Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Micro dramas and micro attention (Score 1) 59

According to the consulting firm’s report, people are currently living a “32-hour, 17-minute day” by multitasking throughout their daily routine online, and consumers spend over 13 hours on media daily by utilizing various social media platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok.

Want to bet the consulting firm uses similar math when reporting billable hours?

Comment The big drop was the 1960s (Score 1) 176

The birth control pill was first approved in 1960 in the US and 1961 in Finland, at the beginning of a huge drop in fertility rates for both countries:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.macrotrends.net%2Fglobal-metrics%2Fcountries%2Fusa%2Funited-states%2Ffertility-rate

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.macrotrends.net%2Fglobal-metrics%2Fcountries%2Ffin%2Ffinland%2Ffertility-rate

That drop alone brought the US down to about the current total fertility rate: 1960 (3.65), 1973 (1.88), 2024 (1.79). The drop from 2007 (2.12) until now is pretty minor in comparison. I of course won't say that birth control is the only thing that changed in the '60s: a lot of other factors starting converging then as well.

Overall I think the biggest contributor to the drop has been in unintended pregnancies: rates dropped the furthest in teenagers up to age 24. Most people, rich or poor, when they have a real choice, choose to 1, wait to have kids, 2, have fewer of them.

Comment Re:Advertising drives up costs (Score 1) 64

Well, logically, every dollar they spend on advertising could be spent on research or simply not added to the price.

That assumes the amount of revenue generated by the product isn't affected by advertising, but in reality in the US (though the intersection of those two sets seems to keep shrinking every day) drug revenue is strongly tied to advertising. Ads get people to go to the doctor about a condition sooner rather than later, they also get people to refill prescriptions sooner rather than later. And those increases in revenue happen immediately. On the other hand money spent on early stage research today won't even begin to generate revenue during the current CEO's tenure, and so should be avoided if at all possible.

Comment Re:No distinction between neurotypical and neurodi (Score 3, Informative) 25

One of the purposes of using mouse models is to study a problem in the simplest and cheapest scenario. Once a proof of principle is established, it makes sense to explore the boundaries of how far that principle can be extended. At any rate, they ran the experiments in C57BL/6J, C57BL/6 and a B6;129 cross. Which mouse lines do you think they should try in the future? Should they run those experiments before they look at mouse models of Alzheimers, FTD, and Parkinsons?

Comment Re:Yeah, "exciting" (Score 4, Interesting) 25

This sort of stuff isn't in his crosshairs; it's also catnip for aging billionaires. The real risk will be pressure to approve drugs based on this research that have very little evidence of actually providing a real benefit but do have severe side effects, like the recent crop of Alzheimer's drugs (Aduhelm, leqembi, Kisunla)

Comment Re:To put this in perspective (Score 1) 108

Try to read the summary again... slowly and it helps to move your lips. The summary states 0.6 g/kg, not 1.6 g/kg Math is hard.

The post leads off with:

A review of published meta-analyses examining protein supplementation found no evidence supporting intake beyond 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight daily, according to an analysis by cardiologist Eric Topol.

This (and 2.2 g/kg) are the levels of consumption that people have been recommending which Topol is addressing in the article.

Dripdry's comment:

Thatâ(TM)s like eating 10 chicken breasts per day.

The post does also mention the recommendation of 0.8 g/kg/day from the National Academy of Medicine, but whatever lets try the math again with 0.6 g/kg:

For someone to be eating 560 grams of protein a day at a rate of 0.6 g/kg, they would have to weigh 933 kg.

Comment Re:Bizarre angle re EAT recommendations (Score 2) 108

TL;DR: There is limited evidence for eating up to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight daily for increasing muscle mass IF you are younger than middle age and doing a lot of resistance training, but the upper limit of usefulness might actually be lower than 1.6. There is also evidence that eating too much protein increases the risk of atherosclerosis. It's not clear where the threshold for increased risk is; it is probably between 1 and 1.6 g/kg. Meanwhile the protein influencer and supplement industry is pushing levels of 2.2 g/kg.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two percent of zero is almost nothing.

Working...