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As Smith et al. report, the Fukushima plume has finally arrived on America’s west coast in earnest, doubling the bomb testing fallout and expected to double yet again by next year. Are thousands to die? Well, at its expected peak of 5 mBq/kg (more…)
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As often happens, Ling et al. become honest towards the end of their article. Contrary to what the title and abstract imply, they do not expect their new antibiotic to prevent resistance, but only for it to take longer to establish itself. Not quite the same thing, is it? Of course what all this does not address (more…)
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This month’s J. Arch. Science contains two glaring examples of Cargo Cult, the imitation of the outward appearance of the scientific method without any real sense and understanding of it’s purpose and substance. Pretending to describe the tool used for cutting her sample teeth Burt only names the maker of its electric drive. Even if that were at all relevant, which it isn’t, (more…)
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I think Lesk is conflating two totally unrelated problems. There is wrong, fraudulent, or irreplicable research and there are authors, who submit their own identical results several times to more than one journal. These two things have no bearing on each other, except perhaps (more…)
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I don’t understand the article by Couzin-Frankel at all. She’s been an experienced science journalist for years and ought to be at home in quantitative thinking. Personally I am grossly overweight, have hated and eschewed all kinds of physical exercise at least since age three, and run a partly treated high blood pressure. All those are large and well known risk factors. Other people smoke, drink, or engage in sports (to my observation the highest risk factor by far for all kinds of accidents and injury). Are any of those (more…)
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Nearly all of the total methane emission from abandoned wells comes from very few highly emitting cases, according to Kang et al., suggesting that little effort might make a big difference here. On the other hand their total sample size is a mere 19 wells, so before acting a much more comprehensive look is in order.
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Freeman’s argument about water not being fractionated through plant transpiration sounds quite convincing, but is contradicted by the results of Kahmen et al. 2011 (PNAS 108, 1981–1986). So to the extent it relies on this non-fractionation the model by Winnick et al. has to be seen as questionable.
First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.
I’m not much impressed by the editorial quality of Elsevier’s journal Applied Energy, and with Elsevier it’s not the only one. There are several jarring occurrences of “MW/h” in Pearre et al. interspersed with the correct “MWh”. (I grudgingly accept the American convention of two fraction bars in one term, as in “$/MW/h”, but it has to be done consistently.) Is it not time to strike Elsevier off the list of reputable publishers?
