A massive new Canadian-led
study says that working night shifts dramatically increases the risk of
heart attack or stroke — although no one seems to know exactly why.
Photograph by: Photos.com
, canada.com
Shift work — especially working nights — increases the risk of heart
attack and stroke, according to a Canadian-led study that is being
billed as the largest-ever of its kind.
About a third of Canada's
full-time labour force does shift work — working evening and nights,
rotating shifts, split shifts and any other schedule that isn't
nine-to-five.
Until now, the data on whether shift work heightens
heart attack and stroke risk has been controversial, with some studies
showing an increased risk, and others no association whatsoever.
For
their new study, the international research team pooled results from 34
studies involving more than two million people. They found that shift
work was associated with a 23 per cent increase in the risk of a heart
attack, a five per cent increase in the risk of stroke and a 24 per cent
increase in the risk of unstable angina, coronary artery disease and
other "coronary events."
Night work was associated with the sharpest increase in risk — 41 per cent — for major vascular problems.
The
most basic thing to say* about why theater tickets are expensive to buy
is that theater is expensive to make. Economist William Baumol famously
observed that it's really hard to make a string quartet more efficient,
because it's not feasible to replace the live violinist with a robot or
with a cheaper Chinese violinist Skyping in from Shanghai. Similarly,
you can't perform "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" with fewer than four
principal actors. You also can't make it without a director, or a
costume team, or a set designer, and so on. Prices are people, and
theater is labor-intensive work, and that makes a night at the theater
necessarily an expensive thing to consume.
But it doesn't explain
why average paid admission has increased by a fifth since before the
recession to $93, according to new statistics from the Broadway League
-- nor why non-musical ticket
prices grew by about 30%. Here the answer comes from the demand side.
Broadway plays and special events are limited-time-only star-studded
events that draw lots of rich people. And producers have gotten wise to
the idea that rich people are extremely price insensitive when it comes
to seeing celebrities on the Great White Way, especially if there's only
a short window. The message rich people appear to be sending is: If you
charge it, we will pay it.
White House press secretary Jay Carney has voiced frustration with the
press for taking comments out of context last week when President Obama
said "the private sector is doing fine." But Carney stopped short of
promising that the Obama campaign would not take Mitt Romney's quotes out of context going forward.
"That's a rather remarkable question," Carney said during the White
House briefing Monday, adding that he wouldn't "speculate" on whether
the Obama team would avoid taking Mitt Romney's comments out of context.
"Certainly, we believe that you all ought to do your jobs and report on context."
"I would say that our general position is that we're for truthful, accurate, factual reporting that's done in context," he said.
Facebook's growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Unique
U.S. visitors to the wildly popular social media site rose 5% in April
to 158 million, according to data attributed to comScore. ComScore
confirmed the data.
That's the slowest growth rate since comScore started tracking data in 2008.
Users
spent more than six hours a month on the site in April, up 16% from the
prior year. Still, that's a slower growth rate than the 23% increase in
2011, according to comScore data cited in the report.
Facebook
went public on May 18 in a widely anticipated market debut. But the
stock price has slid since then. Facebook's stock was up about 2% to
$27.65 on Monday afternoon.
