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Gina Kolata reports at the NYT that something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling, primarily because of the declining health and fortunes of poorly educated American whites who are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans. “It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” say Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner.

Though not fully understood, the increased deaths are largely thought to be a result of more suicides and the misuse of drugs and alcohol, driven by easier access to powerful prescription painkillers, cheaper high quality heroin and greater financial stresses. Death rates for people with a high school education or less rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education. The rise in death rates among middle-aged white Americans means half a million more people have died in the US since 1998 than if the previous trend had continued. The death toll is comparable to the 650,000 Americans who lost their lives during the Aids epidemic from 1981 to the middle of this year, the researchers say. Anne Case and Angus Deaton warn that middle-aged Americans who are turning to drink and drugs are set to suffer more health problems than their elders unless the downwards trend can be halted. "This is not automatic. If the epidemic is brought under control, its survivors may have a healthy old age. However, addictions are hard to treat and pain is hard to control, so those currently in midlife may be a ‘lost generation’ whose future is less bright than those who preceded them.”

In the 1910s, the number of cars in the US exploded from 200,000 to 2.5 million. The newfangled machines scared horses and ran over pedestrians, but by the time government could pass the very first traffic law, it was too late to stop them. Now Kevin Matley writes in Newsweek that thanks to political gridlock in the US, lawmakers respond to innovations with all the speed of continental drift. so new technologies spread almost instantly and take hold with almost no legal oversight. And according to Matley, this is terrific for tech startups, especially those aimed at demolishing creaky old norms—like taxis, or flight paths over crowded airspace, or money. "Drone aircraft are suddenly filling the sky, and a whole multibillion-dollar industry of drone making and drone services has taken hold," says Matley. "If the FAA had been either farsighted or fast moving, at the first sign of drones it might’ve outlawed them or confined them to someplace like Oklahoma where they can’t get in the way of anything too important. But now the FAA is forced to accommodate drones, not the other way around." Bitcoin is another example of a technology that's too late to stop. "But have you heard the word bitcoin uttered once in any of the presidential debates? Government doesn’t even understand bitcoin, and that’s been really good for it." Uber and Airbnb show how to execute this outrun-the-government strategy. By the time cities understood what those companies were doing, it was too late to block or seriously limit them.

CNN reports that the US Navy launched four armed F/A-18 fighter jets to intercept two Russian Tu-142 Bear aircraft that were flying near the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan while itwas participating in a bilateral training exercise with South Korea in the Pacific Ocean. "It is standard operating procedure for U.S. planes to escort aircraft flying in the vicinity of U.S. Navy ships," says Navy Cmdr. William J. Marks. "This type of interaction is not unprecedented. Overall I would characterize the interaction as safe." The Nimitz-class nuclear powered USS Reagan is essentially a floating airport, complete with an air traffic control center that tracks and communicates with nearby aircraft. When the carrier engages in flight operations, it institutes a carrier control zone, which extends up to 2,500 feet and within a five-mile radius, according to the Navy’s flight training instruction carrier procedures.

The lack of communication by the Russian aircraft conflicted with general aviation practice. Even commercial airports of any significant size generally expect two-way radio contact when aircraft fly as close as the Russians did, according to international aviation guidelines. Encounters such as these were common during the Cold War. They subsided with its end but picked up again under current Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Over the last few years and particularly this year and last year, with the start of the Ukraine crisis, Russia has picked up the number of sorties," says Nick de Larrinaga. adding that Putin wants to show Russia is "still a global military power and a force to be reckoned with."

For more than a half century, it has been an article of faith that science would not get funded if government did not do it, and economic growth would not happen if science did not get funded by the taxpayer. Now Matt Ridley writes in the WSJ that when you examine the history of innovation, you find, again and again, that scientific breakthroughs are the effect, not the cause, of technological change. "It is no accident that astronomy blossomed in the wake of the age of exploration," says Ridley. "The steam engine owed almost nothing to the science of thermodynamics, but the science of thermodynamics owed almost everything to the steam engine. The discovery of the structure of DNA depended heavily on X-ray crystallography of biological molecules, a technique developed in the wool industry to try to improve textiles." According to Ridley technological advances are driven by practical men who tinkered until they had better machines; abstract scientific rumination is the last thing they do.

It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics. After all, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. and Britain made huge contributions to science with negligible public funding, while Germany and France, with hefty public funding, achieved no greater results either in science or in economics. To most people, the argument for public funding of science rests on a list of the discoveries made with public funds, from the Internet (defense science in the U.S.) to the Higgs boson (particle physics at CERN in Switzerland). But that is highly misleading. Given that government has funded science munificently from its huge tax take, it would be odd if it had not found out something. This tells us nothing about what would have been discovered by alternative funding arrangements. "Governments cannot dictate either discovery or invention," concludes Ridley. "They can only make sure that they don’t hinder it. Innovation emerges unbidden from the way that human beings freely interact if allowed. Deep scientific insights are the fruits that fall from the tree of technological change."

Back before methamphetamine cooks started buying up non-prescription decongestants to brew crank, all of us were able to buy effective decongestants right off the store shelf without a problem. Now David DiSalvo writes at Forbes that to fill the store-shelf void, drug companies substituted the already-FDA approved ingredient phenylephrine for pseudoephedrine but the oral decongestant phenylephrine simply doesn’t work at the FDA-approved amount found in popular non-prescription brands, and it may not even work at much higher doses. Researchers at the University of Florida are asking the FDA to remove oral phenylephrine from the market. "We think the evidence supports that phenylephrine’s status as a safe and effective over-the-counter product should be changed,” says Randy Hatton. “We are looking out for the consumer, and he or she needs to know that science says that oral phenylephrine does not work for the majority of people.”

In 1976, the FDA deemed a 10 milligram oral dose of phenylephrine safe and effective at relieving congestion, making it possible for companies to use the ingredient without conducting studies. But Leslie Hendeles and Hatton say phenylephrine does not effectively relieve nasal stuffiness at this dose. They say the FDA cited four tests demonstrating efficacy at the 10 milligram dose, two of which were unpublished and sponsored by drug manufacturers. In contrast, the FDA cited six tests demonstrating no significant difference between phenylephrine and placebo. Hendeles said a higher dose may work, but no research has been published regarding safety at higher doses. “They need to do a dose-response study to determine at what higher dose they get both efficacy and safety,” says Hendeles adding that until then “consumers should go that extra step and get it (pseudoephedrine) from behind the counter."

This year, murders have spiked in major cities across America and according to FBI director James B. Comey the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers that has come in the wake of highly publicized incidents of police brutality may be the main reason for the recent increase in violent crime. “I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year," says Comey adding that he has been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations. That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country’s most violent cities. Officers tell Comey that youths surround police when they get out of their vehicles, taunting them and making videos of the spectacle with their cell phones. “In today’s YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime,” says Comey. “Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns.”

This year, murders have spiked in major cities across America and according to FBI director James B. Comey the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers that has come in the wake of highly publicized incidents of police brutality may be the main reason for the recent increase in violent crime. “I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year," says Comey adding that he has been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations. That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country’s most violent cities. Officers tell Comey that youths surround police when they get out of their vehicles, taunting them and making videos of the spectacle with their cell phones. “In today’s YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime,” says Comey. “Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns.”

Dave Itzkoff writes in the NYT that years after their deaths Andy Kaufman and Redd Foxx will be united in a most unlikely way as Hologram USA, a technology company that specializes in visual recreations of celebrities, will present shows with hologramic likenesses of Andy Kaufman and Redd Foxx across the country. “They’re comedy icons. Both of them influenced so many comedians after them,” says Alki David adding that the company is “working with other estates of famous funny guys and funny girls, these just happened to be amenable estates who see the vision.” David says that the hologram shows featuring these comedians would include some of their best-known material — say, Andy Kaufman lip-syncing the “Mighty Mouse” theme on the debut episode of “Saturday Night Live” — as well as narrative segments that dramatize biographical details. The shows will have residencies in multiple locations in tourist-oriented cities across the country and will play several times a day for the first year and then eventually be put on a rotation with other acts. As for the future, "there are an awful lot of dead celebrities,” concludes David. “There are an awful lot of dead people with a lot of followers. The fresher the memory, the bigger the star.”

James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that for the past 16 years Walmart has often acted as though it hoped Amazon would just go away. When Walmart announced last week that it was significantly increasing its investment in e-commerce, it tacitly acknowledged that it had fallen far behind Amazon in the race for online customers. Now, the magnitude of the task it faces has grown exponentially as e-commerce growth continues to surge globally. “Walmart.com has been severely mismanaged,” says Burt P. Flickinger III. “Walmart would go a few years and invest strategically and significantly in e-commerce, then other years it wouldn’t.Meanwhile, Amazon is making moves in e-commerce that’s put Walmart so far behind that it might not be able to catch up for 10 more years, if ever.”

In 1999, Amazon was a fledgling company with annual revenue of $1.6 billion; Walmart’s was about $138 billion. By last year, Amazon’s revenue was about 54 times what it was in 1999, nearly $89 billion, almost all of it from online sales. Walmart’s was about three times what it was 15 years before, almost $486 billion, and only a small fraction of that — 2.5 percent, or $12.2 billion — came from Walmart.com. Walmart’s superefficient distribution system — a function of its enormous volume and geographic reach — was long the secret to Walmart’s immense profitability. Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart spokesman, says that Walmart is building vast new fulfillment centers and is rapidly enhancing its delivery capabilities to take advantage of its extensive store network to provide convenient in-store pickup and adds that 70 percent of the American population lives within five miles of a Walmart store. “This is where e-commerce is headed,” says Jariwala, which is to a hybrid online/in-store model. “Customers want the accessibility and immediacy of a physical store,” along with the benefits of online shopping.

After 30 years in use, the US Army’s official handgun, the Beretta M9 pistol, is being retired and AP reports that firearms manufacturers are competing for a rare chance to sell the US. Army a new handgun that would replace the current Cold War-era model. Critics say the M9 is too bulky for small-handed shooters, troops who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan complain it's not as hard-hitting as they would like, and it can't easily accommodate the accessories now common in the civilian firearms market, such as swappable gun-sights or gun-mounted lights. “It’s a little one size-fits-most” says Rodney Briggs.. “It’s been around for a really, really long time, and it’s just old and outdated.”

Army has a lengthy list of requirements. Among them, it wants a handgun with an adjustable grip that can easily fit large or small hands. That way, shooters don't have to adjust their grip mid-fight to operate hard-to-reach buttons or levers. The gun should accommodate sights that make it easier to shoot in low light. It should have a rail on which soldiers can easily attach additional equipment, like infrared pointers. The military also wants a gun that can be equipped with a suppressor, which muffles the sound of gunshots. Beretta intends to enter a new pistol called the APX into the competition. The new gun is a major engineering departure from the M9. It has a polymer frame like more recent handguns and can meet the Army's other requirements. Beretta has publicly complained that the government never formally requested efforts to improve its M9, which the company said is a standard procedure for upgrading platforms. “If you look at the history… for a variety of weapons, you’ll find all along we’ll have used spiral development, product improvement. Where was the requirement they notify prime contractor with an opportunity to fix the problem?” says Howard Yellen, a military adviser for Beretta.