Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org
Retired Analytical Chemist
League of Women Voters -voting methods, election security
Board Member Colorado Citizens for Science
Joined Oct 2022
Gaythia Weis
boosted
Mike Johnson's Wild Anti-LGBTQ Past Revealed By CNN's K-File
"The inspectors concluded they couldn’t investigate because OSHA is banned from enforcing safety laws on farms with fewer than 11 workers unless they have employer-provided housing known as a “temporary labor camp.”
Since 2009, at least 17 workers, most of them immigrants, have died on Wisconsin dairy farms. Twelve of the deaths happened on farms with fewer than 11 workers. OSHA did not inspect eight of those 12, each time citing the small farms exemption."
Gaythia Weis
boosted
The end of the Sarennes glacier near Alpe d'Huez. Final measurements done on 16 October.
#ClimatechangeisWaterchange
https://www.ledauphine.com/environnement/2023/10/19/a-l-alpe-d-huez-le-glacier-a-fondu-d-un-metre-en-moins-d-un-mois
@dalias @belehaa @writerethink @CassandraZeroCovid There is a shortage of nurses, based on generally poor working conditions. And also lack of access to training. That gap is partially filled by religious institutions where education in basic science is limited by doctrine. For example: https://www.ccu.edu/academics/nursing/ as opposed to the University of Colorado.
Gaythia Weis
boosted
An immunocompromised person in my family got COVID for the first time, AT THE HOSPITAL because they stopped requiring ANY PRECAUTIONS. No masks, no nothing.
They can't avoid the hospital so that means they'll just have to roll the dice each time they go?
What a cruel world.
Immunocompromised means the vaccine doesn't work as well. So what the current US policy says is equivalent to "you're on your own" good luck! 😡😡😡
Gaythia Weis
boosted
The disappearance of thicker #Arctic sea ice by decade in October... 🧊📉
More info on data: https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/pan-arctic-ice-ocean-modeling-and-assimilation-system-piomas
Gaythia Weis
boosted
💯@soniasodha 'The pandemic will cast a long shadow over the Covid generation because of terrible political choices'.
These continue with a failure to reconfigure learning spaces, and improve ventilation. #CovidIsAirborne #LongCOVID @guardian @yahooNewsUK
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/empty-classroom-seats-reveal-long-063308176.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr
Gaythia Weis
boosted
‘This place wanted to be a wetland’: how a farmer turned his fields into a wildlife sanctuary https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/22/farm-wetland-bird-animal-sanctuary-oregon?
Gaythia Weis
boosted
“Placing HEPA air filters into classrooms in the Bradford area of the UK reduced the number of covid-19-related absences among students by more than 20 per cent”
Clean air works. Why are we not doing this more?
Gaythia Weis
boosted
🏳️🌈🖖🏽
This is what "freedom" means to the right wing. https://www.comicsands.com/tp-usa-david-boyles-assault-2666018152.html?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=infeed&utm_campaign=linkprogram
@freemo @futurebird @andyhilmer I think that "banned" is the wrong term to uses in most school districts. They simply lack the capacity to teach advanced math, including Calculus, even if they thought it was important and wanted to do so. Starting with early grades, they think of math as a series of drills to be memorized. Who would teach the needed abstract reasoning concepts?
It is the lefty liberal districts, that do have some math capable teachers who do actually ban access to higher level math. They do so because they are worried about "gaps", the early sorting of students into high and low math tracks, a practice that disproportionately disadvantaged Black and Latino students and made it harder for them to access advanced courses down the line. If you prohibit Algebra until 9th grade, some students are either getting outside supplementation, or they are being slowed down. Opportunities to burst forward are also not accessible. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/san-francisco-insisted-on-algebra-in-9th-grade-did-it-improve-equity/2023/03
Of course the issue isn't just school sorting, it is social and educational privilege that enables some families to provide their offspring with enriched environments, starting at the preschool level.
It is hard to create catch up opportunities in public schools, especially when so many elementary school teachers have week abstract learning/math skills themselves.
And we are a far cry from being a society where most adults understand at least the basic concepts of rate of change or approaching a limit. People don't understand that Calculus might actually have some relevance.
@dayglojago Ooo. Way back my father was a PCC math instructor who loved that system for the reasons you explain. Glad it worked out for you!
Gaythia Weis
boosted
"I admit that I started thinking about this after spending the weekend walking underneath a grove of hundreds-of-feet-tall, centuries-old California Redwoods. As I gazed at the morning fog settling over the giant trees, I wondered: Why are we really spending billions on GPUs and data centers, fueling a spike in water consumption during a drought? For products consumers may or may not want or need?" -Sharon Goldman
https://venturebeat.com/ai/why-ai-is-teetering-on-the-edge-of-a-disillusionment-cliff-the-ai-beat/
Gaythia Weis
boosted
Wow it gets better.
“she was forced to leave Temple University for neighbouring UPenn after a dispute with her boss, who then attempted to have her deported.”
& Penn
“They issued an ultimatum, if she wanted to continue working with mRNA she would lose her prestigious faculty position, & face a…pay cut.”
”…that same week, I had just been diagnosed with cancer…I was facing 2 operations, & my husband, who had gone back to Hungary to pick up his green card…got stranded…”
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech
Gaythia Weis
boosted
This is huge. And likely to go under the media radar.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4236066-arizona-governor-revokes-saudi-owned-alfalfa-farm-lease/
Gaythia Weis
boosted
The Guardian article on the #NYC #rainfall #deluge and #flooding and the analysis on which it is based are okay, but entirely miss the key point - "with every degree (Celsius) of warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture"[1]. In greater #NY / #NJ the temperature is now about 2.2C over the 1900 - 2020 average [2]. This equates to the atmosphere holding 15.4% more water than average. No "rapid attribution study" necessary. It's simple atmospheric #physics.
Guardian - "Type of storm that drenched New York is up to 20% wetter due to #ClimateCrisis. Rapid attribution study finds storm 10-20% wetter after city experienced a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours on Friday"
Guardian article -
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/02/new-york-city-flooding-rain-storm-climate-change
[1] ZDF Report (in German) -
per #ZDF weather expert, meteorologist Özden Terli
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/panorama/klima-starkregen-hitze-experten-100.html
[2] US Temperature Data per #US #EPA
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-temperature
#ClimateEmergency #Climate #Klimakrise #Klima #ClimateDiary #GlobalWarming #NewYork #NewJersey #Weather #TorrentialRain #Floods #FlashFlood #FlashFloods #Meteorology
Gaythia Weis
boosted
The University of Pennsylvania, where Kariko was on track for a professorship, decided to pull the plug on her when her grant rejections piled up.
"I was up for promotion, and then they just demoted me and expected that I would walk out the door," she told AFP in an interview from her home in Philadelphia in December 2020.
Kariko didn't yet have a green card and needed a job to renew her visa. She also knew she wouldn't be able to put her daughter through college without the hefty staff discount.
She decided to persist as a lower-rung researcher, scraping by on a meager salary.
It was a low point in her life and career, but "I just thought...you know, the (lab) bench is here, I just have to do better experiments," she said.
Now, her pioneering work—which paved the way for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines—has won her the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
#NobelPrize #medicine #nobel #mrna #Kariko
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-katalin-kariko-scientific-maverick-paved.html
Gaythia Weis
boosted
Psst... get your COVID booster everyone, it's based on Nobel Prize-winning technology!
Gaythia Weis
boosted
On Monday, President Biden is to deliver remarks to celebrate the Americans with Disabilities Act (#ADA), which he cosponsored as a senator, and to mark #DisabilityPrideMonth, according to the White House.
Gaythia Weis
boosted
Retired Analytical Chemist
League of Women Voters -voting methods, election security
Board Member Colorado Citizens for Science
Joined Oct 2022
