Science 2.0

Participation in elite adult rugby may be associated with changes in brain structure.

This is the finding of a study of 44 elite rugby players, almost half of whom had recently sustained a mild head injury while playing.

The study, part of the Drake Rugby Biomarker Study, was led by Imperial College London and published in the journal Brain Communications.

The research found a significant proportion of the rugby players had signs of abnormalities to the white matter, in addition to abnormal changes in white matter volume over time.

Cambridge, MA ¬- Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have helped detect the clear presence of a moon-forming region around an exoplanet -- a planet outside of our Solar System. The new observations, published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, may shed light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

If a doctor declares that they are going to another country on vacation to provide free medical care, they get a great deal of social currency from that. Ask a San Francisco doctor to travel to rural California to do the same and you'll be dismissed.

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During yesterday's Golden Globes acceptance speech for best supporting actor, Robert Downey Jr. ("Oppenheimer") seemed to be referencing stage fright when he said "Yeah, yeah, I took a beta-blocker so this will be a breeze." 

Let's ignore that he is pretending he has stage fright, and certainly that accepting an award would give him high blood pressure or heart palpitations, and discuss what we know it really means; celebrities have jumped on the beta blocker fad for social anxiety or depression. Unlike fentanyl or xanax, no one will judge you if you keel over while on beta blockers. No one is worried your propranolol habit is out of hand.

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Presidents Obama and Bush are good friends now, but they wouldn't be in President Bush held a grudge. While campaigning in 2007 and 2008, Senator Obama laid every cultural crime at the feet of the outgoing Republican. And when the housing crisis hit, and he made the economy worse with a stimulus package for government union employees just as President Biden did in 2021, President Obama blamed Bush - even though Bush warned in 2005 that forcing banks to justify why they turned down a mortgage while insuring bad housing loans, at the demand of Democrats, is what led to the housing bubble.

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Even though author JK Rowling controversially believes that being a woman might be more than a state of mind, people bought "Hogwarts Legacy" in droves last year. It was the top-selling game, beating out new entries in the popular "Call of Duty" and "Diablo" franchises.

That is if current trends from November held up. December can be a real confounder because "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III" came out in November - and quickly rose to the number two spot. It could have beat Harry Potter but we won't know until Activision releases its numbers. Also impressive was "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom", because it was only available on one platform, the Nintendo Switch, while Harry Potter was also available on Xbox, Playstation, and PC.

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This is a companion piece to “Enough: Toward A Sustainable Economics” 

https://www.science20.com/fred_phillips/enough_toward_a_sustainable_economics-256755.

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