Before science day, a couple of news items: Nothing to seriously worry about, but  our U.S. Congress has to act by 11:59PM Friday night before government funding runs out .   First, there is an announced compromise, which is shaky, and there seems to be no way for the full Congress to act until next week. Anyway, this stopgap measure is only until very early March, when they need to pass another stopgap bill. But not to worry anyway, for  since 1976 the Congress has had 22 funding gaps . Each time, the nation survived. Congressional leaders  met with President Joe Biden  today in the White House, and tried to work out something to combine immigration with Israel/Ukraine war funding. Easy to blame Republicans for what is happening. Let's see if Speaker Mike Johnson survives this mini-crisis, for he committed the cardinal sin of actually working out a deal with Democrats, and will need them to actually pass the needed legislation in the House. About that circus called the Republican

Nearly a dozen years ago I wrote an article for  The Huffington Pos t on  Star Power for Humanit y.  The latest June issue of  Scientific American  featured  Star Power: What is the future of fusion energy?   You can click on that link for the full article.  I'll summarize: This past December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( LLNR ) claimed a breakthrough in attaining net positive with their laser fusion system.  No one had ever done that before. As an aside, I worked there in the 1970's on that project, and left because I could not envision the laser that would accomplish this task.  Can you believe that was around half a century ago? The bad news is that net positive is a long way from commercialization.  And certainly, that intriguing ultimate laser has not yet been invented. Well anyway, this article was written by Philip Ball, a British science writer who is my same age.  He has a PhD in physics from Bristol University.  Easy to read  Sci Am  article with no eq

Before I step into the future, one item about today, COVID-19 booster shots.  I've said this a hundred times, at least, but make this perhaps number 101:    boosters help keep people out of the hospital . This was a recent study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association Inter Medicine: Data from more than 192,000 adults in 13 U.S. states who had been hospitalized this year with this virus between January and April were analyzed. This was  before  the BA.5 and BA.4 subvariants took over. Even then, UNVACCINATED PEOPLE WERE 10.5 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE HOSPITALIZED THAN PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN FULLY VACCINATED AND BOOSTED (note that this was the original booster). How important was that early booster?  People who were vaccinated but not boosted were 2.5 times more likely to end up in the hospital than those who had received a booster. Note that the second booster did not arrive until after the time period of this analysis.  I would hope that this second booster e

                              From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD     Brazil      India      South Africa June     9    1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30      3880    14748       1224       299      465 Jan      14       4142     15512        1151        189      712                  Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194 April   6          906     11787         4211       631       37 May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59   June   1         287    10637         2346      3205       95  July   7          251      8