n2doc
n2doc's JournalMitt Romney Inc.: The White House That Never Was
In the months before the 2012 election, a group of high-powered consultants and political operatives prepared a secret report for candidate Mitt Romney, explaining how he should take over and restructure the federal government should he win the presidency.
“The White House staff is similar to a holding company” read one PowerPoint slide, which would have been presented to President-elect Romney as part of an expansive briefing on the morning after Election Day. It went on to list three main divisions of the metaphorical firm: “Care & Feeding Offices,” like speechwriting, “Policy Offices,” like the National Security Council, and “Packaging & Selling Offices,” like the office of the press secretary. This was the view of the Presidency Romney would have brought with him to Washington, a glimpse of the White House that never was — and plan that never saw the light of day.
But now the secret is out. On May 29, the Romney Readiness Project, the Republican candidate’s transition organization known as R2P, published a 138-page report detailing how it prepared for a potential Romney victory. It is the product of a team of nearly 500, who labored in Washington and around the country to be ready to help Romney assume the reins of power on January 20th, 2013, in accordance with the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/02/mitt-romney-inc-the-white-house-that-never-was/#ixzz2V4WBCVWA
Sunday's Non Sequitur is a dig at a certain retiring congressperson...
At least, I see it that way....
How a Supercomputer May Have Finally Unlocked a Way to Beat HIV
There's no easy answer for HIV; the sly virus uses our own immune cells to its advantage and mutates readily to shrug off round after round of anti-retrovirals. But thanks to the efforts researchers from the University of Illinois and some heavy-duty number crunching from one of the world's fastest petaflop supercomputers, we may be able to stop HIV right in its tracks.
The latest line of attack against HIV targets its viral casing (or capsid). Capsids lie between the virus's spherical outer coat, a .1 micron diameter, lipid-based layer known as the viral envelope, and a bullet-shaped inner coat known as the viral core that contains the strands of HIV RNA. Capsids comprise 2,000 copies of the viral protein, p24, arranged in a lattice structure (a rough insight gleaned only from years of cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, cryo-EM tomography, and X-ray crystallography work). The capsid is responsible for protecting the RNA load, disabling the host's immune system, and delivering the RNA into new cells. In other words: It's the evil mastermind.
The lattice protein structure allows the capsid to open and close like a Hoberman Sphere.
As Dr Peijun Zhang, project lead and associate professor in structural biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine explained to the BBC:
The capsid is critically important for HIV replication, so knowing its structure in detail could lead us to new drugs that can treat or prevent the infection. The capsid has to remain intact to protect the HIV genome and get it into the human cell, but once inside, it has to come apart to release its content so that the virus can replicate. Developing drugs that cause capsid dysfunction by preventing its assembly or disassembly might stop the virus from reproducing.
more
http://gizmodo.com/how-a-supercomputer-may-have-finally-unlocked-a-way-to-510672032?utm_source=feedly
Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads the World in Health Expenditures
MERRICK, N.Y. — Deirdre Yapalater’s recent colonoscopy at a surgical center near her home here on Long Island went smoothly: she was whisked from pre-op to an operating room where a gastroenterologist, assisted by an anesthesiologist and a nurse, performed the routine cancer screening procedure in less than an hour. The test, which found nothing worrisome, racked up what is likely her most expensive medical bill of the year: $6,385.
That is fairly typical: in Keene, N.H., Matt Meyer’s colonoscopy was billed at $7,563.56. Maggie Christ of Chappaqua, N.Y., received $9,142.84 in bills for the procedure. In Durham, N.C., the charges for Curtiss Devereux came to $19,438, which included a polyp removal. While their insurers negotiated down the price, the final tab for each test was more than $3,500.
“Could that be right?” said Ms. Yapalater, stunned by charges on the statement on her dining room table. Although her insurer covered the procedure and she paid nothing, her health care costs still bite: Her premium payments jumped 10 percent last year, and rising co-payments and deductibles are straining the finances of her middle-class family, with its mission-style house in the suburbs and two S.U.V.’s parked outside. “You keep thinking it’s free,” she said. “We call it free, but of course it’s not.”
In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that Americans do not get better care.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/health/colonoscopies-explain-why-us-leads-the-world-in-health-expenditures.html?_r=0
Medicare is going insolvent in about 13 years....
by Tim Fernholz
Chalk it up to the perils of projection: Today we learn that Medicare, the US public health insurance program for seniors, will exhaust its trust fund in 2026, thirteen years from now. When the trust fund runs out, the program will need to either reduce benefits, raise taxes, or borrow more money to meet its obligations. It’s, um, one of the most important decisions legislators need to make about reducing US public debt. And it feels like thirteen years is just around the corner, right? Maybe, but as Sean West notes, Medicare projections (pdf) have a long history of ups and downs. The graph above shows how forecasts of Medicare insolvency have evolved over time (note: a value of zero doesn’t indicate a doomsday prediction; it merely means there was no specific forecast in that year).
The average prediction of Medicare’s insolvency is eleven years. Note, too, that the forecasts track recessions. In times of trouble, tax revenues dip and predicted usage of the program goes up, depleting the fund. Conversely, when the economy is booming, more revenue is predicted to come in, and less healthcare is predicted to go out. This year, we’re seeing a slight increase in the program’s longevity, for several reasons: 1) the mild recovery, 2) the 2010 health care reform law, which cut hundreds of billions in Medicare spending, 3) budget cuts agreed to in 2011 and 4) an expectation of slower growth in health care costs. Of course, America’s health care system or public finances still need more work, but hey, it’s a start.
http://qz.com/89971/medicare-is-going-to-run-out-of-money-in-about-a-decade-but-thats-what-they-always-say/
Just like social security going 'bankrupt' , it is always going to happen, except when it doesn't.
Revealed: The Awesome Explanation for the Moon’s Extra Gravity
By Michael Lemonick
In 1968, just a year before the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, NASA scientists discovered something that could have sent astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins plunging to their deaths: an unexpected gravitational force—one so strong it caused the unmanned Lunar Orbiter spacecraft to violently shake up and down as it orbited Earth’s neighbor.
The cause, NASA determined, was the presence of “mascons,” or mass concentrations of especially dense rock just below the surface of the Moon, with much stronger pulls than the rock that surrounds them. Scientists adjusted accordingly to land the Apollo. But for decades, a pressing question lingered: how could these mascons—not found anywhere on Earth—even exist in the first place?
Today, as published in Science, we finally have an answer. In short: blame the asteroids—and the make-up of the Moon itself.
Mascons are always found within impact basins, the huge, roughly circular depressions created when asteroids smashed into the Moon billions of years ago. Since the depressions are lower than the surrounding surface, and therefore hold less rock, you’d naturally expect less gravity in these locations. But there’s actually more.
That’s because the Moon is made like lemon-meringue pie. No, really. As Science paper co-author and planetary scientist Jay Melosh explains, the crustal rock on the surface has a relatively low density, like meringue. And the mantle underneath is like lemon filling—it’s denser than what’s on top, and warm enough to flow under pressure (even though it’s technically solid). When asteroids strike, they blast through the Moon meringue and drill deep into its lemon filling.
Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/05/30/revealed-the-awesome-explanation-for-the-moons-extra-gravity/
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayMember since: Tue Feb 10, 2004, 01:08 PM
Number of posts: 47,953
