1.9 Cases of Leukemia per 10,000 CT Scans in Children

In the breakdown of results, the study authors from Group Health Research Institute and University of California, Davis note that the risk of developing leukemia was highest from head scans for kids under age 5 with a rate of 1.9 cases per 10,000 CT scans. Younger children and girls seemed more susceptible to solid cancers than older kids and boys. Every 300 to 390 scans of a girl’s abdomen or pelvis was associated with the development of one solid cancer. The study estimates that 4,870 fut...

 Buddhini Samarasinghe: Scientists Should Stick to Science

It is a statistical fact that you are more likely to die while horseback riding (1 serious adverse event every ~350 exposures) than from taking Ecstasy (1 serious adverse event every ~10,000 exposures). Yet, in 2009, the scientist who said this was fired from his position as the chairman of the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Professor David Nutt's remit was to make scientific recommendations to government ministers on the classification of illegal drugs based on the harm they c...

 Facts About the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

1.How faint are the farthest objects? The Hubble observations detected objects as faint as 30th magnitude. The faintest objects the human eye can see are at sixth magnitude. Ground-based telescopes also can detect 30th-magnitude objects. Those objects, however, are so dim they are lost in the glare of brighter, nearby galaxies. Searching for the faintest objects in the Ultra Deep Field is like trying to find a firefly on the Moon. Light from the farthest objects reached the Hubble teles...