualified scientists is long overdue, and would be a valuable public service," Lakely said. However, contrary to Lakely's arguments, the scientific process itself, as well as the methods used by organizations like the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N. IPCC, involve extensive scrutiny and peer review. Furthermore, dozens of studies and assessments have been published that have specifically looked at the causes of climate change, including natural variability. Some major climate science reports and most government regulations relying on that science also require public comment periods, which makes the argument that climate scientists have gone unchallenged rather dubious. Heartland has longstanding ties to well-known climate deniers like Fred Singer, Christopher Monkton, Willie Soon, House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas, Craig Idso, Patrick Michaels, Myron Ebell, William Happer, and others. Many of the speakers at its annual meetings have received funding from the fossil fuel industry, and few if any of them have successfully published studies in scientific journals that deal with climate change issues. Image: Ed HawkinsSome of them, including Singer, were involved in efforts to convince the public that there was no clear link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer a few decades ago. It's unclear exactly when a red team/blue team climate debate or series of debates will occur. What is known, however, is the general format of such an exercise. Such a debate would have a "red team" of experts who would challenge consensus findings from scientific reports, and a "blue team" would then have the opportunity to respond. The productivity of this entire exercise would depend entirely on how such a debate were set up, such as the composition of the teams, the questions examined, the stakes and setting involved, and more. In an interview with Reuters on July 11 Pruitt said that he would like these debates to be televised, thereby raising the stakes for both mainstream climate scientists - who have the backing of thousands of peer reviewed climate studies and the conclusions of virtually every major science academy in the world - as well as climate deniers, who until this point had been relegated to the outer fringes of climate policymaking. Critics of the debates see them as a way for Pruitt and others who are staunchly opposed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to elevate minority views and make them appear to be just as valid as the consensus conclusions of the vast majority of climate scientists researching the subject. This concern motivated senior Democrats on the House Science Committee to write to Pruitt on July 21 to express their concerns about the motivations behind the debates. The letter didn't hold back, either. "In the face of this overwhelming agreement on the basic fact of human-caused climate change by the world's scientists, your efforts seem to be divorced from reality and reason," the Democrats wrote. "This only reinforces our skepticism of your motives in engaging in a clearly unnecessary, and quite possibly unscientific, red team-blue team exercise to review climate science." UPDATE: July 26, 2017, 10:49 a.m. EDT Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include comments from the Heartland Institute. WATCH: An iceberg the size of Delaware broke off Antarctica

25 Jul 2017 8:35pm GMT

Anova just announced a partnership with Field Company, yet another Kickstarter success story. Anova will be offering an exclusive limited batch of the Field Skillet before it's made available to the general public.

25 Jul 2017 6:51pm GMT

Lemons were the acai bowls of the ancient Romans - prized by the privileged because they were rare, and treasured for their healing powers. In fact, this coveted fruit, as well as the citron, were the only citrus fruits known in the ancient Mediterranean - it took centuries for other fruits, such as oranges, limes and pomelos to spread westward from their native Southeast Asia, a new study finds. However, the citrus fruits that followed in later years weren't as exclusive as lemons and citrons, said the study's lead researcher, Dafna Langgut, an archaeobotanist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

25 Jul 2017 6:43pm GMT