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Food the Forgotten Medicine: More bait and switch from the "College of Medicine"
'We know little about the effect of diet on health. That's why so much is written about it'. That is the title of a post in which I advocate the view put by John Ioannidis that remarkably little is known about the health effects if individual nutrients. That ignorance has given rise to a vast industry selling advice that has little evidence to support it.
The 2016 Conference of the so-called "College of Medicine" had the title "Food, the Forgotten Medicine". This post gives some background information about some of the speakers at this event. I'm sorry it appears to be too ad hominem, but the only way to judge the meeting is via the track record of the speakers.
Quite a lot has been written here about the "College of Medicine". It is the direct successor of the Prince of Wales' late, unlamented, Foundation for Integrated Health. But unlike the latter, its name is disguises its promotion of quackery. Originally it was going to be called the "College of Integrated Health", but that wasn't sufficently deceptive so the name was dropped.
For the history of the organisation, see
The new "College of Medicine" arising from the ashes of the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health
Don't be deceived. The new "College of Medicine" is a fraud and delusion
The College of Medicine is in the pocket of Crapita Capita. Is Graeme Catto selling out?
The conference programme (download pdf) is a masterpiece of bait and switch. It is a mixture of very respectable people, and outright quacks. The former are invited to give legitimacy to the latter. The names may not be familiar to those who don't follow the antics of the magic medicine community, so here is a bit of information about some of them.
The introduction to the meeting was by Michael Dixon and Catherine Zollman, both veterans of the Prince of Wales Foundation, and both devoted enthusiasts for magic medicne. Zollman even believes in the battiest of all forms of magic medicine, homeopathy (download pdf), for which she totally misrepresents the evidence. Zollman works now at the Penny Brohn centre in Bristol. She's also linked to the "Portland Centre for integrative medicine" which is run by Elizabeth Thompson, another advocate of homeopathy. It came into being after NHS Bristol shut down the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital, on the very good grounds that it doesn't work.
Now, like most magic medicine it is privatised. The Penny Brohn shop will sell you a wide range of expensive and useless "supplements". For example, Biocare Antioxidant capsules at £37 for 90. Biocare make several unjustified claims for their benefits. Among other unnecessary ingredients, they contain a very small amount of green tea. That's a favourite of "health food addicts", and it was the subject of a recent paper that contains one of the daftest statistical solecisms I've ever encountered
"To protect against type II errors, no corrections were applied for multiple comparisons".
If you don't understand that, try this paper.
The results are almost certainly false positives, despite the fact that it appeared in Lancet Neurology. It's yet another example of broken peer review.
It's been know for decades now that "antioxidant" is no more than a marketing term, There is no evidence of benefit and large doses can be harmful. This obviously doesn't worry the College of Medicine.
Margaret Rayman was the next speaker. She's a real nutritionist. Mixing the real with the crackpots is a standard bait and switch tactic.
Eleni Tsiompanou, came next. She runs yet another private "wellness" clinic, which makes all the usual exaggerated claims. She seems to have an obsession with Hippocrates (hint: medicine has moved on since then). Dr Eleni's Joy Biscuits may or may not taste good, but their health-giving properties are make-believe.
Andrew Weil, from the University of Arizona
gave the keynote address. He's described as "one of the world's leading authorities on Nutrition and Health". That description alone is sufficient to show the fantasy land in which the College of Medicine exists. He's a typical supplement salesman, presumably very rich. There is no excuse for not knowing about him. It was 1988 when Arnold Relman (who was editor of the New England Journal of Medicine) wrote A Trip to Stonesville: Some Notes on Andrew Weil, M.D..
"Like so many of the other gurus of alternative medicine, Weil is not bothered by logical contradictions in his argument, or encumbered by a need to search for objective evidence."
This blog has mentioned his more recent activities, many times.
Alex Richardson, of Oxford Food and Behaviour Research (a charity, not part of the university) is an enthusiast for omega-3, a favourite of the supplement industry, She has published several papers that show little evidence of effectiveness. That looks entirely honest. On the other hand, their News section contains many links to the notorious supplement industry lobby site, Nutraingredients, one of the least reliable sources of information on the web (I get their newsletter, a constant source of hilarity and raised eyebrows). I find this worrying for someone who claims to be evidence-based. I'm told that her charity is funded largely by the supplement industry (though I can't find any mention of that on the web site).
Stephen Devries was a new name to me. You can infer what he's like from the fact that he has been endorsed byt Andrew Weil, and that his address is "Institute for Integrative Cardiology" ("Integrative" is the latest euphemism for quackery). Never trust any talk with a title that contains "The truth about". His was called "The scientific truth about fats and sugars," In a video, he claims that diet has been shown to reduce heart disease by 70%. which gives you a good idea of his ability to assess evidence. But the claim doubtless helps to sell his books.
Prof Tim Spector, of Kings College London, was next. As far as I know he's a perfectly respectable scientist, albeit one with books to sell, But his talk is now online, and it was a bit like a born-again microbiome enthusiast. He seemed to be too impressed by the PREDIMED study, despite it's statistical unsoundness, which was pointed out by Ioannidis. Little evidence was presented, though at least he was more sensible than the audience about the uselessness of multivitamin tablets.
Simon Mills talked on "Herbs and spices. Using Mother Nature's pharmacy to maintain health and cure illness". He's a herbalist who has featured here many times. I can recommend especially his video about Hot and Cold herbs as a superb example of fantasy science.
Annie Anderson, is Professor of Public Health Nutrition and
Founder of the Scottish Cancer Prevention Network. She's a respectable nutritionist and public health person, albeit with their customary disregard of problems of causality.
Patrick Holden is chair of the Sustainable Food Trust. He promotes "organic farming". Much though I dislike the cruelty of factory farms, the "organic" industry is largely a way of making food more expensive with no health benefits.
The Michael Pittilo 2016 Student Essay Prize was awarded after lunch. Pittilo has featured frequently on this blog as a result of his execrable promotion of quackery -see, in particular, A very bad report: gamma minus for the vice-chancellor.
Nutritional advice for patients with cancer. This discussion involved three people.
Professor Robert Thomas, Consultant Oncologist, Addenbrookes and Bedford Hospitals, Dr Clare Shaw, Consultant Dietitian, Royal Marsden Hospital and Dr Catherine Zollman, GP and Clinical Lead, Penny Brohn UK.
Robert Thomas came to my attention when I noticed that he, as a regular cancer consultant had spoken at a meeting of the quack charity, "YestoLife". When I saw he was scheduled tp speak at another quack conference. After I'd written to him to point out the track records of some of the people at the meeting, he withdrew from one of them. See The exploitation of cancer patients is wicked. Carrot juice for lunch, then die destitute. The influence seems to have been temporary though. He continues to lend respectability to many dodgy meetings. He edits the Cancernet web site. This site lends credence to bizarre treatments like homeopathy and crystal healing. It used to sell hair mineral analysis, a well-known phony diagnostic method the main purpose of which is to sell you expensive "supplements". They still sell the "Cancer Risk Nutritional Profile". for £295.00, despite the fact that it provides no proven benefits.
Robert Thomas designed a food "supplement", Pomi-T: capsules that contain Pomegranate, Green tea, Broccoli and Curcumin. Oddly, he seems still to subscribe to the antioxidant myth. Even the supplement industry admits that that's a lost cause, but that doesn't stop its use in marketing. The one randomised trial of these pills for prostate cancer was inconclusive. Prostate Cancer UK says "We would not encourage any man with prostate cancer to start taking Pomi-T food supplements on the basis of this research". Nevertheless it's promoted on Cancernet.co.uk and widely sold. The Pomi-T site boasts about the (inconclusive) trial, but says "Pomi-T® is not a medicinal product".
There was a cookery demonstration by Dale Pinnock "The medicinal chef" The programme does not tell us whether he made is signature dish "the Famous Flu Fighting Soup". Needless to say, there isn't the slightest reason to believe that his soup has the slightest effect on flu.
In summary, the whole meeting was devoted to exaggerating vastly the effect of particular foods. It also acted as advertising for people with something to sell. Much of it was outright quackery, with a leavening of more respectable people, a standard part of the bait-and-switch methods used by all quacks in their attempts to make themselves sound respectable. I find it impossible to tell how much the participants actually believe what they say, and how much it's a simple commercial drive.
The thing that really worries me is why someone like Phil Hammond supports this sort of thing by chairing their meetings (as he did for the "College of Medicine's" direct predecessor, the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health. His defence of the NHS has made him something of a hero to me. He assured me that he'd asked people to stick to evidence. In that he clearly failed. I guess they must pay well.
Tagged alternative medicine, Andrew Weil, Anti-science, antiscience, badscience, CAM, Cancernet, Catherine Zollman, College of medicine, evidence, Graeme Catto, herbal medicine, herbalism, Michael Dixon, Michael Pittilo, nutribabble, nutribollocks, nutrition, nutritional therapy, Robert Thomas, Simon Mills, Westminster university | 20 Comments
Another update. Red meat doesn't kill you, but the spin is fascinating
This article has been re-posted on The Winnower, so it now has a digital object identifier: DOI: 10.15200/winn.142935.50603
The latest news: eating red meat doesn't do any harm. But why isn't that said clearly? Alarmism makes better news, not only for journalists but for authors and university PR people too.
I've already written twice about red meat.
In May 2009 Diet and health. What can you believe: or does bacon kill you? based on the WCRF report (2007).
In March 2012 How big is the risk from eating red meat now? An update.
In the first of these I argued that the evidence produced by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) for a causal relationship was very thin indeed. An update by WCRF in 2010 showed a slightly smaller risk, and weakened yet further the evidence for causality, though that wasn't reflected in their press announcement.
The 2012 update added observations from two very large cohort studies. The result was that the estimates of risk were less than half as big as in 2009. The relative risk of dying from colorectal cancer was 1.21 (95% Confidence interval 1.04–1.42) with 50 g of red or processed meat per day, whereas in the new study the relative risk for cancer was only 1.10 (1.06-1.14) for a larger 'dose', 85 g of red meat. Again this good news was ignored and dire warnings were issued.
This reduction in size of the effect as samples get bigger is exactly what's expected for spurious correlations, as described by Ioannidis and others. And it seems to have come true. The estimate of the harm done by red meat has vanished entirely in the latest study.
The EPIC study
This is the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, another prospective cohort study, so it isn't randomised [read the original paper]. And it was big, 448,568 people from ten different European countries. These people were followed for a median time of 12.7 years, and during follow-up 26,344 of them died.
The thing that was different about this paper was that red meat was found to pose no detectable risk, as judged by all-cause mortality. But this wasn't even mentioned in the headline conclusions.
Conclusions: The results of our analysis support a moderate positive association between processed meat consumption and mortality, in particular due to cardiovascular diseases, but also to cancer.
To find the result you have to dig into Table 3.
So, by both methods of calculation, the relative risk from eating red meat is negligible (except possibly in the top group, eating more than 160 g (7 oz) per day).
There is still an association between intake of processed meat and all-cause mortality, as in previous studies, though the association of processed meat with all-cause mortality, 1.09, or 1.18 depending on assumptions, is, if anything, smaller than was observed in the 2012 study, in which the relative risk was 1.20 (Table 2).
Assumptions, confounders and corrections.
The lowest meat eaters had only 13% of current smokers, but for the biggest red meat eaters it was 40%, for males. The alcohol consumption was 8.2 g/day for the lowest meat eaters but 23.4 g/day for the highest-meat group (the correlations were a bit smaller for women and also for processed meat eaters).
These two observations necessitate huge corrections to remove the (much bigger) effects of smoking and drinking if we want find the association for meat-eating alone. The main method for doing the correction is to fit the Cox proportional hazards model. This model assumes that there are straight-line relationships between the logarithm of the risk and the amount of each of the risk factors, e.g smoking, drinking, meat-eating and other risk factors. It may also include interactions that are designed to detect whether, for example, the effect of smoking on risk is or isn't the same for people who drink different amounts.
Usually the straight-line assumption isn't tested, and the results will depend on which risk factors (and which interactions between them) are included in the calculations. Different assumptions will give different answers. It simply isn't known how accurate the corrections are when trying to eliminate the big effect of smoking in order to isolate the small effect of meat-eating. And that is before we get to other sorts of correction. For example, the relative risk from processed meat in Table 3, above, was 9% or 18% (1.09, or 1.18) depending on the outcome of a calculation that was intended to increase the accuracy of food intake records ("calibration").
The Conclusions of the new study don't even mention the new result with red meat. All they mention is the risk from processed meat.
In this population, reduction of processed meat consumption to less than 20 g/day would prevent more than 3% of all deaths. As processed meat consumption is a modifiable risk factor, health promotion activities should include specific advice on lowering processed meat consumption.
Well, you would save that number of lives if, and only if, the processed meat was the cause of death. Too many epidemiologists, the authors pay lip service to the problem of causality in the introduction, but then go on to assume it in the conclusions. In fact the problem of causality isn't even metnioned anywhere in either the 2012 study, or the new 2013 EPIC trial.
So is the risk of processed meat still real? Of course I can't answer that. All that can be said is that it's quite small, and as sample sizes get bigger, estimates of the risk are getting smaller. It wouldn't be surprising if the risk from processed meat were eventually found not to exist, just as has happened for red (unprocessed) meat
The Japanese study
Last year there was another cohort study, with 51,683 Japanese. The results were even more (non-) dramatic [Nagao et al, 2012] than in the EPIC trial. This is how they summarise the results for the relative risks (with 95% confidence intervals).
"…for the highest versus lowest quintiles of meat consumption (77.6 versus 10.4 g/day) among men were 0.66 (0.45 — 0.97) for ischemic heart disease, 1.10 (0.84 — 1.43) for stroke and 1.00 (0.84 — 1.20) for total cardiovascular disease. The corresponding HRs (59.9 versus 7.5 g/day) among women were 1.22 (0.81 — 1.83), 0.91 (0.70 — 1.19) and 1.07 (0.90 — 1.28). The associations were similar when the consumptions of red meat, poultry, processed meat and liver were examined separately.
CONCLUSION: Moderate meat consumption, up to about 100 g/day, was not associated with increased mortality from ischemic heart disease, stroke or total cardiovascular disease among either gender."
In this study, the more meat (red or processed) you eat, the lower your risk of ischaemic heart disease (with the possible exception of overweight women). The risk of dying from any cardiovascular disease was unrelated to the amount of meat eaten (relative risk 1.0) whether processed meat or not.
Of course it's possible that things which risky for Japanese people differ from those that are risky for Europeans. It's also possible that even processed meat isn't bad for you.
The carnitine study
The latest meat study to hit the headlines didn't actually look at the effects of meat at all, though you wouldn't guess that from the pictures of sausages in the headlines (not just in newspapers, but also in NHS Choices). The paper [reprint] was about carnitine, a substance that occurs particularly in beef, with lower amounts in pork and bacon, and in many other foods. The paper showed that bacteria in the gut can convert carnitine to a potentially toxic substance, trimethylamine oxide (TMAO). That harms blood vessels (at least in mice). But to show an effect in human subjects they were given an amount of carnitine equivalent to over 1 lb of steak, hardly normal, even in the USA.
The summary of the paper says it is an attempt to explain "the well-established link between high levels of red meat consumption and CVD [cardiovascular disease] risk". As we have just seen, it seems likely that this risk is far from being "well-established". There is little or no such risk to explain.
It would be useful to have a diagnostic marker for heart disease, but this paper doesn't show that carnitine or TMAO) is useful for that. It might also be noted that the authors have a maze of financial interests.
Competing financial interests Z.W. and B.S.L. are named as co-inventors on pending patents held by the Cleveland Clinic relating to cardiovascular diagnostics and have the right to receive royalty payments for inventions or discoveries related to cardiovascular diagnostics from Liposciences. W.H.W.T. received research grant support from Abbott Laboratories and served as a consultant for Medtronic and St. Jude Medical. S.L.H. and J.D.S. are named as co-inventors on pending and issued patents held by the Cleveland Clinic relating to cardiovascular diagnostics and therapeutics patents. S.L.H. has been paid as a consultant or speaker by the following companies: Cleveland Heart Lab., Esperion, Liposciences, Merck & Co. and Pfizer. He has received research funds from Abbott, Cleveland Heart Lab., Esperion and Liposciences and has the right to receive royalty payments for inventions or discoveries related to cardiovascular diagnostics from Abbott Laboratories, Cleveland Heart Lab., Frantz Biomarkers, Liposciences and Siemens.
The practical significance of this work was summed up the dietitian par excellence, Catherine Collins, on the BBC's Inside Health programme.
Listen to Catherine Collins on carnitine.
She points out that the paper didn't mean that we should change what we already think is a sensible diet.
At most, it suggests that it's not a good idea to eat 1 lb steaks very day.
And the paper does suggest that it's not sensible to take the carnitine supplements that are pushed by every gym. According to NIH
"twenty years of research finds no consistent evidence that carnitine supplements can improve exercise or physical performance in healthy subjects".
Carnitine supplements are a scam. And they could be dangerous.
Another blog on this topic, one from Cancer Research UK also fails to discuss the problem of causality. Neither does it go into the nature (and fallibility) of the corrections for counfounders like smoking and alcohol,. Nevertheless that, and an earlier post on Food and cancer: why media reports are often misleading, are a good deal more realistic than most newspaper reports.
Tagged cancer, diet, epidemiology, evidence, processed meat, red meat | 8 Comments
How big is the risk from eating red meat now? An update.
A new study of the effects of eating red meat and processed meat got a lot of publicity. When I wrote about this in 2009, I concluded that the evidence for harm was pretty shaky. Is there reason to change my mind?
The BBC's first report on 12 March was uncritical (though at least it did link to the original paper -big improvement). On 16th March, Ruth Alexander did a lot better, after asking renowned risk expert, David Spiegelhalter. You can hear him talk about it on Tim Harford's excellent More or Less programme. [Listen to the podcast].
David Spiegelhalter has already written an excellent article about the new work. Here's my perspective. We'll see how you can do the calculations yourself.
The new paper was published on Archives of Internal Medicine [get reprint: pdf]. It looked at the association between red meat intake and mortality in two very large cohort studies, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses' Health Study.
How big are the risks from red meat?
First, it cannot be said too often that studies such as these observe a cohort of people and see what happens to those people who have chosen to eat red meat. If it were the high calorie intake rather than eating meat that causes the risk, then stopping eating meat won't help you in the slightest. The evidence for causality is reconsidered below.
The new study reported a relative risk of death from any cause were 1.13 for one 85 g serving of red meat per day, and 1.20 for processed meat. For death from cardiovascular disease the risks were a slightly higher, 1.18 for read meat and 1.21 for processed meat, For dying from cancer the relative risks were a bit lower, 1.10 for red meat and 1.16 for processed meat.
A relative risk of 1.13 means that if you eat 85 g of red meat every a day, roughly a hamburger for lunch, your risk of dying in some specified period, e.g. during the next year, is 13 percent higher than that for a similar person who doesn't eat the hamburgers.
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the relationship is entirely causal. This is the worst case (or perhaps the best case, because there would be something you could do). How big are your risks? Here are several ways of looking at the risk of eating a hamburger every day (thanks to David Speigelhalter for most of these). Later we'll see how you can calculate results like these for yourself.
If you eat a hamburger every day, your risk of dying, e.g in the coming year, is 13 percent higher than for a similar person who doesn't eat hamburgers.
In the UK there were around 50 cases of colorectal cancer per 100,000 population in 2008, so a 10% increase, even if it were real, and genuinely causative. would result in 55 rather than 50 cases per 100,000 people, annually.
But if we look at the whole population there were 22,000 cases of colorectal cancer in the UK in 2009. A 10% increase would mean, if the association were causal, about 2200 extra cases per year as a result of eating hamburgers (but no extra cases if the association were not causal).
Eating a hamburger a day shortens your life expectancy from 80 years to 79 years (sounds rather small)
Eating a hamburger a day shortens your life by about half an hour a day, if you start at age 40 (sounds quite serious)
The effect on life expectancy is similar to that of smoking 2 cigarettes a day or of being 5 Kg overweight (sounds less serious).
The chance that the hamburger eater will die before the similar non-hamburger eater is 53 percent (compared with 50 percent for two similar people) (sounds quite trivial).
Clearly it isn't easy to appreciate the size of the risk. Some ways of expressing the same thing sound much more serious than others. Only the first was given in the paper, and in the newspaper reports.
The results. Is there any improvement in the evidence for causality?
The risks reported in the new study are a bit lower than in the WCRF report (2007) which estimated a relative risk of dying from colorectal cancer as 1.21 (95% Confidence interval 1.04–1.42) with 50 g of red or processed meat per day, whereas in the new study the relative risk for cancer was only 1.10 (1.06-1.14) for a larger 'dose', 85 g of red meat, or 1.16 (1.09-1.23) for processed meat.
A 2010 update on the 2007 WCRF report also reported a similar lower relative risk for colorectal cancer of 1.16 for 100 g/day of red or processed meat This reduction in size of the effect as samples get bigger is exactly what's expected for spurious correlations, as described by Ioannidis and others.
One reason that I was so sceptical about causality in the earlier reports was that there was very little evidence of a relationship between the amount of meat eaten (the dose) and the risk of dying (the response), though the reports suggested otherwise. The new study does seem to show a shallow relationship between dose and response, the response being the relative risk (or hazard ratio) for dying (from any cause).
The Figure shows the relationship in the Nurses' Health Study (it was similar for the other study). The dotted lines are 95% confidence limits (see here), and the lower limit seems to rule out a horizontal line, so the evidence for a relationship between dose and response is better than before, But that doesn't mean that there is necessarily a causal relationship.
There are two important problems to consider. The legend to the figure says (omittng some details) that
"The results were adjusted for age; body mass index; alcohol consumption, physical activity level, smoking status ; race (white or nonwhite); menopausal status and hormone use in women, family history of diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, or cancer; history of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, or hypercholesterolemia; and intakes of total energy, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables."
So the data in the graph aren't raw observations but they've been through a mathematical mill. The corrections are absolutely essential, For example, Table 1 in the paper shows that the 20% of people who eat the most red meat had almost twice the total calorie intake of those who eat the least red meat. So without a correction there would be no way to tell whether it was high calorie intake or eating red meat that was causing an increased risk of death. Likewise, those who eat more red meat also smoke more, drink more alcohol, are heavier (higher body mass index) and take less exercise.
Clearly everything depends on the accuracy of the corrections for total calorie intake etc. It was done by a method called the Cox proportional hazard multiple linear regression. Like any other method that makes assumptions, and there is no easy way to check on how accurate the corrections are. But it is known "that studies on colon cancer that adjusted for larger number of covarariates reported weaker risk ratios than studies which adjusted for a smaller number". The main problem is that there may be some other factor that has not been included in the corrections. Spiegelhalter points out
"Maybe there's some other factor that both encourages Mike to eat more meat, and leads to a shorter life.
It is quite plausible that income could be such a factor – lower income in the US is both associated with eating red meat and reduced life-expectancy, even allowing for measurable risk factors."
How to do the calculations of risk.
Now we come to the nerdy bit. Calculations of risk of the sort listed above can be done for any relative risk, and here's how.
The effect on life expectancy is the hardest thing to calculate. To do that you need the actuaries' life table. You can download the tables from the Office of National Statistics. The calculations were based on the "England and Wales, Interim Life Tables, 1980-82 to 2008-10". Click on the worksheet for 2008 – 10 (tabs at the bottom). There are two tables there, one for males, one for females. I copied the data for males into a new spreadsheet, which, unlike that from ONS, is live [download live spreadsheet]. There is an explanation of what each column means at the bottom of the worksheet, with a description of the calculation method. In the spreadsheet, the data pasted from the full table are on the left.
and lower down we see life expectancy, $ e_x $, from age 40 is 39.8 years
On the right is an extended life table which is live. You enter into cell H5 any relative risk (hazard ratio), and the table recalculates itself.
Lower down, we see that life expectancy from age 40 with risk ratio 1.13 is 38.6 years.
If you enter 1.00 on cell H5 (highlighted), the table on the right is the same as that on the left (there are some trivial differences because of the way that ONS does the calculations). The life expectancy of a 40 year old man is 39.8 years, so the average age of death is 79.8 years. If you enter 1.13 in cell H5, the relative risk of dying (from any cause) for a hamburger per day, the table is recalculated and the life expectancy for a 40 year old man falls to 38.6, so the mean age of death is 78.6 years (these numbers are rounded to 80 and 79 in the summary at the top of this page).
The Excel sheet copies the relative risk that you enter in cell H5 into column O and uses the value in column O to multiply the risk of death in the next year, $ q_x $. So, for example, with a hazard ratio of 1.13, the risk of dying between 40 and 41 is increased from $ q_{40} = 0.00162 $ to $ q_{40} = 0.00162 \times 1.13 = 0.00183 $, and similarly for each year. If you want the relative risk to vary from year to year, you can enter whatever values you want in column O.
Loss of one year from your life expectancy when you are 40 implies loss of about half an hour per day of remaining life: (365 x 24 x 60)/(40 x 365) = 36 minutes per day. This is close to one microlife per day. A microlife is defined as 30 minutes of life expectancy. A man of 22 in the UK has 1,000,000 half-hours (57 years) ahead of him, the same as a 26 year-old woman. David Spiegelhalter explains that loss of one microlife per day is about the same risk as smoking two cigarettes per day. This is put into perspective when you realise that a single chest X-ray will cost you two microlives and a whole-body CT scan (which involves much larger exposure to X-rays) would cost you 180 microlives.
The last way of expressing the risk is perhaps the most surprising. The chance that someone who has a hamburger for lunch every day will die before a similar non-hamburger eater is 53 percent (compared with 50 percent for two similar people). This calculation depends on a beautifully simple mathematical result.
The result can be stated very simply, though its derivation (given by Spiegelhalter here, at the end) needs some maths. The probability that the hamburger eater will life longer than the non-hamburger eater is
\[ \frac{1}{h+1}. \]
When there is no risk, $ h = 1$, this is 0.5, a 50:50 chance of one person dying before the other. When the relative risk (hazard ratio) is $ h = 1.13 $ it is
\[ \frac{1}{1.13+1} = 0.47, \]
so there is a 100 – 47 = 53% chance that hamburger eater dies first.
Another way to put the same result is to say that when a hazard ratio, $ h $, is kept up throughout their lives, the odds that hamburger eater dies before the non-hamburger eater is precisely $ h $. The odds of an event happening are defined as the ratio between the probability of it happening, $ p $, to the probability of it not happening, $ (1-p) $, i.e.
\[ h = \frac {p} {(1-p)}. \]
Rearranging this gives
\[ p = \frac {h} {(1+h)}. \]
When the risk ratio is $ h=1.13 $ this gives $ p = 0.53 $, as before.
Based largely on the fact that the new study shows risks that are smaller than previous, smaller, studies, it seems to me that the evidence for the reality of the association is somewhat weaker than before.
Although the new study, unlike the earlier ones, shows signs for a relationship between the amount of read meat eaten and risk of death, the confounding factors (total calories eaten, weight, smoking etc) are so strong that the evidence for causality is critically dependent on the accuracy of the corrections for these factors, and even more dependent on their not being another factor that has not been included.
It can't be said too often that if the association is not causal then refraining from eating red meat won't have the slightest benefit. If it were, for example, the high calorie intake rather than eating meat that causes the risk, then stopping eating meat won't help you in the slightest.
Even if the increased risk was entirely caused by eating meat, the worst consequence of eating red meat every day is to have a 53% chance of dying before someone who doesn't eat much meat, rather than a 50% chance.
I won't become a vegetarian just yet (or, at least if I do it will be on ethical grounds, not because of health risk).
Acknowledgment. I'm very grateful to Professor David Spiegelhalter for help and discussions about this post.
Tagged bacon, David Spiegelhalter, ham, Life table, processed meat, red meat, risk, statistics, stochastic | 17 Comments


text:
WMG acquires Songkick discovery platform
The label group has bought Songkick's discovery app, website and trademark – but not its ticketing business, which has "pending litigation" against Live Nation
By Jon Chapple on 14 Jul 2017
Matt Jones (left) with Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth
Recorded music giant Warner Music Group (WMG), one of the 'big three' record labels, has acquired "selected assets" from Songkick, including its concert-discovery app, website and the Songkick trademark.
The surprise acquisition excludes Songkick's ticketing business – established in June 2015, when it merged with white-label ticketing platform Crowdsurge – and, crucially, the "pending litigation" associated with it. The company has been locked in a legal battle with Live Nation/Ticketmaster since December 2015, when Songkick sued the conglomerate over alleged abuses of its "monopoly power" to stifle competition.
The Songkick app will operate as a standalone brand overseen by WEA, WMG's artist and label services division. WEA services include sales, distribution, streaming account management and playlisting, analytics, insight, artist websites, VIP experiences, fan clubs and merchandising, and the acquisition will "lead to additional offerings for Songkick users", says WMG.
At press time the direction of Songkick's ticketing business is unclear; IQ has requested clarification. WMG is already an investor in Songkick through its parent company, Len Blavatnik's Access Industries, which invested a further US$15 million in last August.
"I'm excited to pass the baton on the discovery service to the great team at WMG, an ideal organisation to carry on this mission and to take it in new, innovative directions"
"Fans all over the world trust Songkick to help them find events featuring the artists they love," says Tony Harlow, president of WEA. "It's a passionate, highly engaged music community, always on the lookout for new experiences. Bringing together Songkick's discovery platform and world-class technology with our existing ecommerce expertise and global reach represents a powerful step in strengthening and evolving our direct-to-fan capabilities."
Matt Jones, CEO of Songkick, adds: "Songkick was founded on the promise of improving the live experience for fans and the artists they love. Over the years, we have helped tens of millions find their next great live experience, and today I'm excited to pass the baton on the discovery service to the great team at WMG, an ideal organisation to carry on this mission and to take it in new, innovative directions.
"And, on behalf of the many artists and fans we've served over the last decade, we are committed to continuing our litigation against Live Nation and Ticketmaster independently."
WMG's other interests in live music include promoter Warner Music Live in Finland and, formerly, Nous Productions in France, which was last August acquired by Live Nation.
Songkick Discovery "not going anywhere" after WMG buy
Songkick is "doubling down" on concert discovery after shuttering its ticket business, while retaining a skeleton crew of ticketing staff for its legal battle with LN
Evvnt buys ticketing/discovery platform EventViva
The UK events marketer says the acquisition of EventViva's 200,000-plus promoter database will enable it to grow its global footprint
Songkick poaches Shazam director for biz dev
Nick Fishbaugh is tasked with forging new partnerships and expanding the live music discovery/ticketing platform's presence globally
D2F platform Musictoday files for bankruptcy
Just over two years after its acquisition from Live Nation, the direct-to-fan merch store is up for sale, along with buyer and parent company Delivery Agent
Songkick integrates with Shazam
Users of the music-identification platform will from 2017 be able to buy tickets from Songkick at the "moment of discovery"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


In the quiet of the morning, after two days of rain, calm crests over the ocean beyond my window. I watch gentle waves and wonder why it feels so impossible to make a difference in this world. Wonder why so many are hurting in a season supposed to be filled with joy. Where is the peace in all the madness? And why don't I know what to say?
Afraid of speaking the wrong words. Afraid of saying too much. Not saying enough. And so I sit in silence.
The past few weeks the world has tipped over into disarray. Tragedy and terror try our patience and wring our souls dry. And there is anger. Ignorance. Fear. Words are wielded like weapons and they cut and create more havoc, dividing on all levels in the worst kind of way.
Do we know how broken we are? Do we care?
How much easier to huddle in our homes, safe and warm and dry, while streets in far off lands run with blood. How much easier to avoid those closer to home who need more than we think we can possibly give. We are convinced now that we cannot make a difference. And fear has won.
I envy those who believe they can. Those who push fear aside and step into darkness. Those who stand up and speak and get up and do. And I wonder if I could be one of them. If I could turn off the noise . . . the vitriol, the incessant back and forth fighting filling social media, a virus that will sicken us all if we let it . . . is that even possible now? And I wonder where the good is. Surely we have not succumbed so fully to this darkness that we no longer recognize the light.
Or have we snuffed it out? Burned that candle right down to wick so it no longer holds a flame. I don't know. Perhaps.
It's possible that in all the mass confusion, unimaginable hurts and horrors, that we have lost sight of the good. That we have become so consumed with what is going on beyond our borders, we've also forgotten the very ones around us who need us just as much. Who need to know they are also loved. That they too matter.
And maybe that's where we start. Acknowledging the brokenness instead of finding someone to blame for it. Attempting to fix it rather than figuring out how it all happened in the first place.
Fear tells us we can't. Fear tells us we're going looking for trouble when we try to do good. Fear keeps us in the safety of our homes, behind locked doors.
Love in the truest, purest form, makes us more than who we think we are. More than what the world tells us we are. That kind of love lets people in. Lets us out beyond our safety zones and pushes us into places we'd rather not go. Places we cannot possibly go without it. But once we're there? We know it's we're meant to be.
I can't go out and save the world. But I can love those around me.
It may be a small step. But it may be all we can do. All we have to do.
A phone call. A card or email. A meal. Or even a hug.
I think I'll start there. Because sometimes there isn't anything to say. Sometimes words fail.
How will you love this season?
How will I love? Not wisely…but too well. Probably find another dog for the lifeboat.
The state of the world honestly doesn't trouble me too much, for a couple of reasons. First, it's what I'm used to. Barbara once said that my life is much better when people are shooting at me, and she's right.
Second, it's something with which Jesus was quite familiar – we in the West tend to see "Greater love hath no man than he who would willingly lay down his life for his friends" as a metaphor, but for Jesus it was literal.
It's unfortunate, but even a small candle's pretty effective; you can see the flame from a Zippo at five klicks on a clear night.


text:
On the Uses and Abuses of Infrastructural Inversion
26. August 2010 · 4 comments	· Categories: climate science, sociology
Nearly everything we ever do depends on vast social and technical infrastructures, which, when they work, are largely invisible. Science is no exception – modern science is only possible because we have built the infrastructure to support it: classification systems, international standards, peer-review, funding agencies, and, most importantly, systems for the collection and curation of vast quantities of data about the world. Star and Ruhleder point out the infrastructure that supports scientific work is embedded inside of other social and technical systems, and becomes invisible when we come to rely on it. Indeed, the process of learning how to make use of a particular infrastructure is, to a large extent, what defines membership in a particular community of practice. They also observe that our infrastructures are closely intertwined with our conventions and standards. As a simple example, they point to the QWERTY keyboard, which despite its limitations, shapes much of our interaction with computers (even the design of office furniture!), such that learning to use the keyboard is a crucial part of learning to use a computer. And once you can type, you cease to be aware of the keyboard itself, except when it breaks down. This invisibility-in-use is similar to Heidegger's notion of tools that are ready-to-hand; the key difference is that tools are local to the user, while infrastructures have vast spatial and/or temporal extent.
A crucial point is that what counts as infrastructure depends on the nature of the work that it supports. What is invisible infrastructure for one community might not be for another. The internet is a good example – most users just accept it exists and make use of it, without asking how it works. However, to computer scientists, a detailed understanding of its inner workings is vital. A refusal to treat the internet as invisible infrastructure is a condition to entry into certain geek cultures.
In their book Sorting Things Out, Star and Bowker introduced the term infrastructural inversion, for a process of focusing explicitly on the infrastructure itself, in order to expose and study its inner workings. It's a rather cumbersome phrase for a very interesting process, kind of like a switch of figure and ground. In their case, infrastructural inversion is a research strategy that allows them to explore how things like classification systems and standards are embedded in so much of scientific practice, and to understand how these things evolve with the science itself.
Paul Edwards applies infrastructural inversion to climate science in his book A Vast Machine, where he examines the history of attempts by meteorologists to create a system for collecting global weather data, and for sharing that data with the international weather forecasting community. He points out that climate scientists also come to rely on that same infrastructure, but that it doesn't serve their needs so well, and hence there is a difference between weather data and climate data. As an example, meteorologists tolerate changes in the nature and location of a particular surface temperature station over time, because they are only interested in forecasting over the short term (days or weeks). But to a climate scientist trying to study long-term trends in climate, such changes (known as inhomogeneities) are crucial. In this case, the infrastructure breaks down, as it fails to serve the needs of this particular community of scientists.
Hence, as Edwards points out, climate scientists also perform infrastructural inversion regularly themselves, as they dive into the details of the data collection system, trying to find and correct inhomogeneities. In the process, almost any aspect of how this vast infrastructure works might become important, revealing clues about what parts of the data can be used and which parts must be re-considered. One of the key messages in Paul's book is that the usual distinction between data and models is now almost completely irrelevant in meteorology and climate science. The data collection depends on a vast array of models to turn raw instrumental readings into useful data, while the models themselves can be thought of sophisticated data reconstructions. Even GCMs, which now have the ability to do data assimilation and re-analysis, can be thought of as large amounts of data made executable through a set of equations that define spatial and temporal relationships within that data.
As an example, Edwards describes the analysis performed by Christy and Spencer at UAH on the MSU satellite data, from which they extracted measurements of the temperature of the upper atmosphere. In various congressional hearing, Spencer and Christy frequently touted their work, which showed a slight cooling trend in the upper atmosphere, as superior to other work that showed a warming trend because they were able to "actually measure the temperature of the free atmosphere" whereas other work was merely "estimation" from models (Edwards, p414). However, this completely neglects the fact that the MSU data doesn't measure temperature in the lower troposphere directly at all, it measures radiance at the top of the atmosphere. Temperature readings for the lower troposphere are constructed from these readings via a complex set of models that take into account the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the trajectory of the satellite, and the position of the sun, among other factors. More importantly, a series of corrections in these models over several years gradually removed the apparent cooling trend, finally revealing a warming trend, as predicted by the theory (see Karl et al for a more complete account). The key point is that the data needed for meteorology and climate science is so vast and so complex that it's no longer possible to disentangle models from data. The data depends on models to make it useful, and the models are sophisticated tools for turning one kind of data into another.
While the vast infrastructure for collecting and sharing data has become largely invisible to many working meteorologists, but must be continually inverted by climate scientists, in order to use it for analysis of longer term trends. The project to develop a new global surface temperature record that I described yesterday is one example of such inversion – it will involve a painstaking process of search and rescue on original data records dating back more than a century, because of the needs for a more complete, higher resolution temperature record than is currently available.
So far, I've only described constructive uses of infrastructural inversion, performed in the pursuit of science, to improve our understanding of how things work, and to allow us to re-adapt an infrastructure for new purposes. But there's another use of infrastructural inversion, applied as a rhetorical technique to undermine scientific research. It has been applied increasingly in recent years in an attempt to slow down progress on enacting climate change mitigation policies, by sowing doubt and confusion about the validity of our knowledge about climate change. The technique is to dig down into the vast infrastructure that supports climate science, identify weaknesses in this infrastructure, and tout them as reasons to mistrust scientists' current understanding of the climate system. And it's an easy game to play, for two reasons: (1) all infrastructures are constructed through a series of compromises (e.g. standards are never followed exactly), and communities of practice develop workarounds that naturally correct for infrastructural weaknesses and (2) as described above, the data collection for weather forecasting frequently does fail to serve the needs of climate scientists. The climate scientists are painfully aware of these infrastructural weaknesses and have to deal with them every day, while those playing this rhetorical game ignore this, and pretend instead that there's a vast conspiracy to lie about the science.
The problem is that, at first sight, many of these attempts at infrastructural inversion look like honest citizen-scientist attempt to increase transparency and improve the quality of the science (e.g. see Edwards, p421-427). For example, Anthony Watt's SurfaceStations.org project is an attempt to document the site details of a large number of surface weather measuring stations, to understand how problems in their siting (e.g. growth of surrounding buildings) and placement of instruments might create biases in the long term trends constructed from their data. At face value, this looks like a valuable citizen-science exercise in infrastructural inversion. However, Watts wraps the whole exercise in the rhetoric of conspiracy theory, frequently claiming that climate scientists are dishonest, that they are covering up these problems, and that climate change itself is a myth. This not only ignores the fact that climate scientists themselves routinely examine such weaknesses in the temperature record, but also has the effect of biasing the entire exercise, as Watts' followers are increasingly motivated to report only those problems that would cause a warming bias, and ignore those that do not. Recent independent studies that have examined the data collected by the SurfaceStations.org project demonstrate that the corrections demanded by Watts are irrelevant.
The recent project launched by the UK Met Office might look to many people like it's a desperate response to "ClimateGate", a mea culpa, an attempt to claw back some credibility. But, put into the context of the history of continual infrastructural inversion performed by climate scientists throughout the history of the field, it is nothing of the sort. It's just one more in a long series of efforts to build better and more complete datasets to allow climate scientists to answer new research questions. This is what climate scientists do all the time. In this case, it is an attempt to move from monthly to daily temperature records, to improve our ability to understand the regional effects of climate change, and especially to address the growing need to understand the effect of climate change on extreme weather events (which are largely invisible in monthly averages).
So, infrastructural inversion is a fascinating process, used by at least three different groups:
Researchers who study scientific work (e.g. Star, Bowker, Edwards) use it to understand the interplay between the infrastructure and the scientific work that it supports;
Climate scientists use it all the time to analyze and improve the weather data collection systems that they need to understand longer term climate trends;
Climate change denialists use it to sow doubt and confusion about climate science, to further a political agenda of delaying regulation of carbon emissions.
And unfortunately, sorting out constructive uses of infrastructural inversion from its abuses is hard, because in all cases, it looks like legitimate questions are being asked.
Oh, and I can't recommend Edward's book highly enough. As Myles Allen writes in his review: "A Vast Machine […] should be compulsory reading for anyone who now feels empowered to pontificate on how climate science should be done."
Nice article, Steve. And another addition to my reading TODO.
As a climate scientist, I find that the book by Paul Edwards very helpful in explaining our infrastructure. Thank you very much, Steve, for clarifying the concept "infrastructural inversion" which I did not understand well as I read the book.
I sense a little problem in both your and his expressions about models. I understand what you mean when you say that every observation involves some kind of models. In such contexts, the concept of "model" covers statistical models and radiative transfer models. On the other hand, in the contexts where you and Edwards discuss models, the focus is usually on physical-science-based prognostic models. I once wanted to say that we need to distinguish two different meanings of "model". But now I think it is more likely to be a continuum. Still I think we should explicitly mention what part of the continuum we focus on.
(Another instance of this issue is how to answer to the question whether CRU has developed a climate model.)
Nick Barnes
Got back from a trip to Cambridge to find my copy waiting for me (along with the newer edition of Weart, which I thought I should read given that I recommend it to everybody). So I hope to get it read this week.
Joseph Sobry
Hi Steve, my infrastructural inversion vis a vis the human-keyboard interface got the better of me.
A very minor spelling error in an otherwise excellent article.
Quoting from your article:
"This not only ignores the "face" that climate scientists themselves routinely examine such weaknesses in the temperature record, but also has the effect of biasing the entire exercise, as Watts' followers are increasingly motivated to report only those problems that would cause a warming bias, and ignore those that do not."
"Face" should probably be "fact".
Just so the Watts' followers in their inversion efforts don't come and haunt you about it.
[Thanks – fixed! (I'm just waiting for them to quote the first seven words of my final paragraph out of context…) – Steve]


text:
Home > Journals > Transactions of the American Entomological Society > Volume 145 > Issue 3
Transactions of the American Entomological Society
VOL. 145 · NO. 3 | December 2019
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VIEW ALL ABSTRACTS +
Chironomidae of the Upper Saint Croix River, Wisconsin
Alexander T. Egan, Leonard C. Ferrington Jr.
145(3), 353-384, (9 December 2019) https://doi.org/10.3157/061.145.0307
KEYWORDS: Chironomidae, Diptera, taxonomy, diversity, richness, Saint Croix River
Read Abstract +
Chironomid communities of the upper St. Croix River, Wisconsin, were sampled for pupal exuviae at four locations monthly from April to October, 2007. Species richness was very high, with 252 species from 73 genera, dominated by the subfamilies Chironominae and Orthocladiinae. Most studies of lotic systems find fewer than 150 chironomid taxa, and often less than 100. The high richness may be due to regional conditions that support diverse aquatic communities, such as thermal regime, typical landscape patterns such as elevated mid-order stream diversity or increased β-diversity in headwaters, or the collection method which can detect species from adjacent habitats. There were 35 species that are atypical of lotic systems and some may have occupied microhabitats or adjacent habitat that more closely matches their preferences. Twenty-one species, mostly in Orthocladiinae, had range expansions into the western Great Lakes region or appear to be previously undescribed for the Nearctic. Sixty morphotypes, dominated by 41 Chironominae, did not fit any published exuviae descriptions.
A Review of Genus Dysgonia Hübner (Lepidoptera, Erebidae, Erebinae) from Turkey with Distinctive External and Genital Morphological Characters and a New Species for the Turkish Fauna
Erdem Seven, Celalettin Gözüaçik, Ersin Aykut
145(3), 385-393, (10 December 2019) https://doi.org/10.3157/061.145.0305
KEYWORDS: Dysgonia, Lepidoptera, morphology, distribution
The genus Dysgonia Hübner, [1823] from Turkey is reviewed and one newly recorded species, D. rogenhoferi (Bohatsch, 1880) is reported. The generic and distinctive morphological characters, based on all species in Turkey, are summarized. Illustrations of external features and genitalia are presented.
A Preliminary Report of the Sucking Lice (Insecta: Phthiraptera: Anoplura) of Some Small Mammals of Turkey with Four New Records
Bilal Dik, Ahmet Yesari selçuk, Haluk kefelioğlu, Adem keskin
KEYWORDS: Polyplax, Hoplopleura, small mammals, sucking lice, Turkey
A preliminary study was performed to detect the sucking lice (Insecta, Phthiraptera: Anoplura) on small mammals in different localities of Turkey, between the years of 2017–2018. Six specimens of sucking lice were collected from six different small mammalian species belonging to five different genera. The lice were identified as Polyplax borealis Ferris, Polyplax reclinata (Nitzsch), Polyplax serrata (Burmeister), Hoplopleura acanthopus (Burmeister) and Hoplopleura affinis (Burmeister). Polyplax borealis, P. reclinata, H. acanthopus and H. affinis are here reported from Turkey for the first time. With the present study, Microtus arvalis for P. borealis, Crocidura suaveolens for P. reclinata, Apodemus uralensis for P. serrata, Nannospalax leucodon and Apodemus witherbyi for H. affinis are reported as new-host associations. In addition, H. acanthopus was reported from Chionomys nivalis in Turkey, for the first time.
The First Detection of Metamasius hemipterus (L.) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) from Coastal Mississippi, USA
M. J. Thorn, J. L. Seltzer, A. G. Hendon, BeverLy Keasler, J. G. Hill
KEYWORDS: Palm pest, sugarcane, palm weevil, red ring disease
Specimens of Metamasius hemipterus (L.) were collected from a nursery in coastal Mississippi during invasive insect pest monitoring by the Mississippi State University Invasive Insect Trapping Team. Specimens were collected during a USDA CAPS palm commodity survey occurring at nurseries and natural areas across the southern half of the state. Within the United States, Metamasius hemipterus is recognized as a pest of sugarcanes, bananas, and palms in Florida. It is also a pest in a variety of economically important fruits in its native range in the Antilles, Central, and South America. It has been implicated as a minor vector of red ring disease in palm, caused by the nematode Bursaphelenchus cocophilus (Cobb). This exotic insect poses a threat to the horticulture industry in Mississippi by vectoring pathogens injurious to palms and damaging other horticultural products.
Geographic Distribution of Strumigenys epinotalis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
James K. Wetterer
KEYWORDS: biogeography, exotic species, Native species
Strumigenys epinotalis (former Pyramica epinotalis) is a tiny arboreal ant (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) first found in Costa Rica in 1924. The earliest known US specimens were collected in Florida and Louisiana in 2009. I compiled 33 site records of S. epinotalis from nine countries: Brazil (4 sites), Colombia (1), Costa rica (3), Ecuador (1), Mexico (9), Nicaragua (1), Panama (1), Paraguay (1), and the US (12). the US sites come from four states: Alabama (1), Florida (6), Louisiana (4), and Mississippi (1). Strumigenys epinotalis has been recorded from widely scattered Neotropical sites in ranging from Paraguay (24.1°S) to central Mexico (20.1°N). records of S. epinotalis in Louisiana and Florida are from considerably higher latitudes (27.2–30.6°N). the US populations may be non-native, or they could be at the northern end of the ant's native range. Most S. epinotalis records apparently come from relatively intact forests, often in swampy areas, and all known nests have been found up in trees, either inside epiphytes or in cavities within trees. I have sampled ants at hundreds of sites in South and Central Florida through vegetation beating and I have only found this species twice. Given the extreme scarcity of S. epinotalis records across its enormous known range, it seems possible that native populations of S. epinotalis occur all along the Gulf coast of Mexico and the US, but have been overlooked.
Morphological Characteristics of Antennal Sensilla in Hyphantria cunea (Drury) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae)
Jian Zhang, Libo Fu, Bin Cheng, Shouhui Sun
KEYWORDS: Hyphantria cunea, antennal sensilla, scanning electron microscopy
Fall webworm, Hyphantria cunea Drury (Lepidoptera: Erebidae) is extremely adaptable and highly invasive in China as a defoliator of ornamental and forest trees. To better understand the chemical orientation of this insect towards its host products, we determined the structure and distribution of antennal sensilla of H. cunea by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that the male antenna was bipectinate and the female antenna was serrate, and they made of three parts, a scape, a pedicel, and a flagellum of more than 58 flagellomeres. Based on their morphology, sensilla squamiformia, sensilla basiconica, sensilla trichodea (ST1, ST2, ST3), sensilla chaetica, sensilla coeloconica, sensilla styloconica and Böhm bristles were distinguished on the antennae in both sexes. The putative functions of these sensilla also were discussed with reference to their morphology, distribution, and ultrastructure. We expect these results to help develop further electrophysiological investigations aiming to a better understanding of H. cunea olfaction.
Revision of the Genus Paraidemona Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1893 (Acrididae, Melanoplinae)
Daniel Otte
The genus Paraidemona is a completely apterous member of the subfamily Melanoplinae (Acrididae) known only from Texas and northern Mexico. Prior to the present study seven species were known: cohni Fontana and Buzzetti, ruvalcabae Buzzetti et al., fratercula Hebard, latifurcula Hebard, punctata (Stal), olsoni Yin and Smith, mimica Scudder and nuttingi Yin and Smith. Under Paraidemona nuttingi I describe eight new subspecies: hiltoo, jeya, pekwi, tatsinubi, tomoobi, tabu, hanipu and sunipu.
Paraidemona species are confined to grasslands, from grassy coastal margins to dry thorn scrub and oak woodlands of central and western Texas, and prefer short grasses, sometimes intermixed with various broadleaf forbs. The radiation of this genus appears to be recent. Although the genitalia are the principal characters used to define the species, differences can be small and difficult to dissect. Speciation has probably not gone to completion in many cases.
Redescption of Salina yunnanensis and a New Species of Salina Mac Gillivray, 1894 (Collembola: Paronellidae) from China
Yitong Ma
KEYWORDS: Salina similis sp. nov., Paronellinae, taxonomy, chaetotaxy
A known species and a new species of Salina Mac Gillivray, 1894 from China are described here, S. yunnanensisDenis, 1929 and S. similis sp. nov.. The original description of S. yunnanensis is simple and only provided colour pattern and a few characters, here, the detail description were added. S. similis sp. nov. is characterised by its colour pattern and chaetotaxy on Abdominal segment I–III as 11-15, 4, 2 respectively.


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Trump Implicates US Agency, Claims the Service Tampered with 'Hundreds of Thousands of Ballots'
By Christine Favocci
Published December 4, 2020 at 3:03pm
Even if President Donald Trump's legal team hasn't proved them in court, allegations continue trickling in that indicate the 2020 presidential election might have had serious integrity problems — and the president is calling out government agencies that witnesses say were involved.
"Whistleblowers reveal that the USPS is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands of ballots," Trump tweeted Friday of a One America News Network report.
"@OANN This long time Democrat stronghold got rid of massive numbers, especially in swing states, during and before delivery of the ballots," he wrote. "Well documented evidence!"
Whistleblowers reveal that the USPS is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands of ballots. @OANN This long time Democrat stronghold got rid of massive numbers, especially in swing states, during and before delivery of the ballots. Well documented evidence!
The network outlined shocking claims surrounding the U.S. Postal Service, including people backdating ballots and the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of completed mail-in ballots.
These allegations aren't from some right-wing startup network's conspiracy theory mill, but rather from witnesses who spoke to the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society. The national conservative legal organization is conducting an independent investigation into alleged voter fraud in several battleground states.
Findings from the project were released Tuesday, and the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard detailed some of the most significant allegations.
In Wisconsin, Nathan Pease, a subcontractor hired by the USPS, said he was approached by two different workers on separate occasions with the claim that nearly 100,000 ballots received the day after Election Day were being backdated so as not to be thrown out for their late arrival.
Do you believe the whistleblowers' claims of fraud by USPS workers?
Similar claims of workers backdating ballots were also made by workers in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where witnesses also said they were directed to dump Trump's campaign mail into "Undeliverable Bulk Business Mail" bins and to deliver Democratic candidate Joe Biden's mailers on time.
The Amistad Project also heard from Gregory Stenstrom, a Pennsylvania tech expert who claimed that voting machines were improperly updated and accessed against protocol while workers mishandled jump drives, making it nearly impossible to verify votes without a serious audit.
The most distressing claim came from Jesse Morgan, a truck driver hired by the USPS to bring a trailer full of completed mail-in ballots across state lines.
He told the Amistad Project that he brought the ballots from Bethpage, New York, through Harrisburg to a stop in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he said his trailer packed with many as 288,000 ballots went missing.
RELATED: With Trump on the Way Out, Mayor Lightfoot Now Demanding Restaurants and Bars Reopen 'as Quickly as Possible'
These allegations, if true, implicate workers from the USPS and prove the concerns that the president and others had to widespread vote-by-mail, especially in key states, were well-founded.
There is a great misconception that the right is clamoring to overturn the election results to re-elect Trump, but that's simply not the case.
Quite the contrary, I hope — pray — that these allegations and others are untrue or exaggerated, because that means we can still trust our fellow Americans to play fair and let the best man win in national elections.
But it's hard to keep dismissing claims about a stolen election when each day brings new evidence of potential voter irregularities and fraud.
What makes these scenarios plausible is not that there is a centralized conspiracy with a puppet master at the top pulling all the strings, but rather that the left's concerted efforts to paint Trump as an evil dictator since he announced his presidential candidacy five years ago.
It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect many different people scattered across many locations throughout the U.S. to have the same idea to do their part to overthrow the villain they believed him to be.
After all, riots in cities throughout the nation erupted under the banner of Black Lives Matter without significant public affiliation or coordination prior to their spontaneous outbreak last May when George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody.
Somehow, thousands of people went from being law-abiding citizens to vandals and arsonists seemingly overnight, loosely based on the BLM movement but more a product of the zeitgeist at the time.
The same could be true of voter fraud, with workers using nefarious means to stop Trump because it was just sort of the next logical thing to do after years of propaganda against him.
We don't know if any of these claims about the Postal Service are true and possibly never will, but it's often said that where there's smoke, there's fire, and it seems more and more like this election was a smoldering heap from day one.
Did you know that The Western Journal now publishes some content in Spanish as well as English, for international audiences? Click here to read this article on The Western Journal en Español!
Christine Favocci
Christine earned her bachelor's degree from Seton Hall University, where she studied communications and Latin. She left her career in the insurance industry to become a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother.
@CFavocci
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Tags: 2020 election, Donald Trump, mail-in voting, politics, tweet, United States Postal Service USPS, voter fraud
C. Douglas Golden January 15, 2021 at 11:02am
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Translation can be tricky. It's both a science and an artform.
Incorrect terminology translations, tone, grammar, or even dialect can derail even the simplest of translation requirements into a word salad of gobbledy gook.
So, we thought it a good idea to highlight seven elements you need to consider when translating content for multiple markets.
Be familiar with your source content. Often clients will forward on some content requiring translation and have no idea of what the content entails. This makes it extremely difficult to address any queries the linguist may have and slows down the process of translation.
Too often clients would like to break into foreign markets and are unsure of the prevalent language of the region, nor the respective dialect required. Always research your prospective regions and the cultural requirements to ensure you're speaking to that region in their mother-tongue, and doing it well.
There are certain regional differences within the same language. Having the knowledge of what those are can take your translations from general to personalised. Getting the dialect or even tone of the translated content incorrect can result in your translated content being overlooked before you've even communicated the key essence of your message.
Localisation software has come a long way, so considering the format of your source content as well as the required delivery format can greatly affect turnaround time. Agencies should be able to translate directly into the files in question and save your designers a bunch of time and heartache copying and pasting a foreign language into content blocks.
Understanding your region is one thing, but you also need to understand the market you're communicating with. You need to decide on the voice of your translations that you require. It could require more of an academic feel, a friendly, warm tone or a firm and stern voice to further elaborate on your communications. An academic feel won't necessarily work when dealing with the general public, nor will a stern tone work within medical questionnaires. This needs to be considered.
One quality assurance measure to take is to have all prevalent terminology / phrases and/or sentences extracted from the text and translated prior to the entire project being translated. Having your key terminology translated and having those translations approved means that your key, unique elements of your project have approved, correct translations. The rest of the content will follow the same tone of voice, style and ultimately be more consistent.
If your agency offers this, take them up on it. All businesses have a certain level of duplication within their content, be it slogans, product descriptions etc. Translation memories save all previous translations so when it comes to time to translate the same sentence/phrase in new content, the previous translation can simply be leveraged and you won't be charged twice, in full, for the same phrase and or sentence to be translated. It also makes updates to existing content, like websites, a breeze to manage.
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