Stephan: If a country doesn't care about newborn babies is it a civilized country? Not a rhetorical question given what this report shows?
And, once again, you see that the worst outcome figures come from states controlled by Republicans, which is to say that Americans in those states consistently vote for the degradation of the quality of their own lives. Why is that do you think?
Perhaps because, surprise, surprise, once again the data shows there is a strong correlation between belonging to the christofascist cult, with its sexual dysfunction and view of women as subordinate creatures to men, and poor social outcomes.
No wonder Republicans don't like facts.
For decades, the number of American babies born too small was on the decline. But new data suggests the rate may be ticking up again—especially among African Americans.
The World Health Organization defines an underweight newborn as weighing less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces. In 2016, according to new joint report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s annual county health rankings, 8.2 percent of new babies failed to exceed the threshold. That’s a 2 percent increase in underweight births since 2014. (The United States also fares poorly compared with other nations. See this Brookings Institution chart, based on 2011 data.)
Babies can be born too small for a number of reasons: Most commonly, it’s because they are premature or because the mother’s placenta isn’t providing enough nutrients. Low birth weight is associated with a range of health problems, from infections and brain bleeds in infancy to a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease later in life. Birth weights are a good general indicator of the health of a community, […]
Stephan: This is a very important article because based on actual data it gives us a profile of who the gun owners in the U.S. are, overwhelming a tiny group of American White men, and why they own not one but multiple guns. There are several surprises in this data, particularly that these men are not, as you might expect, fundamentalists, in fact they aren't even religious. But the biggest take away, for me, is that this obsession with guns is at its core a fear response arising from the fact that American society is entirely oriented towards profit and those who are not on the receiving end of profit are in a fear fugue for which guns are a kind of totem aspirin.
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University. (emphasis added)
So, who is buying all these guns—and why?
The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, […]
Stephan: Here is more bad news about micro-particles of plastic. The takeaway: stop using any form of sea salt and use only mined salt. This report explains why I say this.
Two fragments of blue microplastic surrounded by diatom phytoplankton (seen under a microscope) after being collected from the sea in a fine mesh trawl net. Credit: Alex Hofford/EPA
Sea salt around the world has been contaminated by plastic pollution, adding to experts’ fears that microplastics are becoming ubiquitous in the environment and finding their way into the food chain via the salt in our diets.
Researchers believe the majority of the contamination comes from microfibresand single-use plastics such as water bottles, items that comprise the majority of plastic waste. Up to 12.7m tonnes of plastic enters the world’s oceans every year, equivalent to dumping one garbage truck of plastic per minute into the world’s oceans, according to the Read the Full Article
Irene Papanicolas, PhD; Liana R. Woskie, MSc; Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH, - JAMA
Stephan: The United States spends more than any other nation on earth for healthcare, several orders of magnitude more in some cases, and gets healthcare of such a shoddy quality that we are down in the basement of developed nations at 37th. Why is that?
This article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, addresses that question. It's lengthy but worth your time, and it demonstrates the essential nature of an illness profit system compared with a healthcare system.
Question Why is health care spending in the United States so much greater than in other high-income countries?
Findings In 2016, the United States spent nearly twice as much as 10 high-income countries on medical care and performed less well on many population health outcomes. Contrary to some explanations for high spending, social spending and health care utilization in the United States did not differ substantially from other high-income nations. Prices of labor and goods, including pharmaceuticals and devices, and administrative costs appeared to be the main drivers of the differences in spending.
Meaning Efforts targeting utilization alone are unlikely to reduce the growth in health care spending in the United States; a more concerted effort to reduce prices and administrative costs is likely needed.
Abstract
Importance Health care spending in the United States is a major concern and is higher than in other high-income countries, but there is little evidence that efforts to reform US health care delivery have had a meaningful influence on controlling health care spending and costs.
Stephan: Based on decades of reading social outcome and neuroscience research data I have been saying for some years that conservative religiosity is as much a psychophysical disorder as a political or religious position. Here's the latest research confirming that view.
The primary research paper of which this report is a popular presentation is:
Neuropsychologia. 2017 Jun;100:18-25. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.04.009. Epub 2017 Apr 6.Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism.
Republican christofascist Mike Pence, Vice President. Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex.(emphasis added)
The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.
Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group.
For decades, the number of American babies born too small was on the decline. But new data suggests the rate may be ticking up again—especially among African Americans.
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the 
Question Why is health care spending in the United States so much greater than in other high-income countries?
