‘Hardest OCD decision of my life.’
- A new theory about why Egypt stopped building pyramids.
- Have humans been abducted by extraterrestrials? A prestigious Harvard psychiatrist, John Edward Mack, thought so. His sudden death leaves behind many mysteries.
- Man and Wunderkammern: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert Ripley.
- In an excerpt adapted from his new book, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley, author Neal Thompson retraces the brilliant and belief-beggaring career of a man whose name lives on in American culture as a symbol of wit and wonder.
- The inscrutable proof of
Japanese mathematicianInter-universal Geometer Shinichi Mochizuki. - Up to 40 percent of patients with chronic back pain could be cured with a 100-day course of antibiotics rather than surgery — a medical breakthrough ‘worthy of a Nobel prize’.
- New pill which makes alcoholics want to drink less gives addicts fresh hope.
- Frequent marijuana use tied to reduced bladder cancer risk.
- Factories around the world are churning out synthetic recreational drugs, which have no history of human use, on an industrail scale. You’d probably be better off eating rat meat.
- The future of a globally warmed world has been revealed in a remote meteorite crater in Siberia.
- Melting Arctic prompts race for routes, resources.
- Our algorithms can predict future disasters. Now what?
- Why so many people – including scientists – suddenly believe in an afterlife.
- The trailer for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity will turn your knuckles white.
Hat tip to @ClaudiaLives, and thanks to Rick and RPJ.
Quote of the Day:
In this issue of JAMA, Eappen et al1 reach the troublesome but not surprising conclusion that hospitals in the United States can profit handsomely from postsurgical complications, even if the hospitals could avoid them. The authors note that “Effective methods for reducing surgical complications have been identified. However, hospitals have been slow to implement them.”
Although the authors do not expressly say so, readers may infer that the associated financial losses may discourage hospitals from reducing avoidable postsurgical complications as vigorously as they could. This brings to mind Shaw’s famous lament in his play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’ that “[i]t is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity. That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity.”
Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, in his editorial on ‘Making Surgical Complications Pay’ (JAMA, April 17, 2013).
