Older Americans Increasingly Filing for Bankruptcy
August 6th, 2018Via: SSRN:
The social safety net for older Americans has been shrinking for the past couple decades. The risks associated with aging, reduced income, and increased healthcare costs, have been off-loaded onto older individuals. At the same time, older Americans are increasingly likely to file consumer bankruptcy, and their representation among those in bankruptcy has never been higher. Using data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, we find more than a two-fold increase in the rate at which older Americans (age 65 and over) file for bankruptcy and an almost five-fold increase in the percentage of older persons in the U.S. bankruptcy system. The magnitude of growth in older Americans in bankruptcy is so large that the broader trend of an aging U.S. population can explain only a small portion of the effect. In our data, older Americans report they are struggling with increased financial risks, namely inadequate income and unmanageable costs of healthcare, as they try to deal with reductions to their social safety net. As a result of these increased financial burdens, the median senior bankruptcy filer enters bankruptcy with negative wealth of $17,390 as compared to more than $250,000 for their non-bankrupt peers. For an increasing number of older Americans, their golden years are fraught with economic risks, the result of which is often bankruptcy.
Oil Giant Shell Leads Investment in Startup with ‘Electric Cars for Everyone’ Goal
August 6th, 2018Via: Electrek:
Shell, the major British–Dutch multinational oil and gas company, has been leading several efforts having to do electric cars as it sees the auto industry transition to electric propulsion affecting its business.
Now the oil giant Shell is leading an investment in a startup with the goal to make ‘Electric Cars for Everyone’ with a new charging technology.
Shell’s VC arm Shell Ventures confirmed that it is leading a $31 million Series A round of financing in Ample, which describes itself as “a technology company focused on solving the energy delivery challenge for electric cars.”
Facebook, Apple and Spotify Ban Infowars’ Alex Jones
August 6th, 2018Update: YouTube Deletes Alex Jones Channel
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Via: Guardian:
Facebook has banned four pages run by the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for “repeated violations of community standards”, the company said on Monday.
The removal of the pages – the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the Infowars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page – comes after Facebook imposed a 30-day ban on Jones personally “for his role in posting violating content to these pages”.
Following that suspension, a Facebook spokesperson said: “More content from the same pages has been reported to us – upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”
Related: YouTube Deletes Entire Health Ranger Video Channel
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Office Employed Chinese Spy for 20 Years
August 6th, 2018Via: CBS:
New details emerged Wednesday about how a mole for the government of communist China managed to stay by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s side for nearly 20 years.
It happened five years ago, but additional information is just surfacing about how the Bay Area senator’s office was infiltrated by a Chinese spy.
The Bay Area is a hotbed for Russian and Chinese espionage. Late last year, the feds shut down the Russian consulate in San Francisco.
You may remember the thick black smoke that billowing from building before Russian diplomats turned it over to authorities, presumably produced by burning documents.
Now, all eyes are on Chinese intelligence in the Bay Area after the website Politico reported last week that a staffer for Senator Feinstein turned out to be a Chinese spy who reported back to the government officials about local politics.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle uncovered additional details in a column written by reporters Phil Matier and Andy Ross.
The column revealed that the Chinese spy was Feinstein’s driver who also served as a gofer in her Bay Area office and was a liaison to the Asian-American community.
Hong Kong: McSleepers
August 6th, 2018Via: South China Morning Post:
The number of people sleeping in McDonald’s outlets has increased six-fold over the past five years, a trend partly driven by rising rents and substandard housing that makes life especially unbearable in the city’s baking weather, a study has found.
…
Researchers were able to interview 53 McRefugees aged between 19 and 79 in depth, and found 57 per cent of them had a job and 71 per cent of them had flats that they rented or owned, contrary to the common belief that these people tended to be jobless and homeless.
Saving on air conditioning costs, as well as comfort and security, topped a list of reasons given by these interviewees, followed by high rents, conflict with family members, the ability to develop social relations at the chain and substandard housing.
Other reasons included saving on transport costs and time to work, and seeking temporary shelter while waiting for low-rent public housing.
Scientists Have Successfully Transplanted a Bioengineered Lung Into a Pig
August 5th, 2018Via: BBC:
To create a new lung, experts used a “scaffold” that provided structural support and slowly built up the lung tissue around it, using cells from the pig that was due to get the transplant.
This was done to prevent the lung being rejected by the pig’s immune system.
Once transplanted, the lung alveolar tissue and blood vessels carried on developing for up to two months.
Not only was the lung not rejected, but it even developed an important population of bacteria.
Lungs suitable for transplant are in short supply and the study is a significant step forward in finding an alternative solution. “People wait for a long time on a transplant list before they are able to receive a donated lung,” said co-author Professor Joan Nichols.
The transplantation of bioengineered lungs has been tried before in small animals, but these efforts have met with failure. There were problems with the blood vessels and the animals suffered from an accumulation of fluid, known as oedema.
“We were able to make a much better developed vasculature in the lungs… and transplant into a larger animal with a larger lung,” said co-author Prof Joaquin Cortiella, from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, US.
Venezuela: President Nicolas Maduro Survives Assassination Attempt by Terrorists Using Explosives-Laden Drone
August 4th, 2018Via: Daily Mail:
Seven national guards have been injured in Venezuela after what is believed to have been an assassination attempt on socialist President Nicolas Maduro using an explosive-laden drone during a Caracas military parade.
Footage broadcast by state television shows Maduro abruptly cutting short his speech before looking to the sky. Thousands of soldiers who were standing in massed ranks then scatter as people scream amid the sounds of explosions.
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was standing next to him at the time, and can be seen ducking away from the source of the loud explosions. Images showed a soldier with a bleeding head being carried away and smoking holes in nearby buildings.
Maduro accused neighboring Colombia and unidentified ‘financiers’ in the United States of being responsible for the attack, while some of his officials blamed Venezuela’s opposition.
Association of Statin Exposure With Histologically Confirmed Idiopathic Inflammatory Myositis in an Australian Population
August 3rd, 2018Facebook link to cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson discussing this.
In other news: Doctor Payments Increased Drug Prescribing by 73%:
Drugmakers that pay for doctors’ meals get an outsize return on their investment, or a 73% increase in prescribing of their drug.
That was the conclusion of a new paper, which looked at cardiologists who were taken out to a meal by sales representatives of Pfizer PFE, +2.24% or AstraZeneca AZ, -0.16% The companies make two expensive branded cholesterol-lowering statins, Lipitor and Crestor.
Via: JAMA:
Question: What is the association between current exposure to statin medications and histologically confirmed idiopathic inflammatory myositis?
Findings: In this population-based case-control study of 221 patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis and 662 age- and sex-matched controls, there was a statistically significant 79% increased likelihood of statin exposure in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis compared with controls.
Meaning: Given the increased use of statin medications worldwide and the severe adverse effects of idiopathic inflammatory myositis, increased awareness and recognition of this potentially rare adverse effect with statin exposure is needed.
Periodic Fasting Starves Cisplatin Resistant Cancers to Death
August 3rd, 2018Via: EMBOpress:
Treatment of cancers with the cytotoxic agent cisplatin frequently evokes resistance, accompanied by rewiring of metabolic pathways, limiting its clinical use. Recent research by Obrist et al (2018) shows that cisplatin?resistant growth of lung adenocarcinoma is particularly vulnerable to periodic fasting cycles and starvation?induced cell death, due to its dependency on glutamine, required for nucleoside biosynthesis, suggesting an opportunity for nutritional anti?cancer interventions.
NASA Names Astronauts for First Manned U.S. Space Launches Since 2011
August 3rd, 2018Via: Reuters:
NASA on Friday named nine astronauts for the first manned space launches from U.S. soil since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s announcement signals a milestone in the U.S. space program, with its shift to the private sector for ferrying cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.
Since the space shuttle program was shut down, the U.S. space agency NASA has had to rely on Russia to fly astronauts to space station, a $100 billion orbital research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth.
The astronauts named on Friday will be carried aloft aboard spacecraft developed by entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing Co, crewing first the test flights, and then missions involving both Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
The first flight is expected sometime next year.
