Economic Growth in the United States: A Tale of Two Countries

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/12/economic-growth-in-the-united-states-a-tale-of-two-countries.html

Dec. 6, 2016
Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman:

Economic growth in the United States: A tale of two countries, by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman, Equitable Growth: Overview The rise of economic inequality is one of the most hotly debated issues today in the United States and indeed in the world. Yet economists and policymakers alike face important limitations when trying to measure and understand the rise of inequality.

Our first finding—a surge in income inequality

First, our data show that the bottom half of the income distribution in the United States has been completely shut off from economic growth since the 1970s. ...

It’s a tale of two countries. For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong. And this stagnation of national income accruing at the bottom is not due to population aging. ...

Our second finding—policies to ameliorate income inequality fall woefully short

Our second main finding is that government redistribution has offset only a small fraction of the increase in pre-tax inequality. ...

Our third finding—comparing income inequality among countries is enlightening

Third, an advantage of our new series is that it allows us to directly compare income across countries.

•••••

One example of the value of these efforts is to compare the average bottom 50 percent pre-tax incomes in the United States and France.8 In sharp contrast with the United States, in France the bottom 50 percent of real (inflation-adjusted) pre-tax incomes grew by 32 percent from 1980 to 2014, at approximately the same rate as national income per adult. While the bottom 50 percent of incomes were 11 percent lower in France than in the United States in 1980, they are now 16 percent higher. (See Figure 3.) ... Since the welfare state is more generous in France, the gap between the bottom 50 percent of income earners in France and the United States would be even greater after taxes and transfers.

The diverging trends in the distribution of pre-tax income across France and the United States—two advanced economies subject to the same forces of technological progress and globalization—show that working-class incomes are not bound to stagnate in Western countries. In the United States, the stagnation of bottom 50 percent of incomes and the upsurge in the top 1 percent coincided with drastically reduced progressive taxation, widespread deregulation of industries and services, particularly the financial services industry, weakened unions, and an eroding minimum wage.

[In other words, the stagnation in the U.S. coincided with the policies that Trump wants more of.]

•••••

Trump’s pick of Wilbur Ross for Secretary of Commerce

Trump has been making a lot of loony tweets, which take up the media's attention. Don't know if this is evidence of a disordered mind or a deliberate strategy to distract us from what is going on.

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/1393517483994177

Dec. 7,2016



Trump’s pick of Wilbur Ross for Secretary of Commerce seems to have escaped media scrutiny, but here’s what you need to know about him:

1. Ross has specialized in buying up steel mills, textile mills and coal mines, then getting rid of their unions, slashing wages, dropping health care, reneging on pension obligations, and cutting operating costs down to the bone.

2. Running a coal mine on the cheap has consequences. On Jan. 2, 2006, 12 miners perished at Ross’s Sago Mine. Just a year before the disaster, the Mine Safety Administration of the Department of Labor cited the mine for 208 safety violations, 96 considered “serious and substantial,” including roof falls, improper ventilation, blocked escape passages and piles of combustible materials. Nineteen days before catastrophe struck, a federal inspector cited the company for “a high degree of negligence” for allowing potentially explosive coal dust to accumulate in the mine. After the Jan. 2 underground explosion trapped miners in a smoke-choked shaft, they discovered their emergency air packs were inoperable. (The mine foreman was later indicted for falsifying safety check reports.)

But despite the findings that the mine was unsafe, Ross refused to shut it down. The mine’s executives said Ross had been intimately involved with the company and knew all about its safety problems, but pushed them to show profits (see below).

3. Forbes magazine lists Ross as one of the world's billionaires with a net worth of $2.9 billion.

Trump portrays himself as the voice of working people, including coal miners. Wilbur Ross is the embodiment of greed that has shafted working people, and, not incidentally, murdered coal miners.

Tuna’s Declining Mercury Contamination Linked to U.S. Shift Away from Coal

I suggest reading the whole article at the following link.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tunas-declining-mercury-contamination-linked-to-u-s-shift-away-from-coal/

By Richard Conniff on November 23, 2016

Levels of highly toxic mercury contamination in Atlantic bluefin tuna are rapidly declining, according to a new study. That trend does not affect recommended limits on consumption of canned tuna, which comes mainly from other tuna species. Nor does it reflect trends in other ocean basins. But it does represent a major break in the long-standing, scary connection between tuna and mercury, a source of public concern since 1970, when a chemistry professor in New York City found excess levels of mercury in a can of tuna and spurred a nationwide recall. Tuna consumption continues to be the source of about 40 percent of the mercury contamination in the American diet. And mercury exposure from all sources remains an important issue, because it causes cognitive impairment in an estimated 300,000 to 600,000 babies born in this country each year.

The new study, published online on November 10 by Environmental Science & Technology, links the decline directly to reduced mercury emissions in North America. Most of that reduction has occurred because of the marketplace shift by power plants and industry away from coal, the major source of mercury emissions. Pollution control requirements imposed by the federal government have also cut mercury emissions.

Progress on both counts could, however, reverse, with President-elect Donald Trump promising a comeback for the U.S. coal industry, in part by clearing away such regulations.

•••••

The new study comes as worldwide mercury emissions continue to rise, particularly in the Pacific, source of much of the tuna and other seafood consumed in the U.S. That increase of about 3.8 percent per year results largely from increased reliance on coal-fired power plants in China, India and other Asian countries.

Despite President-elect Trump’s campaign pledge to revive the coal industry in this country, economic factors, including competition from inexpensive natural gas, make a U.S. coal comeback unlikely. Even U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who for eight years blamed the Obama administration for the demise of coal, began to walk back the idea that Republican control in Washington, D.C., would make much difference: “Whether that immediately brings business back is hard to tell,” he told a Kentucky audience on November 11, “because it’s a private sector activity.”

•••••

Carrier union leader: Trump 'lied his ass off' about deal

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/309077-carrier-union-leader-trump-lied-his-a-off-about-deal

By Brooke Seipel - 12/06/16 04:39 PM EST

Share to Facebook
18.3KShare to Twitter
Share to Google+

Carrier union leader: Trump 'lied his ass off' about deal
© Getty

President-elect Donald Trump "lied his ass off" about the terms of the deal to keep Carrier manufacturing jobs in the United States, the Carrier union's president said Tuesday.

United Steelworkers 1999 President Chuck Jones was optimistic when Trump first promised to save the jobs of 1,350 workers at Carrier's Indiana plant, The Washington Post reports. Carrier had originally planned to move the jobs to Mexico, but decided to keep 730 of the jobs in Indiana after receiving $7 million in tax breaks from the state, where Vice President-elect Mike Pence is governor.

Jones told the Post that he hoped Trump would explain at a Dec. 1 meeting that 550 of the Carrier jobs weren't saved.

“But he got up there,” Jones said, “and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off.”

At a celebratory rally last week, Trump praised the deal, telling the press, "Now they’re keeping — actually the number’s over 1,100 people,” he said, “which is so great.”

Jones said the numbers of jobs saved reported by Trump and Pence were misleading and included positions that weren't slated to move to Mexico.

“Trump and Pence, they pulled a dog and pony show on the numbers,” Jones said. “I almost threw up in my mouth.”

Election 2016 recount: Where 5 states stand

http://www.freep.com/story/news/nation/2016/12/06/election-2016-recount-where-5-states-stand/95037554/

Detroit Free Press Staff and News Services 9:15 a.m. EST December 7, 2016

Five states are contending with requests for recounts of ballots cast in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is behind recount efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, states where Republican Donald Trump won narrowly over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In Nevada, a partial recount of the race was requested by independent presidential candidate Roque De La Fuente. Clinton won in that state.

And a motion was filed Tuesday in central Florida by three voters who say that the election in Florida, which went to Trump, was marred because of hacking, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems.

Here's where each state stands Tuesday.

•••••

Note to Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans

https://weather.com/news/news/breitbart-misleads-americans-climate-change

Dec. 6, 2016

Global warming is not expected to end anytime soon, despite what Breitbart.com wrote in an article published last week.

Though we would prefer to focus on our usual coverage of weather and climate science, in this case we felt it important to add our two cents — especially because a video clip from weather.com (La Niña in Pacific Affects Weather in New England) was prominently featured at the top of the Breitbart article. Breitbart had the legal right to use this clip as part of a content-sharing agreement with another company, but there should be no assumption that The Weather Company endorses the article associated with it.

The Breitbart article – a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case – includes this statement: "The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare."

In fact, thousands of researchers and scientific societies are in agreement that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are warming the planet’s climate and will keep doing so.

Along with its presence on the high-profile Breitbart site, the article drew even more attention after a link to it was retweeted by the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

•••••

For an even deeper dive on the science, we recommend the blog by our experts.

Finally, to our friends at Breitbart: The next time you write a climate change article and need fact checking help, please call. We're here for you. I'm sure we both agree this topic is too important to get wrong.

Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-buries-evidence-of-125-billion-in-bureaucratic-waste/2016/12/05/e0668c76-9af6-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html

By Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward December 5, 2016

The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.

Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.

The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.

•••••

For the military, the major allure of the study was that it called for reallocating the $125 billion for troops and weapons. Among other options, the savings could have paid a large portion of the bill to rebuild the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, or the operating expenses for 50 Army brigades.

But some Pentagon leaders said they fretted that by spotlighting so much waste, the study would undermine their repeated public assertions that years of budget austerity had left the armed forces starved of funds. Instead of providing more money, they said, they worried Congress and the White House might decide to cut deeper.

o the plan was killed. The Pentagon imposed secrecy restrictions on the data making up the study, which ensured no one could replicate the findings. A 77-page summary report that had been made public was removed from a Pentagon website.

•••••

The Defense Business Board was ordered to conduct the study by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, the Pentagon’s second-highest-ranking official. At first, Work publicly touted the efficiency drive as a top priority and boasted about his idea to recruit corporate experts to lead the way.

After the board finished its analysis, however, Work changed his position. In an interview with The Post, he did not dispute the board’s findings about the size or scope of the bureaucracy. But he dismissed the $125 billion savings proposal as “unrealistic” and said the business executives had failed to grasp basic obstacles to restructuring the public sector.

•••••

Work said the board fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs — members of Congress, he added, love having them in their districts — or to renegotiate defense contracts.

[Very true. Republicans get very upset when there are plans to cut back in their own districts.]

•••••

Broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos

Sam Thielman
Dec. 6, 2016

Broken polling machines may have put vote counts in question in more than half of Detroit’s precincts and nearly one-third of surrounding Wayne County, possibly throwing the Michigan recount into chaos.

If the discrepancies can’t be solved by recounting every paper ballot in question by hand, a recount in those precincts simply won’t happen.

Donald Trump’s slim margin over Hillary Clinton means any chance of the state flipping on a recount likely hinges on Wayne County, where the Democrat won by a landslide. Clinton lost by 10,704 votes in Michigan; Wayne’s population of 1,759,335 makes it the likeliest candidate to contain errors bigger than that margin.

There are three vote totals: the total number of votes the electronic ballot scanners report; the total number of people who signed the electoral roll, or “poll book”; and the total number of paper ballots filled out and stored in sealed containers. The poll books and the electronic ballot scanners do not match, so the paper ballots will be counted by hand. If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain.

Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter. He told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it.

Preliminary investigation by election officials in Wayne County found that 610 of the area’s 1,680 precincts could not reconcile the number of votes cast according to the machines with the number of ballots issued according to the electoral rolls. Detroit contains 662 of Wayne’s precincts; in 392 of those, the number of votes didn’t match up.

Baxter told the News he was confident a recount would match the ballots issued to the paper records, which are sealed and stored under guard. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100%,” he said, “but it never is with a recount.”

•••••

Trump's National Security Adviser Shared Fake News About Clinton

by Mathew Ingram
November 19, 2016

As Donald Trump puts together his cabinet, some of his picks are getting critical attention for past comments they made that suggest they hold racist or otherwise offensive views about various groups. One of those getting scrutiny is General Michael Flynn, Trump’s nominee for National Security Advisor.

Flynn is a former Lieutenant General who led the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years, from 2012 to 2014, before being forced out. A Pentagon official told the Washington Post at the time that his vision of the future of the DIA was “disruptive,” and others said his management style was “chaotic.”

On Twitter in particular, Flynn has not been shy about holding forth about Muslims, terrorism, and Hillary Clinton. And in several cases he has shared fake news stories about those subjects.

Just a few days before the election, the general tweeted a link to a news hoax from a right-wing conspiracy theory site called True Pundit, and said the New York Police Department had evidence of new Hillary Clinton emails that proved her involvement in or knowledge of money laundering and sex crimes with children, among other things.

•••••

Dakota Pipeline Was Approved by Army Corps Over Objections of Three Federal Agencies

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30082016/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux-army-corps-engineers-approval-environment

By Phil McKenna
Aug. 30, 2016

Senior officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and two other federal agencies raised serious environmental and safety objections to the North Dakota section of the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline, the same objections being voiced in a large protest by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that has so far succeeded in halting construction.

But those concerns were dismissed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which relied on an environmental assessment prepared by the pipeline's developer, Dakota Access LLC, when it approved the project in July, according to public documents.

•••••

After the company rerouted the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just a half-mile upstream of the reservation, the tribe complained that the Army Corps did not consider threats to its water supply and cultural heritage.

The EPA, the Department of the Interior and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation echoed those concerns in public comments on the Army Corps' draft environmental assessment. Citing risks to water supplies, inadequate emergency preparedness, potential impacts to the Standing Rock reservation and insufficient environmental justice analysis, the agencies urged the Army Corps to issue a revised draft of their environmental assessment.

"Crossings of the Missouri River have the potential to affect the primary source of drinking water for much of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tribal nations," Philip Strobel, National Environmental Policy Act regional compliance director for the EPA, wrote in a March 11 letter to the Army Corps.

The current route of the pipeline is 10 miles upstream of Fort Yates, the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the county seat. The Standing Rock Sioux rely on the Missouri River for drinking water, irrigation and fish.

•••••

Federal law requires federal agencies to take into account the effect a proposed project will have on historic property. The Army Corps' assessment, however lacked adequate consultation with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and focused on a limited number of water crossings rather than on the pipeline's entire expanse, according to letters ACHP officials wrote to the Army Corps.

•••••

Clinton, Trump Latest Popular Vote Election Results

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-trump-latest-popular-vote-election-results-jill-stein-leads-recount-efforts-2455817

By Clark Mindock @clarkmindock On 12/06/16 AT 11:46 AM
International Business Times

Hillary Clinton, who lost the Electoral College to President-elect Donald Trump in November, extended her popular vote lead over her former challenger Tuesday to a tally that is far larger than any other election in history where the candidate who lost the election won in the popular vote.

As of Tuesday morning, Clinton leads Trump 65,467,571 to 62,813,613, according to voter data from the Cook Political Report — a margin of 2,653,958 votes. That lead represents nearly a 2.1 percent edge in the popular vote as a whole.

In 13 swing states that played an oversized role in electing the next president, however, Trump has maintained a healthy lead. Trump leads Clinton in those states 22,238,917 to 21,418,687, an 820,230 vote advantage. The lead in those swing states may overstate how many voters played a crucial role in electing the next president, as the Washington Post argued last week, since the deciding swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — were decided by an accumulative 79,646 votes.

•••••

We are probably going to have a president who thinks exploring space is more important that the welfare of humans on earth.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-denier-nasa-transition-20938

By Brian Kahn
Dec. 6, 2016

Scientists and policy watchers have been sounding the alarm bell that NASA’s climate work could be in jeopardy ever since Donald Trump’s election last month.

That’s due in large part to some of his advisors saying the agency should be focused on space exploration and not wasting money observing the earth. But the alarm started ringing louder last week with the announcement that Chris Shank, the deputy chief of staff to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), will be heading the transition at the agency.

Shank is also policy and coalition director for the House Science, Space and Technology Committee (you know, the committee responsible for that tweet last week) and a former NASA senior official during the Bush era, a period when scientists said they were being censored.

Now Shank will be in charge of helping lay out the priorities for the next NASA administrator and if his past is any indication, NASA’s $1.9 billion earth science budget will be square in the crosshairs.

NASA’s satellites, climate modeling and other earth-based science research are crucial to understanding the threats climate change poses from sea level rise to more extreme precipitation. Losing any of the agency’s earth monitoring abilities would be a huge blow to both science and climate policy in the U.S. and around the world.

Shank has questioned the underpinnings of climate science. His boss has also used his platform as chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee to call hearings — hearings that Shank played a role in putting together as policy director — questioning climate science and attacking individual researchers.

Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said having someone like Shank manage the transition at NASA is essentially having someone “who views things like oversight of science in a way that if you don’t like the answer, you attack the science. They’re trying to politicize science as much as they possibly can. It worries me that somebody like that can be leading a transition team.”

Climate Change Will Stir ‘Unimaginable’ Refugee Crisis

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/climate-change-trigger-unimaginable-refugee-crisis-senior-military

Dec. 1, 2016
By Damian Carrington, The Guardian

Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of “unimaginable scale,” according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the “new normal”.

The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency.

Military leaders have long warned that global warming could multiply and accelerate security threats around the world by provoking conflicts and migration. They are now warning that immediate action is required.

“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,” said Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman, chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on climate change and a former military adviser to the president of Bangladesh. He said one metre of sea level rise will flood 20 percent of his nation. “We’re going to see refugee problems on an unimaginable scale, potentially above 30 million people.”

Previously, Bangladesh’s finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of displaced people.

Brig Gen Stephen Cheney, a member of the U.S. Department of State’s foreign affairs policy board and CEO of the American Security Project, said: “Climate change could lead to a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. We’re already seeing migration of large numbers of people around the world because of food scarcity, water insecurity and extreme weather, and this is set to become the new normal.

“Climate change impacts are also acting as an accelerant of instability in parts of the world on Europe’s doorstep, including the Middle East and Africa,” Cheney said. “There are direct links to climate change in the Arab Spring, the war in Syria, and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa.”

•••••

R Adm Neil Morisetti, a former commander of the UK maritime forces and the UK’s climate and energy security envoy, said: “Climate change is a strategic security threat that sits alongside others like terrorism and state-on-state conflict, but it also interacts with these threats. It is complex and challenging; this is not a concern for tomorrow, the impacts are playing out today.”

Morisetti said climate change would mean the UK military will be deployed more often to conflict and disaster zones. The military leaders were speaking ahead of an event in London on Thursday.

In September, a coalition of 25 U.S. military and national security experts, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, warned that climate change poses a “significant risk to U.S. national security and international security” that requires more attention from the U,S, federal government.

In 2015, a UK foreign office report made a stark assessment of the dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including very large risks to global food security, increased risk of terrorism as states fail, and unprecedented migration that would overwhelm international assistance.

“Countries are going to pay for climate change one way or another,” said Cheney. “The best way to pay for it is by tackling the root causes of climate change and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If we do not, the national security impacts will be increasingly costly and challenging.”

Extreme Storms Will Be a Lot More Frequent as Climate Warms
by Maggie Fox
Dec. 5, 2016

The number of heavy downpours in much of the U.S. could increase five-fold by the end of the century, causing flash floods, mudslides and ruining crops, climate researchers predicted Monday.

People need to start getting ready for these catastrophic storms now, because most places aren't prepared to handle such extreme weather, the team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research said.

And yes, climate change is to blame, the experts said. As the average temperature warms up, the air will get warmer and moister and more prone to these heavy storms, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

"Imagine the most intense thunderstorm you typically experience in a single season. Our study finds that, in the future, parts of the U.S. could expect to experience five of those storms in a season, each with an intensity as strong or stronger than current storms," said NCAR's Andreas Prein, who led the study team.

"Extreme precipitation intensities have increased in all regions of the contiguous United States and are expected to further increase with warming at scaling rates of about 7 percent per degree Celsius, suggesting a significant increase of flash flood hazards due to climate change," the team wrote.

•••••

As air gets hotter, it can hold more water vapor. Heavily wet air means for heavier storms.

"Short-term precipitation extremes cause flash floods, landslides, and debris flows in the entire continental United States," they wrote.

•••••

At the same time, many areas will be drier overall — meaning those heavy rains will wash over desiccated ground. That's a recipe for crop disaster and mudslides.

"The frequency of extremes increases by a factor of more than five in large parts of Canada and over the western U.S. in December, January and February," they added.

And that will affect roads, bridges and dams as well as communities built in low-lying areas and on hillsides.

•••••

Weather patterns are unpredictable and climate experts agree that as temperatures warm, weather patterns will become more extreme and unpredictable. That means heavier rain but also heavier snow, floods as well as droughts and changes in ocean circulation patterns that can make some areas colder than they are now.

Mix-up over homemade herbal tea puts woman in life-threatening condition

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-12/b-moh113016.php

Public Release: 1-Dec-2016
Mix-up over homemade herbal tea puts woman in life-threatening condition
BMJ

A woman who mistakenly used foxglove instead of comfrey leaves to make a herbal tea was rushed to hospital in a life-threatening condition.

Writing in the journal BMJ Case Reports, doctors at King's College Hospital say the case highlights the need to be aware of accidental ingestion of the foxglove plant in patients who use herbal remedies.

The previously well 63-year-old woman arrived at the emergency department with vomiting, palpitations, and lightheadedness. She had no history of heart problems.

A friend had recommended her the herbal drink comfrey (Symphytum officinale) to help ease her insomnia. She had purchased a handful of comfrey leaves from a local market and brewed them into a tea. Her symptoms began several hours later.

Heart monitoring showed an irregular heartbeat, but standard blood tests were normal.

The National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) database did not have an entry for comfrey. However, the entry for foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) states it may be confused with comfrey herbal tea.

In particular during Spring, it is very difficult to distinguish between the thick leaves of comfrey and foxglove (see figure 2). This case illustrates how this subtly can lead to mistaken identity, and near-fatal consequences.

A quick internet search suggested that the comfrey plant closely resembled the foxglove plant, which contains the organic forms of digoxin and digitoxin - active compounds that are frequently used in the treatment of irregular heart rhythm and heart failure.

Raised digoxin levels confirmed this and the patient was given an antidote. After five days of monitoring, her heart returned to normal rhythm and she was discharged home.

The patient was unable to find the original leaves she had purchased in the market but was advised to contact the seller to inform them of the mistake.

"Homemade herbal remedies on the surface may seem harmless," write the doctors. "However, this case illustrates how limited knowledge of plants can be potentially fatal."

They have also contacted the NPIS to recommend including the risk of accidental ingestion of Digitalis under the entry for comfrey.

Certification would ensure quality welfare during cattle transport

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/e-cw113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Certification would ensure quality welfare during cattle transport
Following best practices will improve welfare of cattle and provide economic benefits in dairy and beef transportation, according to a new article in The Professional Animal Scientist®
Elsevier

Over 530,000 cattle are shipped to slaughter plants each week, making the transport of cattle a vitally important part of the beef and dairy industries. Almost all beef or dairy cattle are transported once during their life, and often they may be transported as many as 6 times. A new report details how a cattle transporter quality assurance program could help ensure the safe, humane, and expeditious shipping of cattle and benefit the industry significantly in terms of both economics and efficiency.

"Every stakeholder has an expectation for fostering animal well-being," Karen Schwartzkopf-Genswein, lead author of the study, said. "Producers, consignors, packers, and retailers alike want to improve animal treatment during transportation."

•••••

Identifying areas of concern and managing risk before and during transport is something drivers must be educated about in order to ensure the best outcome for cattle and managers. "A driver's cattle transporting experience is significant in the success of cattle transportation, which makes training and education important," Schwartzkopf-Genswein said.

In order to ensure best management practices are followed and cattle welfare is valued throughout the transportation process, the authors of the study recommend following the lead of the pork industry. Specifically, the majority of pork packers require drivers to show proof of Transporter Quality Assurance certification before entering any slaughter facility. To prove their commitment to good welfare, the beef and dairy industries need to use a practical and robust verification process similar to the pork industry.

•••••

Even mildly excessive body iron stores increase the risk of type 2 diabetes

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uoef-eme113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Even mildly excessive body iron stores increase the risk of type 2 diabetes
University of Eastern Finland

Even mildly elevated body iron contributes to the prevalence and incidence of type 2 diabetes, according to research from the University of Eastern Finland. Excess body iron accumulation is a known risk factor of type 2 diabetes in hereditary hemochromatosis, but the results presented by Dr Alex O. Aregbesola in his doctoral thesis show that elevated iron is a risk factor in the general population as well, already at high levels within the normal range.

Men accumulate more iron and are more at risk

In addition, a gender difference was observed in the risk and prevalence of type 2 diabetes, to some extent due to different body iron accumulation between men and women. Men had 61% higher prevalence and 46% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared to women. At comparable age groups, men were found to accumulate more iron than women, and iron explained about two-fifths and one-fifth of the gender difference in type 2 diabetes prevalence and incidence respectively.

Moderate iron stores are safer than depletion toward iron deficiency

•••••

there was a U-shaped type of association between iron stores and the risk of type 2 diabetes which showed that the risk was lowest on moderate levels.

•••••

Unhealthy dietary habits associated with the surge of type 2 diabetes include excess dietary intake of iron and unregulated iron supplement use. Iron is a micronutrient that is required in the formation of some essential body proteins and enzymes, like hemoglobin, cytochromes and peroxidase. However, it is harmful when stored in excess in the body. It promotes the release of free radicals that damage the secretory capacity of beta cells of pancreas to produce insulin. It also decreases insulin sensitivity in peripheral tissues and organs involved in glucose metabolism.

•••••

We like what experts like -- and what is expensive

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uov-wlw113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
We like what experts like -- and what is expensive
Art taste bends to social factors
University of Vienna

Together with colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, Matthew Pelowski and Michael Forster from the Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods at the University of Vienna have observed the influence of social and financial contextual information on the pleasures of art. The focus was on the question whether the purchase price, the prestige of a gallery or the socioeconomic status and educational status of other persons have an influence on the personal taste.

We like what experts or peers like - and what is expensive

•••••

"Results showed that when participants thought that either experts or their peers liked a painting, they also liked it more", says Pelowski. "However, when they thought that the unemployed dropouts didn't like a painting, participants went in the opposite direction and said that they liked it more."

In a second study, the researchers also showed that telling participants the (fictitious) sales price of a painting at an art auction, significantly changed the way they rated art. Very low prices made participants like art less, very high prices made them like art more.

Art is used to show allegiance to desirable social groups

"These results provide empirical support for a 'social distinction' theory, first introduced by the French Sociologist and Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu," explains Pelowski. "According to how we use our evaluation and engagement with art in order to show allegiance to, or distance ourselves from, desirable or undesirable social groups." Both studies also have important implications for museums, suggesting that the context can affect how we see art.

Benefits of daily aspirin outweigh risk to stomach

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/cu-bod113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Benefits of daily aspirin outweigh risk to stomach
Cardiff University

Stomach bleeds caused by aspirin are considerably less serious than the spontaneous bleeds that can occur in people not taking the drug, concludes a study led by Cardiff University.

Published in the journal Public Library of Science, the extensive study of literature on aspirin reveals that while regular use of the drug increases the risk of stomach bleeds by about a half, there is no valid evidence that any of these bleeds are fatal.

Professor Peter Elwood from Cardiff University's School of Medicine said: "Although many people use aspirin daily to reduce the risk of health problems such as cancer and heart disease, the wider use of the drug is severely limited because of the side effect of bleeding from the stomach. With our study showing that there is no increased risk of death from stomach bleeding in people who take regular aspirin, we hope there will be better confidence in the drug and wider use of it by older people, leading to important reductions in deaths and disablement from heart disease and cancer across the community."

Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death and disability across the world, and research has shown that a small daily dose of aspirin can reduce the occurrence of both diseases by around 20-30%.

Recent research has also shown that low-doses of aspirin given to patients with cancer, alongside chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, is an effective additional treatment, reducing the deaths of patients with bowel, and possibly other cancers, by a further 15%.

•••••

Authoritarian regimes use rhetoric to legitimize their power

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uok-aru113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Authoritarian regimes use rhetoric to legitimize their power
University of Kansas

Leaders of authoritarian regimes in Central Asia have been able to use rhetoric to define their power as legitimate to the public despite practices of human rights violations and clamping down on dissent, according to a new study by a University of Kansas expert on international relations.

"Those governments have been fairly effective in mobilizing public support through discourse that has shaped the public's understanding of what it means to have a legitimate government," said Mariya Omelicheva, a KU associate professor of political science. "They've persuaded the public that their ideas of legitimacy were informed by the countries' histories and traditions. These governments presented their practices as consistent with the people's primary demands and needs."

•••••

The study is important, she said, because roughly 25 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, several relatively stable authoritarian regimes have emerged in the region. They have adopted formal trappings of democracy, but they have made no progress as states in democratic transformation.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also viewed as the two most important states in the region economically and politically.

"The leadership of these states have been determined to maintain power under the guise of democracy without exposing themselves to the political risks of competition," Omelicheva said. "They have every single formal democratic institution, but they strip them of their democratic essence."

•••••

"Because of these obvious infractions on democratic principles in practice, these authoritarian governments generate public support by resorting to performance legitimation, meaning they would assert that they have been effective in delivering on the public's demands for order, stability, security and socioeconomic progress," Omelicheva said.

More or less they have been successful in following up on their promises relative to the terms they've defined, she said.

Omelicheva found that Nazarbayev and Karimov both used similar rhetorical tactics by comparing their countries' economies at the dawn of their independence -- the collapse of the Soviet Union -- to the present day, arguing how much progress they have made.

•••••

"Because of these obvious infractions on democratic principles in practice, these authoritarian governments generate public support by resorting to performance legitimation, meaning they would assert that they have been effective in delivering on the public's demands for order, stability, security and socioeconomic progress," Omelicheva said.

More or less they have been successful in following up on their promises relative to the terms they've defined, she said.

Omelicheva found that Nazarbayev and Karimov both used similar rhetorical tactics by comparing their countries' economies at the dawn of their independence -- the collapse of the Soviet Union -- to the present day, arguing how much progress they have made.

New research: Feeling bad has academic benefits

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/cu-nrf113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
New research: Feeling bad has academic benefits
A Concordia study reveals that occasional negative moods can positively impact student success
Concordia University

For some, the start of December marks the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year. But for most university students, the coming weeks mean final exams, mounting stress and negative moods.

While that doesn't seem like an ideal combination for great grades, new research from Concordia University in Montreal shows that the occasional bout of bad feelings can actually improve students' academic success.

A study published in Developmental Psychology by Erin Barker, professor of psychology in Concordia's Faculty of Arts and Science, shows that students who were mostly happy during their four years of university but who also experienced occasional negative moods had the highest GPAs at the time of graduation.

In contrast, the study also confirmed that students who experienced high levels of negative moods and low levels of positive moods often ended up with the lowest GPAs -- a pattern consistent with depressive disorders.

"Students often report feeling overwhelmed and experiencing high levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms," says Barker, who is also a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development.

"This study shows that we need to teach them strategies to both manage negative emotions and stress in productive ways, and to maintain positive emotional experiences."

•••••

These findings demonstrate that both negative and positive emotions play a role in our successes.

"We often think that feeling bad is bad for us. But if you're generally a happy person, negative emotions can be motivating. They can signal to you that there is a challenge that you need to face. Happy people usually have coping resources and support that they draw on to meet that challenge."

•••••

Weakening polar vortex may yield longer, harsher winters in North America

By Michael Kuhne

Longer, harsher winters may be in store for the portions of North America as the polar vortex continues to weaken and shifts, according to a new study.

The polar vortex is a large pocket of frigid air that hovers above the polar regions, and is most prominent in the winter months.

Researchers at China's Lanzhou University penned the study, which was published in Nature Climate Change last month.

Lanzhou researchers found that a loss of sea ice in the Arctic regions due to rising temperatures in the Barents-Kara seas, along with an increase in snow cover over Europe and Asia, has caused the polar vortex to weaken. The pocket of cold air has in turn shifted toward Eurasia.

This movement could lead to colder and possibly extended winter seasons for portions of North America and Eurasia, according to the study.

•••••

The polar vortex in winter can extend well into the atmosphere and at times be more than 100,000 feet deep, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Bob Smerbeck said.

A weaker polar vortex allows the stratosphere, or a distant part of the Earth's atmosphere, to warm, while a stronger one prevents that process, according to Vallee.

"The stratospheric vortex typically governs the tropospheric vortex [in the lower part of the Earth's atmosphere] during the winter months and is based on polar heating and cooling," Vallee said.

"As the stratosphere warms in winter, it can reverse the wind direction below it," he said.

This could block high pressure systems from taking shape in the high latitudes of the Earth, which would increase opportunities for cold in the mid-latitudes.

According to Smerbeck, the southern shift could bring the other end of the polar vortex toward eastern North America, yielding colder winters for the region.

"There are other factors that determine where the vortex sets up," Smerbeck said. "The warm blob over the north Pacific in winter 2013-2014 and the unusually warm waters along the west coast of North America [for the] 2014-2015 winter contributed to a southward dip in the vortex across eastern North America and cold winters in the central and eastern U.S."

Smerbeck said there is a lot of research still being conducted,

•••••

Loss of soil carbon due to climate change will be 'huge'

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/nioe-los113016.php

Public Release: 30-Nov-2016
Loss of soil carbon due to climate change will be 'huge'
Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW)

55 trillion kilograms: that's how much carbon could be released into the atmosphere from the soil by mid-century if climate change isn't stopped. And all in the form of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane. Tom Crowther (NIOO-KNAW) and his team are publishing the results of a worldwide study into the effects of climate change on the soil in the issue of Nature that comes out on 1 December.

For decades, scientists have speculated that rising global temperatures might affect the huge amount of carbon stored in the soil. Carbon is one of the building blocks of life, and nowhere on land are larger carbon stocks to be found than in the soil.

Thousands of studies worldwide have produced mixed signals on whether the soil's storage capacity will decrease as the planet warms, or perhaps even increase.

A new, worldwide study led by researcher Tom Crowther (Netherlands Institute of Ecology NIOO-KNAW, formerly of Yale University) finally answers that question: "The effect will be roughly equivalent to adding another industrialized country to the planet, the size of the United States."

"If climate change isn't stopped, an additional 55 trillion kilograms of carbon will be released into the atmosphere by the year 2050", says Crowther. It will be released in the form of CO2 or methane: greenhouse gases, speeding up what would otherwise have been a natural process.

"It's about 17 percent more than the projected emissions due to human-related activities during that period", says Crowther. And those greenhouse gases could further accelerate global warming, which would have even more of an impact on the soil: a full-fledged domino effect.

So why was this not obvious all along? Because researchers were looking in the wrong places, argues Crowther. "With data from more than 40 institutes around the world, covering 20 years, our scope is now finally worldwide."

•••••

The release of those stocks - built up over thousands of years - will be accelerated by climate change because it stimulates soil life. Micro-organisms in the soil, in particular, will become more active.

Factors that could slow down this process, or speed it up even further, should also be considered. With more CO2 in the atmosphere, for instance, plant growth will also be accelerated. That's why the international researchers have reserved a margin for the extra emissions: between 12% and 17%.

•••••

NIH study links morning sickness to lower risk of pregnancy loss

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-links-morning-sickness-lower-risk-pregnancy-loss

Sept. 26, 2016

A new analysis by researchers at the National Institutes of Health has provided the strongest evidence to date that nausea and vomiting during pregnancy is associated with a lower risk of miscarriage in pregnant women. The study, appearing in JAMA Internal Medicine, was conducted by researchers at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and other institutions.

Nausea and vomiting that occurs in pregnancy is often called “morning sickness,” as these symptoms typically begin in the morning and usually resolve as the day progresses. For most women, nausea and vomiting subside by the 4th month of pregnancy. Others may have these symptoms for the duration of their pregnancies. The cause of morning sickness is not known, but researchers have proposed that it protects the fetus against toxins and disease-causing organisms in foods and beverages.

“It’s a common thought that nausea indicates a healthy pregnancy, but there wasn’t a lot of high-quality evidence to support this belief,” said the study’s first author, Stefanie N. Hinkle, Ph.D, a staff scientist in NICHD’s Epidemiology Branch. “Our study evaluates symptoms from the earliest weeks of pregnancy, immediately after conception, and confirms that there is a protective association between nausea and vomiting and a lower risk of pregnancy loss.”

•••••

Trevor Noah: Let’s Not Be Divided. Divided People Are Easier to Rule.

I suggest reading the whole article at the following link

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/trevor-noah-lets-not-be-divided-divided-people-are-easier-to-rule.html

Born in South Africa to an interracial couple at a time when such relationships were illegal under apartheid, Trevor Noah weaves observations about race and ethnicity into his comedy. He has hosted various television shows in South Africa, including “Tonight with Trevor Noah,” and is currently host of “The Daily Show,” based in New York City.

By TREVOR NOAHDEC. 5, 2016

When I took over “The Daily Show” from Jon Stewart in 2015, I was surprised to learn that my job as a late-night comedy host was not merely to entertain but to eviscerate — to attack, crush, demolish and destroy the opponents of liberal, progressive America. Very quickly, people from some quarters — mostly those same liberal progressives — criticized me for not maintaining the minimum acceptable levels of daily evisceration that were established by my predecessor.

The truth is that Jon never liked being labeled the Great Eviscerator. He didn’t think it was healthy, and he always tried to think about the details of issues with a healthy dose of skepticism before going on air and putting his ideas out into the world.

•••••

The experience of stepping into Jon’s shoes brought on enormous culture shock for me. In South Africa, where I come from, we also use comedy to critique and analyze, and while we don’t let our politicians off the hook, we don’t eviscerate one another. If anything, my stand-up shows back home are a place where we can push away the history of apartheid’s color classifications — where black, white, colored and Indian people use laughter to deal with shared trauma and pain. In South Africa, comedy brings us together. In America, it pulls us apart.

•••••

America, I’ve found, doesn’t like nuance. Either black people are criminals, or cops are racist — pick one. It’s us versus them. You’re with us, or you’re against us. This national mentality is fueled by the hysteria of a 24-hour news cycle, by the ideological silos of social media and by the structure of the country’s politics. The two-party system seems to actively encourage division where none needs to exist.

•••••

The past year has been so polarizing and noxious that even I find myself getting caught up in the extreme grandstanding and vitriol. But with extremes come deadlock and the death of progress. Instead of speaking in measured tones about what unites us, we are screaming at each other about what divides us — which is exactly what authoritarian figures like Mr. Trump want: Divided people are easier to rule. That was, after all, the whole point of apartheid.

•••••

To the extremists and true believers of any cause, there is an idea that moderation and compromise are simply a prelude to selling out and giving up, when in fact the opposite is true — moderation brings radical ideas to the center to make them possible.

•••••

Sadly, given what we’ve seen in this election, Mr. Trump’s victory has only amplified the voices of extremism. It has made their arguments more simplistic and more emotional at a time when they ought to be growing more subtle and more complex. We should give no quarter to intolerance and injustice in this world, but we can be steadfast on the subject of Mr. Trump’s unfitness for office while still reaching out to reason with his supporters. We can be unwavering in our commitment to racial equality while still breaking bread with the same racist people who’ve oppressed us. I know it can be done because I had no choice but to do it, and it is the reason I am where I am today.

When you grow up in the middle, you see that life is more in the middle than it is on the sides. The majority of people are in the middle, the margin of victory is almost always in the middle, and very often the truth is there as well, waiting for us.

•••••

In Macedonia's fake news hub, this teen shows how it's done

I've included an example below of the harm this garbage can do, in addition to affecting our election.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-news-macedonia-teen-shows-how-its-done/

Dec. 2, 2016

On the second floor of a noisy sports center in the Macedonian town of Veles, a teenage purveyor of fake news cracked open his laptop and laid out his case for why lying is more lucrative than the truth.

Real news gets reported everywhere, he argued. Made-up stories are unique.

“The fake news is the good news,” the 18-year-old said, pointing to a graph showing his audience figures, which reached into the hundreds of thousands, a bling watch clasped firmly around his wrist. “A fake news article is way more opened than any other.”

BuzzFeed News identified Veles as a hub of the fake news industry seeding sensationalized or falsified information across Facebook. A reporter from Britain’s Channel 4 News chased the industry’s adolescent kingpins across town, cornering one 16-year-old fake news baron who said he had no plans to stop — even though he acknowledged it was wrong.

But there were no such qualms from the teenager who spoke to The Associated Press at Veles’ Gemdidzii Sports Hall.

Retreating from a spirited indoor soccer game into an empty office, he walked an AP journalist through the ins-and-outs of his fake news operation on condition that neither he nor his stable of bogus news sites would be identified, because otherwise that would hurt his business.

He showed the AP how he ripped much of his material off The Political Insider, a right-wing news site that produces a steady drumbeat of pro-Donald Trump pieces. He then flipped over to Google Analytics, an audience tracking tool, to show that he’d managed to gather more than 685,000 page views a week.

•••••

Using the web intelligence service Domain Tools, the AP confirmed that the teen is behind more than a dozen different websites, including knockoffs of well-known U.S. media outlets. Typical headlines include “Wow! Queen Elizabeth Invited Trump - This Is A Game Changer” or “BREAKING: What George Soros Just Did Will Leave You SICK!” Both pieces carried untrue or questionable assertions.

A simple Domain Tools search revealed roughly 200 U.S.-oriented news websites registered in Veles, most created within the last 12 months.

These sites tend to follow one of two patterns: Some masquerade as well-known outlets like The New York Times or Fox News, while others operate under made-in-America-sounding names like USA Daily News 24. That latter site’s lead story — “Michelle Obama DEMANDS Americans PAY UP To Give Her Mom A Cushy $160k Pension” — is entirely false.

•••••

For the residents of Veles, a Macedonian rust belt town of 50,000 people with shuttered factories and high unemployment, the thousands of dollars brought in by fake news operations aren’t necessarily unwelcome.

“They see it in a positive way,” said local journalist Petar Peckov. “They say, ‘The boys are working. There is money and we will benefit from it.’”

For everyone else on Facebook, Veles’ new cottage industry means a bewildering assault of misinformation and propaganda.

“Telling real from fake is difficult when people are intentionally trying to mask this from you,” said Robyn Caplan, a researcher at Data & Society, a New York-based institute that studies the cultural impact of technological change.

“The headlines that this Macedonian guy was using would have, could have been found a few years ago on something like — not in the same political sentiment — on Upworthy or on Elite Daily” she said in a telephone interview, referring to two websites that pioneered the viral news phenomenon. “They’re building off of practices that people have become really used to.”

The Macedonian teenager says he’s indifferent to politics. He sees it all as a money-making scheme, as well as a preparation for his career after high school, where he has been studying marketing and politics.

Shrugging off the handwringing over the ethics of fake news, he said the onus was on readers.

“They can read it if they want to,” he said. “I’m not the one pushing them to click on the article.”

•••••

[Example of the stupid stuff people can be led to believe. Seeing the stupid stuff my own Facebook friends fall for, this is not surprising, but is disheartening. And I'm supposed to believe humans are the best thing a force that created the universe could come up with?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-man-with-assault-rifle-dc-comet-pizza-victim-of-fake-sex-trafficking-story/

Dec. 4, 2016

Late last month, Comet Ping Pong was the subject of a fake news report. It is unclear if the incident is related.

As CBS affiliate WUSA reported previously, using the hashtag #PizzaGate, an imaginary story about the popular pizza shop was spread, accusing it to be the center of a child sex slave ring organized by Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager.

As a result, the pizza place was hammered by thousands of threats, and bizarre, unsubstantiated tales about child sex trafficking.

WUSA reported that they found two women, who declined to give their names, banging on the patio at the pizza place in late November. The women were looking for the alleged tunnels used to traffic children.

“All of this is an underground tunnel that helps take the kids and transport them back and forth so they can can do these rituals,” said one of them. “They are putting a lot of curses and spells over the city. They are kidnapping the children who are missing. They were never missing because D.C. know where they are.”

Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis said then that the restaurant does not even have a basement.

He said he suspected the story simply emerged because he and a friend supported the Clinton campaign.

“These people are destroying their lives,” said neighbor Maura Dougherty about the conspiracy theorists. “It’s insane.”

Before the latest incident, Comet Ping Pong’s owner told WUSA that the PizzaGate conspirators have also harassed and abused his staff. The manager got so many threats and vulgar messages, his wife asked him to quit his job. And the online bullies have gone after other businesses on the block as well.

Global warming blowout: Record highs beat record lows by 48-to-1 ratio in November

http://mashable.com/2016/12/01/temperature-records-ratio-november/#recnvlLXSaqP

By Andrew Freedman
Dec. 3, 2016

As the planet warms in response to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the ratio of high temperature records compared to low temperature records has become more skewed. If the climate weren't warming, that long-term ratio should average out to about 1-to-1.

However, that isn't the world we're living in. A 2009 study found that the record highs to lows ratio was 2-to-1 for the lower 48 states during the 2000s, and this disparity has only grown since then. Projections show the imbalance increasing in coming decades as global warming continues.

Keeping in mind that individual months show considerable variability in weather patterns, it's clear that over the long-term, the ratio of record highs to record lows is now strongly favoring record highs as well as record warm overnight temperatures. This is consistent with computer model projections of a warming world.

No individual month shows this better — and to a ridiculous degree — than November 2016.

New, preliminary numbers from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) show that during November, the ratio of record highs (4506) to record lows (94) was a shocking 48-to-1.

According to Guy Walton, a former Weather Channel meteorologist who meticulously tracks these records, this year is on track to have the lowest tally of record low temperatures since 1922 and the highest ratio of daily record highs to lows — at about 6.6-to-1.

Comparing the number of temperature records has some limitations, but the ratios are more accurate in reflecting how the U.S. has warmed in recent decades, according to Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at the NCEI in Asheville, North Carolina.

"Because the number and lifetimes of weather stations has varied over time, comparing raw numbers of records doesn't completely capture the signal," he said. "Using a ratio of warm-to-cold records helps account for these effects."

All of North America, including Canada, had an unusually warm November, with many cities in the Midwest, Alberta and other Canadian provinces setting records for the warmest November on record.

A Nov. 21 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that by midcentury, the ratio of record daily high temperatures to record daily lows will likely be about 15-to-1, depending on the pace of greenhouse gas emissions.

December promises to be far colder in these areas as the weather pattern changes from the Pacific Ocean across North America, though it is unclear whether record highs will still outnumber record lows.

•••••

tags: extreme weather

Swimming, racquet sports, and aerobics linked to best odds of staving off death

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/b-srs112816.php

Public Release: 29-Nov-2016
Swimming, racquet sports, and aerobics linked to best odds of staving off death
Specific types of sport and exercise seem to be associated with differing risk levels
BMJ

In terms of exercise, swimming, racquet sports, and aerobics seem to be associated with the best odds of staving off death from any cause and from heart disease and stroke, in particular, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

•••••

Overall, compared with the survey respondents who said they had not done a given sport, risk of death from any cause was 47% lower among those who played racquet sports; 28% lower among swimmers; 27% lower among aerobics fans; and 15% lower among cyclists.

No such associations were seen for runners/joggers or those who played football/rugby.

When the researchers looked at risk of death from heart disease and stroke, they found that playing racquet sports was associated with a 56% lower risk, with equivalent figures of 41% for swimming and 36% for aerobics, compared with those who did not participate in these sports.

Neither cycling, running/jogging, nor football/rugby were associated with a significantly reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease, the analysis showed.

The researchers did find a 43% reduced risk of death from all causes and a 45% reduced risk from cardiovascular disease among runners and joggers when compared with those who didn't run or jog, but this apparent advantage disappeared when all the potentially influential factors were accounted for.

And few of the survey respondents said they played football or rugby regularly, which might also explain the apparent low impact of these activities on death risk in this study, explain the researchers.

For some sports, the higher the intensity, duration, and volume, the greater was the reduction in risk, while for others a U shaped curve emerged, indicating that lower intensity might be better than higher intensity or no participation at all. But due to the small number of deaths involved, these findings should be regarded as preliminary, say the researchers.

This is an observational study so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, added to which the relatively short recall period, the 'seasonality' of certain sports, and the inability to track changes in levels of sports participation throughout the monitoring period, may all have had some bearing on the results, caution the researchers.

•••••

More than 8-fold higher risk of major heart attack for under 50s who smoke

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/b-mt8112816.php

Public Release: 29-Nov-2016
More than 8-fold higher risk of major heart attack for under 50s who smoke
All smokers at risk, but younger ones are particularly vulnerable, study shows
BMJ

Smokers under the age of 50 are more than eight times as likely as non-smokers to have a major heart attack, making them the most vulnerable of any age group of smokers, reveals research published online in the journal Heart.

•••••

Media misreporting that the Green Party has dropped efforts at Pennsylvania recount

News media is saying the Green Party has dropped the recount effort in Pennsylvania. Many of the headlines are misleading. Some use the more accurate qualifier "statewide" recount, but don't give the rest of the story, which this source does.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20161204_Jill_Stein_campaign_drops_recount_effort_in_Pa_.html

Dec. 3, 2016
by Caitlin McCab

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein discontinued her statewide recount effort in Pennsylvania Saturday afternoon after a Commonwealth Court judge mandated the campaign post a $1 million bond to press on with its challenge.

In court documents filed shortly before 5 p.m., an attorney for the Stein campaign wrote, "Petitioners are regular citizens of ordinary means. They cannot afford to post the $1,000,000 bond required by the Court."

•••••

Last Monday, the statewide recount request in Pennsylvania was filed by 100 voters, as required by state law. None were named.

"The judge's outrageous demand that voters pay such an exorbitant figure is a shameful, unacceptable barrier to democratic participation," Stein said in a statement Saturday. "This is yet another sign that Pennsylvania's antiquated election law is stacked against voters."

According to her statement, she plans to hold a news conference about the recount effort Monday morning outside Trump Tower in New York City.

Meanwhile, Stein's campaign intends to continue its county-by-county recount effort in Pennsylvania, said attorney Larry Otter. That requires efforts in individual precincts - a process that requires three voters to petition their local election boards.

In the region, a recount in Philadelphia is already underway in 75 of the city’s more than 1,600 divisions. Judges in Bucks and Delaware counties will hear arguments this week on whether to grant recounts, Otter said.

Patients should stop using e-cigarettes before plastic surgery, experts conclude

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/wkh-pss112916.php

Public Release: 29-Nov-2016
Patients should stop using e-cigarettes before plastic surgery, experts conclude
Wolters Kluwer Health

Cigarette smokers are at increased risk of complications after plastic surgery. Could e-cigarette users face a similar risk? Evidence and recommendations related to e-cigarette use by plastic surgery patients are discussed in a special topic paper in the December issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

"Refraining from [e-cigarette] use four weeks before surgery is a prudent course of action, despite the fact that it has yet to be determined if the effects are similar to traditional cigarettes," write ASPS Member Surgeons Dr. Peter Taub of Mount Sinai Medical Center and Dr. Alan Matarasso of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in New York City.

•••••

Head impacts lead to brain changes in high school football players

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/rson-hil111616.php

Public Release: 28-Nov-2016
Head impacts lead to brain changes in high school football players
Radiological Society of North America

Brain imaging exams performed on high school football players after just one season revealed changes in both the gray and white matter that correlated with exposure to head impacts, according to a new study that will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

•••••

Immune system influenced by social status

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uom-isi112516.php

Public Release: 28-Nov-2016
Immune system influenced by social status, but access to resources not to blame
A study published in Science shows that social status affects the immune system and response to infection
University of Montreal

Social status is one of the most important factors in predicting the risk of disease and mortality in humans and other social mammals. A new study by the University of Montreal, Duke University (USA), and Emory University (USA) published in Science reveals that low social status alone can alter immune regulation, even in the absence of variation in access to resources, health care, and at-risk behaviours for health.

"In short, two individuals with access to the same dietary resources and the same health care and exhibiting the same behaviours have different immune responses to infection depending on whether they have a high or low social status," said Luis Barreiro, Professor in the Department of pediatrics at the University of Montreal's Faculty of Medicine and researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.

•••••

Do power poses help?

People could try it and see if it works for them. It's possible it might work for some people and not for others.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uop-ppd112816.php

Public Release: 28-Nov-2016
Power poses don't help and could potentially backfire, Penn study shows
University of Pennsylvania

The idea behind power poses, that if you stand in a "powerful" position, broad posture, hands on hips, shoulders high and pushed back, you will suddenly feel psychologically and physiologically stronger, is intuitively appealing, especially for people without much confidence. The problem is that it's simply not true, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers Coren Apicella, an assistant professor in the psychology department in the School of Arts & Sciences, and Kristopher Smith, a fourth-year psychology Ph.D. student.

Apicella and Smith attempted to replicate the original power pose study by Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy and Andy Yap, which got much attention when it appeared in 2010 in the journal Psychological Science. The initial study reported increases in feelings of power, risk taking and testosterone and a decrease in cortisol. The Penn researchers found no support for any of the original effects, what's called embodied cognition, results they published recently in Hormones and Behavior.

"We did find that if anything -- and we're skeptical of these results, because we'd want to replicate them -- that, if you're a loser and you take a winner or high power pose, your testosterone decreases," Apicella said.

In other words, Smith said, "people might not be able to 'fake it until they make it,' and in fact it might be detrimental."

•••••

The current findings are not the only to suggest that the effects of power posing are not real, adding to the evidence that has accumulated since the 2010 study. Some say the inability to replicate that first work doesn't matter, that they'll continue touting its results regardless. But to scientists working in social science fields, it makes a big difference, particularly in a landscape described as a replication crisis for psychology, one where, in an analysis of 100 published papers, only 36 percent showed replications with significant findings.

"As scientists, we care about the truth," Apicella said. "There's so much skepticism about research in general, especially research coming out of social science. Studies like the original power pose work can be harmful because they delegitimize good work."

To that end, and especially given the recent failed replications, Apicella cautions researchers continuing to work on this topic to tread lightly. "Even if power poses were found to work in the short term," she said, "we don't know if they could backfire in the long term."

Modern hunter-gatherers show value of exercise

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-11/uoa-mhs112816.php

Public Release: 28-Nov-2016
Modern hunter-gatherers show value of exercise
University of Arizona

In a remote area of north-central Tanzania, men leave their huts on foot, armed with bows and poison-tipped arrows, to hunt for their next meal. Dinner could come in the form of a small bird, a towering giraffe or something in between. Meanwhile, women gather tubers, berries and other fruits.

This is everyday life for the Hadza, an indigenous ethnic group living around Lake Eyasi in East Africa and one of the last hunter-gatherer populations on Earth.

The Hadza live a very different kind of lifestyle -- and a very active one, engaging in significantly more physical activity than what is recommended by U.S. government standards. They also have extremely low risk of cardiovascular disease.

University of Arizona anthropologist David Raichlen and his collaborators, Brian Wood of Yale University and Herman Pontzer of Hunter College, have spent several years studying the lifestyle of the Hadza, which they say provides a glimpse into how our ancestors lived tens of thousands of years ago, and how that way of life may have impacted human evolution, especially with regard to exercise and health.

•••••

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that people engage in 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity activity -- about 30 minutes a day, five times a week -- or about 75 minutes per week of vigorous intensity activity, or an equivalent combination of the two. However, few Americans achieve those levels.

The Hadza, on the other hand, meet those weekly recommendations in a mere two days, engaging in about 75 minutes per day of MVPA, researchers found.

Furthermore, and consistent with the literature identifying aerobic activity as a key element necessary to a healthy lifestyle, researchers' health screenings of Hadza people have shown that the population has extremely low risk for heart disease.

"They have very low levels of hypertension," Raichlen said. "In the U.S., the majority of our population over the age of 60 has hypertension. In the Hadza, it's 20 to 25 percent, and in terms of blood lipid levels, there's virtually no evidence that the Hadza people have any kind of blood lipid levels that would put them at risk for cardiovascular disease."

While physical activity may not be entirely responsible for the low risk levels -- diet and other factors may also play a role -- exercise does seem to be important, Raichlen said, which is significant because humans' physical activity levels have drastically declined as we have transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming to the Industrial Revolution to where we are today.

"Over the last couple of centuries, we've become more and more sedentary, and the big shift seems to have occurred in the middle of the last century, when people's work lives became more sedentary," Raichlen said.

•••••

A Job Is More Than a Paycheck

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-02/a-job-is-more-than-a-paycheck

Dec 2, 2016 8:44 AM EST By Noah Smith

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, I’m starting to rethink one of my basic beliefs about the economy. For a long time, I’ve believed that what mattered most for economic well-being was money. Median income, consumption, wages -- all the things I cared about most were measured in dollars.

•••••

In most of economic theory, a job isn't treated as something inherently valuable -- it’s just a conduit through which money flows from employer to employee. But most people probably care not just about the amount of money they get, but how they get it. If they see themselves as having earned their daily bread, they feel better about themselves than if they got a handout. A job also probably has an important symbolic value -- it sends a message that society cares about you and has a place for you.

•••••

There are a few exceptions. David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald have measured the impact of unemployment on happiness, and found that having a job is an important determinant of how satisfied people are, regardless of how much money they have. Meanwhile, some of the little sociology research I do know about shows that job status is important for keeping marriages together.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, Americans are hurting from a lack of jobs. A number of deep dives into the mindset of Donald Trump voters, both before and after the election, have focused on the loss of status and self-respect that less-educated men in decaying industrial regions have suffered as jobs have been lost and replaced by government benefits. One way to see this is in the decline in the percentage of men in the U.S. labor force:

•••••

The dramatic Democratic loss in the Midwest in the 2016 election should be a wake-up call. The Democrats have been the party of the social safety net, and have long wondered why so many working-class Americans don’t seem to appreciate those benefits.

[These benefits did not make up monetarily for what was lost. Even if Democrats tried to do so, the republicans would block it.]

Trump, meanwhile, sailed to victory in the Midwest, in part by railing against globalization. Economists David Autor, David Dorn and Kaveh Majlesi have found that regions that experienced more Chinese import competition were much more likely to vote for Trump. Other studies by Autor and Dorn have found that that same import competition was responsible for throwing lots of Americans out of work and that nothing else replaced those jobs. So it seems that many voters in the Midwest didn’t want checks in the mail -- they wanted work. And they voted for a candidate who promised them jobs, even if he was very vague on his plans for doing so.

•••••

[See link above for possibilities for tackling this problem.]

•••••

Minimum wage increases by US states fuelled earnings growth in low-wage jobs

http://voxeu.org/article/minimum-wage-increases-and-earnings-low-wage-jobs

Sandra Black, Jason Furman, Laura Giuliano, Wilson Powell
02 December 2016

Over the past three years, 18 states plus the District of Columbia have implemented minimum wage increases, joining ten other states that have raised their minimum wages at least once since the last Federal increase in 2009. This column examines the impact of the more recent state increases on wages, weekly earnings, and employment among workers in the low-wage leisure and hospitality Industry. A comparison with states with no minimum wage increase since 2009 suggests that the recent legislation contributed to substantial wage increases with no discernible impact on employment levels or hours worked.

•••••

Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump in popular vote passes 2.5 million

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-popular-vote-lead-25-million-a7451661.html

Harriet Agerholm
Dec. 2, 2016

Hillary Clinton has received more than 2.5 million more votes than Donald Trump in the Presidential election, making her lead over her rival greater than 10 previous US Presidents.

The former Secretary of State lost the electoral college and conceded her 232 electoral votes – distributed in different numbers per state – to Mr Trump’s final tally of 306 votes.

Yet the Democrat has accrued 65,250,000 total votes so far, compared to the President-elect’s 62,686,000 — meaning at least 2,564,000 more Americans voted for her.

The Democrat's lead has been swelling thanks to late counting of mail in and absentee votes in states including California, New York and Washington.

As ballots continued to be counted on Thursday, 46.2 per cent of the electorate had voted for Mr Trump, while 48.1 per cent opted for Ms Clintons— figures that have caused critics to complain the voting system is undemocratic.

Despite polling failing to forecast the bombastic property tycoon's win, Ms Clinton’s 1.9 per cent lead puts her on track to secure the popular vote pollsters predicted in the days before the election.

Her lead is five times that of Al Gore’s advantage over George W Bush in the contentious 2000 Presidential election.

•••••

He is also the first US President ever who lost earned less than 50 per cent of the vote in both primary and general elections, which undercuts post election claims from the Trump camp that the President-elect has a mandate to push through his campaign pledges.

•••••

Although the billionaire property tycoon has won more votes than any previous Republican nominee, the 2016 election also set a record for the most votes cast for candidates other than the eventual President.

•••••

Trump voter lost home, blames incoming Treasury secretary

http://www.whio.com/news/national-govt--politics/trump-voter-lost-home-blames-incoming-treasury-secretary/5IgZ4s3YbuZJ67R5WnVYbM/

Updated: Friday, December 02, 2016 @ 1:51 PM
Published: Friday, December 02, 2016 @ 6:28 AM
By: JOSH BOAK, JEFF HORWTIZ - Associated Press

When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington, D.C. And she knew Trump's pick for Treasury_Steven Mnuchin_all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

"I just wish that I had not voted," said Colebrook, 59. "I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in."

Less than a month after his presidential win, Trump's populist appeal has started to clash with a Cabinet of billionaires and millionaires that he believes can energize economic growth.

The prospect of Mnuchin leading the Treasury Department drew plaudits from many in the financial sector. A former Goldman Sachs executive who pivoted in the early 2000s to hedge fund management and movie production, he seemed an ideal emissary to Wall Street.

When asked on Wednesday about his credentials to be Treasury secretary, Mnuchin emphasized his time running OneWest_which not only foreclosed on Colebrook but also on thousands of others in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by subprime mortgages.

•••••

For Mnuchin, the fundamental problem stems from the Great Recession. His investor group was the sole bidder to take control of the troubled bank IndyMac in 2009. The group struck a deal that left the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission responsible for taking as much as 80 percent of the losses on former IndyMac assets and rebranded the troubled bank as OneWest.

The combination of OneWest's profitability, government guarantees and foreclosure activities drew the ire of activist groups like the California Reinvestment Coalition. It found the bank to be consistently one of the most difficult to work out loan modifications with even though OneWest never drew a major response from government regulators.

By June of 2014, five years after taking over OneWest, Mnuchin sold the bank for $3.4 billion at a tremendous profit.

Colebrook said she learned the hard way about OneWest's tactics, after the regional bank acquired her home lender, First Federal Bank of California, in late 2009.

•••••

Over five years, she tried unsuccessfully to adjust her loan with OneWest through the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Modification Program. But she said that One West Bank lost paperwork, provided conflicting statements about ownership of the loan and fees and submitted charges that were unverified and caused her loan balance to balloon. By the time she lost her home in foreclosure in April 2015, the payoff balance totaled $517,662.

Colebrook said she is still challenging the foreclosure in court.

She now lives with her boyfriend in the small California city of San Luis Obispo. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, knowing that she could just as easily have ended up there.

"I cook at the homeless shelter because there but the grace of God go I."

Changing minds

Due to those who chose to engage him in productive conversation as a fellow human being, while making it clear they outraged by his views.

Why I Left White Nationalism
By R. DEREK BLACK
NOV. 26, 2016

I could easily have spent the night of Nov. 8 elated, surrounded by friends and family, thinking: “We did it. We rejected a multicultural and globalist society. We defied the elites, rejected political correctness, and made a statement millions of Americans have wanted to shout for decades.”

I’d be planning with other white nationalists what comes next, and assessing just how much influence our ideology would have on this administration. That’s who I was a few years ago.

Things look very different for me now. I am far away from the community that I grew up in, and that I once hoped could lead our country to a moment like this.

I was born into a prominent white nationalist family — David Duke is my godfather, and my dad started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and I was once considered the bright future of the movement.

•••••

Several years ago, I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.

•••••

People have approached me looking for a way to change the minds of Trump voters, but I can’t offer any magic technique. That kind of persuasion happens in person-to-person interactions and it requires a lot of honest listening on both sides. For me, the conversations that led me to change my views started because I couldn’t understand why anyone would fear me. I thought I was only doing what was right and defending those I loved.

•••••

I never would have begun my own conversations without first experiencing clear and passionate outrage to what I believed from those I interacted with. Now is the time for me to pass on that outrage by clearly and unremittingly denouncing the people who used a wave of white anger to take the White House.

•••••

The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy, though saying that makes me a hypocrite. I was a much more extreme partisan than a vast majority of Trump voters and I never would have recognized that label.

The motivations that led to this choice are more complex. I have no doubt many of his supporters voted thinking he’d soften his rhetoric, that his words didn’t really matter. The words were not disqualifying for them because they don’t see, or refuse to see, what the message of hate will reap.

•••••

Hillary Clinton's Popular Vote Lead Over Donald Trump Now Exceeds 2.3 Million

Note that this is from the legitimate ABC news site. There is a site that has a name designed to fool people into thinking it is legit. I am guessing the imposter registered the domain name first and won't sell it to ABC.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clintons-popular-vote-lead-donald-trump-now/story?id=43888531&cid=abcn_fb

By David Caplan
ABC News' Shushannah Walshe contributed to this report.
Nov 30, 2016 , 9:43 PM ET

It's been more than three weeks since the November 8 general election, but ballots are still being counted -- and Hillary Clinton's popular vote lead over President-elect Donald Trump continues to grow.

According to figures released by The Associated Press on Wednesday, Clinton received 64,874,143 votes, while Trump received 62,516,883 votes -- a difference of 2,357,260.

Converted into percentages, Clinton has won 48.1 percent of the vote so far, while Trump's share of the vote so far is 46.4 percent.

While Clinton's lead now exceeds 2.3 million votes, just ten days ago, ABC News reported that Clinton's lead over Trump was more than 1.5 million votes.

Trump's lead in the Electoral College, however, stands at 306, compared to Clinton's 232.

As for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that he has received 4,442,771 votes so far, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 1,420,351 votes. Converted into percentages, Johnson has received 3.3 percent of the vote so far, while Stein's share is 1.1 percent.