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This is an online video simulator "To reveal just how quickly a disease, in this case smallpox, can spread, designers have created a simulator that shows how the world could collapse in less than a month. "It imagines you are 'patient zero' and shows how the disease would spread rapidly through your locality, infecting and killing your neighbours."

One of the most misunderstood creatures in this country is crotalus, a genus of venomous pit vipers most people simply call rattlesnakes. Crotalus horridus, also known as the timber rattlesnake or canebrake snake, epitomizes the deeply ambivalent relationship Americans have with this animal, which Benjamin Franklin considered a symbol of our nascent country-and which remains a symbol of freedom and defiance of unjust government-yet has been hunted to extinction or near-extinction throughout New England. The fear and loathing with which most Americans view rattlesnakes is illustrated most vividly by events like the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, wherein thousands of rattlesnakes are...

Neuroskeptic « Why Scientists Shouldn’t Replicate Their Own Work Brain Activity At The Moment of Death By Neuroskeptic | March 3, 2017 2:48 pm 203 What happens in the brain when we die? Canadian researchers Loretta Norton and colleagues of the University of Western Ontario examine this grave question in a new paper: Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death Norton et al. examined frontal EEG recordings from four critically ill patients at the point where their life support was withdrawn. Here are some details on the four: (table at link) Here’s the...

The Amazon has long been held up as an example of untamed wilderness. But people have lived in the world’s largest rainforest for thousands of years, hunting, gathering and farming1. For years, researchers have debated how much of an influence human activities have had on the Amazon. And now, a study describes the extent to which ancient peoples changed the distribution of trees in the forest around them. The paper2, published on 2 March in Science, finds that many domesticated trees and palms are five times more likely to be over-represented in the Amazon than are non-domesticated ones. The researchers...

Why are “giant fountains of lava” suddenly pouring out of some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the entire planet, and why are so many long dormant volcanoes suddenly roaring back to life? The spectacular eruption of Mt. Etna in Italy is making headlines all over the world, but it is far from alone. According to Volcano Discovery, 35 major volcanoes either are erupting right now or have just recently erupted, and dozens of others are stirring. So what is causing this upsurge in volcanic activity? Is something strange happening inside the Earth? According to the USGS, magma is “molten...

Southern Nevada may pose more of a dirty little problem for some solar plant developers than they realize or are letting on. Solar photovoltaic developers say not to worry about how much water their plants will use because they need only enough water to run the office bathrooms and wash the arrays of panels a couple of times a year. But people who live near proposed plants or maintain solar panels in the desert guffaw at that last bit and are willing to bet the panels will need to be hosed down more frequently. Dust on solar panels can decrease...

I talked to a Russian. I admit it. I'm not particularly proud of it, but so be it. It was at EXPO 1974 in Spokane, WA. Me and a couple of my high school buddies snuck into the Russian pavilion. We were in back when the Russian security guys caught us. They asked us what we were doing back there. I told them, "Looking for your spy equipment you filthy commies!" They chased us outside. There you have it. I expect to be denounced by the Democrats. I talked to a Russian. I'd have talked to the Chinese if they'd...

Why Was Civilization So Late in Coming? Posted on February 27, 2017 According to evolutionists, modern man appeared 200,000 years ago, but civilization appeared only 8,000 years ago. We examine their explanations. An interesting question was asked on Quora and reproduced on Forbes.com: “Why Haven’t We Found Civilizations Older Than 7,000 — 8,000 years?” Taking the bat was Adam Wu, an evolutionary neurosurgeon from Saskatchewan. Here’s a synopsis of his answers:

One of the most perplexing phenomena in astronomy has come of age. The fleeting blasts of energetic cosmic radiation of unknown cause, now known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), were first detected a decade ago. At the time, many astronomers dismissed the seemingly random blasts as little more than glitches. And although key facts, such as what causes them, are still largely a mystery, FRBs are now accepted as a genuine class of celestial signal and have spawned a field of their own. The passage was marked this month by the first major meeting on FRBs, held in Aspen, Colorado,...

When it comes to swindles, it would be hard to top Liz Carmichael. She spun a tale about obtaining proprietary secrets from her deceased NASA engineer husband that enabled her to start and become CEO of a totally bogus car company marketing the Dale. This fictitious 84 mpg, three-wheeled car bilked millions from investors in 1975…and all the while Liz was actually a man, Jerry Dean Michael, impeccably dressed like a woman. No investor ever saw the car factory or drove a Dale. Yet, “Liz” always talked with investors so matter-of-factly about “her” wholly imaginary industrial realm that they willingly...

Such a shield could leave Mars in the relatively protected magnetotail of the magnetic field created by the object, allowing the Red Planet to slowly restore its atmosphere. About 90 percent of Mars's atmosphere was stripped away by solar particles in the lifetime of the planet, which was likely temperate and had surface water about 3.5 billion years ago. According to simulation models, such a shield could help Mars achieve half the atmospheric pressure of Earth in a matter of years. With protection from solar winds, frozen CO2 at Mars's polar ice caps would start to sublimate, or turn directly...

On Aug. 21, 2017, American skywatchers will be treated to a rare and spectacular celestial show — the first total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States in nearly four decades. Next year's "Great American Total Solar Eclipse" will darken skies all the way from Oregon to South Carolina, along a stretch of land about 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide. People who descend upon this "path of totality" for the big event are in for an unforgettable experience, said eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College in Massachusetts. "It's a tremendous opportunity," Pasachoff told Space.com. "It's a...

South America Shows the Flood Progression by Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * Evidence for Creation New research confirms that the Flood recorded in Genesis was global. It also reflects the exact step-by-step biblical account of the floodwaters’ progression.

A dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago had drumstick-shaped legs much like living birds, according to palaeontologists. The feathered dinosaur also had bird-like arms similar to wings. Scientists used high-powered lasers to reveal invisible details of what the creature looked like.

Party Of Science: Democrat Congressional Candidate Brianna Wu Doesn’t Know How Gravity Works February 28, 2017 By Bre Payton U.S. House candidate Brianna Wu, a Massachusetts Democrat, is worried that people will drop rocks from the moon that will hit the earth and kill people.Wu, who gained notoriety after getting involved in the GamerGate controversy of 2014 and is now challenging sitting Rep. Stephen Lynch, tweeted that she isn’t happy about SpaceX’s plan to ferry private citizens to the moon by 2018, for reasons that will make your head explode. it's almost like someone deleted the second tweet as it...

For the first time ever, the World Health Organization has drawn up a list of the highest priority needs for new antibiotics — marching orders, it hopes, for the pharmaceutical industry. The list, which was released Monday, enumerates 12 bacterial threats, grouping them into three categories: critical, high, and medium. “Antibiotic resistance is growing and we are running out of treatment options. If we leave it to market forces alone, the new antibiotics we most urgently need are not going to be developed in time,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation. “The pipeline...

Aboriginal hunters from Arctic Canada have a couple of names for what they say is an extremely rare polar bear that is huge, narrow-bodied, fast-moving and lithe: "tiriarnaq" or "tigiaqpak," meaning "weasel bear." Now the thawing and rapidly eroding Chukchi Sea coastal permafrost has produced evidence that one of these legendary weasel bears — or some other strange kind of bear — roamed Arctic Alaska centuries ago. A huge, fully intact and unusually shaped polar bear skull emerged in 2014 from an eroding archaeological site about 13 miles southwest of Utqiaġvik (Barrow). It is one of the biggest polar bear...

Harvard scientists triumphantly announced that they'd created metallic hydrogen last month, but now it's suddenly gone. Scientists hailed it as the “holy grail” of high pressure physics when they finally produced it in the lab: metallic hydrogen, a century after it was first theorized to exist. And now that sample, which had been held in a hyper refrigerated laboratory, has vanished into thin air, and scientists can’t figure out why. Reports indicate that the metallic hydrogen had been kept between a vice of two diamonds at huge pressures while being stored at 80 Kelvin, but something happened in the lab...

From the University of WisconsinFrom rocks in Colorado, evidence of a ‘chaotic solar system’Plumbing a 90 million-year-old layer cake of sedimentary rock in Colorado, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University has found evidence confirming a critical theory of how the planets in our solar system behave in their orbits around the sun.Alternating layers of shale and limestone near Big Bend, Texas, characteristic of the rock laid down at the bottom of a shallow ocean during the late Cretaceous period. The rock holds definitive geologic evidence that the planets in our solar system behave...

Potential risk could outweigh benefit of taking the medication, study's author saysPopular heartburn medications taken by millions of Canadians could lead to long-term kidney damage without any warning, a new study suggests. The drugs, called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), reduce the symptoms of heartburn by lowering the amount of acid in the stomach. They include the brand names Losec, Nexium, and Prevacid. Doctors previously monitored patients for acute kidney problems, such as decreased urination, swelling in the legs, ankles, or feet, and nausea. Such symptoms were thought to be a warning of more permanent kidney damage, and would often result...