Science reporting relevant to current events with an emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area
2 August 2021 Hello again, friends of science, Let’s take a brief look at ourselves, our forebears, and our cousins this week. First, is a story of our chimpanzee and gorilla cousins. They have been observed for decades hanging out with each other, eating food side by side, and letting their youngsters play with each … Read more
5 July 2021 Hello again dear readers, ¿Wasn’t science supposed to let us travel using flying cars and jet packs and hover-boards? Well, all are available but it’s a lot cheaper to buy an airline ticket (or book a plane from your flying club) and rent a car at your destination. In my June 6 SciSchmooze, I expressed … Read more
27 June 2021 A 150,000-year-old skull found in China is described in a journal this week. The skull is not Homo sapiens. The authors chose to name the species Homo longi but many scientists suspect the person was Homo denisova. Just eleven years ago, it was announced that novel DNA was sequenced from a girl’s finger bone found in a Siberian Altai Mountain … Read more
7 June 2021 Clouds are rare over Mars. Curiosity photographed clouds so far above the surface that they may be dry ice crystals. This SciSchmooze is going to press before the results of Ingenuity’s 7th flight are known. But if you would like a little model (about 1/7 scale) of Ingenuity – for free – … Read more
30 May 2021 Dr. Elizabeth Bik searches for faked images, plagiarized passages, and incorrectly interpreted data in scientific papers. She is amazing in her ability to recognize improperly re-used images even when they are reversed and rotated. She presented a paper on “Misconduct in Scientific Papers: Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification” at the Bay Area Skeptics … Read more
2 May 2021 Fewer and fewer Americans are lining up to get COVID-19 shots while only 31% of our population has been fully vaccinated. Public Service Announcements are pushing for more people to get vaccinated, e.g. Barack Hussein Obama, Stewie from Family Guy, and Google. Aware that a large proportion of Republicans are hesitant, there … Read more
4 April 2021 Dear Science Fans, Out in our solar system neighborhood, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter is about to be released from the underside of the Perseverance rover. NASA’s official description of Ingenuity’s role says it will be decommissioned after a month of test flights. Sorry, folks. I do not expect the world’s population will … Read more
7 March 2021 Percy (Perseverance Rover) has been feeling its oats, doing calisthenics, and moving about at its landing spot dubbed “Octavia Butler Landing.” ((Butler’s 1998 book, Parable of the Talents, tells of the election of the populist, misogynistic, xenophobic Andrew Steele Jarret to the White House, whose rallying cry is “Make America Great Again.” … Read more