In a linked paper (doi:10.1136/bmj.g366), Miller and colleagues present the results for up to 25 years of follow-up in the Canadian study.4 No difference in breast cancer mortality was observed between the mammography and control arms, whereas a significant excess incidence of invasive breast cancer was observed in the mammography arm, resulting in 22% overdiagnosis. This means that 22% of screen detected invasive cancers would not have reduced a woman’s life expectancy if left undetected.

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Too much mammography | BMJ

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We have estimated how much individuals would need to be paid for kidneys to be willing to sell them for transplants. These estimates take account of the slight risk to donors from transplant surgery, the number of weeks of work lost during the surgery and recovery periods, and the small risk of reduction in the quality of life.

Our conclusion is that a very large number of both live and cadaveric kidney donations would be available by paying about $15,000 for each kidney. That estimate isn't exact, and the true cost could be as high as $25,000 or as low as $5,000—but even the high estimate wouldn't increase the total cost of kidney transplants by a large percentage.

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How to fix the organ donor shortage? Let people sell their kidneys, say Gary Becker and Julio Elias
There is a clear remedy for the growing shortage of organ donors, say Gary S. Becker and Julio J. Elias: Establish a market, offer payments and save lives.

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If we want to communicate with other civilisations, it turns out that the laws of physics, the nature of interstellar space and a little common sense place surprisingly strict bounds on how this communication can take place.

My favorite bit:

In addition to this, says Messerschmitt, a good idea is to exploit the laws of physics and in particular Shannon’s mathematical theory of communication, which determines how much information can be sent to a noisy channel the certain power level. stop

Yes, to a noise channel the certain power level.  stop

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How to Design an Interstellar Communications System | MIT Technology Review
If we want to communicate with other civilisations, it turns out that the laws of physics, the nature of interstellar space and a little common sense place surprisingly strict bounds on how this communication can take place.

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As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before," Tom Mallouk, a professor of materials chemistry and physics at Penn State, said in a press release.

http://www.contriving.net/link/ej

Gold.  Nanoparticles.  Human cells.  Go.

As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before,” Tom Mallouk, a professor of materials chemistry and physics at Penn State, said in a press release.

http://www.contriving.net/link/ej

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But my calculations show that if the skiers were to jump from the same slope on the Moon, they would be moving slower off the jump and the ratio of the distance they travel on the Moon verses on Earth is one, meaning they travel the same distance!

(I didn't check the math because I like living on the edge and just throwing stuff out there and see if some internet wiseguy calls me on posting wrong stuff)

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Physics Buzz: Olympic Women Ski Jump Equally Far on the Moon
Right now, for the first time in Olympic history, women are taking to the ski jumping slopes to compete for Olympic gold. If they were on the Moon how far might they fly? Would they surpass the Moon’s escape velocity and go soaring through space? Or would they manage to circle around the …

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If you're happy now, you'll be happy and more introverted in the future.  

(Insert clause about one study without replication, blah, blah , blah)

An analysis of personality and well-being surveys for 16,000 Australians attempted to see what personality measurements said about future personality.

Happy people tended to become more agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable and introverted over time. This last finding – higher well-being leading to more introversion – was opposite to what was expected, given that higher extraversion usually leads to future happiness.

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How being happy changes your personality

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Whoever thought this system up should be slapped upside the head.

Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most of the patients stuck with the extreme low-calorie diet, which consisted of special shakes called Optifast and two cups of low-starch vegetables, totaling just 500 to 550 calories a day for eight weeks. Ten weeks in, the dieters lost an average of 30 pounds.

At that point, the 34 patients who remained stopped dieting and began working to maintain the new lower weight. Nutritionists counseled them in person and by phone, promoting regular exercise and urging them to eat more vegetables and less fat. But despite the effort, they slowly began to put on weight. After a year, the patients already had regained an average of 11 of the pounds they struggled so hard to lose. They also reported feeling far more hungry and preoccupied with food than before they lost the weight.

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The Fat Trap
In the battle to lose weight, and keep it off, our bodies are fighting against us.

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The Estonian government is digital.  When banking, voting, contracts, and taxes are handled via the internet and authenticated by a national public key infrastructure, what does it matter where a person is located physically?  

As noted in the article, online voting accounted for 24 percent of Estonia's votes in the last election, and votes were cast from 105 countries around the world.

There is also a flip-side to the fully digitized nature of the Republic of Estonia: having the bureaucratic machine of a country humming in the cloud increases the economic cost of a potential physical assault on the state. Rather than ceasing to operating in the event of an invasion, the government could boot up a backup replica of the digital state and host it in some other friendly European territory. Government officials would be quickly re-elected, important decisions made, documents issued, business and property records maintained, births and deaths registered, and even taxes filed by those citizens who still had access to the Internet.

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Lessons from the World’s Most Tech-Savvy Government – Global – The Atlantic
The Atlantic covers breaking news, analysis, opinion around politics, business, culture, international, science, technology, national profiles on the official site of the Atlantic Magazine.

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