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Tell women about birth control that works — and they’ll choose birth control that works

by ValerieWindham Posted on June 17, 2015

Tell women about birth control that works — and they’ll choose birth control that works

By on 17 Jun 2015commentsShare

Straight from the “no shit” department: Counseling clients at family planning clinics about the proven effectiveness of contraceptive methods results in more clients choosing more effective methods, and in turn, reducing unintended pregnancy. Fancy that!

A study published today in The Lancet shows what happens when you provide training on effectiveness-based contraception counseling — which includes discussion of long-acting reversible contraceptives such as the IUD and hormonal implant, the most effective forms of birth control — to 20 Planned Parenthood clinics. After monitoring these clinics (and another 20 that did not receive the training), the study authors found a significant difference in contraception choices made.

From The Atlantic:

The results were striking: 71 percent of the providers who received the training discussed IUDs and implants with their patients, but just 39 percent of those in the control group did so.

In the intervention group, 28 percent of women ended up choosing IUDs or implants, compared with 17 percent in the control group. Among women who had gone to the Planned Parenthood for family-planning services, the effectiveness counseling reduced the rate of unintended pregnancies by half over the course of a year.

So — talk to women about birth control based on what actually, really, truly works, and they will choose birth control that actually, really, truly keeps them from getting pregnant when they don’t want to be.

The next step, obviously, is making said birth control more accessible. Baby steps — or should we say, no-baby steps.

Source:
An IUD in Every Uterus

, The Atlantic.

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Tell women about birth control that works — and they’ll choose birth control that works

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It’s raining lampreys — time to leave this terrifying planet

by Ewan45J515680712 Posted on June 11, 2015

It’s raining lampreys — time to leave this terrifying planet

By on 11 Jun 2015commentsShare

Hope you weren’t too excited about living on Earth, because as far as I can tell, it’s turning into a living nightmare: Lampreys are raining from the sky in Fairbanks, Alaska.

It’s not just any ol’ fray o’ fish — Arctic lampreys are jawless, slimy, blood-sucking terror monsters, which subsist by clamping to prey and sucking out their blood and body fluids. Here’s more from Quartz:

The key to this gory diet lies in its plunger-like “mouthpart,” as biologists call it, the mouth and tongue of which are lined with dozens of sharp yellow teeth. The mouthpart’s shape allows it to clamp onto fish—salmon, for instance, or sharks. It then uses its teeth and “tongue teeth” to slice and scrape its victim’s flesh until it draws its bloody meal.

Well, OK, to be fair — only four lampreys have been found in the Fairbanks area so far, but that’s more lampreys than you would ever want to meet in the wild. Trust that!

And there may be a logical explanation for all of this:

Though Alaska authorities aren’t totally sure what’s going on, they have a solid working theory. Hungry gulls are likely scooping adult lampreys—which have returned to a nearby river to spawn—and then dropping them when the squirmy fish prove too unwieldy to fly with, according to the Alaska fish and game department.

Yeah, or that’s just what the lampreys want you to think. THINK ABOUT IT.

Source:
Terrifying “vampire fish” are raining down on Alaskans

, Quartz.

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It’s raining lampreys — time to leave this terrifying planet

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This origami battery is cooler than your crane

by StacieKaleski Posted on June 10, 2015

This origami battery is cooler than your crane

By on 10 Jun 2015commentsShare

What do you get when you add dirty water to your origami? Gross origami. What does Binghamton University engineer Seokheun “Sean” Choi get when he adds dirty water to his origami? A paper battery that could power cheap diagnostic tests in developing countries. (Don’t worry — that frog is still pretty cool.)

Here’s how Choi’s battery works: Dirty water contains bacteria. It also contains organic matter that the bacteria feeds on. When the bacteria metabolizes said organic matter, it respires free electrons. So when you put a drop of dirty water on a piece of paper coated in “activated carbon” that can harvest those electrons, and you’ve got yourself a way to generate an electric current!

In a paper published in the journal Nano Energy, Choi and his co-author explain where the ancient art of paper folding comes in:

Using origami, compact and stackable 3-D battery structures can be created from 2-D sheets through high degrees of folding along pre-defined creases. In this work, the base reservoir paper was folded twice to make a battery stack including four batteries connected in series. When bacterial culture is added on to the common inlet on the folded battery stack, it is transported horizontally and then vertically, first filling the reservoir of each battery, and then reaching the different batteries.

The unfolded piece of paper is about 2.8 inches on a side, but it folds to roughly the size of a matchbook. It also costs about five cents to make. This is important, because ultimately Choi sees his origami trick as a way to make the cheap diagnostic tests that have become popular in developing countries even cheaper. Many of these devices can still be prohibitively expensive, because they require external equipment or handheld devices. Here’s more from the paper:

[…] There is a compelling need for an inexpensive and equipment-free paper-based diagnostic system that can work independently and self-sustainably even in challenging field conditions such as resource-limited and remote regions.

For creating the self-powered paper-based system, a paper-based power source is indispensable because the power source directly integrated onto paper would facilitate system integration holding the same advantageous features of the paper-based diagnostic tools such as low-cost, simple, easily operable, and disposable.

And to think — with a little more foresight, your arts and crafts teacher could’ve been running a world-saving battery factory, rather than overseeing the controlled chaos that is teaching hyper and uncoordinated children how to express their creativity.

Source:
Binghamton engineer creates origami battery

, Binghamton University.

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This origami battery is cooler than your crane

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Could one of these robots save you in a climate disaster?

by JMTJaniceuq Posted on June 5, 2015

Circuit Du Soleil

Could one of these robots save you in a climate disaster?

By on 5 Jun 2015 4:12 pmcommentsShare

We spend a lot of time worrying about how robots are out to get us. I get it — it’s good to be ready for the worst. But while we wait for the singularity, we could put these invulnerable machines to use helping us weak humans cope with disasters both natural and un-.

On June 5 and 6, entrants from academia and industry are trying in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. You can watch livestreams of mechanical men taking on a series of challenges as their human overlords (for now) look on in sweaty, nerdy anticipation.

From Gizmodo:

Twenty-four teams from around the world (about half from the U.S.) have built robots that must complete a number of tasks. The course is set up to simulate a disaster scenario not unlike the Fukushima nuclear disaster that occurred in Japan in 2011.

The ‘bots have to perform a series of tasks including: driving a vehicle, locating and closing a valve, getting through a wall and up a set of stairs, and a “surprise task” that we hope involves learning how to love. They must be controlled wirelessly, and for a portion of the challenge they must be fully autonomous (“look, Ma! No controller!”). Here’s more from the Washington Post:

If you’ve read about a cool robot during the course of the past few years, chances are pretty good that it was being groomed for these challenges. The winning team will receive $2 million from DARPA, with the first two runner-ups receiving $1 million and $500,000, respectively.

You hear that, R2? Save the world, make bank — and may the best robot win.

Source:
Everything You Need to Know About Today’s DARPA Robotics Challenge

, Gizmodo.

Live: Watch robots battle it out in the DARPA challenge

, Washington Post.

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Could one of these robots save you in a climate disaster?

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Study says street harassment is everywhere, still sucks

by ShaniFitzgibbon Posted on May 28, 2015

Hey Girl

Study says street harassment is everywhere, still sucks

By on 27 May 2015commentsShare

Would you like a joke? Here you go:

Q: What’s just like hot garbage and hangs out all over the street?

A: Street harassers! (And also literal garbage.)

Hollaback! and Cornell University have just published the results of the largest international study of street harassment to date. (ICYMI, we wrote about the United States-focused portion of that study last month.) This great infographic sums up some of their results:

Hollaback! / Cornell University

Remember: Street harassment really, truly sucks — and it’s actually powerful enough to keep women off streets and public transit. Now let’s all take a deep breath and deal with our catcalling-related frustration with this excellent song from Tacocat:

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Study says street harassment is everywhere, still sucks

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The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

by ShaniAtkinson Posted on May 21, 2015

The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

By on 21 May 2015commentsShare

There’s a moment in almost every American woman’s life when she thinks to herself: “Hold up — why are we still arguing about what I can and cannot do with my uterus?” And then she realizes that there is no sense-making answer to that question, and that the fact that the debate exists at all is definitively absurd.

Jill Lepore, in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, sheds some light on why we’re stuck in a hellish tango around the constitutional validity of our reproductive rights:

The Constitution never mentions sex, marriage, or reproduction. This is because the political order that the Constitution established was a fraternity of free men who, believing themselves to have been created equal, consented to be governed. Women did not and could not give their consent: they were neither free nor equal. Rule over women lay entirely outside a Lockean social contract in a relationship not of liberty and equality but of confinement and subjugation. As Mary Astell wondered, in 1706, “If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born Slaves?”

Essentially, the Constitution is inadequate. It speaks directly only to the sort of people who were enfranchised in 1787; the rest of us are left to make arguments by amendment and, failing that, by indirection.

I’m not going to waste your time with my take on it — just go read the whole thing.

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The Constitution doesn’t care about your uterus

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Grinning, Sparring, Losing: Mitt Romney’s Surreal Night Inside a Salt Lake City Boxing Ring.

by JeromeGott Posted on May 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Muhammad Ali’s winning formula for boxing was to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” There was plenty of floating, but not much stinging, for former presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday night, during a two-round charity bout in Salt Lake City, against former five-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.

Revealing some prime #grandpabod in bright red satin shorts (remember, he only ate organic on the campaign trail?), and sporting an “I can’t believe I’m doing this but WTF” grin, the former governor’s sparring skills just couldn’t cut it.

The Associated Press captured what’s been dubbed the “Quake on the Lake“:

Romney, 68, and Holyfield, 52, sparred, if you could call it that, for just two short rounds before Romney ran away from the boxer and threw in the towel, giving up a round early in the lighthearted fight that came amid several other fights by professional boxers and an auction.

The two barely threw any punches and largely just danced around, occasionally lightly jabbing each other in the midsection in what was much more of a comedic event than an actual bout.

Let’s be honest: Holyfield, who once famously lost part of his ear in a fight with Mike Tyson, could have knocked out the former governor of Massachusetts with a single punch. But the joyous thing, the meaningful thing, was that he tried. Please proceed, governor:

Romney landed at least one solid jab, it seems:

Kapow! Rick Bowmer/AP

Holyfield then took a fall to make things interesting:

In the end, a ring-side Anne Romney—who always has her boyfriend’s back—threw in the towel on Mitt’s behalf, and Holyfield emerged victorious:

The black-tie affair raised at least $1 million for Charity Vision, a Utah-based nonprofit that helps doctors perform surgeries for the blind in developing countries. That amount of money is apparently equivalent to Holyfield’s net worth, and 1/25 of Romney’s, according to Buzzfeed’s Tale of the Tape.

After the match, Holyfield apparently quipped to Romney: “You know what? You float like a bee and sting like a butterfly.”

And so everyone had an enjoyable time, especially Ann Romney:

Continued:  

Grinning, Sparring, Losing: Mitt Romney’s Surreal Night Inside a Salt Lake City Boxing Ring.

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This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

by LorrineWomble Posted on April 17, 2015

This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

By on 17 Apr 2015commentsShare

Disasters (natural or human-caused) are like TV shows. As soon as get into one, your friend tells you about another one that you just have to check out, and then by the time you’re caught up with that one, you start seeing headlines all over the place for a new one, and so on forever until one day you see an article about that one you haven’t thought about in a year, and you’re like, “Huh. Is that still happening?”

Monday is the five-year anniversary of the start of the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history, lasting for 87 days and spewing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the surrounding environment.

Here to remind us that, yes, the disaster is still a thing and probably will be for a while is renowned doodler and science communicator Perrin Ireland. In this video, she (literally) paints a pretty bleak picture. Basically, scientists are still trying to account for all the leaked oil and expect it to be years before they fully understand the spill’s impact on the local ecosystem.

Check out the video, and be sure to stay tuned for next season, when scientists continue the hunt for those pesky dispersants!

Oh, and by the way, have you heard about all those exploding oil trains?

Source:
Where’d the oil go?

, onEarth.

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This gorgeous video will remind you what an ugly mess the BP oil spill made

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Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.

by Kathryn9208 Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Weekends are always better when they start with koalas.


This Koala Is So Cute You’ll Want It To Get Away With Stealing This Kid’s Car


Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.


We Have Some Good News For You About the Koala That Was Burned in the Fire


Please, Please Stop Making Mittens for Koalas


Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala


PHOTOS: Koalas, Tennis Players Grapple with Australian Heat Wave

Oh, Australia. Even when you’re just taking the dog out for a walk, you might walk straight into a CRAZY KOALA WRASSLIN’ MATCH.

This fight raises fresh questions about the Secret Service’s competency: Why would they let the president get so close to one of these dangerous beasts!?

Happy Friday.

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Koalas Are Cute and Cuddly. This Video Proves They Are Also Fearsome Warriors.

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I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

by TamieJ55dxlffb Posted on March 9, 2015

I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

By on 9 Mar 2015commentsShare

As Tim Cook announced in an Apple broadcast conference today, Apple Watch is coming out in April — the 24th, for those of you who can’t wait to have an iPhone melted down and injected in your bloodstream, essentially.

Apple Watch includes the following dystopian features: Wirelessly transmitted physical taps that your friends can send to get your attention, as if the ubiquitous boodle-BOOP! tone weren’t annoying enough; the ability to send your heartbeat to a loved one, possibly to let him know that you have just drunk four Red Bulls in a row and might die; and a litany of fitness apps to make you feel shitty — with reminders! — about failing to meet your daily “calories burned” quota.

And, as Cook very creepily said during the launch announcement: “Apple Watch is the most personal device we have ever created. It’s not just with you, it’s on you.”

It’s on you.

It’s on you.

That is what you say to your friend, in an urgent tone, when a large spider has crawled into her hair.

There’s been a fair amount of talk about how no one cares about Apple Watch, no one will buy it, and maybe it will go the way of Amazon Fire. To which I can only say: God, I hope so.

Cook kicked off the conference by reminding everyone that, barring surgical intervention, we’ve become about as attached to our smartphones as humanly possible: “We never leave home without it, for the vast majority of us it’s never more than an arm’s length away.”

Again: That is not a good thing, sir! I don’t like it! I don’t like the fact that I check Twitter before I put my contacts in in the morning; I don’t like the fact that I text while I eat, walk, and yes, in the spirit of candidness, occasionally drive; and I really don’t like the fact that my relationships with my many friends and family members who live far away are conducted nearly entirely through a $400 device produced by a multibillion-dollar international corporation. Which is why when Cook described Apple Watch as a “revolutionary new way to connect with others … immediately and much more intimately than ever before,” I physically flinched.

When Grist intern Liz Core temporarily lost her phone a couple weeks ago and I returned it to her, she said that she had felt a sort of “phantom limb” syndrome for the 48 hours it was gone — falsely feeling it vibrate, etc. Which smartphone-owner out there doesn’t immediately sympathize with this? Isn’t that a problem?

The announcement of Apple Watch really did make me feel depressed, and has inspired me to follow the lead of a few of my fellow Gristers and take a hiatus from my phone for a week. But not this week, because I have to travel. Goddamn it. Anyway, stay tuned!

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I watched Tim Cook introduce Apple Watch and now I’m depressed

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