Surgeon specialization and operative mortality in United States: retrospective analysis.

Objective:  To measure the association between a surgeon's degree of specialization in a specific procedure and patient mortality.

Design:  Retrospective analysis of Medicare data.

Setting:  US patients aged 66 or older enrolled in traditional fee for service Medicare.

Navigating Government Service as a Physician.

Working in government can be a remarkable life experience for anyone but particularly for those who have trained in the worlds of medicine and public health. This article describes some lessons learned from a physician initially based in academic medicine and public health who has since spent more than a decade serving in leadership positions at the state and federal levels. Many of the described themes about policy making can guide health professionals who wish to understand and ultimately contribute to the public sector.

Climate sensitivity uncertainty: when is good news bad?

Climate change is real and dangerous. Exactly how bad it will get, however, is uncertain. Uncertainty is particularly relevant for estimates of one of the key parameters: equilibrium climate sensitivity--how eventual temperatures will react as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations double.

Stratospheric controlled perturbation experiment: a small-scale experiment to improve understanding of the risks of solar geoengineering.

Although solar radiation management (SRM) through stratospheric aerosol methods has the potential to mitigate impacts of climate change, our current knowledge of stratospheric processes suggests that these methods may entail significant risks. In addition to the risks associated with current knowledge, the possibility of 'unknown unknowns' exists that could significantly alter the risk assessment relative to our current understanding. While laboratory experimentation can improve the current state of knowledge and atmospheric models can assess large-scale climate response, they cannot capture possible unknown chemistry or represent the full range of interactive atmospheric chemical physics.