Generally, no, universities classify graduate students as students, not employees. Stanford additionally classifies postdocs as students and charges their funding source a nominal tuition fee.
> A Stanford postdoctoral scholar is a non-matriculated trainee, in graduate student status, in residence at Stanford University pursuing advanced studies beyond the doctoral level in preparation for an independent career.
This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, which of course benefits Stanford's tax situation considerably.
It depends on the source of the funds and the nature of the postdoc’s duties. If the postdoc is on a “fellowship”, either paid by the university or by something like an NIH trainee fellowship, then they are not employees. If the employee is hired to do work for a project, on the other hand, which is typical when funded on an NSF or DARPA grant, then they are employees. This is MIT’s info page, which I believe is reasonably representative: https://postdocs.mit.edu/postdoctoral-position/defining-post...
Science had an article on that in 2002 that went into more detail on how this system came about (basically, vague laws that have ended up interpreted through a series of IRS rulings). I think but am not 100% sure that even though this article is about 20 years old, the current situation is still similar. https://www.science.org/content/article/postdocs-and-law-par...
But still, I doubt you would have found many grad students who were independently wealthy before unionization. Or at least, in the field where they were lobbying the hardest for unionization, is probably where the most independently wealthy students were.
That's hardly an apples to apples comparison. A typical American has around 100 ng/mL selenium in their blood. By your logic, that's a toxic heavy metal that's ten times as bad as PFAS in terms of concentration. It's actually an essential cofactor in many biological processes. I'm not implying PFAS is harmless, but the dose makes the poison and it depends what biological processes are being interfered with.
If you consider phosgene and HCl to be "benign" based on their half life sure, but this assumes complete combustion. The cloud of visible black smoke emitted shows that clearly didn't happen. Partially combusted vinyl chloride monomer is some horrible mix of carcinogens that will contaminate the area for years.
How do protected cycle lanes mitigate the crash types in the article? I see how they may prevent getting rear ended or doored, but all the intersection conflict points remain and in many cases are exacerbated by the "protection." I've seen lane designs that force cyclists to pass right turning cars on the right at intersections. Often the barriers reduce visibility and tell drivers they don't have to be aware of bikes, increasing the chances for conflict. While infrastructure does need to be improved, I don't think this is a complete solution.
Pretty simple, cycles get their own cycle on lights at crossing, and you ban right turns on red. Right turns on red are such a stupid idea, a tiny time saving for a minority of people, but a huge increase in risk for vulnerable road users.
As for branch junctions along the road, priority is given to bikes going in the direction of traffic, and you build tables across the junction, reduce junction radius, both force cars to slow down when turning into junctions, and make it clear they need to look for other road users.
These are all solved problems. The Netherlands publishes an extremely well respected guide on exactly how to build people-centric road infrastructure that massively reduces collisions and road incidents. There’s no need to reinvent anything, just look at countries that have road death rates at a fraction of what the US has.
>Hans Monderman (19 November 1945 – 7 January 2008) was a Dutch road traffic engineer and innovator. He was recognised for radically challenging the criteria used to evaluate engineering solutions for street design. His work compelled transportation planners and highway engineers to look afresh at the way people and technology relate to each other.
>His design approach is the concept of "shared space", an urban design approach that seeks to minimise demarcations between vehicle traffic and pedestrians, often by removing features such as kerbs, road surface markings, traffic signs, and regulations. Monderman found that the traffic efficiency and safety improved when the street and surrounding public space was redesigned to encourage each person to negotiate their movement directly with others.
Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space.
This guy didn't do a lot of research when he picked chronic spontaneous urticaria as the target human indication. There already is an effective biologic, omalizumab, that works on the majority of patients and has no side effects (source: I have CSU/pressure urticaria). Cyclosporine is a heavy duty immunosuppressant with side effects that are worse than hives, imo, so I'm not sure what the target market would be. Personally I'd rather not take the risks of being seriously immunosuppressed, even if it meant getting hives. And, it was the drug my immunologist wanted me to try next if the biologic didn't work, so it's already being prescribed off label.
I use Amber to do similar calculations. It's distributed as a free set of analysis and preparatory programs called AmberTools, which is the V15 software cited, and a licensed simulation program, which is v10. Interestingly, that is a super old version (usually it's released every other year or so with the number corresponding to the year)
> A Stanford postdoctoral scholar is a non-matriculated trainee, in graduate student status, in residence at Stanford University pursuing advanced studies beyond the doctoral level in preparation for an independent career.
This makes doing taxes as a postdoc extremely irritating as the stipend is not earned income, which of course benefits Stanford's tax situation considerably.