Open Thread, Feb 8 - Feb 15, 2016

Pearl has a new book out: Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer (with Glymour and Jewell also as authors), already available on Kindle and paperback coming out the 26th. You can find the Table of Contents and chapter previews here.

At 150 pages, 4 chapters, and with homework exercises, this looks like the introductory causality work that I've wanted to exist for a few years.

I recently attended a 10 day intensive Vipassana meditation retreat. Would a write-up of the experience be something LWers are interested in as an article for discussion?

I had minimal to moderate experience in meditation before this but now feel much more comfortable with it. I can see potential rationality relevance through,

* Discipline
* Concentration
* Emotion and habit regulation
* Seeing reality as it is

If there is interest then I would appreciate it if someone is willing to look over a draft of the article for me as I haven't written for LW before.

A cautionary statement about betting on your beliefs from Tyler Cowen:

Bryan Caplan is pleased that he has won his bet with me, about whether unemployment will fall under five percent. ... The Benthamite side of me will pay Bryan gladly, as I don’t think I’ve ever had a ten dollar expenditure of mine produce such a boost in the utility of another person.

That said, I think this episode is a good example of what is wrong with betting on ideas. Betting tends to lock people into positions, gets them rooting for one outcome over another, it makes the denouement of the bet about the relative status of the people in question, and it produces a celebratory mindset in the victor. That lowers the quality of dialogue and also introspection, just as political campaigns lower the quality of various ideas — too much emphasis on the candidates and the competition.

I just got the weirdest piece of direct messaging spam from a 0 karma account:

Hi good day. My boss is interested on donating to MIRI's project and he is wondering if he could send money through you and you donate to miri through your company and thus accelertaing the value created. He wants to use "match donations" as a way of donating thats why he is looking for people in companies like you. I want to discuss more about this so if you could see this message please give me a reply. Thank you!

I'm not sure exactly what the scam is in the above, but the plan on the face is so ridiculous that it has to be one (p=95). Is anyone else receiving these, or is it just me since I'm a well know MIRI funder?

On the betting market PredictIt you can by a contract for 38 cents that pays $1 if the Democratic party doesn't win the next U.S. presidential election. This seems like an amazingly good bet. (I have 1158 shares) Do others who follow U.S. politics agree that the chance of the Democrats not winning the election is well above 38%?

I haven't reviewed the slack posts recently; I wanted to briefly say that there are 250 people who have joined now. They are not all active; but still it's going strong.

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong_Slack

I think my girlfriend needs psychiatric help - she has visual hallucinations and other symptoms I've promised to keep confidential. She doesn't want to see a psychiatrist, as she and her family attribute her symptoms to supernatual causes; they believe that the "spirits" she sees actually exist. (Another family member - not a blood relative - also has psychiatric symptoms that are being treated and managed.) I really don't want to go into further details because one time I promised not to tell my psychiatrist about her issues and then told him anyway and she freaked out when I admitted to telling him. (I admitted it because I can't lie for shit and suck at keeping secrets, but that's beside the point.)

Any advice? ("Break up with your girlfriend" will be ignored, unless you can convince me that it would be better for her if I left her.)

Building story, seeking comments

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XcgNwELHCU-r7GuYUgDNDDIviThd8Y7Bdto_kMIcmlI/edit

I'm most of the way done putting together a design-doc for a story, and could use some feedback to help make sure no idiot balls are being held. Please feel free to go over what I've pinned down so far, and to comment there or here.

What do you consider the most interesting clinical trials that are currently running?

Seen on MR: the Conspira-Sea Cruise, through the eyes of a skeptical journalist. (It's exactly what it sounds like: a 7-day cruise for believers in conspiracy theories.)

At the end of last year there were a lot of news articles about like this about Metformin as the first anti-aging drug trial. I can't find the exact trial on clinicaltrials.gov. Can you?

What is the central claim in Buddhism?

In Buddhist phenomenology and soteriology, the skandhas (Sanskrit) or khandhas (Pāḷi) are the five functions or aspects that constitute the sentient being. In English, these five aspects are known as the five aggregates. The five aggregates are: material form, feelings, perception, volition (sometimes translated as mental formations), and sensory consciousness. Considering that the five aggregates continuously arise and cease within our moment-to-moment experience, the Buddha teaches that nothing among them is really "I" or "mine."

In the Theravada tradition, suffering arises when one identifies with or clings to an aggregate. Suffering is extinguished by relinquishing attachments to aggregates.

-Skandha

• That can be tested, empirically, can't it?

• Has it? If not, why not? If so, where and what are the results?

What are your favorite recent (2011-present) Science Fiction novels?

Yvain's 2016 nootropics survey has opened: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DFP4bSS00i_zQJ3nlw8KJxhUJjmrH9DA8cq0BsQciOc/viewform

The previous survey's data & results: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/16/nootropics-survey-results-and-analysis/

Seeking socio-econo-political organizing methods

How many useful ways are there for an uploaded mind, an em, to organize copies of itself to maximize the accuracy of their final predictions?

The few that I've been able to think of:

• "Strict hierarchy". DPR.2.1 can advise DPR.2, but DPR.2's decision overrides DPR.2.1's.
• "One em, one vote". DPR.2 gets a vote, and so does DPR.2.
• "One subjective year, one vote". DPR.2.1 is running twice as fast as DPR.2, and so DPR.2.1 gets twice as many votes.
• "Prediction market". The DPRs implement some sort of internal currency (which, thanks to blockchains, is fairly easy), and make bets, receiving rewards for accurate predictions.
• "Human swarm". Based on https://www.singularityweblog.com/unanimous-ai-louis-rosenberg-on-human-swarming/ .

How many reasonably plausible methods am I missing?

Why does GiveWell prefer dalys to qalys?

If GiveWell cared more about QALY's than DALY's, would their recommendations be different?

Is there an argument that society undervalues and/or underfunded paternalistic preventative health interventions for the wrong reasons? Is there a compelling reason that normal market forces will not solve the task of preventative health?

Should I be an organ donor? Should I tell others to be donors? Should you be a donor?

Two studies report on the QALY impact of organ donation in the Cost Effectiveness Analysis Registry. Whiting et al (2004) Canadian study reports that kidney transplantation alone results in a gain of 1.99 QALYs over a 20-year time compared with waiting on dialysis. Kontodimopoulos and Niakis's (2008) Greek study reports a 16.11-4.37=11.74 and 16.11-3.94=12.17 for the Lifelong QALY difference for hemiodialysis and peritoneal dialysis respectively against renal replacement therapy.

By inference, kidney transplantion alone raises recipient QALY’s by between 1.99 and 12.17. Accorinding to DonateLife: ‘Less than 1% of people die in hospital in the specific circumstances where organ donation is possible. The circumstances in which you can become a tissue donor are less limited.’ Assuming a 1% successful registration to transplantion rate, one donor registration aggregates to between 0.19 and 1.2 QALY’s for kidney’s alone. Assuming excess resources exist for transplantation aside donor registration, these QALYs can be directly attributable to additional donor registration. Additional donor registration can be attributed to organ donation advocacy if we assume accurate self report and adjust for selection of people who are already interested in organ donation in pre-and-post persuasion surveys for a group being targeted for increased donation.

The mechanism of action for behaviour change in prospective organ donor advocacy is believed to be family education and facilitating informed consent cccording to DonateLife. They say that ‘The majority of Australians are generally willing to become organ and tissue donors (69%).’ and ‘'In Australia approximately 60% of families give consent for organ and tissue donation to proceed.The majority of Australians (60%) have now discussed their donation decision with their family.'’

It seems like there is not enough information on the assembly of outreach operations to actually cost it per QALY. But it’s free to tell people that they should support their families decisions and to get your learn on so you can talk authoritatively and provide ‘informed consent’ to prospective donors.

The Open Philanthropy Project estimates that:

clearing the kidney waiting list could (naively) save billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of QALYs.

They refer to clearing the waitlist with incentive based organ trading (no price ceiling of $0 for donors)

It seems like policy change roughly occurs in an altruistic direction over the long term. The literature suggests switching to an opt-out system doesn’t increase donation rates, even though countries that have those systems tend to have higher donation rates. But why donate organs if I can wait to the Open Philanthropy Projects' policy change interventions manage to get incentive based systems set up? In fact, could motivating individuals to donate their organs, thus giving them less incentive to advocate selfishly for a licit organ trade be ineffective?

tl;dr: America’s Matas and Schniztler (2003), in a highly cited paper, report a gain of 3.5 QALY’s and health care system cost savings of 100,000USD for every new donor. Assuming, the American health care system is costed at the same rate at the time of publication as today (unlikely, figure is extremely conservative), will save the government 1million USD for just 10 new organ donors (35 QALY’s)

My country, Australia, underperforms international for organ donation rates :/

References

• DonateLife http://www.donatelife.gov.au/discover/facts-and-statistics#sthash.uidw6ohC.dpuf

• Kontodimopoulos and Niakis's (2008) An estimate of lifelong costs and QALYs in renal replacement therapy based on patients' life expectancy: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17996975

• Whiting et al (2004) Cost-effectiveness of organ donation: evaluating investment into donor action and other donor initiatives: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15023149

• Matas and Schniztler (2003) Payment for Living Donor (Vendor) Kidneys: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1600-6143.2003.00290.x/full

Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

LIGO detects gravitational waves -- Press Conference

Press Release

To people interested in status and long-term relationships: here, have fun :-)

In general, hypothesis testing is overrated and hypothesis generation is underrated

Andrew Gelman

An interesting discussion -- in the comments -- about meta-uncertainty or probabilities of probabilities. I say it's turtles all the way down :-)

Just to orient my exposition, which one do you prefer: the long or the short explanation?

The longer one:

"Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are models of computation that simulate the way the neural tissue in animals computes.

Neural tissue is made up by a large number of interconnected neurons: each neuron is a cell which has numerous locations, called synapses, that receive the electrochemical signals of hundred or thousands of other neurons. When the combined potential of all those rises above a certain threshold, a chemical transmissions is initiated, propagating a signal through a long thin projection of the body of the cell, called axon, which in turn is connected to the body of other neurons. In this way, neurons make up complex biological circuitry, where chemical potentials travel back and forth: the paths that gets used the most strengthen, those that are less useful weakens over time.

Artificial neurons are abstractions that treats signals in a similar way: they are nonlinear functions that receives many weighted inputs, and when those adds to a value above the threshold, they output a value. Usually the hyperbolic tangent is taken to be the activation function.

[pic]

Artificial neurons are connected in layers, each neurons receiving the inputs of every neurons in the layer before, outputting its value to every neurons in the layer after. This architecture is called fully connected, was the first to be considered and to be implemented."

The short one:

"Artificial Neural Networks aim at imitating the way neural tissue computes.

Neural tissue is made up by cells called neurons. They have a body littered with receptors where other neurons can connect (synapses), and have a long prolongation called axion, that can connect to other neurons. When combined the electrochemical potential in the synapses rises above a certain threshold, the axion transmit an impulse to the neurons it’s connected. Neurons are connected in complex ways, creating a biological circuit where signals can be strengthened or weakened based on their use.

Artificial neurons imitate this behaviour using a threshold function, usually a sigmoid function such as the hyperbolic tangent. Each neuron weights each of its input, add them together and pass the value to the threshold function, which will propagate the signal if the combined input is sufficient.

Artificial Neural Network usually are made up of neurons lined in layers, each neuron in a layer receiving the input of every neuron in the layer before and passing its output to each neuron in the layer after. This model is called fully connected and, while powerful, quickly becomes unmanageable for ANNs that have thousands of neurons per layer or have many layers to process the input (deep neural networks)."

Why do people spend much, much more time worrying about their retirement plans than the intelligence explosion if they are a similar distance in the future? I understand that people spend less time worrying about the intelligence explosion than what would be socially optimal because the vast majority of its benefits will be in the very far future, which people care little about. However, it seems probable that the intelligence explosion will still have a substantial effect on many people in the near-ish future (within the next 100 years). Yet, hardly anyone worries about it. Why?

Pareto fellowship

Tonight I was feeling really depressed. Then I thought I would feel better if I donated to GiveDirectly, in the knowledge that their research supports improvements in psychological distress for the recipient population. Maybe regular donation could be tested for treatment for low mood? If that was the case, maybe governments would subsidise it just like they do other psychiatric interventions.

Succession planting

Intelligent gardener: growing nutrient dense food

The correlates of war dataset. Now discussions about military interventions can go beyond our interventions, single case examples and personal reference experiences.

Would anyone be willing to look at humanitarian interventions from an effective altruism angle? Since the Open Philanthropy Project doesn't even have a shallow investigation of the topic, donors, researchers and advocates might be missing quite an important cause.

If someone is anti-consumerism, pro-animal welfare and pro-internationalism where do they belong, politically?

Although popular opinion believes that Prohibition failed, it succeeded in cutting overall alcohol consumption in halfduring the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s, suggesting that Prohibition did socialize a significant proportion of the population in temperate habits, at least temporarily. Some researchers contend that its political failure is attributable more to a changing historical context than to characteristics of the law itself. Criticism remains that Prohibition led to unintended consequences such as the growth of urban crime organizations.

-Wiki: prohibition

How did prohibition ever gain enough popular support to become law?

2) Because of the Woman's Suffrage movement, as married women and children were one of the people most heavily affected by drunkenness (i.e. husbands drinking away all the money, spousal/child abuse under the influence, etc). Prohibition has great popular support amongst the women of America. And as women's political rights increased, so did the power of the prohibitionists. In fact, one of the Suffragette's main arguments was that it allowed women to escape drunken husbands.

3) The alcohol trade was heavily involved in governmental corruption scandals (in part because they tried to fight the prohibitionists), and so reform-minded progressives (who were in favor of increasing governmental regulation and oversight) increasingly allied with the prohibitionists against a common enemy.

-Eli5: reddit

Regarding (3), it would seem there is a sense in which alcohol was already mafia bootlegged pre-mafia, they just stopped doing it in cahoots with the government!

http://www.metaculus.com/questions/ seems to be a good successor to predictionbook. Does anybody know who's responsible for it?

A US based philanthropic organisation is very keen to fund me for something here in Australia. They have a shit-tonne of money. Though, it's not in a uncertain effectiveness cause error (GiveWell says they aren't ready release their OPP report on it yet). It's stressful pitching this opportunity for career capital against the impact I could have putting my time and resources in an 'effective' cause area. If I assume effectiveness will become increasingly valued in the world, taking their funds (which isn't even diverting it from better causes since it's cause specific funding) might actually NOT be good career capital. It's a pretty controversial area that doesn't command popular support. The scope of the funding probably isn't broad enough to do policy research stuff, which could be useful to the Open Philanthropy Project, but it is probably narrow enough to do evaluation efforts of whatever I experiment with, which could inform other EA's decisions (but that's probably not that unique, at the margin, eh?). Any advice?

I'm thinking a bit about AI safety lately as I'm considering writing about it for one of my college classes.

I'm hardly heavy into AI safety research and so expect flaws and mistaken assumptions in these ideas. I would be grateful for corrections.

1. An AI told to make people smile tiles the world with smiley faces but an AI told to do what humans would want it to do might still get it wrong eg. Failed Utopia #4-2 . However, wouldn't it research further and correct itself (and before that, have care to not do something un-correctable)? Reasoning as follows: let's say a non-failed utopia is worth 100/100 utility points per year. A failed utopia is that which at first seems to the AI to be a true utopia (100 points) but is actually less (idk, 90 points). Even were the cost of research heavy, if the AI wants/expects billions or trillions of years of human existence, it should be doing a lot of research early on, and would be very careful to not be fooled. Therefore, we don't need to do anything more than tell an AI to do what humans would want it to do, and let it do the work on figuring out exactly what that is itself.

2. Partially un-consequentialist AI/careful AI: Weights harms caused by its decisions (somewhat but not absolutely) heavier than other harms. (Therefore: tendency towards protecting what humanity already has against large harms and causes smaller surer gains like curing cancer rather than instituting a new world order (haha).)

Thanks in advance. :)

Interpersonal

• Socialize with close others.
• Associate with happy people.
• Give the people around you opportunities to be generous. Ask them for favors.
• Be actively kind (and occasionaly reminisce about your recent acts of kindness).

Be happier

Whenever I used to think of nationalising industries, I would think of industries relating to critical infrastructure or 'prestige industries'. Reading the following threw my intuitions overboard!

A tobacco industry buy-out

In the current model, the tobacco industry has a corporate mission of selling unhealthy products so as to profit its shareholders. Its aims and purposes are intrinsically misaligned with the public good and will ever remain so. However, if the tobacco industry were nationalised, with the intent of winding down operations, the interests of those providing tobacco and public health would be aligned.

For the amount of health harms caused, the tobacco industry is not highly profitable. The total profit of the three major tobacco companies in Australia in 2007 was $600 million on assets of $3.6 billion.27 The profit per tobacco related death was approximately $20 000. Profits must decline in time as smoking rates fall as intended. Based on asset base and a reasonable profit to projected earnings multiple, a buy-out in Australia might cost in the range of $5 billion. Estimates of the cost of nationalisation in Canada range from $0–15 billion.28 Purchase could be sweetened by protection from civil litigation. Even if it costs of the order of several billions, it would rapidly return that in terms of quantifiable reductions in healthcare costs.

-http://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2012/november/towards-an-endgame-for-tobacco/

Would the tobacco industry be for or against this? Would there be an opposition except from deontological libertarians?

differential intellectual progress, differential technological development

Raising for Effective Giving did it for Poker Players. Could this kinda outreach be done with any profession?

I'm trying to live by Selgiman's PERMA positive psychology heuristic.

The question that Seligman seems to have borrowed from Aristotle is: What is the good that we choose for its own sake rather than because it makes a contribution to something else that we value? Aristotle’s answer was happiness. Aristotle also asked another question: What is the good that when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing? I think he meant: What is it that makes life meaningful? Again, Aristotle’s answer is happiness. But, what Aristotle meant by happiness was more than just positive feelings, emotional well-being or life satisfaction. According to Aristotle, happiness is flourishing. Flourishing is the good that we choose for its own sake.

-http://wintonbates.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/is-perma-be-all-and-end-all-of-human.html

In my opinion, only the first 2: positive emotions and engagement fulfill that criteria.

Life is better already.

The most ''authoritative'' study on the relationship between mobile phone use and cancer is industry funded, and both meta-analyses, case-study and the IARC warn of the dangers of mobile phone use, while most government guidelines are rather complacent on the issue, and refer to the authority of the industry-funded study

Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range (450–2100 MHz). Other digital wireless systems, such as data communication networks, produce similar radiation.

In 2011, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified mobile phone radiation as Group 2B – possibly carcinogenic (not Group 2A – probably carcinogenic – nor the dangerous Group 1). That means that there "could be some risk" of carcinogenicity, so additional research into the long-term, heavy use of mobile phones needs to be conducted.[2] The WHO added in June 2011 that "to date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use",[3] a point they reiterated in October 2014.[4] Some national radiation advisory authorities[5] have recommended measures to minimize exposure to their citizens as a precautionary approach.

In 2009, a meta-analysis of 23 studies on mobile phone use and tumor risk found that "there is possible evidence" that mobile phone use causes an increased risk of tumors

In October 2012, Italian high court (Corte suprema di cassazione) granted an Italian businessman, Innocente Marcoloni a pension for occupational disease; "[c]ontrary to the denials of many health agencies in the U.S. and in some other countries, the Italian Supreme Court has recognized a "causal" link between heavy mobile phone use and brain tumor risk in a worker's compensation case." According to Reuters, a lower court in Brescia had "ruled there was a causal link between the use of mobile and cordless telephones and tumours" in the case of "Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumour in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for [between 5 and 6] hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand" and that the ruling was upheld but they summarized experts saying the "decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject." As it takes time to develop cancer, the court disregarded short-term studies.[citation needed] The court based their ruling on "studies conducted between 2005 and 2009 by a group led by Lennart Hardell, a cancer specialist at the University Hospital in Orebro in Sweden" and disregarded studies that were even partially funded by the mobile phone industry such as the INTERPHONE

Lennart Hardell (born 1944), is a Swedish oncologist and professor at Örebro University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden.[1] He is known for his research into what he says are environmental cancer-causing agents, such as Agent Orange,[2] and has said that cell phones increase the risk of brain tumors.[3]

Hardell's research on cell phones and cancer has concluded that long-term mobile phone use is associated with an increased risk of acoustic neuroma and glioma.[4][5] He has said that children should be banned from using cell phones except in emergencies, as he feels the risk of cancer is greater in people who begin using mobile phones before the age of 20.[6]

His research was criticized in a 2002 review for methodological flaws. The review authors, John D. Boice Jr. and Joseph K. McLaughlin, wrote that Hardell's study, published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, was "non-informative, either because the follow-up was too short and numbers of cancers too small, or because of serious methodological limitations."[7] Another of Hardell's studies, in which he claimed that mobile phone users in rural areas were at a greater risk of developing brain tumors,[8][9] was criticized by Adam Burgess in Spiked. Burgess wrote that the study was "post hoc and therefore hypothesis-generating only," and said that the increased risk Hardell had claimed to have found in the study was "barely statistically significant."[10]

-Wikipedia

I feel that latent biases associated with vested interests are underappreciated by the rationalist community. From my post on tobacco, to previous times I've raised the issue of mobile phones and health, to Givewells position on the worm wars: they're Master's economics students so It's not surprising that they're biased towards the economists side of the disciplinary debate.

Interesting thoughts this week

Are there handy references (like an app) that can output the following, given a particularly growing region, rather than have me have to look it all up individually? Crop, Soil, Harvest season, Sunlight, Pest control, Sowing season, Water and Spacing?

*

Of all DSM conditions, I reckon people with scrupolosity would have the worst insight (self awareness). Moreso than those with chronic pyschotic disorders. Too bad there's no literature on the topic. It's probably because it's so hard to identify scrupulotes, both because of that lack of insights, and because scrupolosity of often very high regarded, socially, albeit being harmful to the individual.

*

differential intellectual progress, differential technological development

*

I'm trying to live by Selgiman's PERMA positive psychology heuristic.

The question that Seligman seems to have borrowed from Aristotle is: What is the good that we choose for its own sake rather than because it makes a contribution to something else that we value? Aristotle’s answer was happiness. Aristotle also asked another question: What is the good that when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing? I think he meant: What is it that makes life meaningful? Again, Aristotle’s answer is happiness. But, what Aristotle meant by happiness was more than just positive feelings, emotional well-being or life satisfaction. According to Aristotle, happiness is flourishing. Flourishing is the good that we choose for its own sake.

-http://wintonbates.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/is-perma-be-all-and-end-all-of-human.html

In my opinion, only the first 2: positive emotions and engagement fulfill that criteria.

Life is better already.

*

Available evidence suggests that limiting access to alcohol on campus through campus-wide bans may decrease the frequency of alcohol use and heavy drinking, but may not reduce binge drinking (Wechsler 2001a)

-What Works for Healh

Do you think universities should ban, or at least restrict funding to alcohol consumption on campuses?

*

'AUSTRALIA will never adopt a cash-for-organs scheme', ALP Shadow Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says.

Why so dogmatic? Are the Libs any better?

*

Raising for Effective Giving did it for Poker Players. Could this kinda outreach be done with any profession?

*

barring actual deprivation or trauma, children are largely who they are going to be as a result of their genetic makeup. In long-term measures of well-being, education and employment, parental influence exerts a temporary effect which disappears when we are no longer living with our parents. So costly added extras (music lessons, coaching and tutoring, private school fees) are probably not going to change your child’s life in the long term. (However, data on the antenatal environment suggests benefit to taking iodine, but avoiding ice-storms and licorice during pregnancy.[8]) Sharing time together and finding common interests can build a good relationship and help a child develop without major costs.

*

Tonight I was feeling really depressed. Then I thought I would feel better if I donated to GiveDirectly, in the knowledge that their research supports improvements in psychological distress for the recipient population. Maybe regular donation could be tested for treatment for low mood? If that was the case, maybe governments would subsidise it just like they do other psychiatric interventions.

Are there handy references (like an app) that can output the following, given a particularly growing region, rather than have me have to look it all up individually? Crop, Soil, Harvest season, Sunlight, Pest control, Sowing season, Water and Spacing?

Available evidence suggests that limiting access to alcohol on campus through campus-wide bans may decrease the frequency of alcohol use and heavy drinking, but may not reduce binge drinking (Wechsler 2001a)

-What Works for Healh

Do you think universities should ban, or at least restrict funding to alcohol consumption on campuses?

Dear all,

Instead of speculating about what the policies of this site are or aren't, look at the bottom of the page and you will find a link. Follow it and stop bullshitting.

Thanks.

'AUSTRALIA will never adopt a cash-for-organs scheme', ALP Shadow Health Minister Tanya Plibersek says.

Why so dogmatic? Are the Libs any better?

Trying purposefully to fall asleep has been found to induce frustration and further prevent falling asleep

• Wiki P