Kids Need to Get Outside
Those of us who are grandparenting age remember a time when it was unusual for a kid to know what the interior of their home looked like during day light. When we got home from school, we changed into “play clothes”, had a little snack and were sent outside until dinner time. Short of a Nor’easter or hurricane, weather didn’t matter. We were expected to dress for it and get out there — out from under our mother’s feet. When summer rolled around, we were outside from after breakfast to sundown.
We ran and jump-roped and hop scotched in summer and built snow forts in winter. We built playhouses out of whateve...
Source: World of Psychology - June 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D. Tags: Children and Teens Exercise & Fitness Childhood Obesity Screen Time Summer Vacation Video Games Source Type: blogs
Under New York ’s New Rent Control Law Nobody Wins
Earlier this month New York Stateenacted a new rent regulation bill. The bill applies to the entire state but has a significant impact on New York City where 2.4 million people live in close to a million regulated apartments. The City ’s two regulatory frameworks, rent control and rent stabilization, differ on which units qualify and the rules that govern rent increases, but in general they both cap the amount that a landlord can increase rents each year leading to rents that are much lower than the market rate. The new law cre ates permanent regulations thatseverely limit the ability of landlords to raise rents in speci...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 26, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Peter Van Doren Source Type: blogs
Empirical Evidence for Stock-Market Short-Termism?
This blog post is part of a larger series on stock-market “short-termism”. See also my entries onshare buybacks and progressivecorporate governance reforms.I. IntroductionTo recapitulate the “myopia thesis”: managers of publicly traded firms are hostage to diversified shareholders who forego careful study of the firm’s fundamentals and instead respond to the latest, easily digestible quarterly earnings report. Rather than undertaking investments that might have a substantial retu rn down the road, managers mimic the priorities of transient shareholders uninterested in a firm’s long-term strategy. Future-orien...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 18, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Derek Bonett Source Type: blogs
Share Buybacks: Mismeasured and Misunderstood
In March of this year,Forbespublished an article with the following lede:The Economist has called them “an addiction to corporate cocaine.” Reuters has called them “self-cannibalization.” The Financial Timeshas called them “an overwhelming conflict of interest.” In an article that won the HBR McKinsey Award for the best article of the year, Harvard Business Review has called them “stock price manipulation.” These influential journals make a powerful case that wholesale stock buybacks are a bad idea—bad economically, bad financially, bad socially, bad legally and bad morally.There is no shortage of ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 30, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Derek Bonett Source Type: blogs
Zeiss Gets Approval for ReLEx SMILE for Myopia Treatment for People with Astigmatism
Zeiss won FDA approval for its ReLEx SMILE product for performing myopia treatment on patients with astigmatism. The product is offered on the company’s VisuMax femtosecond laser system, allowing the creation of a lenticule inside the cornea and access incision in one step. The laser is used to create millions of “photodisruptions” within the targeted tissue, gently cutting through it with high precision.
A major benefit of ReLEx SMILE is that it allows for significantly smaller flaps to be created compared to LASIK, potentially resulting in 80% smaller side-cuts and 30% smaller cap cuts.
“Thanks to o...
Source: Medgadget - October 8, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
Silence versus Bearing Witness: Response to Alan Stone
by Bandy X. Lee, MD, MDiv
Earlier this year, I was delighted to discover that Dr. Alan Stone had written a review of the book I edited: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, for the blog Lawfare. Most outside of psychiatry will not have heard of Dr. Stone, but he is a well-respected figure among psychiatrists who practice at the intersections of law and ethics, such as myself. I was delighted not because I was anticipating a positive review, but because I hoped that a rigorous discussion without misrepresentation would break open the myopia of my field.…...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - September 19, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Blog Editor Tags: Featured Posts Politics professional ethics Psychiatric Ethics Source Type: blogs
CAFE Standards
Last week the Trump administration announced its intent to freeze Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE) at 2020 levels. Rules implemented in 2012 under the Obama administration would require a fleet average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025, but the new rule change would instead hold average fuel economy at about 37 mpg.Predictably, the announcement created a flurry of criticism, with theNew York Times editorial board characterizing the plan as reckless in the face of climate change. Much of this criticism misses a key point: CAFE has been repurposed to manage a problem for which it was not desi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 7, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Peter Van Doren Source Type: blogs
Can I do it till I need glasses?
This article in The Independent is friendlier to lay readers.This is not a trivial or even modest effect -- it ' s actually huge. " The difference is so pronounced that if the average person who left school at 16 had 20/20 vision, the average university graduate would legally need glasses to drive, researchers from Bristol and Cardiff Universities said, " according to The Independent.I ' m happy to say that I personally was spared this fate, despite my highly excessive education. In fact I now use reading glasses because, like most people, I have become slightly far-sighted with age. Nevertheless in parts of Asia, where ch...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 11, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
New Glasses Slow Down Myopic Progression in Children
Scientists working at Hong Kong Polytechnic University have developed a lenses for glasses that are able to slow down myopic progression in children. The center of the lens works as in a common pair of glasses, adjusting for myopia and astigmatism, while around this region the lens consists of dozens of spots of myopic defocus that help with vision correction. These so-called Defocus Incorporated Multiple Segments (DIMS) Spectacle Lenses work at all viewing distances.
“We have tried to incorporate myopic defocus optics into different treatment modalities, such as contact lens. For spectacle lens, the challenge is the eye...
Source: Medgadget - April 19, 2018 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Ophthalmology Pediatrics Source Type: blogs
A Message to the Nurse's Future Self
So nurse, it ' s twenty years in the future, and you have two more decades of nursing under your belt. You ' ve cared for thousands of patients, held thousands of hands, and looked into thousands of pairs of eyes. What do you remember, and what do your patients recall? What stands out for you? How does your career compare to your expectations, dreams and aspirations? How would you like that 20 years to live in your mind and heart? You can create it now.Patients RememberNurse, what do your patients remember about you? First, they probably don ' t remember your name, and that ' s almost a certainty. Maybe a special one or tw...
Source: Digital Doorway - February 26, 2018 Category: Nursing Tags: career career development career management careers healthcare careers nurse nurse careers nurses nursing Source Type: blogs
Trade Deficit Disorder
It ’s been a tough week for President Trump – and it’s only Tuesday. Just when Trump nearly had the country acknowledging his omnipotence, the stock market took a record one-day plunge on Monday and then, this morning, we learned that the president’s first year in office coincided with the larg est U.S. trade deficit in nine years. Lest Mr. Trump concludes that he hasn’t been protectionist enough, there is another way for him to explain (without need of contrition or humility, of course) how he presided over a bigger trade deficit in his first year than was experienced in any of Presiden t Obama’s eight.Trade d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 6, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel J. Ikenson Source Type: blogs
Senate Passes a Pentagon Budget, but a BCA Trainwreck Looms
By a vote of 89-8, the Senate yesterdaypassed a $700 billion defense budget. That isn ’t particularly newsworthy. AstheNew York Times reported, “The vote marked the 56th consecutive year that Congress has passed the defense policy bill—a point of personal pride for Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.”The important story is that Sen. McCain et al. have no plan for actually raising the necessary funds, either through more taxes, cuts elsewhere, or more debt. Previous budget fights played by the rules —compromising to abide by the bipartisan Budget Control Act ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 19, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Christopher A. Preble Source Type: blogs
The Green Investment Pension Con
Public pensions are complicated beasts. They represent the aggregation of promises made to public employees —both current and former—to pay them benefits from their retirement until their demise. They sum to a growing—albeit somewhat imprecise—stream of payments that presently extends to close to the end of the current century. The predilection of politicians to make promises that won’t come due until long after they’ve left office has resulted in many states with promised benefits far in excess of the money set aside to meet them. Many state pension authorities managing underfunded pensions —often nudged ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 19, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ike Brannon Source Type: blogs
The Age of Designed Babies Arrives
by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
In the film Gattaca, a couple desiring to have a child visits their neighborhood geneticist:
Geneticist: You have specified hazel eyes, dark hair and fair skin. I’ve taken the liberty of eradicating any potentially prejudicial conditions. Premature baldness, myopia… alcoholism and addictive susceptibility… propensity for violence, obesity, etc.
Marie Freeman: We didn’t want… Diseases, yes, but– [looks at Antonio]
Antonio Freeman: We were just wondering if it’s good to leave a few things to chance?
Geneticist: We want to give your child the best possible st...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - August 4, 2017 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Craig Klugman Tags: Clinical Trials & Studies Genetics Health Regulation & Law Human Subjects Research & IRBs Media Reproductive Medicine Research Ethics genetic engineering Source Type: blogs
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 10: Discretion, or a Rule?
A Class Camping TripForget about monetary policy for a moment or two, and imagine, instead, that you ’re back in 6th grade. You and your classmates are about to go on a camping trip, involving some strenuous hiking, and lasting several days.Somehow, your teacher must see to it that all of you are kept well fed. To do so, she plans to appoint one of you Class Quartermaster. The school ’s budget is limited, and rations can get heavy, so there will only be so much food to go around — so many hotdogs, baked beans, scrambled eggs, peanut butter sandwiches, and granola bars. The Quartermaster’s job will be to make sure i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 11, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
