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Articles by Peter Smith
A Decongestant Debate That Won’t Clear Up
Randy Hatton ran the hotline. His students fielded dozens of drug-related questions from pharmacists, physicians, and even the occasional vet. When the phones rang, Hatton and his team never knew what to expect. One time, surgeons dropped part of a patient’s skull on the floor and wanted to know what solution would sterilize the bone chunk before they put it back in. Another time, veterinarians called to ask how big of a dose of human antibiotics to inject into an African elephant.
Rifling Through the Evidence: Uncertainty in Firearms Analysis
In 2015, Peter Stout, head of the Houston Forensic Science Center, began administering a test that was designed to not look like a test. Like many crime labs in the United States, analysts at the center routinely perform forensic firearms identification, meaning they inspect crime scene evidence — in this instance, the microscopic patterns on bullets and cartridge casings. By comparing these markings, the examiners aim to pair the patterns with marks made when firing a specific gun.
In Scientific Publishing, Who Should Foot the Bill?
In the spring of 2024, Ali Kharrazi, then an editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, or CRSUST, received a routine request to review several papers. Although guest editors had already recommended accepting the work, something unusual stood out.
In Scientific Publishing, Who Should Foot the Bill?
In the spring of 2024, Ali Kharrazi, then an editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Current Research in Environmental Sustainability, or CRSUST, received a routine request to review several papers. Although guest editors had already recommended accepting the work, something unusual stood out.
Effectiveness of a theory-driven Brazilian jiu-jitsu-based medical self-defense training for nurses facing workplace violence: A multicenter quasi-experimental study
Section snippets What is already known • Self-defense training is widely recognized as an effective strategy for managing violent encounters in health-care settings. • Existing workplace violence interventions typically lack a structured, theory-driven approach tailored to nurses across diverse hospital settings and specialties.
Without Federal Funding, Antibiotics Research May Lag
Most antibiotics come from soil, and the one that Gerry Wright’s research team recently discovered in Hamilton, Ontario was no exception. The lasso-shaped string of molecules came from a microbe living in the garden soil of one of Wright’s lab technicians. Its name: lariocidin. Wright, a chemical biologist at McMaster University, has for decades made concerted efforts to collect soil, often on a shoestring.
In the Northeast, a Question of Fighting Fire With Fire
The view from Plains Road, a sandy two-track running through the pine barrens in Montague, Massachusetts, often looks parched, rust-colored, and, occasionally, blackened by fire. In recent decades, state officials have deliberately burned several hundred acres of the forest to restore what some believe was a traditional Indigenous land use practice.
Following the Trail of eDNA
Following the Trail of eDNA Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is helping scientists locate elusive wildlife—from rare and endangered species to emerging invasives By Peter Andrey Smith Conservation Sep 26, 2024 Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath A COLLEAGUE IN JULIE LOCKWOOD’S LAB FIRST ENVISIONED IT: a supersized swab.
“No Mow May” Won’t Fix Our Biodiversity Problems
This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In 2020, the Wisconsin city of Appleton brought No Mow May to the United States. Each spring, by temporarily forgoing mowing and letting residential lawns grow with flowers, residents could support bees and other insect pollinators, proponents claimed. Indeed, they even said the practice was backed by their own published scientific study.
NF really is consistent
About eighteen months ago, I noted here that a project was underway to verify Randall Holmes’s rather impenetrable claimed proof of the consistency of NF, using the Lean proof verification system. The project has now been completed by Sky Wilshaw, a Part III student in Cambridge, building on the earlier work of some other students. Here is a new paper by Holmes and Wilshaw explaining the proof in its current version.
Environmental DNA is everywhere
In the late 1980s, at a federal research facility in Pensacola, Florida, Tamar Barkay used mud in a way that proved revolutionary in a manner she could never have imagined at the time: a crude version of a technique that is now shaking up many scientific fields. Barkay had collected several samples of mud — one from an inland reservoir, another from a brackish bayou, and a third from a low-lying saltwater swamp.
The Importance of Having Health Insurance in Today's Age
So far, you must be familiar with health insurance services, but not a few are still hesitant to have it. In fact, health insurance has a variety of benefits that can help you in the future. Before discussing the benefits, first consider the explanation regarding the meaning of health insurance below. What is Health Insurance? Health insurance is insurance that provides guarantees to the insured to reimburse any treatment which includes hospitalization costs, surgery costs, and drug costs.
Saddleback Church doubles down on support for female pastors
The woman pastor at the center of the Southern Baptist Convention's decision to oust Saddleback Church — the California megachurch founded by pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren — says she will continue to serve as a ministry leader despite her longstanding ties to the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Saddleback has yet to say if it will appeal its expulsion.
Philosophy of mathematics - a reading list
A few people recently have quite independently asked me to recommend some introductory reading on the philosophy of mathematics. I have in fact previously posted here a short list in the ‘Five Books’ style. But here’s a more expansive draft list of suggestions. Let’s begin with an entry-level book first published twenty years ago but not yet superseded or really improved on: Stewart Shapiro, Thinking About Mathematics (OUP, 2000).
A withering report on sexual abuse and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. A viral video in which a woman confronts her pastor at an independent Christian for sexually preying on her when she was a teen. A TV documentary exposing sex abuse of children in Amish and Mennonite communities.
The Love Canal disaster: Anatomy of an environmental tragedy
By the late 1970s, the odor seemed just about everywhere on the east side of Niagara Falls, New York, in a neighborhood with thousands of residents and two area public schools. Noxious fumes seeped into basements. The stench filled backyards. It clung to one engineer's sweater for days after his visit. A chemical stain appeared on the bed sheets of one factory worker. The odor was spreading from drums the Hooker Chemical Company had unceremoniously dumped decades prior in an unfinished canal.
Clotheslines with billowing linens and long dresses are a common sight on the off-grid farms of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, home to the nation's largest Amish settlement. For many tourists they're as iconic a part of Amish Country's bucolic scenery as the rural lanes and wooden bridges. But for two days in late April, a clothesline with a different purpose was strung in a small indoor exhibit here.
First responders lacking mental health support turn to their peers
First Responder Trauma Counselors offers mental health services for first responders and health care workers EMTs rush a patient to the emergency room at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on March 24, 2020, as the number of confirmed Massachusetts cases of coronavirus soars to near 5,000. (Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) This article originally appeared on Undark.
When first responders grapple with their own mental health
Jones worked as an emergency medical technician in his late twenties. Courtesy of Randy Jones This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. When Randy Jones got his start as an emergency medical technician in the 1970s, he wore a smock and a clip-on tie that reduced the chances a patient would grab hold and strangle him.
Lacking Mental Health Support, First Responders Turn to Peers
By Peter Andrey Smith , Undark Connecting state and local government leaders When Randy Jones got his start as an emergency medical technician in the 1970s, he wore a smock and a clip-on tie that reduced the chances a patient would grab hold and strangle him. With few job prospects in the tiny Kansas town where he grew up, the rush of running to emergencies in an ambulance felt like God’s work. Jones remembers wearing blood on his shirt like a badge of pride.
Lacking Mental Health Support, First Responders Turn to Peers
When Randy Jones got his start as an emergency medical technician in the 1970s, he wore a smock and a clip-on tie that reduced the chances a patient would grab hold and strangle him. With few job prospects in the tiny Kansas town where he grew up, the rush of running to emergencies in an ambulance felt like God's work. Jones remembers wearing blood on his shirt like a badge of pride. Then, in the early hours of New Year's Day 1979, he plowed through a snowstorm to a call he can't forget.
Religious Healthcare Practitioners Win Injunction on ACA Rules
A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction on behalf of religious health care providers who feared the Biden administration would interpret the Affordable Care Act as requiring them to perform abortions or gender-transition treatment against their conscience. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had argued that it doesn't require religious providers to offer such procedures and has never brought or threatened any enforcement activity against a religious entity in such a case.
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