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elections 2020, absentee ballot issues, voting options
The author writes, “Voting during a contentious presidential election and a pandemic is more than a little overwhelming. Like many Americans, you may have designed a plan to vote by absentee ballot months ago ... you submitted your information and waited for the ballot to arrive in the mail, but it never did. You have a few options.” Photo credit: OSCE Parliamentary Assembly / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

What We Know About the People Who Don’t Want to Get Vaccinated ; Study Links Hydraulic Fracking With Increased Risk of Heart Attack ; and More Picks 4/30

What We Know About the People Who Don’t Want to Get Vaccinated (DonkeyHotey)

The author writes, “Over the past three weeks, the U.S. rate of vaccination against the coronavirus has slowed. That’s because many people who wanted to get their shots have gotten them, and many people who remain unvaccinated are reluctant. To stop the virus from spreading, we need to deprive it of carriers, and that means persuading the holdouts to roll up their sleeves. Who are they? And how can we change their minds? Researchers have interviewed thousands of these people. Here’s what they’ve found.”

Distraught Over Dead Son, Mom Can’t Sue Doctor. Doctor Can Threaten to Sue Her, Though (Reader Steve)

From the Miami Herald: “On the day Reggie Jacques was born, doctors at Winnie Palmer Hospital in Orlando told his parents that there was no hope, that his brain had gone too long without oxygen during his difficult birth. But Reggie refused to die. On his sixth day, said parents Jean and Ruth Jacques, doctors urged them to remove Reggie from his ventilator. They said he would surely stop breathing. The couple agreed a month later. But Reggie wouldn’t die. Around Day 60, doctors asked the couple to sign a ‘do not resuscitate’ order. They declined. And Reggie still refused to die. For 95 days, Reginald Jacques refused to die. But on the 96th day, Sept. 19, 2016, something felt wrong.”

Study Links Hydraulic Fracking With Increased Risk of Heart Attack Hospitalization, Death (Mili)

The author writes, “New research compares the health impacts of fracking on either side of the New York and Pennsylvania border and found that people who live in areas with a high concentration of fracking wells are at higher risk for heart attacks.”

Joanne Chory Is Using Plants to Save the Planet (Russ)

From the Washington Post: “The world was running out of time, and so was Joanne Chory. The 63-year-old biologist was nearing the end of a distinguished career researching how plants grow. Now she’d won the most prestigious honor in her field, the Breakthrough Foundation’s life sciences prize, which came with a $3 million check and an opportunity to address inventors and well-heeled donors at a glitzy Silicon Valley awards ceremony in December 2017. The audience expected Chory to reflect on her achievements. Instead, she seized the chance to issue a warning.”

MIT Scientists Study Spider Web Structure by Translating It Into Music (Dana)

The author writes, “Now you can walk through a virtual spider web, using VR headset and controllers to interact with a web sonification model. A spider weaving its intricate web is a bit like a person composing a song, at least in the eyes of MIT materials engineer Markus Buehler, whose research involves translating web structure into musical melodies. Together with his collaborators, he has devised a way for humans to ‘enter’ a 3D spider web and explore its structure both visually and aurally via a virtual reality setup.”

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