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Why don’t a lot of people use generics?
  • This is incorrect. You just can't switch manufacturers easily if you're stable on one. But that's not a brand vs generic thing, that's an any manufacturer to any-other manufacturer thing. Same with warfarin, narrow-therapeutic index antiepileptics, etc.

  • Would a surgical puncture to the skull relieve a pressure headache?
  • No idea unfortunately, but definitely not to release pressure. You don't get air in your brain, it's all fluid. Outside of the hospital, all the drains drain to somewhere internal, usually the abdominal cavity

  • Would a surgical puncture to the skull relieve a pressure headache?
  • Am a doctor, this wasn't actually a migraine and is not how migraines happen. Shunts are placed for elevated intracranial pressure, which can occur for a number of reasons, and do cause headaches. But it's a very uncommon cause of headaches and a shunt will not fix your actual migraines or tension headaches.

  • Phoenix turns to ice-filled body bags to treat heatstroke as US south-west bakes
  • Body-bag ice cooling has actually been pretty common practice across emergency medicine for some time. Legit body bags (clean ones obviously) are purpose built to be watertight and hold an adult human, and they're easily accessible to hospitals. It's a very effective and affordable method for controlling hyperthermia

  • Would it be possible to run Pi-hole, Octoprint and Home Assistant on the same RPi 3 mod. B?
  • Not OP but loss of the Pi results in loss of network connectivity. A headache if you're home and never doing anything time-critical on the network. A disaster if you or anyone else is dependent on the network for anything time-sensitive (virtual doctors appointment, work call, etc), or you're away from home and unable to directly VPN to your router to reconfigure DNS settings.

  • Why do we use mean instead of mode?
  • It's not that we don't use mode, there are definitely times mode is used. It's just that mean (and median as well) contain a lot more useful information about distributions that we often care about. For a normal distribution mean, median, and mode should all be identical. So why do we use mean? Because mathematically, the mean is what underpins the formula for the normal distribution, not median or mode, and when you're talking about doing math with normal distributions mean is the thing to talk about (along with standard deviation).

    We use median a lot too, you probably just don't hear it called median very often. The median is useful in non-normal distributions, and it defines the 50th percentile, so along with the 25%-ile and 75%-ile you've got your quartile distributions. We use these all the time to talk about grades in schools, or when we talk about home prices distributions in a given area, or salaries within a given field.

    We use mode too, again just by a different name most of the time. Any time you've asked "what's the most common blank" you're basically asking for a mode. When we talk about "average" income in a country, we're usually actually talking about median or mode. Favorite animal? Answered as a mode.

    You have to use the right statistical tool for your question: unfortunately English doesn't do a good job of conveying this without math jargon.

  • [Biology] The umbilical cord: is it 'necessary' to sever it, or is it designed to disconnect on its own eventually?
  • I'm sorry you're getting downvotes. I'm betting the bulk are because you're in c/askscience saying you don't have any evidence to support your question, but that's kinda the whole reason to ask a question. You weren't speculating in a top level comment so I think it's rude to be downvoting. As far as I can tell you're asking genuine questions which is kinda the whole point of this community. Fuck the haters, ask questions when you're curious!

  • [Biology] The umbilical cord: is it 'necessary' to sever it, or is it designed to disconnect on its own eventually?
  • But most animals don't leave it intact. They chew through it shortly after birth. You can't really have a tissue that is sturdy enough to survive tension during fetal development and vaginal delivery that then instantly falls apart, so it has to be manually severed after delivery. The vast majority of mammals don't let it stay attached for long at all, because their offspring are pretty mobile immediately after birth. From my reading of some of the random websites that recommend this, apparently it was based on the observations of a single species of higher ape (a chimp I think) that doesn't sever the umbilical cord quickly. But when we have been severing cords as a species for generations and the vast majority of other mammals sever the cord with their teeth, I think the evolutionary biology evidence points towards severing the cord quickly.

    Now evolutionary biology isn't a solid basis for medical practice, but we don't really have much scientific data at all to base this on at this point. There have been reports of increased rates of serious infections from the practice, which has face validity with the fact that you're leaving a devascularized piece of tissue attached to the vascular system of neonate with an immature immune system. Outside of infection, there has been some case reports of polycythemia (excessively high red blood cell count) and jaundice in these infants. This makes sense physiologically. While attached to the placenta there is a greater intravascular volume available to the infant, which is the entire basis behind delayed cord cutting. It stands to reason that continuing to allow that extra blood volume to enter the infant would result in polycythemia and jaundice.

    I'm not intimately familiar with the foundational literature by which the standard DCC cutoffs of 1 minutes or cessation of umbilical pulsatility were founded upon. There could be a very real argument for saying, should the time be 2 minutes? 5 minutes instead of 1? Or should we at least study it if it hasn't been already?

    In summary, we have a piece of dead/dying tissue attached to a physiologically stressed neonate with an immature immune system. Leaving it attached for days is in contradiction to the vast majority of other mammalian labor behaviors, is inconsistent with the majority of human's labor history, and has a clear pathological mechanism by which the commonly reported complications can be easily explained. Without some legitimate evidence to actually support benefits or disprove the risks, I think this practice should be discouraged by healthcare professionals.

  • [Biology] The umbilical cord: is it 'necessary' to sever it, or is it designed to disconnect on its own eventually?
  • To somewhat play devil's advocate, what's wrong with a minute? What benefit are you expecting from leaving it on longer?

    The long and the short is Delayed Cord Clamping is really the only thing we have data for, and that's what we should do without evidence something else is better.

  • [Biology] The umbilical cord: is it 'necessary' to sever it, or is it designed to disconnect on its own eventually?
  • This is an alternative birth method called "lotus birth" or more formally "umbilical non-severance" in which babies are left tethered to the delivered placenta until their cord desiccates and detaches from their body on its own, usually in 3-10 days, while applying salt to the placenta to increase the speed at which it dries. It will eventually fall off, however, after its delivery the placenta is no longer being supplied with the oxygenated blood it needs to survive, and becomes necrotic (dead). This can act as an easy entry point for infectious organisms to enter the neonate, and can result in life-threatening infections. Neither the American College of Obstetrics or the American Academy of Pediatrics have explicit guidance statements as to whether this should be recommended against. AAP has published that there have been multiple case reports of severe infections with various bacteria secondary to this practice.

    This should not be confused/conflated with Delayed Cord Clamping, which is waiting 30-60 seconds after the baby's delivery for some of the residual fetal blood in the placenta to be delivered to the baby's circulation to prevent anemia. This has good evidence for benefit to the baby, is recommended by ACOG, and is basically standard of care in the US.

    Source: ACOG and AAP publications, also I'm a 4th year medical student that has completed OBGYN rotations

  • Help with a player that likes the idea of being a caster, but not the mechanics

    I've been a DM for about 3 years, and have predominantly run one-shots and short campaigns in DnD5e and PF2e. I have a player who persistently builds primary caster based characters, but then won't do anything in combat but "I stab it with my dagger." They rarely use cantrips, and basically won't cast a leveled spell unless I suggest it immediately before their turn. They seem to enjoy playing despite the fact that they're far too squishy to be a front-line melee character and don't utilize most of their class features. I've talked with them explicitly about how their play style seems to be discordant with the kind of play they want to do, and that maybe next time they should try a paladin/champion or a fighter/rougue subclass with some minor casting. They agreed at the time that sounded like a good idea, but low and behold showed up to the next one-shot with a primary caster, and over 3 hours of play and 3 combats never cast a single spell, including a cantrip.

    I enjoy playing with this persons as a whole. They are engaged in the fiction, and are particularly engaged during exploration activities. They tell me they also find combat quite fun, and they are requesting I run a mega dungeon in the near future.

    As a general rule, I like to let people play how they have the most fun, but issues have arisen with this play style. Namely, all of my TPKs have been associated with this player charging a squishy character directly up to a significantly stronger villain and continuing to stab it with a dagger until they went down, significantly hindering the party in the action economy and resulting in a TPK. I feel I have to intentionally weaken all of my encounters to keep the party feasible in the face of such mechanically poor combat choices.

    What else can I do to help drive this individual towards melee builds, and/or help encourage them to change their play style to better suite the caster classes they choose?

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    Resources for becoming a better player!

    tl;dr - What resources do you know of (blogs, videos/youtube channels, books, etc) that cater to improving your skills as a TTRPG player? I'm looking for the player equivalent of MCDM's Running the Game, The Alexandrian blog, etc directed towards players.

    Hello all, I've been involved in TTRPGs for about 3 years now, and I've spent the bulk of that time DM'ing D&D5e, but I've also dabbled in a number of different systems including PF2e, Monster of the Week, and Scum and Villainy. During this time, I've found a great many resources aimed at helping me become a better DM, though I realized recently I haven't seen anything aside from the book Live To Tell The Tale by Keith Ammann (of The Monsters Know What They're Doing fame) directed squarely at players.

    Part of me wonders if this is a continuation of the theme that DMs put in more work than their players for a game to exist, and individuals who want to devote significant time to the craft are almost always DMs. Maybe it's driven by the fact that most of the things that can make you a better player are things you learn to become a good DM.

    Regardless of the reason, I see plenty of advice aimed for entry-level players about not having their phones out and participating in the game, but no real resources of substances for becoming the best player one can be. Has anyone come across any good resources focused on deep character creation, player-centric role play, etc?

    2
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)GO
    godzillabacter @lemmy.world
    Posts 3
    Comments 84