Remember when the CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler flew corporate jets to Washington to beg for a bailout?

After receiving a righteous whuppin’ by politicians, bloggers and YouTubers, the group returned for a second go a month later in cars.

The fiasco was a killer for business-jet industry which had hoped the CEOs would defend the craft as time-savers.

They “didn’t have the guts to defend their actions,” Michael Boyd told the Economist.

No seriously, the aviation consultant does know the jets are a smidge unpopular these days. 

“Right up there with Saddam Hussein,” was the way Boyd put it.

In fact, many companies appear to have decided to rid themselves of their jets altogether. The US automakers, Time Warner, AT&T and Citigroup have put their jets up for sale and other companies cancelled orders for new ones. 

As a result, UBS reports a 62% increase year-over-year in the number of second-hand corporate jets on the market—that’s the highest number since the statistic was introduced.

“The market is dead,” states the UBS report in one particularly gloomy passage. Elsewhere, the report describes current affairs as “possibly the worst market since 1970.”

Surprisingly, not everyone agrees. The Economist cites a JPMorgan analysis of asking prices for used jets—they actually rose 3.4% in November.

To Jonathan Breeze, Jet Republic’s CEO, that means some firms don’t really want to sell their jets at all. They put their jets on the block for an unreasonably high price, assuring there will be no buyers. This way they appear to be in touch with the times while the top dogs gallivant around as usual.

American Well, a Boston-based start-up that facilitates Internet-based physician “house calls” went live on Jan 15 with its first customer, the Hawaii Medical Service Association.

The archipelago’s sole Blue-Cross Blue-Shield licensee in turn plans to assure the service is available to every state resident, including those who are uninsured.

The service should appeal to those who don’t want to wait to see a physician or waste time commuting to the doctor’s office. It seems particularly well suited for patients needing medication refills or a look-see following surgery, and for elderly folks who are comfortable with computers.

Hawaii seems an ideal first venue for American Well’s online doctor service because island geography frequently complicates access to providers, and because the state lacks providers in remote areas.

During the encounter physicians can, ideally, access patients’ medical histories. For example, a patient using Microsoft’s HealthVault personal medical record can permit the physician to access the information.

Some worry what will happen because physicians can’t detect or assess physical findings using the new medium, but Robert Sussman has been trying it for awhile and has some perspective.

“It’s a tool to help doctors do better, the way a stethoscope is a tool,” he told the New York Times. “You still have to use your common sense.”

And at times it can facilitate triage decisions better than a phone conversation. Physicians for example, can see whether a febrile infant is lethargic and hence needs to be seen or is alert and thus may not have to come in.

Diabetes and strokes precipitate age-related cognitive decline by impacting the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory formation.

But the 2 conditions affect different parts of the hippocampus and do so via different mechanisms, according to a study in Annals of Neurology.

Scott Small and colleagues at Columbia University Medical Center used magnetic resonance imaging to document strokes and create functional maps of the hippocampus in 240 community-based elderly individuals including 60 with diabetes and 74 with brain infarcts.

They found that diabetes impacted hippocampal function via swings in blood glucose levels, while strokes impacted a different subregion via transient reductions in blood flow.

In the case of diabetes, adverse effects on the brain were correlated with mild to moderate blood sugar excursions, a conclusion that may have implications for so-called “normal, age-related” cognitive decline, because glucose regulation starts to deteriorate by the fourth decade of life.

“If we conclude this is underlying normal age-related cognitive decline, then it affects all of us,” Small told the New York Times.

And since physical exercise improves glucose regulation, “We have a behavioral recommendation — physical exercise,” he added.

Bruce S. McEwen, a neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University was impressed. “When we think about diabetes, we think about heart disease and all the consequences for the rest of the body, but we usually don’t think about the brain,” he said.

“We need to think about their…cognitive skills, and whether they will be able to keep up with the demands of education and a fast-paced society.”

Earlier studies had demonstrated that physical activity reduces the risk and diabetes increases the risk of age-related cognitive decline.