If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? Physicist Silas Beane of the University of Bonn, Germany, thinks he has the answer. His paper ‘Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation’ has been submitted to the journal Physical Review D.

Justin Mullins: The idea that we live in a simulation is just science fiction, isn’t it?
Silas Beane: There is a famous argument that we probably do live in a simulation. The idea is that in the future, humans will be able to simulate entire universes quite easily. And given the vastness of time ahead, the number of these simulations is likely to be huge. So if you ask the question: ‘Do we live in the one true reality or in one of the many simulations?

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Although many industries have fought to prevent action on climate change, there’s at least one major business that’s taking it seriously, according to a recent perspective in Science. Climate change is estimated to cost the world economy $1.2 trillion annually, which is proving to be a stress test for the insurance industry. Lest you think that’s a niche concern, insurance accounts for seven percent of the global economy and is the world’s largest industry.

Increasingly, weather and climate related catastrophes are costing insurers. The number of weather-related loss events in North America has nearly quintupled in the past three decades, according to a recent report from MunichRe. Sandy alone cost New York and New Jersey $80 billion, affecting individuals and business, and impacting health. Claims have more than doubled each decade since the 1980s (adjusted for inflation) and paid claims now average $50 billion a year worldwide.

Many insurers are using climate science to better quantify and diversify their exposure, more accurately price and communicate risk, and target adaptation and loss-prevention efforts. They also analyze their extensive databases of historical weather- and climate-related losses, for both large- and small-scale events. But insurance modeling is a distinct discipline. Unlike climate models, insurers’ models […]

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Cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it, a study from the University of Oxford suggests.

Using brain imaging, researchers found that the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis reduced activity in a part of the brain linked to emotional aspects of pain.

But the effect on the pain experienced varied greatly, they said.

The researchers’ findings are published in the journal Pain.

The Oxford researchers recruited 12 healthy men to take part in their small study.

Participants were given either a 15mg tablet of THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) – the ingredient that is responsible for the high – or a placebo.

The volunteers then had a cream rubbed into the skin of one leg to induce pain, which was either a dummy cream or a cream that contained chilli – which caused a burning and painful sensation.

Each participant had four MRI scans which revealed how their brain activity changed when their perception of the pain reduced.
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Cannabis appears to mainly affect the emotional reaction to pain in a highly variable way.

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MAD ISLAND, Texas (AP) – Armed with flashlights, recordings of bird calls, a small notebook and a stash of candy bars, scientist Rich Kostecke embarked on an annual 24-hour Christmastime count of birds along the Texas Gulf Coast. Yellow rail. Barn owl. Bittern. Crested Cara-Cara. Kostecke rattled off the names and scribbled them in his notebook.

His data, along with that from more than 50 other volunteers spread out into six groups across the 7,000-acre Mad Island preserve, will be analyzed regionally and then added to a database with the results of more than 2,200 other bird counts going on from mid-December to Jan. 5 across the Western Hemisphere.

The count began in 1900 as a National Audubon Society protest of holiday hunts that left piles of bird and animal carcasses littered across the country. It now helps scientists understand how birds react to short-term weather events and may provide clues as to how they will adapt as temperatures rise and climate changes.

‘Learning the changes of habit in drought could help us know what will happen as it gets warmer and drier,’ said Kostecke, a bird expert and associate director of conservation, research and planning at the Nature Conservancy in Texas.

Scientists saw […]

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Because of the power vested in the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, with command over a space encompassing 27 nations with more than 500 million citizens and the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 18 trillion US dollars, it’s perhaps no surprise in this era of moral promiscuity that powerful private lobby groups such as the tobacco industry, the drug lobby, the agribusiness lobby and countless others spend enormous sums of money and other favors-legal and sometimes illegal-to influence policy decisions of the EU Commission.

This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private industry lobby groups and the EU Commission was in full view recently with the ruling of the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA) trying to discredit serious scientific tests about the deadly effects of a variety of Monsanto GMO corn.

Cancer of Corruption

In September 2012, Food and Chemical Toxicology, a serious international scientific journal, released a study by a team of scientists at France’s Caen University led by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. Before publication the Seralini study had been reviewed over a four-month period by a qualified group of scientific peers for its methodology and was deemed publishable.

It was no amateur undertaking. The scientists at Caen made carefully-documented […]

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