Stubborn-turtle-blog

And yet GDP is a fairly useless metric

State-level GDP, 2015

I’ll be honest, my dream is to be a medical officer for a space company/organization

Seven Vehicles That Will Carry Humanity Into Orbit and Beyond Very Soon

The human race is quickly becoming a spacefaring civilization. During the Cold War, aggression and technological rivalry between two superpowers led to humanity’s first journey into space and to those first footsteps on the Moon. Today, exploration is driven by competition in the commercial space industry.

Private companies like SpaceX, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada Corp are already signed up to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Later, they’ll also build and fly their own human-capable spacecraft, while NASA itself focuses on building a vehicle that will eventually take humans to Mars. Read more about each spacecraft.

They are (from top to bottom):

1.) NASA’s Orion Spacecraft 

First crewed launch 2021-2023

2.) SpaceX’s Crew Dragon

 First crewed flight 2017

3.) Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner 

First Crewed Flight: 2018

4.) Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser

First flight: 2019

5.) Blue Origin’s New Shepard

First Crewed Flight: 2018

6.) World View Capsule

First Crewed Launch: 2017

7.) Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo

Launch date: Unknown

The victors write history

"Lost Cities" Discovered In Libya

The Garamantes were an ancient civilization, in what is today Libya, on the African northern coast.  Unfortunately for their legacy, most of what we knew about them comes from their enemies, the Romans. Unsurprisingly, the Roman accounts described the Garamantes as “barbaric nomads and troublemakers on the edge of the Roman Empire.” This view of the Garamantes as a minor, annoying tribe is being overturned by recent digs. In 2011, a team of researchers led by archaeologist David Mattingly from the University of Leicester discovered more than 100 fortified farms, towns, and villages with castle-like structures in Libya that date from 1 CE to 500 CE. The Garamantes operated a trans-Saharan trade, and were even pioneers at building oases! Hardly the “barbaric nomads” the Romans unfairly called them.

International tango is also the middle of a fight

“The forms of tango are like stages of a marriage. The American tango is like the beginning of a love affair, when you’re both very romantic and on your best behavior. The Argentine tango is when you’re in the heat of things and all kinds of emotions are flying: passion, anger, humor. The International tango is like the end of the marriage, when you’re staying together for the sake of the children.” -Barbara Garvey

In early September of 1666, the Great Fire of London devastated the city for four days. Archaeological evidence suggests the searing heat may have reached as high as 3000 F. At that temperature human remains, bones and all, become ash.

Computer Room Not Found

This graphic shows how fast a rocket must go to leave every planet

Women need to be able to nurse, and pump, without shame when they return to their work.

Alarming disparities in health outcomes could be prevented by breastfeeding

A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics showed that black infants had more than twice the deaths of whites attributable to lack of optimal breastfeeding. Black infants also had more than three times the rate of necrotizing enterocolitis, a devastating disease of preterm infants, attributable to suboptimal rates of feeding with their mother’s own milk.

White women initiate breastfeeding at much higher rates than black women and slightly higher rates than Hispanic women; moreover, white women breastfeed longer and have higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding. Current rates for black, white, and Hispanic women were defined as “suboptimal breastfeeding.” This is the first study to show how these disparities translate into differences in health outcomes.

“If mom can’t go to work, she’s not getting paid. This may spell the difference between making rent that month, or keeping the lights on, or paying for basic needs,” said Dr. Melissa Bartick, assistant professor of medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study. “When I first saw our results, I cried.”

Melissa C. Bartick, Briana J. Jegier, Brittany D. Green, Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, Arnold G. Reinhold, Alison M. Stuebe. Disparities in Breastfeeding: Impact on Maternal and Child Health Outcomes and Costs. The Journal of Pediatrics, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.10.028

It is recommended that women breastfeed each child exclusively for the first six months of life, followed by continued breastfeeding while complementary foods are introduced for at least the first year of life.        Credit: © gamelover / Fotolia

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