Links

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mislabeling-leads-recall-popular-blood-pressure-medicine-n904881
Aug. 29, 2018
A pharmaceutical company has issued a voluntary nationwide recall of a popular blood pressure medication, hydrochlorothiazide, after a lot of the company's product was found to be mislabeled, the Food and Drug Administration said this week.
The labels of the Accord Healthcare bottles say they contain 100 12.5-milligram tablets of hydrochlorothiazide, but they actually contain 100 25-milligram tablets of spironolactone, a drug used to treat heart, liver and kidney failure, the FDA said in a statement issued Monday.


https://abcnews.go.com/Health/sti-rates-rise/story?id=57473315
For the fourth consecutive year, rates of several sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are on the rise across the U.S, according to preliminary data presented at the National STD Prevention Conference, organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Washington this week. Just this past year, nearly 2.3 million cases of these STIs were diagnosed.
Three STIs, in particular, are on the rise: syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia.


https://qz.com/quartzy/1368716/revel-in-the-joy-of-doing-things-you-will-never-master/
https://qz. com/quartzy/1368716/revel-in-the-joy-of-doing-things-you-will-never-master/
Aug. 25, 2018
Revel in the joy of doing things you will never master
We need to care about our work, and our relationships, and the consequences of our aggregate actions over time. And indeed, mastery of a skill or craft—whether that happens to be tied to a salary, or not—can be immensely satisfying over a lifetime.
But what we don’t need to do is make sure that every single thing we spend our time on has a measurable and quantifiable outcome. We don’t need to have ambitions to become master potters to take a pottery class, or have a gig in two weeks to spend an afternoon strumming the guitar, or a plan to run a marathon to enjoy a run round the park. We can dabble, meander, dip our toes in projects they have no business being in—and not feel the need to tell anyone about how much we did or didn’t accomplish.


http://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Has-the-federal-pay-raise-been-cancelled-It-depends-who-is-talking-492134821.html
Aug. 30, 2018
Has the federal pay raise been cancelled? It depends on who is talking
President Trump said Thursday that he’s rescinding a Jan. 1, 2019, 2.1 percent pay raise for civilian federal workers, including the big federal workforce of Alaska — but Congress has other thoughts.
If Trump prevents the raise, it could be harmful for a state like Alaska, which depends on the economic power of its federal workforce.
“It’s always been a huge player in Alaska,” said Neal Fried, a state labor economist.
But Karina Borger, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said Trump may not get the chance to cut worker pay increases because the latest appropriations bill has a 1.9 percent civilian pay hike — and it’s virtually untouchable.
Trump’s message came in a letter to Congress on Thursday, published on the White House website. Trump said he is using his authority under federal law to reset the raises to zero. The law allows such authority if he determines a “national emergency” or “serious economic conditions” exist.
Trump said the national deficit required him to act, blocking cost-of-living increases that average 25.7 percent, or about $25 billion. He didn’t say how much the treasury would save from the 2.1 percent raises alone.
“Specifically, I have determined that for 2019, both across-the-board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at zero,” Trump wrote.
The financial services appropriations with the 1.9 percent pay raise passed the Senate Aug. 1 by a 92-6 vote, Borger said — a bipartisan number which makes it virtually veto-proof. She said she expected the raise to get through the conference committee intact.
Trump’s budget proposal, submitted in February, contained virtually the same message about federal salaries as his letter, Borger said. But the Senate chose to pass the increase when it decided that federal workers needed the raise.
“The president proposes, Congress disposes,” Borger said.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2018/08/27/federal-court-first-amendment-protects-sharing-food-with-homeless-people/#1a97c2384884
Aug. 27, 2018
In a colorful decision that managed to invoke the Boston Tea Party, Lady Macbeth and Jesus of Nazareth, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that feeding the homeless is “expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.” The decision revives a challenge brought by a local chapter of Food Not Bombs, which sued Fort Lauderdale, Florida for requiring a permit to share food in public parks.
Thanks to the city's ordinance, Fort Lauderdale has become infamous for cracking down on compassion. In 2014, police arrested a 90-year-old man and two ministers who were simply trying to share food with the homeless.


https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/the-key-to-changing-rural-hearts-and-minds-being-respectful-even-when-opinions-are-polarized/
https://www .adweek. com/brand-marketing/the-key-to-changing-rural-hearts-and-minds-being-respectful-even-when-opinions-are-polarized/
Aug. 22, 2018
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a science communicator, it is that the quickest way to get someone to stop listening to you is to call them stupid.
Not only is it mean, but it’s inaccurate and counterproductive to science education. The reasons for science denial are far more nuanced than “lack of education.” And if we refuse to address this nuance, then the level of scientific literacy in our country will never change.
the coal industry as a whole is shoveling money—and coal propaganda—into classrooms. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of grants have been given to teachers who are willing to implement coal lessons created by the coal industry. You can imagine how unbiased these lessons are. Unfortunately, this is a very appealing offer for West Virginia teachers who are ranked 48th in the country when it comes to teacher’s pay, meaning they often don’t have sufficient funds to buy the classroom supplies they need. In fact, West Virginia teachers made national headlines when they went on a state-wide strike to fight for better pay and benefits, a situation that the coal industry is clearly taking advantage of.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45361665
Aug. 30, 2018
The FBI has arrested a man accused of making threatening calls to a newspaper that criticised President Donald Trump's attacks on the media.
The FBI says Robert Chain, 68, called the Boston Globe about a dozen times and threatened to shoot reporters.
He allegedly called journalists the "enemy of the people", using a phrase which has been frequently invoked by Mr Trump, who last tweeted it on Thursday.


https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/google-titan-made-by-chinese-company-feitian.html
Aug. 30, 2018
Google's new hardware security key was made by a Chinese company


https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/global-warming-may-cause-insects-gobble-more-crops-study-finds-n905186
Aug. 30, 2018
Insects are going to love it when the world turns hotter in the coming years. Not only will they spread more disease — they will eat more crops, researchers reported Thursday.
That’s because as temperatures rise, insects become more active and reproduce more, which makes them hungrier, the researchers reported in the journal Science.
These increasingly voracious insects will hit North America and Europe right in the breadbasket, the researchers predicted.
Wheat, corn and rice crops will all be damaged — to the tune of 10 percent to 25 percent for every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees F) that average global temperatures rise, according to the report.
Public health experts have noted an increase in insect-borne diseases, from Zika, West Nile and chikungunya viruses spread by mosquitoes, to a rise in infections such as Lyme disease, which is spread by ticks.
Things could get even worse than what’s predicted by the study, said Markus Riegler of the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University in Australia.
“For example, many insect pests are vectors of plant pathogens that also cause crop losses,” Riegler, who was not part of the research team, wrote in a commentary.
“Predictions based on population growth and metabolic rates may thus underestimate crop damage due to insect vectors under global warming.”


http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/parenting/ct-rear-facing-car-seat-guidelines-changed-pediatricians-say-20180830-story.html
Aug. 30, 2018
Kids should ride in rear-facing car safety seats until they reach the highest height and weight their seat can hold, a leading pediatricians' group now says.


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/31/mediterranean-diet-old-age-longer-life-study
Aug. 30, 2018
Adopting Mediterranean diet in old age can prolong life, study suggests


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/28/california-wildfire-firefighters-deaths-climate-change
Aug. 28, 2018
California’s ‘megafires’ are making a demanding job even harder, say firefighters mourning their colleagues
Stoke was one of five firefighters, in addition to a contract bulldozer operator and a mechanic, who have died fighting California wildfires in the past year, setting a deadly record even in a state where wildfires are a fact of life.
According to the California Fire Foundation, this is the first time since record keeping began in 2000 that so many firefighters have died in so many fires and in so short a span of time.
As the climate shifts, California has been swept by “megafires” of unprecedented size and ferocity. The state’s fire season now lasts 78 days longer than it did 50 years ago, encompassing most of the year, from early spring until late December. “It used to be a 10,000-acre fire was a big fire,” said Gabriel Lauderdale, a firefighter in San Mateo county, south of San Francisco. But the Carr fire that killed Stoke has burned over 200,000 acres, and the Mendocino Complex fire 200km north of San Francisco, recently topped 400,000 acres, making it the largest in California’s history.
Firefighters are pushing themselves to their physical and emotional limits to battle these blazes, staying awake for days, sleeping in the dirt, working away from their homes for more than a month. They are doing so even as their colleagues die, and they are grappling with grief and a profound exhaustion that some in the field believe may have contributed to those deaths.
At the height of California’s firefighting efforts this summer, there were 14,000 firefighters from 17 states, as well as Australia and New Zealand, deployed in the field. Even at the best of times, theirs is an all-consuming job.
A Cal Fire spokesperson emphasized that each death took place in a unique situation with complicated circumstances. But Allen connects the recent spate of deaths both to this new breed of extreme fires and to the exhaustion that results from fighting them. “Guys have been out for weeks on end, working non-stop,” he said. “That’s definitely going to wear on folks, and you’re not going to be as attentive.”


https://www.marketwatch.com/story/california-wildfires-could-increase-by-50-by-2050-beaches-fully-erode-report-finds-2018-08-28
Aug. 30, 2018
California could face an almost 50% increase in the number of wildfires that burn more than 25,000 acres, and the average area burned across the state would rise by 77% by the end of the century if emission trends are not reversed, the report found.