Fascinating that Memory tracking models seem to be organized in hierarchical structures that can be represented in tree-like forms. Reminds me of Helical models discovered in the early 70's for DNA strata
We have to look at Colleges and Universities as business models..... Some of the best run businesses in the country. All the more reason it makes sense for the NCAA to allow athletes to make $$ on endorsement deals
Agreed. My city's local "planning commission" has overstepped many old timers long planned future family-development agreements because big money has come in wanting to develop large scale housing communities. The communities once plotted as kid friendly cul-de-sac, have become thoroughfares for big business by touting "connectivity needs". It's a joke, especially when you see that the make up of the planning commission is 2/3 land developers and contractors.
There is a third way. Suburban single-family zones full of cul-de-sacs are designed to be metaphorically put under glass and never changed. Building massive towers, on the other hand, is very drastic and has the potential to destroy the character of a community.
I like the approach advocated by the Strong Towns movement: allow the next increment of development by right, everywhere. So a neighborhood of mostly single-family homes should allow accessory dwelling units (mother-in-law apartments) and conversion to duplexes by right. A neighborhood of duplexes should allow conversion to triplexes or quadplexes by right. A neighborhood of those should allow conversion to even denser development like townhomes, and multiplexes, etc. This allows a town or city to grow gradually and naturally.
The way they put it is, "No community should have to experience extreme change... but no community should be exempt from change". Wanting to build massive towers to address housing shortages is not ideal, but it's an understandable reaction, when it's illegal to address the shortage by having every neighborhood in the city "thicken up" a bit.
This is how the great cities we love all over the world became great -- through gradual, incremental change and intensification.
Which puts the neighborhood under glass. If you are going to rebuild that means your payout needs to pay for the current value of the building, tear down fees, and new construction fees. If the neighborhood is in decline no problem - land is cheap and the buildings are not being maintained, but there is no demand to build anything there so nothing gets built. If the area is in demand land values are high, the people living there maintain their property (to ensure it keeps the value), and so the costs of building one more floor are always greater than the costs of keeping the building.
That needn't be the case though. Many estates with cul-de-sacs are better designed and have paths between them so while cars can't drive straight through pedestrians (and depending on local rules, cyclists) can get around more freely.
They are a sterile insular abomination when the only way out is by car to get anywhere useful. Then save some more money by leaving out sidewalks. Who needs those? The real problem is poor oversight of developers who think they know what they're doing when they draw their silly street designs on paper.
Cul de sacs historically meant that you or your kid can't walk or cycle two other cul de sacs without going on a busy arterial street, though modern approaches that preserve walking/cycling paths while blocking cars seem better.
But if you would think of the activity instead as a DDoS attack on your mental attention span would you come to a different conclusion?
I was downvoted before for suggesting that DDoS protection would constitute a limit on free speech, so clearly this community feels that DDoS protection is a "good" thing.
I think we can all agree that human attention span is a limited resource, much like network bandwidth.
If we make a simple analogy between network bandwidth and human attention span, then how is an automated bot (or army of humans) sending out mass propaganda to overload your attention any different than an automated bot transmitting junk data to overload your network bandwidth? Why would you control one but not the other?
I want to see the study. If we are saying that average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80–90% between 1914 and 2018, where were the subject vegetables taken from? Are we needing to look at farming methods, large agriculture process such as early harvest, soil depletion, delivery method, sun exposure, etc?
And, if we are looking at findings from the USDA, Agricultural Research Service and USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, they really need to update their research. As stated by the study's author, " the USDA mineral content of vegetables and fruits has not been updated since 2000"
"The material does not protect quite as well as a Kevlar sheet of the same thickness—but it only costs about 5 percent as much" - Incredible. Millions could be saved to protect the military and police. Additionally it could provide less weighty armor and improve performance. There has been a lot of talk about the weight of full military body armor, and I wonder how much this new material would weigh, and if comparable to kevlar but lighter, could improve performance. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/09/25/army-body-arm...
It's almost certainly heavier than the kevlar equivalent. It might be a good material for quickly building fixed fortifications though, or more cheaply armoring vehicles.
Wow, to formulate a generic drug and export it to the U.S. requires the FDA stamp, but if you generate components used in manufacture of US-made drugs get literally no FDA oversight. How can this be?.
I made this account to respond to exactly this question.
The FDA's legal basis to regulate medicines is actually incredibly weak and really hasn't changed much since the 1930s. One of the examples is exactly this case. The FDA only regulates finished medicines in two cases a) brand name or b) generic equivalents. Leaving aside brand name drugs for the moment getting approval to sell a generic equivalent doesn't look anything like what you would expect. What people generally think is that generic drugs are 'copies' of existing brand name drugs and the FDA cares about making sure the generic guys are producing the same drug as the brand name one.
This isn't what happens at all. A manufacturer has to demonstrate similar blood level uptake as the FDA approved equivalent drug using a very similar approval process for the brand name drug. This requires an incredible effort that is substantially the same as getting an original drug approved.
The bottom line is that the FDA doesn't examine the on-going manufacturing of the drug much or supplier reliability much at all. If a manufacturer can pass blood level equivalence nothing else really matters. This equivalence is only valid for the direct manufacturting producer of the drug, not the company marketing it. The reality is that if you want to get FDA approval for a generic you might as well partner with a firm outside the US that knows how to handle this process because its a waste of money jumping through FDA hoops to certify a new facility in the US.
Once you have proved equivalance you can start selling the drug. At this point, the FDA is basically done. The FDA basically dones't care anymore and has very weak sanctions to enforce safety compliance.
The FDA can't do anything about this situation on its own; the way drugs are approved is directly established by law that dates back to the 1930s. I notice a lot of people in this thread suggesting that FDA leadership is bought off and does the work of the drugs companies. I assure you this is not the case.
FDA oversight of pharmacutecial ingredients is accomplished under an entirely different legal regime that has nothing to do with drug approval whatsoever.
For what it's worth many things are like this. It's the same thing with genetically engineered products, also under FDA purview. There is 0 mandatory oversight. If you have the clearance to sell a potato, then you can produce any engineered potato you like and sell it with 0 oversight, testing, or additional requirements. All the FDA offers is a purely voluntary opt-in consultation. [1]
Perhaps unsurprisingly this [2] was the head of the FDA under our last president. He was appointed a newly created executive role, not entirely jokingly referenced as the 'czar of foods.' A Monsanto vice president and lobbyist whose career highlights included arguing that companies should be allowed to knowingly allow at least a very small amount of carcinogenic chemicals into foodstuffs. Seriously, that was the head of the US Food and Drug Administration for nearly 8 years.
