It’s so cool that psychedelic rock has made a comeback. The Black Angels are one of these grousp that have contributed to that comeback. The band hails from Austin‚ Texas. The The Black Angels were formed in May 2004. Velvet Underground fans may give the name a second thought as the group’s name derives from the Velvet Underground song “The Black Angel’s Death Song.”  The band consists of Alex Maas (vocals‚ bass‚ organ‚ drone machine/keyboard)‚ Christian Bland (guitar‚ drone machine/keyboard)‚ Stephanie Bailey (drums‚ percussion)‚ Kyle Hunt (keyboards‚ percussion‚ bass‚ guitar)‚ and Jake Garcia (guitar‚ bass). Passover Released 2006 Passover is The post Complete List Of The Black Angels Albums And Discography appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Terror Watchlist Encounters at Border Increasing

Over 240 years ago‚ famous mathematician Leonhard Euler came up with a question: if six army regiments each have six officers of six different ranks‚ can they be arranged in a square formation such that no row or column repeats either a rank or regiment?After searching in vain for a solution‚ Euler declared the problem impossible – and over a century later‚ the French mathematician Gaston Tarry proved him right. Then‚ 60 years after that‚ when the advent of computers removed the need for laboriously testing every possible combination by hand‚ the mathematicians Parker‚ Bose‚ and Shrikhande proved an even stronger result: not only is the six-by-six square impossible‚ but it’s the only size of square other than two-by-two that doesn’t have a solution at all.Now‚ in mathematics‚ once a theorem is proven‚ it’s proven forever. So it may be surprising to learn that a 2022 paper‚ published in the journal Physical Review Letters‚ has apparently found a solution. There’s just one catch: the officers have to exist in a state of quantum entanglement.“I think their paper is very beautiful‚” quantum physicist Gemma De las Cuevas‚ who was not involved with the work‚ told Quanta Magazine at the time. “There’s a lot of quantum magic in there. And not only that‚ but you can feel throughout the paper [the authors’] love for the problem.”To explain what’s going on‚ let’s start with a classical example. Euler’s “36 Officers” problem‚ as it is known‚ is a special type of magic square called an “orthogonal Latin square” – think of it like two sudokus that you have to solve at the same time in the same grid. For example‚ a four-by-four orthogonal Latin square might look like this:No color repeats in any direction; no number repeats in any direction; all numbers in all colors are represented.Image credit: IFLScienceWith each square in the grid defined like this – with a fixed number and a fixed color – Euler’s original six-by-six problem is impossible. However‚ in the quantum world‚ things are more flexible: things exist in superpositions of states.In basic terms – or at least‚ as basic as it can get when we’re talking about quantum physics – this means that any given general can be multiple ranks of multiple regiments at the same time. Using our colorful double-sudoku example‚ we could imagine a square in the grid being filled with‚ say‚ a superposition of a green two and a red one.Reen owo? Gred Tone?Image credit: IFLScienceNow‚ the researchers thought‚ Euler’s problem would have a solution. But what was it?At first glance‚ it might seem that the team had made their job a lot harder. Not only did they have to solve a six-by-six double sudoku that was known to be impossible in the classical setting‚ but now they had to do it in multiple dimensions at once.Luckily‚ though‚ they had a couple of things on their side: first‚ a classical near-solution that they could use as a jumping-off point‚ and second‚ the seemingly mysterious property of quantum entanglement.Put simply‚ two states are said to be entangled when one state tells you something about the other. As a classical analogy‚ imagine you know your friend has two children‚ A and B (your friend isn’t good at names) of the same gender. That means that knowing that child A is a girl tells you with certainty that child B is also a girl – the two children’s genders are entangled.Entanglement doesn’t always work out this nicely‚ where one state tells you absolutely everything about the other – but when it does‚ it’s called an absolutely maximally entangled (AME) state. Another example might be flipping coins: if Alice and Bob each flip a coin and Alice gets heads‚ then if the coins are entangled‚ Bob knows without looking that he got tails‚ and vice versa.Remarkably‚ the solution to this quantum officer problem turned out to have this property – and this is where it gets really interesting. See‚ the example above works for two coins‚ and for three‚ but for four‚ it’s impossible. But the 36 Officers problem isn’t like flipping dice‚ the authors realized – it’s more like rolling entangled dice.“[Imagine that] Alice selects any two dice and rolls them‚ obtaining one of 36 equally likely outcomes‚ as Bob rolls the remaining ones. If the entire state is AME‚ Alice can always deduce the result obtained in Bob’s part of the four-party system‚” the paper explains.“Furthermore‚ such a state allows one to teleport any unknown‚ two-dice quantum state‚ from any two owners of two subsystems to the lab possessing the two other dice of the entangled state of the four-party system‚” the authors continue. “This is not possible if the dice are replaced by two-sided coins.”Because these AME systems can often be explained using orthogonal Latin squares‚ researchers already knew that they exist for four people throwing dice with any number of sides at all – any‚ that is‚ other than two or six. Remember: those orthogonal Latin squares don’t exist‚ so they can’t be used to prove the existence of an AME state in that dimension.However‚ by finding a solution to Euler’s 243-year-old problem‚ the researchers had done something amazing: they had found an AME system of four parties of dimension six. In doing so‚ they may even have discovered a whole new kind of AME – one with no analog in a classical system.“Euler … claimed in 1779 that no solution exists. The proof‚ by Tarry‚ came only 121 years later in 1900‚” the authors write. “After another 121 years‚ we have presented a solution to the quantum version wherein the officers can be entangled.”“The quantum design presented here will likely trigger further research in the nascent field of quantum combinatorics‚” they conclude.The study is published in Physical Review Letters.An earlier version of this article was published in January 2022.

As the mathematician De La Soul famously stated‚ three is the magic number. But if physicist Richard Feynman is to be believed‚ that figure is off by a factor of about 400. For Feynman‚ you see‚ the “magic number” is around 1/137 – specifically‚ it’s 1/137.03599913. Physicists know it as α‚ or the fine structure constant. “It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered‚” Feynman wrote in his 1985 book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. “All good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.”It’s both incredibly mysterious and unbelievably important: a seemingly random‚ dimensionless number‚ which nevertheless holds the secret to life itself. “It's a measure of the strength of the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic force‚” explained SUNY Stony Brook astrophysics professor Paul M Sutter in an article for Space. “If it had any other value‚ life as we know it would be impossible‚” he wrote. “And yet we have no idea where it comes from.”Normally‚ this would be the part where we give you some examples of where the value turns up – but the answer to that‚ quite literally‚ is “everywhere.” It was first discovered in 1916‚ by the physicist Arnold Sommerfeld‚ but it had already been turning up in equations for decades before that. It lurks in formulas describing light and matter‚ and it governs everything from the smallest hydrogen atom to the formation of stars.“In our everyday world‚ everything is either gravity or electromagnetism‚” Holger Müller‚ a physicist at the University of California‚ Berkeley‚ told Quanta Magazine. “And that’s why alpha is so important.”Of course‚ physics is no stranger to constants – there’s c‚ the speed of light; G‚ the gravitational constant; in quantum physics there’s both h and  to describe the Planck constant; if you’re a real aficionado you may even know about k‚ the Boltzmann constant. But α has something none of those other constants have – or‚ to be more precise‚ it doesn’t have something they do.“There are no dimensions or unit system that the value of the [fine structure constant] depends on‚” wrote Sutter. “The other constants in physics aren't like this.”Take the speed of light‚ for example. Look it up in a search engine‚ and you’ll find it’s equal to 299‚792‚458 meters per second. Or is it 670‚615‚200 miles per hour? Our mistake: it’s actually 1‚802‚600‚000‚000 furlongs per fortnight. Screw it – let’s just say it’s one light-year per year.Get the picture yet? The value of the constant isn’t actually‚ well‚ constant – it depends on the units you use. But the fine structure constant doesn’t have that property: it’s an entirely dimensionless constant. “If you were to meet an alien from a distant star system‚ you'd have a pretty hard time communicating the value of the speed of light. Once you nailed down how we express our numbers‚ you would then have to define things like meters and seconds‚” explained Sutter.“But the fine structure constant? You could just spit it out‚ and they would understand it.”But perhaps the weirdest thing about this seemingly most pure of constants is that it may‚ in fact‚ not be constant. Some physicists have suggested that today’s α is actually slightly larger than it used to be – only by one part in about 100‚000 over six billion years‚ but that’s enough to have some pretty huge ramifications in the long run. Change that 137 to 138‚ for example‚ and you decrease the value of α by 0.00005 – enough‚ some scientists argue‚ to prevent stars from creating carbon‚ thus halting the creation of life as we know it.As Feynman put it: “It's one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. “You might say the ‘hand of God’ wrote that number‚ and ‘we don't know how He pushed his pencil.’”An earlier version of this article was published in June 2022.

"Why does gravity pull us down and not up?" - Gracie‚ age 9‚ Brookline‚ MassachusettsGravity is the reason things with mass or energy are attracted to each other. It is why apples fall toward the ground and planets orbit stars.Magnets attract some types of metals‚ but they can also push other magnets away. So how come you feel only the pull of gravity?In 1915‚ Albert Einstein figured out the answer when he published his theory of general relativity. The reason gravity pulls you toward the ground is that all objects with mass‚ like our Earth‚ actually bend and curve the fabric of the universe‚ called spacetime. That curvature is what you feel as gravity.What is spacetime?Before getting into the complicated world of gravity‚ you need to understand spacetime.Spacetime is exactly what it sounds like: the three dimensions of space – length‚ width‚ and height – combined with the fourth dimension – time. Using some very brilliant math‚ Einstein was the first person to realize that the laws of physics work in a universe where space and time are merged together.What this means is that space and time are connected – if you move really fast through space‚ time slows down for you compared to someone who is moving slowly. This is why astronauts – who are moving very fast in space – age a tiny bit more slowly than people on Earth.Earth curves spacetime so that you fall toward Earth instead of away from it.Image Credit: Tokamac via Wikimedia Commons‚ (CC BY-SA 4.0)Matter makes gravity wells‚ not gravity hillsRemember‚ gravity is the idea that objects in the universe are attracted to each other because spacetime is bent and curved. When Einstein came up with general relativity‚ he showed that all stuff in the universe can curve spacetime – in physics terms that stuff is mass and energy.Since your brain usually thinks about the world in three dimensions‚ it is really hard to think about the four dimensions of spacetime as a single idea. So to make it easier to visualize‚ imagine the surface of a trampoline. If there is nothing on it‚ it is flat. But if you stand on the trampoline‚ it stretches around your feet and creates a valley with you at the center. If there is a ball on the trampoline‚ it would roll toward your feet.This is a two-dimensional example of how spacetime works. Your mass stretched the trampoline‚ creating what is called a gravity well that the ball rolls into. This is very similar to how the gravity of a heavy object – like the Earth – pulls things like you and me toward it.To make things even weirder‚ since space and time are connected‚ time is also stretched by heavy objects!  In the movie ‘Interstellar‚’ the characters go to a planet close to a black hole‚ and while they are there‚ they age slower than everyone else.The heavier you are‚ the steeper the sides of the trampoline well. That is why really massive things in the universe – like the Sun or black holes – have stronger gravity than Earth.So why does gravity pull you down and not push you away?Imagine someone went under the trampoline and pushed up. The ball would roll away! This would be a gravity hill‚ not a gravity well. As far as scientists know‚ matter – or stuff – always makes gravity wells and not gravity hills. Scientists can imagine things made of exotic matter or energy that would cause gravity to push you off into space‚ but so far‚ no one has found anything that could cause gravity to push you away from Earth.Hello‚ curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name‚ age and the city where you live.And since curiosity has no age limit – adults‚ let us know what you’re wondering‚ too. We won’t be able to answer every question‚ but we will do our best. Mario Borunda‚ Associate Professor of Physics‚ Oklahoma State UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Giant fissures have been appearing in the ground across the southwest US. In southcentral Arizona alone‚ 272 kilometers (169 miles) of these cracks have been mapped‚ while they have also appeared in Utah‚ California‚ and Texas.The cracks are not natural formations‚ according to Joseph Cook of the Arizona Geological Survey‚ who told Insider that "it's something we've caused to form". Subsidence‚ where the ground is displaced‚ is generally the result of humans trying to get water out of the ground‚ causing it to compress and become unstable."More than 80 percent of known land subsidence in the U.S. is a consequence of groundwater use‚ and is an often overlooked environmental consequence of our land and water-use practices‚" the US Geological Survey explains on their website‚ adding "increasing land development threatens to exacerbate existing land-subsidence problems and initiate new ones."Fissures occur where softer ground collapses‚ but nearby ground does not. Like their evil cousin the sinkhole‚ they can open up pretty quickly.A recent New York Times investigation into groundwater use and the appearance of these fissures highlighted another problem; groundwater is being depleted faster than it naturally fills up.“Most of the water we’re pulling out of the ground is thousands of years old‚” Jason Groth‚ Charles County Maryland’s deputy director of planning and growth management‚ told the New York Times. “It’s not like it rains on Monday‚ and by Saturday it’s in the aquifer.”Within a decade‚ he believes the county may run out of water. With increasing temperatures and drought‚ the amount of groundwater we collect may compensate for the loss of rainwater (e.g. in farming) but it may be a temporary fix.“From an objective standpoint‚ this is a crisis‚” law professor and water expert at the University of Tulsa‚ Warigia Bowman‚ told the New York Times. “There will be parts of the U.S. that run out of drinking water.”The extraction of groundwater may have repercussions for our planet's axis too.[H/T: New York Times]An earlier version of this article was published in September 2023.

Imagine you’re a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop – but instead of a chicken egg‚ you find an ostrich egg‚ much larger than anything a chicken could lay.That’s a little how our team of astronomers felt when we discovered a massive planet‚ more than 13 times heavier than Earth‚ around a cool‚ dim red star‚ nine times less massive than Earth’s Sun‚ earlier this year.The smaller star‚ called an M star‚ is not only smaller than the Sun in Earth’s solar system‚ but it’s 100 times less luminous. Such a star should not have the necessary amount of material in its planet-forming disk to birth such a massive planet.The Habitable Zone Planet FinderOver the past decade‚ our team designed and built a new instrument at Penn State capable of detecting the light from these dim‚ cool stars at wavelengths beyond the sensitivity of the human eye – in the near-infrared – where such cool stars emit most of their light.Attached to the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope in West Texas‚ our instrument‚ dubbed the Habitable Zone Planet Finder‚ can measure the subtle change in a star’s velocity as a planet gravitationally tugs on it. This technique‚ called the Doppler radial velocity technique‚ is great for detecting exoplanets.“Exoplanet” is a combination of the words extrasolar and planet‚ so the term applies to any planet-sized body in orbit around a star that isn’t Earth’s Sun.Thirty years ago‚ Doppler radial velocity observations enabled the discovery of 51 Pegasi b‚ the first known exoplanet orbiting a Sunlike star. In the ensuing decades‚ astronomers like us have improved this technique. These increasingly more precise measurements have an important goal: to enable the discovery of rocky planets in habitable zones‚ the regions around stars where liquid water can be sustained on the planetary surface.The Doppler technique doesn’t yet have the capabilities to discover habitable zone planets the mass of the Earth around stars the size of the Sun. But the cool and dim M stars show a larger Doppler signature for the same Earth-size planet. The lower mass of the star leads to it getting tugged more by the orbiting planet. And the lower luminosity leads to a closer-in habitable zone and a shorter orbit‚ which also makes the planet easier to detect.Planets around these smaller stars were the planets our team designed the Habitable Zone Planet Finder to discover. Our new discovery‚ published in the journal Science‚ of a massive planet orbiting closely around the cool dim M star LHS 3154 – the ostrich egg in the chicken coop – came as a real surprise.LHS 3154b: The planet that should not existPlanets form in disks composed of gas and dust. These disks pull together dust grains that grow into pebbles and eventually combine to form a solid planetary core. Once the core is formed‚ the planet can gravitationally pull in the solid dust‚ as well as surrounding gas such as hydrogen and helium. But it needs a lot of mass and materials to do this successfully. This way to form planets is called core accretion.A star as low mass as LHS 3154‚ nine times less massive than the Sun‚ should have a correspondingly low-mass planet forming disk.An artist’s rendering of LHS 3154b. Video Credit: Abby Minnich.A typical disk around such a low-mass star should simply not have enough solid materials or mass to be able to make a core heavy enough to create such a planet. From computer simulations our team conducted‚ we concluded that such a planet needs a disk at least 10 times more massive than typically assumed from direct observations of planet-forming disks.A different planet formation theory‚ gravitational instability – where gas and dust in the disk undergo a direct collapse to form a planet – also struggles to explain the formation of such a planet without a very massive disk.Planets around the most common starsCool‚ dim M stars are the most common stars in our galaxy. In DC comics lore‚ Superman’s home world‚ planet Krypton‚ orbited an M dwarf star.Astronomers know‚ from discoveries made with Habitable Zone Planet Finder and other instruments‚ that giant planets in close-in orbits around the most massive M stars are at least 10 times rarer than those around Sunlike stars. And we know of no such massive planets in close orbits around the least massive M stars – until the discovery of LHS 3154b.Understanding how planets form around our coolest neighbors will help us understand both how planets form in general and how rocky worlds around the most numerous types of stars form and evolve. This line of research could also help astronomers understand whether M stars are capable of supporting life.Suvrath Mahadevan‚ Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy &; Astrophysics‚ Penn State; Guðmundur Kári Stefánsson‚ NASA Hubble Fellow‚ Department of Astrophysical Sciences‚ Princeton University‚ and Megan Delamer‚ Graduate Student‚ Department of Astronomy‚ Penn StateThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For centuries‚ the quest for new elements was a driving force in many scientific disciplines. Understanding an atom’s structure and the development of nuclear science allowed scientists to accomplish the old goal of alchemists – turning one element into another.Over the past few decades‚ scientists in the United States‚ Germany‚ and Russia have figured out how to use special tools to combine two atomic nuclei and create new‚ superheavy elements.The heaviest element on the periodic table has 118 protons.Image Credit: Licks-rocks via Wikimedia Commons‚ (CC BY-SA 4.0)These heavy elements usually aren’t stable. Heavier elements have more protons‚ or positively charged particles in the nucleus; some that scientists have created have up to 118. With that many protons‚ the electromagnetic repulsive forces between protons in the atomic nuclei overwhelm the attractive nuclear force that keeps the nucleus together.Scientists have predicted for a long time that elements with around 164 protons could have a relatively long half-life‚ or even be stable. They call this the “island of stability” – here‚ the attractive nuclear force is strong enough to balance out any electromagnetic repulsion.Since heavy elements are difficult to make in the lab‚ physicists like me have been looking for these elements everywhere‚ even beyond the Earth. To narrow down the search‚ we need to know what sort of natural processes could produce these elements. We also need to know what properties they have‚ like their mass densities.Calculating densityFrom the outset‚ my team wanted to figure out the mass density of these superheavy elements. This property could tell us more about how the atomic nuclei of these elements behave. And once we had an idea about their density‚ we could get a better sense of where these elements might be hiding.To figure out the mass density and other chemical properties of these elements‚ my research team used a model that represents an atom of each of these heavy elements as a single‚ charged cloud. This model works well for large atoms‚ particularly metals that are laid out in a lattice structure.We first applied this model to atoms with known densities and calculated their chemical properties. Once we knew it worked‚ we used the model to calculate the density of elements with 164 protons‚ and other elements in this island of stability.Based on our calculations‚ we expect stable metals with atomic numbers around 164 to have densities between 36 to 68 g/cm3 (21 to 39 oz/in3). However‚ in our calculations‚ we used a conservative assumption about the mass of atomic nuclei. It’s possible that the actual range is up to 40% higher.Asteroids and heavy elementsMany scientists believe that gold and other heavy metals were deposited on Earth’s surface after asteroids collided with the planet.The same thing could have happened with these superheavy elements‚ but super mass dense heavy elements sink into ground and are eliminated from near the Earth’s surface by the subduction of tectonic plates. However‚ while researchers might not find superheavy elements on Earth’s surface‚ they could still be in asteroids like the ones that might have brought them to this planet.Scientists have estimated that some asteroids have mass densities greater than that of osmium (22.59 g/cm3‚ 13.06 oz/in3)‚ the densest element found on Earth.The largest of these objects is asteroid 33‚ which is nicknamed Polyhymnia and has a calculated density of 75.3 g/cm3 (43.5 oz/in3). But this density might not be quite right‚ since it’s quite difficult to measure the mass and volume of far-away asteroids.Polyhymnia isn’t the only dense asteroid out there. In fact‚ there’s a whole class of superheavy objects‚ including asteroids‚ which could contain these superheavy elements. Some time ago‚ I introduced the name Compact Ultradense Objects‚ or CUDOs‚ for this class.In a study published in October 2023 in the European Physical Journal Plus‚ my team suggested some of the CUDOs orbiting in the solar system might still contain some of these dense‚ heavy elements in their cores. Their surfaces would have accumulated normal matter over time and would appear normal to a distant observer.So how are these heavy elements produced? Some extreme astronomical events‚ like double star mergers could be hot and dense enough to produce stable superheavy elements.Some of the superheavy material could then remain on board asteroids created in these events. They could stay packed in these asteroids‚ which orbit the solar system for billions of years.Looking to the futureThe European Space Agency’s Gaia mission aims to create the largest‚ most precise three-dimensional map of everything in the sky. Researchers could use these extremely precise results to study the motion of asteroids and figure out which ones might have an unusually large density.Space missions are being conducted to collect material from the surfaces of asteroids and analyze them back on Earth. Both NASA and the Japanese state space agency JAXA have targeted low density near-Earth asteroids with success. Just this month‚ NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brought back a sample. Though the sample analysis is just getting started‚ there is a very small chance it could harbor dust containing superheavy elements accumulated over billions of years.The Psyche spacecraft has left Earth. It will use the gravitational field of Mars to carry it closer to the asteroid. It will then orbit the asteroid and collect data.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechOne mass-dense dust and rock sample brought back to Earth would be enough. NASA’s Psyche mission‚ which launched in October 2023‚ will fly to and sample a metal-rich asteroid with a greater chance of harboring superheavy elements. More asteroid missions like this will help scientists better understand the properties of asteroids orbiting in the solar system.Learning more about asteroids and exploring potential sources of superheavy elements will help scientists continue the century-spanning quest to characterize the matter that makes up the universe and better understand how objects in the solar system formed.Evan LaForge‚ an undergraduate student studying physics and mathematics‚ is the lead author on this research and helped with the writing of this article‚ along with Will Price‚ a physics graduate student.Johann Rafelski‚ Professor of Physics‚ University of ArizonaThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here’s some good news: the mortality rate in the UK‚ and maybe the world‚ should be down in 2024 thanks to some intervention from the BBC and Disney. Admittedly‚ to believe that you need either a very poor understanding of statistics or a very optimistic faith in the influence of television‚ but that’s most people‚ surely?Every December‚ the British Medical Journal (BMJ)‚ one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world‚ lets its hair down a little with an edition that has some fun. No lies are included‚ but sometimes papers make suggestions that shouldn’t be taken too literally. One tradition involves pretending to draw outlandish conclusions from real‚ but almost certainly spurious‚ correlations.This year‚ the BMJ has teamed up with another beloved British institution‚ the science fiction series Doctor Who‚ to explore whether one doctor working over the festive season can have a meaningful impact on people’s health.At first sight‚ the answer appears to be yes.It is now 60 years since Doctor Who was launched‚ and 31 of those years have been marked by an end-of-year special. Fourteen of these were aired on Christmas Day itself‚ with the rest between December 24 and January 1.Professor Richard Riley of the University of Birmingham compared UK mortality figures in years following the airing of these specials and the years when people had been forced to find other sources of entertainment.Riley found a reduction in deaths in years following the screening of specials. For certain aspects of the study‚ the decrease even achieved statistical significance.Riley didn’t look at global mortality‚ but if Doctor Who specials really were saving all those lives‚ we might expect the benefits to be worldwide‚ in proportion to the number of Whovians per country.Riley found festive season specials were associated with 3.6 fewer deaths in the UK in the subsequent year per 10‚000 person-years. Despite four years of specials with a Scottish doctor‚ the Scots don’t seem to be benefitting particularly strongly‚ because the UK-wide effect was barely half as strong as that for England and Wales alone.The effect was larger (6.0 per 10‚000 person-years in England and Wales) when the special was screened on Christmas Day itself‚ rather than in the surrounding week. Indeed‚ Christmas Day specials were associated with a statistically significant difference (P=0.003 in England and Wales)‚ which specials in general were not.Given that this year had the first special aired on Christmas Day for six years‚ one might conclude the morgues will be particularly quiet in 2024.Lest the findings be criticized for lack of a plausible mechanism‚ Riley proposes exposure to the representation of a doctor you’d want to see may lead people to consult medical experts during the year. Sometimes this may be timely enough to identify life-threatening illnesses that would otherwise be missed until too late.Riley cites previous evidence that Doctor Who has inspired many fans in their life choices‚ including in some cases to become scientists. Presumably‚ this has had considerable benefits to national health‚ although these would take much longer than one year to be expressed.More generally‚ the work could be seen as indicating the life-saving benefits of medical professionals‚ particularly those known for their empathy and commitment‚ working over Christmas.Pre-empting those who might criticize the study‚ Riley turns to the Doctor’s own quotes. “I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren’t there‚” and “There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.”Even those sympathetic to the study may question Riley’s exclusion of the COVID years‚ when death rates spiked enough to undermine the overall conclusions. However‚ with the Christmas Day specials having been run every year between 2005 and 2017‚ Riley used the appropriately named interrupted time series analysis‚ a statistical technique to avoid the results being distorted by general trends in improvements in healthcare.Such studies always need to choose their inputs carefully. In this case‚ conscious of the Doctor’s own words‚ “I hate repeats”‚ only new releases were considered. Spinoffs‚ whether televised or in other media‚ were also ignored. Riley used age-standardized annual mortality rates rather than crude death rates‚ preventing the results from being distorted by the aging of the population (which‚ if the conclusions were believed‚ has been facilitated by the Doctor extending lifespans).In an acronym so stretched it warps space timey-wimey stuff‚ Riley called the study Televised festive broadcasts and Association with Rates of Death In Sixty years of Doctor Who (TARDIS).Riley notes he has four times unsuccessfully sought funding to investigate if watching too much Doctor Who in youth causes harm (ADverse Reactions In Children).Taking all that into account‚ the health benefit of watching this year’s special should be considered doubtful‚ but maybe you’d better‚ just to be safe.The study is open access in the British Medical Journal.

On Christmas Eve‚ The Hill newspaper reported anonymous sources "in the Biden orbit" indicated the White House is "deeply frustrated" over the media’s “disproportionate media focus on the polls that show Biden losing while ignoring polls that show him winning." Biden saw his approval rating hit a new low of 34 percent in a Monmouth University poll released last Monday. A few days before that‚ a Wall Street Journal poll showed Biden at 37 percent approval rating. Trump is holding a 2 percent lead over Biden in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ national polling averages.  A New York Times/Siena poll last Tuesday showed just 33 percent of respondents approve of Biden’s Israel policy. The same poll found Trump leading Biden by 6 points among registered voters younger than 30.  Sources told The Hill the president has gathered advisers‚ both internal White House aides and external personal confidants‚ for meetings to discuss Trump‚ the negative polling and how to effectively message the president’s accomplishments.   "One Biden ally said meetings have taken place because of ‘deep frustration’ over polls but that it did not reflect a panic over the president’s prospects‚" The Hill reported. A source from the Biden administration told The Hill that "The meetings are intended to discuss messaging on his age and his accomplishments. There has been concern among his inner circle that the messaging has not been strong or consistent enough to break through with the public." The White House has long argued the 2024 election will be a close one but that as voters begin to compare Biden with Trump‚ things will move in its favor. They’ve largely dismissed polls as being meaningless this far away from the election while noting pundits have previously counted out Biden only to see him rise to victory. Ivan Zapien‚ a former DNC official‚ told The Hill‚ “Yes‚ it’s frustrating. I have heard many theories as to why the message is not connecting. None convince me or make me feel better.” The Hill also reported Biden was short with reporters on Saturday when asked "What's your outlook about the economy next year?" The president said: “All good. Take a look. Start reporting it the right way.” Let's guess the "right way" is to accentuate the positive on Biden's behalf‚ just like the "right polls" are the ones that show Biden winning.