Links

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2175414-terraforming-mars-might-be-impossible-due-to-a-lack-of-carbon-dioxide/
July 30, 2018
Terraforming Mars might be impossible
“If there is enough carbon dioxide, we could warm up Mars in 100 years once we start,” says Chris McKay at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. “We know how to warm up a planet – we’re doing it on Earth. The fundamental question is, is there enough stuff?”
No, it turns out. Bruce Jakosky at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Christopher Edwards at Northern Arizona University used results from several spacecraft to build an inventory of all the carbon dioxide on Mars to figure out whether, if we moved all of it from the ground into the atmosphere, we could create high enough temperatures and pressures for life.
But Jakosky and Edwards found that there’s probably only enough carbon dioxide in the Martian polar ice caps, dust and rocks to raise the pressure to 20 millibars at most. So we can’t terraform Mars with existing technology, because there simply isn’t enough carbon dioxide. “It’s not that terraforming itself isn’t possible, it’s just that it’s not as easy as some people are currently saying,” says Jakosky. “We can’t just explode a few nukes over the ice caps.”
Without enough carbon, we would have to warm up Mars some other way, perhaps by making chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) or bombarding the planet with comets or asteroids. That’s going to be difficult, and it will still not be enough to truly make Mars a home. For that, we need nitrogen – and we’re still not sure how much of that Mars has.
“If there’s not enough carbon dioxide, terraforming would take thousands of years or more but it’s still possible,” says McKay. “If there’s not enough nitrogen, you need Star Trek. You need warp drive and tractor beams, you need to pull nitrogen from the atmosphere of Jupiter. It becomes science fiction.”


https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/news/78774/common-painkiller-linked-to-an-increased-risk-of-heart-problems/
Researchers have found that diclofenac is associated with an increased risk of major cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke.
Diclofenac is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug), used to treat pain and is used widely across the world.
The authors mention that although the relative risk was increased, the absolute risk remained low for each individual patient.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/diclofenac-oral-route/description/drg-20069748
Diclofenac, US Brand Name
1. Cambia
2. Cataflam
3. Voltaren
4. Voltaren-XR
5. Zipsor
6. Zorvolex


https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergeorgescu/2018/08/22/americas-real-economy-it-isnt-booming/#6c58521060b7
https://www .forbes. com/sites/petergeorgescu/2018/08/22/americas-real-economy-it-isnt-booming/#6c58521060b7
Aug. 22, 2018
having a job doesn’t exempt anyone from poverty anymore. About 12% of Americans (43 million) are considered poor, and yet they are employed. They earn an individual income below $12,140 per year, and slightly more than that for a family of two. If you include housing and medical expenses in the calculation, it raises the percentage of Americans living in poverty to 14%. That’s 45 million people.
At that level of income, there’s almost no way to pay for food and shelter in any sizeable American city. That means people now can both be employed and homeless. Rajon Menon writes, for The Nation:
In America’s big cities, chiefly because of a widening gap between rent and wages, thousands of working poor remain homeless, sleeping in shelters, on the streets, or in their vehicles, sometimes along with their families.
One-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42% earn less than $15. That’s $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.
Even in households that combine income from two wage-earners, it’s rarely enough to live on without anxieties about money. It takes an average of a little more than $100,000 per year now for a household to be able to live without anxieties about money.
What’s genuinely astonishing to me is that the private sector doesn’t see the immense danger in all this—not simply the prospect of a collapse from enormous household debt loads, but the prospect of civil unrest after another huge correction like the one in 2008. Our current course is unsustainable. And for all the proposals for changes in public policy to ameliorate income inequality, only the private sector can get the nation on a better track by raising wages, increasing benefits and investing in new ventures and expanded markets.