The incredible tale of irresponsible chocolate milk research at the University of Maryland. Academic press offices are known to overhype their own research. But the University of Maryland recently took this to appalling new heights — trumpeting an incredibly shoddy study on chocolate milk and concussions that happened to benefit a corporate partner. It's a cautionary tale of just how badly science can go awry as universities increasingly partner with corporations to conduct research. The story started when the University of Maryland issued a press release about a new study on the effects of a single brand of chocolate milk on cognitive and motor skill tests in high school athletes. The scientists had found that drinking the milk appeared to improve the kids' test scores and reduce concussion-related symptoms.
The scientists only looked at a Fifth Quarter Fresh, which its maker claims comes from "super, natural cows" The first problem here is that the research itself is breathtakingly suspect. The Fifth Quarter Fresh website. This is incredibly irresponsible. Everyone Uses Singular 'They,' Whether They Realize It Or Not. CSA Images/Vetta/Getty Images Talk about belated recognition.
At its meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 7, the American Dialect Society voted to make the 600-year-old pronoun "they" their word of the year for 2015. Or more precisely, a particular use of that pronoun that grammarians call the singular "they. " This is the "they" that doesn't care whether it's referring to a male or female. As ordinary as it is, that use of "they" has always been a bit disreputable — you might say it, but you wouldn't want to write it down.
A few months ago, the Washington Post style guide accepted it. This use of "they" has been around for a long time. That rule wasn't really discredited until the 1970s, when the second-wave feminists made the generic masculine the paradigm of sexism in language. But once the generic masculine fell out of favor, what were we going to replace it with? But singular "they" still has its critics, and they can get pretty lofty about it. Darth Vectivus - Wookieepedia. "Strength that is never touched by ruthlessness is touchingly irresponsible. " ―Darth Vectivus[src] Darth Vectivus, in the life he enjoyed prior to becoming a Sith, was a male Human who served as the director of the Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B asteroid mining colony in the MZX32905 star system near the planet Bimmiel.
A shrewd and principled businessman, he shut down the operation when the reservoir of dark side energy over which the colony was situated began to negatively influence his employees. Because of his own Force sensitivity, he began to study and experiment with the mysterious anomaly himself, where he developed a Force technique which involved the creation of dark side–empowered phantoms. He eventually did away with the entire mining operation and left the habitat for a time in search of the Sith. His quest was ultimately fruitful, and upon completion of his apprenticeship, he ascended to mastery as Darth Vectivus, Dark Lord of the Sith. Biography Edit Early life Edit ―Lumiya[src] Nest thermostat bug leaves owners without heating. Marco Rubio Changes Course During Thursday Night's Republican Debate. It was a debate with several ugly moments.
Chris Christie called President Obama a “petulant child” and vowed to “kick” his “rear end out of the White House come this fall,” evidently forgetting that the man he once hugged is leaving at the end of this year anyway. Ben Carson said “secular progressives” don’t know “there is such a thing as right and wrong.” Ted Cruz called Obama a “child” too. But the ugliest moments belonged to Marco Rubio. The junior senator from Florida sold his soul in North Charleston, South Carolina, for a shot at winning over the supporters of Donald Trump. It began early in the night when Rubio said, “Barack Obama does not believe that America is a great global power.
If he had, Rubio would have quoted him. Later in the evening, the moderators asked about Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. This is the Florida senator’s new strategy. But the people Rubio needs to win don’t only dislike undocumented immigration. London breaches air pollution limit for the whole of 2016 in just over seven days | UK Politics | News.
London breached its own legal limit on air pollution for the whole of 2016 in just over seven days, according to worrying new figures. Under EU rules the capital is allowed to exceed the maximum safe levels of nitrous oxide for 18 hours a year – an allocation it had burned through by the peak of the morning rush hour on Friday 8 January.
Putney High Street and Knightsbridge were the first two areas to report breaches. Last year Oxford Street reported a breach within two days of the new year beginning. Last year the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants warned the Government that as many as 60,000 early deaths a year are caused by air pollution across the UK. The number, higher than previously thought, was calculated by including the effects of Nitrous Oxide in the death toll for the first time. Despite mounting evidence of their dangers, motor vehicles are still permitted in city centres – including in central London. Indyplus gallery: High air pollution levels across the UK.
How Donald Trump Lost—and Won. Donald Trump lost, and won, the latest Republican presidential debate. The nature of his loss was subtle; the nature of his victory was scary. Let’s talk about the loss first. The centerpiece of the debate was his battle with Ted Cruz, in which I suspect Trump was beaten. Cruz simply pulverized him on the nonsense that The Donald has been peddling about Cruz’s Canadian birth. Well, almost anything. After all, the big news of the day was that Cruz’s wife Heidi has been an executive at Goldman, Sachs—Manhattan’s big bad bank.
As for Trump’s victory, it was more zeitgeisty. Read More: Are the Syrian Refugees All ‘Young, Strong Men’? Success in these debates is now measured by how Trump-like, or how boorish, the candidates can be. The three least Trumpitudinous candidates on the stage—Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Ben Carson—were judged to have been losers of the debate. There may be a visceral satisfaction to the biff-and-pow of the Republican debates, but it is not the way to the White House. Your Android phone is too damn nosy. Where are you right now? Can I see a list of everyone you know? Can I look through your photos? Those are impertinent questions from any source, including your smartphone. So it's no surprise that people who use Google's Android smartphone software wish they could say "no" more often. That's according to a study presented Thursday at a Federal Trade Commission privacy conference in Washington, DC. There's a catch, though, said study co-author Serge Egelman.
The problem underscores how exhausting it is for us to manage our privacy, let alone figure out what we want our phones to do. Remember Windows Vista? On Android phones, people have faced an all-or-nothing approach. So if you want your flashlight app to access your camera so it can control the LED flash but not let it access your contacts, you might be able to do something about it when you eventually get Marshmallow.
That point was echoed by researchers throughout the day. Google did not respond to a request for comment. Can Bitcoin Save Argentina's Flailing Economy? Does the South American country's chaotic economy make it fertile ground for radical financial experiments? In the village of El Chaltén in Argentine Patagonia, a small absurdist ritual takes place each day. Every morning, at the deli counter of the general store, its owner Felipe cuts two or three large salamis into dozens of smaller sections. He wraps each one in clingfilm, carefully weighs it, and attaches a printed-out price sticker accordingly.
Each new section of salami has a different price, correct to two decimal places. In El Chaltén, fresh food arrives once a month. In between times, it lies in boxes on the shelves of the two small grocery stores and slowly rots. In Argentina, there is no loose change. In recent years Argentina has been hit by crisis after crisis. The lack of coin currency is just one symptom of the chaotic nature of Argentina's economy. For ordinary Argentinians and visitors alike, the most noticeable effect has been the booming black market. Reefer madness debunked as major UK study finds marijuana does not reduce IQ in teens. A large study conducted in the United Kingdom failed to find evidence of a robust link between cannabis use and lowered intelligence among teenagers.
The study, published online January 6 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, found a statistical association between cannabis use and decreased intellectual performance. However, this association vanished when the researchers took other variables into account. “The notion that cannabis use itself is causally related to lower IQ and poorer educational performance was not supported in this large teenage sample,” wrote Claire Mokrysz of the University College London and her colleagues. The findings are based on 2,235 teenagers who participated in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a long-term study following children born in the Bristol area in 1991 and 1992.
The children had their IQ tested at the age of 8, and again at the age of 15. The teenage cannabis users had lower IQ scores and worse educational performance. Chipotle Will Close Restaurants Nationwide On Feb. 8 For Employee Meeting. What Happened After Zappos Got Rid of Workplace Hierarchy. The online shoe retailer Zappos has always stood out for its unconventional human-resources philosophy. For nearly a decade the company has been making something it calls “The Offer” to new hires—an opportunity to take a $2,000 stipend instead of starting the job. The company prides itself on the attentiveness of its customer service and the devotion of its workers, and “The Offer” is an attempt to weed out those who aren’t thrilled about the work ahead.
But now, one of the company’s unusual approaches has led to what’s being called a Zappos exodus, as 18 percent of the company's staff have taken buyouts in the last 10 months. That takes Zappos’ turnover rate for 2015 to 30 percent, which is 10 percentage points above their typical annual attrition rate. Why are so many employees leaving?
But there was a result of holacracy that the company didn’t anticipate (but probably should have): confusion. Hsieh, for his part, seems to understand that holacracy isn’t for everyone. Businessinsider. Dog people have had their day in the sun with the celebrations of the brave service of military working dogs across the web, including this site. But what about cat people? Where are the stories for them? No need to take your frustrations out on the scratching post. Here are the tales of 7 felines who have proved their mettle under fire: 1. Acoustic Kitty is not the name of the cat itself, but the name of a $20 million CIA project intended to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet Embassies. 2.
Not just present at the most pivotal battle of World War II’s Eastern Front, Mourka was an active participant. 3. Felicette, sometimes mistakenly referred to as Felix, was featured on French postage stamps. In October 1963, the year after the U.S. put John Glenn into orbit around the Earth, the French medical research center CERMA launched a black and white female cat 97 miles from Earth’s surface, not quite reaching orbit. 4. Mrs. 5. “Unsinkable Sam” after the war. 6. 7. (photo: Wikimedia Commons) F.lux creators call Apple out for releasing Night Shift. When Apple debuted the beta version of iOS 9.3 this week, it showed off a new feature called Night Shift, which reduces the blue light being emitted from your phone at night.
It works by analyzing your clock and geolocation to see if you’re in bed and should help you sleep better, given that the light from smart devices used before bed is thought to make it more difficult to nod off. However, this is not a new feature or an Apple-original. F.lux first became available on iOS in 2015, having already found success among laptop and desktop users and did exactly what Apple’s Night Shift will do now.
But the company banned it almost immediately after it appeared. According to F.lux, Apple’s reason was that the app was in violation of its Developer Program Agreement. Whatever Apple’s reasoning, with almost 200,000 visits to the app’s page in less than 24 hours, there was a clear indication it was something iOS users really wanted. ➤ Response to Apple’s announcement [F.lux] The Akrasia Effect: Why We Make Plans but Don't Follow Through. 5 Ways Elite-College Admissions Squeeze Out Poor Kids : NPR Ed. Kids growing up poor in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City have no access to several Ivy League recruited sports: sailing, crew, rugby, hockey and diving.
LA Johnson/NPR hide caption toggle caption LA Johnson/NPR Kids growing up poor in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City have no access to several Ivy League recruited sports: sailing, crew, rugby, hockey and diving. LA Johnson/NPR Take two 18-year-olds with equally stellar academic abilities. Often, when the media report on this phenomenon, known as undermatching, the focus is on the motivations of the students. But a new report from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation takes a more pointed look at the other side of the table: the admissions policies of selective and elite colleges.
"Although neutral on its face," the report concludes, "the admissions process as it is implemented is actually skewed dramatically against the poor. " Among the examples cited in the report are: Legacy preferences. 5. They don't give hard numbers. Hillary Clinton doesn't trust you. Hillary Clinton's campaign has spent the past few days indulging its worst instincts. It blundered into a dumb attack on Bernie Sanders, but rather than back down it raised the stakes.
The result has been a reminder, to liberals, of what they like about Sanders and mistrust about Clinton. But it's also been a missed opportunity for Clinton to make the case to Democratic primary voters that she should have been making all along. The subject was Sanders's support for a single-payer health care system. The policy puts Clinton in a bind: It's popular with liberals but dangerous in a general election. In 1994, Clinton spearheaded a doomed overhaul of the health care system. The Clinton plan wasn't single-payer, but it was a lot closer than what we have now.
Clinton's view is that anyone who actually cares about insuring the uninsured needs to grapple with the power of the status quo — and Sanders hasn't come close. Obamacare, meanwhile, rests on shaky ground. "No. Maddow tried again. The Biggest Body Language Mistakes You Can Make In a Job Interview. New York Wants to Force Vendors to Decrypt Users' Phones | On the Wire. A bill that is making its way through the New York state assembly would require that smartphone manufacturers build mechanisms into the devices that would allow the companies to decrypt or unlock them on demand from law enforcement.
The New York bill is the latest entry in a long-running debate between privacy advocates and security experts on one side and law enforcement agencies and many politicians on the other. The revelations of the last few years about widespread government surveillance, especially that involving cell phones and email systems, has spurred device manufacturers to increase the use of encryption. New Apple iPhones now are encrypted by default, as are some Android devices. The FBI, Justice Department and other agencies have been pushing back against this trend, talking with manufacturers about potential ways around default or user-enabled encryption. “Encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place. Image from Flickr stream of Andrew Mager. The National Eater 38: Where to Eat in 2016. 25 Unearthly Places You Won't Believe Actually Exist.
Cars and the Future. Open Salaries: the Good, the Bad and the Awkward. Average Age Of First-Time Moms Keeps Climbing In The U.S. Uk.businessinsider. I went to a Trump rally in my hijab. His supporters aren't just racist caricatures | Kaddie Abdul | Opinion. New Remote Desktop client could almost make me a Continuum believer. Secrets of the MIT Poker Course. Iran frees U.S. sailors swiftly as diplomacy smoothes waters. Chuck Hagel Reveals Obama's Negligence in Syria. The Gray Scale. Rumors are flying that scientists detected gravity waves. Barack Obama's Final State of the Union Address.
Marco Rubio: We need to add to U.S. surveillance programs. Dogs Are Not People. The Psychiatrists Prescribing LSD And Ecstasy. Iran fills Arak nuclear reactor core with concrete. The First Mile Always Sucks. Let It Go. Uk.businessinsider. Google Opens Virtual Reality Division, Apps Move to Enterprise Unit. Long Guarded And Reserved, Saudi Arabia Goes Big And Bold : Parallels. EU migrant crisis: Germany sends migrants back to Austria. Inside the vault: A rare glimpse of NASA’s otherworldly treasures. Putin: At best, Russian economy is No. 5 in the world. The Economist. Detect and Disable an Airbnb's Hidden Wi-Fi Cameras With This Script. 2016 Pritzker Prize Goes To Chilean Architect Alejandro Aravena.
What Twitter and Yahoo should do next. Big Budget Items. Tech companies are trying to hasten the spread of the digital revolution, but a new study suggests it could do more harm than good. The Problem With Journalism Is You Need an Audience. You Might Not Have to Rinse Your Recyclables After All. Why You Can’t Get That Song Out of Your Head. Self-Filling Water Bottle Converts Humid Air into Drinkable H2O. The Fight for Mosul. The Grand Strategy of Rising Superpower Management. 'Hidden History' Of Koch Brothers Traces Their Childhood And Political Rise. Health | Brain inflammation link to autism. Doctor Disruption » Principles of Design #45 – Cathedral Effect. Tesla defends selling cars directly to the customer at FTC panel. Magazine | Why do we need economic growth? This paragraph on a black kindergartner's view of the world is absolutely crushing.
Balance of Asia-Pacific military power shifting against U.S.: report. Iran's Khamenei welcomes sanctions lift, warns of U.S. 'deceit' It’s time to start taking Bernie Sanders seriously. Why California Is Such a Talent Magnet. Can A Little Calculus Make A Total Novice Into A Gambling Pro? Sumner Redstone at DuckDuckGo. As America shifts toward natural gas for energy, decaying pipelines and storage facilities are at risk of leaks and explosions. Oil price falls below $28 a barrel, or less than the cost of an actual barrel | Business News | News. What The People Who Read Your College Application Really Think : NPR Ed. Trick a Guard Box-Protected Thermostat Into Warming Up the Office. Census Reveals Just How Many Bugs Share The American Home.
Read This Before the Next Time You Go to the Casino. Researchers Project Digital People into Chairs in Augmented Reality Study. Homeless people are not cockroaches or vermin – they are human and have rights | Housing Network. How Elon Musk thrives with a 100 hour work week. State repression in Egypt worst in decades, says activist. On the road: Centuries of Roma history. The Wire Hanger's Flexible Symbolism.