In August 2020, I got my first jab of the Moderna COVID vaccine as part of their Phase III trial. One month later, I got the booster. 12 hrs after that, I had the classic symptoms–headache, fever, muscle and joint pain–indicating that I was in the vaccine arm of the trial and not the control. […]
Comparing energy efficiency of boiling water: household appliances Michael D. Eissenberg, BSME, PE, Leed AP*, and Joel C. Eissenberg, Ph.D.* *co-corresponding authors Abstract Kitchen appliances use various mechanisms to heat, with differences in energy sources and geometry. The goal of this study was to compare energy efficiency across common household appliances. To facilitate comparison, 1 […]
It is hard to overstate the transformational public health benefits of anti-hypertensives and statins for blood pressure and serum cholesterol control. For a modest cost, these drugs not only mitigate human suffering but save billions, if not trillions, of dollars by avoiding costly surgical interventions. The repurposing of anti-diabetic drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide for […]
The biggest near-term threat to human civilization from global warming is loss of fresh water and arable land for crops. It turns out that nature has confronted the challenges of increased temperature, increased salinity, disease resistance and violent weather. Recently, as strain of maize called “Jimmy Red corn” has been resurrected from a population bottleneck […]
A commenter on AB recently noted that EVs are dead, to which I responded that there sure are a lot of zombie EVs here in East Providence. Kevin Drum has a post up about EVs showing that zombie EVs have been proliferating exponentially since 2011 and arithmetically since 2020. So many dead EVs. Who knew? […]
When I started as a PhD student at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1977, my stipend as an NIH trainee was $3900/year (ca. $20K in today’s dollars). When I started as a postdoc at Washington University in 1982, my salary was $12,800 (ca. $41K in today’s dollars). At the time, I regarded this as the opportunity cost […]
Richardson has a post-election analysis up at her substack blog. Some money grafs: “In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin campaigned hard to flip the state senate to the Republicans, telling voters that if his party had control of the whole government he would push through a measure banning abortion after 15 weeks. This has been a […]
From a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com: “For a party that’s always on suicide watch according to the pollsters, Democrats sure have been winning a lot of elections these past six years.”
Count me among those who hope for the dawning of the driverless car age to happen soon. If I live long enough, the day will come when someone—my wife, my daughter—will extend their hand to demand the car keys. The prospect of being able to summon a driverless car to take me to the grocery […]
In a previous post, I mentioned an effective way to curtail illegal immigration—require all employees to be screened through E-Verify—and some reasons why it won’t be adopted. Another disincentive to deterring illegal immigration is that it subsidizes Social Security and Medicare: “ . . . illegal immigrants as a group are net contributors who partially […]