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New Numbers Present Sony’s Case For Abandoning PlayStation Discs
While Sony has been shamed out of many fan-hated changes over the years, that was never going to be the case for its decision to abandon physical discs starting in 2028.
Piitch-timer gamesmanship triggers scuffle between Pirates, Yankees
New York Yankees shortstop Jose Caballero triggered a benches-clearing scuffle with the Pittsburgh Pirates through manipulation of MLB's pitch clock.
Laredo Public Health continues ABA caregiver workshop series
The Laredo Public Health Department will host the fourth session of its ABA Parent & Caregiver Workshop series, focusing on teaching life skills and independence for kids with special care...
Extreme heat is eroding health, productivity and incomes of Dhaka’s informal workers
DHAKA — On June 28, as the afternoon sun beat down on Bangladesh capital Dhaka’s sprawling Tejgaon neighborhood, Samiha Begum gathered her two school-aged children and headed for the shade of Hatirjheel Lake. Their narrow one-room home in a nearby slum had become unbearable. She said, “The room starts heating up as soon as the […]
Jumbo Package: Alabama Basketball adds a 7-footer for 2026
You wanted big men? Nate Oats got a BIG man
9 Vitamins and Supplements That May Support Brain Health
Certain vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats benefit brain health by supporting nerve function, protecting brain cells from damage, and improving focus.
2026 FIFA World Cup
2026 FIFA Men's World Cup news, live scores, schedules, live streams, stats, standings, bracket and more from NBC Sports
Michigan extends key tax breaks for billions of dollars of real estate development in Detroit
Real estate developers are breathing a sigh of relief now that state lawmakers have agreed to an extension of two key property tax abatements used for projects around Michigan.
Abacus Health Solutions Named Preferred Vendor of American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration
Abacus Health Solutions, a leader in chronic disease management solutions, has been selected to join the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration Preferred Partner Program (AP3), a trusted network of vetted organizations serving healthcare employers nationwide.
Jose Caballero's "routine'' sparks Yankees-Pirates bench clearer
Pirates' reliever Dennis Santana's overreaction to Jose Caballero's habitual, but legal, stall tactics at the plate led to an eighth inning incident.
Should Rangers Pursue Struggling Yankees Reliever?
The New York Yankees aren't traditional sellers, but they have a reliever in Camilo Doval who's been named a fit for the Texas Rangers.
Miami Dolphins Discussion: You Just Knew But Were Wrong Edition
We ask Miami Dolphins fans which past player they beieved would be a star for the team but ultimatly were busts.
UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans wanted one image to say, “Hey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,” I could provide that image. Here it is: (Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn’t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.) Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen “Top 30” list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June. So if you’re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that’s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week. Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I’ll explain today in the first part of this week’s Streaming Ratings Report—for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June—which is a double issue since I’ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+’s strategy, so it merited its own article. Let’s dive in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Check Out My Interview on UFC 250 at MMA Draw After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here: [ The MMA Draw Newsletter Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future… Read more a day ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold ](https://www.themmadraw.com/p/did-paramount-really-overpay-for?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) I never thought I’d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them. Check the article and their newsletter out! Paramount+ Has Its Best Sporting Event of All Time…But Was It Worth It? Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let’s talk about what we can’t say. Namely, let’s start with the lack of comparisons. First off, I’d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+…but we don’t have the data. This is the first time we’ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary datecdote (saying it had “an average minute audience” of 5 million “views”) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets. We also can’t compare this fight to other fights/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn’t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for TVision and VideoAmp, respectively. (This isn’t Paramount’s fault, but does still suck.) We also can’t compare to UFC’s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don’t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn’t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be apples-to-apples. Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be apples-to-apples. That didn’t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights. Duh. Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That’s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things “Econ 101” that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it’s not! Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially “free” if you’re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They’re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996…which is over $100 in today’s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight! Again, streaming is essentially “free”. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we’re talking about and what tier you’re on. No wonder more people are “watching”. (Plus, Nielsen’s out-of-home viewing also helps these numbers.) UFC Freedom 250 Did Well…But I Have A Lot of Worries So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.) That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then…I can compare this viewership to the NFL: And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I’d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it’s not impressive at all: We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup: Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours. We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of “is this a good investment?” and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs: The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now. Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that’s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they’re leaked to the press.1 I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I’d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren’t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite/pet show, and that just doesn’t make sense. The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount’s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport. UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar—say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon—but they’ll be fewer and far between. Was This Deal Worth It? All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it? In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount’s own data is to be believed. And it’s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller. And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA’s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it’s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn’t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad. But two overpays don’t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old cliché about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much. Share 1 I would love regular reports on subscriber additions by programs, but as is, it’s mostly leaked or rumored in haphazard ways.
Alabama health officials report 28 cases of Cyclospora amid national outbreak
The Alabama Department of Public Health has reported 28 confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis in the state as of July 20, as part of an ongoing national outbreak.
WHO evacuated health workers from Ebola treatment center due to armed clashes
On July 15, gunfire erupted between armed groups near an Ebola Treatment Center (ETC) in Nyankunde (or Nyakunde), located 45 kilometers (28 miles) southwest of Bunia in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Following the fighting, medical personnel from the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa CDC and the NGO Samaritan’s Purse evacuated from Nyankunde, […]
3 storylines for Alabama football entering 2026 SEC media days
Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is likely to speak on a variety of topics at 2026 SEC media days, most notably the Crimson Tide's quarterback battle.
Monitoring the health of NH bats requires a little eavesdropping
A group of bat advocates, including scientists at UNH, NH Fish and Game and volunteers have been working together to monitor the health of the state’s bats.
Shaky political "science": breakdown of the peer review process
[This article is the latest in our “Shaky Political Science” series. In our 38 page report, “Shaky political ‘science’ misses mark on ranked choice voting,” released in December 2025, we examined over 40 studies focused on ranked choice voting (RCV). Many of these studies suffered from puzzling research methodologies, poorly constructed surveys, unrealistic simulated elections, cherry picked data and faulty analyses that often were contradicted by results from real-world elections (a link to our full paper is here). Here are links to the first four articles in our series: the first one summarizing the overall results of our report; the second one analyzed a study co-authored by University of Minnesota academic Larry Jacobs, which was one of the most error-prone of all the research we reviewed in our report; a third article showing an admirable example of two political scientists holding two other political scientists accountable for their flawed, sloppy research; and a fourth article that analyzed seven studies sponsored by New America’s political reform program that deployed flawed methodology based on “simulated” elections instead of real-world elections, which when combined with some basic misunderstandings of RCV, produced odd and misleading results]. In this fifth article in our “Shaky Political Science” series, we examine two flawed studies on the impact of RCV on voter turnout authored by San Francisco State University professor Jason McDaniel. McDaniel’s research in these two papers stands out for its puzzling methodology, inadequate and cherry-picked data, and faulty analyses that not only misunderstands ranked choice voting but reflects a basic misunderstanding of politics in general. The first of the McDaniel studies actually passed through a peer review process and then was subsequently published by the Journal of Urban Affairs, despite its obvious errors. It is perplexing that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the errors and send it back to McDaniel for a rewrite or outright rejection. This calls into question the credibility of the peer review process itself. The peer review process is supposed to represent the intellectual pinnacle of the profession – a way for academics to certify the quality of each other’s work, and to act as a check against sloppy research. In the case of the McDaniel study, the peer review process failed. Yet his flawed study has been cited dozens of times by other political scientists in their own flawed works — an unvirtuous circle of academic research. Here is the first Jason McDaniel study that we analyzed: “Writing the Rules to Rank the Candidates: Examining the Impact of Instant-Runoff Voting on Racial Group Turnout in San Francisco Mayoral Elections,” by Jason McDaniel, 2016, Journal of Urban Affairs. This study covered San Francisco’s use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in mayoral elections, purporting to show that RCV reduces voter turnout overall, increases voter errors, and has a negative impact on “marginal populations,” i.e. racial minorities, mainly as the result of the alleged complexity of RCV asking voters to rank candidates and having to be familiar with multiple candidates and related dynamics. McDaniel reached these conclusions by examining five San Francisco mayoral elections taking place in odd years (i.e. where there are no federal or state races on the ballot) from 1995 to 2011, comparing three earlier non-RCV races (in 1995, 1999 and 2003) with the later two RCV races (in 2007 and 2011). Only two RCV races were studied, and as McDaniel acknowledged, only the contest in 2011 was “competitive” (that contest in 2007 was the first mayoral election using RCV, and incumbent mayor Gavin Newsom won easily in the first round of counting, earning 74% of first choices and far ahead of the second place candidate who had just 6.3% of first choices). Yet even the allegedly competitive contest in 2011was won by an incumbent with a landslide margin of nearly 20 points. No other elections were studied by McDaniel, even though San Francisco elects 17 other offices besides mayor with RCV, including the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors (the name for the city council) in even years, and six other citywide offices in odd years. Previous academic research has found that competitive elections can stimulate greater voter involvement and higher turnout. For unexplained reasons, this study ignored at least 34 other RCV races between the years 2004 to 2011, many of which were very competitive and had high voter turnout. Instead, McDaniel’s analysis based its conclusions on data from only a single, marginally-competitive mayor’s race using RCV. These 2007 and 2011 mayoral elections were the only two RCV elections that McDaniel used as the sole basis for his small data set to determine the impact of RCV on voter turnout. Despite having no meaningful data to inform his study, McDaniel nonetheless concluded that RCV lowered turnout when compared to the previous three mayoral non-RCV elections using two-round runoffs. Then, using the same inadequate database of San Francisco elections, McDaniel also found that “Instant-runoff voting is associated with a significant decline in Black voter turnout and White voter turnout…On average, Black voter turnout decreases by 18 points and White voter turnout decreases by 16 points …” But how could he credibly arrive at that conclusion when his study was based on voter turnout in two RCV contests that were not even remotely competitive? Beyond that, McDaniel tacitly admits that the key determining factor driving Black voter turnout was not RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable Black candidate. McDaniel wrote, “Black voter turnout was about 17 percentage points higher for the two elections that featured an African American candidate compared to the three elections that did not” — but one of those three elections did not use RCV. The same dynamic was present for White voter turnout, in which higher turnout was not correlated with RCV vs non-RCV elections, but the presence of a viable White candidate. Beyond that, McDaniel’s voter turnout results, whether correlated with the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections, showed no clear patterns. In his Figure 1, he shows low Asian voter turnout in the non-RCV elections in 1999 and 2003 when there was no viable Asian candidate running, but in the 2007 mayoral election using RCV, there is still no viable Asian candidate, yet Asian turnout increases dramatically. For Latinos, voter turnout is virtually the same in 1999 (no viable Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2003 (leading Latino candidate, non-RCV elections), 2007 (no viable Latino candidate, RCV elections) and 2011 (leading Latino candidate, RCV elections). Meanwhile White voter turnout increased dramatically from a low in the 2007 mayoral election, in which the leading candidate was a white incumbent, to the 2011 election in which there were no leading white candidates that finished any higher than sixth place with 5.6% of the vote. Clearly other factors were determining voter turnout than either the race of the candidates or RCV vs non-RCV elections. Despite these inconsistent findings, McDaniel boldly marches forth to render conclusions about the impact of RCV on different groups of racial voters, even though his conclusions are not remotely supported by his data. This looks like the worst kind of “data cherry picking” to cover up a puzzling conclusion based on a poor data set involving only two RCV elections, neither of which were remotely competitive. McDaniel’s cherry picking didn’t stop there. In calculating voter turnout for the three non-RCV mayoral elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003, he failed to mention that in each of these years there was a two-round runoff election, with a first round election in November in which no candidate garnered a winning majority of the vote, followed by the decisive runoff in December. So there were two non-RCV elections in each election year. But McDaniel only decided to include one of the two elections in his data set, apparently the December runoff in each year (which had higher turnout in two out of the three mayor’s races, and lower turnout in the third). So he ignored the November 1995 election, the November 1999 election when turnout was only 45 percent, and the November 2003 election when turnout was only 45.7 percent. This is flawed methodology based on blatant cherry picking, since McDaniel simply omitted three elections worth of data that did not fit within his frame. His study should never have made it through a peer review process, and it is an embarrassment to political science that not only was it approved for publication, but it has been uncritically cited by dozens of other political scientists. Share A “study” without wider context or credible data Lacking a data set that included even a single competitive RCV mayoral race, McDaniel declared that RCV lowered voter turnout in 2011, when turnout was 42.5 percent. But he also ignored -- or did not realize -- that voter turnout in mayoral elections during 2011 had sharply declined in all big cities, including far more steeply in nearby Los Angeles and other cities. In fact, San Francisco’s election in 2011 had the second highest turnout of any mayoral election in the nation’s 22 largest cities from 2008-2011. Was 2011 just a particularly low turnout year all across the country, perhaps because the country was still reeling from the aftermath of the housing market collapse in 2008-2010? McDaniel ignored this factor and did not search for alternative explanations beyond his flawed thesis. Furthermore, while McDaniel suggested that RCV leads to more “overvotes” – which is an invalidated ballot in which a voter, in either a non-RCV or RCV race, makes a mistake and selects two candidates for a single choice – he failed to address that in the June 2012 US Senate primary contest, which used the typical “one-choice” plurality method and did not use RCV, there was more than five times as many overvotes in San Francisco and Oakland than in the RCV mayoral elections in those cities. Additionally, turnout had been significantly higher and more representative in RCV elections for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors races -- that McDaniel didn’t even bother to study -- as compared to previous “delayed two-round runoffs” for those offices, often higher by as much as 40% in the RCV races. Perhaps the most surprising irony was that an earlier study co-authored by McDaniel (Overvoting and the Equality of Voice under Instant-Runoff Voting in San Francisco by Francis Neely and Jason McDaniel, 2015, California Journal of Politics and Policy) found that overvotes are often more common in lower-income precincts, but that the pattern of overvoting is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. Wrote Neely and McDaniel: “[Overvote] errors appear to be a function of complexity in general and not IRV per se…. the pattern of overvoting is similar in both IRV and non-IRV contests…Even among votes cast in a top-of-the-ticket race like U.S. Senate, overvoting occurs in an uneven fashion” (IRV, or ‘instant runoff voting,’ is another name for ranked choice voting in single-winner contests). So McDaniel not only contradicted his own conclusion in his earlier study with Neely, but the earlier study had been an important corrective for one of the most frequently made mistakes made by anti-RCV political scientists – a continual failure to provide crucial context by pairing a comparative analysis of real world RCV elections with an analysis of real world plurality or other electoral methods. Unfortunately McDaniel’s earlier study does not get cited much by other researchers, and McDaniel did not even cite it in his own flawed study analyzed above. Incredibly, McDaniel cherrypicked McDaniel, even as his flawed study has been cited dozens of times. Despite being a textbook example of poor political “science,” featuring both inadequate as well as cherrypicked data, the shelf life of McDaniel’s study has been extended endlessly by other political scientists and media outlets who have cited it uncritically. Equally troubling, the Journal of Urban Affairs put this paper through its peer review process and published it despite its numerous flaws. McDaniel gets it wrong, Part II Not content with producing one shoddy, confused paper, McDaniel produced another one a few years later, here is the link: Electoral Rules and Voter Turnout in Mayoral Elections: An Analysis of Ranked-Choice Voting by Jason McDaniel. San Francisco State Univ. (McDaniel, 2019). In this paper, McDaniel extended his previous flawed research focused on San Francisco, about voter turnout and voter impact, to multiple RCV cities through the 2018 elections. In his data set he included San Francisco, Minneapolis, St Paul, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro and Santa Fe. He then compared their turnout in mayoral elections to non-RCV cities, and to mayoral elections in those cities held before first RCV usage, and concluded “a significant decrease in voter turnout of approximately 3–5 percentage points in RCV cities after the implementation of RCV.” But he replicated many of the same mistakes as his first study presented above. While in this study McDaniel attempted to distinguish between various factors, such as odd year vs. even year elections, competitive races vs. noncompetitive, contests with open seats and other factors, the analysis is superficial and inadequate. He attempts to incorporate so many often-conflicting variables that his conclusions are once again unsupported by the actual data, and ultimately unconvincing (this second study never underwent a peer review process). For example, McDaniel declared that for RCV cities “in elections that are more competitive than average (margin of victory less than 20%), there is no significant RCV effect on voter turnout.” Yet McDaniel is a professor in a city, San Francisco, in which the 2018 special election using RCV to fill a mayoral vacancy was exceedingly close, decided by a margin of only one percentage point, and resulted in the second highest turnout in San Francisco history for a mayoral election. Illustrating the complexity involved in assessing the critical factors in turnout, that special election was held on the same election day as federal and state offices, which tends to boost turnout. Yet more voters participated in that RCV mayoral election than voted on the same day in the non-RCV primary for governor in which former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom was running. Even more puzzling, in this study McDaniel inaccurately cited his own previous study from 2015 with Neely. McDaniel wrote, “Neely and McDaniel (2015) examine individual ballot image files within a natural experiment, and find higher rates of ballot errors in RCV elections compared to non-RCV elections” (emphasis added). However, we quoted from that 2015 study several paragraphs above, and in actual fact Neely and McDaniel actually concluded the opposite -- that the pattern of overvoting – which is the most common form of ballot error – is similar in both RCV and non-RCV contests. McDaniel also ignored the fact that in Bay Area RCV elections held in even years – at the same time as federal and state elections, when turnout is highest -- the “undervote” (that is, the dropoff in ballots cast for governor or mayor) has declined, which contradicts his thesis that the act of ranking ballots in RCV elections is too complex and presents a barrier for certain demographics of voters. To his credit, McDaniel actually acknowledged another contradiction in his own paper, which found a negative RCV turnout effect in some odd-year elections but not others, admitting that “may present a challenge to the theory that increased complexity [from RCV] will have a marginal negative effect on voter turnout.” But he tried to wallpaper over that contradiction by blaming it on an unlikely source -- bad election administration. McDaniels wrote, “This would suggest that the negative impact of RCV on voter participation may be alleviated by high quality election administration,” without presenting any data or even anecdotes to support such an unfounded theory. While competent election administration of any election, whether RCV or non-RCV, is crucially important, there is no credible research that supports the far-fetched notion that the quality of election administration has much of an impact on voter turnout in US elections, whether using RCV or otherwise. Upgrade to a $5 subscription The unvirtuous circle of academic research It is puzzling how McDaniel’s first study could have survived the peer review process for the Journal of Urban Affairs. The mistakes in McDaniel’s first study above should have been obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of ranked choice voting as well as elections in general, and elections in San Francisco specifically. It undermines faith in the credibility of the peer review process to think that a jury of peer political scientists did not catch the egregious errors and reject McDaniel’s sloppy research and paper. And it remains a black mark on political science that this thoroughly discredited study has been cited dozens of times by other researchers. Indeed, in our research paper it became apparent that many political scientists cite each other’s flawed research to pad their list of citations and to legitimize their own flawed research, creating an unvirtuous circle of political science. More broadly, McDaniel’s voter turnout studies, like other studies evaluating RCV’s impact on turnout, lacked a recognition that no credible opinion or research can claim that RCV increases voter turnout merely because so many voters are excited to vote for their favorite candidates instead of “lesser evil” candidates without worrying about spoilers. Instead, with respect to turnout, the advantage of RCV has always been that, in most places where it has been used, it has eliminated a pre-November primary or post-November runoff, which usually saw about half the turnout of the November general election. This is especially true during even years when there are state and federal elections on the ballot which substantially drive turnout more than local contests. Any study that does not adequately account for this non-November primary/runoff vs November general election dynamic, or odd year vs even year election factors, is simply not credible. Both of McDaniel’s studies largely failed on those grounds. Steven Hill and Paul Haughey Share Upgrade to a $5 subscription Thanks for reading DemocracySOS…your digital portal for the pro-democracy movement. Subscribe for only $5 per month to receive full benefits and to support our work. Subscribe
Trump calls for review after climate manual for judges withdrawn
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Perspective: Abandoning business
For businesses in our industry and similar sectors, the recent primary results were an alarming wake-up call that many read as “get out of Dodge, now.” To say that the results in both the Democratic and Republican primaries were surprising and disturbing to many in the business community would be an understatement. On the Republican […]
Perspective: Abandoning business
For businesses in our industry and similar sectors, the recent primary results were an alarming wake-up call that many read as “get out of Dodge, now.” To say that the results in both the Democratic and Republican primaries were surprising and disturbing to many in the business community would be an understatement. On the Republican […]
This Is The Alabama’s Biggest Question Entering 2026
Alabama enters the 2026 season with expectations as high as ever, but unlike many recent Crimson Tide teams, there is one glaring question that could determine whether Kalen DeBoer’s third season ends with a College Football Playoff run or another disappointing finish. Can Alabama finally establish a consistent running game? The numbers from last season…
Ali Abazeed talks about public health during air quality alert
Ali Abazeed serves as Chief Public Health Officer and Director of the Detroit Health Department. He joins Fox 2 to discuss how to treat patients during this air quality alert, and the best practices to maintain health over the next few days.
ARKANSAS A-Z: Black men’s business league embraced economic advances
The Arkansas Negro Business Men's League was created by prominent Black business and professional leaders at a meeting in Little Rock on Dec. 31, 1902-Jan 1, 1903. The state organization grew out of the National Negro Business League, created in 1900 and headed by Booker T. Washington, principal of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute and one of the most prominent spokesmen for Black communities at the time.
Kings' Alex Karaban: Tallies 14 points in SL victory
Kings' Alex Karaban: Tallies 14 points in SL victory
Indiana Finally Gets Anticipated Final Answer on 5-Star Recruit
After months of battling to land one of the best players in the nation, Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti comes through again with an incredible achievement.The Hoosiers have been in a recruiting battle for five-star standout wide receiver Monshun Sales. Indiana was going up against schools like Alabama, Texas, LSU, and Ohio State.Ultimately, at […] The post Indiana Finally Gets Anticipated Final Answer on 5-Star Recruit appeared first on HEAVY.
Florida politics weekly recap: Voter data, campaign cash and 2 lawmakers in court
President Donald Trump's national address renewed the debate over election security this week, while newly released intelligence records put a spotlight on publicly available Florida voter-registration data.
'The facts have not changed': States push back on allegations of non-citizens voting
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the agency will be going through state databases to review any cases of noncitizens voting. But states say their elections remain secure.
Fed rate-hike voices swell before July decision, rates still seen on hold
Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack on Friday added her voice to a small but growing chorus of policymakers arguing the Fed may need to raise short-term borrowing costs to deal with persistently high inflation, setting up a charged debate at the central bank's July 28-29 meeting.
Zoo Boise to temporarily close Africa section for giraffe health exam
According to a recent news release, Zoo Boise is taking a proactive approach to giraffe care, particularly for Jabari, the zoo's 16-year-old aging male giraffe,
China warns of reciprocal countermeasures after U.S. shortens foreign journalist visas
The Trump administration announced Thursday it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and prompting China to warn of possible reciprocal countermeasures.
Alabama students show significant gains in science proficiency; reading, math results mixed
By Andrea Tinker, Alabama Reflector Alabama students made significant improvements in science proficiency on this year’s Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP) standardized test, while the picture was somewhat more mixed on reading and math scores. According to data released by the Alabama State Department of Education on Tuesday, science proficiency went up for fourth, sixth […]
SEC football recruiting rankings after Niko Kampas' commitment
Updated 2027 SEC football recruiting rankings after Niko Kampas commits to Tennessee.
4 sentenced in burglary ring that targeted Asian American business owners in the Northwest
Four Colombian nationals were sentenced in federal court Tuesday for their roles in a multistate burglary ring that targeted Asian American business owners across Oregon and Washington state. Derinso...
Livestream: Mayor Sheffield, Detroit health chief to address wildfire smoke threat
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield, Chief Public Health Officer Ali Abazeed, and other city officials will hold a press conference to address the ongoing health risks from Canadian wildfire smoke impacting the region.
John and Ann Tickle donate $25M to Ballad Health
John and Ann Tickle have donated $25 million to Ballad Health - the largestsingle philanthropic gift in system history.The announcement was made on Friday.Ball
Alabama state health officer receives 7% raise
The raise, a 5% performance-based raise and a 2% cost-of-living adjustment, amounts to an increase of about $16,800, for a total salary of $352,800.
Ukraine's Zelenskyy faces political crisis amid Russian attacks
Russian attacks overnight on Ukraine killed at least four civilians and wounded 20, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
GOP leaders forced to abandon signature veterans benefits bill amid intra-party dispute
Speaker Mike Johnson suffered another humiliating political defeat at the hands of his own party on Thursday when he was forced to abandon plans to pass a veterans’ benefits bill designed to be one of the GOP’s big legislative wins before the midterms.
Students show progress in science across Alabama
Alabama students made strong gains in science and improved in all three tested subjects in eighth grade, according to preliminary statewide test results presented Tuesday (July 14).
Alabama students post large science gains, overall eighth-grade scores improve
Alabama students posted strong gains in science, improved eighth-grade achievement and higher ACT scores, according to preliminary statewide assessment results presented Tuesday.
How to watch Palmetto Sports & Entertainment
Palmetto Sports & Entertainment is the Midlands’ home for live sports and analysis from across South Carolina.
How to watch Palmetto Sports & Entertainment
Palmetto Sports & Entertainment is the Midlands’ home for live sports and analysis from across South Carolina.
How is USF St. Pete’s Marine Science Lab doing 2 months after catastrophic fire?
For the 150 students and faculty housed in the building, the last couple months have been a series of ups and downs.
Alabama state employees could see health benefit changes amid 'difficult choices'
Changes could be presented to the State Employees Insurance Board (SEIB) in September, CEO Stephanie Azar said.
NJ business temporarily closes after copper theft spoils thousands in food
Johnny "Gabagool" Aubry said the thieves stole the copper piping that supplies cold air to the walk-in refrigerator and deli case.
Some Chicago restaurants forced to close after failed health inspections
Google and Epic Abandon Settlement, Clearing the Way for Rival Android App Stores
Google and Epic Games this week withdrew their joint settlement agreement after it became clear the court was unlikely to allow it. With the settlement out, Google is bound by a permanent injunction issued in October 2024 requiring it to allow alternative app stores on Android devices. In a court filing [PDF], Google said that it plans to begin supporting alternative app stores on July 22. In a statement to The Verge, Google said it decided to withdraw the motion to avoid a prolonged legal fight.
Team Welch demanded ‘misleading’ ad’s removal. Crist’s camp replaced it
A political committee backing Charlie Crist uploaded a new ad calling out City Hall spending with tweaked language.
Residents ask Hillsborough to stop funding Israeli business nonprofit
The Florida Israel Business Accelerator has helped nearly a dozen Israeli businesses open offices in Hillsborough County.
Hotel Bethlehem to feature ‘Megabar,’ unique eats and live entertainment for Musikfest
Restaurant manager Alyssa Carpiniello noted that guests should also save room for dessert.
RWJBarnabas Health Urges Community to Donate Blood Amid National Shortage
RWJBarnabas Health is asking the public to donate blood and platelets as New Jersey and the nation faces a growing blood shortage driven by a significant decline in donor turnout and overall collections.
US Reimposes Blockade on Iranian Ports, Launches New Strikes
Gharibabadi said Tehran no longer considers itself bound by the memorandum of understanding, including on the Strait of Hormuz.
Grief and mental health - The real reasons for Stanley Nwabali's exit from, and return to, Chippa United
Five months after his surprise departure from Chippa United without much explanation, Nigeria goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali has returned to the South African Premiership club, in equally unexpected fashion.
Texas Makes Announcement Featuring Arch Manning
The college football season is approaching quickly, and the Texas Longhorns are one of the most intriguing teams entering 2026.Head coach Steve Sarkisian has assembled a roster loaded with talent. However, quarterback Arch Manning remains the team’s biggest storyline as he enters his fourth season with the program.This will be just Manning’s second year as […] The post Texas Makes Announcement Featuring Arch Manning appeared first on HEAVY.
Alabama students make big gains in science, improve across eighth-grade tests
Since 2023, eighth-grade proficiency has climbed from 50% to 59% in English language arts and from 21% to 27% in math.
Power of 7: Could an ancient political feud explain Qumran sect’s faulty 364-day calendar?
New theory offers a solution to one of the Dead Sea Scrolls' longest-running puzzles, arguing the out-of-sync calendar was used for ideological reasons -- until it felt safe to abandon it
76ers' Labaron Philon: Team-high 17 points in SL loss
76ers' Labaron Philon: Team-high 17 points in SL loss
Preliminary ACAP test scores show improving science, stagnant ELA and math scores
The Alabama State Board of Education is sharing preliminary data on spring 2026 test scores for the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP).
Preliminary ACAP test scores show improving science, stagnant ELA and math scores
The Alabama State Board of Education is sharing preliminary data on spring 2026 test scores for the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP).
Pa. health department launches dashboard of reported measles cases in the state
The database will be updated three times per week with details about the county, age and hospitalization status of each case.
Apple looks to shrink AI models for iPhones
Apple is reportedly in very early discussions with PrismML, a Silicon Valley startup spun out of the California Institute of Technology and backed by Khosla Ventures, about technology that could dramatically reduce the size of powerful AI models so they can run directly on iPhones, CNBC reports. PrismML recently announced that it compressed Alibaba’s open-source […]
Who scored for Spain? See Mikel Oyarzabal penalty goal vs. France at World Cup
Spain's Mikel Oyarzabal converted a penalty to give his team and early 1-0 lead vs. France at the 2026 World Cup semifinals. See the highlight.
Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal nets penalty, taking lead vs France
Mikel Oyarzabal scored an early penalty, that gave Spain a 1-0 lead against France.
Apple in talks with startup that shrinks AI models to run on an iPhone
PrismML says its compressed version of Alibaba’s Qwen model uses up to 15 times less memory, potentially advancing Apple’s AI push.
Man jailed for life for killing business associate in money row
Ben Wazabanga drove from Bedford to London to confront Ayowale Aladejana over business debts.
RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute Welcome First Patients at Melchiorre Cancer Center
RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, officially welcomed its first patients today at the Melchiorre Cancer Center.
New England Patriots Dealt Harsh Linebacker Verdict in NFL Rankings
The New England Patriots spent the past two seasons rebuilding a defense capable of carrying a contender.NFL evaluators still see a weakness right in the middle of it.No Patriots player appeared in ESPN’s ranking of the NFL’s top 10 off-ball linebackers for 2026. New England also failed to place anyone among the honorable mentions or […] The post New England Patriots Dealt Harsh Linebacker Verdict in NFL Rankings appeared first on HEAVY.
5 things to do this week in Greenville
See our curated list of upcoming and ongoing arts, culture and entertainment events in the Greenville area. Send us your events at greenville@postandcourier.com.
How birders in Chad ‘found’ the rusty lark, a bird lost to science for nearly a century
The morning of Feb. 2, 2026, started like many others for Pierre Defos du Rau and Julien Birard: It was hot and sunny with a gentle breeze, ideal birding weather. The two French ornithologists, who have been birding since their teens and have traveled the world in search of birds, were at Abou Telfane Game […]
Five RWJBarnabas Health Hospitals Recognized Among “100 Great Community Hospitals" for 2026 by Becker’s Hospital Review
RWJBarnabas Health, the largest, most comprehensive academic health system in New Jersey, today announced that five of its hospitals have been recognized by Becker’s Hospital Review and included in its list of “100 Great Community Hospitals" for 2026.
Nearby businesses are losing "a lot of money" due to unstable Glen Burnie, Maryland building
Businesses in Glen Burnie, Maryland, say the uncertainty is taking a financial toll four days after the nearby Empire Towers office building was evacuated due to structural concerns.
Trump's HHS abandons threat to withhold Medicare and Medicaid funding over trans care
NPR has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing its most aggressive attempt to end gender affirming care for youth nationally.
The Quintessential Trump-era Politician
In 2020, I wrote an article about collaboration and collaborators. The title was History Will Judge the Complicit, and it started with the story of two famous East Germans, Markus Wolf and Wolfgang Leonhard, who both landed in East Berlin just after the end of the war. Although they came from very similar backgrounds, the former stuck with the regime, eventually becoming its spy boss; the latter, horrified by the brutal reality of Soviet-style communism, escaped. By way of juxtaposition, I also wrote about Lyndsey Graham and Mitt Romney. These two men also made very different decisions when confronted by Donald Trump’s assault on the ideals that they had both grown up believing: A glance at their biographies would not have led many to predict what happened next. On paper, Graham would have seemed, in 2016, like the man with deeper ties to the military, to the rule of law, and to an old-fashioned idea of American patriotism and American responsibility in the world. Romney, by contrast, with his shifts between the center and the right, with his multiple careers in business and politics, would have seemed less deeply attached to those same old-fashioned patriotic ideals. Most of us register soldiers as loyal patriots, and management consultants as self-interested. We assume people from small towns in South Carolina are more likely to resist political pressure than people who have lived in many places. Intuitively, we think that loyalty to a particular place implies loyalty to a set of values. But in this case the clichés were wrong. It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” In the wake of Graham’s unexpected death on Saturday, I wrote about him again. He was, in many ways, the quintessential politician of Trump’s Washington, a man who shifted 180 degrees. Graham had been a fervent American patriot, proud reserve officer and military lawyer; he became one of the most important defenders of a president who believes soldiers are “suckers and losers” and shows no respect for law of any kind. As his politics changed, his language grew coarser and his behavior grew worse: He urged Israel to “level the place” in Gaza, and insulted the Danish prime minister in Munich, prompting a colleague, Senator Elissa Slotkin, to issue an apology. Here’s an excerpt from the article, which you can read in The Atlantic (gift link here) Like his close friend John McCain, Graham believed that America should stand at the center of a broad democratic alliance. The few times I met him were in that context, at the Munich Security Conference or at other European-American gatherings, which he once attended with great regularity. He also took seriously the practice of American democracy at home. In a 2014 conversation with The Atlantic, he described himself as a pragmatic politician who eschewed populist slogans. “I know Washington is broken, but what’s broken about it is everybody yelling and nobody trying to fix it,” he said. “I’m trying.” When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.” When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak. But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. As I wrote in 2020, it’s very hard to look in to anyone’s heart and to understand their motivations from the outside. But it does seem that Graham had a deep need to be relevant, to be in the game, to be a player, at any cost. And that, rather than any particular achievement, is what he will be remembered for. Continuing to monitor conflicts of interest, ostentatious emoluments, outright corruption and policy changes that will facilitate outright corruption. (Read my original article, Kleptocracy Inc and check out the SNF Agora Institute chart) June 27 Trump diverted funds from more than 900 projects nationwide—including safety upgrades at national parks—to finance beautification projects around Washington, including $700,000 used to fix a White House walkway. June 28 After a years-long Department of Justice investigation into Abbott Laboratories over its management of a baby formula facility where potentially deadly bacteria turned up enough evidence to criminally charge the firm, top department officials instead opted for a financial penalty—illustrating the department’s move away from strict corporate enforcement under the Trump administration. June 29 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stacked the Defense Policy Board—which is charged with providing independent national security recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense—with Trump allies, including tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, who has invested in defense contractors like OpenAI and SpaceX, after purging the panel last year. Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Axon—which makes about 90% of US tasers—two weeks before ICE solicited bids for a $220 million taser contract. The White House unveiled limited-edition US passports for America’s 250th birthday, featuring a portrait of Trump overlaid on the Declaration of Independence. June 30 Trump made around $1.2 billion from his various crypto companies last year, including more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial and $600 million from sales of his meme coin. Trump is considering issuing 250 pardons to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. These are expected to be largely doled out through the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s informal network of intermediaries. White-collar defense attorneys say they can typically win pardons for clients for $2 million. Last year, Trump administration officials awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million to Clark Construction for the White House ballroom—negotiations in which the president was directly involved. July 1 The Amazon MGM Studios documentary about Melania Trump earned the First Lady more than $10 million. Trump made hundreds of individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million the day before his announcement pausing “Liberation Day” tariffs for 90 days sent the S&P 500 soaring nearly 10%—one of the largest single-day gains ever. Mar-a-Lago and Trump National Doral saw record surges in revenue during Trump’s first year in office, earning $77.5 million and $121.9 million respectively, compared to average annual revenues of $25 million and $75 million during Trump’s first term. Entities across the Persian Gulf paid more than $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, including $263 million from the sale of half his stake in World Liberty Financial to a firm backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a top UAE royal and brother of the country’s president. Kash Patel failed to properly disclose his stock purchase of a Department of Justice contractor, MicroStrategy, worth up to $250,000 last year, despite laws requiring disclosure within 45 days of the trade. July 2 Trump has been directing administration officials to steer more government contracts—so far worth more than $2.4 billion—to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin aerospace firm, after Amazon gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, donated to the White House ballroom project, and reached a $40 million deal to license a Melania Trump documentary. Alongside the billions he made from cryptocurrency last year, Trump earned millions of dollars from real estate licensing fees, including $21 million from organizations in the UAE and $9.2 million in Saudi Arabia, along with smaller sums from merchandise sales, including $4.7 million from Trump Watches and $35,920 from 45 Guitar, a guitar brand endorsed by the president. House Democrats accused consultants tied to the Trump administration of financial fraud, alleging they gave prospective donors to America250—the bipartisan committee created by Congress to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial—the banking and routing numbers for Freedom 250, the White House’s fund for events like the UFC cage fight. Democrats also allege that Freedom 250’s CEO traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos to solicit donations from foreign government officials and business leaders. The Trump administration’s proposed rollback of gun regulations would lift the prohibition on mailing handguns to individuals, a significant win for GrabAGun—the direct-to-consumer firearm retailer on whose board Donald Trump Jr. sits and in which he holds a 1.1% ownership stake. GrabAGun currently must rely on a middleman to transfer firearms to customers. Trump’s financial disclosure revealed that he made more than 21,000 securities trades during his first year back in office, growing his investment account to at least $858 million across stakes in around 1,600 companies, compared to the 13 total trades Joe Biden made during his entire presidency. July 4 Nearly 1 million people who bought the president’s meme coin—Trump Coin—collectively lost $3.8 billion on the token, while he walked away with $636 million. July 6 Shares of Dell closed up 4.4% after Trump recommended people buy the firm’s computers during a speech announcing the launch of Trump investment accounts for children, boosting the more than $1 million worth of shares the president owns in the company. July 9 Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh named crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen to a task force aimed at modernizing the Federal Reserve, including rethinking its approach to inflation—a key factor keeping interest rates elevated. Palm Beach International Airport has officially changed its name to Trump International Airport—a move that will require Florida to pay royalties to the president’s family for licensing his name. I was there a few months ago, during a trip to Barcelona. The sculptures were a revelation, I’d never seen so many together before. Each one has its own personality. Enjoy the good weather, if you are lucky enough to have it. History Will Judge the Complicit The Quintessential Politician Autocracy Inc Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
FSU researcher creates seawater isotope database to improve climate reconstructions, projections
A Florida State University paleoclimatologist led the creation of a global database hosting thousands of seawater isotope measurements collected over
Lakers’ Surprising Jarred Vanderbilt Stance Amid Jonathan Kuminga Pursuit Revealed
Understanding the Jarred Vanderbilt Lakers stance is crucial as the team navigates trade discussions for Jonathan Kuminga this summer. The post Lakers’ Surprising Jarred Vanderbilt Stance Amid Jonathan Kuminga Pursuit Revealed appeared first on HEAVY.
Inside this health care lab the patients aren't real, but the lessons are
Discover how The University of Alabama's Simulation Center prepares nursing students through hands-on experiential learning, building confidence, clinical skills and compassionate patient care.