Bloomberg [unpaywalled] – Outages from Albania to Texas show how electricity networks aren’t ready for climate change. “…The climate crisis exposes electricity networks to flash floods ripping down transmission towers, droughts drying up hydro reservoirs and demand spikes from cooling during searing heat. “The whole power system was built and designed in one climatic era… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Health Care
Pharmacy Benefit Managers – Middlemen Inflating Drug Costs, Squeezing Main Street Pharmacies
StatNews: FTC report finds PBMs profit at the expense of patients and independent pharmacies Pharmacy Benefit Managers: The Powerful Middlemen Inflating Drug Costs and Squeezing Main Street Pharmacies Interim Staff Report July 2024 U.S. Federal Trade Commission Office of Policy Planning. Continue Reading
Peer review is essential for science. Unfortunately, it’s broken.
Ars Technica: “Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt was the most difficult book I’ve ever written. I’m a cosmologist—I study the origins, structure, and evolution of the Universe. I love science. I live and breathe science. If science were a breakfast cereal, I’d eat it every morning. And at the height of… Continue Reading
New map gives horror glimpse at world’s climate in 60 years
Express UK: “As Britons experience a cold, rainy summer, experts are urging them to appreciate the milder conditions while they can. A new interactive map developed by scientists from the University of Maryland offers a glimpse into a much hotter future, predicting drastic changes in climate for cities worldwide within the next 60 years. According… Continue Reading
Association between passenger-vehicle front-end profiles and pedestrian injury severity in motor vehicle crashes
The association between passenger-vehicle front-end profiles and pedestrian injury severity in motor vehicle crashes. Journal of Safety Research Volume 90, September 2024, Pages 115-127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2024.06.007 – “Introduction: Vehicles play an important role in pedestrian injury risk in crashes. This study examined the association between vehicle front-end geometry and the risk of fatal pedestrian injuries in… Continue Reading
How People with Disabilities Use the Web
W3C: “How do people who cannot move their arms use your website? What about people who cannot see well or at all? Or people who have difficulty hearing, or understanding, or have other disabilities? This resource introduces how disabled people use the web, including people with age-related impairments. It helps developers, designers, content creators, and… Continue Reading
Insurers Pocketed $50 Billion From Medicare for Diseases No Doctor Treated
WSJ via MSN: “…Insurer-driven diagnoses by UnitedHealth for diseases that no doctor treated generated $8.7 billion in 2021 payments to the company, the Journal’s analysis showed. UnitedHealth’s net income that year was about $17 billion. UnitedHealth’s Wiggin said the Journal’s calculations appear accurate. He said the added payments are “not simply earnings for the company,”… Continue Reading
FDA Pulls Food Additive in Citrus Sodas Over Health Risks
Gizmodo: “A problematic ingredient in some soft drinks is now officially being taken off the market. The Food and Drug Administration has revoked its authorization that allows brominated vegetable oil (BVO) to be used in food, following recent research suggesting that it could potentially harm people’s thyroid health. BVO is vegetable oil that’s been modified… Continue Reading
Plastics companies blocked mitigation efforts and may have broken US laws
The Guardian – Paper outlines different legal theories that could help governments pursue accountability for harms: “Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues. The research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) details the widespread burdens… Continue Reading
No surprises act
ProPublica: “In 2020, Congress passed the No Surprises Act to protect patients from exorbitant medical bills that had burdened Americans with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. The law was designed to decrease the charges for patients treated by an out-of-network doctor during medical emergencies. Such ER visits often left people vulnerable to so-called… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 29, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 29, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading
Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy
Via LLRX – Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy – Jordan Awan, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Purdue University explains how machine learning has pushed the boundaries in several fields, including personalized medicine, self-driving cars and customized advertisements. Research has shown, however, that these systems memorize aspects of the data they were trained with in order… Continue Reading
