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Tardy Tests: K-12 testing delay keeps teacher out of work

Natalie Andrus Fleming is a school psychologist based at the Asa Messer Elementary school in Providence. On Wednesday, September 16, the third day after schools partially reopened in Providence, one of two cities in RI that were not approved for full in-person reopening due to high COVID-19 rates, Fleming said she was directed to stop […]

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Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Book review

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a rare example of the fortunate academic whose subject matter, through no actions of her own, becomes of intense public interest. What she spent a career studying was the rise of Benito Mussolini, the early 20th Century radical who subverted the institutions of democracy to turn Italy into a dictatorship – and […]

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Surviving and Thriving: Vegan, vegetarian eateries face the pandemic in PVD and Pawtucket

Prior to the pandemic, you could often find Rob and Uschi Yaffe seated at the end of a long, reclaimed wood table in the middle of their casual fine dining restaurant, the Grange. The brunch rush bustling around them; mason jars filled with sweet tea and tart lemon wedges or strawberry and peanut butter smoothies […]

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Math Behind Group Size Limits in the Pandemic

In RI, during the COVID-19 emergency Gov. Gina Raimondo has limited informal social gatherings to no more than 15 people and in-person school classrooms to stable groups of no more than 30 students. Where do these numbers come from? The governor has described them as “judgment calls,” but she is not just arbitrarily picking numbers. […]

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Chazan! Unfiltered: Art and medicine collide in this locally produced biographical graphic novel

Dr. Joseph Chazan, like the character Billy Pilgrim in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, is unstuck in time. The phenomenon is localized in a new graphic novel Chazan! Unfiltered, which takes a here-there-and-back-again approach to his personal and professional life story. Rhode Island’s own Dr. Chazan is a nephrologist (in layman’s terms, a kidney doctor), and while […]

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Fall in the Stars: Mother Nature begins to doze, but society does not

Autumn officially begins on September 22, 2020 at 9:30am EDT. Mars, having turned retrograde at the beginning of the month, sits at a harsh angle to the big three in Capricorn: Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto. Mars, having rolled over these three while in direct motion during August, is prepared to roll back over, taking jabs […]

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Get a Flu Shot to Prevent a “Twindemic”: Health experts say vaccinations are more important than ever

“Twindemic” is the trendy buzzword for the nightmare scenario in the medical community right now: seasonal influenza rampaging at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic, two respiratory illnesses with similar symptoms – fever, headache, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, fatigue – stressing health care resources, especially hospital beds. “Getting vaccinated against the flu is […]

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