Free Republic

For workers who use machine-learning models to help them make decisions, knowing when to trust a model's predictions is not always an easy task, especially since these models are often so complex that their inner workings remain a mystery. Users sometimes employ a technique, known as selective regression, in which the model estimates its confidence level for each prediction and will reject predictions when its confidence is too low. Then a human can examine those cases, gather additional information, and make a decision about each one manually. But while selective regression has been shown to improve the overall performance of...

Concerned about 2024, Democrats begin to circle a weak and wounded president. But beyond Biden’s fate, bigger questions loomNineteen months into his first term as president, Joe Biden appears to be the lamest of lame ducks. The rapidity and completeness of his political collapse is unprecedented in my long life as an observer of such things, and possibly in our history. It’s as if the death scene that wrapped up an elaborate plot happened 15 minutes into the movie. What on earth can we expect for next two hours? Similarly, with Biden disappearing into a tar pit of irrelevance, the...

Scientists measured the impact of high doses of Vitamin B6 on young adults and found that they reported feeling less anxious and depressed after taking the supplements every day for a month. Dr. David Field, lead author, said: "The functioning of the brain relies on a delicate balance between the excitatory neurons that carry information around and inhibitory ones, which prevent runaway activity. "Vitamin B6 helps the body produce a specific chemical messenger that inhibits impulses in the brain, and our study links this calming effect with reduced anxiety among the participants." While previous studies have produced evidence that multivitamins...

Mariana Mazzucato warns that shutdown may be needed unless we 'do capitalism differently' The novel coronavirus shutdowns and restrictions are slowly being lifted in most areas, but already warnings of a “climate shutdown” have begun reverberating on the environmental left. A leading U.N. economist who advises European governments last week sent up a trial balloon via an article titled “Avoiding a Climate Lockdown,” arguing that in “the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again — this time to tackle a climate emergency.” “Under a ‘climate lockdown,’ governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat,...

California pro-family organizations are sounding the alarm over a proposed bill they say could give the power to state courts to take "temporary emergency jurisdiction" of children if they come to California for transgender drugs, surgery, or mental healthcare. The California Family Council and the Pacific Justice Institute are warning about the bill known as SB 107, which calls these gender-altering treatments "gender-affirming health care." The measure passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee on June 28 even after hearing testimony from a teenager who had undergone transgender procedures and regretted them.

A new study found a link between depression, diet, and the development of frailty. Frailty, defined as a recognizable state of increased vulnerability resulting from a decline in function across multiple physiological systems, affects 10–15% older adults and often co-occurs with other health conditions, like depression. Diet is thought to be a major contributor to frailty development. While previous studies established a link between an inflammatory diet—including artificial trans fats (like partially hydrogenated oil), refined carbohydrates, and saturated fats—and the risk of development frailty, this is one of the first studies to try to understand the impact of depression on...

On this day 200 years ago, Johann Mendel was born. He would come to be known as Gregor (the religious name he received upon entering St. Thomas's Abbey in Austria-Hungary as an Augustinian Friar) and later as the "father of modern genetics." Mendel studied math, physics, and eventually botany in school. While conducting experiments breeding hybridized pea plants in the monastery garden and greenhouse, he discovered the principles of heredity. As one article on his life explains: He chose to study the inheritance of seven traits (seed shape, seed coat tint, flower color, flower location, pod shape, unripe pod color,...

Genetic liability to rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with an increased risk for coronary artery disease (CAD) and intracerebral hemorrhage, according to a study. Shuai Yuan and colleagues used a Mendelian randomization approach to examine the causality of the associations of RA with CAD and stroke. Seventy independent single nucleotide polymorphisms strongly associated with RA were selected as instrumental variables from a genome-wide association meta-analysis involving 14,361 RA cases and 43,923 controls. From meta-analyses of genetic studies, international genetic consortia, the U.K. Biobank, and the FinnGen consortium, summary-level data for CAD, all stroke, any ischemic stroke and its subtypes, intracerebral...

Air Force Gen. John Raymond, chief of the newly created Space Force, says he supports efforts by the Biden administration to reach a U.N.-sponsored agreement on military activity in space, something past administrations have rejected as an arms control ploy by China and Russia to limit the American power in space. The four-star general also endorsed the Biden administration’s recent unilateral declaration of a ban on anti-satellite tests that create debris in space. Gen. Raymond said he backs the idea of trying to deter conflict in space through arms agreements to establish international “norms” for military space operations.

A vicious beating at the Bellevue Transit Center sent a disabled man to the hospital with a fractured skull...Sixty-three-year-old Eric Larson, who was sitting in his wheelchair when he was attacked, died from his injuries Tuesday...Police tracked down the suspect [Gabriel Vargas-Garcia] and discovered he was just released from prison on July 8 on a sexual assault conviction.

In recent months, COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. has “slowed to a crawl” as an increasingly distrustful public says “no thanks” to primary shots and boosters. Still, U.S. public health agencies continue to authorize, approve and recommend COVID-19 vaccines — even for infants.On Tuesday, advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — perhaps believing they can reverse the slowdown in “vaccine uptake” and without admitting to the ravages caused by the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shots — unanimously recommended the “Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted.”The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week granted Novavax...

Explanation: Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope shows not only Jupiter and its...

One and a half years since President Joe Biden took office, Americans give President Biden a negative 31 - 60 percent job approval rating, the lowest score of his presidency, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea- ack) University national poll of adults released today. Republicans (94 - 2 percent) and independents (67 - 23 percent) disapprove, while Democrats approve (71 - 18 percent). Registered voters give President Biden a negative 33 - 59 percent job approval rating, his lowest approval rating among registered voters in a Quinnipiac University national poll.

How inevitable is a third consecutive nomination of Donald Trump? Partisan commentators, when it suits their purposes, tend to assume it is so. Republicans who remain supporters of the 45th president point to data showing he remains popular among his party’s voters. They also recall how loudly heralded attempts to deprive him of his first nomination, in 2016, foundered. Democrats who regard Trump’s election as an inexplicable black swan event, or even a putsch, have an obvious interest in elevating his chances. So do the cable news channels, which, hungry for ratings, gave him the equivalent of billions of dollars’...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure Tuesday to codify the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on same-sex and interracial marriages, in which none of West Virginia’s delegates voted for the legislation. The chamber approved House Resolution 8404 — the Respect for Marriage Act — in a 267-157 vote; 47 Republicans joined 220 Democrats in backing the measure. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., voted against the bill, arguing marriage is a union “between a man and a woman.” Reps. David McKinley and Carol Miller were among the seven Republicans who did not vote.

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect. “Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square. Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year. “We observed no significant difference between student...

Siberian ‘Ivan Tea’ is better than the additive-laden soda, the Russian president added Russian President Vladimir Putin has derided Coca-Cola and suggested that ‘Ivan Tea’ – a medicinal brew made from Siberian fireweed – is a more “useful” refreshment. Coca-Cola pulled out of the Russian market in June over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Participating in the ‘Strong Ideas for New Times’ forum in Moscow on Wednesday, Putin was approached by Alexander Khlynov from the Union of Ivan Tea Producers, who proposed the government help boost production of the traditional Russian drink. Putin agreed to bring Khlynov’s proposal to Minister...

Now new research released Wednesday has shed light on this trading frenzy and concluded that a change in how Robinhood and other online brokers report fractional trading data was a culprit. “This volume is due to the interaction of a well-intentioned but misguided FINRA reporting rule, Robinhood trading, and fractional shares,” wrote the authors — Robert Bartlett at University of California, Berkeley, Justin McCrary at Columbia University and Maureen O’Hara at Cornell University. In 2017, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority started requiring brokers to report fractional trades — sometimes just 1/100th of a share — as if they were for...

President Biden said Wednesday that he has cancer, forcing the White House press office to quickly clarify that he was referring to skin cancer treatment that he had before taking office last year.

A day after the mother of two young Black girls called out Sesame Place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for an incident over the weekend in which a character at the theme park appeared to deny and pass by her girls, an attorney for the family said the event has had a devastating effect on them. "Their hearts were completely shattered by a character," attorney B'Ivory LaMarr told NBC10 in an interview Tuesday. "And tickets are not cheap. This is something these young girls were looking forward to. Words can't describe the type of grief they are going through right now."...