Bloomberg: Patient Deaths Show Darker Side of Modernized Chinese Medicine

What killed Wu was later described in an autopsy report as a "drug allergy." But doctors couldn’t pinpoint what he was allergic to because the shots he was given contained dozens, if not hundreds, of different compounds extracted from two herbs. [...]

Chinese medicine injections generated sales of $13 billion last year, according to the research firm Forward Industries Institute. Listed companies worth billions of dollars have thrived, benefiting major global funds like those managed by Schroders Plc., UBS Group AG and Skagen AS that hold their stocks.

Yet, the industry’s ascent has also raised public health concerns. Over a hundred injections based on traditional recipes are sold in China these days, some without stringent human trials. Doctors often prescribe them in an array of untested combinations. Adverse reactions, from skin rashes to fatalities like Wu’s, doubled to about 133,000 last year from 2011, according to government data. [...]

Still, due to the history of lax regulation, many injectables based on Chinese medicine haven’t been evaluated in strict scientific clinical trials. That means the reactions they set off in the body aren’t fully known. Chinese medicine is based on centuries of practical experience. But it is traditionally taken orally, which gives the digestive system a chance to shield patients from harmful chemicals. Injecting the concoctions into the bloodstream can heighten side effects.

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Vox: We're becoming numb to terrorism. That might be a good thing.

Their argument is that terror attacks, particularly since 9/11, have become both more frequent and less organized. Instead of big, spectacular events, we’ve seen a string of attacks across the West that were carried out by lone individuals with few resources, little training, and hardly any planning. The attack in New York City this week is a prime example: A 29-year-old man drives a rented truck into a crowded bike path, killing eight people, and then flees with pellet and paintball guns in hand.

According to Amarasingam and Clarke, these sorts of low-level attacks have become so common that people are growing numb to them. As a result, the “once-shocking violence becomes normalized” and citizens stop responding with the panic and outrage that were once their reactions. [...]

Exactly. And I’ll add that this is actually a good thing in some ways. If terrorism is normalized for people, both jihadist and far-right violence, they are less likely, maybe, to support crazy laws that impact their civil liberties and the rights of others. It’s only when you introduce a sudden sense of fear, one that people don’t understand, that they become kind of irrationally protectionist. So in a way normalizing terrorism is good. [...]

I think the victims of terrorism never really forget. The families of those killed and those who are injured will have to deal with the aftermath of any attack for a long time. And I think for some terrorist groups, the mere act of revenge is maybe enough. They know they will never fully defeat a country like the United States, but as long as they show that there is a push back, that they aren’t just taking American foreign policy decisions lying down, then that is enough. They also communicate that internally to members.  

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Vox: How cosmic rays revealed a new, mysterious void inside the Great Pyramid

Today, the journal Nature has published a finding that sounds like the setup to a Nicolas Cage movie. A team of physicists and engineers has discovered a previously unknown “void” in the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. And they did it with the help of cosmic rays created at the edge of space.

The “ScanPyramids Big Void,” as scientists are calling it, is around 98 feet long and about 50 feet high. The investigators don’t know what’s inside this void or what its purpose is. Nor do they have any way to currently access it. [...]

Khufu wasn’t just a king — he was thought to be a god. And so his death commanded something spectacular. At 455 feet, his pyramid stood as the world’s tallest man-made building until the year 1300. That’s 3,800 years. The pyramid was about as old to the ancient Romans as the Romans are to us. And throughout the rise and fall of civilizations, the pyramids have remained a fascination. Even today, they still contain mysteries — like the newly identified void. [...]

The Great Pyramid is a wonder of the ancient world built around 2400 BC; experts still don’t know exactly how it was constructed. The void is completely sealed off from the known passageways in the pyramid. There’s no way to currently get to it. And so Nature’s finding opens more questions than it provides answers.

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Quartz: Britain’s improving gender gap has nothing to do with wages or promotions

Britain is one of most improved countries for closing the gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum. But data shows that this improvement has nothing to do with tangible improvements in either salaries or getting more women into leadership. Here are the most-improved countries in closing the overall gap: [...]

Yet when it comes to getting more women in the workforce, paying them the same as men, or having more females in leadership roles, the UK is still stalling at 53rd in the Economic Participation and Opportunity pillar.

When it comes to wages alone, Britain ranks 95th worldwide. WEF points out that 57% of all work UK women do is unpaid (compared to 32% for men) and the mean monthly earnings of women is 66% that of men.

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CityLab: 49 Countries Have Already Reached Peak Emissions

Let's start with the good news, since it’s so rare in climate coverage today. Rich and his co-author, Kelly Levin, reviewed historical emissions and found that the number of countries whose greenhouse gas emissions have already peaked is on the rise. In 1990, 19 countries had already peaked; by 2000, that number had risen to 33, and by 2010 it was 49—including France (which peaked back in 1991), the Netherlands (1996), Australia (2006), and the United States (2007). “Nearly all of the developed countries have already peaked. That's an encouraging trend,” Rich says. “People may not know that, based on the current rhetoric, but actually [U.S. emissions] did peak 10 years ago. We’ve made a lot of progress, and our economy has grown.” [...]

Still, the total number of countries that have peaked matters less than their share of global emissions. To illustrate: Between 1990 and 2000, the number of countries that peaked grew by 14, but their share of global emissions actually decreased—from 21 percent to 18 percent—over the same period. Sharper emissions cuts by some countries, especially powerhouse emitters, could offset slower peaks by others. By 2010, the 48 countries that had peaked were responsible for 36 percent of global emissions. The countries that have peaked could account for 40 percent of emissions by 2020, and 60 percent by 2030. [...]

Now for the bad news: All this progress is still probably not enough to limit warming to less than two degrees over pre-industrial levels. “The global picture is still not good,” Rich says. “Global emissions need to peak in 2020 for what's called the least-cost likely chance of meeting the two-degree global temperature target, and we're not on track for that.” Even if every nation meets all the commitments in its Paris Agreement pledges, global emissions are still expected to increase between 2020 and 2030. That doesn't necessarily mean that the goals of the Paris Agreement are totally out of reach, but it will be a lot harder—not to mention more expensive—to get there. Global emissions can peak later, but it means countries will have to decarbonize faster, and may have to rely on as-yet unproven carbon-capture technologies to limit global warming to safe levels.

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