graeham

Expensive by UK standards, but cheap vs Bay Area: Cambridge UK.

I've not been anywhere else that has the density of interesting people doing interesting stuff. London is not far if you need to break the bubble (and Stansted Airport even closer).

Downsides: salaries are generally lower than SV (esp for technical work), Brexit uncertainty, weather is fairly average, limited outdoor sport options (other than running, road cycling, rowing)

generally = sometimes it is less expensive. I guess it wasn't clear, but my point was that healthcare is on average much more expensive in the US.

I did my PhD in a lab with a few people do 3d printing of organ scaffolds. Many (all?) of them used gelatin over collagen - I think the main factor was cost being much lower. There may have been something about gelatin being easier to extrude in a 3d printing process as well. I think the idea is that gelatin is a prototyping material.

For Tesla or Newfies?

Its great that the NFL is supporting biomechanics research (and will hopefully help the sport as well).

However, while the models are open source they seem to be created for LS-DYNA, which is a fairly expensive program. I'm not aware of any good open source finite element packages, but I bet this will limit uptake of their models.

I don't think it's 100% of either of these (outcome vs tech used). If its true research, the outcome isn't known. There are major benefits in developing technology for it's own sake, which then provides tools that can be used towards other applications.

There is an interesting additional link between cardiovascular disease and bones: calcification (calcium deposits in arteries) also seem to have some link with heart attacks and strokes.

Seen similar things, with the effect of learning curve being fairly massive - particularly for the first 5-10 procedures done. Really understated in the article for being a fairly major factor.

Agreed that multiple stents and multiple vessels can be stented in one cath session. My point was more that there isn't very strong evidence or criteria for what constitutes a vessel that should be stented versus which should not. Worse, plaques are dynamic – what looks benign today could rupture and cause a complete/near occlusion. Rupture and subsequent thrombosis is more dangerous than stenosis itself.

People in a clinical trial typically don't pay for the treatment (or placebo).

Stents are an incredible piece of engineering, but probably are over-used (particularly in the USA). There are a few issues at play:

-Chest pain

-Artery narrowing

-Heart attack risk

They aren't the same, although there is correlation between each. The original idea behind stents was to stabilise vessels in the process of a heart attack. They are increasingly used in a preventative way - but the problem is there aren't very many or good tools to tell how at risk an individual is to a heart attack.

Another major problem (as the article mentions) is that stents improve the situation in one artery, but most patients that need a stent have atherosclerosis in multiple vessels. This likely explains why the chest pain remains.

Agreed. A large amount of time also goes into things like making figures, which is mostly time-consuming grunt work.

I think the key is differentiating between creative work (which is better to be done deep with fewer hours) and grunt work which is almost purely time. Both are needed for a sucessful PhD - few are good at both and it is hard to switch between the two.