Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, July 03, 2012.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: The Star-Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Glaxo Settlement Pulls Back Curtain On Drug Marketing
By Scott Hensley
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As part of a landmark $3 billion settlement of health fraud charges by GlaxoSmithKline, the government released a slew of documents that serve as a one-stop guide to alleged sales practices that ran rampant for years.
. . .
Take, for instance, Glaxo's alleged hiring of celebrity doctor Drew Pinsky through a PR firm to talk up the unproven use of the antidepressant Wellbutrin SR as a remedy for sexual dysfunction. The government's complaint says the company indirectly paid him $275,000 in 1999 for that work, some of which is described in this memo and a transcript from a radio interview that year.
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And later in the complaint, the government alleges that Glaxo paid kickbacks in the form of gifts, consulting and speaking fees, entertainment and a whole lot more. One exhibit to the complaint explains how drug reps in New England could get tickets to sporting events for meetings with doctors.
Some of these alleged activities wouldn't pass muster with the drug industry's voluntary code for company's dealings with doctors. But the Glaxo settlement and other similar ones agreed to by large drugmakers suggest marketing excesses were pervasive.
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Feds Announce Record Fine for Michigan Oil Spill
By Kate Sheppard
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Just ahead of the two-year anniversary of the giant oil spill in Michigan, the federal government has handed down a $3.7 million fine and a notice of 24 violations to the Canadian company responsible for the pipeline.
The July 2010 incident dumped upwards of 20,000 barrels of diluted bitumen—a heavy form of petroleum—into the Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. The Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said it is the largest fine the office has ever assessed. The company was also cited for failing to address corrosion in the pipeline, and for not responding fast enough to the spill.
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At $3.7 million, federal pipeline regulators are proposing the largest fine in the agency’s history for noncompliance with minimum safety standards – and yet it’s a tiny fraction of what compliance will cost Enbridge. Nearly a year after the Kalamazoo River spill, Enbridge announced that it would finally replace 75 miles of corroded pipeline on its Line 6B pipeline at an expected to cost $286 million. In this context, the PHMSA fine hardly amounts to a slap on the wrist, amounting to a small cost of doing business than a meaningful incentive to make the business decision that protects the public and environment.
Of course, the cost of the Kalamazoo spill, at over $750 million, far exceeds both PHMSA’s paltry fining authority as well as the cost of replacing corroded pipe and complying with regulations. However, remember that the Kalamazoo River tar sands spill was an order of magnitude greater than the worst case spill scenario anticipated by Enbridge. Overly optimistic risk assessments seem to permeate the pipeline industry. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found overly optimistic risk assessments to be one of the causes of the tragic, and preventable, San Bruno explosion which killed eight people.
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American Accelerator's Last Hurrah: 99.8% Certainty God Particle is Found
By Jason Mick
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. . .
Tomorrow, while America celebrates July 4, mankind worldwide may celebrate a separate momentous event -- the discovery of the legendary Higgs boson.
. . .
The data comes courtesy of Tevatron, a smaller accelerator 4 miles in circumference. Located on the FermiLab grounds just east of Batavia, Ill., Tevatron was long the world's most powerful accelerator. Its tests actually wrapped up last year, before the accelerator was permanently shut down, after the U.S. decided being a world leader in scientific research was no longer among its spending priorities.
But Tevatron's last hurrah has offered a tantalize tease of what lies ahead with the LHC. Taking 10 years worth of data involving approximately 500 trillion particle collisions, the FermiLab teams offered up signs of elusive particle.
. . .
Nobel Prize laureate Leon Lederman popularized the hunt for the Higgs boson in his book "The God Particle", which chronicled his work hunting for the particle at FermiLab. Professor Lederman originally intended the title to be "The Goddamn Particle" -- an expression of his frustration at the difficult observing it. The title was subsequently shortened and the phrase "God particle" stuck as a colloquialism for the complex theoretical particle.
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Was the Tevatron's blip, unlikely as it may be, a mere stastical fluctuation, or was it the first observation of the God particle? The data from the LHC should offer evidence towards which possibility is true.
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Toshiba fined $87m for LCD price fixing in the US
By (BBC)
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Japanese electronics maker Toshiba has been fined $87m (£55m) for conspiring to fix prices of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in the US.
It has been accused of holding meetings with other LCD makers in a bid to keep prices of the panels at a high level.
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LCD panels are used in a variety of products, ranging from flat screen TVs to personal computers and laptops.
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Last year, seven LCD makers, including South Korea's Samsung, paid more than $500m for partial refunds to retail consumers who bought goods containing the LCD panels made by them in a bid to settle price-fixing claims.
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Toshiba was the only firm that decided to contest the claims.
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International |
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India: Surplus of grain is going to waste
By Samuel Blackstone
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Recent advances in agricultural technology have helped increase India's grain production through developments including high-yield seeds for the past five years, Reuters reports. With all this excess food, it would appear that a solution to the Indian hunger problem has been found.
But there's a big problem — India's storage facilities have not kept up with the grain's pace of development. As a result, grain surpluses are now being stored outside, where the chances of rotting drastically increase.
This inefficient system has deadly consequences. Instead of the grain filling the bellies of hungry Indians, it is feeding rodents and insects, growing fungus, and decomposing. Just this year, officials estimate that 6 million tons of India's grain worth $1.5 billion could become inedible, according to Reuters. This is while 43 percent of children under 5 are underweight, according to UNICEF. Reuters reports that 3,000 children die every day from illnesses related to malnutrition.
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Pakistan to reopen supply lines to Nato Afghan forces
By (BBC)
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Pakistan will reopen crucial supply routes to Nato-led forces in Afghanistan after the US apologised for killing 24 of its soldiers in November, Washington and Islamabad have said.
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Mrs Clinton made the announcement in Washington after talks by phone with her Pakistani counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar.
"I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pakistani soldiers who lost their lives," she said in the statement.
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The BBC's Kim Ghattas says Washington had resisted saying sorry as there is deep anger among Americans about the death of US soldiers in Afghanistan from attacks by militant groups with alleged connections to Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.
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Nigeria signs $4.5bn oil refining deal with Vulcan
By (BBC)
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Nigeria has signed a preliminary $4.5bn (£2.9bn) deal with US-based Vulcan Petroleum to build six oil refineries.
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Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer but its refineries are only able to refine a fraction of this into fuel.
As a result, it is forced to import much of its fuel at great cost.
The memorandum of understanding with Vulcan marked "the beginning of changing our old paradigm of exporting just raw materials and exporting jobs to Western countries," said Nigeria's Trade and Investment Minister Olusegun Aganga.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Guns blamed for sparking some wildfires in West
By (AP via cbsnews.com)
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This year, officials believe target shooting or other firearms use have sparked at least 21 wildfires in Utah and nearly a dozen in Idaho. Shooting is also believed to have caused fires in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.
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Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Sports Shooting Council, said that perhaps 5 percent of the wildfires in the state have been caused by target shooters this year.
"I don't know how much of a problem it really is," he said.
Officials believe steel-jacketed bullets are the most likely culprits. One shot that hits a rock and throws off sparks can ignite surrounding vegetation and quickly spread. Popular exploding targets are also blamed for causing wildfires.
For weeks, state officials have said they were powerless to ban gun use because of Second Amendment rights, but legislative leaders say they found an obscure state law that empowers the state forester to act in an emergency.
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Fourth of July is deadliest day on roads; 10 percent of deaths are teens
By RICHARD SIMON
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Have a happy Fourth of July - but drive carefully. Independence Day is the deadliest day of the year on the road.
. . .
The warning comes on the heels of congressional approval of a transportation bill that would provide financial incentives to states that establish graduated licensing programs; such programs impose restrictions on teenagers' driving privileges.
Chris Mullen, director of technology research at State Farm, said that strong graduated licensing laws "gradually and systematically expose teens to more complex driving situations, ultimately reducing their crash risk. Studies show that crashes among teen drivers have decreased by up to 38 percent in states with strong graduated licensing systems."
. . .
On the Fourth of July holiday, schools are out, offices are closed and more people are on the road, an institute spokesman said. Further, a higher proportion of deaths are related to drinking and driving on July 4 than on a typical day, he added.
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US approves first over-the-counter HIV home-use test
By (BBC)
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A home HIV test is expected to go on sale in the US within months, after winning regulator approval.
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Government estimates suggest 1.2 million people in the US are HIV-positive, but 20% do not know they are.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said it hopes the over-the-counter test will reach people who might not otherwise get tested.
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It was 99% accurate for negative results - or identifying that someone does not carrying the virus.
Meanwhile, Dr Jonathan Mermin, director of the HIV unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said people who receive negative results should take the test again after three months, because it can take weeks before antibodies to HIV appear.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
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Hendrix was advertised to play the Woodstock Music Festival, along with many of the other biggest rock groups of the time. It was to take place on rented farmland in Upper State New York from August 15–18, 1969. Although Hendrix's music had been written for a power trio of guitar, bass, and drums, he wanted to expand his sound so he added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee (another old friend from his R&B days), and Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez to play congas. After drummer Mitch Mitchell arrived, this new lineup rehearsed for less than two weeks before the festival and according to Mitchell never really meshed. In addition, although Woodstock would become famous and mythologized through the documentary film of the same name, by the time of his performance, Hendrix had been up for three days, and his band was short on sleep as well, contributing a rawness to their filmed performance.
. . .
Hendrix and his band were introduced by the festival MC, Chip Monck, as "The Jimi Hendrix Experience", but once on stage Hendrix clarified saying, "We decided to change the whole thing around and call it 'Gypsy Sun and Rainbows'. For short, it's nothin but a 'Band of Gypsys'". He then launched into a two hour set, the longest of his career. . .
Hendrix's psychedelic rendition of the U.S. national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" occurred about 3/4 into their set (after which he morphed into "Purple Haze"). The song had actually been part of his set for a year and he had already performed it on at least three different occasions. During the number, Hendrix used feedback and sustain on his guitar to recreate the sound of wails and falling rockets. Although pundits quickly branded the song as a political manifesto against the Vietnam War, Hendrix himself never explained its meaning other than to say at a press conference three weeks later, "We're all Americans. . .it was like 'Go America!'. . .We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see". The song would become "part of the sixties Zeitgeist" as it was captured forever in the Woodstock film; Hendrix's image performing this number during the day wearing a blue-beaded white leather jacket with fringe and a red head scarf, has since been regarded as a defining moment of the 1960s.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Is it now possible to blame extreme weather on global warming?
By Leo Hickman
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This week, scientists have been queuing up, it seems, to explain how the wildfires in Colorado, the heatwave across the eastern seaboard, and the "super derecho" are all indicative of "what global warming looks like". Most pulled back, though, from directly blaming global warming for such weather events.
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Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences:
The link between extreme events which have occurred recently and the build-up of the greenhouse gases is best represented by the "loading the dice" analogy – as the world warms, the likelihood of occurrence (frequency), intensity, and/or geographic extent of many types of extreme events is increasing. The events are individual data points in a broader pattern, akin to pixels on a computer screen. You can't say much from any one pixel, but a picture emerges when you step back and look at the pattern. That said, for a few types of extreme events, particularly heat waves, it is sometimes possible to connect the pixel to the bigger picture more directly. The best case is the European heat wave of 2003. According to computer simulations of climate, the likelihood that such an event would occur was about doubled by the buildup of the greenhouse gases. A few other events have been examined using similar techniques, including the 2010 heat wave in Russia.
As for the willingness of scientists to make such statements: as the climate signal due to the ever-increasing greenhouse effect strengthens and emerges more and more from the noise in the system, and as statistical techniques for doing such "fingerprinting" studies as I mention above improves, scientists have become more confident in making such claims, which is to be expected.
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Michael F. Wehner, staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:
. . .
This risk of extreme weather, particularly very severe heat waves, has already changed significantly due to human induced global warming. For instance, the chances of the 2003 European summer heat wave, responsible for as many as 70000 additional deaths, at least doubled and likely increased by a factor of 4 to 10. The chances of the 2010 Russian and 2011 Texas events also undoubtedly increased. While these events could have occurred without the human changes to the climate, it is important to know that the amount of climate change that we have experienced so far is very small to what is projected to occur by the middle and end of this century. By 2100, today's most extreme weather events will seem relatively normal.
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We can’t solve our environmental problems without business
By Leslie Chang
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“If business isn’t developing solutions to our sustainability issues, they won’t be developed,” says Andy Hoffman. “If business is not part of the solution, there will be no solution.”
Hoffman is director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan. “The reality is that the most powerful institution in the world is business,” he says — and he’s optimistic that business has the capability to make a huge difference in helping to solve pressing environmental problems.
Hoffman is also interested in how culture and social institutions affect our views on environmental issues. In the U.S., he says, we’ve reached a scientific consensus on climate change, but we still lack a social consensus. In order to achieve a social consensus, Hoffman believes we need to shift discussions of climate change away from the political arena and frame the issue in other ways — for example, as an issue of social equity. In order to achieve this, we need to find credible spokespeople representing diverse interests within our society.
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Ban food waste from landfill for renewable energy, urges thinktank
By (Press Association)
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The government should ban all food leftovers from landfill by the end of the decade to boost technology which can turn it into energy, a study from thinktank CentreForum suggested on Tuesday.
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A ban on food waste going to landfill would force local authorities to collect leftovers separately from households and businesses, which would provide the supplies needed for anaerobic digestion.
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The market for "digestate", the leftover organic material from anaerobic digestion which can be used as fertiliser for crops, also needs to be developed.
The report's co-author Quentin Maxwell-Jackson said: "Anaerobic digestion technology has so many clear advantages over other waste treatment and energy generation options that it is very surprising it has not taken off in a big way yet in the UK."
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Mali's government vows to recover territory
By (Al Jazeera)
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Mali's embattled interim government has ramped up diplomatic efforts to save the north from rebel fighters who have destroyed World Heritage shrines in Timbuktu and have reportedly rigged another city with mines.
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In Timbuktu, where Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) have enforced sharia law for the past three months, the Islamist group has smashed seven tombs of ancient Muslim saints as well as the 'sacred door' to a 15th-century mosque.
The destruction has deeply upset many Malians and prompted outpourings of condemnation from abroad.
UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, called on Tuesday for an end to the "repugnant acts" of destruction and called for the creation of an emergency fund for securing the cultural treasures and sending a mission to assess the damage.
. . .
Fatou Bensouda, the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor, has warned that the destruction of religious and historical buildings could amount to a war crime and those responsible could face prosecution.
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Science and Health |
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Controversy Clarified: Why Two Insulators Together Can Transport Electricity
By (ScienceDaily)
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In 2004, researchers discovered something amazing: If the two materials, SrTiO3 and LaAlO3, both of which are electrical insulators, are joined together, a thin, electrically conducting region is formed at their interface. Over the subsequent three years, a number of hypotheses were proposed to explain this effect, which has led to controversy ever since. "There are conference sessions at which the majority of contributions are about this effect," says Mathilde Reinle-Schmitt, a researcher at PSI and the first author of the work presented here.
. . .
Both substances are complex metal-oxide materials – so-called perovskites – with a typical layered structure. In SrTiO3, the structure consists of alternating planes of strontium oxide (SrO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2), while in LaAlO3, they are lanthanum oxide (LaO) and aluminium dioxide (AlO2). The two materials, however, differ in one crucial aspect: In SrTiO3, both planes are electrically neutral, while in LaAlO3 they are alternately positively and negatively charged. The combination of two such materials leads, in the opinion of one school of thought, to the transfer of mobile electrons to the interface between the two materials, thereby making this ultrathin interfacial region conducting. This happens, however, only when the LaAlO3 film is thick enough. Otherwise, the combination of materials remains an insulator. This hypothesis is known as the «polar catastrophe». Other researchers are nevertheless convinced that conductivity is created because both compounds are known to combine at their interface and this intermixed material is conducting.
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Perovskites, the category to which the materials being investigated belong, often have interesting electrical and magnetic properties, some of which have never been observed in any other materials. An additional important property is highlighted by Philip Willmott, leader of the investigating group at PSI, "In contrast to traditional semiconductors used today, different perovskites have a similar crystalline and chemical structure and can thus be easily incorporated together, so that materials with different characteristics can be combined into a single device, such as a superconductor with a material which reacts sensitively to magnet fields, or one which can detect substances in the air." Materials in which the current does not flow in all three dimensions, but in only one or, as here, in two, are also current topics of research that could lead to numerous applications.
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Study Sheds Light On Pregnancy Complications and Overturns Common Belief
By (ScienceDaily)
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A study led by Hospital for Special Surgery researchers has demonstrated that women who have a specific type of antibody that interferes with blood vessel function are at risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes and that other antibodies in the same family thought to cause pregnancy complications do not put women at risk.
The researchers say that many doctors may be unnecessarily treating some pregnant women who have antiphospholipid antibodies (aPLs) with anticoagulants, such as expensive heparin injections, which can cause bleeding and bone loss. The multicenter study appears in the July 2012 issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
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Anticoagulant treatments are currently used for many women with aPLs, but identifying who to treat is not clear and this treatment is often ineffective. "Although many patients with aPLs are treated with heparin, pregnancy outcomes are still disappointing. We need better therapies," said Dr. Salmon. "This study will allow us to identify subsets of patients with the highest risk in whom to test new approaches and new drugs."
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Does Medicaid Make People Healthier?
By Alex Blumberg
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On the face of it, it seems like Medicaid would make people healthier, by giving them access to health care they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.
But there is a counterargument. It says that being on Medicaid is really worse for you than being uninsured, because it provides you with such low-quality health care.
. . .
Fifty thousand mail surveys and 750 in-person interviews later, they concluded that Medicaid did, in fact, make people healthier.
"People reported their health to be much better once they were insured," Baicker says. "The probability that they reported themselves to be in good, very good or excellent health increased by 25 percent."
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Where the Different Colors of Fireworks Actually Come From
By Casey Chan
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If you want to scientifically impress your friends tomorrow (or look like a hoity toity smartypants), you can tell them what the color of fireworks really mean. . .
Here's the complete list of the chemical cocktails that go into different fireworks, courtesy of The Works Museum in Bloomington, Minnesota:
Electric White: White-hot metal flakes
Orange: Calcium salts
Bright Red: Strontium Carbonate
Turquoise: Copper Chloride
Purple: Strontium (red) & Copper (blue)
Silver Sparkle: Burning Aluminum or Magnesium flakes
Green: Barium Chloride
Gold: Glowing Iron or Charcoal powder
Yellow: Sodium Chloride
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Technology |
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Judge orders Twitter to turn over posts
By (UPI)
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A judge in New York has ordered Twitter to turn over tweets and data from an Occupy protester arrested during a march on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino struck down Twitter's request to quash a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney for the Twitter posts and data from Brooklyn resident Malcolm Harris, CNN reported.
Sciarrino said freedom of speech applies to Twitter, but "that is not the same as arguing that those public tweets are protected."
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"We are disappointed in the judge's decision and are considering our options," a Twitter representative said in a statement. "Twitter's terms of service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights."
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EU: software licenses may be sold by consumers
By Rob Beschizza
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The European Union's Court of Justice ruled today that software licenses may be sold.
By its judgment delivered today, the Court explains that the principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website. . .
The case concerned Oracle, which sued UsedSoft, a German company which bought and resold "used" software licenses which provided access to software downloads.
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What news ombudsmen should do to make the news part of the Web, and vice-versa
By Cory Doctorow
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Dan "Mediactive" Gillmor sends us his latest Guardian column, a thoughtful and fascinating manifesto for what the role newspaper ombudsmen could morph into, in order to maximize the relevance and centrality of newspapers and news organizations on the Internet:
Aggregate (quote and link to) every thoughtful critique of the organization's work that I could find, and invite readers to analyze and comment on those critiques. I would ask permission to crosspost some of these on the blog. When I thought a critic was wrong, I'd say so. I'd also note when they were, in my view, making fair points. I'd deal with disrespectful critiques on a case-by-case basis, recognizing that sometimes a nasty person can make a good point.
Create a robust, open forum about the newspaper's work. This would most likely take the form of a traditional bulletin board system where readers could create their own topics, using moderation software that would minimize staff costs while still filtering out the worst trolls.
Strongly encourage newsroom staff to participate in these conversations. . .
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Cultural |
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Seventeen magazine promises to feature 'real girls' only
By Hélène Hofman
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Seventeen magazine has responded to a high school student's online petition and pledged to feature only real, unaltered images of girls.
AFP reports that editor Ann Shocket's letter to readers for the August issue outlines a new "Body Peace Treaty," which vows to "always feature real girls and models who are healthy"and "never change girls' body or face shapes (never have, never will)." The news agency says Seventeen will still tweak photos to smooth wrinkles on clothing or get rid of flyaway hair. . .
The announcement comes after Julia Bluhm, a 14-year-old blogger from Maine, stared a change.org petition in April, asking Seventeen to print one unaltered photo in its magazine each month. . .
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Debt and defiance in bankrupt Stockton, California
By Mark Mardell
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Stockton recently became the largest city in the US to declare bankruptcy, but along the road to ruin also earned the title of "America's most miserable city".
. . .
I meet the mayor, Ann Johnston, in her balloon shop. We can't go to city hall; it is closed one day a week to save money.
She says Stockton suffered from a perfect storm. These big projects left the city with no money in the bank, and borrowing expanded. Then the recession struck.
All of the city's money comes from property tax, and as property prices went into freefall, the local government's income was slashed.
. . .
Indeed the bankruptcy is a device to avoid paying creditors and to avoid making even deeper cuts. But many are furious about what has happened. The mayor has faced an angry public meeting where city workers testified to the suffering caused by inept politicians.
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Stockton's descent into insecurity is chilling because it is not an isolated example.
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Rare copy of Waldseemueller's early America map found in Germany
By (BBC)
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A copy of a rare 16th century map known as "the birth certificate of America" has been discovered in Germany.
The map, by the famous cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, is credited with being the first to document and name the newly-discovered land of America.
It had been thought that Waldseemueller had only made four copies, but researchers at a Munich university have now discovered a fifth version.
. . .
Waldseemueller named the new land after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, thinking he had been the first to discover it rather than Christopher Columbus.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |