CharonY

That should not be the argument. Rather, one should apply means to reduce overall gun-related incidences rather than focusing on specific measures addressing i.e. mass or gun shootings (which both are relatively low incidence in relation to overall gun deaths). Because the latter leads to rather silly suggestions such as "hardening" schools (and presumably other areas such as cinemas and concerts) by adding more guns to the mix.

It is annoying that they use different scales, though. The overall studies are not strongly conclusive regarding the effect of the buyback program, it seems.

I think this conflates different effects. Most data on humans suggest that malnutrition of the mother has a stronger effect on the development of male compared to female fetuses (i.e. females are more resilient). The resulting sex ratio shift is driven by incomplete pregnancies and death. However, the data is confounded by the observation that in various populations where these studies have been conducted, mothers tend to give fewer births after their first male child, for example. Other issues include the proper measurement of nutritional status. For example, in an Ethiopian study low BMI was associated with a change in sex ration. However, in Urban areas, it is not. Independently there have been some suggestion that maternal nutritional status (not necessary starvation, but overall nutrition) may have a weak effect before or around conception on the gender of the child. But these connections are even weaker and some metastudies failed to reproduce these findings. Overall, there may be an effect, but it it does not seem to be clear or very strong one. Also, most point to survival-driven sex ratio deviation rather than a sex determining effect in humans.

I also believe that in Canada there are stricter rules for storing and securing firearms and generally do not allow carrying guns outside of occupational reasons. This counters the mindset of using guns for split-second self-defense.

I found a report, but have not read the full reference to it. However Fox and Fridel seem to conclude that shooting incidences involving students have declined since the 90s. Of course, due to the rarity, any even such as Parkland will spike those numbers.

It would be more akin to regular policing of a village rather than a building. But realistically, I wonder if it makes sense to look at school shootings in isolation. While they are the one of the most emotionally devastating shootings one could think of, they are still a relatively rare event (I wonder whether there are historic data on school shootings in the US). The issue is that the rarity of those events may make measures specifically for schools either useless or at least provide low impact. On the other hand, overall measures that tackle gun violence as a whole may have a better success rate in eventually pulling those numbers down.

Yes, they can. The issues is that many studies rely on accurate statistics collected by agencies such as CDC to document gun deaths, for example. Without those you 'll have to try to estimate these numbers from other public sources (say, police reports) which can be difficult and less accurate.

I mentioned that earlier, there are restrictions on research in place, including preventing CDC to collect relevant information. And the lack of these data is hampering research aside from the lack of actual funding.

I have mentioned earlier that gun-related deaths and injury are an underreseached subject. The RAND corporaton (and independent think tank) has made a similar point. However, they also have collected a summary of existing studies to synthesize at least some of the findings, incomplete as they may be (link here). The strongest evidence seem to indicate that child-access prevention laws might decrease suicide as well as unintentional injuries and deaths. Background check may have a moderate impact in decreasing suicide and violent crime. Likewise, there is moderate evidence that stand-your-ground laws may increase violent crime. For other outcomes the evidence was inconclusive.

I have not read that one, but there was one from a Spanish cohort that, in my memory, was not terribly conclusive, and clearly not in a clinical sense. Also the effect was not really worrisome and the authors themselves have acknowledged that it does not justify any change in medical practice. However, in my memory that study was conduct fairly typically with no huge warning signs (aside from the usual cautions and limits of these type of studies).

You did not say Africa was being developed under colonialism. You said it was doing OK. This neglect the obvious facts that developments served to extract wealth from colonies, typically with subjugation of the native population to various degrees. The system was designed to benefit the colonizer country and the ruling elite and not for the population. Furthermore, the economies were not designed to be sustainable and hence at least part of the decline in some areas after gaining independence is based on these built in inefficiencies. A number of scholars (see e.g. books by Robinson and Heldring) have made the point that especially in countries that were already organized in states in pre-colonial times have retarded the development of the country by inhibiting political development and removing accountability from their leaders. In countries with white settlements, the extraction of wealth had a lasting impact on inequality and economic development. It is not uncommon to see that folks argue that colonialism was the key element in modernizing or, even worse "civilizing" Africa. However, this is based on a heavily eurocentric telelological view of history that is generally dismissed by modern historians.

If you mean approved for therapeutic use, yes there are some, not a huge amount, though. Most are not used for highly targeted delivery per se, but rather as adjuvants for vaccines for example or used in formulation to alter solubility and/or general bioavailability. Others include degradable implants etc. There are also few liposomal delivery systems that increase delivery to tumour sites for "classic" anti-tumour agents. Essentially they increase uptake rate by tumours (as they tend to be more active) over regular tissue. But it does not result in exclusive delivery. Note that nanoparticles are already in general use in all kind of regular products ranging from personal care products to fabrics. Their implementation in drugs is not a huge thing, but targeted delivery is still quite a bit of a challenge. I just checked out RNA therapeutics and after ~30 years of development only six seemed to have found to have clinical benefits. Not sure regarding their approval status.

That is true, for example the cause could very well be an infection that prompted acetaminophen use in the first place. That being said, finding cause relationships is a high bar for epidemiological studies. Especially for effects that differ between humans and common animal models these links may be very hard to establish even in detailed follow-up studies. As a general precaution it is therefore recommended to minimize medication, when not medically indicated.

Holy potato, that article was horrible. Luckily they had a link to the actual report. The molecule in question is a simple sRNA, so the approach falls under the siRNA therapeutics. Generally these have been problematic to implement due to a number of reasons related to e.g. drug delivery and precise targeting. What the authors did for the mouse model are using nanparticles for delivery. Both are not trivial to translate to human therapeutics. Two additional things: killing in vitro is not super useful in itself. There are thousands of candidates that are not useful as therapeutics for a number of reasons. While the mouse model makes it a bit more interesting, it is still a huge gap and there are concerns regarding the reliability of siRNA therapeutics. I am not sure whether recent advances have successfully overcome those.

As a rule of thumb you should have some level of roughly applicable undergrad work. The precise area matters less. For example, having done field work is less useful if you want to join a wetlab. But if you have at least some applicable skills (such as e.g. sterile techniques, maybe cultivation techniques, certain analytical techniques etc.) it is mostly transferable. It is generally assumed that you'll have to learn your way around the lab. However, if have at least a basic awareness of how not to kill yourself, others and ruin expensive equipment and chemicals, it is typically fine. Demonstrating desire and ability to learn and the willingness to put serious time and effort into the work become more important at that point. In fact, with the latter you could also join even if you had only done fieldwork of sorts. The big question would then be why the switch in topic.

So the article was a deleted editorial that does not seem to reference a specific paper? Well, that puts it rest now, doesn't it?

That is a strange thing to say as Africa was being colonized in the century before. It is also conveniently ignores the challenges of decolonization and the success stories of properly implemented aid. The overall lack of insight is clearly visible by generalizing things over all of Africa, for example. Not that I claim to know significantly more, after all ,in Western countries little is taught about African history. However, I am not making strong claims without any level of support. Darnit, crossposted again, hyper.

There may be a bit of confusion here as these measures are related to each other. It is rare to use joules to measure electricity consumption/production, as compared to kWh (with is just a simple factor). I think that was Ten Oz alluding to. However, you can also relate cost to Watts though it typically is mostly only relevant to compare the cost efficiency of similar systems. E.g. to compare to a 2kW solar system to a 7kW one. Hmm crossposted with modpost. Sorry about that.

I feel the most unwelcome posts often have a few features in common, including strong assertion of opinions or badly sourced information as fact and being combative without providing sources. Quite frequently folks jump the gun when e.e. well-rehashed conspiracy or crackpot theories are mentioned, though most back off when the poster indicates that they are genuinely misinformed and are willing to take another look at things. What I also noticed is that seemingly the forum is also not very welcoming to female posters.

That is a fair point. But I maintain that it is not about helping or not helping, but rather try to administer help that takes local conditions and systems into account. A big issue is that traditionally a kind of almost colonist approach was taken, which disregarded local economic systems. The good news is that many help organizations have realized that and try to provide help in collaboration with locals.

To be fair, the author quoted in OP seems to be quite misinformed on a number of issues, including the concepts of evolution. As such, obviously he is espousing his opinion which are quite obviously lacking context or are outright wrong. He claims that over the last 50 years Somalia the population was kept alive by food aid. Yet, looking at IMF data Somalia was self-sufficient until the late 70s and until the early 80s they exported significant amount of livestock to fuel their economy. Famines really flared up in the wake of civil war, but also by the influence of the IMF which imposed certain austerity measures that arguably further destabilized the country as some economists argue. These measures, including the devaluation of their currency increased prices for agricultural imports (fertilizers, fuel, irrigation systems etc.). Moreover, to increase income the government favored the production of high-value agricultural products for export rather than for consumption. These and many other factors led to a vicious cycle in which the country grew more and more dependent on external food sources, which destroyed the abilities of local farmers to compete leading to starvation, leading to destabilization. Now whether that analysis is correct depends a bit on the sources. However, it is clear that Somalia did not grew to starvation due to foreign aid in the last 50 years (considering its ability to secure food and maintain population growth during droughts before the destabilization of the country). It is also easy to see that the article was full of fluff, bluster and polemics, but does not provide even a little bit of insight on what is happening in the countries he is talking about. The two-dimensional view of these nations and their people, effectively reducing them to populations of cattle that outstrip existing resources (based on what? Much of Europe has outstripped its resources by that measure!) makes it quite clear that this opinion column does not deserve an in-depth analysis and heck, I wasted far too much time here.

Both are arguing the same thing but with different measures. One is based on direct dating, the second is indirect and based on deposition. The latter (what could be meant by OP, though at the later point OP referred to actual dating).

I think the definition is quite clear and as pointed out, repeatedly, it requires establishing a baseline. And assuming that the low rate is the baseline, you have gotten your answer a couple of time already. It is like asking whether $5 for one object is a bigger discount than $4 for a different one, without telling what the respective original price is.

It was conducted to a significant degree with the help of foreign investments and assistance, initially most from the US (increase by five-fold in the last decade) but increasingly from China. As others have noted, it is not that outside money is harmful in itself as you assert, but rather it is dependent on the form of assistance. Dumping rice and clothes could disrupt the market, and would only be beneficial in the midst of an acute crisis. In fact, Ethiopia is still a a large recipient of foreign. However, the nature of aid has changed over time to investing in strategies rather than providing what folks outside think is needed. A large chunk of the help went into funding education, for example.

Basically yes. The issue is that there is no good approach to disentangle these two factors in humans as we cannot standardize the environment. I.e. we can at best only do rough normalizations (e.g. via income) but that can miss hugely relevant elements.