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dunkellic  ·  1901 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong

Not finished the whole article yet, but at least the first paper that's cited has obviously not been read beyond the first few lines.

    But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy

The author cites this meta-analysis for this: The prevalence of metabolically healthy obesity: a systematic review and critical evaluation of the definitions used (can't post link in comments)

To quote the conclusion of the full paper:

    The prevalence of the MHO phenotype has been widely

    debated. This systematic review showed that the overall

    prevalence of MHO varied from 6% to 75%. The preva-

    lence seems to be higher in women, young people and

    Asians. However, when only studies with at least a 70%

    response rate were considered, the overall MHO preva-

    lence ranged from 10% to 51%. Considering the marked

    heterogeneity of MHO definitions described in the litera-

    ture, it is clear that the establishment of a common MHO

    definition is urgently needed, although this may not be

    an easy task because we still do not know the precise

    mechanisms that are involved with this phenotype and its

    clinical implications in the long term.

  
A) there's no widely accepted definition for being metabolically healthy in obese people, this also ignores all non-metabolic issues, i.e. having a good HbA1c but arthrosis due to your joints being overwhelmed.

  
B) with rising trial/study quality, the rate of MHO obese people dropped

C) young people are more likely to be MHO, meaning that they simply haven't developed damage yet. Asian people are more likely to be MHO, because some of the trials in asian populations "define obesity was a lower

BMI cut-off point ≥25 kg/m² (22% of the studies)", whereas in trials with caucasian/western populations it was a BMI >30kg/m².

Another poignant quote from the original meta-analysis:

    On one hand, high prevalence estimates (arbitrarily set in ≥ 33%) were obtained when the definition was based on less strict criteria, for example, that proposed by Meigs et al . (37) using only HOMA-IR. On the other hand, low prevalence estimates were found when a more stringent definition of MHO was used, for example, that proposed by Karelis et al . (36), which is based on five cardiometabolic factors: blood pressure, HDL-c, low- density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol and HOMA-IR.

  
Again, HMO prevalence is tied to low trial quality.

Unlike the HuffPos authors conclusion, mine is that MHO is by and large a myth and for most people, for most individuals, obesity equals being unhealthy.

dunkellic  ·  4066 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sick.

    Does the NTT being high for healthy adults (which is what the study measured) necessarily mean that there is no benefit for those who cannot get vaccinated?

Sorry, my reply lacked a little bit of structure.

    If vaccination does not confer benefits to children and elderly, wouldn't that imply that the herd effect from mass vaccination would in fact be good for them and those who cannot get the vaccine?

Yes, this is correct (but of course it also implies that we have an effective vaccine for healthy people).

If the vaccine is a perfect match, than the NNT might actually suffice when there would be a high amount of vaccination (I've found a study that got a NNT of 25 to achieve a protective herd effect)...perhaps I've been a little to rash in my statement.

Right now I think it's safe to say that vaccination rates are not nearly high enough to provide herd immunity, but it may perhaps be actually possible with very high rate of vaccination (I'm no epidemiologist, so don't take my word as gospel).

Added-before-I-pressed-reply: I actually found a study where children around the age of 3-15 were vaccinated and there was a significant herd immunization effect. The study says that you'd need about 80% of the children (because they are the main early vectors for spreading the virus) in a society vaccinated to achieve this. --> I'm most likely wrong

As for the article you've linked..I'm afraid pharmaceutical companies are a necessary evil...but sometimes it's really depressing.

dunkellic  ·  4067 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sick.

Yeah, but it does that badly, that's the problem. It has a potential NNT of 100, which is a high number for such a common disease (in the case of a NNT of 36 in a perfect case, it's not that bad though).

The high NNT also means that it is less likely to achieve any kind of herd protection. Compared to for example the measles vaccine with a NNT of ~7, a 100 seems quite high (disclosure: but this is actually a tricky comparison and may not be fair for the flu vaccine. The NNT is heavily influenced by the baseline risk of actually getting the disease. If the baseline risk is very high to get sick in the first place, which is often the case for classic childhood disease like measles or varicella, the NNT is usually much lower even with a less effective vaccine. The NNT for the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer is somewhere in the range of 5000-8000 because of the low baseline risk of getting the disease).

Furthermore, even the wikipedia article (which I object somewhat to) agrees on the fact, that for at least for the elderly, it's not very effective:

    The group most vulnerable to non-pandemic flu, the elderly, is also the least to benefit from the vaccine.
which probably isn't to blame on the vaccine alone, but also on the less robust immunologic response of the elderly.

And citing from the Cochrane review:

    In children under the age of two the data are extremely limited, but vaccination appeared to confer no measurable benefit.

In the end, these results are most likely to be too optimistic, (at least) half the studies were funded by pharmaceutical companies and while I don't want to say you cannot trust them at all, you have to take them with a pinch of salt, especially in regard of how much money they make with flu-vaccination.

    Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines

I do not want to say: "DO NOT GET VACCINATED", especially if you are somehow immunocompromised, be it age (old or very young) or due to some underlying disease (diabetes, etc.), the benefits easily outweighs the risks.

dunkellic  ·  4069 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sick.

Usually I'm heavily in favour of vaccines, but I honestly cannot recommend flu vaccination. Before you burn me as a heretic, this is the reason I don't get flu shots (even though I would get them for free):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269...

    Authors of this review assessed all trials that compared vaccinated people with unvaccinated people. The combined results of these trials showed that under ideal conditions (vaccine completely matching circulating viral configuration) 33 healthy adults need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. In average conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalised or working days lost but caused one case of Guillian-Barré syndrome (a major neurological condition leading to paralysis) for every one million vaccinations. Fifteen of the 36 trials were funded by vaccine companies and four had no funding declaration. Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited..

    This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.

Hope you get better mk ;)

dunkellic  ·  4070 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The World’s Most Depressing Tech Infographic Says You’re Dead In 9 Years

As cliché as it sounds, but at least part of the journey is the reward, why should I feel bad for spending 3 1/2 years learning when I consider all the great things I know because of it? What's the problem with eating and drinking adding up to four years, if I get to taste and enjoy great foods? Why should I feel bad for spending 10 1/2 years at work, if that work is what I find fulfillment in?

Well, he did the exact opposite to Star Trek, then again both franchises have different vantage-points. I wonder what he is going to do with Star Wars. Trek was a complete reboot and pretty much kicked the established lore in the ass (I personally think it was an entertaining popcorn movie, but the setting was hardly Star Trek, it really was quite interchangeable..). But the franchise was basically dead at that point and it didn't go peacefully with Nemesis as the last movie.

But Star Wars? There's no need for a reboot - in my opinion at least, yet there's no obvious starting-point for a story to tell. True, the lat three movies weren't really critically acclaimed, but Star Wars is far from the shape Trek was in during Nemesis. There are a lot of stories that could be turned to films, the whole extended universe thing and the comic book series, which feature a few rather gritty plots (beloved characters die, Luke turning to the dark side, etc...).

dunkellic  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What would happen if North Korea launched a missile at the United States?

What would be detected is a ballistic missile launch; while there's no "law" that every ballistic missile is nuclear, it is certainly the rule and there is no way to determine what kind of warhead an ICBM/SLBM carries in-flight.

As soon as the launch is detected, countermeasures are imitated. The launch/boost time window is ~ 5 minutes long and without prior warning the U.S. would have to hope that by chance there's missile destroyer nearby, in order to try to intercept it. During midcourse the missile is almost undetectable, because it doesn't have an exhaust. So once the last booster falls off, the first window for interception closes. Once the warhead reenters the atmosphere the second, shorter (approx. 2 minutes), time window would open. Terminal interception is very difficult because the warhead enters at terminal velocity with ~ 14000km/h (~8700mph). If the warhead would split up into several reentry warheads (socalled "MIRVs), a proper interception is almost impossible, even for the U.S. (but afaik the North Koreans are far from having that technology).

Here are two videos from the old and discontinued Nike-Sprint interceptor missile, just to give an impression of how damned fast these things are (and the Sprint goes "only" 12000km/h!). In the second video you can see how the missile turns from black to white due to the enormous friction.

dunkellic  ·  4081 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Update: The Return of Tags

    If you mute a user, that user cannot comment on your posts.

What was the rationale behind that? This could be a little bit "problematic", what happens when someone spews bullshit about something or someone and you cannot correct him? (Most obvious example: user A claims something untrue about user B, user A has muted user B; now user B cannot comment on the accusations, not without making his own post at least. While it could be said "well, let B ignore A, then his or her problem is null", everyone else would still see and read that comment without hearing the opposing view)

dunkellic  ·  4087 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Germany to transfer its gold from NYC to Frankfurt

I'm sorry but:

>quotes american constitution in debate about german sovereignty >does not address a single point

This is equivalent to putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "lalalalalalalalalalalal"

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Australia Banned Assault Weapons. America Can, Too. - NYTimes.com

I don't get it, how does this make killing-sprees any harder?

    A semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least two of the following characteristics:  A folding or telescoping stock  A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon  A bayonet mount  A flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor  A grenade launcher

Those are basically ALL cosmetic criteria, in none of the recent killing sprees did the perpetrator need any of these things. Grenade launchers are almost impossible to get for civilians in the U.S. this way or another, bayonet mount? When was the last person killed by a bayonet. Flash-suppressors make the muzzle-flash less noticeable, the gun is still as loud as before and huge flames gushing out of your barrel are a Hollywood-fantasy anyway. The folding stock only makes it easier to carry the rifle close to your body, heck - if someone would really want to shorten his rifle, he'd simply saw it off

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Australia Banned Assault Weapons. America Can, Too. - NYTimes.com

What are the current criteria for an assault weapon in NY state?

Judging from the wiki-article on the AWB, the criteria are/were mostly/entirely cosmetic.

Edit: there's no strikethrough on hubski?

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Germany to transfer its gold from NYC to Frankfurt

The reason for depositing the gold abroad was, that if - for one reason or another - the german currency tanked really really hard, it could instantly get liquidity by exchanging the gold for a foreign currency (british pounds, american dollars, french franc). Because France has the Euro as well, this tactic does not make sense anymore (as also explained in the article).

This begs the question though, why the move from NYC to Frankfurt then? And why move the money out of France now and not much earlier?

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Germany to transfer its gold from NYC to Frankfurt

| It has no sovereignty.|

Yeah, no.

Cessation of hostilities between the United States and Germany had been proclaimed on 13 December 1946 by United States President Harry S.Truman. End of state of war with Germany was granted by the U.S. Congress on 19 October 1951, after a request by President Truman on 9 July. Since German civilians were legally still considered enemy nationals for a long period this resulted in some peculiar effects, such as that marriages between white U.S. soldiers and white German women were not permitted until December 1946. (The U.S. army at the time still prohibited interracial marriages, so black soldiers had to wait until 1948) In January 1946 the Swedish Red Cross was permitted to send food to Germany, but earlier attempts to send food by relief agencies had been blocked by the US Treasury Department under the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917, and U.S. troops had been under orders not to share their food rations with German civilians.

In the Petersberg Agreement of November 22, 1949, it was noted that the West German government wanted an end to the state of war, but the request could not be granted. The U.S. state of war with Germany was being maintained for legal reasons, and though it was softened somewhat it was not suspended since "the U.S. wants to retain a legal basis for keeping a U.S. force in Western Germany". At a meeting for the Foreign Ministers of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States in New York from September 12 to December 19, 1950, it was stated that among other measures to strengthen West Germany's position in the Cold War that the western allies would "end by legislation the state of war with Germany". During 1951, many former Western Allies did end their state of war with Germany: Australia (9 July), Canada, Italy, New Zealand, The Netherlands (26 July), South Africa, and the United Kingdom (9 July) The state of war between Germany and the Soviet Union was ended in early 1955. Sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany was granted on May 5, 1955, by the formal end of the military occupation of its territory. Special rights were however maintained, e.g., vis-à-vis West Berlin.

Under the terms of the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the Four Powers renounced all rights they formerly held in Germany, including Berlin. As a result, Germany became fully sovereign on March 15, 1991. After Germany joined the United Nations, there had been disagreement as to whether articles 53 and 107 of the UN Charter, which named Germany as an "enemy state", still applied, but these articles became irrelevant when the Four Powers renounced their special rights in the 1990 treaty,and they were formally recognized as irrelevant by a UN General Assembly resolution in 1995.

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Unbelievable Sci-Fi Short Made By One Person (democratization of film-making)

Oah, pretty cool - especially for one person. I think the twist could be seen coming and the animation of the alien could use some polishing (animating animals and people is really really hard), but still very good nonetheless.

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What do you do for a living? What would you like to do?

Damn expired link...

After spending a month in the radiology department, it's is definitely in my top-five.What bothers me is that you have almost no patient-contact and (more so) that you do almost nothing curative (well, there's interventional radiology, but you'll end up doing almost exclusively interventional or diagnostic). But apart from that it was a great experience.

Immunology is the other thing that interests me the most currently, especially since it is developing rapidly right now and making great strides with certain diseases (also, for an internal medicine specialty it has relatively young patients).

Apart from that I can only tell you what I don't want to do, OB/GYN, surgery and dermatology (not because I don't respect them, I just don't want to do them). I once considered psychiatry, but I was quite let down by my experience with it, sadly.

But I have still some time left and there are fields I haven't even dipped into (neurology, anesthesia, etc.), so I'll see what the future brings.

    I think that in the states practical experience comes too late in the process.

I'm afraid this is a universal problem with medical education. The more research advances, the more is added to the curriculum, but almost never is something thrown out and the time you have available stays the same. It's a difficult situation and I don't see any easy solution for it (make medical education even longer? Specialize during medschool and you'll end up with MDs that can't think outside the box, etc...)

What specialty did your wife chose (and how?)

dunkellic  ·  4088 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What do you do for a living? What would you like to do?

    What year are you?

I'm from Germany, our system is slightly different. Instead of a premed we have a pre-clinical part which is already part of the medical curriculum. It takes two years and in those two years we're supposed to learn everything about how the healthy body is supposed to work( the subjects are (neuro)anatomy, biochemistry and (neuro)physiology, sociology&psychology, physics, general chemistry, terminology and biology). After those two years (=4 semesters) we have our first hurdle called "Physikum", which you have to pass in order to advance to the next part. If you fail the Physikum (which basically tests everything you've learned in those 2 years) thee times, you cannot continue studying medicine in Germany.

Afterwards comes the clinical part, where we have the individual specialties as subjects (internal medicine, radiology, surgery, etc.) and go on rounds, etc. This takes another 3 years (in the free time between semesters we have to do internships). Afterwards we have a so-called practical year, where you work full-time in surgery, internal medicine and a specialty of your choice for 4 months each. Then, once you're done with that, you can take your "Hammer-"exam (the word means the same in German and English ;) ) and if you pass that, you're finally an M.D. (after at least six and a half years; more if you have to repeat something). I'm currently in my seventh semester (3 1/2 year), so I'll still have some time to decide:)

    My unsolicited advice would be to choose the specialty that gives you the most satisfaction regardless of pay or residency length or strenuousness.

That's what I always tell to myself as well, but sometimes, when you see some intern next to the verge of a breakdown, you'll wonder if you made the right choice (or in my case "will make the right choice")

dunkellic  ·  4090 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What do you do for a living? What would you like to do?

Currently in med-school and looking forward to practicing (in a couple of years), though I haven't decided on my specialty yet (or whether I veer more towards the research part)...

There are a lot of thing I would like to do as well, teaching for example (not in school but college/med-school), before deciding on med-school I wanted to do industrial design, which I still find interesting, just like architecture.

My biggest dream though would be to work in space ;)

dunkellic  ·  4091 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Stupid is Winning: We are in the final years of our internet

This should play in the background of this article ;)

dunkellic  ·  4091 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Not Your Mom’s Trans 101

Okay, I found that link both interesting and disputable.

First of all, my question:

What I don't really get is, what do transpeople associate with gender? What does it mean for a trans-man to have male gender? What defines male for them - they certainly don't aspire to behave and feel like cis-men, or do they? This is what I don't totally understand, the rejection of the assigned gender and rejection of the behavior of the stereotypical cis-gender, but at the same time they... - what is it that makes a trans-man feel like a man, what's the defining characteristic of man for them? It cannot be what most of the society regards as typically "cismale", because that attracts downright disgust from the trans community (or at least that's what I witnessed). (This obviously disregards the community which feels as neither male or female).

Please regard that when I say male and men in the paragraph above, I mean the gender and not the sex (as you may have noticed, I'm not totally familiar with the terminology).

Now come the parts I disagree with:

    Whether the baby is intersex or not, the child is then raised as whatever arbitrary gender the doctor saw fit to assign.

At least where I live this decision is not made immediately and not solely by the doctor, at least the parents are involved, usually more people.

    For whatever reason, they are able to live somewhat comfortably within the gender in which they have been cast. No one really knows why so many people are capable of fitting into such arbitrary categories.

I find this paragraph surprising; while I can understand why someone who does not agree with his assigned gender might wonder why everybody else seems to have such an easy time with it, there is without doubt a complex interplay between sex, karyotype and neurology; there are differences in the brains of men and women (sex) and you cannot completely decouple sex from gender. If we would follow the train of thought of the author, we would have to ask ourselves: why the hell would bulls behave like bulls and not like cows; why do male lions behave like male lions and not like females? Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but it simply seems to be the norm in nature and it seems as if there is a strong causal relation between genetics and behaviour (and thus gender). Correlation does not imply causation, but it heavily implies it. And don't disregard this as an "appeal to nature", as this is not a statement about which state is preferable, it's merely an observation. This is NOT to say that the question is not quite interesting from a (neuro)biological point of view, it's just that the observed behavior is not surprising nor that it is hard to imagine a causal relationship between the two.

    The entire concept of “sex” is simply a way of attaching something social– gender– to bodies.

Tell me, a biologist sorting a bunch of Drosophila in males and females, in what way does he assign any social value to the fly? The statement that the "entire concept of sex" is a social construct to assign some personal, or predefined by society, value to something strikes me as quite detached from reality.

    The fact is that the concept of binary sex is based on the fallacious idea that multiple sex characteristics are immutable and must always go together

There's male, female and intersex (plus a wider variety for words to better describe intersex). It's largely used binary, which is not precise.

    There are people with hormonal anomalies. In fact, hormone levels vary wildly within the categories of cis male and cis female

Yes, but usually there is still quite a clear difference in the levels, almost in orders of magnitude. If a women has the progesterone and testosterone levels of a man, several tissues will stop working - this is considered a disease (and correctly so usually, otherwise you can say that diabetes or pancreatic insufficiency is a disease too).

    In addition to variations like XXY, XXYY, or X[0]

Yes and some of those come with serious problems. Dysplasia, hypogonadism, etc. While I don't think these karyotypes can be called diseases, they certainly are anomalies - and usually require to something go not as expected in spermatogenesis/oogenesis/embryogenesis.

Also the mentioned XX males are most likely the product of a translocation of the sex-determining region of Y, but due to the genetic configuration they suffer (afaik) from azospermia. In this regard the author is right, it's not strictly the karyotype, but the translation of the genetic information - it's just that if no anomalies occur, this - at least in regards to sex-specific traits - is influenced pretty strong by karyotype.

    Yet it is possible to isolate, alter, and remove many of these traits. Many of these traits do not always appear together, and before puberty and after menopause, many of them do not apply.

It is not possible to change the histologic type of many tissues, a sex-changed person will not (yet) produce sperm instead of ova and vice-versa, there's no way to give a man a uterus complete with endometrium and a vagina and penis are not basically the same thing. They have to some degree the same roots, but they both contain cells that differentiated to a type that is not found in its counterpart and they cannot differentiate into their counterpart (to claim they are still the same because they have the same roots would mean that you could claim that your brain is the same as your toe-nail, since they both came from the same zygote). A table and a stool are not the same thing, even if both are made out of wood.

    This being the case, I believe the most sensible way to look at the question of sex now is this: a male body is a body belonging to a male– that is, someone who identifies as male.

Females suffer from different diseases, have different risk-factors, even different lab values (i.e. Hb, hematocrit,etc.) than males, male and female anatomy differs not only on an internal but also on an external level and even on smaller levels (histology/neurological functionality). Again, there is a strong correlation between the gender and certain traits, traits that range beyond behavior (i.e. traits not influenced by society).

I somehow feel that this article gets the directions wrong - it says "why do we understand sex as biological traits???" when, at least in biology, the term was meant to describe individuals that produce ova or sperm. It's like wondering, why do we call light with 720nm wavelenght red and not blue - when the reason is that we assigned the wavelength 720nm the term "red". There's also room for improvement, no doubt - do men with azospermia don't count as men because they can't produce men? Or is the ability to produce sperm on a principal level (i.e. the production of tissue which is predisposed to produce sperm, but may not be able to)...

I don't want to question that the term sex is often misused when gender is meant, but I don't regard the misinterpreting/abolition of the term sex as the correct solution. The concept of sex is not a social construct, it's a concept to describe a certain phenomenon in biology and is extremely useful, not only for biologists, but also for medicine.

I hope I found most typos and grammatical errors, if not excuse them please - writing this took longer than excepted and I have to stop procrastinating now (or never).

Not that it has something to do with the core of the article, but I wonder what series the author actually watched...

    Trek has almost a pathological antipathy to anything Transhumanist, and explicitly rejects any kind of enhancement of Humans whether it is genetic (Eugenics Wars), medical (anti aging) or technological (Borg)

Yes, if only I could think of a central character that had his vision not only restored but also improved by technology...(although I admit that Star Trek has always been critical of transhumanism)

    No doubt this is some American reaction to a caricature of Socialism, as the Borg clearly represents a Socialist society in many minds

What? The Federation itself is more or less socialistic, they certainly were not intended as some criticism or caricature of Socialism.

dunkellic  ·  4103 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Most Immoral Thing in America

But he's wrong on his most central point. Let me quote wikipedia:

    In the United States, laws vary from state to state. As of 2012, adultery remains a criminal offense in 23 states.[54]In those states where adultery is still on the statute books (although rarely prosecuted), penalties vary from life sentence (Michigan)[55] to a $10 fine (Maryland) to a Class B misdemeanor (New York)[56] to a Class I felony (Wisconsin).[57] In the state of South Carolina, the criminal fine for adultery is a fine no greater than $500 and/or imprisonment for no more than one year [South Carolina code 16-15-60], yet the divorce laws codified at South Carolina Code Section 20-3-60(A) deny alimony to the adulterous spouse, which in some cases can cost the adulterous spouse millions of dollars in future income.[58] Other states where adultery is illegal include Massachusetts, Idaho, Oklahoma.[59] Massachusetts, Idaho, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin are the only states to consider adultery a felony. In the other states it is a misdemeanor.
dunkellic  ·  4103 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: After setbacks, Russia boosts space spending

About time but I wonder whether this will help much, the brain drain the russian space industry is suffering from comes not from a lack of funds (well, not exclusively), but because the standards of living and the government structures are simply much better in almost any western country.

I also wonder how much of that money will actually land in the hands of Roscosmos and not get lost in transit...