You know the filtered water you use to brew your freshly-ground, custom-roasted, shade-grown coffee beans should be at 195-205°F (91-96°C). Science has now determined that you should drink the resulting java at 140-147°F (60-64°C). You’re welcome.
More:
“Science Finds The Most Acceptable Coffee Drinking Temperature,” Zac Cadwalader, Spudge
“Impact of beverage temperature on consumer preferences for black coffee,” William D. Ristenpart, Andrew R. Cotter, and Jean-Xavier Guinard, Nature
Ants navigate by leaving scent trails, marking their journeys by leaving pheremones in their wake, to be followed by other ants or to find their way back home. Desert ants can’t do that, since it’s too windy there, and scents dissipate. Here’s how they compensate. A video by Robert Krulwich and Jason Orfanon, animated by OddTodd (Todd Rosenberg).
Wild crows can recognize people, especially those they don’t like. They can pick a person out of crowd, follow them, and remember them for years. Robert Krulwich explains. Animation by Neil Wagner.
Scientific Method be damned, medical journals have an economic incentive for publishing papers with postive outcomes. When a drug study shows positive outcomes, pharmaceutical companies buy reprints of it in bulk to distribute it to prescribers.
Those purchases can add up to over $2 million. For journals like The Lancet ($40 annual revenue) and NEJM ($100 million/yr.), that’s huge. 41 percent of The Lancet’s 2021 income came from reprints. When it comes to drug studies, Big Phama’s thumb is firmly on the scale.
More:
Scientific journals are incentivized to publish positive drug studies,” Annalisa Merelli, Quartz
Related:
“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” John P. A. Ioannidis, PLOS Medicine
According to a University of Michigan study, the percentage of American adults who believe in evolution is now 54%. In all, 32% of religious fundamentalists, 34% of conservative Republicans, and 83% of liberal Democrats accept evolution as fact. Science marches on!
More:
“Study: Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans,” Morgan Sherburne, Michigan News
“Franz Anton Mesmer, a charismatic physician from Vienna, Austria, began ‘healing’ people in Paris using an alternative therapeutic practice he called ‘animal magnetism’ …..
“Mesmer claimed an invisible magnetic fluid was the life force that connected all things, and that he had the power to regulate it to restore health in his patients. He was a celebrity figure until Louis XVI, the last king of France, commissioned a group of leading scientists to investigate Mesmer’s methods in 1784.”
More:
“Mesmerising Science: The Franklin Commission and the Modern Clinical Trial,” Urte Laukaityte, Public Domain Review
Eunice Foote, a pioneer in the field of climate change, wrote about the heat-trapping effects of CO2 in 1856. She was ignored by history, perhaps because she also wrote about womens rights. A BBC video, animated by Peter Caires.
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