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MSG and Umami

One of the most frequent questions I get when speaking about my book is the MSG question. My talk is about L-glutamate, the taste of umami and veal stock (it makes a little more sense if you've read the book) and, before I get to the punchline, I'm inevitably interrupted by someone insisting that MSG is toxic.* I will now refer all interested parties to this Times article: Even now, after "Chinese restaurant syndrome" has been thoroughly debunked (virtually all studies since then confirm that monosodium glutamate in normal concentrations has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people),…

Holiday Altruism

Since it's supposed to be the season of charity, that time of year when we remember those who are less fortunate than we are, I thought I'd post on altruism and the brain, since there have recently been a few interesting studies. The basic moral of these experiments is that we are built to be altruistic. We are social animals that have evolved the ability to care about each other. Consider a paper recently published in Nature Neuroscience. Scientists at Duke University imaged the brains of people as they observed a computer play a simple video game. Because the subjects were told that the…

Writing Sentences

Taking advantage of a new Amazon feature, Steven Johnson does some literary data-mining: The two stats that I found totally fascinating were "Average Words Per Sentence" and "% Complex Words," the latter defined as words with three or more syllables -- words like "ameliorate", "protoplasm" or "motherf***er." I've always thought that sentence length is a hugely determining factor in a reader's perception of a given work's complexity, and I spent quite a bit of time in my twenties actively teaching myself to write shorter sentences. So this kind of material is fascinating to me, partially…

Birth Order

A nice article on birth order in the latest Time. One of the interesting things about birth order effects is that, although they are statistically subtle, people have been noticing the consistent differences between first and last borns for a long time. It's one of those examples of folk psychology where the folk turn out to be right. It's awfully hard to resist the charms of someone who can make you laugh, and families abound with stories of last-borns who are the clowns of the brood, able to get their way simply by being funny or outrageous. Birth-order scholars often observe that some of…

Chemistry

Chemistry gets short shrift. Theoretical physics and neuroscience and molecular biology get all the sexy press, while chemistry departments slowly wither away. In many respects, this is just because chemistry has been so successful: there don't seem to be any great unknowns or theoretical gaps left within the field. It's not like neuroscience (which can't even begin to explain consciousness, Alzheimer's, etc.) or modern physics (which still can't reconcile the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics). Of course, the unfortunate fate of every successful science is to become a branch of…

"Big picture" inferences about the 2008 election

I'm still chewing through the exit polls, though Steve is right that there are no big surprises. I think I'll put up a few charts which display questions where responses can be thought of in an ordinal manner just to make clear the trend lines. But of course Andrew Gelman has already crunched the data. His main findings are: 1. The election was pretty close. 2. As with previous Republican candidates, McCain did better among the rich than the poor. But the pattern has changed among the highest-income categories. 3. The gap between young and old has increased-a lot. But there was no massive…

Friday Flotsam

Things are busy - both volcanically and personally - so I'm going to just give you some links to a bunch of exciting/interesting/insane news: West Mata erupting on May 5, 2009 in the Lau Basin. According to a bunch of news sources, the eruption at Fernandina in the Galapagos is over (in spanish). That being said, the PNG noted that there is still a lot of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide being emitted, suggesting there is still a lot of degassing magma beneath the vents - at what depth (and will it erupt) is the question. There is a lot of speculation that Nyiragongo (DRC) is erupting or…

Introducing the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center

Mt. Baker in Washington. Image taken by John Scurlock. Eruptions reader Robert Somerville brought to my attention the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center, a "clearinghouse for research on Mt. Baker" in Washington state. The center is a non-profit organization that is affiliated with the Geology Department at Western Washington University - and from the looks of the website, they've already done a great job in compiling a lot of information about Mt. Baker, including an excellent eruptive history of the volcano. Mt. Baker is one of the most active Cascade volcanoes, with active fumarolic…

Dennis Moore gets death threats over health insurance reform

According to the Kansas City Fox affiliate (via TPM DC), Congressman Dennis Moore, who represents northeastern Kansas and is the only Democratic representative from Kansas, has cancelled public events after credible death threats. He tells the reporter that he's gotten two separate threats, and finds this turn of events unacceptable. "I expect to have differences with people, differences of opinion. And, I respect people's opinions," he said. "But, I expect exchanges we have to be respectful and not threatening. As a former prosecutor, I certainly do not tolerate threats well and that's why…

Prop. 8 stands, 18,000 marriages still legal, valid in Iowa

The California Supreme Court upheld the legality of last year's ballot initiative writing discrimination into the Constitution. No one can marry a same sex couple now, but they didn't invalidate marriages performed in the window between a previous ruling permitting same sex marriages and the amendment's passage. This is obviously a disappointment. Proposition 8 is a travesty, and should never have passed. Indeed, it surely won't stand. More and more states are legalizing marriage equality through the legislatures, and it's increasingly uncontroversial. The fact is, California nearly…

Conservatives Democrats vs. Liberal Republicans, etc.

Question below about the details of what conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans might believe, etc. I decided to look for a few questions. I removed Independents because their sample sizes are a bit smaller. I clustered all those with socioeconomic status 17-47 as "Low" and those from 47-98 as "High." Again, I limited the sample to whites & the years 1998-2008. Dem Repub High Low High Low Yes – Abortion on Demand Liberal 74.8 57.5 52.9 41.6…

Segregation forever?

My Sister's Keeper: They called it a lesbian paradise, the pioneering women who made their way to St. Augustine, Fla., in the 1970s to live together in cottages on the beach. Finding one another in the fever of the gay rights and women's liberation movements, they built a matriarchal community, where no men were allowed, where even a male infant brought by visitors was cause for debate. ... "To me, this is the real world," she said. "And it's a very peaceful world. I don't hear anything except the leaves falling. I get up in the morning, I go out on my front deck and I dance and I say, 'It's…

Orson Scott Card, Intelligent Design advocate

Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design. Oy, but it is depressing. It's a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked "Darwinists". He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them. Then he goes on and on, hectoring scientists about how they should behave. For a professional writer, it's just plain bad writing—I'm struggling with how to address his arguments, but he's written such a gluey mass of tangled ranty irrationality that it's hard to get a handle on it. Ugly, ugly, ugly……

Taking on the Prison Problem

I get invited to speak to a lot of US Transition groups, and often I go.  Often the leaders are blog readers, sometimes people I know through the internet, often future-friends.  While every talk is different, they have some real similarities.  Whether speaking in a suburb of Maryland, a large city in Ohio or to a coalition of rural towns in Virginia, I know that some things will probably happen. I will meet wonderful, kind hosts who will put me up in their guest room and on their couch.  I will most likely speak at a Unitarian Church (although I have spoken in many, many different kinds of…

Quote mining 101

So over at Keith Kloor's place, we see Keith read a comment of Michael Tobis', (read it for your self here) in which he says: "Adaptation is crucial" and "adaptation and mitigation are not a tradeoff. They are two faces of the same coin." along with a whole bunch of, typical for Tobis, nuanced and intelligent points. What does Keith want his readers to take away from that? That Michael Tobis is a hypocrite who does not really care about suffering humanity and his whole schtick is "the typical zero-sum talking point, that mitigation (curbing carbon emissions) has to take precedence over…

When traditional medicine doesn't help, does integrative medicine provide answers?

Sometimes, I think advocates of "integrative" medicine are trolling me. Of course, unlike antivaccine advocates, I realize it (usually) isn't about me at all and they're just writing what they believe and have (usually in the vast majority of cases) never encountered me and (usually in the vast majority of cases) aren't considering me at all. Even so, it's hard, when coming across an article like The Power of Integrative Medicine When All Else Fails by Emma M. Seppälä over on Psychology Today, not to think that I'm being trolled, so blatant are the alternative medicine propaganda and apologia…

A publicity stunt against Dr. Oz threatens to backfire spectacularly

I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I had a rather…

Why do women shop and men hunt?

Or, when the hunting season is closed, watch teh game (the guys), or when there are no sales, admire each other's shoes (the gals)? This is, of course, a parody of the sociobiological, or in modern parlance, the "evolutionary psychology" argument linking behaviors that evolved in our species during the long slog known as The Pleistocene with today's behavior in the modern predator-free food-rich world. And, it is a very sound argument. If, by "sound" you mean "sounds good unless you listen really hard." I list this argument among the falsehoods, but really, this is a category of argument…

On "Orac," Isis, pseudonymity, and anonymity

And now for something completely different. There was a time when, as a blogger, I would have been instantly aware of an incident like the one I'm about to discuss, instantly aware of it and all over it within a day. That it's been a few days since this happened, and I remained blissfully unaware of it until yesterday tells me how much I've changed as a blogger since my early days. Sure, some things haven't changed much, as anyone who reads my first post cum manifesto can see if he goes back and reads it, such as the subject matter of this blog and my commitment to science and science-based…

CAM, placebos, and the new paternalism

Three and a half years ago, I bought a new car. The reason why I mention this as a means of beginning this post is because that car had something I had never had in a car before, namely Sirius XM satellite radio preinstalled. Curious, I subscribed, and I now barely listen to regular radio anymore. A couple of years after I had bought the car, a new channel was added to the lineup, a channel called Radio Classics. I don't know how I discovered it, but I rapidly became hooked on what's commonly referred to as old time radio. Basically, that's classic radio of the sort that was broadcast between…

A case study in fake news: Did the FBI raid the CDC based on the CDC whistleblower's allegations?

[Note: The proprietor of the website has responded by e-mail. See Comment #37.] Now that the unreal has become real, I was just thinking how weird it is that I've never actually blogged about a phenomenon that directly contributed to the election of Donald Trump. I'm referring to the phenomenon known now as "fake news." Now, by "fake news," I do not mean sloppy reporting. I do not mean biased reporting. I do not even mean a type of article that many crank websites publish in which a real news story (often with other news stories) is used as jumping-off point for pseudoscience and conspiracy…

Dr. Dean Ornish: Turn away from the Dark Side! It's not too late!

I realize I've said it before, but I still can't believe as many people read what I like to lay down on a daily basis right here on this blog. Believe me, it has nothing to do with an sort of false sense of modesty. After four years at this, I know I'm good at blogging. Real good. But good isn't always enough to make much of a difference or even to garner an audience. Whether I've done the first, I don't know. I like to think that I have. As for the second, I've done pretty well for myself. Indeed, after a year of stagnant traffic, January and February were the best months, traffic-wise, in…

Cryptographic Padding in RSA

Ok, away from politics, and back to the good stuff. When I left off talking about encryption, we were href="http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/12/public_key_cryptography_using.php">looking at RSA, as an example of an asymmetric encryption system. Since it's been a while, I'll start off with a quick review of RSA. Asymmetric encryption systems like RSA are based on computations that are easy to perform if you know the keys, and incredibly hard to perform if you don't. In the specific case of RSA, everything is based on a pair of very large prime numbers. If you know those two primes…

Graph Searches and Disjoint Sets: the Union-Find Problem

Suppose you've got a huge graph - millions of nodes. And you know that it's not connected - so the graph actually consists of some number of pieces (called the connected components of the graph). And there are constantly new vertices and edges being added to the graph, but nothing is ever removed. Some questions you might want to ask about this graph at a particular point in time are: How many components are there in the graph? Which component is vertex X in? Are vertices X and Y in the same component? How many components are there? All of these questions are variants of a classic…

A Recipe Meme

I got hit by a mutant meme; I don't remember who tagged me. I'm not terribly into these meme things, but I don't pass up excuses to post recipes. So below the fold are four recipes that I've created: seared duck breast with ancho chile sauce; saffron fish stew; smoked salmon hash; and spicy collard greens. Seared Duck Breast with Ancho-Chile Sauce This is one of the best recipes I've ever created. It's perfect with a good california Zinfandel. Get some really good, large duck breasts. Marinate them for an hour or two in red wine. Put about 2 cups of chicken stock into a small pot…

Darwin's species and the One-True-Peak

Today is Darwin Day. Chris at Mixing Memory has qualms about the name, and suggests "Evolution Day" as a more appropriate celebratory appellation in keeping with the spirit of Charles Darwin's scientific insights. I tend to have sympathies with Chris' point, though I would assert that Darwin was the Newton, not the Kepler, of evolutionary biology. Many scientists observed the reality of evolution and formulated "laws" before and after his time, but it was Darwin who placed natural selection upon heritable variation at the center of the process of evolutionary change over time. But Chris'…

The genetics of adaptation, mutations of large effect?

Many months ago I was reviewing R.A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection when I touched upon his view of the nature of adaptation, precisely, that it occurs though the substitution of mutations of small effect. This dovetails with the "gradualism" which Charles Darwin promoted, and is also the thinking that drive's Richard Dawkins conception of evolution promoted in his popular books. In contrast, in the contemporary age S.J. Gould was most closely associated with the position that mutations and evolutionary changes of a larger scale, macromutations, may play a role in…

Basic concepts - linkage disequilibrium

Thinking about it today, I realized there is a "Basic Concept" that I think I should touch upon, and that is linkage disequilibrium (LD). Notice the wiki link? I do that whenever I mention LD because it is such an essential concept for some of the evolutionary ideas which I am interested in, but often not necessarily a transparent or clear one to the lay person. Its lack of obviousness isn't due to complexity, LD is pretty simple, rather there are particular background ideas which one needs to firmly have in mind before one can easily grasp it. For this reason I've placed an image of a…

Sunday Sacrilege: It rhymes with reflex

This one crosses religious boundaries — it will get me in trouble with some atheists, even. What is one act that will turn many a respectable citizen of Western society into a gibbering denialist? Sex. We have an unfortunate cultural association between religion and sex. Sex is dirty; sex is sinful; sex is corruption; sex is filthy; sex will lead you into iniquity and evil. Christianity is rife with these attitudes, and you can find them imbedded deeply into the Bible. Often it's because women are regarded as particularly wicked tempters, the source of original sin, and just itching to…

My Response to the State of the Union: Let's Just Pretend That It Never Happened

It would be for the best. First, some general thoughts. I had the distinct sense Obama was trying to run the clock out. He knew he had to say something, but has no room to maneuver. Thanks to his mediocre first two years and his enabling of conservative talking points (which one wonders if that's not strategic, but ideological), the Democrats lost control of the House and have been boxed into a corner rhetorically. Related to that, he set the stage over and over again to box Republicans in, but then he mostly chickened out and rarely offered concrete proposals that would put them in a…

Poverty, Education, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and the Unlovely Poor

I found this comment to a Bob Herbert column by a teacher who works at a school attended mostly by poor whites. I'm excerpting it in full as comments have a tendency to disappear into the ether, but also because I don't think many people have (fortunately) any idea what poverty really means for educational outcomes. The comment, followed by a comment about Rebecca Skloot's book (italics mine): As a teacher in a low income, mostly white, school district, 'the poor' are not an abstract concept to me; they are my students. I see first hand what poverty does and it's not just - as the wealthy…

Egnor: Don't Know Much about Antibiotic Resistance

OK, last post about this bozo, and then I'm done (famous last words...). In the previous post, I dealt with Egnor's claim that the evolution of antibiotic resistance by selection of resistant genotypes is obvious, and not germane (namely, that it wasn't obvious at one point in time). What bothered me with not just Egnor's claim (which I'll get to a minute) and ScienceBlogling Mike's response is that evolutionary biology does have a significant role to play in combating the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance. First, what Egnor said: The important medical research on antibiotic…

A Tale of Two Polls, or What I Learned from 16S rRNA Microbiome Analysis

I'll return to the Research 2000 poll I discussed Wednesday, and also talk about this Gallup poll Digby discusses (and I think misinterprets), because I think we have to really think about the data we're collecting--and the questions in those polls really are different in quality from each other. But first, the 16rRNA. Something that's applicable to many fields is that you have to understand the limitations of your data, not just the strengths. In addition, you also imagine what the data would look like given certain outcomes: given scenario X, we would expect to see A, and given scenario…

Lack of Power, Not Communication by Scientists, Is Not the Key Problem

Once again, Chris Mooney has published an article castigating scientists for our supposedly poor communication skills. Since I've dealt with this before, I don't want to rehash old ground. But two good posts, one by ScienceBlogling Evil Monkey and Joe at Climate Progress, are worth noting because they echo some points I've made before (and save me the trouble of doing so again. Sweet Baby Intelligent Designer, this gets tiresome). First, Evil Monkey places this in the appropriate context: The problem with Chris Mooney is that he doesn't understand the problem. And the reason he doesn't…

Doing It For the Kids: The Evolution of Migration

tags: evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, life history, migration, long-distance migration,birds,ornithology,researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper White-rumped sandpiper, Calidris fuscicollis, chicks on Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada. Image: Laura McKinnon [larger view] I recently told you about research that used new microtechnology to document the incredible journey of Arctic Terns, a small bird species that annually migrates from its wintering area in Antarctica to its breeding colonies in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America…

Human Eyes Speak Volumes to Birds

tags: Eurasian Jackdaw, Corvus monedula, body language, behavior, peer-reviewed paper Eurasian Jackdaw, Corvus monedula. This is the smallest species of corvid (crows and ravens). Image: Wikipedia [larger view]. Those of you who go birding will know what I am talking about when I say that birds are so capable of reading human body language that they know when we are looking at them, which frequently causes them to hide from our gaze. However, this capacity has never before been scientifically studied in birds, until now, that is. A newly published paper studied handraised, tame…

Polonium-210, Part I.

It's bigger news in the UK than elsewhere but it's still big news. Apparently Russian dissident and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium 210. Time for some science. Polonium 210 is a radioisotope, meaning it is an isotope of the element Polonium that is radioactive. Three things here: element, isotope and radioactive. Things in our world are made of chemicals and the chemicals are made of elementary building blocks, called, naturally enough, elements. Last time I checked there were 117 different flavors, ninety four of which occur naturally and the rest can…

Election for new Director General of WHO: why should we care?

The US midterm election will be held on November 7 and American politicians are busy doing what they do best: pointing fingers at each other and avoiding the issues. They are not the only ones campaigning for office next, week. The two days after the US elections the World Health Organization executive committee will also elect a new Director General. The choice may or may not turn out to be of equal importance to the US election. It will depend on who is elected. Why might it matter? WHO is reaching a critical point in its history. Founded in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, WHO was…

Reading Diary: Genius At Play The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway by Siobhan Roberts

John Horton Conway is a great mathematician, certainly one of the greatest living mathematicians. Polymathematical in his mathematical interests (game theory, geometry, group theory, topology and more, not to mention the Game of Life), he's also one of the most eccentric, and that's saying a lot in a field where Cedric Villani is prime eccentricity competition. As one can imagine, the biographer of an oddball character like Conway faces certain ... challenges ... that most biographers don't face. Memory, obstinacy, whimsy, the whole nine yards. So it pleases me to say that Siobhan Roberts'…

On the back of an envelope: The water benefits of an efficient toilet

Here is the second in what will be a series of posts on how little things like changes in technology we take for granted, or simple behaviors, can have a big impact on water use. The first looked at turning off the water when you brush your teeth: a seemingly trivial thing. It turned out not to be so trivial. (I will, on occasion, also blog about the “not so little” things like fundamental changes in our agricultural systems, dietary choices, and industrial processes.) The Pacific Institute has done extensive and groundbreaking research over the past 25 years on a wide range of water, climate…

Celebrating the Fun of Science by Alan Ladwig

Guest Blog by Alan Ladwig USA Science & Engineering Festival Emcee  and Panel Host I am really looking forward to having fun at my third USA Science and Engineering Festival. With its carnival-like atmosphere the Festival is the perfect place to bring your kids for an up close look at the wonders of science and technology. They’ll be able to engage with hundreds of scientists and engineers who are working on solutions to challenges that matter to the economy and to our daily lives. The Festival fare features demonstrations by science professionals, television personalities, authors,…

Double Helix Water

Guest Blog by Festival Nifty Fifty Speaker Joe Schwarcz PhD Unfortunately chemistry is a mystery to many.  And that suits the hucksters just fine.  It sets the stage for cashing in on chemical ignorance by bamboozling people with scientific sounding balderdash.  Ignorance, though, is not total.  There is one molecular formula that people do tend to recognize and that is, good old H2O.  Then if you press them to name an important chemical in the body, chances are they will come up with DNA.  And they are likely to have some sort of mental picture of the double helix structure of DNA, since…

Buckyballs Roll into the Pit of Folly: A feature by Festival Nifty Fifty Speaker Dr. Joe Schwarcz Ph.D

The most memorable remaining landmark from Montreal’s fabulous Expo 67 is the giant geodesic dome designed by architect, engineer and futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) for the U.S. pavilion. The magnificent 62 meter high dome now houses an environmental museum known as the “Biosphere.” Fuller, who dreamed of energy efficient homes, recycling and global sustainability long before these ideas became fashionable, would be pleased. But the famous inventor, writer and designer surely never dreamed that his name would be immortalized in numerous chemistry journals, lectures and textbooks. “…

Swallowing Blueberries, Apples and Hype

By: Joe Schwarcz PhD Author, USASEF Expo Performer and AT&T Sponsored Nifty Fifty Program Speaker Blueberries may reduce the growth of breast cancer! Apples and pears reduce the chance of stroke! I bet I have your attention now. But those are not my words, they're recent newspaper headlines. It seems that virtually every day some new study comes out touting the ability of this or that food to extend our earthly existence. Usually the researchers themselves are modest in their claims and end their discussion with the inevitable call for more research. But then the media get a sniff…

Estrogen, Aggression and Photoperiod

Randy Nelson is a wonderful person, an engaging speaker and the author of the best textbook on Behavioral Endocrinology. I heard that he is also a great teacher which does not surprise me and he has a talent for attracting some of the best students and postdocs to work in his lab. Oh, by the way, he also does some great research. For decades, the study of seasonality and photoperiodism was a hustling bustling field, until everyone jumped on the clock-gene bandwagon. Randy Nelson is one of the rare birds to remain in the photoperiodism field, coming out every year with more and more…

Why CDC says this year's flu season is "very sobering"

Monday morning, start of week three of the official flu season (which began October 4). CDC's scientific spokeswoman on the flu, Dr. Anne Schuchat has said we are seeing "unprecedented" flu activity for this time of year, including an unusual toll in the pediatric age group. What does "unprecedented" mean? It's not very specific on what precedents are included, but if we confine ourselves to the three years before this one, we can get a good idea of just how unusual this flu season is. This week CDC unveiled a new graphic for their Emerging Infections Program (EIP) (I liked the old one better…

Beverage of your choice and at your own risk

I don't fly as much as I used to but I still fly too often for my likes and when the cart comes around for the free beverages it's either orange juice "with no ice" or a bloody mary mix "with no ice." I rarely drink water, but if I did, I would never drink the water out of a pitcher, as offered to me a couple of weeks ago on Air Canada. From a bottle, maybe, but since bottled water isn't as well regulated as tap water, I usually don't partake. I know a fair amount about public drinking water, but one day I was seated on a plane next to somebody who knew a lot about airplanes and he said he'd…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact: Formally published papers that have been through a traditional prepublication peer review process remain the most important means of communicating science today. Researchers depend on them to learn about the latest advances in their fields and to report their own findings. The intentions of traditional peer review are certainly noble: to ensure methodological integrity and to comment on potential significance of experimental studies through examination by a panel of objective, expert colleagues. In principle, this system enables…

Amid minimum-wage votes and Walmart strikes, APHA OHS section honors workplace-safety champions

At the 141st meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA) held last week in Boston, the organization’s Occupational Health & Safety section honored the achievements of some extraordinarily dedicated individuals and organizations whose efforts have been advancing workplace safety. While these awards are typically most meaningful to others in the field, events taking place elsewhere around the country – among them the largest Walmart workers’ strike to date and voter approval of the country’s highest yet minimum wage – highlight the importance of this year’s award winners’ work…

CDC: Older workers continue to bear brunt of occupational highway fatalities

For older workers, the most dangerous occupational move may be getting behind the wheel. Last Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that among highway transportation incidents, which are the leading cause of occupational death in the country, the highest fatality rates occur among workers ages 65 years old and older. In fact, workers in that age group experienced a fatality rate three times higher than workers ages 18 to 54. The unfortunate trend was seen across industries and occupations and among most demographic groups, according to data published in…