Beleaguered Presidents

Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Death: Closing the Constitution's Succession Gap

Underwriting the presidents.

The United States has had 43 presidents. We examined whether they survive significantly longer or shorter than their contemporaries. We found that survival was better for presidents elected in the 1789-1841 and 1933-2001 periods (SMRs of 0.7 and 0.6, respectively), but worse for those elected in 1845-1929 (SMR = 2.9). We also found increased mortality during the years lived in office (SMR = 1.4...

Presidents who value science.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 323 13 FEBRUARY 2009 843 COVER An image of Mare Moscoviense on the lunar farside, taken by the Terrain Camera aboard the SELENE (Kaguya) spacecraft on 17 January 2008. Crater frequency distributions derived from such images yield ages of about 2.5 billion years for several volcanic deposits in this mare, indicating that volcanism on the lunar farside lasted about ...

HIV prevention: new pilots for beleaguered Swaziland.

The good news is that the incidence of HIV in the Kingdom of Swaziland has stabilised over the past 5 years. The bad news is that it is still 31% among adults aged 18–49 years and, alarmingly, 43% among pregnant women. All told, an estimated 201 292 Swazis were HIV-positive in 2012, despite intensive eff orts to mitigate the epidemic. The government provides antiretroviral treatment (ART) and, ...

Which presidents are most memorable?

BACKGROUND/RATIONALE Episodic memory loss is a hall-mark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), with recall of recent events becoming progressively difficult. A commonly used tool, the recollection of US presidents, was assessed in evaluating episodic versus semantic memory loss among AD patients compared with spouse controls. METHODS A total of 36 patients (12 men, 24 women) with possible or probable ...