Money and Computing

The National Institutes of Health has begun a clinical trial to assess the antibody response to an extra dose of an authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine in people with autoimmune disease who did not respond to an original COVID-19 vaccine regimen. The trial also will investigate whether pausing immunosuppressive therapy for autoimmune disease improves the antibody response to an extra dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in this population. The Phase 2 trial is sponsored and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, and is being conducted by the NIAID-funded Autoimmunity Centers of Excellence. more »

The Path Ahead: Maximum Employment - The outlook for the labor market has brightened considerably in recent months. After faltering last winter, job gains have risen steadily over the course of this year and now average 832,000 over the past three months, of which almost 800,000 have been in services (figure 2). The pace of total hiring is faster than at any time in the recorded data before the pandemic. The levels of job openings and quits are at record highs, and employers report that they cannot fill jobs fast enough to meet returning demand. These favorable conditions for job seekers should help the economy cover the considerable remaining ground to reach maximum employment. The unemployment rate has declined to 5.4 percent, a post-pandemic low, but is still much too high, and the reported rate understates the amount of labor market slack.5 Long-term unemployment remains elevated, and the recovery in labor force participation has lagged well behind the rest of the labor market, as it has in past recoveries. more »

The largest county in the United States in 2020 remains Los Angeles County with over 10 million people. The largest city (incorporated place) in the United States in 2020 remains New York with 8.8 million people. 312 of the 384 U.S. metro areas gained population between 2010 and 2020. The fastest-growing U.S. metro area between the 2010 Census and 2020 Census was The Villages, FL, which grew 39% from about 93,000 people to about 130,000 people. 72 U.S. metro areas lost population from the 2010 Census to the 2020 Census. The U.S. metro areas with the largest percentage declines were Pine Bluff, AR, and Danville, IL, at -12.5 percent and -9.1 percent, respectively. The largest county in the United States in 2020 remains Los Angeles County with over 10 million people. more »

Julia Sneden wrote: At the age of 37, I started a new career as a kindergarten teacher. My first day on the job, the lead teacher, who was in her 70's and scared me every bit as much as she scared the children, watched me writing a note. "You'll have to change the way you hold your pencil," she said. "Excuse me?" I replied, looking down at my hand. "You're using your thumb and middle finger to control the pencil," she said disapprovingly. "You're supposed to hold it between thumb and pointer, with tall-man tucked firmly away. It would be very bad for the children to see a teacher holding her pencil like that." The battle of the pencil grip was bad enough, but the first time she saw me cutting a piece of paper with the blunt-nosed, child sized scissors, she threw up her hands in horror. "What kind of teachers did you have?" she snapped. "Don't you know that you're supposed to put your thumb and middle finger into the handle loops of those scissors, and stretch your pointer finger straight out beside the blades in the direction you want to cut? You have your thumb and pointer in the handles!" more »