We have to wear N95s in the medical profession if we are interacting with a patient with suspected or confirmed active tuberculosis. They are, indeed, miserable to wear. Try performing a complicated procedure that is hard enough normally with a mask crushing your face and the constant feeling of suffocation.

CS was a popular elective in my school (class of 2002). Full copying and pasting of programs, including the comments was routine for nearly the entire class. Even interested students such as myself (I had had some programming experience at a...computer camp in junior high), didn't really have the opportunity to learn anything from the teacher or write programs because of the attitude in the class. Of note, there were a lot of gifted & talented / AP / whatever students in the class that actually had rather high academic achievement in high school but the class had become a such a joke that even they copied and pasted the programs.

Of course, this is an isolated school. I'm sure things go differently in different schools, but I am sure code plagiarism (is that even the right term? I am not a programmer by trade) is fairly common when you get a high school teacher that is teaching out of the book and doesn't really care about the source codes as long as the programs compile and she can check the "pass" box in the grade book for the assignment.

We actually learned some true basic when I was in 4th-6th grade as a part of the gifted curriculum, and I received far more teaching at that time despite it not even being a full CS course...probably because the teacher actually cared.

Keep in mind that studies have shown that we only read the beginning and end of the words to save time, particularly when we are in a rush. Therefore astr - onom - y and astro - log - y can be interchangeable depending on how quickly you are reading. In the context of a survey that is predominantly concerned with science, your brain is most likely to spit out the definition for astronomy if it only receives astro **** y as input. The US has its fair share of idiots, but I'll bet that a significant amount of the 40 percent that "confused" the two actually know the difference.

P.S. I am too lazy to provide a citation because my psych 101 textbook has been in a landfill for 10 years and google did not immediately return the result I wanted.

1) Absorption of the xray beam is not just based on a material's electron density. The contrast media we use today have a k-shell energy in the mid 30 kev which causes a sharp increase in the amount of absorption due to the photoelectric effect proportional to compton scatter. This means they have a higher absorption at these energies than their atomic number would indicate. Gallium's atomic number is lower than iodine's and its k edge is at 10 kev rather than in the 30s. I find it hard to believe that it provides better contrast resolution AT SIMILAR DOSES than iodine based contrast media. The actual paper (http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1311/1311.6717.pdf) does not discuss the dose of gallium administered but based on the images I would assume they completely filled the coronary vasculature with gallium. This would not be compatible with life.

2) We have administered gallium 67 salts intravenously for medical imaging for decades, although it is out favor these days due to relative inferiority to newer imaging agents such as FDG-F18. Since the isotope is emitting photons out of the patient rather than us shooting photons into the patient and depending on gallium to absorb them, the doses are much lower for the type of imaging currently used than they would have to be for the proposed use as a contrast agent. As described above, completely replacing the blood with gallium to perform conventional or CT angiography would not be compatible with life.

Source: Radiology Society of North America physics modules http://www.rsna.org/RSNA/AAPM_Online_Physics_Modules_.aspx (massive paywall)

You seem to be postulating that the use of Facebook is indicative of low intelligence. As a recent graduate of a top 20 medical school, I can confidently say that greater than 80 percent of my peers use Facebook. The percentage is similar in my residency program. Are you saying that hundreds of at least moderately intelligent people with the motivation to go through four years of college, four years of medical school, and 3 or more years of residency are not candidates for your company because we choose to occasionally interact via an electronic medium with which you are not comfortable? If your hiring practices are subject to such idiotic generalizations, then you will stay "smallish" or go bankrupt very quickly.

"administrative action or termination." ...OR termination? Every single one of them should have been fired at the least. If I looked up an ex girlfriend on the electronic medical record system I'm logged into right now, I would be subject to a $50,000 dollar fine and a year in prison even after being fired ( AMA HIPAA penalties page). This kind of abuse of access to privileged information similar to a HIPAA violation, except double illegal since most of the surveillance has no legal basis either.