Tornadoes, climate change and why Dixie is the new Tornado Alley

  Tornadoes tore up homes in New Orleans and its suburbs and were reported in communities from Texas to Mississippi and Alabama as severe storms swept across the South in late March 2022. We asked tornado scientist Ernest Agee to explain what causes tornadoes and how the center of U.S. tornado activity has shifted eastward from the traditional Tornado Alley in recent years.

Vaccine hesitancy is complicating physicians’ obligation to respect patient autonomy during the COVID-19 pandemic

  Sitting barely six feet away from me, my patient yelled angrily, his face mask slipping to his upper lip: “No, I will not get vaccinated. And nothing you do or say will change that fact.” He provided no reason for why he was so opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine.

  As a primary care resident physician working in an underserved area of Reading, Pennsylvania, I have seen patients of all age groups refusing to follow COVID-19 guidelines such as wearing a mask, social distancing, or getting the vaccine.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Benefactor or idealogue

  Over the years, I have discussed my observations and concepts of the two different roles or routes taken by a U.S. Senator or Congressman during their tenure in Washington.

  One clearly chooses one of two postures in their representation of you in Washington. Our delegates to DC are either benefactors or idealogues.

Planned abandonment

  Management guru Peter Drucker advocated a practice he called planned abandonment. He stressed how important it is that managers develop the wisdom and courage to regularly review what their organization is doing and determine whether it’s worth doing. He urged executives to note and resist the systemic and emotional forces that make it difficult to abandon activities that drain resources, detract from central goals, or otherwise impede progress.

Older Americans are given the wrong idea about online safety – here’s how to help them help themselves

  Recently, the U.S. Social Security Administration sent out an email to subscribers of its official blog explaining how to access social security statements online. Most people know to be suspicious of seemingly official emails with links to websites asking for credentials.

  But for older adults who are wary of the prevalence of scams targeting their demographic, such an email can be particularly alarming since they have been told that the SSA never sends emails. From our research designing cybersecurity safeguards for older adults, we believe there is legitimate cause for alarm.

Fewer Americans are hunting, and that raises hard questions about funding conservation through gun sales

  Gun and ammunition sales in the U.S. have skyrocketed in recent years. And although it may come as a surprise, this trend has supported conservation activities.

  That’s because every firearm and bullet produced or imported into the U.S. is subject to an excise tax dedicated to wildlife conservation and restoration. In 1998, these taxes generated about US$247 million in inflation-adjusted apportionments to state fish and wildlife agencies from the federal U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which collects and manages these funds. By 2018, these revenues had more than tripled to $829 million.

Unpacking cancel culture: Is it censorship, civil right or something else?

  There’s no shortage of passionate opinions about cancel culture.

  Depending on who you ask:

• Cancel culture is on the rise. Cancel culture isn’t real.
• Canceling has little to no effect on the canceled. Canceling ruins lives.
• Cancel culture is a threat to free speech. Cancel culture is just speech holding others accountable.

  There isn’t agreement on what “canceling” means.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse - Incumbency reigns supreme in the Alabama Senate

  Being an incumbent state senator in Alabama is like owning that seat. The level of reelectability odds is probably better than that of an incumbent congressman, which is about the same as being elected to a seat in the Russian Communist Politburo.

  Being a freshman state senator in Alabama is a more powerful position than being a freshman U.S. congressman, especially if you want to affect public policy.

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s path to Supreme Court nomination was paved by trailblazing Black women judges

  Just five women and two African Americans, both men, are among the 115 people who have served on the United States’ highest court over more than two centuries. Both of those numbers may change in 2022, with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a 51-year-old Washington, D.C., native raised in Miami, to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.

  Jackson’s rise is, in part, due to the work of those women and Black men – and to Black women judges dating back almost a century.

What you eat can reprogram your genes – an expert explains the emerging science of nutrigenomics

  People typically think of food as calories, energy, and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level.

  This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology, and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics. This is a discipline still in its infancy, and many questions remain cloaked in mystery. Yet already, we researchers have learned a great deal about how food components affect the genome.