Much like the vaginal microbiome differs among women and changes over time, the penis is home to a variety of bacteria that vary with a man’s age, sexual activities, and whether he is circumcised, among other things. And it’s not just the skin that envelops the male sexual organ that’s inhabited by microbes: researchers continue to identify bacteria that dwell within the urogenital tract, a site once considered sterile in the absence of infection.I would presume that men who partake of a particular activity without condoms might generally have a larger number of bacteria to be found there, for obvious reasons.
David Nelson, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University in Bloomington, was investigating Chlamydia infections when he and his colleagues found evidence to suggest that the sexually transmitted pathogens in the urogenital tract were obtaining metabolites from other microbes. “There was a signature in the chlamydial genome that suggested this organism might be interacting with other microorganisms,” said Nelson. “That’s what initially piqued our interest. And when we went in and started to look, we found that there were a lot more [microbes] than we would have anticipated being there.”
The researchers found that some men pass urine containing a variety of lactobacilli and streptococci species, whereas others have more anaerobes, like Prevotella and Fusobacterium. In terms of overall composition, “we see a lot of parallels to the gut,” said Nelson, noting that there doesn’t seem to be a standout formula for a “healthy” urogenital tract. Commensal microbes within the urethra could make a man more susceptible to infection by supporting colonization by pathogens like Chlamydia, whereas bacteria that consume the environment’s nutrients could help prevent it. “We just don’t know at this point,” said Nelson.
Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some
organisms went extinct and others evolved.
Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification played a part in the crisis—similar to today, as manmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate.And the oceans do not fix themselves quickly:
In a study published in the latest issue of Paleoceanography, the scientists estimate that surface ocean acidity increased by about 100 percent in a few thousand years or more, and stayed that way for the next 70,000 years. In this radically changed environment, some creatures died out while others adapted and evolved. The study is the first to use the chemical composition of fossils to reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the oceans due to high CO2.
"This could be the closest geological analog to modern ocean acidification," said study coauthor Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "As massive as it was, it still happened about 10 times more slowly than what we are doing today."
The study confirms that the acidified conditions lasted for 70,000 years or more,
consistent with previous model-based estimates.
"It didn't bounce back right away," said Timothy Bralower, a researcher at Penn State who was not involved in the study. "It took tens of thousands of years to recover."
It's interesting to note his complaint that the right wing arguments against worrying about equality involved throwing up everything and seeing if anything would stick.Brad DeLong links to the now extensive list of pieces debunking the FT’s attempted
debunking of Thomas Piketty, and pronounces himself puzzled:I still do not understand what Chris Giles of the Financial Times thinks he is doing here…OK, I don’t know what Giles thought he was doing — but I do know what he was actually doing, and it’s the same old same old. Ever since it became obvious that inequality was rising — way back in the 1980s — there has been a fairly substantial industry on the right of inequality denial. This denial didn’t rely on any one argument, nor did it involve consistent objections. Instead, it involved throwing many different arguments against the wall, hoping that something would stick. Inequality isn’t rising; it is rising, but it’s offset by social mobility; it’s cancelled by greater aid to the poor (which we’re trying to destroy, but never mind that); anyway, inequality is good. All these arguments have been made at the same time; none of them ever gets abandoned in the face of evidence — they just keep coming back.Look at my old article from 1992: every single bogus argument I identified there is still being made today. And we know perfectly well why: it’s all about defending the 1 percent from the threat of higher taxes and other actions that might limit top incomes.What’s new in the latest round is the venue. Traditionally, inequality denial has been carried out on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and like-minded venues. Seeing it expand
to the Financial Times is something new, and is a sign that the FT may be suffering from creeping Murdochization.
In truth, Beethoven thrived as a strong-willed but socially adept virtuoso pianist and composer for his first 25 years or so. As he developed hearing problems in his late 20s, however, and moved toward the realization that the malady was irreversible, he began to turn inward. As he descended into deafness in his 30s and 40s, he grew increasingly mercurial, irritable, and paranoid. At times, he appeared to be fully irrational. He wrote emotional confessionals and fought with members of his family. He flirted with numerous women but was unable to sustain a lasting relationship. He moved restlessly from dwelling to dwelling, changing residences in Vienna more than 30 times in 35 years. A smart dresser in his youth, he appeared increasingly unkempt and disheveled. In his final decade, he became so dissipated that he was once mistaken for a vagabond and thrown into jail. By any measure, Beethoven’s personal life was bizarre....
The Beethovenian paradox of “crisis and creativity”—to use the phrase coined by Solomon—has been well described in the past. But no one before Suchet has focused quite so intensely, and so eagerly, on the crisis part—and the composer’s melodramatic highs and lows: stopping the orchestra during an already overly long performance and insisting that the players start again from the beginning; refusing to bow before passing royalty when walking in the park with Goethe; receiving a distinguished visitor with an unemptied chamber pot under the piano. Such stories, well known to historians, are too good to make up.
Suchet also presents ongoing reports regarding Beethoven’s gastrointestinal issues, which run through the book like an idée fixe. These begin with a description of the stomach pains and diarrhea that Beethoven experienced before his first concert at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1794, followed by periodic updates on his irritable bowel syndrome, bad digestion, irregularity, acute constipation, colic, distended stomach, and more. While these disorders have been noted elsewhere, they are presented in unusual detail here, so much so that one begins to wonder whether the book might have been more aptly titled The Inner Beethoven. This may be more information about Beethoven’s bodily functions than we want to know.
Last year Mike Bloomberg's group issued a comprehensive study of mass shootings covering 2009 through 2013. Using a combination of law enforcement and media reports, the researchers were able to identify 43 mass shootings, using the FBI's definition of "mass shooting" as any incident in which at least four persons were killed by someone using a gun. Of these shootings, 40 percent arose out of domestic disputes, and at least 6 of the 17 shooters had been named in previous domestic assaults. In only 10 percent of the shootings was there evidence of prior contact between the perpetrator and a mental health professional, although friends and relatives of other shooters expressed some awareness that mental health issues might have precipitated the attacks.
Now let's get down to Colion's real nitty-gritty, the issue of multiple shootings in gun-free zones. The report states that, at maximum, one-third of these shootings took place in what might have been considered gun-free zones. But other than four school shootings, the Aurora movie theater and Fort Hood (the report was released before the Navy Yard shooting), it's not clear that any of the other 37 mass shootings took place in specific gun-free zones, although the researchers probably assumed that the two multiple shootings in Chicago and one in DC also took place in gun-free zones. And how many of the 43 multiple shootings ended with a "good guy" pulling out a gun? None. In every incident except one, the shooter either shot himself or was arrested by the police. The bystanders who subdued Jared Loughner after he shot Representative Giffords were unarmed. The recent Santa Barbara shootings took place in off-campus locations where anyone was legally able to carry a gun.
Both models found that summers in the future would be drier overall.
However, when it came to intense downpours, defined as more than 28mm per hour, the higher resolution model saw a significant increase.
Boudreaux argued in October 2009 that insider trading “is impossible to police and helpful to markets and "investors....Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest—in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities.
In a January 2013 article for the Wall Street Journal, Boudreaux and Mark Perry argued that the “progressive trope ... that America's middle class has stagnated economically since the 1970s” is “spectacularly wrong"".
I’m a third of the way through Piketty’s book and so far he hasn’t made a very good case at all – lots of graphs and correlations, but no reason to suppose that any particular level of inequality brings good or bad results. Perhaps he brings this together in the next two-thirds, but at this stage I’m not too worried if we have the same level of inequality as we had in the 20s.I responded in the thread:
You want an economist to tell you precisely when a certain level of inequality becomes problematic?And I made that comment before reading this blog entry in The Economist which basically said the same thing, although I can't find the link right now.
I would have thought that the matter is a question answered by an application of morality and common sense, not by a graph.
Magnetic stimulation is providing relief from severe depression after
only three treatments, providing an alternative to electroconvulsive
therapy for seriously ill patients.
The finding by researchers at The Alfred hospital means the
treatment can now be offered to patients needing rapidly effective
treatment, for example those who are suicidal or refusing to eat or
drink.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation involves applying a strong
magnetic field to particular areas of the brain, causing neurons to fire
and strengthening connections with other areas of the brain.
Records from the 14th and 15th century York archives show that prostitutes were called in by the court to examine the man and to physically test him. The prostitutes would then report back to the court. There are rather graphic testimonies in the records.Here's a bit more detail on this bit of medieval history from a book, Regional Variations in Matrimonial Law and Custom in Europe, 1150-1600 :
James began by joking about why he’d made the effort to travel from Cambridge where he’s usually confined due to the need for thrice-weekly hospital visits.
“As with every other red-blooded Australian male I’m doing it to impress Tony Abbott’s daughters,’’ he told a sold-out crowd of 400 fans.
Italian Lemon-Garlic MarinadeMix together zests and juices of 1 lemon and 1 orange, 4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced, 1 coarsely chopped onion, several sprigs each of fresh rosemary and fresh thyme or 2 teaspoons of each herb dried, a pinch of red pepper flakes, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper and 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil.Place marinade in a large Ziploc bag with 1 spatchcocked chicken. Place bag on a plate and refrigerate at least 24 hours and up to 48, turning bag over occasionally.
The supermassive black hole candidates at the center of every normal galaxy might be wormholes created in the early Universe and connecting either two differentA good idea for science fiction, too.
regions of our Universe or two different universes in a Multiverse model. Indeed, the origin of these supermassive objects is not well understood, topological non-trivial structures like wormholes are allowed both in general relativity and in alternative theories of gravity, and current observations cannot rule out such a possibility.
We show that it is possible to use a massless field in the vacuum to
communicate in such a way that the signal travels slower than the speed of
light and such that no energy is transmitted from the sender to the receiver.
Instead, the receiver has to supply a signal-dependent amount of work to switch
his detector on and off. This type of signalling is related to Casimir-like
interactions and it is made possible by dimension ---and curvature--- dependent
subtleties of Huygens' principle.
And no doubt the revolting students will continue to revolt for their selfish reasons.Her charming tendency to throw in bitchiness continues unabated, then.*
In the early noughties, the Howard government allowed unis to raise their fees by 25 per cent. One small uni decided not to do so. It found its applications from new students actually fell. So the following year it put its fees up like all the others and its applications recovered.
In Britain, the Cameron government allowed unis to raise the £3000 annual fee they charged local students up to a limit represented by the £9000 fee charged to foreign students. Almost all of them took the opportunity to raise their fees to the maximum allowed.
Applications dropped by 9 per cent in the first year, but rose in subsequent years.
On the basis of all this, my guess is the sandstone unis will raise their fees a long way and the less reputed unis won't be far behind them.
Their notion of competition will be to make sure no one imagines a lesser fee than the big boys is a sign of their lesser quality.
The important difference between an absolute cut and a reduction in a predicted future increase was often lost on Tony Abbott in opposition.And Michelle Grattan is also pretty on the mark in her column today too:
He would, for example, warn of catastrophic job “losses” due to the carbon tax, using as evidence modelling that in fact showed employment would continue to grow strongly, but slightly less strongly than had the carbon price not been there.
He accused the former government of “cutting” the health budget when it had in fact pared back future projected increases in the health budget because of some statistical thing that no one could ever really understand.
But now, in government, he’s right on to the difference. It’s like a miracle, or something. And it’s Labor who are suddenly having trouble with the absolute cut versus lower future increase thing.
So when Bill Shorten accuses him of “cutting” or “ripping off” pensions, Abbott responds, quite correctly, that pensions will continue to increase every six months, imploring Labor to just have the decency to tell the truth.
Tony Abbott seems to have fallen into the same trap as Paul Keating in 1993. Keating refused to accept that John Hewson had handed him that win; he insisted on believing it was an endorsement of him and his philosophy.
Like Keating, Abbott triumphed on negatives. But now he and his colleagues think they have a mandate to transform dramatically the society and its culture, going far beyond what people expected.
There’s little sign, however, that the government has the political skills to match its ambition, or that the community shares its often uncompromising, black-and-white view of the world.The point is, as I'm sure many have already suggested, people voted out a chronically dysfunctional Labor Party, rather than voting with any great enthusiasm for Tony Abbott personally. And you can hardly argue that there was any evidence that they were ready for a great change in governmental philosophy when Abbott slid in by promising to follow most key Labor policies.
