How to make…brains better at noticing threats
https://www.Economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21725543-target-recognition-warfare-how-make-soldiers-brains-better-noticing beyond AR – AT, augmented thinking! Where machines help us recognize
#Climatechange linked to…allergies, #asthma
http://www.USAToday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/30/climate-change-allergies-asthma/2163893/ Pollen up from a longer season; monitoring done w/o pay by volunteers
QT:{{”
“All of these things are likely affecting us,” says the CDC’s Akinbami, but it’s unclear which factors — chemicals, hygiene, pollen — have the most impact or what their relationship is to each other. She says the first two sensitize people and the third triggers their sensitivity.
On the pollen front alone, there are large gaps in the data, says the CDC’s Luber, noting pollen counts are not done on weekends and don’t cover every state. There’s not a single pollen-counting station in Alaska, Hawaii or 16 other U.S. states.
In fact, the 76 U.S. stations (plus one in Puerto Rico) are run by volunteers trained and certified by the National Allergy Bureau, part of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), a private organization that promotes research and treatment.
“There’s no federal funding,” says Linda Ford, an allergist who volunteers to do the count for the Omaha area as a way to help her patients. “There is no automated service for this,” she says, adding it can take as long as two or three hours.”
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More NYers Opting for…the Bike Lane – 450k trips/day v. 170k in ’05
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/07/30/nyregion/new-yorkers-bike-lanes-commuting.html But there’s #bikelash from walkers & drivers
Naked mole rats: Can they help..cure cancer?
http://www.Slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/naked_mole_rats_can_they_help_us_cure_cancer_.html Live >6x longer than C57BL/6 & have “insectile” queen-domimated society
Turn Off Your Push Notifications
https://www.Wired.com/story/turn-off-your-push-notifications Importance of #Quiet! I find #Gmail’s “learned” categories effective for key msgs
QT:{{”
The conventional thinking, held by the large proportion of the many researchers and clinicians I’ve interviewed over the years, is that obesity is caused by caloric excess. They refer to it as an “energy balance” disorder, and so the treatment is to consume less energy (fewer calories) and expend more. When we fail to maintain this prescription, the implication is that we simply lack will power or self-discipline.
“It’s viewed as a psychological issue or even a question of
character,” says Dr. David Ludwig, who studies and treats obesity at Harvard Medical School.
The minority position in this field — one that Dr. Ludwig holds, as do I after years of reporting — is that obesity is actually a hormonal regulatory disorder, and the hormone that dominates this process is insulin. It directly links what we eat to the accumulation of excess fat and that, in turn, is tied to the foods we crave and the hunger we experience. It’s been known since the 1960s that insulin signals fat cells to accumulate fat, while telling the other cells in our body to burn carbohydrates for fuel. By this thinking these carbohydrates are uniquely fattening.
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Are You a Carboholic? Why Cutting #Carbs Is So Tough
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/07/19/well/eat/are-you-a-carboholic-why-cutting-carbs-is-so-tough.html #Obesity as an energy-balance v hormonal-regulatory disorder
The Big Book http://www.Esquire.com/features/robert-caro-0512 Great description of a clinical & cool but productive 4-decade relationship betw. R #Caro & his editor
LBJ #4
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“Gottlieb did the same math and agreed. In an industry that survives mostly by lying to itself, he is an anti-romantic, an
unsentimentalist. When he edits Caro, they sit side by side at a conference table and go through the pile in front of them, page by tattered page, Gottlieb attacking anything that reads too much like writing, too much like nostalgia or indulgence. He and Caro have mellowed with age, but they have fought bitter fights, fights that have caused people to close their office doors hundreds of feet away. “Everything to him is as serious as everything else,” Gottlieb says. “When we came to something like a semicolon, it was war.”
…Gottlieb is the taskmaster. (“I can remember when he told me, ‘Not bad,’ ” Caro says. “Once.”) Gottlieb and Caro, bound for forty years, rarely see each other socially. Theirs is a professional relationship, clear-eyed and clinical.
Yet they are also prisoners of a mutual faith. “Bob is convinced that without me, he cannot function,” Gottlieb says. “I have explained to him for years that it isn’t the truth. It isn’t the truth. But because he believes it to be true, it is true.” And Gottlieb has given over so much of his own life to Caro, has fought so hard over semicolons, because he believes something else to be true. “These books will live forever,” Gottlieb says. “We all know that.””
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Found Lewis’ @theBigShort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short) v. helpful in understanding the financial plumbing of the ’08 meltdown, eg CDO,CDS,MBS..
.@GeoChurch ascribes his…ideas to narcolepsy
https://www.StatNews.com/2017/06/08/george-church-narcolepsy Advocates more neurodiversity, ie those w. ASD, OCD, ADD + narcolepsy
QT:{{”
“His condition has persuaded Church of the benefits of, even the need for, neurodiversity, meaning brains that work differently from most others. The world needs people with high-functioning autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention deficit disorder and, yes, narcolepsy, he has come to believe.”
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