“More than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer, a finding scientists have called ‘disturbing’ and ‘concerning.’
The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples, taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. This is the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the world, including the widely used Roundup brand. Almost a third of the participants were children ranging from six to 18.”
— “‘Disturbing’: weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples,” Carey Gillam, The Guardian
A previous study found the herbicide 2,4-D in a third of US blood samples. If the science won’t convince Red State farmers to cool it with these chemicals, maybe Susan Werner‘s song (above) will give them pause.
DC Bus shelter, 8 blocks from the Capitol, January 16, 2021
“When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.
But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.”
— “Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters’ Towns, Study Finds,” Alan Feuer, New York Times
More:
“What an analysis of 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection tells us,” Robert A. Pape, Washington Post
“By means of a golf tally counter, 283 college students kept track of their thoughts pertaining to food, sleep, or sex for one week. Males reported significantly more need-based cognitions overall, but there was no significant interaction between sex of participant and type of cognition recorded. Therefore, although these young men did think more about sex than did young women, they also thought more about food and sleep.”
— “Sex on the brain?: an examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability,” Fisher, Moore, Pittenger, Journal of Sex Research 2012, via NCBI
______________
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Every year since the dawn of time, the Santa Ana winds lash Southern California’s dry autumn brushlands into explosive, blazing infernos. Every year since the dawn of the last century, Southern Californians express surprise as they are engulfed in a sea of flame. With climate change, things won’t get better.
“We will never be able to control wildfire,” explains Tania Schoennagel of the Institute for Alpine and Arctic Research, “We have to learn to live with it and adapt, just like we do with droughts and flooding. Our current wildfire policies can’t protect people and homes.”
More:
“The Future of Fighting Wildfires in the Era of Climate Change,” Bob Berwyn, Pacific Standard
“Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes,” Tania Schoennagela, Jennifer K. Balcha, Hannah Brenkert-Smith et al., PNAS
___________________
Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-pC2
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Research at the University of Edinburgh indicates that that the brains of men and women are shaped differently. While men’s brains are bigger overall, brains of women tend to have thicker cortices, which are associated with intelligence. We’re going to ask some women to look into that for us and tell us what it all means.
More:
“Women have bigger brain regions associated with intelligence,” Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz
___________________
Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-pyN
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here.Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
“White Collar Crime Risk Zones uses machine learning to predict where financial crimes will happen across the U.S. The system was trained on incidents of financial malfeasance from 1964 to the present day, collected from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a non-governmental organization that regulates financial firms.
The system uses industry-standard predictive policing methodologies, including Risk Terrain Modeling and geospatial feature predictors, which enables the tool to predict financial crime at the city-block-level with an accuracy of 90.12%.
Predictive policing apps are designed and deployed to target so-called “street” crime, reinforcing and accelerating destructive policing practices that disproportionately target impoverished communities of color.”
Angus Deaton has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
“To design economic policy that promotes welfare and reduces poverty, we must first understand individual consumption choices. More than anyone else, Angus Deaton has enhanced this understanding. By linking detailed individual choices and aggregate outcomes, his research has helped transform the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics, and development economics.”
“Princeton professor Angus Deaton wins Nobel Prize in economics,” Jeff Guo, Washington Post
“Why Angus Deaton Deserved the Nobel Prize in Economics,” Christopher Blattman, Foreign Policy
Video [21:02]: Angus Deaton addressing the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on “Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality.” October 17, 2013. A complete audio recording of his remarks is here.
_____________
Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-miU
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
“Adults who are obese now outnumber those who are merely overweight, according to a new report in the journalJAMA Internal Medicine.
A tally by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis estimated that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 were obese as of 2012, and an additional 65.2 million were overweight.”
“Researchers at the University of Auckland (in partnership with Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy products exporter) used a machine to measure the integral elements of possible pizza ingredients as precisely as possible, and then published a paper about it in the Journal of Food Science. … ‘Quantification of Pizza Baking Properties of Different Cheeses, and Their Correlation with Cheese Functionality.’”
“For cheese to brown, the paper explains, it needs to lose moisture first. For the moisture to evaporate, blisters need to form, because where they lift the surface of the cheese, free oil can run off and expose the surface to raw heat. And for a blister to form, steam needs to collect in a pocket and push up the cheese.”
“This is why mozzarella makes for good browning. First, it doesn’t have much free oil. Second, it is very elastic. Third, it contains a lot of moisture. So steam pockets form easily, which create healthy blisters, which quickly expose the surface to browning.”
— “Here is the recipe for perfectly browned pizza cheese as established by science,” Sonali Kohli, Quartz (links added)
More:
“Science Crowns Mozzarella The King Of Pizza Cheese,” Maanvi Singh, NPR
NotionsCapital 