Why are We so Blest?

XXXL: why are we so fat?

ne of the most comprehensive data sets available about Americans—how tall they are, when they last visited a dentist, what sort of cereal they eat for breakfast, whether they have to pee during the night, and, if so, how often—comes from a series of studies conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants are chosen at random, interviewed at length, and subjecte...

Systematic reviews in epidemiology: why are we so far behind?

Why are we so concerned with acute incomplete stent apposition?

In their article, Shimamura et al. report that incomplete stent apposition (ISA) was observed in all 38 everolimus-eluting stents (EES) and all 39 sirolimus-eluting stents (SES) post-percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (measuring 315+ 94 mm and 0.50+0.24 mm in EES and 308+ 119 mm and 0.95+ 0.70 mm in SES), that it persisted in 26% of EES and 38% of SES at 8–12 months although the size of t...

Why are we doing so little clinical research? Part 2: Why clinical research is neglected.

Family medicine is a clinical discipline. So why are so few family physicians doing clinical research? Certainly there are notable exceptions to that generalization. But if you look at our publication record as a whole, clinical descriptive research is only a small part. Yet it is an important issue, with consequences for our place in medical schools. In this editorial, I want to address this i...

Why are clicks so exclusive ?

Clicks occur abundantly in the languages of southern Africa, but are not found anywhere else. This is unexpected since the clicks seem to be both auditorily salient and easy to produce. This paper suggests that the reason for the areal skewness of clicks lies in the African phonetictypological environment rather than in production or perception constraints. In particular, clicks are limited to ...