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Archive for May, 2019

Links for May 2019

Friday, May 3rd, 2019

How Single-Family Garages Can Ease California’s Housing Crisis: Given the affordable housing crisis, California cities should encourage single-family homeowners to convert garages into apartments and accessory dwelling units.

How long do vaccines last? The surprising answers may help protect people longer.
Recent studies show vaccines for flu, mumps, pertussis, meningococcal disease, and yellow fever also lose their effectiveness faster than official immunization recommendations suggest.

True Crimes. Why it’s important to name names when discussing the climate catastrophe. by Billy Wilson.

Syphilis Is Spreading Across Rural America.
Back in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a plan to eradicate the sexually transmitted disease that totaled over 35,000 cases nationwide that year. While syphilis can cause permanent neurological damage, blindness or even death, it is both treatable and curable. By focusing on the epicenters clustered primarily throughout the South, California and in major urban areas, the plan seemed within reach.

Instead, U.S. cases topped 101,500 in 2017 and are continuing to rise along with other sexually transmitted diseases. Syphilis is back in part because of increasing drug use, but health officials are losing the fight because of a combination of cuts in national and state health funding and crumbling public health infrastructure.

Esther Lederberg and Her Husband Were Both Trailblazing Scientists. Why Have More People Heard of Him? Like many female scientists, Esther Lederberg saw her achievements overshadowed by a man’s. Now there’s a movement to tell their stories. by Katy Steinmetz.

She discovered lambda phage, invented replica plating.

Statistical Guidance on Reporting Results from Studies Evaluating Diagnostic Tests – Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff

Undercover with New York Nazis by Michael McCanneM

Your Gas Stove Is Bad for You and the Planet: To help solve the climate crisis, we need to electrify everything. by Justin Gillis and Bruce Nilles

In 2008, Johns Hopkins scientists urged doctors to advise parents of asthmatic children to get rid of their gas stoves or at least install powerful exhaust hoods.

How Margaret Dayhoff Brought Modern Computing to Biology

To combat rising U.S. prescription drug prices, let’s try competition. by Michael Kades

The Myth of Fingerprints. by Clive Thompson
Nonetheless, the reliability of fingerprinting today is rarely questioned in modern courts. One exception was J. Spencer Letts, a federal judge in California who in 1991 became suspicious of fingerprint analysts who’d testified in a bank robbery trial. Letts was astounded to hear that the standard for declaring that two prints matched varied widely from county to county. Letts threw out the fingerprint evidence from that trial.

Universal Health Care Might Cost You Less Than You Think: We don’t think of the premiums we already pay as taxes, but maybe we should. by Matt Bruenig

2 Rules for Building Comfortable Stairs
rise plus run (r+R) should equal 18 inches.
And twice the rise plus (2r+R) the run should be 25 inches.

From Digby

Wireless LEDs Aren’t A First, But You Can Make Your Own
X-base | Wireless LED Lighting and Display System Kickstarter 2018

Why American Costs Are So High for building transit (4X – 10X rest of world)

The Human Antivenom Project by Kyle Dickman

Understanding the Basics of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing

Cardiopulmonary exercise testing and its application

The World’s Most Annoying Man: Steven Pinker is selling Reason™, not reason… by Nathan J. Robinson