Welcome, Chat, Questions, Answers

Hello all, I'm the administrator for the Science! group, at least until Dug completes his recovery from illness.

My published magazine articles are on diverse subjects, such as the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Elderhood, or any subject where I feel further exploration is needed yet unavailable. My current writing topic is the COVID-19 pandemic.

Please use this Librarything Topic entry for any questions, comments, or if you just want to say Hello.

Congratulations on the administration position! & thanks for your concern about my health. I am doing ok at present, ambulatory and working on occasion - hopefully the Drs can keep the nasties at bay for an extended time.

I have not been in charge of anything but just post my interests here more often than most probably because I have not mastered any social media.

>1 MaureenRoy: thank you for taking on the administration duties!

Science education--like so much else--is failing us, itself and, certainly not least, the people (students) who now are or in the near future intend to be undertaking degrees in the sciences with the expectation of pursuing a career in applied or theoretical science.

Though the following case example concerns a professor of anthropology, his case is just as readily found today among professors in the sciences. Read on and don't overlook the comments from many who, like the author, are, at various stages of their careers, struggling with the dilemma of deciding what to do: resist and fight, surrender, hide and hope to be lucky and spared the worst, or resign and get out.

As a society we are in very serious trouble and this is not "going away" anytime soon.

Why I'm Giving Up Tenure at UCLA |
The ideological takeover of my university has ruined academic life for anyone who still believes in freedom of thought.
Joseph Manson | Jul 7
( https://www.commonsense.news )

________________________________________

On my "just-ordered and soon-to-be-reading" list:
not brand new but from 2018

Lost In Math: how beauty leads physics astray (New York, Basic Books)

Please add your comments, questions or suggestions to any of the subjects listed in this LT Science! group. Also, book links would be great!

Announcement on Tuesday, December 10, 2024:

Maureen Roy is resigning as Administrator of the LT Science! group, effective December 31, 2024, or as soon as a new administrator is accepted by the LT management. Anyone interested in volunteering to become the new Science! group administrator can contact LibraryThing on one of their main administrative groups. I suggest that the new Science! administrator have at least 1 year of college-level science classes. I have been spending 1-2 hours weekly looking online and on iPhone news feeds for new science findings to post here. I have also tried to keep my personal comments in the Science! group as objective as possible. Remember that it is not unusual for LT groups with no weekly active or new posts to languish, sometimes to the point of inactivity.

Maureen, your posts have been fascinating and i hope you will continue to post after moving on from being the administrator.

Hello, everyone. My name is Darryl, and I'm a semi-retired pediatrician who had to suddenly resign from working as a pediatric hospitalist in Atlanta for 21+ years in late 2021 after my father suffered a sudden illness that claimed his life; for the moment I'm a 24/7 caregiver for my elderly mother, who has moderate dementia, but I hope to begin working in a non-clinical capacity sometime next year.

In addition to medicine my relevant interests are children's health, public health, both domestic and global, the American healthcare "system," epidemiology, and health care disparities (I'm an African American man). Since I'm a newly approved member of this group I'll watch from a respectful distance, and learn about it and its members first.

Welcome, kidzdoc, feel free to ask questions anywhere on Science group threads.

>7 wcarter: Thanks! Two years as admin here is enough for me. By the way, another news source I often check online is the phys.org new magazine. They combine science headlines with newer sections on emerging study results, a great idea.

Hello all, in recent weeks I have taken more responsibilities as caregiver for a family member w/ chronic health issues, so I do not + will therefore rarely in the future have time to check in on LT or this Science! group at all. But thank you for the fascinating experience of being Admin here up to now.

I do not have the time to be a good administrator but I am happy to try and find a weekly post to put up. I don't know if I can live up to all the MaureenRoy created but I would like to see this group keep going.

>11 MaureenRoy: Thank you Maureen for all that you have done! Best wishes to you and your family member. And thank you SRB5729.

Yes thank you, Maureen. I don't think I commented much, but I read a lot of what you posted.

>14 clamairy: UR welcome! The thing is, interesting science reports sometimes come in clusters, with occasional dead zones time-wise. So, not to worry if you find nothing noteworthy some weeks. There's always reputable sources like:

https://www.britannica.com/Science-Tech

https://www.wolframalpha.com/examples

https://www.bloomberg.com/green

https://www.npr.org/sections/space/

https://phys.org/

https://events.cornell.edu/event/fractals-conference

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/topics/infectious-diseases-and-public-health

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-117

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-quantum-theory-gravity-sought-crucial.html

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/

https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/03/elon-musk-announces-spacexs-mars-mission-with-st...

I included the US school of public health at Johns Hopkins University because it was founded in the midst of the 1918 global influenza pandemic, and even in the 21st century, pandemics are still a threat.

There are also the academic institutions... here are some in the USA:

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/new_biography_of_Einstein

https://news.mit.edu/

And academic publishers of popular science writing: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-89587-1

And non-profit organizations: https://www.lung.org/research/sota/key-findings/most-polluted-places

And libraries set up by independent thinkers:

https://centerforneweconomics.org/envision/library/

https://centerforneweconomics.org/apply/the-commons-program/resources/

I just started reading a used copy of Artemis, Andy Weir’s 2nd novel. It’s interesting that the author includes a map with a couple of nuclear reactors on the surface. Would that be at all safe?? Maybe it would be as safe as it is on Earth, since this author depicts those reactors on the lunar surface that faces Earth.

NASA and other space agencies are currently working on programs for nuclear reactors to provide power on the Moon. See here for the Fission Surface Power website: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration-systems-development-mission-directorate/fission...

As for safety, one aspect that's better on the Moon is the lack of atmosphere. No wind to carry contaminants in the event of a release of radioactive material. Other aspects are harder - the space environment is different thermally and from natural space radiation than Earth, so systems have to be designed for these.

drneutron and everyone, in a perfect world I’d like to see any lunar nuclear installations be located underground, perhaps inside a lava tube? (There’s quite a few meteor *impact* craters even on the near side of the moon, and the far side of the moon is extremely chewed up by impacts.). The precedent for underground nuclear installation is US Admiral Rickover’s design for the first US civilian nuclear reactor at Shippingport, PA, near Pittsburgh, which to date has had zero nuclear leaks of any kind.

On my recently posted subject of “pink” noise generators, I did see the low number of devices studied so far, but in view of the health and safety aspects of such devices that may be used around infants, I want to alert all parents that further safety studies are needed on that technology.

And on the subject of A.I., the overwhelming majority of such applications so far strike me as overblown if not off in a bubble, a very expensive bubble. But I’m willing to list more authoritative writings on that subject. My favorite AI applications so far are the medical radiology software programs that have helped radiologists identify diagnostic features sometimes missed by the human eye.

Unsure of how to categorize the new book from self-described mentalist Oz Pearlman, so here is its publisher page:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783252/read-your-mind-by-oz-pearlman/

(Oz accepted the US White House press association invitation to host the April 25, 2026 White House Correspondents Dinner.)

Apologies for my absence… death of a family member.