In 2021, fentanyl and its analogues accounted for over 75% of all U.S. fatal drug overdoses with an estimated 71,238 deaths.[1] Fentanyl is a Schedule II controlled drug.[2] It is a synthetic opioid legally manufactured and used as a prescription pain management medication, mainly post-operatively for short duration medical care. It is also sold and…
Increasingly, firms are being victimized by electronic fund transfer (“EFT” or “wire transfer”) fraud crimes. Many of these incidents started with fraudulent emails originally directed to senior-level administrators (a practice known as phishing). These emails have familiar logos and similar (but slightly different) email addresses, sender names, and signatures which would not normally raise suspicion…
The Vice Society ransomware gang has been targeting educational institutions (over 26% of its attacks) with human-operated, double-extortion ransomware phishing attacks. This ransomware group is relatively new to the world of cybersecurity, and it commonly gets into networks or computer systems by using malicious documents containing ransomware in phishing attacks. Phishing is a type of…
The excess death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States exceeded 1 million, as a low-end estimate of fatalities, in January 2022. This estimate is based on an extrapolation of California public health fatality data from the pandemic years compared with fatality data from the three years prior to the pandemic. The difference…
I believe that the subject Project[i] may have a significant effect on the environment and that a full ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT (EIR) should be required. The subject Project has been described by the Environmental Management Division of the Los Angeles Harbor Department as primarily an effort “to comply with the State of California’s Marine Oil…
When time-series data is plotted as a normal x-y plot with the time variable along the x-axis it is difficult to identify seasonality or other factors that may influence the data. Florence Nightingale used a form of radial polar plots to display data from the Crimean War that demonstrated the death rate among soldiers could be reduced…
The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles performed abysmally in the World Bank’s first port efficiency study. This ranking of ports was based on performance metrics such as minutes per container movement. Currently, East Asian container ports rank as the most efficient in the world. This is mainly because their terminals are moving toward full automation….
It is likely that approximately 330,000 Americans, at a minimum, prematurely died in 2020, primarily due to the effects of COVID-19. This rough estimate is an extrapolation derived from California Department of Health and Human Services’ 2020-2021 Provisional Deaths by Month Statewide as of 6-16-2021 (source: https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/7a456555-87b9-4830-817c-72d72e628745/resource/3192c0ff-e380-4314-8a88-16a3bdace8b7/download/2021-06_deaths_provisional_state_month_sup.csv ). The state’s aggregate provisional deaths by month…
Some public health experts are concerned herd immunity against COVID-19 will not be achieved, even after COVID-19 vaccines become widely available. This would occur is enough people refuse to be inoculated, and parents refuse to vaccinate their children. School-required COVID-19 vaccinations could help society achieve herd immunity against COVID-19. California schools already require students to…
Until further notice from CDPH or the CDC, athletic conditioning in California PK-14 schools should only be conducted in accordance with the California Blueprint Data Chart[1] for your county’s current COVID-19 tier (It can be determined here.[2]) Based on your school’s current tier determination, the following table applies with respect to athletic conditioning: General California…