CharonY

I am not sure where you got this, but the only information I saw is that TiO2 is classified as suspected carcinogen when inhaled (ultimately it is placed in category 2) I have not seen any proposals for legislature changes as a result. The common assumption at this point is that there are no expected changes in usage, as with other substances that have been categorized as such. Now under Reach there are regulations that kick in, which include: - if more than 1% of the compound is in a given product, it requires a hazard pictogram. I assume that applies to your cans, which basically requires to print "suspected of causing cancer on it (or something to that effect, not just carcinogenic, which would apply only for higher classifcations)". The reason why inhalation is not listed specifically is because they are only allowed to add that if it has been shown that no other routes are possible. if more than 0.1% of the compound is used, the manufacturer must provide safety information free of charge There are no additional provisions e.g. for worker safety for cat 2 chemicals (not sure whether they may revise safe occupational levels).

So here is the thing. Science reporting, if done correctly, is essentially the current state to the best of our knowledge and we are not dealing with ultimate truths. However, many folks are not interested in that. They want hard predictions ("this healthy/harmful" , "you should do this and avoid that"). Yet science is almost all about nuance. This put actual scientists in a bit of a bind. If they are too careful and add too many caveats, they lose their audience. If they make predictions and the turn out not to be happening, they lose credibility. Most scientists are likely only willing to add strong statements in a very limited ares within their field of expertise. Others scientists, who have strong opinions in many fields tend to drift toward bad science at one point or another.

I suspect that ADHD is much more frequently diagnosed in kids, which results in less common prescription. That being said, the prescription rate for children as well as adults are known to be rising. Another aspect is that ritalin has been associated with cardiovascular issues. While in children that is usually not a huge problem, it may increase issues found in adults or after chronic use.

Species is both, singular and plural. "Specie" refers to coin money. An important thing to consider is that there are different definitions of species, and virtually none are applicable to all organisms uniformly in a meaningful way. Based on reproductive isolation, it is pretty certain by now that these are not different species. As such Denisovians are also identified as Homo sapiens denisova and Neanderthals have been proposed to be named uniformly as H. sapiens neanderthalensis. But for historic reasons it is probably only slowly changing.

If you read my post you would realize that there are large variances within OECD countries. If you pick out those with low poverty, they typically also have low inequality. Those with high poverty issues include Eastern European countries that have relatively recent joined the union, as well as some countries with massive economic deficits (Greece, Spain). The UK is also one of the countries with relatively high inequality and poverty. Counterpoints include e.g. the Netherlands, Finland etc. But note that you have not even shown harmonized data that actually indicate that poverty levels are higher in Europe as a whole compared to the US. And to answer your implied question, yes, income equality has an enormous impact on US society. One major aspect is that of public health. Child mortality, death during pregnancy and other health indicators in the US are among the worst in all developed countries. Maternal mortality is ~4 times that of Canada and 7 times that of Sweden or Italy, for example. And that is despite a higher per capita health expenditure. What does it have to do with inequality? Well, looking at finer grained data it is apparent that the abysmal values are driven by poverty. The likelihood of dying during childbirth, for example increases by over 300% for mothers of low income. So income inequality, coupled with privatized health system result in serious public health challenges. If folks are dying because they cannot afford care that would be covered in other countries (or where folks have sufficient income to cover those basics), I would call it a huge friggin problem.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion. Countries with the lowest inequality also usually have the lowest poverty rates. It is not an either or. The US stands out with having a strong economy saddled with high poverty rate AND inequality.

The interesting thing is this, according to OECD data (it is important to use harmonized data for comparison) 2015 the USA has the largest income inequality among developed countries (after Israel) with 16.8% . It is slightly higher than in e.g. Greece, Spain and Canada (14.2-15.3). For Greece and Spain it is fairly clear that the main driver is the overall dismal economic situation. On the other hand, other European countries do far better, With e.g. the Netherlands and France being around 7.9-8.1. The UK is doing worse with 11%, but still better than the US. It is important to note that of course in all countries we have regulated capitalism (to various degrees) but also different social systems. Looking at income equality and the poverty gap the US is also pretty much on top, which indicates that despite robust economy, inequality is a huge issue. That is not to say that it is not in Europe, but it shows that different implementations, regulations and social programs significantly influence the outcomes. That is probably also the case for state-funded programs within the US. IIRC, a dependent must not have an income above a certain limit (i.e. far below the taxable income threshold). So once the income passes that level the taxes would be like for any other person. I am not sure if there are special deductibles for students in high school (in colleges there are certain deductibles for tuition) but if not, it would be essentially the same as for an adult. Also, I believe that only stipends and scholarships are exempt and only when used as qualified expenses (e.g. tuition). Scholarships used for e.g. living expenses would count as taxable. Same regarding employment by the University, if it comes above the threshold, it has to be taxed. Had actually my fair share of paperwork for my students in this regard as it is somewhat confusing, especially when student payments come from different sources.

I was listening to a panel discussion on governance and rather obviously, the Trump administration came up. What they argued is that the politicization of oversight committees (DOJ, intelligence agencies military etc.) there will be increasing institutional struggles, as evidenced by the tons of leaks and open contradiction of White House briefings. Thus, e.g. intelligence agencies are less likely to collaborate with the house intelligence committee. These damages, they argue, are likely going to be lasting and won't just reset if the administration changes.

Statement from McCabe.

Typically one would discuss a hypothesis based the evidence level. Generally, widely open questions are hard to answer or to discuss. If there is no evidence that a phenomenon exist, the answer is always the same: there is no evidence for it. Unless, of course you want to send folks off to wild goose chases, which, admittedly sometimes can be interesting (bur rarely productive).

Think about how EC50 is calculated and what it represents. To reach the same half maximum occupancy the values can be directly compared. But what for other levels?

I do not have papers on hand, but I doubt that there is any dispute that industrial livestock use, especially of ruminants have an important negative environmental impact. But fundamentally the argument that are proposed are rather nonsensical. If you have livestock, you do not decrease monocultures for example.

Interestingly I have only ever heard two variations, one with a harder tso (in Germany) and a softer so in the US. Maybe it is area or field dependent?

Sorry, I should have been more clear. With paper I generally refer to article paper in peer-reviewed journals. A master's thesis can include a dissection of things that went wrong, for example. It depends on what types of groups you have. If they are non-continuous categories bar graphs are often used using averages and relevant error bars or box plots, for example. But it is not clear to me why you would use only one dilution. Usually you would indicate the CFU in your undiluted original sample. The dilutions merely serve to make the colonies countable. As a word of advice for your thesis, do not make the assumption that your reader is going to guess what you mean with abbreviations. Often, they are lab lingo that differ not only between disciplines but also between labs. For example if you say 10^-7 it is not necessarily clear that you are doing a dilution of cultures or some compound. Or T could refer to time but also any other variable. Be clear in your text and especially figure legend. The committee really hates having to guess what you mean, I can tell you that for sure.

It entirely depends on what you want to show with the data. In lab course it may be useful to show the counts per dilution to to show how well (or not) you did the dilutions, for example. In an actual paper you would never do that, of course. But depending on whether you want to show trends, correlations, group differences etc. you would use different type of presentation.

Apparently child marriages are in some cases happening to circumvent statutory rape persecution. Link.

Sure, but in this context precision is relevant. The precise nature of the interaction with certain drugs are complex and can have opposite effects (i.e. higher or lower bioavailability) based on the drug-juice combination. Certain anti-hypertensive drugs have been shown to be affected by grapefruit intake (effectively increasing the dosage), requiring about 2-3 days to reset the dosages. Most ACE inhibitors have not shown any known interactions, whereas others are inhibited. In other words, general trends cannot be really translated into specific interactions.

Careful about that. CYP3A4 inhibition is known to last for many hours, with reports of up to 24h. I.e. the effect can accumulate.

Financing is only one aspect. The other is societal. A number of countries in Europe offer high quality tax-financed education. However, the associated social mobility varies a lot. In Germany, for example, access to higher education and social mobility was barely higher than in the UK and worse than Canada, both countries with significant tuition fees. Reasons include structural elements (the school system, for example), societal inequalities and associated class-consciousness. I am certain, there are more.

It is a talking about a different target. Naringin and related compounds are suspected to inhibit anion transporters that facilitate transfer of drugs to blood (specifically OATP1A2). The inhibition of the cytochrome (which would have the opposite effect, as that would increase biovailability) is known to be mediated by furancoumarins.

You'll have to be careful, the pharmacokinetics are not trivial. For grapefruit and related fruits (e.g. pomelo) the main mechanism is blocking of an enzyme (CYP3A4) that is relevant for the breakdown of drugs (and metabolites). I.e. the fruit blocks its activity and the drug sticks around longer than it should. This effect can take a long time to wear off. A secondary effect, that is also seen in orange juice, shows an opposite effect. They reduce the uptake of drugs from the intestines into the bloodstream. So the net effect (either increasing or decreasing the target dose) depends on the drug and the amount you are taking. So the situation is not quite straightforward. However, specifically for beta blockers I have only seen three examples published (grapefruit, orange and apple juice) that have shown reduced uptake. The assumption is that naringin-like substances may responsible. In grapefruit juice, naringin was found to block a specific transporter, but to my knowledge in organge and apple juice the precise component is not known.

It is getting off-topic, but I find the direct and indirect connections in recent political shifts in Europe to Rusia very eerie. Germany had a strenuous relationship with Russia at best, especially after the turn (back?) to a more autocratic system. Yet the new far-right party is surprisingly Putin-friendly, despite the fact that the right traditionally was not (to the contrary, in fact). Conversely, Russia-run media were also surprisingly chummy with them. Edit: oh and the study was from Stanford, IIRC and therefore was based on US students. So there could be differences across the ocean (though I am not utterly convinced about that, tbh).

Well, one can only hope. However, current studies (2016 or newer) so far suggest that the opposite is the case. There was a prominent study which showed that students all the way from middle school to college had problems distinguishing ads from actual news, and were very uncritical regarding social media. So, perhaps folks are critical where you are (though that it is only one part, the other is validation of facts) or perhaps your social circle. The second worrisome aspect is that according to surveys there seems to be a trend that folks overestimate their ability to spot fake news. That being said, after the news of Russian propaganda, there has been an increasing awareness of the manipulative use social media platforms, which may be responsible to the potential shift you are seeing. It will be interesting to see where the discourse goes. Also, there are efforts to teach media literacy in North America as well as Europe, which may improve things. At the same time, there are current political movements that want to actively undermine it.

That is not a major driver, otherwise one would expect at best a similar dissemination of fake and real news. Rather, the authors argue that among other things, fake news provide novelty and thereby increase interest. I.e. there seems to be non-random selection of fake news.

In Science Vosoughi et al published a paper showing that fake news on social media spread faster and wider than real news. This difference was not driven by bots, but by actual users. The spread of false news is also driven by network structure, but rather simply by the fact that most users seem to favour fake news. These findings, together with decreasing trust to mainstream media (Gallup: from 1998-2016, %great deal of trust: 59-> 51 democrats; 53->30 independents; 52->14 republicans), especially in the younger segment, highlight that it may become more difficult for folks to decide on what is fact or fiction.