‘In March, Christy Sheats, 42, wrote on Facebook: “It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semiautomatic weapons.” On Friday she got into an argument with her two daughters and shot them both dead. Sheats herself was shot and killed by a police officer. …’

Via Boing Boing

‘A migraine is one of the most common health issues worldwide, affecting up to one in five people. But the mechanisms that drive migraines aren’t well understood. In fact, doctors and scientists are still trying to figure out if a migraine is primarily a vascular or a neurological disorder.  A new genome-wide association study published in Nature Genetics suggests that a migraine may primarily stem from problems with the blood supply system.

The data in this paper comes from a meta-analysis of 22 genome-wide association studies, a combined dataset of more than 35,000 migraine cases and even more controls. The primary meta-analysis found associations between migraines and 38 independent genomic regions, 34 of which this study associated for the first time with migraines.When the authors characterized the genes near these associated loci, they found that a number of them were previously associated with vascular disease. Others are involved in smooth muscle contraction (smooth muscle lines larger blood vessels) and regulation of vascular tone. Some of these genes were also associated with arterial functioning…’

Source: Ars Technica

Pro-choice advocates just won the biggest Supreme Court abortion case in decades: ‘In a huge victory for the pro-choice movement, the Supreme Court voted 5-3 Monday to strike down two major anti-abortion provisions that were part of an omnibus anti-abortion law Texas passed in 2013.

The court’s ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt also strikes a blow to a strategy by the pro-life movement to limit abortion access incrementally, through state laws. To provide abortions at any stage of pregnancy, the provisions forced doctors to have “admitting privileges” with a nearby hospital (which are difficult to get for abortion providers specifically), and forced clinics to undergo often expensive renovations to become “ambulatory surgical centers,” which haven’t been demonstrated to make abortion safer (though abortion is already quite a safe medical procedure.) While pro-life advocates said these laws made abortion safer for women, their most significant effect was forcing roughly half of the state’s abortion clinics to close. The overwhelming consensus from doctors is that the laws had no medical benefit, and actually made abortion less safe because they forced quality clinics to close for no compelling medical reason.

The central constitutional question was: Did the policies put an “undue burden” on women when they are forced to drive hundreds of miles because their nearest clinic has closed due to regulatory hurdles? The Court found that it did…’

Source: Vox

‘Systematic review of studies of over 68,000 elderly people also raises questions about the benefits of statin drug treatments’

Source: EurekAlert! Science News