Search Content

Displaying results 68301 - 68350 of 87947

My apologies to Canada

We have further information from the University of Ottawa about Coulter's non-appearance last night. Last night, the organizers themselves decided at 7:50 p.m. to cancel the event and so informed the University's Protection Services staff on site. At that time, a crowd of about one thousand people had peacefully gathered at Marion Hall. So…no word of violence at all, just a peaceful protest. Ann Coulter simply chickened out, and the decision was entirely hers and the organizations that invited her. Never mind, there was no infringement of open discussion here, just another example of right…

Meet the new NCCIH five year strategic plan, same as the old NCCAM five year strategic plan

It's no secret that I'm not particularly fond of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Formerly known as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and before that the Office of Alternative Medicine, NCCIH has been the foremost government agency funding research into quackery and the "integration" of quackery into medicine for the last 24 years, which is, of course, the reason I've been been harshly critical of NCCIH since very early in the history of Respectful Insolence. Basically, NCCIH not only funds studies of dubious "…

Evangelicals, Evolution, and Kristof

I really wasn't going to bash Kristof over his recent apologia for evangelicals. I've done so before, and I didn't really see the point in doing so again. But, by way of ScienceBlogling James Hrynyshyn, I came across Kristof's response to some of the criticism he has received (in bold is his synopsis of a particular criticism; italics mine): It's okay to deride evangelicals because they're Neanderthals on science and other issues. If people don't believe in evolution, they invite mockery. If we call them nuts, it's because we have good evidence that they are nuts. I agree that the…

Maybe There's a Simpler Explanation for the Failings of the Traditional News Media

TEH STUPID. From Bob Somerby: The second trait is the corps' sheer stupidity--an artifact of palace culture. Did she cry on purpose? they're asking today. Well, no, she didn't, we confidently state. If you think she did, you may not understand why acting schools exist. Or why they can be ineffective. But our press corps is deeply, Antoinette-level dumb. They love what's silly--and despise what is "hard." Hence the striking account of Social Security offered by ABC News during Saturday's Dem debate. Like that phone call to C-SPAN in yesterday's HOWLER (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/7/08), we…

Should We Let Creationists Dictate Our Time: A Response to Tristero

In commenting on a post by SA Smith that rebuts (quite well) Behe's latest ID creationist idiocy, tristero writes (bold original; italics mine): But reading Smith's post on HIV evolution, I have to confess I can't for the life of me understand it. Ms Smith, I promise I'll spend some more time on it later and try to puzzle it out; I like that kind of a challenge (and please don't bother rewriting it for civilians, you've got better things to do!). But the tactic Behe is employing worries me, because it is so cynical, and dangerously effective. Essentially, id creationists are slowly trying to…

The Evolution of My Opposition to Creationism

In response to my latest post about Michael Egnor, I received a couple of comments lamenting my intemperance towards Egnor. Below is the long version, but Mark sums up the short version quite nicely (bold original; italics mine): But his illness is the result of the actions of many doctors - doctors like Dr. Egnore who ignore reality, and don't practice medicine with an awareness of how their actions contribute to the evolution of the other species that surround us. It's people like Dr. Egnor who hand out antibiotics like candy, because after all, bacteria don't evolve, and so their…

What -ogamy are we?

Martin mulls over the question, Are Humans Polygamous? There is lots of interesting discussion, with a FinnXPer & reindeer lover in the fray. I think part of the confusion here is simply semantical. Cultural anthropologists often tend to define an -ogamy based on the preferred ideal within a society. So you have circumstances where the social ideal is polygyny, but for various reasons most males (and even females) aren't in polygynous relationships. In contrast, behavioral ecologists tend to look at it a different way, the extent of polygyny can be thought of as the ratio of the…

Xmas is not about Truth

Ed, Greg & PZ have commented on the strange reaction of the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary toward Richard Dawkins' enthusiasm for Christmas traditions. So "why would an atheist want to sing Christmas carols?" The same reason that the study and reading of literature has not been reduced to physics. We humans appreciate great stories, and we can conceive in our mind's eye ideas which may not be true, but we enjoy the play of those ideas nonetheless. One does not have to be a Greek pagan to appreciate the beauty and power of the Iliad, and in fact for centuries…

How to Deal with Foreclosed Home Owners

Over at Beat the Press, economist Dean Baker describes his plan to deal with the wave of foreclosures: 1. Gives homeowners facing foreclosure the option of renting their home for as long as they want at the fair market rate. This rate is determined by an independent appraiser in the same way that an appraiser determines the market value of a home when a bank issues a mortgage. 2. The proposal requires no taxpayer dollars or new bureaucracies. It would be administered by a judge in the same way that foreclosures are already overseen by judges. It simply changes the rules under which…

From the Archives: Trials of the monkey: An accidental memoir by Matthew Chapman

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman. This one, of Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir, is from…

A dystopian vision

Another interesting blog that has been around for some time is Charles Stross's — you ought to check it out, and the comments are often informative too. One in particular was brought to my attention — it's a comment made in response to another fellow, Dan, who is something of an American triumphalist, seeing us spiraling upward, ever upward, into glory and a bold Star Trekian future of wealth and prosperity and technology. Maclaren wrote an antidote, which I include below. I don't agree with it entirely — we aren't quite as bad off as it says right now, although I can see his word-portrait as…

2013 Lane Anderson Award Shortlist: Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada

One of the highlights of the year for me is the Lane Anderson Award shortlist announcement. From their website here and here: The Lane Anderson designation honours the maiden names of Robert Fitzhenry's mother, Margaret Lane, and his wife, Hilda Anderson Fitzhenry. The Fitzhenry Family Foundation is a privately directed Canadian foundation established in 1987 by Canadian publisher Robert I. Fitzhenry (1918-2008). The Lane Anderson Award will be administered by Christopher Alam, a partner at the law firm of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. The annual Lane Anderson Award will honour two jury-…

There's no place like home (for now)

The number of people who still aren't worried about climate change — or the number of voters willing to elect someone who feels that way, which is pretty much the same thing — is still depressingly high. But many others have long since moved on to the practical issues of how to respond to the consequent ecological disruption. This category includes scientists, artists, captains of industry, and those who are actually charged with dealing with the myriad problems involved. They all seem to be coming to the same conclusion: humans would rather stay at home and adapt rather than move to safer…

Impressionable youth and climate propaganda

How old do you have to be before it's acceptable for your high-school teacher to expose you to propaganda? Last week I had the honor of taking part in a video chat with a class of eighth graders at a private school in Atlanta. I got involved through a personal connection and then took a strong interest when I learned that the students would be sitting through both Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Martin Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle as part of an environmental writing section of their English course. Then their teacher, in an effort to nudge his students toward something…

The killing fields, poultry style

Two Associated Press articles over the weekend suggest to me the US poultry industry is getting ready for avian flu, in earnest. One story reports how news of bird flu in US poultry would affect consumer habits. One reports on the practical problem of having to kill hundreds of thousands of birds quickly and efficiently -- kill the, that is, for purposes other than sating our appetites. Here's the essence of the first story, about consumer attitudes. The results are about what consumers would do in a hypothetical instance and are always subject to how events actually unfold. They also have…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XIV: gambling man

Many people characterized Dishonest John McCain's shenanigans around the bail-out bill a gamble that didn't pay off, but it was hardly uncharacteristic. McCain is not only a risk taker but an inveterate gambler, literally and figuratively. He is also a Big Friend of the gaming industry and a customer. Over the weekend the New York Times ran a very long investigative report about McCain's close ties to the gambling industry and his own fondness for the dice. Here's how it starts: Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in…

Primer on greenhouse gases, III.

This is the third (and last) post in our primer of the science of green house gases (see the first two here and here). Our objective is to explain what makes something a greenhouse gas. Why is CO2 a greenhouse gas and not O2 (oxygen) or N2 (nitrogen)? In the first two posts we set the table by explaining electromagnetic (EM) radiation, how we describe it and how it interacts (or doesn't interact) with matter. We pointed out that all physical bodies act like little transmitters of EM radiation and that they can also absorb EM radiation -- but only at the same wavelengths they emit it. Some…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 17 new articles published yesterday and 24 new articles today in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Norwegian Physicians' Knowledge of and Opinions about Evidence-Based Medicine: Cross-Sectional Study: Objective To answer five research questions: Do Norwegian…

Clock Tutorial #15: Seasonality

This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior. So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year. Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…

Health deform, Second Amendment edition

We're only just learning some of the crap that's in this health care deform compromise/giveaway to the insurance industry, but some of it has come out (via the Manager's Amendment .pdf [and I admit I don't exactly know what this is except it contains legislative language allegedly in the bill]). For starters, rest easy. Your fucking guns are safe. If you are a woman, no similar concessions to your uterus (h/t McJoan at DailyKos). One of the things we are told by apologists for this monstrosity is that it has all sorts of great provisions for prevention and wellness promotion. I'm in public…

Football and brain trauma: a workplace health issue

by Michael Lax, MD, MPH The news that almost one third of NFL football players can expect to suffer the effects of brain trauma made headlines in major media. While it is not surprising that large men, often leading with their heads, bashing each other week after week suffer some consequences, what was unexpected was how many players are likely to be injured, and that the NFL actually acknowledged this reality. Obviously, the findings lead to the question of what to do about it besides compensate the injured. In the context of workplace injuries the injury rate in this industry is…

Researchers develop innovative way to detect fake malaria drugs that could save lives, deter counterfeiting

It looks like a simple piece of paper and it’s nearly as cheap, ideally costing just pennies. But despite its small size, it’s poised to make an enormous impact and potentially save thousands of lives. It’s a new test to spot counterfeit versions of the drug artesunate, which is one of the most important drugs used to treat malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that affects hundreds of millions of people every year. Based on the science of microfluidics, researchers at Oregon State University developed an easy-to-use and inexpensive testing kit that patients and health care providers can use to…

OSHA issues new whistleblower protections for food industry workers

When President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law in 2011, it was described as the most sweeping reform of the nation’s food safety laws in nearly a century. Public health advocates hailed the law for shifting regulatory authority from reaction to prevention. What received less attention was a first-of-its-kind provision that protects workers who expose food safety lawbreakers. The law’s whistleblower provision, also known as Section 402, amends the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to provide “protection to employees against retaliation by an entity engaged in…

Healthcare costs and tradeoffs: Air conditioners and teachers' salaries edition

At the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Ezra Klein has put up two posts about healthcare costs that are well worth reading. The first is about Oregon's Medicaid program, which has been the basis for some exciting recent research on how Medicaid coverage affects recipients' lives and is now trying to reduce the growth in healthcare costs by improving community health. The second is an interview with Bill Gates, whose Gates Foundation is trying to reduce global deaths of children under age five. Both pieces address one of today's key healthcare questions: How can we best use finite resources to…

In Which I Introduce Myself and Explain How I Got Here

I may be a happily married woman, but I'm not immune to seduction - who is? So when a lovely woman named Erin came around offering to fulfill my wildest fantasies, I was intrigued, if a little nervous. She promised me the moon, deep stimulation, plenty of aroused excitement, the full range of delights. It was intoxicating. And so I allowed my self to be swept away by the titillation of more and bigger and deeper. She was even open (shocking!) to getting my honey involved (more on this below). And thus, I find myself here at Science Blogs, ripe and panting to begin. The lure of more…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Huffington Post, Dave Jamieson reports that labor unions are stepping up to help protect increasingly vulnerable immigrant workers from deportation. In fact, Jamieson writes that in many instances, labor unions have become “de facto immigrants rights groups,” educating workers on their rights and teaching immigrants how to best handle encounters with immigration officials. Jamieson’s story begins: Yahaira Burgos was fearing the worst when her husband, Juan Vivares, reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in lower Manhattan in March. Vivares, who fled Colombia and…

Contractor racks up mine safety violations and unpaid penalties, also wins safety awards

Estevan R. Benavidez's family says he was a happy-to-lucky, 20 year old. He graduated from Miami (AZ) High School in 2008, was a talented tattoo artist, liked to fish, eat junk food, and spend time with his young daughter. On January 9, 2010 he was working for Ames Construction as a laborer at the Freeport McMoRan copper mine in his hometown. He reported to work at 6:30 am, but he never made it home alive. Benavidez was working with several other men to construct a new reservoir at the surface copper mine. The large lined reservoir holds a sulfuric acid mix used to extract the copper…

2 weeks of General Medicine

I'm sorry I've been buried the last couple weeks, as I've just started my general medicine rotation. Today is my post-call day, which means I get to sleep in and then study all day long. The fire hydrant of information is cranked open full bore again, and the shelf exam for medicine is supposed to the hardest. There is an incredible amount to know, and only a limited amount of time to assimilate it. Inpatient medicine is especially challenging. It's funny because most people's perception of medicine is from all the TV shows about medicine and you see doctors constantly fixing some…

5 Alternative Medicine Treatments that Work?

CNN suggests there are 5 (count them 5) alternative medicine treatments that actually work! How pathetic is it for altie-meds that the article is presented this way. You know, 5 altie-med therapies that work versus, well, all real pharmaceuticals that actually have proven medical effects. As many have pointed out, if it works, it ceases to be "alternative" and then becomes evidence-based medicine. But let's not take this for granted, let's go over this list presented by altie-quack Andrew Weil. 1. Acupuncture for pain Hands, down, this was the No. 1 recommendation from our panel of…

"Sizzle" tries, but fizzles

So, as you've probably heard and read around here on Scienceblogs and elsewhere, filmmaker Randy Olson has made a new film about climate change. It's billed as a "mockumentary," and it's certainly a mock...something. There are several nuggets of good stuff in the movie, but they unfortunately get lost in the distractions. More after the jump... In the early portion of the movie, Randy's wealthy gay benefactors, Mitch and Brian (think "Jack" from Will and Grace times two), say they're upset about global warming--but "they don't know why they're upset." Why didn't Randy explain to them why…

The subtly different squid eye

By now, everyone must be familiar with the inside out organization of the cephalopod eye relative to ours: they have photoreceptors that face towards the light, while we have photoreceptors that are facing away from the light. There are other important differences, though, some of which came out in a recent Nature podcast with Adam Rutherford (which you can listen to here), which was prompted by a recent publication on the structure of squid rhodopsin. Superficially, squid eyes resemble ours. Both are simple camera eyes with a lens that projects an image onto a retina, but the major details…

Conservapedia and Math

Many of my fellow SBers have been mocking the recently unveiled Conservapedia. Conservapedia claims to be a reaction to the liberal bias of Wikipedia. Ed, PZ, Afarensis, Tim, John, and Orac have all piled on already. But why should they get to have all the fun? Conservapedia has an extensive list of what they claim to be examples of the liberal bias of Wikipedia. My SciBlings have already covered most of the nonsense to be found within, but one point is clearly mine to mock: grievance number 16: Wikipedia has many entries on mathematical concepts, but lacks any entry on the basic…

Inside Nature's Giants part IV: the incredible anatomy of the giraffe

Welcome to the last article in my little series on Inside Nature's Giants (see part I, part II and part III first). The final, fourth episode looked at giraffes (or, specifically, Rothschild's giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi, or G. rothschildi if you prefer). For me this was the most impressive episode; partly because they covered just about everything you could think of, and partly because I haven't seen inside a giraffe before. Graham Mitchell was on-hand as their giraffe expert (is this the same Graham Mitchell who also publishes on crocodile farming?). They showed us the…

Clock Tutorial #15: Seasonality

This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior. So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year. Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…

ScienceOnline'09: Interview with Betul Kacar

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Betul Kacar of the Counter Minds blog, to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background? I am Betul (Kacar), originally from Istanbul, Turkey, living in the USA. I actually came here to get a PhD…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

Last night was Seder night and today we had the outage, so I know this is coming late. Still, there are 26 new articles published last night and 5 new articles tonight in PLoS ONE. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Uncovering the Genetic Landscape for Multiple Sleep-Wake Traits: Despite decades…

Noam Chomsky's interview about the election in Democracy Now!

What do you think? I think he has not seen change.gov and change.org yet, as they undermine his (otherwise useful) argument. But you have to read (or listen to) the entire thing - it is long and below are a few short snippets: Noam Chomsky: "What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World": .....And I agree with it. It was a historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it's historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would…

Clock Tutorial #15: Seasonality

This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior. So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year. Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…

Clock Tutorial #15: Seasonality

This post (click on the icon) was originally written on May 07, 2005, introducing the topic of neuroendocrine control of seasonal changes in physiology and behavior. So far, I have directed all my attention to daily - circadian - rhythms, and pretty much ignored other rhythms that correspond to other cycles in nature. Another obvious cycle in nature is the procession of seasons during a year. Just as an environment during the day is different from the same environment during the night and thus requires different adaptations for survival, so the winter environment and the summer environment…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Testing the Hypothesis of Fire Use for Ecosystem Management by Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic Modern Human Populations: It has been proposed that a greater control and more extensive use of fire was…

Birds of Washington State

A bookseller in Seattle who was a friend of mine often told me that his customers really wanted a durable and reasonably-priced field guide that focused on Washington State birds and was targeted specifically to beginning, visiting and relocating birders. Finally, after years of breathless waiting, that book, Birds of Washington State, by Brian Bell and Gregory Kennedy was recently published (Auburn, WA: Lone Pine, 2006). In short, Birds of Washington State is the most user-friendly bird field guide I've seen. It has a sturdy softcover that allows the user to quickly and easily flip through…

Functional Free Will

In the building where I usually work, there are four doors on the ground floor. The main front door, that I usually exit during the day; a back door that I usually enter and leave at the ends of the day; and a left and right side door. The door to the left leads to a parking lot, with no sidewalk right where the cars turn into the lot entrance, but it is closer to the post office and coffee; the door to the right leads to a nice sidewalk, but it is set back from the main road, and closer to the downtown restaurants. Two summers ago, the front door was blocked for many weeks by road…

NICMOS rules! That's it...t

News item at NASA HQ website: The B-side power supply on the ACS has crapped out Not good, since they switched to it when the A-side went flakey. May be fixable. Or not. PS: there was a 3pm telecon on the status of HST today if anyone was on it, let me know what they said. If there was anything new. Because of the servicing gap, and general old age, there are only three cameras working on the Hubble Space Telescope right now, and no real spectrographs. The primary instrument is the Advanced Camera for Surveys, a wide field (by Hubble standards) very high spatial resolution optical camera. It…

Public Health Classic: DES Daughters

This post is part of The Pump Handle’s new “Public Health Classics” series exploring some of the classic studies and reports that have shaped the field of public health. Links to past posts in the series are available here. If you have a favorite Public Health Classic to recommend, let us know in the comments. And if you’re interested in contributing a post to the series, email us at thepumphandle@gmail.com (send us a link to the report or study along with a sentence or two about what you find most interesting or important about it). By Dick Clapp Between 1940 and 1971, a synthetic form of…

Young widow 'felt like a fool' waiting to hear from OSHA

Six months after Maureen Revetta's husband, Nick, 32, was killed by an explosion at the U.S. Steel plant in Clairton, PA, she was still waiting to hear from the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).   The young widow, now a single parent with a two children under age 5, had received a condolence letter from OSHA shortly after the September 2009 incident.  The letter indicated the agency was investigating the circumstances surrounding her husband’s work-related death.  It didn't mention, however, that the statute of limitations for issuing citations was six…

Beryllium manufacturer and union draft worker safety regulation, ask OSHA to move on it

The world's largest producer and supplier of beryllium and workers exposed to the highly toxic mineral decided not to wait any longer for federal OSHA to draft a proposed worker safety rule on the hazard. Last week, the United Steelworkers International Union and Materion Brush (the only U.S. manufacturer) sent the complete text of a draft regulation to the head of Labor Department's Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Individuals exposed to the metal may become immunologically sensitized to it, and develop a unique disabling, chronic lung disease. Beryllium is also…

Finally! Scientific Integrity Guidelines from White House OSTP

Less than two months after taking office, President Obama issued a memorandum on scientific integrity, which stated: The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and…

"It's on our website": an insufficient response to asbestos danger lurking in millons of attics

No doubt that a federal agency's website can be a useful public relations tool. We all have much better access now to government data, reports and other records. That's certainly a good thing. But even the most content-rich website cannot substitute for other forms of communication and information sharing. Yet more and more lately I'm hearing reporters recount a different experience in their conversations with Obama Administration public affairs offices. During the peak of Deepwater Horizon disaster, for example, reporters were frequently told "looked at our website," "it's probably on…

Multiple chronic conditions and Medicaid expansions

In MMWR, Brian Ward and Lindsey Black of the National Center for Health Statistics report that 25.7% of US adults have been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). In their analysis of data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey, they examined rates of diagnoses of arthritis, asthma, cancer, COPD, coronary heart disease, diabetes, hepatitis, hypertension, stroke, or weak/failing kidneys. It's not surprising that MCC prevalence varied by age; just 7.3% of those aged 18-44 had multiple chronic conditions, compared to 32.1% of those aged 45-64 and 61.6% of those aged 65 and up…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reporter Jeffrey Meitrodt authored an outstanding four-part series on one of the nation’s deadliest occupations: farm work. In “Tragic Harvest,” Meitrodt chronicles the impact of lax farmworker safety rules and the rise in worker fatalities in Minnesota. He begins his series with the story of farmworker Richard Rosetter: Richard Rosetter stood inside his 28-foot grain bin and smashed a shovel into the thick layer of ice that covered his corn. He was in a foul mood. His wife and a neighbor were pestering him, upset that he was working by himself, with no…