Science and human woes under the fledgling new admin

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/02/16/us/politics/ap-us-medicaid.html This is a NYT article about revisions proposed for Medicaid including tyhe elimination of maternity coverage. Seema Verma, a protegee of Mike Pence proposes the delivery of block grants for Medicaid recipients with the idea that Medicaid recipients should be able to choose how to spend money. Maternity and newborn care might be an election and therefore not a mandatory benefit. What could happen, since half of US pregnancies are unplanned, is that this care would go uncovered, resulting in more maternal and infant mortality, disability and ultimately, higher costs to the society. The reason for this is that health costs are increasing at a higher rate than inflation and the block grants that are being proposed will increase at the rate of inflation and therefore there will be less and less coverage with time. This has been a proposal by Republicans for years and has been defeated. Verma is the choice to run CMS or Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Her picture was not included in the article, probably for a good reason.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/science/turtle-neck-retraction-shells.html
 Article in the Trilobites blog in the NYT about turtles.The journal Scientific Reports includes a study on the cervical bones of turtles which evolved in some turtles to be part of their defenses against predators.Cryptodires and pleuroidires are two kinds of turtles which retract their necks differently.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/science/great-dying-permian-extinction-fossils.html
Interesting article in the NYT about a fossil discovery by a teenager ten years ago. An article by a Utah paleontologist in Science Advances speculates about the Permian extinction, the worst mass extinction. The fossil find was of an ecosystem which was wiped out 250 million years ago. The diversity of the fossils found points to the fact that the recovery of diversity after the extinction may have happened more quickly than suspected.



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/science/santiago-ramon-y-cajal-beautiful-brain.html?_r=0 Article from the NYT about the anatomical drawings and discoveries of Santiago Ramon y Cajal who sketched the brain from a new book, "The Beautiful Brain."


https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062368621/i-contain-multitudes
This is a fabulous new book by the blogger and science writer Ed Yong. (The Ed's Up). He writes about microbial-animal connections with such humor and purpose, subverting the way we used to teach the immune system as routing the microbial (foreign) enemy instead of as managing the multifarious bacterial/animal symbiosis.  I hope everyone will read this book. Yes! The bugs are the good guys in a lot of cases! He gets down and dirty with researchers, explaining their methods and rationale in their investigations in an engaging and informative way.  I am a big fan of Lynn Margulis and loved his mention of her, not that long gone, and a revolutionary, as credited in the book. Read it and respect your bugs!




https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hot-dispute-emerges-over-first-land-bridge-from-north-to-south-america/ This is an article from Scientific American about a new dispute (not fake news) about dating the first land bridge from North to South American, which may have happened (the connection) fifteen million and not three million years ago as previously thought. Montes a geologist at the U of the Andes at Bogota proposed the older date as a result of the collection of fossils during the recent widening of the Panama Canal.



https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/respiratory-syncytial-virus-vaccine-enters-clinical-testing This from the NIH, a report of an RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) vaccine in clinical trials. This is a trial for adults.  RSV is a major cause of death in infants and children, causing 250,000 deaths per year.