An obese woman swims in a swimming pool. Doctors say that the incidence of NASH has exploded in the last two decades thanks in part to the growing prevalence of obesity; though there are currently no medicines on the market to combat the disease (an opportunity several pharmaceutical companies hope to capitalize on), exercise and weight loss represents one of the most reliable ways to reverse the progression of the disease.
Credit: Phanie/Alamy

Sandra C., a special education teacher in New Jersey, didn’t worry too much when her doctor told her to call a liver specialist. Sure, she got fatigued running around with the schoolchildren, […]

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Shortages of drugs — including anesthetics, painkillers, antibiotics and cancer treatments — have become increasingly common in the U.S. Although some shortages create a stir in the media, patients are less frequently aware they are not being administered a certain drug as a result of rationing, according to The New York Times.

The American Society of Health System Pharmacists says there are inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, according to the report. Reasons for drug shortages include manufacturing problems, new federal safety rules or drugmakers ceasing production of low-profit products.

In turn, hospitals must decide which patients get certain drugs and which don’t, raising ethical red flags and resulting in medically questionable practices, according to the report.

Here are five things to know about drug shortages and rationing in hospitals.

1. To decide which patients will get rationed drugs, some institutions have created formal committees that include ethicists and patient representatives, while in others, individual physicians, pharmacists or drug company executives make the decision, according to the report.

2. Other criteria are used to decide which patients will receive drugs. For instance, […]

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Up to 100 masked men, dressed in black, gathered in central Stockholm to attack people from immigrant backgrounds, reports say.

Swedish police say the large gang distributed leaflets inciting people to assault refugees.

Witnesses said the men physically attacked people they believed were foreigners. However, police have not confirmed these reports.

It comes amid heightened tension in Sweden over the migrant crisis.

Some 163,000 migrants applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015, the highest per capita number in Europe.

According to Aftonbladet newspaper, the men in Stockholm were distributing leaflets on Friday evening with the slogan “It’s enough now!”,

The material threatened to give “the North African street children who are roaming around” the “punishment they deserve.”

The newspaper published a video showing the gang clashing with police at Stockholm’s central station.

Knuckledusters

Stockholm police said in a statement (in Swedish) that the group was handing out leaflets with the intention to incite people to carry out crimes.

One man was arrested after punching an officer in the face. Several others were detained on public order offences and another was found with brass knuckledusters, police said. […]

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Part of the reward of becoming an agent of compassionate, life-affirming change, whether or not you get public acknowledgment, is the knowledge you are doing measurable good. There is nothing theoretical about your gift as an agent of change. It may usually be anonymous, but the contribution is quite real.

Research shows that the spread of happiness can be objectively measured and quantified. This work also begins to explain exactly what one needs to do to cause happiness to spread and what the social outcomes are of doing so.

There actually is a database of international research on happiness: the World Happiness Report. Published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), the first World Happiness Report was published in April 2012. The latest was released April 23, 2015.

How Can We Measure Happiness?

To create the survey, teams of researchers review country by country survey data on well-being, including a ranking of national average life evaluations, based on Gallup World Poll data. But they place particular emphasis on each individual’s subjective evaluation of a series of questions rising from how much freedom a […]

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Voting machine
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“You’ve heard the old adage ‘follow the money.’ I follow the vote, and wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that’s an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to … make bad things happen.” — Steve Stigall, CIA cyber-security expert, in remarks to the US Election Assistance Commission

Primary election rigging in the coming weeks and months is all but assured if American voters and candidates don’t take steps to prevent it now. Evidence that US voting systems are wide open to fraud and manipulation should be taken seriously in light of the unprecedented high-stakes elections we’re facing.

Not in recent history have American voters been presented with such radically polarized candidates, forcing a crucial choice for the direction of our future, and possibly upending long-established centers of power.

It’s no secret that US primaries have been tightly controlled by the two ruling parties, usually to the benefit of their favored candidates. If […]

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