Placebos in research

• The US buys an equivalent of 298 paracetamol tablets per person every year.
• The average American consumes $1,200 worth of prescription medications over the same period.
• In the UK, one in 10 people over the age of 65 takes eight medications every week.

• People with lower cholesterol levels are more likely to die violent deaths.
• If you put primates on a low-cholesterol diet, they become more aggressive. Lowering animals’ cholesterol seems to affect their levels of serotonin. Even fruit flies start fighting if you interfere with their serotonin levels.
• Studies have linked serotonin levels in people to violence, impulsivity, suicide, and murder.
• In a randomized controlled trial, statins were found to increase aggression in post-menopausal women though, oddly, not in men. Giving statins to Nile tilapia made them more confrontational and altered the levels of serotonin in their brains.

"“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers.”"

Apart from people, the observer effect is famously highlighted in the thought experiment of the physician Erwin Schrödinger.

He states that if a cat is placed in a box of radioactive atoms that may or may not kill it in one hour, the cat is in the state of limbo until someone observes it by opening the box. The final outcome does not happen until someone observes it.

To get someone to act on your advice, it’s going to mean giving up at least some of the credit for it. 

When the person receiving your advice feels like they had a hand in creating it—with guidance from you, the expert, of course—they’re far more likely to act on it.

In this case, you’re showing your work because it instills trust, and trust is critical for acceptance. 

When you show you work, the person you’re advising doesn’t have to take your recommendations on blind faith. They can see exactly how you got to your advice and buy into it along the way.

Among the most known telehealth services:

• patient portal: you have the possibility to keep track of your health record while being able to communicate securely with your
  doctor
• virtual doctor appointments: extremely useful for persons who do not need an in-person physical examination
• store and forward: this kind of service enables the electronic transmission of medical documents
• remote patient monitoring: it allows your doctor to monitor your health from the comfort of your home by using wearable devices
• mobile health: through mobile health applications, you can keep better track of your health.

Among the benefits of the telehealth:

• better access to medical care: especially for individuals with mobility issues or living far from a doctor
• improves care quality
• reduces care cost: you do not need to travel anymore
• increases patient's satisfaction: especially by saving time.

• 1720s. Scottish doctor William Cullen saw that evaporation had a cooling effect.
• 1748. Cullen demonstrated his ideas by evaporating ethyl ether in a vacuum.
• 1805. Oliver Evans designed a refrigeration machine that used vapor instead of liquid.
• 1820. English scientist Micahel Faraday used liquefied ammonia for cooling.
• 1835. Jacob Perkins, who worked with Evans, patented a vapor-compression cycle using liquid ammonia.
• 1842. John Gorrie, an American doctor, built a machine similar to Evans's design to artificially create ice and cool down patients with yellow fever.
• New and improved refrigeration ideas continued to be developed, including Albert Einstein's idea of an environmentally friendly refrigerator with no moving parts that did not rely on electricity.
• By 1920, refrigerators were considered essential in American homes.

Refrigerators today work by evaporating liquids.

The liquids are pushed through the refrigerator through tubes and begin to vaporize. As the liquids evaporate, they carry heat away with them as the gases travel to a coil outside the refrigerator. Here the heat is released. The gases return to a compressor, where they become liquid again, restarting the cycle.

The pun on "May the Force be with you" has been used a number of times over the years.

Once In 2008, a Facebook group celebrated "Luke Skywalker Day" and adopted the May the Fourth slogan. Since then, May 4 has been a regular fandom celebration. In 2013, Disney also joined in the celebration.

Keto is more than just a diet. It is a cultural identity.

The Keto diet changes how adherents think about medicine and nutrition. With the fake news that dominates the news cycle, it's not surprising that keto went viral. It's anti-establishment.

The body can only store glucose to last a few days. If we don't eat carbs, the body finds other ways to fuel the body, like ketogenesis. In ketogenesis:

• The liver starts to break down fat from food and our body reserves. The useful energy source is called ketone bodies and can replace glucose as fuel when there's a glucose shortage.
• Once ketogenesis starts, the ketone levels rise.
• The body burns fat instead of the usual glucose.

You may think it was your idea to keep your desk neat or speak up in a meeting, but your behavior was likely influenced by those in your network.

Once we understand social networks, we can use its power to shape workplaces for the better. You can turn an unhappy team into an innovative, collaborative one.

Your experiences in the world is not only a product of your own desires, actions, and thoughts, but also a product of the desires, actions, and thoughts of people around you.

The things that are seemingly personal to you are actually very strongly influenced by similar traits in other people. You do have agency. You can choose what to do. But you're also affected by what others are doing. Both are true.