Tag: science

Scientists Develop Drug That Prevents Spread of HIV, Study Reveals

Admin

by Grace Carr   Scientists reported that an antiretroviral drug prevented the spread of HIV in 1,000 sexually active homosexual couples, according to an eight-year study conducted in Europe. The authors published their findings in the Lancet medical journal Thursday, Reuters reported. Researchers followed 1,000 couples, each composed of one HIV-positive partner and one HIV-negative partner. The couples were sexually active and did not use condoms during intercourse, according to the researchers. Despite a lack of protection, none of the HIV-negative men reportedly contracted HIV. The HIV-positive men underwent antiretroviral therapy to suppress the AIDS virus, allowing them to engage in intercourse without transmitting the virus. HIV is a virus spread through bodily fluids that attacks the immune system, specifically CD4 cells, according to HIV.gov. Over time, the virus renders the body unable to fend off infections and disease. HIV is largely spread through sexual intercourse and shared syringe use. Mothers can, however, spread the virus to their babies by breast-feeding. The researchers followed the couples for eight years and found that no HIV-negative men contracted HIV from their partners taking antiretroviral drugs. The scientists estimate that the treatment prevented approximately 472 HIV transmissions over eight years, according to Reuters.…

Read the full story

Black Hole Photo Confirms Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

Admin

by Kevin Pimbblet   Black holes are long-time superstars of science fiction. But their Hollywood fame is a little strange given that no-one has ever actually seen one – at least, until now. If you needed to see to believe, then thank the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which has just produced the first ever direct image of a black hole. This amazing feat required global collaboration to turn the Earth into one giant telescope and image an object thousands of trillions of kilometres away. As stunning and ground-breaking as it is, the EHT project is not just about taking on a challenge. It’s an unprecedented test of whether Einstein’s ideas about the very nature of space and time hold up in extreme circumstances, and looks closer than ever before at the role of black holes in the universe. To cut a long story short: Einstein was right. Capturing the uncapturable A black hole is a region of space whose mass is so large and dense that not even light can escape its gravitational attraction. Against the black backdrop of the inky beyond, capturing one is a near impossible task. But thanks to Stephen Hawking’s groundbreaking work, we know that the colossal…

Read the full story

Pressure Builds on Government Agencies to be More Transparent in Research

Admin

by Robert Romano   In 1963, Karl Popper proposed that the central criterion of the scientific method should be its testability, or the ability to falsify a theory. Absent that, he wrote that such a theory could not be considered scientific. Popper wrote, “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific,” adding, “Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.” Although controversial, in science, the whole premise of peer review is encapsulated by Popper’s central theme, which is that science as a practice should be transparent. The evidence backing up a scientific theory should be reproducible. Popper wrote, “Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.” But many scientific theories, although subjected to peer review, are often not subjected to public review, particularly when it comes to government agencies that rely on published science to enact regulations. While some agencies do require publication of underlying data to support regulations — the National Institutes for…

Read the full story

March for Life Theme in 2019 is ‘Pro-Life is Pro-Science’

Admin

by Troy Worden   The organization which holds “the largest pro-life event in the world” has formally announced the theme for its next march in 2019: “Unique from day one: Pro-life is pro-science.” This Thursday the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, a pro-life organization which aims to “end abortion by uniting, educating, and mobilizing pro-life people in the public square,” unveiled a new pro-science theme for its 46th annual March for Life. Join us at the #MarchforLife on January 18th 2019! The 2019 theme is: #UniqueFromDayOne: pro-life is pro-science. #whywemarch Full video: https://t.co/jdqw3P6Wnv pic.twitter.com/mq214YLDyc — March for Life (@March_for_Life) October 18, 2018 “Science is behind the pro-life movement,” Jeanne Mancini, president of the organization, said at the opening of the event, which was held at the Rayburn House Building on Capitol Hill. One hundred years ago, our understanding of embryonic development and fetal development was very different that what it is now. We owe so many advances to medicine and science and technology, and they all continue to reaffirm the scientific fact and the truth that life begins at fertilization/conception. “‘No good scientist worth their salt says that life doesn’t begin at conception,’ Mancini added, quoting what an…

Read the full story

IG Is Investigating Allegations of Collusion Between Volvo and EPA Officials to Sabotage President Trump’s Auto Regs Roll-Back

Admin
big rig truck

by Tim Pearce   Federal investigators are probing into a 2017 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report that claimed refurbished trucks emitted significantly more pollution than new models. The EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced Tuesday that it would look into allegations that EPA officials improperly colluded with truck manufacturer Volvo to conduct a study that found that “glider trucks” – refurbished truck engines fixed in new bodies – emit as much as 40 times the pollution of new vehicles. The Trump administration is attempting to repeal Obama-era regulations that classified glider trucks as “new motor vehicles” and placed them under a much stricter class of emissions standards. Glider trucks are generally cheaper, though less efficient, than new models, earning the ire of environmentalists and large truck companies, including Volvo. After placing a stay on the rule that would put off enforcement until Dec. 2019, the EPA reversed course in June and lifted the stay. EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler lifted the stay following a D.C. Circuit Court ordered the EPA to enforce the Obama-era regulation. Anti-glider groups and companies have lobbied against the repeal of the regulations, often touting the 2017 EPA study on glider truck emissions. Congressional Republicans asked the OIG to look into…

Read the full story

‘This Is Not Science:’ Scientist Rips Into The Latest Attempt To Blame Wildfires On Global Warming

Admin
Cliff Mass

by Michael Bastasch    – The Associated Press claims that “science says” global warming increases the area of western U.S. land scorched by wildfires every year.  – Climate scientist Cliff Mass noted AP’s simple correlation is not “science” and misses other key drivers of fires.  – It’s similar to another report from early August also attempting to link wildfires to global warming. The Associated Press is out with an analysis claiming that “science says” the amount of western U.S. land scorched by wildfires every year increases as temperatures go up. However, while those things are true, simply correlating two data trends is not “science,” as AP writer Seth Borenstein claims. And one expert says the simple correlation is meant to suggest a strong relationship between global warming and western wildfires that might not be there. “This is not science,” University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The AP’s analysis found the “five years with the most acres burned since 1983 averaged 63.4 degrees from April to September,” which is “1.2 degrees warmer than average and 2.4 degrees hotter than the years with the least acres burned.” Since 1999, “10 years have had more than 10,000 square miles…

Read the full story

Identity Politics Is Now Undermining Science

Admin
JPL Scientists

by Michael Liccione   The prestige of science in our culture is well-earned. That scientists discover truths (or at least serviceable approximations to truths) is undeniable. The evidence for that is how successfully scientific findings have been applied for centuries as technology, which has improved life greatly for countless people. Sound science depends on methodologies that are as objective as possible, in the sense of being designed to minimize various forms of bias. Through objective methodologies we can discover what is really the case, versus what we want or expect to be the case. It’s how science corrects its errors over time and makes progress. But scientific progress is now threatened by a new form of ideology. This time around it’s not religious ideology, but political. It’s not news that identity politics and two of its intellectual pillars—the push for “diversity” and the theory of “intersectionality”—have strongly influenced the practice of the social sciences. A good deal of the peer-reviewed literature in sociology, political science, and even psychology is now produced from that perspective, and amounts to political advocacy. This decline in the objectivity of the social sciences is seen by many as a virtue, because the bias is seen as favoring the right sorts…

Read the full story

Princeton Physicist Points Out The Obvious: The ‘Climate Denier’ Label Is Meant To Cast ‘Me As A Nazi Apologist’

Admin

by Michael Bastach   Some scientists and activists no longer want their critics to be called “skeptics,” but Princeton University Physicist William Happer said “climate denier” is meant to denigrate those critical of claims of catastrophic man-made global warming. The term “denier” is “designed to cast me and others like me as a Nazi apologist,” Happer told The Washington Post. Happer believes global warming, on net, will be beneficial to mankind from enhanced plant growth from carbon dioxide emissions. “Any honest scientist should be a skeptic, most of all, a skeptic of his (or her) own scientific work, and the work of others,” Happer told WaPo via email. President Donald Trump considered Happer as a candidate to head the Office of Science and Technology Policy or even sit on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “If you insist on categorizing me as anything other than an honest scientist (and somewhat immodestly, a very good one) … you might call me a scientist who is persuaded that doubling or tripling CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere will be a major benefit to life on Earth,” Happer wrote, according to WaPo’s Friday report. However, Texas Tech University Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe implored WaPo not to apply the…

Read the full story

National Association of Scholars Calls on Government to End the Practice of Using ‘Secret Science’ for Regulatory Decisionmaking

Admin

by Printus LeBlanc   Every day, the federal government puts out new regulations, updates old ones, or eliminates them all together. This is done in the Federal Register and is published every morning. What most people don’t know is a great amount of the rules and regulations published in the Federal Register were concocted using reports from government and third-party scientists using “secret science.” Thankfully the National Association of Scholars (NAS) is now calling out federal agencies and Congress for not doing enough to ensure science used to influence every single American can be reproduced independently by making the data publicly available. Secret science has long been a tool of the progressive movement to push its radical agenda. The U.S. government gives out billions in grants to research institutions around the country. The grants are given to study everything from climate change and medical research to animal mating habits and shrimp on a treadmill. The product of the research is then given to the representative government agency and often extensive economy changing regulations are drawn up and implemented based on the study. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has been at the forefront of the battle, announcing on March 19, the EPA will no…

Read the full story

New Group Seeks to Elect ‘Scientists’ Like Phil Bredesen to Office

Admin

Liberals have launched a new effort to recruit scientists to run for office. One of their favorite “scientists” is former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee. The new group, named ‘314 Action’ after the first three digits of the mathematical constant “pi,” TheHill.com welcomed them to the national political scene: A group focused on recruiting and training scientists to run for office is eyeing two more key House and Senate races as it plans to ramp up involvement in the 2018 midterms. 314 Action, named after the first three digits of pi, is closely watching the race for Rep. Dave Reichert’s (R-WA) open seat and the Tennessee Senate race, which has garnered some national attention. But the group has yet to make endorsements in either race. Former Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), who has a bachelor’s degree in physics, is running for the open seat in Tennessee. He’s seen as a top recruit for Democrats in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 30 years. In the race to fill Reichert’s seat, the group is closely watching pediatrician Kim Schrier (D), who’s running in a crowded…

Read the full story