Doctors (their mistakes) are the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA.
It is perhaps worthwhile to check the original JAMA article on the topic, too.
The total is 225,000 deaths per year, from(1)
12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery
7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals
20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals
80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals
106,000 deaths/year from nonerror, adverse effects of medication
So...about a third of those are due to hospital-acquired infections. This is definitely a Bad Thing, but one presumes that the alternative in many of those cases would have been death due to whatever disease led to the patient's hospitalization in the first place.
Nearly half were due to nonerror adverse effects of medications. While this is also unfortunate, patients were receiving medication to treat some malady or affliction. (These were the 'nonerror' cases, remember--these people were receiving the proper drugs in accordance with established best practices.) What number of patients would have died in the absence of the given drug therapy?
We're left with the 39,000 deaths per year that could be classified as "doctor's mistakes"--really, errors of the whole medical establishment, since hospital errors are included in that tally. That ranks ninth as a cause of death, rather that third...and I dare say that many of those might not be due to mistakes in diagnosis by my doctor, so why shouldn't I trust him?
Of course, if medical care were capable of curing any disease, then the only causes of death would then be acute-onset illnesses and trauma that kill you before you can get to medical care...and medical error.
(1) Starfield B. "Is US health really the best in the world?" JAMA284(4):483-5 (2000).
$0.51 per gallon of Ethanol. That's not how much Ethanol makers charge us for their fuel. It is how much the Federal government subsidizes every gallon of Ethanol made.
Estimating 131 billion gallons of gasoline used per year in the United States, a total cost of the Iraq war to date of $181 billion over two years--that comes out to $0.69 per gallon.
It might also help the U.S. trade deficit (just over just over $50 billion per month) if you weren't importing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East (at $50 per barrel, that's $3.6 billion per month).
Why ethanol? (basically the same alcohol from the drinks). I thought that it is methanol that should be cheaper and more vehicle-efficiency-friendly.
There are a number of reasons. For one, the yeasty little critters that drive fermentation are good at cranking out ethanol, and are highly tolerant of it. We don't have a ready supply of microbes that can survive in high concentrations of methanol, and we don't have creatures that are particularly efficient at making it.
Methanol has a higher vapour pressure (potentially making it more hazardous) and boils at only 65 degrees Celsius. You'd have to keep any fuel lines under your hood well insulated or else you might have to deal with boiling fuel. Ethanol is less corrosive than methanol, and has a higher energy density per gallon.
Bring lots of mosquito repellant. 40% DEET or better is recommended. That way you won't drop or damage the GPS as you flail madly at the bugs. 8^)
Be aware, however, that DEET eats plastic stuff--so keep the concentrated stuff away from your GPS equipment, as well as any synthetic clothing and such.
Their innovation was a search engine that didn't have NASCAR ads all over it and worked on dial up lines. That's all. They did that in like 1998.
They've come up with nothing profitable since.
And yet...I've been using Google for web searching almost exclusively since 1998. I have vague memories of using Yahoo! and AltaVista for a while, but I've been using Google's product consistently for seven years. In technology terms, I might as well just say forever.
Even if we assume that nothing they've released or are developing will ever be profitable at any point the future, they've still managed to make gobs of money and stay on top of the search engine market since they launched Google Search. How can they be a successful and profitable company year over year with only one or two products that undergo only iterative refinement? Ask Microsoft. (It is true that Google doesn't enjoy the benefits of format lock-in that Microsoft has, but Google does have a product that a) doesn't suck, and b) isn't evil.)
Their stock isn't even first class stock. It's pretend stock. The people who have bought it don't have the voting rights as the insiders. They can't even vote those clowns out of power.
Although it obviously doesn't sit right with you, the 'benevolent dictatorship' model of governance seems to be quite acceptable to a lot of people. Owners of Google stock are saying, "We trust these guys to manage the company--and our money--and quite frankly we like their philosophy of not chasing quarterly financial targets or jumping to the tune of large institutional shareholders." Who do you trust more to run Google--a mob of shareholders, or the guys who built the company? A lot of people seem to be quite willing to put some faith in "those clowns".
All we need is a space shuttle, and a team of roughneck oil workers. With a bit of training they will be SPACE MINERS, and we can send them on their merry way into the sun to mine it for us!
While I think that this is an excellent way to dispose of both an aging Shuttle fleet and an aging Bruce Willis, somehow I think it may need further refinement to be the base of a new hydrogen economy.
BTW there is an existing technology for producing "safe" sodium involving mixing it with mercury to form amalgam. This has been around for many years (it is the basis of early plants for producing sodium hydroxide from salt.) It has not revolutionised fuel cells or led to a practical mobile phone fuel cell. So explain why this should be any different?
This must be some novel use of the word "safe" I'm not familiar with....
Scientist 1: So we'd like to use sodium as part of our fuel, but it's dangerously reactive. Scientist 2: I know! Let's add a neurotoxic metal to it in large quantities. I'm sure the EPA won't mind.
Maybe it didn't catch on because mercury is expensive to store, manipulate, and dispose of? How is your local public works department going to feel about mercury-sodium amalgam entering the waste stream?
You can hardly compare low-earth orbit to stable solar orbit. The environment between the two are completely different. It is harder to get to low-earth because the atmosphere (yes, there still is atmosphere up there) causes insane amounts of friction. Friction, more often than not, causes damage, making low-earth a comparatively high-maintenance venture.
Er, what?
1. Compared to a Lagrange point, getting to low Earth orbit (LEO) is a piece of cake. LEO is still very deep inside Earth's gravity well. The amount of energy you need to put in to each kilogram of cargo to get it to a Langrange point is much greater.
2. Friction doesn't cause (appreciable) damage. Atmospheric drag does cause orbital decay. If you don't give your LEO space station a kick in the pants periodically, it will spiral down and crash. If you're at the point where atmospheric drag is doing real damage to your LEO object, it's too late--it's gonna crash.
3. It's true that you're somewhat less likely to get smacked by something truly dangerous at the Lagrange points. In LEO, you've got a big gravity source (Earth) sucking space crud down on you; an object at rest relative to the Earth a goodly distance away will pick up about 10 kilometers per second of velocity by the time it hits you. LEO is also full of detritus and debris that have been left behind by human space exploration. This is not to say that there aren't free bodies travelling at high speeds in 'free' space at the Langrange points. The stable Lagrange points have accumulated a signficant amount of stuff over the years, since those points are gravitationally stable. While most of it will have a low velocity relative to a space station at a Langrange point, some of those chunks are pretty hefty, and I wouldn't want to have even a low-speed collision with them.
Does it tell me ANYTHING I can't find by going to the help menu?
I hate technical books that tell me less information than was initially provided in the "help" section.
It occurs to me that the target market for this book might well be people who are more comfortable using an old-fashioned physical reference text. (Heck, the target market for this book probably isn't people who read Slashdot.)
As well, sometimes it's just easier to have a hard copy of everything, so there's someplace to make notes, and highlight important details, and stick a bookmark.
Finally, most of us still have a finite supply of screen space. Having a nicely bound paper copy means that I'm not giving up space on the screen--none of this mucking about trying to fit all the windows I want on one desktop. (Don't try to tell me that new users should be comfortable with tabbing back and forth between a help window and something else, either....)
...fingerprints may be scarred, burned, or otherwise mutilated...
Yeah, but does this happen to you on a regular basis?
If there is a change in your fingerprints, it shouldn't be much more difficult to deal with than forgetting your password; just go to the sysadmin and have the system reset. People forget their passwords and PINs quite regularly--any system that uses those techniques must be designed to cope with absentmindedness. Presumably the same thing would be done for biometric systems.
A brief inspection of my fingers reveals that after a couple of decades of use I don't have any apparent scarring or mutilation. If your concerned about a bandaged finger with a papercut or something, just store two fingerprints per person--one from each hand--so you have a backup finger in the event of a minor injury.
It should also be noted that scar tissue, burns, inflammation, and hyper/hypothermia will affect the appearance of veins in the hand, too.
I propose that an international standard system of junk-science measures be used, and that the measurement of speed be 'thicknesses of a human hair per thousandth of the time it takes to blink'.
Thickness of human hair: 20-40 micrometers
Time to blink: ~75 milliseconds
Thair/(1/1000)Tblink = ~0.5 meters/second
Oddly enough, that's almost exactly 1 mile per hour. Did you plan it that way?
A train that can do over 200 mph, and they're planning to run it just over 120 mph. Any ideas why? Are there lots of stops?
That's certainly one reason. Depending on the number of stops and the rate of acceleration this beast can handle, you're going to take a bite out of your average speed.
The big thing is whether or not the track can handle it. The train has to run much more slowly over curves, or else it crunches the passengers against the side of the coach...or just rolls sideways off the track. There may also be problems associated with entering tunnels at top speed.
You car can probably clear 160 km/h (100 mph); do you drive at that speed all the time?
If molecules are open source, then people will be able to make them in their own homes, without appropriate supervision or regulation. Many people may not be aware of the following facts about molecules.
-All known chemical poisons are made of molecules.
-Osama bin Laden's men were carrying molecules when they boarded the aircraft destined to strike the WTC towers. It is believed these molecules were used in the attack.
-Molecules are frequently used as part of copyright infringement schemes. Bootleg DVDs contain high concentrations of molecules.
-Weapons of mass destruction contain molecules.
In the Alphabetical listing page, they list some members of parliament as being "Honourable" (Hon.) and others as not. I didn't realize that they (a) drew a distinction nor that (b) there is such a distinction to be drawn.
For those who are wondering, the "Honourable" style comes with becoming a Privy Councillor, which in turn is bestowed on members of Cabinet (among others). In reality, members of Cabinet are often no more honourable than their backbench colleagues.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
That's an optional extra on any of the T-37 tank, MiG, or nuclear submarine packages.
It is perhaps worthwhile to check the original JAMA article on the topic, too.
The total is 225,000 deaths per year, from(1)
So...about a third of those are due to hospital-acquired infections. This is definitely a Bad Thing, but one presumes that the alternative in many of those cases would have been death due to whatever disease led to the patient's hospitalization in the first place.Nearly half were due to nonerror adverse effects of medications. While this is also unfortunate, patients were receiving medication to treat some malady or affliction. (These were the 'nonerror' cases, remember--these people were receiving the proper drugs in accordance with established best practices.) What number of patients would have died in the absence of the given drug therapy?
We're left with the 39,000 deaths per year that could be classified as "doctor's mistakes"--really, errors of the whole medical establishment, since hospital errors are included in that tally. That ranks ninth as a cause of death, rather that third...and I dare say that many of those might not be due to mistakes in diagnosis by my doctor, so why shouldn't I trust him?
Of course, if medical care were capable of curing any disease, then the only causes of death would then be acute-onset illnesses and trauma that kill you before you can get to medical care...and medical error.
(1) Starfield B. "Is US health really the best in the world?" JAMA 284(4):483-5 (2000).
Estimating 131 billion gallons of gasoline used per year in the United States, a total cost of the Iraq war to date of $181 billion over two years--that comes out to $0.69 per gallon.
It might also help the U.S. trade deficit (just over just over $50 billion per month) if you weren't importing 2.4 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East (at $50 per barrel, that's $3.6 billion per month).
There are a number of reasons. For one, the yeasty little critters that drive fermentation are good at cranking out ethanol, and are highly tolerant of it. We don't have a ready supply of microbes that can survive in high concentrations of methanol, and we don't have creatures that are particularly efficient at making it.
Methanol has a higher vapour pressure (potentially making it more hazardous) and boils at only 65 degrees Celsius. You'd have to keep any fuel lines under your hood well insulated or else you might have to deal with boiling fuel. Ethanol is less corrosive than methanol, and has a higher energy density per gallon.
Bah--sugar in the gas tank won't hurt your engine.
Be aware, however, that DEET eats plastic stuff--so keep the concentrated stuff away from your GPS equipment, as well as any synthetic clothing and such.
They've come up with nothing profitable since.
And yet...I've been using Google for web searching almost exclusively since 1998. I have vague memories of using Yahoo! and AltaVista for a while, but I've been using Google's product consistently for seven years. In technology terms, I might as well just say forever.
Even if we assume that nothing they've released or are developing will ever be profitable at any point the future, they've still managed to make gobs of money and stay on top of the search engine market since they launched Google Search. How can they be a successful and profitable company year over year with only one or two products that undergo only iterative refinement? Ask Microsoft. (It is true that Google doesn't enjoy the benefits of format lock-in that Microsoft has, but Google does have a product that a) doesn't suck, and b) isn't evil.)
Their stock isn't even first class stock. It's pretend stock. The people who have bought it don't have the voting rights as the insiders. They can't even vote those clowns out of power.
Although it obviously doesn't sit right with you, the 'benevolent dictatorship' model of governance seems to be quite acceptable to a lot of people. Owners of Google stock are saying, "We trust these guys to manage the company--and our money--and quite frankly we like their philosophy of not chasing quarterly financial targets or jumping to the tune of large institutional shareholders." Who do you trust more to run Google--a mob of shareholders, or the guys who built the company? A lot of people seem to be quite willing to put some faith in "those clowns".
Yes, but...
Which market is worth bending over for? Sources: GDP, population.While I think that this is an excellent way to dispose of both an aging Shuttle fleet and an aging Bruce Willis, somehow I think it may need further refinement to be the base of a new hydrogen economy.
This must be some novel use of the word "safe" I'm not familiar with....
Maybe it didn't catch on because mercury is expensive to store, manipulate, and dispose of? How is your local public works department going to feel about mercury-sodium amalgam entering the waste stream?For some reason that really reminds me of the "If operating systems were airlines" jokes....
Nah--you want to avoid waterproofing. That way you get the added cooling from water circulation.
Er, what?
1. Compared to a Lagrange point, getting to low Earth orbit (LEO) is a piece of cake. LEO is still very deep inside Earth's gravity well. The amount of energy you need to put in to each kilogram of cargo to get it to a Langrange point is much greater.
2. Friction doesn't cause (appreciable) damage. Atmospheric drag does cause orbital decay. If you don't give your LEO space station a kick in the pants periodically, it will spiral down and crash. If you're at the point where atmospheric drag is doing real damage to your LEO object, it's too late--it's gonna crash.
3. It's true that you're somewhat less likely to get smacked by something truly dangerous at the Lagrange points. In LEO, you've got a big gravity source (Earth) sucking space crud down on you; an object at rest relative to the Earth a goodly distance away will pick up about 10 kilometers per second of velocity by the time it hits you. LEO is also full of detritus and debris that have been left behind by human space exploration. This is not to say that there aren't free bodies travelling at high speeds in 'free' space at the Langrange points. The stable Lagrange points have accumulated a signficant amount of stuff over the years, since those points are gravitationally stable. While most of it will have a low velocity relative to a space station at a Langrange point, some of those chunks are pretty hefty, and I wouldn't want to have even a low-speed collision with them.
Bonus: Pretty movies and a description of Earth Lagrange asteroids (Earth Trojan asteroids).
If you can call that an "interesting failure mode" for a roller coaster, then you must have a pretty weak imagination. :-D
Where I'm from, AERO is a chocolate bar....
As well, sometimes it's just easier to have a hard copy of everything, so there's someplace to make notes, and highlight important details, and stick a bookmark.
Finally, most of us still have a finite supply of screen space. Having a nicely bound paper copy means that I'm not giving up space on the screen--none of this mucking about trying to fit all the windows I want on one desktop. (Don't try to tell me that new users should be comfortable with tabbing back and forth between a help window and something else, either....)
Pax tecum.
Yeah, but does this happen to you on a regular basis?
If there is a change in your fingerprints, it shouldn't be much more difficult to deal with than forgetting your password; just go to the sysadmin and have the system reset. People forget their passwords and PINs quite regularly--any system that uses those techniques must be designed to cope with absentmindedness. Presumably the same thing would be done for biometric systems.
A brief inspection of my fingers reveals that after a couple of decades of use I don't have any apparent scarring or mutilation. If your concerned about a bandaged finger with a papercut or something, just store two fingerprints per person--one from each hand--so you have a backup finger in the event of a minor injury.
It should also be noted that scar tissue, burns, inflammation, and hyper/hypothermia will affect the appearance of veins in the hand, too.
For the grammar Nazis who are smugly correcting the above remark, the errors were deliberately introduced for comedic effect.
For those who failed to note both errors, please turn in your cards at the door; your G.N. status has been revoked.
Thickness of human hair: 20-40 micrometers
Time to blink: ~75 milliseconds
Thair/(1/1000)Tblink = ~0.5 meters/second
Oddly enough, that's almost exactly 1 mile per hour. Did you plan it that way?
That's certainly one reason. Depending on the number of stops and the rate of acceleration this beast can handle, you're going to take a bite out of your average speed.
The big thing is whether or not the track can handle it. The train has to run much more slowly over curves, or else it crunches the passengers against the side of the coach...or just rolls sideways off the track. There may also be problems associated with entering tunnels at top speed.
You car can probably clear 160 km/h (100 mph); do you drive at that speed all the time?
I'm afraid your mistaken. No worries; that error is all to easy to make.
If molecules are open source, then people will be able to make them in their own homes, without appropriate supervision or regulation. Many people may not be aware of the following facts about molecules.
-All known chemical poisons are made of molecules.
-Osama bin Laden's men were carrying molecules when they boarded the aircraft destined to strike the WTC towers. It is believed these molecules were used in the attack.
-Molecules are frequently used as part of copyright infringement schemes. Bootleg DVDs contain high concentrations of molecules.
-Weapons of mass destruction contain molecules.
Please, will someone think of the of children?
Well, just one.
But he was a journalist, so it doesn't count.
For those who are wondering, the "Honourable" style comes with becoming a Privy Councillor, which in turn is bestowed on members of Cabinet (among others). In reality, members of Cabinet are often no more honourable than their backbench colleagues. :-)