I remember reading a study of math performance of elementary school students in Norway done over a five year period, basically from 1st to sixth grade. Unlike the US, the schools in Norway share a common curricula, so differences among schools were fairly easy to correct for. This study was a meta-analysis, drawn from the standard tests given to all students in the system.
What they found was that: their were more male math “geniuses” than female, but then again, there were more male math “idiots” than female. For than average middle, in 12 of 12 subclasses of math proficiency, male and female performed the same. However, between the 3rd and 4th grade, when more advanced fractions were introduced, female did not do as well as males (the other 10 of twelve were on parr) but-the difference was only just significantly different. The authors conclusion was that females could be brought to parity with males with as little as one extra “period of study” was introduced.
And I read somewhere that farm animals are routinely given antibiotics to make them grow bigger faster. It could be an urban legend (rural legend?) though.
Whie it isn’t totally without controversy, cases like Terri Schiavo’s are far less controversial among doctors than they are among the public.
As an example in the other direction, I’m sure the public would not consider cancer screening to be controversial, but many aspects of it very much are. For instance, I am firmly against primary screening for prostate cancer.
Do you recall the name of the doctor who spearheaded the PSA test movement? I read a recent interview w/ him, and he’s now going largely in the other direction. Not because the tests are inaccurate, but because people think the PSA test directly indicates the presence of cancer, which it doesn’t. There could be any number of causes for elevated PSA, and there can be cancer without elevated PSA. Does this jibe with your experience in the field?
The tremendous increase in health costs will affect your premiums for health insurance. Either that or it will put XYZ corp. out of business.
Even if the company is paying none/a small part of your premium, you are still getting a benefit from health insurance as an employee. You are able to purchase at group rates rather than individual, your premium is paid with pre-tax dollars, and your past experience of high claims doesn’t disqualify you from coverage.
When you are applying for a job, you are in sales and the company you are applying to is a potential customer.
Thank you. I currently work for a biotech company that is working on a treatment for a specific type of cancer. Development of the product has already been going on for over a decade, and it will likely be a few more years before it makes it onto the market, assuming it makes it through Phase III all right. Obviously, all of the resources going into this, including the people, lab space, research supplies and, yes, animals, costs millions of dollars. Yet a friend of mine was absolutely shocked to hear that the company would charge (probably a lot of) money for the drug, rather than just giving it away to anyone who needed it.
Equally important is the fact, (AIUI from my father who’d been in pharmaceutical development his whole professional life.) that something on the order of 90% of all new medications are based on research done in the US, compared to Europe and Canada, because of the costs involved, and the fact that US is the only major market where profits are high enough to make it really cost-effective.
Related to this: sequencing the human (or any other organism’s) genome will not magically result in medical answers. Most biomedical researchers view sequencing as a technical acheivement, not a scientific discovery. It’s a useful tool to have in the arsenal, but sequence alone won’t get you anywhere near an answer.
I’m an animal tech, that’s a kind of lab animal looker afterer/research assistant.
People are always saying things like “you are brave, I couldn’t do stuff like that to an animal” (stuff like what?! We can’t legally do anything that hurts them [of corse nor would we want to]), “how could you?!” (again what?!), “how can they get away with that anymore (with what?!) no one would buy products tested on animals anymore.”
Luckily there is a damn good answer to the last one: the all the stuff on your face was tested by people like me and so was the stuff that makes you hair that odd colour. If the product has not been tested on animals it cannot be sold. If a product says ‘not tested on animals’ on it that just means that another company has done the testing in the past and they have pinched/bought the recipe.
The animals I look after are mostly used for health (rather than cosmetic) research. I’ve worked with farm animals, pets, show animals, production animals and research animals, out of all of these the research animals are the happiest and most well looked after. When the animal techs have finished daily duties and whatever else is ment to happen that day they go and play with the animals, pat them, talk to them and train them, they get more attention than most pets.
Animal techs are noramally people who love animals. And yet they receive so much abuse from people who have never been in an animal house but have seen a bit of film taken in the 50s of people zapping mice. :rolleyes:
Anyway, that’s my bitch for the month. And I admit I do tease these people, when they ask what I do I say “I’m the one who zaps the mouse”.
The practice of using a person’s sex as a rating factor for premium rates or annuity rates. As an actuary, it makes perfect sense to me and it’s statistically justified. Many people think it’s discriminatory though.
the smoke detectors connected to your fire alarm system do not “beep” like the ones in your house. in fact, they have no audible capabil;ities at all. the audible appliances are completely seperate, and they do not “beep” either.
although your phone is dead, the little yellow light next to the label “phone line failure” on your fire alarm dialer is not causing the problem on your phones. the light is on because your phones do not work.
at four am, i am groggy, grouchy and doing the best i can to return your call. do not have me paged, then either call your mom or ignore your phone. i can not help you through your problems unless you ANSWER THE PHONE! i can not instruct your voice mail as to which button it can push to silence the alarm until i get there, and your voice mail can not tell me the address you forgot to give the answering service.
I do not work in hard-or-social science related field as such.
I am a Director of Education at a UU Church. Mostly I work with the children: scheduling nursery workers and Sunday school teachers. purchasing supplies, setting up snacks each Sunday, attending Board and other meetings, etc.
The problem the church is facing right now is this: their numbers have hit a plateau, and there are very few children under 11 in the church, and there are very few college students.
However, they seem to be resistant to this fact: they are not doing what they SHOULD be doing to attract couples with young children, or college students. Their Sunday services are just as boring as regular church, which a lot of the college students I know stopped attending not only because they didn’t agree with most church’s conservative views, but because conservative church services here, by and large, are boring.
You can still be spiritual and jazz up everything. We don’t have to have the liberal humanist equivalent of High Mass every Sunday. For some reason, this is offensive to half the church.
Not all kids are going to learn to add and write in complete sentences. Sometimes they just need to learn how to function in society in a way that will keep them from getting taken advantage of or killed.
Just because a 7th grader (or older) can’t read doesn’t mean he is stupid, lazy, or a drain on society.
If your payroll check is messed up, and your company contracts the payroll (you’ll know, the subcontracted company usually has their name somewhere on the check) they will blame the subcontracter.
It may not be possible to get a copy of JUST ONE check. or JUST ONE W2 form. When we do reprints, we have to reprint the entire payroll, including all the checks and other forms.
For batch processing, a Mainframe or AS400 system is still the best option. A distributed network requires more infrastructure and support than a single box. Therefore, there will always be a need for AS400 or Mainframe folks.
Martial Arts work, and work well… within reason. I don’t care how well trained you are, in a stand up toe to toe fight, a smaller, physically weaker opponent will loose to an equally trained larger stronger opponent.
Also, Pride, UFC and other MMA competitions are not valid ways to judge the effectiveness of an art… however, this viewpoint splits the martial arts world.
Or you might consider that he listed multiple reasons why there may be less woman in the sciences, that biology wasn’t the primary reason and that he never implied that there is a genetic reason for disparity between ethnic/religious groups in various occupations.
When I was working as a mechanical engineer, I was constantly having to rescue the company’s owner and senior management from con men who tried to sell them “secret processes” that involved violating basic laws of physics. Some people just can’t get it into their head that it’s impossible for any process to produce more energy than it consumes. Some even think the laws of thermodynamics are a government conspiracy.
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