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Friday, December 29, 2023

3.169 - AMICOR (26)

 3.169 - AMICOR (26) Última postagem de 2.023. Desejando a todos os AMICOR e visitantes mais um ano com Saúde e Felicidade, enquanto pretendemos completar 27 anos encontrando-nos pela INTERNET. Um abraço a todos e agradecimentos pela companhia. Aloyzio

#com Dra. Valderês A. Robinson Achutti (*13/06/1931+15/06/2021)

Visitando uma feira por aqui mesmo...

#Re-Publicando artigos meus, mais antigos.
O Relógio da Vida.   (26/12/2000)

Aloyzio Achutti. 

Dia-ano-século-milênio, e o compasso do tempo se perpetua, acionado pela mola da memória

e da imaginação, na medida em que o presente, em busca do futuro, vai se arquivando no passado.

O dia e o ano têm um ritmo natural, evidente no ciclo diuturno e no sazonal. Os outros  entretanto, século e milênio, têm muito de convenção, mas não deixam de ter seu significado no contexto da história, porque embora não sejam marcados pelo relógio cósmico, no biológico,  guardam o tique-taque da vida umana, e as badaladas de seus eventos mais marcantes.

Em geral, nas muitas cronologias publicadas nesta época, o interesse recai nos grandes sucessos, nas descobertas maravilhosas, nos desastres, nas guerras, e em seus personagens mais famosos. Ao rever o espetáculo, com a atenção  para as grandes datas, para as horas cheias, para eventos marcantes, e os super-heróis, perde-se o pulsar quase imperceptível dos minutos e segundos, de componentes menores,  de pessoas comuns, não desprezíveis, nos quais a vida e a história se realizam.

Essa alegoria tem me levado a pensar na valorização  do espetacular, fazendo sombra ao dia a dia, e no culto aos super-heróis, em detrimento das pessoas comuns (em última análise, da pessoa humana como tal). Esta pode ser uma característica de nosso tempo, que se não for peculiaridade dele, nele tem se manifestado, contando com instrumentos muito eficazes. Se o individualismo abriu o caminho para a concentração de riquezas, marginalizando multidões, como o pêndulo de um grande relógio, o coletivismo exagerou para o lado oposto, mas com idêntica repercussão sobre a pessoa, concentrou o poder em alguns poucos líderes, enquanto criava uma expressão borrada e homogeneizada do conjunto da humanidade. 

A sabedoria da vida está na biodiversidade, que ao se dispersar se auto-regula, se ordena e se reproduz, preservando a identidade de cada um de seus elementos fundamentais com aquilo que lhe é próprio. O grande engano vem da padronização, do estereótipo, da formatação que, se bom para a produção industrial e para aumentar eficiência de qualquer processo, ou para tentar controlar  comportamento, é incompatível com a vida, dentro de sua complexidade e da individualidade de cada ser. Na imaginação do demagogo e do burocrata é tentador trabalhar com a fantasia e retirar a densidade de cada indivíduo, sua identidade, transformando-o num elemento numérico e virtual. Fomos capazes de desenvolver recursos maravilhosos que nos abstraíram da realidade, insuflando a imaginação: a reprodução e a transmissão  cada vez mais perfeita do som e da imagem, a divulgação maciça de idéias, e a estimulação de sentimentos. A modelagem estatística, a terceira dimensão, a  holografia, o mundo cibernético, a inteligência artificial nos arrebatam. Tentam-nos as panaceias, as receitas universais, o aconselhamento em massa, a falácia da medicina sem a relação personalizada médico-paciente. Entretanto, continuarão resistindo os indivíduos, com suas características próprias, com o pulsar elementar e inconfundível de suas vidas.

É curioso que neste final de século tenha se propagado tanto uma epidemia (AIDS) que destrói o sistema imunitário, responsável também, no terreno biológico, pela identificação do que é próprio e não próprio a cada organismo, expondo-o à invasão oportunística. Também aprendemos na medicina a inibir o mesmo sistema com finalidade terapêutica, para prolongar a vida e, ludibriando a identidade, transplantar órgãos de uns para os outros. A clonagem,  também tem tentado fazer indivíduos pretensamente idênticos,  no caminho oposto ao da natureza.

A quebra dos códigos que garantem a biodiversidade, tido como dos maiores feitos científicos de 2.000,  dá-nos uma ilusão de poder de vida e de morte, de recuperação da saúde e de destruição do equilíbrio vital sobre esta terra. A natureza, no entanto, se reserva um último truque ao disponibilizar a vida não como um produto acabado, moldado definitivamente pelos padrões genéticos, mas como algo que se sustenta no tempo, se renova e se adapta na fugacidade de cada instante, neste enorme relógio que vai diferenciando cada indivíduo do outro, não permitindo a perda da identidade de cada um, e ao mesmo tempo, nos mantém inexoravelmente, grandes e pequenos, famosos e humildes, todos solidários num único e mesmo contexto.

#Núcleo de Reanimação Cárdio-Respiratória
do Hospital de Clínicas - Departamento de Pediatria

Com grande satisfação recebi notícias do Núcleo de Reanimação CR, coordenado com sucesso pela Professora Tais Sica da Rocha desde o passamento da   Professora Eliana Trotta. Essa atividade que antes inexistia no currículo da Faculdade de Medicina criei no fim da década de 80, na Disciplina de Promoção e Proteção da Saúde III (Med 114) sob minha regência. Foi muito importante o interesse e o apoio de três acadêmicos de então - hoje eminentes profissionais - Eduardo Estrella, Sandro Gonçalves e Stephen Stefani.

Diz a diretora atual que desde 2014 já treinaram 8.919 novos socorristas: TODOS PODEM SALVAR-VIDAS! SEJA UM SOCORRISTA!

UTI pediátrica Diretora do Programa de ECMO do Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre
Coordenadora do Núcleo de Treinamento em Reanimação Cardiorrespiratória
Departamento de Pediatria/ Faculdade de Medicina/UFRGS  3359-8399 ou 33598374

#

My Bookmarks

Our Top 5 Videos of 2023

VIDEO | ALL TOPICS

 

How AI Discovered a Faster Matrix Multiplication Algorithm

DeepMind researchers trained an AI system called AlphaTensor to find new, faster algorithms for matrix multiplication. AlphaTensor quickly rediscovered — and surpassed, for some cases — the reigning algorithm discovered by German mathematician Volker Strassen in 1969.

Watch the video | Read the article

Can a New Law of Physics Explain a Black Hole Paradox?

A group of physicists recently used circuit complexity, a concept from computer science, to describe the quantum evolution of physical systems. Some computer scientists who initially balked at the idea have since become its closest allies.

Watch the video | Read the article

Could One Physics Theory Unlock the Mysteries of the Brain?

Some neuroscientists hypothesize that our brains work optimally at a “critical point” between subcritical and supercritical extremes. If so, brain diseases like epilepsy could be associated with a divergence from the critical point.

Watch the video | Read the column

When Computers Write Proofs, What’s the Point of Mathematicians?

What is a mathematical proof? What we tend to think of as an eternal, immutable truth, is perhaps better understood as a social construct, number theorist Andrew Granville explains.


Watch the video | Read the interview

P vs. NP: The Greatest Unsolved Problem in Computer Science

How hard is it to prove that a problem is hard? This question is at the heart of meta-complexity, an area of theoretical computer science with implications that go far beyond any specific technology.


Watch the video | Read the article


My Bookmarks

NEUROSCIENCE | ALL TOPICS

 

The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think

By JOANNA THOMPSON

Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternative explanations are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.

Read the article

NEUROSCIENCE

 

How Loneliness Reshapes the Human Brain

By MARTA ZARASKA

Feelings of loneliness prompt changes in the brain that further isolate people from social contact.

Read the article

QUANTIZED COLUMNS

 

When Does the Brain Operate at Peak Performance?

By JOHN M. BEGGS

The critical brain hypothesis suggests that neural networks do their best work when connections are not too weak or too strong.

Read the article | Watch the video

GENOMICS

 

How a DNA ‘Parasite’ May Have Fragmented Our Genes

By JAKE BUEHLER

A novel type of “jumping gene” may explain why the genomes of some complex cells are more densely stuffed with noncoding sequences than others.

Read the article

PHYSIOLOGY

 

In the Gut’s ‘Second Brain,’ Key Agents of Health Emerge

By YASEMIN SAPLAKOGLU

Sitting alongside the neurons in your enteric nervous system are underappreciated glial cells, which play key roles that scientists are only just starting to understand.

Read the article

My Bookmarks

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | ALL TOPICS

 

The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models

By STEPHEN ORNES

Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.

Read the article

MACHINE LEARNING

 

A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence

By ANIL ANANTHASWAMY

By imbuing enormous vectors with semantic meaning, we can get machines to reason more abstractly and efficiently than before.

Read the article

COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITY

 

Complexity Theory’s
50-Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge

By BEN BRUBAKER

How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? A string of recent results has started to deliver answers.

Read the article

 

NEURAL NETWORKS

 

Researchers Discover a More Flexible Approach to Machine Learning

By STEVE NADIS

“Liquid” neural nets, based on a worm’s nervous system, can transform their underlying algorithms on the fly, giving them unprecedented speed and adaptability.

Read the blog

 

ALGORITHMS

 

The Most Important Machine That Was Never Built

By SHEON HAN

At 23 years old, Alan Turing helped define computation, algorithms and what came to be known as Turing machines — the foundation for modern computing.

Read the blog

My Bookmarks

QUANTUM PHYSICS | ALL TOPICS

 

Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing

By CHARLIE WOOD

The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works.

Read the article

EXPLAINERS

 

How Our Reality May Be a Sum of All Possible Realities

By CHARLIE WOOD

Richard Feynman’s path integral is both a powerful prediction machine and a philosophy about how the world is. But physicists are still struggling to figure out how to use it, and what it means.

Read the article

MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS

 

A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics

By KEVIN HARTNETT

Symmetry has been a crucial ingredient in every major advance in physics for more than a century. In recent years, symmetries have been reformulated into a form that can now be applied to quantum field theory, promising new breakthroughs.

Read the article

ASTRONOMY

 

Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe’s First Stars

By JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN

Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.

Read the article

THEORETICAL PHYSICS

 

‘Alien Calculus’ Could Save Particle Physics From Infinities

By CHARLIE WOOD

Feynman diagrams brought a measure of meaning to the infinities of quantum electrodynamics. But deep down, this way of approaching quantum field theory doesn’t really work at all.

Read the article

NUMBER THEORY | ALL TOPICS

 

Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture

By MAX G. LEVY

Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall.

Read the article

COMBINATORICS

 

Surprise Computer Science Proof Stuns Mathematicians

By LEILA SLOMAN

Two computer scientists have found a new, dramatically lower limit to the maximum size of a set of integers in which no three of them are evenly spaced.

Read the article

NUMBER THEORY

 

Behold Modular Forms, the ‘Fifth Fundamental Operation’ of Math

By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ

Modular forms are one of the most beautiful and mysterious categories of objects known to mathematicians. But what exactly are they?

Read the explainer

 

TOPOLOGY

 

An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated

By KEVIN HARTNETT

The telescope conjecture gave mathematicians a handle on ways to map one sphere to another. Now that the conjecture has been disproved, the universe of shapes has exploded.

Read the article

COMBINATORICS

 

Mathematicians Find Hidden Structure in a Common Type of Space.

By JORDANA CEPELEWICZ

In 50 years of searching, mathematicians found only one example of a “subspace design” that fit their criteria. A new proof reveals that there are infinitely more examples out there.

Read the article

#UNDP 

In 2023, we delivered five flagship initiatives and dedicated ourselves to the upcoming HDR, which explores the current gridlock of slow collective action on key global challenges, exacerbated by a lack of trust and polarization, and proposes ways to address it.” 

HDRO has spearheaded thought leadership through cutting-edge knowledge products, impactful publications, statistical and digital platform innovations, and new knowledge networks.


Produced and launched 5 flagship initiatives

2023 Gender Social Norms Index Report


Gender bias is a pervasive problem worldwide. The Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) quantifies biases against women, capturing people’s attitudes on women’s roles along four key dimensions: political, educational, economic and physical integrity. The index, covering 85 percent of the global population, reveals that close to 9 out of 10 men and women hold fundamental biases against women.


Read more here


 

Human Climate Horizons data and insights platform


In the latest release, Human Climate Horizons data and insights platform (HCH) unveils projections of sea level rise and its impacts on people and land in over 5,000 coastal regions and major cities worldwide.


Read more here


 

The paths to equal


With data for 114 countries, the report introduced a new multidimensional framework to measure the status of women’s empowerment and gender equality across the world, with the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI) as new twin indices.


Read more here


 

2023 Multidimensional Poverty Index Report (MPI)




The Corporate Human Development Community Of Practice


In addition, HDRO has supported the development of National and Regional HDRs, and has co-led the next generation of NHDR’s strategy in collaboration with regional bureaus and human development experts across the organization and beyond.

HDRO has actively broadened partnerships and collaborations, fostering meaningful relationships with key institutions and organizations at both global and local levels.


Engaged with over 40 institutions at all levels, including international organizations, universities, research networks, think tanks, private sector actors, governments, and others.

PRIO, IIASA, Harvard University, the German Development Institute, HDCA, CUNY, the Migration Policy Institute, OPHI, the Stockholm Institute, the University of Bristol, the University of Maryland, the LR Foundation, Planet, PRRM, OECD Save the Children, UNICEF, UNITAR, UNV, and many others.


Additionally, HDRO has participated in over 100 group or bilateral discussions with key experts and stakeholders.

HDRO has convened key experts and stakeholders in events and consultations that drove thought leadership and innovation.

Organized over 20 thematic and regional consultations and other events, with over 500 participants


2023 HDR Thematic Consultation: International Institutions in Radically Uncertain Times organized in collaboration with the Oxford Martin Programme on Changing Global Orders. The consultation brought together a multidisciplinary group of prominent historians, economists, sociologists, biologists, and political scientists.

2023 HDR Regional Consultation: Arab States jointly organized with UNDP RBAS, the consultation focused on government mismatches and the need for collective action. The consultation brought together prominent experts, academics, and practitioners from the region and senior managers and specialists from UNDP.

2023 & 2024 HDR Thematic Consultation: Our Shared Digital Future organized in collaboration with the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security. It brought together prominent scholars and practitioners from the fields of political science, journalism, technology studies, law, philosophy, and biology.

2023 HDR Thematic Consultation: South-South Cooperation partnered with the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and South-South Global Thinkers, a joint initiative by UNOSSC and UNDP, the technical consultation draw perspectives from the Global South, and brought together prominent experts, scholars, and practitioners in the field, along with senior managers and specialists from UNDP and UNOSSC.

2023 HDR Regional Consultation: Latin America and the Caribbean organized with UNDP RBLAC, the consultation addressed the topics of governance mismatches and investing in one another in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. Prominent specialists, scholars, and practitioners in the region were involved in the discussion, together with senior managers and specialists from UNDP.

Signals of change shaping the landscape around collective action organized with the UNDP’s Strategy & Futures Team drew on UNDP’s global Futures Network to identify signals of change shaping the landscape around collective action - both enablers and obstacles, including interesting examples of collective action itself at community, country or international level.

For other events please click here

HDRO-produced knowledge has had a significant digital reach, and was referenced and utilized in the formulation of policy documents at both global and local levels, including policy briefs by the SG in preparation for the SDG Summit and the upcoming Summit of the Future, and the midterm review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and many others.

HDRO’s knowledge products have received widespread media coverage, strengthening both the brand and global recognition.

Publications, knowledge products, and events have had broad media coverage, often from the top tier global news outlets.


The Human Development Reports achieved an impressive average of over 3 billion monthly Unique Visitors (UVM), representing the combined potential reach of the news outlets with thousands of monthly media links, while the Human Development Index (HDI) had average monthly UVM of over 10 billion.


#MEDSCAPE

Akash Goel, MD

DISCLOSURES 

February 23, 2023

54

If the pandemic served as a window into our health, what it revealed was a US population that is not only sick but also seemingly only getting sicker. Life expectancy is falling precipitously. Three fourths of Americans are overweight or obese, half have diabetes or prediabetes, and a majority are metabolically unhealthy. Furthermore, the rates of allergic, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases are rising at rates of 3%-9% per year in the West, far faster than the speed of genetic change in this population.

Of course, diet and lifestyle are major factors behind such trends, but a grossly underappreciated driver in what ails us is the role of environmental toxins and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. In years past, these factors have largely evaded the traditional Western medical establishment; however, mounting evidence now supports their significance in fertility, metabolic health, and cancer.

Although several industrial chemicals and toxins have been identified as carcinogens and have subsequently been regulated, many more remain persistent in the environment and continue to be freely used. It is therefore incumbent upon both the general public and clinicians to be knowledgeable about these exposures. Here, we review some of the most common exposures and the substantial health risks associated with them, along with some general guidance around best practices for how to minimize exposure.

#Hospital Moinhos de Vento - O Tempo


#Marginalia, Maria Popova

FROM THE ARCHIVE | Resolutions for a Life Worth Living: Attainable Aspirations Inspired by Great Humans of the Past

If we abide by the common definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom, and if Montaigne was right that philosophy is the art of learning to die, then living wisely is the art of learning how you will wish to have lived. A kind of resolution in reverse.

This is where the wisdom of lives that have already been lived can be of immense aid — a source of forward-facing resolutions, borrowed from people who have long died, having lived, by any reasonable standard, honorable and generous lives, lives of beauty and substance, irradiated by ideas that have endured across the epochs to make other lives more livable.

Here are ten such ideas (after many more highlighted in years past) that make for life-expanding resolutions, and an extra eleventh as an overarching ethos./.../


Saturday, December 23, 2023

3.168 - AMICOR (26)

 3.168 - AMICOR (26) 

#Com Dra. Valderês A. Robinson Achutti (*13/06/1931+15/16/2021)

Como está fazendo muito calor, preferi convidar os amigos para visitarmos as montanhas no norte da Italia (Dolomiti). Também, nosso Natal costumava ter algodão na decoração do pinheiro, imitando flocos de neve...

#Re-Publicando artigos mais antigos meus  (2016)

PAPAI NOEL?

Aloyzio Achutti (2016)

    Dá para acreditar no Papai Noel? A pergunta parece descabida, mas muitos de nós aceitamos essa ilusão durante algum tempo em nossa infância, assim como até hoje toleramos sem discutir muita coisa incerta, ilusória ou mentirosa. Convém crer, é melhor não duvidar, nem perguntar, e pode até não haver resposta…

    É preciso haver um mínimo de compatibilidade entre conhecimentos e “verdades”  utilizados em nosso cotidiano e, ao mesmo tempo, uma boa margem de tolerância, ou explicação razoável, para juntar ideias aparentemente conflitantes. Para viver bem não precisamos estar tentando testar a veracidade a cada momento, nem é preciso que todos tenhamos crenças iguais. Basta haver equilíbrio e estabilidade  no conjunto de crenças de cada um, e haja respeito à diversidade.

    Há quem diga que aquilo que chamamos de realidade não existe de fato (assim como Papai Noel), cada um lança mão da imaginação para construir um mundo como gostaria que fosse, ou como convém, e fique compatível com o restante de nossa memória pessoal. Dúvidas, discordâncias e contestações, nos causam algum desconforto, mas terminamos por nos acomodar.

    A ciência foi criada para colocar um mínimo de ordem na casa, mas mesmo existindo um arquipélago de postulados científicos bastante sólidos nos quais nos agarramos, sobra sempre espaço a ser preenchido pela imaginação.

    Gosto de repetir a frase de Albert Einstein: “imaginação é mais importante que o conhecimento”.

    Afinal de contas não sabemos de onde, nem como surgimos, nem para onde vamos como espécie, nem o sentido e o destino desse mundo. Imaginamos um universo imenso, a se perder no limite da capacidade de nossos sentidos, e das máquinas inventadas para enxergar  o inatingível. Mesmo assim, pelas distâncias que nos separam, estamos recém recebendo e misturando informações  de mundos provavelmente já desaparecidos. 

    Não sabemos o que preenche os espaços entre os astros e seres palpáveis de cuja existência não ousamos duvidar, nem do microcosmo de partículas componentes cuja realidade está a exigir cada vez mais definições, teorias e elucubrações só concebíveis no domínio da imaginação…

    Minha intenção inicial era explorar o clima de descrédito e insegurança no qual vivemos, onde não sobra mais ninguém para se acreditar - assim como Papai Noel que já se foi. Ninguém sabe, ninguém viu, não há provas materiais, só indícios que podem corresponder a um plano conspiratório...

    Ainda, voltando ao espírito natalino materializável na troca de presentes, deveríamos falar sobre o circuito da recompensa, radicado na satisfação gerada pelo mimo, pelo carinho, por qualquer ganho, propina, poder, perpetuando o caminho do prazer e do sucesso, no funcionamento do circuito cerebral naturalmente desenvolvido para garantir sobrevivência e evolução das espécies, mas isso terá que ficar para outra ocasião. 

    Enquanto isso - Feliz Natal!...

#É Natal!



#

Quanta’s 2023 in Review

The Year in Physics

By NADIA DRAKE

From the smallest scales to the largest, the physical world provided no shortage of surprises this year.

Read more | Watch the video

The Year in Biology

By HANNAH WATERS

In a year packed with fascinating discoveries, biologists pushed the limits of synthetic life, probed how organisms keep time, and refined theories about consciousness and emotional health.

Read more | Watch the video

 

The Year in
Computer Science

By BILL ANDREWS

AI learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer scientists developed algorithms that solved long-standing problems.

Read more | Watch the video

The Year in Math will publish later today — check our site and YouTube channel for updates.

Also this week:

GRAPH THEORY

 

A Close-Up View Reveals the ‘Melting’ Point of an Infinite Graph

By KELSEY HOUSTON-EDWARDS

Like ice melting into water, graphs undergo phase transitions. Mathematicians showed that they can pinpoint such transitions by examining only local structure.

Read the article

CHRONOBIOLOGY

 

How This Marine Worm Can Tell Moonglow From Sunbeams

By ELISE CUTTS

For the first time, scientists have decoded the molecular structure of a protein that helps to sync a biological clock to the phases of the moon.

Read the blog

ASTROPHYSICS

 

New Clues for What Will Happen When the Sun Eats the Earth

By JONATHAN O'CALLAGHAN

Recent observations of an aging, alien planetary system are helping to answer the question: What will happen to our planet when the sun dies?



Read the blog

QUANTA SCIENCE PODCAST

 

Selfish, Virus-Like DNA Can Carry Genes Between Species

Podcast hosted by SUSAN VALOT;
Story by SAUGHAT BOLAKHE


Genetic elements called Mavericks that have some viral features could be responsible for the large-scale smuggling of DNA between species.

Listen to the podcast

Read the article

#PUB MED

. 1993 Jan;76(1):26-35.

The evolution of medicine as a profession. A 75-year perspective

PMID: 8426585 
Abstract
Recomendação da Prof. Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja
The profession of medicine has changed dramatically in 75 years. Despite the commitment of individual practitioners to the highest ideals of professionalism, the profession itself has lost privilege, power, and public reputation. It has been toppled from the high moral ground of professionalism. This has happened not so much because individual clinicians have abandoned that ground, but largely because others have occupied it--primarily complex organizations that have developed public mandates to regulate and oversee health care. The issue is not one of unfeeling physicians--it is one of a health care system that has evolved so as to limit medicine's autonomy. This changing system places new constraints and pressures on the physician-patient relationship. The question we are left with is whether medicine can regain its professionalism. How do we reform a system that, by its complexity, has become amoral? The only way is for physicians to re-assume a stout position of advocacy--advocacy for individual patients in a complex and frightening system of care, advocacy for patients as a class of people in a political system that seeks to restrict care, advocacy for patients in a world of environmental and epidemic threats. Such advocacy requires an equally strong moral commitment to the principles of service. Acting in the patient's best interest is not enough. It requires that the profession avoid the appearance of blatant self-interest at every turn. It requires a revised commitment to political activism in the interest of service to patients as a community. The costs are extremely high--but the alternative, physicians-as-technicians and medicine as a slave to corporate and government interests, is hardly acceptable.

#Time

A quick programming note: Health Matters will be off next week, and return on Jan. 2. From all
 of us on the TIME health team, we wish you a happy and health new year. 


Health journalists should be some of the healthiest people around. All day long, we call up experts
and ask them what people can do to live long and full lives.
But knowing what's good for you doesn't always translate into optimal behaviors. We
deprioritize exercise, spend hours scrolling through social media, and eat too many Christmas cookies.
(Maybe just like you.) This year, everyone on our team made time for at least one new activity we
felt sure would enrich our lives. From eating more ice cream to rage biking, some stuff worked so
well that we're planning to take it with us into the new year.

READ WHAT ELSE WORKED FOR US 

#Live Science
TOP SCIENCE NEWS
Never-before-seen antibodies can target many flu viruses
Scientists identified a new class of antibodies in human blood that are able to target multiple
strains of influenza A virus in the lab.
Read More
PLANET EARTH
'Rainbow clouds' appear in Arctic for 3 days in a row
In and around the Arctic Circle, stunning multicolor clouds have been shining in the
sky for days on end. It is very unusual to see so many of these vibrant clouds over such a
long period.
Read More
A research expedition in the Southern Ocean has mapped a string of seamounts that help
to shape the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, an ocean current that flows clockwise around
Antarctica.
 Full Story: Live Science (12/21) 
Chain of ancient volcanoes discovered off Antarctica
(FOCUS voyage/CSIRO)

SPACE
Atom-size black holes from the dawn of time could exist

(NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
New research suggests that if tiny primordial black holes created during the Big Bang exist,
some of them may have been snared by stars and are now forced to eat their way out.
Read More
Hubble Telescope captures a galaxy's 'forbidden' light
(ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. 
The Hubble Telescope viewed a distant galaxy whose light appears to contradict
some of the most common rules of quantum physics.
 Full Story: Live Science (12/21) 

#2023 TED TALKS

TED Talks Daily daily@ted.com Cancelar inscrição

para mim
TED Talks