In a recent paper calling to add even more regulations to legal gun owners, the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote "Each day, 28 U.S. children and teens -- the equivalent of a high school classroom -- die from gun violence, making it the No. 1 killer of youth through age 24."

How did they get their number, and why are they claiming a 24-year-old is a child? (1)

When French and German intelligence agencies passed along to the U.S. CIA that Iraq was acquiring components to build weapons of mass destruction, they did it assuming President Bush was like President Clinton and such information would send America to the negotiating table to loosen restrictions on the Iraq embargo that France and Germany were violating on the black market anyway. 'Promise not to build bombs and we'll let you buy more stuff' tactics that had worked for North Korea.

Since the dawn of civilization, people have searched for the secret to long life.

In "Science Left Behind", Dr. Alex Berezow and I recounted the numerous ways that science denial and acceptance solidly came down along political lines. With minor exceptions, if you found someone who denied climate change, you were going to find a Republican. If you found an anti-vaccine type, or anti-nuclear, or anti-GMO, you were going to find a Democrat.

It used to be common for physicians to give common-sense advice to patients; lose weight, drink less alcohol, stop smoking.

Such shaming may reflect an unequal power relationship, according to a paper in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications which also argues that such shame may create a barrier to accessing services, a fear of being judged, circumstances, coping behaviors, body, illnesses, along with other vulnerabilities.

Data from 513 households and 2,053 people participating in the Coronavirus Household Evaluation and Respiratory Testing (C-HEaRT) study from August 2020 to August 2021 in Utah and from September 2020 to August 2021 in New York City, plus data from the SARS-CoV-2 Epidemiology And Response in Children (SEARCh) study in Maryland, with data collected from November 2020 to October 2021, reveal that isolating from infected family members (separate room) and getting a vaccine helped prevent  severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.

If you are in a business where costs are both fixed and high, but your number of customers is slashed due to government regulations and public concern about leaving the house, it may not be worthwhile to continue. In more heavy-handed states like California, thousands of restaurants went out of business. In some places, so did doctors.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors faced reduced revenue, staff who stopped wanting to work, and decreased morale, according to an analysis of billing claims data. The work found that nearly twice as many family physicians stopped work in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to previous years.

In a recent post in this blog I discussed the idea of exploiting the properties of negative muons for a new kind of imaging technique of unknown volumes of material. The idea is based on the fact that negative muons stopped inside matter have a lifetime that is modified by nuclear interactions, so that a precise detection of their lifetime and point of decay becomes a means of inferring the composition of unknown volumes. Here, I want to offer the results of a quick simulation of the processes, to show that the idea is not so far-fetched.

Different techniques for muon tomography

Land mammals such as horses experience ‘pulses’ in their blood when galloping, where blood pressures inside the body go up and down on every stride. In all mammals, average blood pressure is higher in arteries, or the blood exiting the heart, than in veins. This difference in pressure drives the blood flow in the body, including through the brain. Locomotion can forcefully move blood, causing spikes in pressure, or ‘pulses’ to the brain.

The difference in pressure between the blood entering and exiting the brain for these pulses can cause damage. Long-term damage of this kind can lead to dementia in human beings while horses deal with the pulses by breathing in and out.

A recent survey found that even if the cost was 10X as much (though still a small amount), users would pay more if they liked the feel of a smartphone cover. This means designers might benefit more factoring that into product design.

The caveat; this was a small number of students and Hiroshima University staff so not representative even of Japan. Still, it showed willingness to pay more when the reference smartphone cover price was 100 yen and 1000 yen. The covers were differentiated by surface smoothness, height, slipperiness, dampness, granularity, stickiness, and dryness.