99 degrees and counting

http://www.philly.com/philly/health/fear-of-math-is-harmful-to-your-health-this-woman-wants-to-help-20180629.html  An article from the Philadelphia Inquirer from a scholar at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania who is writing a book about the effects of innumeracy. Quoted from the article, "According to data reported in 2013, almost a third of the U.S. adult population can do only simple operations with numbers — they can count, sort, and do simple arithmetic. If you translate that into the current U.S. adult population, there are about 73 million people who can do up to only basic problems with numbers."  That means they also understand less in terms of how to take a missed dose of medicine (it says to do so on some medications), and also tends to mean that they rely on anecdotal information, which could have no bearing on their own circumstances. People who have diabetes also have to modify their insulin dosages based on their glucose levels and innumeracy make it complex. They also must read meters and other devices. Many people don't know what relative risk is compared to absolute risk and not understand that doubling one's risk could mean 20% to 40% or mean 0.01% to 0.02%, which is negligible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/science/youtube-science-women.html An article from the NYT about  comments left on youtube videos made by women. In a paper published in the JOurnal for the Public Understanding of Science women depicted drew more comments per view than men and more critical comments on their appearance. Some of the researchers' findings echoed a 2014 TED talks study in which it was reported that "when the presenter was a woman, 15.28 percent of comments were about her as opposed to the talk, when the speaker was a man, only 9.84 percent of comments were about him." This is having a discouraging effect on women who wish to make videos on a professional of semiprofessional level, according to the article and study.




http://www.philly.com/philly/health/depression-medication-genetic-test-genomind-anxiety-adhd-20171026.html This is an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a new genetic test for resistance to depression medications. It is called the Genomid Genecept  Assay test. It is better at predicting whether a medication will not work. It uses a proprietary algorithm to analyse 12 different genes to weight their combined effects on patient response to more than 55 different medications.  Some pharmacists will be trained to counsel patients if they see a pattern of unresponsiveness to treatments. There is a type of treatment called TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) or else electrocution therapy (ECT) is used typically used for patients unresponsive to medication.