Should hospital residents be required to work shorter hours and take naps to avoid exhaustion that can bring harm to their patients? The question has created a surprising divide in the medical community, even though no one disputes the fact that people are more prone to make mistakes when they are tired. That is why industries in which employees are responsible for the lives of others — such as airlines and railroads — have limits on how many hours of continuous work their employees are allowed to do. Graduates of medical schools undergoing training as residents in teaching hospitals are subject to industry restrictions, too — but the rules allow for plenty of bleary eyes. In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education told hospitals to adhere to an 80-hour workweek for their residents. The guidelines stemmed in part from past cases of patient harm, including the 1984 death of a patient named Libby Zion in a New York hospital, which led to state caps on residents’ workload. Before the 2003 guidelines, residents in some specialties would work more than 100 hours a week, compared with a 60-hour workweek common in parts of Western Europe. Ever […]
A new study, which researchers have called ‘the most exhaustive end-to-end analysis of climate change impacts yet performed’, predicts that global warming could be twice as bad as previous estimates had suggested. Published this month in the Journal of Climate, the MIT-based research found a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100. Pulling from a variety of data sources back in 2007, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) projected temperature increases anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century. Now due to this new data, it looks like the higher range of that projection may be closer to the truth. The new study was done using 400 applications of a computer model, which included looking at complicated factors such as atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems data, as well as global economic activity. A similar 2003 study had predicted a mere- but still significant- 4 degree increase in global temperatures by 2100, but those models weren’t nearly as comprehensive, and they didn’t take into consideration economic factors. The most impactful way to lower the projections would be to significantly reduce human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, according […]
WASHINGTON — The US state department said on Friday it had offered to resume talks with Cuba about Cuban migration to the United States, a fresh sign of President Barack Obama’s effort to engage the communist state. The talks, last held in 2003 and suspended by Washington in 2004, cover a mid-1990s agreement that aimed to prevent an exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States such as the 1980 Mariel boatlift and another wave of boat people in 1994. ‘We have offered to resume the talks, said Heide Bronke, state department spokeswoman, adding that the offer was made at a meeting with Cuban diplomats in Washington at 4.30pm EDT (2030 GMT) on Friday. Ms Bronke said she did not know whether the Cuban government responded positively to the US overture. Predictably, the Obama administration’s latest gesture to Cuba drew mixed reviews from the Cuban American community, with some blasting it as a ‘unilateral concession to a dictatorial regime and others hailing it as step toward better relations. Mr Obama on April 13 decided to ease limits on family travel to Cuba and to allow US telecom companies to operate on the communist-run island, a […]
Rising oil prices, believes Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, may soon ‘take the wheels off an already derailed world economy. On the face of things, this concern is absurd. The plunge of $115 in the price of oil from its peak last July to its nadir in December was the most precipitous the world has ever seen. Demand for oil is still falling, as the world economy atrophies. Rumours abound of traders hiring tankers to store their excess oil. Rich countries’ stocks cover 62 days’ consumption, the most since 1993 (see chart 1). The average over the past five years has been 52 days’ worth. Nor are oil firms pumping nearly as much as they could. OPEC has announced three separate rounds of production cuts since September in a bid to steady prices. In all, it has vowed to trim its output by 4.2m barrels a day (b/d). That leaves them with as much as 6m b/d of spare capacity. Despite this growing glut, however, the price of oil has been rising steadily in recent weeks (see chart 2). On Wednesday May 20th it closed above $60 a barrel for the first time in more than six months. […]
Some 23 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University. Some 85 percent of respondents said they feared the Islamic Republic would obtain an atomic bomb, 57 percent believed the new U.S. initiative to engage in dialogue with Tehran would fail and 41 percent believed Israel should strike Iran’s nuclear installations without waiting to see whether or how the talks develop. ‘The findings are worrying because they reflect an exaggerated and unnecessary fear,’ Prof. David Menashri, the head of the Center, said. ‘Iran’s leadership is religiously extremist but calculated and it understands an unconventional attack on Israel is an act of madness that will destroy Iran. Sadly, the survey shows the Iranian threat works well even without a bomb and thousands of Israelis [already] live in fear and contemplate leaving the country.’ Advertisement Women are more fearful than men that Iran will obtain nuclear weapons: 83 percent of female respondents said they fear such a scenario in contrast to 78 percent of men; 39 percent of women said they would consider leaving the country in […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
