Miscellaneous Flashcards
How much exercise should one get, and what kind?
According to standard advice issued by the World Health Organization, adults should be getting
▪️at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or
▪️75 minutes of vigorous activity per week
to
▪️extend their lives,
▪️get fit,
▪️have stronger muscles and
▪️be a healthy weight.
If that didn’t already sound a lot, the WHO says to double that if you want to reap further benefits.
The WHO’S definition of moderate exercise includes domestic chores and gardening.
This idea fits with evidence from a study last year of more than 130,000 people in 17 countries, which found that
▪️walking to work and
▪️household chores such as vacuuming or scrubbing the floor
are activity enough to reduce the risk of early death by 28 percent, as long as you do 150 minutes a week.
Your weekly dose of exercise can be crammed into the weekend with no ill effects, says Gary O’Donovan of Loughborough University, UK.
▪️ Most governments urge people to do a little every day, or at least spread their exercise over the week. But his team analysed data from more than 63,000 adults in the UK spanning 18 years and found that people who opted for a “weekend warrior” regime had pretty much the same reduced risk of early death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease and cancer, as those who spread out exercise.
▪️ Even weekend warriors who did less than the recommended amount for the week fared better than inactive people.
▪️“No level ofexercise is too much,” says O’Donovan. “There’s no increase in mortality or morbidity if you keep increasing the amount.” Just don’t go too hard each time.
Exercising three to five times a week should set you up for a long and healthy life,
▪️especially if you mix up activities, says Laura-Anne Furlong, a biomecham’cist at Loughborough University.
Getting fit in 4 minutes: this is the promise of high-intensity interval training, marketed in gyms as HIIT. But does it deliver the goods?
“The answer to that is’ absolutely, definitely ,” says sports scientist Chris Easton at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. “High-intensity training works: it’s been shown pretty consistently to make you fitter, make you healthier,” he says.
That’s because pushing the body out of its comfort zone for short bursts forces it to adapt. The higher the intensity, the greater the adaptation, with benefits for your lungs, heart and circulation. They found that HIIT ▪️reduced, and even sometimes
▪️reversed, the effects of old age
on mitochondria, the energy powerhouses inside cells.
With age, mitochondrial deterioration causes fatigue and can contribute to diabetes.
What’s more, high-intensity training helps boost your metabolic rate, which means you burn more energy even at rest.
▪️… But incorporating some element of vigorous exercise in a longer routine” - whether faster-paced walking or jogging, some hills or just a few stair’s — will deliver benefits.
“In terms of disease risk, what is protective is substantially unproved when there’s a higher intensity component,” …
Does slow exercise burn more fat?
Unfortunately, that is a bit of a confusing message, says sports scientist Chris Easton at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. At very low intensities we burn proportionally more fat than carbohydrate — but the amount of both burned will be much higher at higher intensities, says Easton.
So unless you are prepared to keep going for a very long time, you are better off getting your skates on.
(From New Scientist Jan 2018)
What are the proportion of population literacy in the world over time?
▪️Earliest forms, written communication - 3500-3000 BCE (this means same as before Christ)
▪️In 1800, 87.95% of world’s pop’n was still ILLITERATE.
In the 1950’s:
▪️ Central & northern Europe were reported to have over 95% literacy
▪️Western Europe over 80% literacy
▪️Austria and Hungary over 70% literacy
▪️Italy, Poland and Spain over 50% literacy
▪️Portugal and the Eastern Orthodox countries, adult literacy rates were less than 25%
In short, the spread of literacy skills was, UNTIL THE 18TH CENTURY, primarily limited to religious leaders, state servants, far-travelling traders, members
of specialized guilds and certain nobility.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF ADULTS had little involvement with written texts – sacred or secular.
What is the cancer detection breakthrough discovered at UQ and announced in December 2018?
Researchers have discovered a unique DNA nanostructure that appears to be common to all cancers.
A quick and easy test to detect cancer from blood or biopsy tissue could eventually result in a new approach to patient diagnosis.
This unique nano-scaled DNA signature appeared in every type of breast cancer we examined, and in other forms of cancer including prostate, colorectal and lymphoma,” he said.
“We designed a simple test using gold nanoparticles that instantly change colour to determine if the 3D nanostructures of cancer DNA are present,” Professor Trau said.
This led to the creation of inexpensive and portable detection devices that could eventually be used as a diagnostic tool, possibly with a mobile phone.”
The new technology has proved to be up to 90 percent accurate in tests involving 200 human cancer samples and normal DNA.
We certainly don’t know yet whether it’s the holy grail for all cancer diagnostics, but it looks really interesting as an incredibly simple universal marker of cancer, and as an accessible and inexpensive technology that doesn’t require complicated lab-based equipment like DNA sequencing,” Professor Trau said.
How have UQ scientists discovered a way to impact melanomas?
UQ scientists have identified stem cells which form blood vessels in tumours, and figured out how to “switch off” these cells.
“We’re very fortunate in that we can repurpose already existing drugs on the market.
“We’ve found a specific drug that blocks these vascular stem cells and so this is a significant acceleration or translation of our research really to the clinic and we’ll be establishing this clinical trial this year.”
How can judges rule on the constitution or amendments?
The Thirteenth Amendment (proposed in 1864 and ratified in 1865) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime.
The Fourteenth Amendment (proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868) addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws for all persons.
The Fifteenth Amendment (proposed in 1869 and ratified in 1870) prohibits discrimination in voting rights of citizens on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
All races, regardless of prior slavery, could vote in some states of the early United States, such as New Jersey, provided that they could meet other requirements, such as property ownership.
In contrast to the other “Reconstruction Amendments”, the Thirteenth Amendment was rarely cited in later case law.
As historian Amy Dru Stanley summarizes, “beyond a handful of landmark rulings striking down debt peonage, flagrant involuntary servitude, and some instances of race-based violence and discrimination, the Thirteenth Amendment has never been a potent source of rights claims”.
How do judges make decisions on enacted laws?
“Balancing” happens when judges weigh one set of interests or rights against an opposing set, typically used to make rulings in First Amendment cases.
For example, cases involving freedom of speech sometimes require justices to make a distinction between legally permissible speech and speech that can be restricted or banned for, say, reasons of safety, and the task then is for justices to balance these conflicting claims.
The balancing approach was criticized by Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter who argued that the Constitution gives no guidance about how to weigh or measure divergent interests.
“Doctrinalism” considers how various parts of the Constitution have been “shaped by the Court’s own jurisprudence”, according to Finn.
“Functionalism”. Founders’ Intent involves judges trying to gauge the intentions of the authors of the Constitution.
Problems can arise when judges try to determine which particular Founders or Framers to consult, as well as trying to determine what they meant based on often sparse and incomplete documentation.
“Originalism” involves judges trying to apply the “original” meanings of different constitutional provisions.
To determine the original meaning, a constitutional provision is interpreted in its original context, i.e. the historical, literary, and political context of the framers.
From that interpretation, the underlying principle is derived which is then applied to the contemporary situation.
Former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia believed that the text of the constitution should mean the same thing today as it did when it had been written.
A report in the Washington Post suggested that originalism was the “view that the Constitution should be interpreted in accordance with its original meaning — that is, the meaning it had at the time of its enactment.”
“Meaning” based on original principles.
“Prudentialism” discourages judges from setting broad rules for possible future cases, and advises courts to play a limited role.
Precedent is judges deciding a case by looking to the decision of a previous and similar case according to the legal principle of stare decisis, by finding a rule or principle in an earlier case to guide their judgment in a current case.
Strict constructionism involves judges interpreting the text only as it was written; once a clear meaning has been established, there is no need for further analysis, based on this way, which advocates that judges should avoid drawing inferences from previous statutes or the constitution and instead focus on exactly what was written.
For example, Justice Hugo Black argued that the First Amendment’s wording in reference to certain civil rights that Congress shall make no law should mean exactly that: no law, no exceptions.
Structuralism is a way judges use by searching for the meaning of a particular constitutional principle only by “reading it against the larger constitutional document or context,” according to Finn.
Judges try to understand how a particular ruling fits within the larger structure of the entire constitution.
Textualism primarily interprets the law based on the ordinary meaning of the legal text.
