1 Percent Of Swedes Commit 63% Of Violent Crimes
You've heard about the most wealthy 1%. But what about the most violent 1%? Only a very small fraction of the Swedish population commit all the violent crimes. What matters to me: Can they be identified in advance? One percent of the population is responsible for 63 percent of violent crime convictions Imagine some of these people could be identified in advance with high accuracy. Would you favor sending them into exile to a territory made up of only dangerous people? Or of a gene therapy could make their minds much less prone to violence would you favor their getting a dose of gene therapy to make them less angry and less...
Source: FuturePundit - December 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Gene Therapy Slows Advanced Heart Disease
Gene therapies will some day fix what ails us. That day is getting closer as a gene therapy that introduces a calcium pump enzyme reduces the worsening of advanced heart disease. Researchers from the Cardiovascular Research Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reported the long-term benefits of a single dose of their gene therapy AAV1/SERCA2a in advanced heart failure patients on Nov. 19 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2013. The new long-term follow-up results from their initial Calcium Up-Regulation by Percutaneous Administration of Gene Therapy In Cardiac Disease (CUPID 1) clinical tria...
Source: FuturePundit - December 5, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Healthy Obesity Is A Myth
Obese but with low blood pressure and good lipid profile? Healthy Obesity does not exist. That is from a meta study by Canadian researchers. Some researchers in Texas published similar findings a couple of weeks ago: The damage is being done. "Unfortunately, our findings suggest metabolically healthy obesity is not a benign condition," said the study's corresponding author, Carlos Lorenzo, MD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. "Regardless of their current metabolic health, people who are obese face an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes in the future." Rese...
Source: FuturePundit - December 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Your Job Susceptible To Automation?
Back once again to the question of how fast jobs will get destroyed by automation as computers gain the ability to do tasks which previously only brains could do. A couple of Oxford academics think in the next 20 years machine learning and mobile robotics could even cut into a lot of jobs, including previously safe service jobs. Certain job fields were cited as being at especially high risk for getting automated, including transportation, logistics, office and administration support and jobs in the service industry. Check out this document for clues about whether your job is at risk. The Future Of Employment: How Susceptib...
Source: FuturePundit - December 1, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
DNA Editing Biotech Start-Up
Using a method called CRISPR/Cas a start-up called Editas is harnessing anti-viral proteins from bacteria to edit DNA. Read the whole thing. A new startup, backed with $43 million in venture investments, aims to develop treatments that could cure inherited diseases with a one-time fix based on a new method of genome editing. This is a big deal. As we learn more about the functional significance of more genetic variants we will be able to find lots of individual genetic variants we have that are slightly harmful (genetic load). We will be able to make better cell therapies and grow better replacement organs by taking some c...
Source: FuturePundit - December 1, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Needed Advice For eBook Authors: Check Spelling And Grammar
When I cruise around the complaints in reviews of Amazon Kindle ebooks (books which have no physical book equivalent) the most amazing recurring complaint is bad spelling. Why amazing? It is such an easily avoidable problem. Spell checkers are ubiquitous. The Mozilla Seamonkey browser I'm typing this post in is complaining to me with jagged red underlines as I make spelling mistakes. Granted I do not always notice those red lines when trying to finish up a post so I can go to sleep. But I'm not writing a book and not trying to charge for what I'm doing. But book authors do hope to get people to spend money and then recomme...
Source: FuturePundit - November 29, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Proposed Largest Ship For Residents: 1 Mile Long, $10 Billion
Freedom Ship International proposes to build a mile long ship that will have housing for 50,000 permanent residents. If built the claim is that it would circle the world once a year. What is unclear to me: why would 50,000 people want to circle the world once a year on a ship? What occupations would they have that would make such a lifestyle make economic sense? If the residents did not need to work the question remains: Why circle the globe one a year in a ship, however large? The idea of offshore communities has come to be known as seasteading. The allure for libertarians: avoid taxes, regulations, and visa restrictions....
Source: FuturePundit - November 28, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Imagine Orbiting Light Shields To Cool Venus
Some climate scientists believe that when the sun was less bright Venus had an atmosphere more like Earth. Then Sol's light output went up 30%. Deflecting 30% of the Sun's light from Venus would require massive orbiting sheets of metal (aluminum?). Could transhumans 100 years from now pull off such a feat? Cooling Venus seems more appealing than trying to make Mars hospitable. Mars lacks an atmosphere and is too distant from the Sun.... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - November 26, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
FDA Moves To Shut Down 23andme Genetic Testing Service
The US Food and Drug Administration has told 23andme to stop selling personal genetic testing kits directly to consumers. Alex Tabarrok, an economist who has done work in medical policy, takes up the issue in an excellent post hitting many relevant notes. At the same time that the NSA is secretly and illegally obtaining information about Americans the FDA is making it illegal for Americans to obtain information about themselves. Knowledge about ourselves is dangerous. The FDA fears we might make bad medical decisions with this knowledge. Yes, sure. But America is (or at least is supposed to be) a free society. That is one ...
Source: FuturePundit - November 26, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
COX2 Inhibitor Pain Pills Prevent Marijuana Memory Loss
Okay stoners, try to remember this: Ibuprofen and other COX-2 inhibitors will probably improve your memory formation ability if you get stoned a lot. The main active ingredient in marijuana is Δ 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), and drugs based on this compound have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy patients. But these drugs have not been approved for a wider range of conditions, in part because of Δ9-THC-induced side effects. Moreover, there are no effective FDA-approved treatments for these side effects because, until now, little was known about the mol...
Source: FuturePundit - November 24, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Amazon Deforestation Seen Causing Western USA Drought
Another reason to save the Amazon. In research meant to highlight how the destruction of the Amazon rainforest could affect climate elsewhere, Princeton University-led researchers report that the total deforestation of the Amazon may significantly reduce rain and snowfall in the western United States, resulting in water and food shortages, and a greater risk of forest fires. Dry winters. The researchers report in the Journal of Climate that an Amazon stripped bare could mean 20 percent less rain for the coastal Northwest and a 50 percent reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water for cities and farm...
Source: FuturePundit - November 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Corn For Ethanol Speeds Topsoil Erosion
Read this whole article. We should not erode away our topsoil for ethanol from corn. As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found. Causes bigger dead zones in ocean areas near river outlets too. Americans have a view of the United States of being not only self sufficient in food but also a big crop exporting nation. But the United States is down to only 15% of domestic corn now getting exported. Throw in some population growth and more soil erosion and we'll shift to a food im...
Source: FuturePundit - November 12, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
People Lie More In Afternoon Than Morning?
If you want to get the truth out of someone do not wait until the afternoon. The researchers call this the "morning morality effect." Our ability to exhibit self-control to avoid cheating or lying is significantly reduced over the course of a day, making us more likely to be dishonest in the afternoon than in the morning, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "As ethics researchers, we had been running experiments examining various unethical behaviors, such as lying, stealing, and cheating," researchers Maryam Kouchaki of Harvard University and Isa...
Source: FuturePundit - November 9, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Battery Packs As Car Structural Parts
Imagine your car trunk lid as a battery pack. The same sort of thinking applies to solar panels. Check out solar photovoltaic roof shingles.... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - November 5, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
Less Rain From Earth Cooling Geoengineering?
Sulfates released into the atmosphere to cool the planet would reduce water evaporation and therefore reduce rain. The article gets into Massive satellite arrays to reduce insolation could avoid this problem. Their orientation could be changed in a 24 hour cycle so as to let thru more light when the light will strike water and less light when the light will strike land. They could even most reduce light over deserts so the deserts wouldn't dry out as much. This process could even be tuned to let in more light on areas of the ocean from which evaporated water is most likely to precipitate on land. So, for example, let in mo...
Source: FuturePundit - November 3, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs
