Interesting Links for 01-12-2020

[andrewducker]

How about, rather than having a camera down your throat you swallow a camera?

(tags:camera healthcare )

Banning high stakes fixed-odds betting terminals meant people gambled £700m less - and without the huge job losses predicted

(tags:gambling UK )

Scottish homes to be first in world to use 100% green hydrogen (to replace gas in boilers and cookers)

(tags:hydrogen heating cooking Scotland )

What You Can Learn From Hunter-Gatherers' Sleeping Patterns (it's not what you think)

(tags:sleep humans )

Every NHS and social care worker in Scotland to receive £500 'thank you'. (And £100 for every family with a child getting free school meals)

(tags:Scotland NHS money )

The UK's farmers face upheaval, but a reform to subsidies is needed

(tags:UK farming subsidies reform )

Nearly 250 million workers strike in India

(tags:India strike rights )

Great, the transphobes and the antisemites are in cahoots

(tags:WTF bigotry LGBT transgender Jews conspiracy )

"How I Made a Self-Quoting Tweet"

(tags:Twitter recursion )

The inspiration for the scotch egg looks pretty delicious

(tags:food )

Google's AI handles protein folding, a previously unsolvable problems

(tags:AI protein impressive )

DeepMind's superhuman intelligence - what does it say about the future of AI?

(tags:AI protein thefuture )

UK supermarkets won't deliver to under 18s. Students who are isolating are told to order online. I see a problem...

(tags:shopping UK pandemic students age )

Some of these Nativity scenes are a bit... unorthodox

(tags:Christmas funny )

Comments

[autopope]

The Colon Capsule camera system doesn't totally make a colonoscopy painless: you're almost certainly still going to need to do the 24 hour bowel prep beforehand (the laxative treatment from hell). In my experience that was actually a whole lot more uncomfortable than the colonoscopy itself, even without sedation! (I'd compare the unsedated colonoscopy treatment to a routine dental check-up with de-scaling and polish: mildly uncomfortable with occasional moments of "ouch—" passing before it got bad enough to protest.)

[andrewducker]

That's pretty reassuring. I hopefully will never have one, but if I do I'll have some idea of how uncomfortable it will be.

[calimac]

You will. Unless UK medicine is totally different from US, it's recommended once you hit 55 or so as a cautionary measure. Here it's semi-sedated and you really don't experience anything during the procedure. But the prep, which begins by prohibiting high-fibre food from three days out, then anything red (which would hide polyps in the colon) from two days out, then enforcing fasting + laxative one day out, is at the very least a damnable nuisance.

[andrewducker]

Looks like Scotland is doing targeted colonoscopy following a fecal test.

https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/screening/bowel/bowel-screening#overview

[autopope]

In Scotland there's a universal stool screening program for occult blood that kicks in at age 50, every two years: you mail them a sample tube and in event of any suspicion they call you in for a colonoscopy.

(I jumped the gun and got a colonoscopy at 49 when I learned that my sister had a cancerous polyp (treated successfully), as my father was a colorectal cancer survivor and his father died of it in 1963; this officially put me in the "high risk of hereditary colon cancer" group.)

[anef]

Yes, what other people have said. At age 55 you get an invite and as it's going to be uncomfortable and undignified you ignore it for (ahem) 2 years until your husband gets his invitation, at which point you think, Oh get on with it, for heaven's sake!

But in our experience there was very little prep - you have to self-administer an enema about 1 hour beforehand, and that's it. On the other hand there are no sedatives under the UK system - you get offered gas and air, which makes you feel dizzy but does nothing for the discomfort. On the third hand, not having bowel cancer, priceless!

[andrewducker]

Looks like Scotland is doing targeted colonoscopy following a fecal test.

https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/screening/bowel/bowel-screening#overview

[autopope]

I assume you're in England?

NHS England and NHS Scotland diverge drastically on screening policy for colon cancer.

[anef]

Indeed.

And, I didn't know that. Every day, you learn something new.

[andrewducker]

It was in my reply to you yesterday!

[anef]

I didn't know it before two people pointed it out to me, OK? I was being polite! (But that's the perfidious English for you.)

[andrewducker]

We are the worst.

[calimac]

"apparently the driver has discretion to ask for proof of ID, regardless of the content (and presumably without rifling through all the bags)."

That's unnecessary, and implies very bad planning on Sainsbury's part. Safeway, the US grocer I order groceries from, automatically flags any age-restricted items on the list the picker takes to assemble the order. Then the deliverer knows to ask for ID and a signature. If there's no flags, they don't ask. No rifling through bags is necessary, just checking the list.

[andrewducker]

You'd think so, wouldn't you!

And that's how it works at the physical checkouts - try to buy alcohol and it goes beep and they decide whether you look over 25.

[calimac]

Here at the physical checkouts they ask for ID on an alcohol purchase no matter how old you look, and I'm getting close to the point where I could portray Santa Claus.

[dewline]

Well, that's got to be a pain in something.