"Better Ways Than BMI to Measure Obesity"
There is a reality to data and that is that most commonly a data point is meaningless without context. Whether that context is historical (the data is going up! the data is going down!) or context of additional variables. For example, someone telling you a weather forecast is useless without knowing where they are forecasting. Usually the answer is locally based, but if you turn on the news and hear about the blizzard that is coming, but you look outside and it is sunny with no clouds in the sky and no snow on the ground, well, this might need some clarification.
BMI is another example of this. The basis of the ranges were determined from white men, and then extrapolated to other genders and races. And also without context to underlying causes of obesity. The AMA is attempting to get physicians to decrease their usage of BMI as a standalone measurement and instead put forward other things, such as direct measuring of body fat, etc.
But now BMI should be given much less importance, the American Medical Association (AMA) says. Last month the leading physician's group recommended that practitioners de-emphasize BMI because it can get weight-related health risks wrong, especially when used as the sole diagnostic tool. The policy announcement also noted that BMI, originally developed from data on non-Hispanic white men, has played a role in perpetuating "racist exclusion" and causing "historical harm" by misidentifying the weight status of people in many racial and ethnic minority groups.
In discussing what to use in place of BMI:
That's essentially a tape measure around the waist. And the American Heart Association uses it to classify abdominal obesity at 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men, right?
Correct. But we should avoid repeating past mistakes by relying on waist circumference instead of directly measuring body fat. Like BMI, the standard cutoff values for waist circumference are based on white populations, so they may not be universally applicable. Waist circumference does not consider variations in height either, which is why incorporating additional measures such as waist-to-height ratio is important for a comprehensive assessment.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach for diagnosing obesity. It's a complex disease and should be assessed using multiple measures.
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Progress in fighting maternal mortality after child birth
A trial of a set of interventions to manage postpartum haemorrhage, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found a 60% reduction in heavy bleeding.
Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) - defined as the loss of more than 500 mL of blood within 24 hours after birth - is the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide. It affects an estimated 14 million women each year and results in around 70 000 deaths – mostly in low and middle-income countries - equivalent to 1 death every 6 minutes.
"Postpartum haemorrhage is scary, not always predictable, but absolutely treatable. Nonetheless, its impacts around the world are tragic," said Dr Pascale Allotey, Director of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research at WHO and head of the United Nations' Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP). "No woman should fear for her life when giving birth. Effective solutions to tackle postpartum bleeding need to be available and accessible so that all women can experience a safe birth and a healthy future with their families."
The study, which involved over 200 000 women in four countries, found that objectively measuring blood loss using a simple, low-cost collection device called a 'drape' and bundling together WHO-recommended treatments - rather than offering them sequentially - resulted in dramatic improvements in outcomes for women. Severe bleeding – when a woman loses more than a litre of blood after birth - was reduced by 60%, and they were less likely to lose their life.
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"Scientists have found signs of a new kind of gravitational wave. It's really big"
I saw a TikTok explaining this last night and it is really fascinating.
When two galaxies merge, the enormous black holes at their centers are thought to come together and circle each other in a spinning dance that sends giant waves spiraling out.
These waves are like the ripples that move through a pond if you toss in a rock — only these waves move through the very fabric of the universe, and researchers have been eager to study them.
"We've been on a mission for the last fifteen years to find a low-pitched hum of gravitational waves resounding throughout the universe," says Stephen Taylor, a Vanderbilt University astrophysicist who serves as the chair of a team of researchers known as the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). "We're very happy to announce that our hard work has paid off."
Other research groups using telescopes in Europe, Australia, India, and China also say they're starting to see hints of these waves.
Read the entire NPR article for an excellent explanation of what is going on and why it is such a big deal.
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Timeline of the far future
While surfing Wikipedia this evening, I came across this interesting article.
While the future cannot be predicted with certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which studies how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which studies how life evolves over time; plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia; and sociology, which examines how human societies and cultures evolve.
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Daily Science and Inspiration
Had this idea the other day. The way there are religious or philosophy books with daily entries or motivations, I would love to see something like that. A book I can make a morning routine about, that delves into a science discovery and what enabled it or how it happened, and what inspiration can be taken from it.
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No, the human genome has not been sequenced--yet
No human genome has ever been read in its entirety before. This year, scientists expect to pass that milestone for the first time.
Before the end of 2023, you should be able to read something remarkable. It will be the story of a single individual, who they are and where they come from – and it will offer hints about what their future holds. It probably won't be the most entertaining read on first glance, and it will be very, very long. But it will be a seminal moment – the publication online of the entire genome of a human being, end to end with no gaps.
[...]
This year, for the first time, the entire genome of a single human being – a man named Leon Peshkin – is due to be released.
This complete, single human genome will be a monumental technical achievement. Only 70 years have passed since the double-helix structure of DNA was first revealed, thanks in part to a grainy black and white image taken by Rosalind Franklin, transforming our understanding of how genetic information is stored.
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The History of the Power Grid
A fascinating read on the whole as it gives a good overview of the history of electricity and its growth from World's Fair attraction to home mainstay.
I found this tidbit fascinating:
To put this in perspective, the average yearly outage time in the US is around 475 minutes per year, which is considered especially unreliable despite representing ~99.9% uptime. By comparison, Germany averaged just 12.7 minutes of power outages per year in 2021—a remarkable 99.998% uptime.
Of course the US is much larger than Germany and serves a great deal more people. I would be curious to compare outage time averages for countries of both similar geographical size to the US (Canada, Brazil, China), and also comparing for countries of commensurate population (China, India.) Though China, India, and Brazil are not as "industrialized" yet.
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Polar outpost at night looks other worldly
The red light is amazingly unearthly. This is just one of the photos, many more after the link.
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How the circumference of Earth was calculated by Eratosthenes with sticks
I have seen this clip before but I still love it.
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Explaining the "ten dimensions"
This is far from a concluded reality of modern science, but for various reasons I found myself looking to better understand the dimensions beyond the 4 that I can completely understand. This write up was very simple and helped me understand what they each do, in theory.
How does it work? No idea. This only gave me a surface level of the 'what' for each dimension, absolutely nothing for the 'why' or 'how' - which is exactly what I wanted, but I can imagine others who might be looking for those two elements of context as well.
When someone mentions "different dimensions," we tend to think of things like parallel universes – alternate realities that exist parallel to our own, but where things work or happened differently. However, the reality of dimensions and how they play a role in the ordering of our Universe is really quite different from this popular characterization.
To break it down, dimensions are simply the different facets of what we perceive to be reality. We are immediately aware of the three dimensions that surround us on a daily basis – those that define the length, width, and depth of all objects in our universes (the x, y, and z axes, respectively).
Beyond these three visible dimensions, scientists believe that there may be many more. In fact, the theoretical framework of Superstring Theory posits that the universe exists in ten different dimensions. These different aspects are what govern the universe, the fundamental forces of nature, and all the elementary particles contained within.
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Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888)
Several years ago, I started a short lived Twitter account where I was going to highlight scientists daily or regularly. Unfortunately that proved untenable for me at the time and that project fell away. But Ms. Foote is absolutely someone I would have wanted to feature on it.
[A]n American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner. She was the first scientist to conclude that certain gases warmed when exposed to sunlight, and that rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels would change atmospheric temperature and could affect climate.
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"The mission to discover if Jupiter’s moons support life"
But the biggest surprise was the amount of water that the theoreticians needed to account for the signals: more than twice the amount of water found in all of Earth’s oceans. Because Europa is only a quarter of Earth’s diameter, the water must be spread around the moon in a global ocean, 25 to 95 miles deep, beneath a 10- to 15-mile-thick ice crust.
A fascinating read. The idea of living on a moon of Jupiter's is still probably science fiction, but it's fascinating to learn more. And what we learn impact our ability to live on other planets as well.
I had no idea about the amount of water on Europa!
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Socializing shows life extension benefits for other mammals
Mammals only have one life to live, but the length of that life varies greatly. While some shrews shuffle off this mortal coil in less than 14 months, bowhead whales can swim in Arctic waters for more than two centuries. And longevity is not all about size. For example, 250-pound brown bears (with a maximum life span of 40 years) are outlived, on average, by Brandt’s bats (with maximum of 41 years), a species small enough to perch inside the palm of a human hand.
Instead one of the most important factors impacting a mammal’s life span may be the company it keeps. A team of researchers recently analyzed the longevities and lifestyles of nearly 1,000 species of mammals, ranging from aardvarks to zebras. In a study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, the team discovered that group-living mammals such as ring-tailed lemurs and elephants generally outlive solitary species such as tigers and chipmunks.
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"Device transmits radio waves with almost no power"
So, this definitely feels like it's fake. Like a perpetual motion device, another scam, or maybe an innocent mistake. If it proves true, this could be a serious game changer. But I remain dubious of its claims.
It is possible to wirelessly transmit information simply by opening and closing a switch that connects a resistor to an antenna. No need to send power to the antenna.
Our system, combined with techniques for harvesting energy from the environment, could lead to all manner of devices that transmit data, including tiny sensors and implanted medical devices, without needing batteries or other power sources.
The article, to its credit, does an excellent job explaining the technology and why it works and why it differs from other things out there.
I still remain skeptical simply because it seems too good to be true.
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Fascinating
I have no idea why it is this way and I assume Veritaseum has a video coming up to explain it, but it made me go "Huh!" in surprise. One commenter suggested it is for this reason, which makes sense to me:
Due to the angle of each section, when it hits the table, it pulls the other side which is attached through the cable to the next section. The angular energy is transfered each time one side hits the table.
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Data shows omicron booster kept seniors out of hospitals
Not that this will change anyone's mind which has been made up, but it is good to see ongoing study and evaluation regarding effectiveness.
In the first real-world test of vaccine boosters specially designed to protect against the omicron variant, Israeli researchers have found that people 65 and over who got an updated jab were 81% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who did not.
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Adam Savage looks at a "Perpetual Motion" device
Adam is so charismatic, I really enjoyed him talking about and theorizing about the machine's workings. I am certain there is a project for himself in the future to create this himself.
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Scientists exhumed Gregor Mendel to sequence DNA to mark his bicentennial
Exhuming Mendel from his grave in Brno and running genetic tests on his remains turned out to be a doable project – so long as they could get permission from the Augustinians. That's the religious order that Mendel belonged to, and with which he remains: The Augustinian tomb in the city's central cemetery was thought to contain Mendel's body.
Local religious leaders consulted with Augustinians in Prague, their bishop, and finally Augustinians in Rome. Eventually, permission was granted.
"No one at the time, including Mendel, I think, suspected that his work would be so groundbreaking in terms of being a major scientific theory," says Daniel Fairbanks, a plant geneticist and author of a book called Gregor Mendel: His Life and Legacy.
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Toilet spray captured by scientists
In 2006 there was a TV show called American Inventor, it ran for two seasons. In season one, the finals came down to a couple who were selling a filter toilet seat lid exactly focused on what this (and others) have been talking about lately.
The judges rejected the invention due to lack of rigorous scientific support in the study they did for the finals. To me, both of the inventions from the final had major flaws. The winning invention was a baby seat which put the baby in a partial orb such that in a car crash the idea was that the force of the impact would cause the baby to swing in the seat rather than have the forward force applied to them.
Other than this memory being stirred by the stories in magazines recently regarding the toilet droplets in the air, the show is wholly forgettable.
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NatGeo's 22 discoveries of 2022
From archaeological discoveries to history and biology, lots of interesting moments from the year. There are a few which I'm like 'eh' for including and they just felt the need to hit the '22' number, but also some really cool things to be reminded about and also to learn about for the first time.
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"DOE National Laboratory Makes History by Achieving Fusion Ignition"
Extremely exciting. It could be the first step to finally seeing fusion take hold as a source of power.
A great explanation of what happened:
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