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Emergency Room Bro Culture Needs To Change Before Millennial Doctors Will Take The Speciality

Science 2.0 - Mar 11 2024 - 15:03
If a small survey in California is indicative of young physicians nationwide, emergency room culture will need to change for younger residents to have interest.

The news comes at a worrisome time. Increased government control of health care has meant plummeting interest in emergency medicine among graduating medical students. Women are even less likely to enter the field and instead opt for a culture that requires less assertiveness and self-advocacy, according to the survey.  

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Correlation: Sitting Is Bad For Your Health And Exercise Won't Help

Science 2.0 - Mar 11 2024 - 14:03

Advances in technology in recent decades have obviated the need and desire for humans to move. Many of the world’s population sit for long periods throughout the day, whether in front of a computer at work or in front of a TV at home. Given that the human body is made to move, all this sitting is clearly bad for our health. A new study from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), confirmed this – and then some.

A total of 5,856 female participants aged 63 to 99 years were asked to wear an activity monitor on their hip for seven days at the start of the study. The researchers then followed them for a decade, during which 1,733 participants died.

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Benzene Is Not 'Cancer Causing' When IARC Epidemiology Only Claims Correlation

Science 2.0 - Mar 07 2024 - 14:03
If you have acne, and are worried about benzene because corporate media is touting that an "independent" lab - which happened to be paid by a group representing lawyers who want to sue - found elevated levels of it, you can relax.

In 2018, an International Agency for Research on Cancer did discuss benzene, but the levels were 10,000X safe levels. And they do not ever show what causes cancer, all they do is target chemicals and look at rows and columns of data from surveys and other papers, and try to claim correlation.


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IRS Correctly Says You Can't Use Health Savings For Acupuncture, Massages or Other Wellness Nonsense

Science 2.0 - Mar 07 2024 - 13:03
Folk medicine, traditional medicine, alternative medicine, complementary medicine, wellness - it is all the same thing rebranded to be sold anew but one thing remains consistent; none of it is actual medicine.

Acupuncture is a placebo, massages are not evidence-based treatments, your Blue Apron "organic" food subscription is not preventing any illness, and so the Biden administration has rightly decreed that you can't use a Health Savings Account - untaxed funds meant to be used for medical care - and buy alternatives to medicine. Not even if you you get a doctor to give you a note saying it is real. The irony is that because his constituents overwhelmingly distrust science, his administration launched an unscientific  “Food is Medicine” initiative last year.

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Weedkillers Don't Cause Cancer And Juries Have Learned People Are Not Plants

Science 2.0 - Mar 07 2024 - 11:03
A lawyers who claims his client, a government union employee, got cancer from using the common weedkiller Roundup, is whining that his client didn't get to hear "key evidence" from "the World Health Organisation" that it caused cancer.

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Losing Weight Can't Cause Cancer But Welcome To Modern Epidemiology

Science 2.0 - Mar 06 2024 - 13:03
As the century turned, the science community began to become critical of a once-honored field; epidemiology.  If you are not familiar with it, it is people who correlate causes to outcomes. They don't show it, they usually are not scientists, but they look for links and then if those look interesting scientists will follow up on it.

This was an occupation once so conservative and evidence-driven that they were the last to accept that heart disease and cancer might have a hereditary factor. When epidemiologists showed that smoking causes lung cancer the data were so overwhelming and comprehensive that Big Tobacco began to stockpile money for the inevitable lawsuits because they had denied it.

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Where's Tommaso?

Science 2.0 - Mar 02 2024 - 10:03
March is here, and with it begins a season of intense travel for me - something which for some combination of reasons has become sort of a habit. First, workshops and conferences are rarely scheduled in the December-February period. Second, the Christmas vacations put a sort of break to all activities and disrupt the flow. Third, I teach a course in the first semester, which is now over. And fourth, INFN funding mechanisms imply that it is harder to travel in those months (yearly budgets close toward the end of November, and funds become again available only a bit after the new year starts).

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'Food Is Medicine' Gurus Link Processed Food To Basically Every Disease

Science 2.0 - Feb 29 2024 - 19:02
Food fads in the 'food is medicine' space try to use science jargon - nutriceuticals (literal food as medicine), polyphenols, prebiotics, all so they can  promote fad diets around something new - like fermented foods recently.

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Boiling Water To Remove 'Microplastics' Is So Dumb Even Washingon Post Won't Endorse It. Oh Wait...

Science 2.0 - Feb 29 2024 - 15:02
A new paper in Environmental Science&Technology Letters (created a decade ago to ride the 'everything causes cancer' craze) claims that not only are 'microplastics' harmful - because in modern times we can detect anything in anything and if you can detect it, it is killing you - you can and should remove them by both boiling and filtering the water in your home.

It is so bizarre - we'd have been extinct 150,000 years ago if our bodies did not have the ability to harmlessly excrete lots and lots and lots of trace chemicals - that no mainstream media outlet would promote it.

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Reduce School Violence By Eliminating Grades, Say Academic Psychologists

Science 2.0 - Feb 27 2024 - 15:02
One of the few things that can get a government union employee in a mandatory industry like education fired is hitting a student. Yet the link between increased tolerance and less accountability for students has correlated to increased violence by teachers. If there are no repercussions for behavior, behavior gets worse.

Everyone seems to know this except academic psychologists, who instead argue that grades are the problem. Don't want to be assaulted? Don't have accountability for any student who will suffer no lasting repercussions if they assault you while if you defend yourself you will be fired, go to jail, be sued, and vilified by the internet for eternity.

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Carbon Offsets Won't Work Until There Is Science In How Trees Are Planted

Science 2.0 - Feb 25 2024 - 22:02
Former Vice-President Al Gore has a giant mansion but buys carbon offsets to mitigate the damage. Do they work?

It depends, and that means it is unlikely. Lots of corporations dove into the carbon offset market, Mr. Gore made hundreds of millions of dollars investing in them, but there is no standard beyond 'we will plant this many trees.' The story is certainly compelling. There is no guilt about a mansion or private plane if you pay someone to plant trees that absorb carbon dioxide emissions equal to what you burned and create wildlife habitats and nice views for humans in the process.

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Two Huge Organic Food Sellers Top America's Worst Regarded Grocery Chains

Science 2.0 - Feb 23 2024 - 14:02
So-called "organic food" is a gigantic industry, $135 billion in revenue per year, augmented by a corporate panel created by the Clinton administration that exempts them from real U.S. Department of Agriculture oversight. They can exempt any synthetic ingredients they want and still sell an organic sticker (and do - dozens and dozens of them) and have insider corporations that "certify" organic status, but only make any money if they sell the stickers.

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Raw Cheese by Raw Farm Recall Due to E. Coli

Science 2.0 - Feb 22 2024 - 14:02
Raw milk producers are dangerous, with 700X more foodborne illness risk than pasteurized milk which has had pathogens neutralized. Raw cheese has a better safety record because folk wisdom says that after 60 days the bad stuff is dead.

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Did Environmental Working Group Manufacture A Study Just To Sue Quaker Oats?

Science 2.0 - Feb 21 2024 - 17:02
On February 15th, the litigation outfit known as Environmental Working Group, most famous for using public USDA data (although excluding pesticides from the organic food companies which fund them) to compile a 'Dirty Dozen list' of foods which contain pesticide residues (100 percent of them) but that is nonetheless reliably rewritten by allied journalists in progressive newspapers, paid to publish a

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A New Free Tool For The Optimization Of Muon Tomography

Science 2.0 - Feb 21 2024 - 06:02
Muon tomography is one of the most important spinoffs of fundamental research with particle detectors -if not the most important. 

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Sociology: The Illegal Immigration Problem Is Making All Latinos More Stressed

Science 2.0 - Feb 19 2024 - 15:02
A sociological look at data from 2011-2018 led the authors of a new paper to cite an increase over time in psychological distress among Latinos, including citizens, in the U.S. They cite changes in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was deemed illegal by the courts, and President Biden threatening to shut the southern border of the U.S. entirely.

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1 In 10 Pregnant Women Who Get COVID-19 May Get A Long Covid Diagnosis

Science 2.0 - Feb 19 2024 - 15:02
Any long-term effects of COVID-19, which originated in China and became the third coronavirus pandemic of the century, in the general adult population remain unclear. Some clearly have it while others are told it as an undefined blanket term, like fibromyalgia or chronic lyme disease.

A new paper claims that up to 10 percent of women who get COVID-19 during pregnancy will get a 'Long COVID' diagnosis. Their data are individuals from 46 states plus Washington, D.C. enrolled in the NIH RECOVER Initiative who got COVID-19 while pregnant and later got a Long COVID diagnosis.  

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Cigarettes Have Long-Term Consequences For The Immune System

Science 2.0 - Feb 19 2024 - 12:02
Cigarettes are a co-morbidity for almost everything and a risk factor for the rest, but it isn't just first-order disease that may be in the future of cigarette smokers.

A cohort of 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 20 to 70 in 2011 were examined to see why human immune systems vary significantly in terms of how effectively they respond to microbial attacks. Age, sex and genetics are known to have a significant impact on the immune system, the aim of this new study was to identify which other factors had the most influence.

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Gender Bias: Both Men And Women Prefer To See Women In Google Image Searches

Science 2.0 - Feb 15 2024 - 18:02
If Google image search results overwhelmingly returned results showing men, that would be evidence that ending gender bias still has a long way to go. In the bias community, results showing women are the same thing.

And the authors of a new paper say female and male gender associations are more extreme among Google Images than within text from Google News; text is slightly more focused on men than women, this bias is over four times stronger in images.

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New Analysis Adds To The Heat Pump Controversy

Science 2.0 - Feb 13 2024 - 16:02
Decades before solar and wind took over green marketing dollars, back when environmentalists still promoted natural gas and hydroelectric power, heat pumps became an energy-saving fad.

The problem with them became evident nearly as fast as that electric car range you think you'll get - it is only under ideal conditions in a lab. So if you bought one because you were told it is "400 percent efficient", you probably also bought organic food because someone told you it doesn't have pesticides. In other words, you were just believing in magic.

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