About that John Hawks's evolutionary argument - "if humans with smaller brains could manage, lesser energy requirements would select for this":
I wonder if maybe having larger brains didn't bring extra survival advantages thanks to having available "spare capacity".
From modern day sports we know how bad head injuries can be (boxing, American football, soccer). If in our evolutionary history a chance of brain damage was common, larger brains could be difference between "brain damaged but still functional" and "brain damaged and dead".
Interesting side-effect could then also be availability of this extra capacity for other functionality in individuals which managed to escape brain damage.
When taking baby Aspirin and having anticipated bleeding (e.g. planned surgery or dental work), hematologist's advice was to start preparing about two weeks in advance: take pill every other day for about a week, then stop for another week.
This paper tells The American College of Chest Physicians' recommendation is stopping 7-10 days in advance, in the clinical study they measured 96 hours (4 days) for "normalizetion of platelet reactivity":
Credit should go to landru79, he keeps finding interesting things in Rosetta's raw data. I basically just tried to correct for Twitter's terrible video handling by re-tracing his steps :)
Go check landru79's Twitter feed, there are many more interesting comet images and videos (e.g. he combines multiple frames into color images):
"for every 1000 patients treated for a 5-year period, aspirin therapy would be expected to result in 1 excess hemorrhagic stroke compared with a benefit of ≈14 myocardial infarctions prevented in patients at moderate risk for CHD (5% to 10% 5-year risk)"
"Aspirin has been found to be a safe in patients harboring cerebral aneurysms and clinical studies provide evidence that it may decrease the overall rate of rupture."
"There was an approximately 40% increased risk of all gastrointestinal bleeding with low-dose aspirin in the observational studies reviewed here, a finding very similar to that reported in randomized trials"
"The overall risk of intracranial hemorrhage was also increased by approximately 40% with long-term low-dose aspirin, which is also similar to the estimates from randomized trials, although an increase in risk was not consistently reported in all studies."
"aspirin significantly reduced the risk of myocardial infarction among men by 43%"
"significantly increased risk of major extracranial bleeding with aspirin [RR 1.54]. The excess risk of bleeds was mostly non-fatal. Perhaps by chance, fatal gastrointestinal (GI) or other fatal extracranial bleeds were lower in the aspirin group versus control [RR 0.48]"
"In a meta-analysis of eight trials including 25,570 patients, aspirin use significantly reduced the overall incidence of cancer-related death by 21%"
"In the meta-analysis of six trials, an increased risk of extracranial bleeding was observed with low-dose aspirin; however, the analysis of extracranial bleeding stratified by period of follow-up revealed that the risk of extracranial bleeding decreases over time, becoming comparable to that of placebo or no aspirin from 3 years onwards: <3 years"
"In this same analysis, fewer cases of fatal bleeding were associated with aspirin use, compared with controls [OR 0.32]"
- past smoker (stopped > 10 years ago): 8.9x higher risk
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Take home message: stop smoking!
Precautionary principle: if you take B vitamin supplements, you can continue (for slight decrease of cancer risk), just make sure you aren't taking mega-doses (especially if you still smoke), but really - stop smoking - the sooner you do less cumulative harm you get.
Amounts of vitamins per supplement seem to vary wildly.
Just from checking supplements I have at home:
Supplement #1 (all B vitamins):
- B6: 4.2mg
- B9: 600ug
- B12: 7.5ug
Supplement #2 (just B6 + B9 + B12):
- B6: 75mg
- B9: 800ug
- B12: 150ug
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Recommended daily doses are:
- B6: 1.7 mg/day (men)
- B9: 400 ug/day in US, 330 ug/day in EU (men + non-pregnant-non-lactating women)
- B12: 2.4 μg/day in US, 4.0 μg/day in EU (men + non-pregnant-non-lactating women)
Tolerable upper intake levels are:
- B6: 100 mg/day in US, 25 mg/day in EU
- B9: 1000 ug/day
- B12: no sufficient evidence for setting upper level
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From the study:
Beneficial effects (for men):
- B6: 1.41 - 3mg/day, multivitamins
- B9: 200 - 400 mg/day
- B12: 0.1 - 55 ug/day
Harmful effects (for men):
- B6: > 20mg/day
- B9: 400 - 600 mg/day
- B12: > 55ug/day
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Also something to keep in mind: apparently the majority of people in this study who got lung cancer were heavy smokers for many years, even if they stopped smoking.
Hard to tell much about B vitamin supplement effects on non-smokers from this study.
Researchers themselves excluded never-smokers from more detailed stratified analysis because of their small number.
There were only 60 cases of lung cancer in never-smoker category (out of 36,381 people => 0.16%).
In comparison there were 748 cases of lung cancer in smoker categories (former + recent + current) (out of 40,737 people => 1.84%).
So there is 11.5x higher risk of lung cancer simply by smoking (including people who stopped smoking).
For comparison the highest hazard ratio from this study was 3.71x for a category of current smoker taking >55ug/d B12 vs current smoker who is non-user of B12.
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Also curiously, the worse risks seem to be associated with people who stopped taking vitamins than people who currently use vitamins (B6: 1.97x vs 1.38x, B9: 1.65x vs 1.05x, B12: 2.58x vs 1.19x - individual supplement use status former vs current).
Plus smaller doses of B6/B9/B12 shown in this study to pretty much universally lower lung cancer risk by a bit (hazard ratios of 0.8-0.9x ranges; one noticeable outlier >600ug/d B9 in recent smokers halving risk of cancer).
It's starting to come (EDM is Schiaparelli lander, TGO is orbiter):
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Latest status for lander: still unknown (next checkpoint after 20:00 CEST)
Latest status for orbiter: seems good
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1) The @ESA_EDM landing recording from #MarsExpress has started arriving on Earth, #ESOC teams report seeing packets flowing #ExoMars
2) It will take just over 10 minutes for #MarsExpress to transmit the @ESA_EDM recording #ExoMars
3) Interpretation of the @ESA_EDM recording is quite complex - could take more than 30 minutes
4) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is signal only, no telemetry. We can already tell a lot from that though.
5) #MarsExpress team now processing @ESA_EDM landing recording to extract the trace of the lander's signal as it descended to Mars.
6) #MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC
7) ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars
8) Initial reports from @ESA_TGO telemetry are that it performed exactly as expected during the #BigBurn
9) @ESA_TGO team are now analysing the health of the orbiter, looking good so far
10) Teams monitoring the Schiaparelli lander continue waiting for indication of the lander’s progress. Engineers are waiting for the next signal receipt slot, which will be provided by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will overfly the Schiaparelli landing site between about 18:49 and 19:03 CEST, and downlink any received signals at around 20:00 CEST.
11) @ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is inconclusive - not clear yet what the status of the lander is
Probably something like when Amazon bought CryEngine license from Crytek and then released it for free as Lumberyard (including releasing source code, though not true open source).
The price for such "do whatever you want" license for CryEngine was supposed to be in $50M-70M range and basically rescued Crytek from bankrupcy (SwiftShader would be obviously much cheaper).
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Ok, managed to find the SwiftShader price (includes TransGaming patents, licensed know-how and licensed intellectual property) - it was $1.25M, announced April 20, 2016:
Really interesting documentary. Thanks for posting this.
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Some highlights:
- these new SynCardia artificial hearts are basically the same as old Jarvik-7 hearts (part that goes inside patient's chest), save for different sizes available today
- just the external part is now more modern (thanks to advances in power sources they can be now portable)
- big problem with Jarvik-7 at those earlier times were infections and blood clotting (leading to strokes), but doctors today know better how to manage this (as far as I understood, this is not due to better mechanical design of the heart but due to better medication / monitoring / protocols compared to ~30 years ago)
- these new SynCardia hearts were used for already ~1,600 patients (as "bridge" while waiting for heart transplant)
- FDA approved trial for use of these artificial hearts as permanent solution (no heart transplant needed), the first patient already got implanted this heart for permanent use
I wonder if maybe having larger brains didn't bring extra survival advantages thanks to having available "spare capacity".
From modern day sports we know how bad head injuries can be (boxing, American football, soccer). If in our evolutionary history a chance of brain damage was common, larger brains could be difference between "brain damaged but still functional" and "brain damaged and dead".
Interesting side-effect could then also be availability of this extra capacity for other functionality in individuals which managed to escape brain damage.