A wearable patch used to treat peanut allergies has shown tremendous promise in a recently concluded clinical trial, performing particularly well among young children. Read more…
Read More:
A Skin Patch to Treat Peanut Allergies Just Passed a Crucial Test
Are you one of the millions of people who signed up for health insurance through HealthCare.gov? If your health insurance company is pulling out of Obamacare, you might want to head over to the site before the start of the new year. If you don’t switch your health insurance provider by January, the government will switch it for you. And you might not like their choice. Read more…
See more here:
HealthCare.gov Warns It Might Just Change Your Coverage For You By January
Health officials in the US have identified a cluster of gonorrhea infections that exhibited unusual resistance against the last two main antibiotics known to work against the dreaded sexually transmitted disease. Read more…
Read More:
Our Last Line of Defense Against Gonorrhea Is Failing
Okian Warrior writes: Martin Gottesfeld of Anonymous was arrested in connection with the Spring 2014 attacks on a number of healthcare and treatment facilities in the Boston area. The attacks were in response/defense of a patient there named Justina Pelletier. Gottesfeld now explains why he did what he did, in a statement provided to The Huffington Post. Here’s an excerpt from his statement: [Why I Knocked Boston Children’s Hospital Off The Internet] The answer is simpler than you might think: The defense of an innocent, learning disabled, 15-year-old girl. In the criminal complaint, she’s called ‘Patient A, ‘ but to me, she has a name, Justina Pelletier. Boston Children’s Hospital disagreed with her diagnosis. They said her symptoms were psychological. They made misleading statement on an affidavit, went to court, and had Justina’s parents stripped of custody. They stopped her painkillers, leaving her in agony. They stopped her heart medication, leaving her tachycardic. They said she was a danger to herself, and locked her in a psych ward. They said her family was part of the problem, so they limited, monitored, and censored her contact with them…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Visit site:
Anonymous Hacker Explains His Attack On Boston Children’s Hospital
A year after the FDA loosened limitations on what genetic analytics company 23andMe could offer consumers, the company is embarking on a groundbreaking study of 5, 000 people across Nevada. In partnership with the not-for-profit healthcare provider Renown Health and the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the survey will combine health, population, genetic and environmental data for a comprehensive look at the various influences nature and nurture have on people’s wellness. For their participation, folks will get a 23andMe report of their own genetic information on traits and ancestry for free. With that DNA data, plus Renown’s de-identified health and population info, DRI will model public health risks of disease and illness along with the health impact of conditions like air quality on a community. They’re seeking 5, 000 volunteers to follow Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, who has already signed up to be part of the study. Hopefully, such a comprehensive data set can help researchers build predictive models to look for health factors across the state’s 2.8 million residents. But if anything proves how seriously they’re taking this collaborative project, it’s the dedicated YouTube video they made to promote it: Source: DRI newsroom
View article:
23andMe health study needs 5,000 Nevada volunteers
CAD jockeys among you have a clear idea of what a spline is: However, you may not realize that splines were once physical things. In an era prior to CAD and large-format printing, when draftsmen needed to lay out full-sized curves—for boatbuilding, airplane manufacturing and the like—this is how they did it: To be clear, the “spline” is the actual strip of wood being bent and held in place. The things holding it in place are called spline weights, or colloquially, “ducks” or “whales.” They weigh about five pounds apiece. Spline weights were typically cast in lead, then painted to prevent the user from transferring lead smudges from his hands onto the drawing. The bottom was lined in felt, to prevent tearing the paper it sat on. A protruding hook was used to pin the spline itself down. The surfaces of these heavy objects were purposely cast rough, which made them easier to pick up. In 2005 a company named Edson began manufacturing spline weights out of bronze rather than lead, to reduce the health risk. (It’s not clear if they manufacture them anymore, and I couldn’t find them anywhere on Edson’s website; outside of a handful of boatbuilding schools, no one has much use for spline weights these days.) Ironically, here are some splines of a spline weight. Anyways, next time you CAD jockeys are trying to massage the carpal tunnel out of your wrist, just be glad your mouse doesn’t weigh five pounds.
Read More:
When Splines Were Physical Objects
Rumor has it Apple isn’t going to reinvent the iPhone this year , but you definitely can’t say the same about its software. iOS 10 was unveiled to the world late in the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote, and for good reason — there were many, many new software features to unpack. And now it’s time to play. Assuming you have the guts to install unfinished software, you’ll be able to grab the iOS 10 Public Beta very soon (as long as you’re part of Apple’s Beta Software Program, anyway). As a quick reminder, the preview is compatible with the iPhone 5 and newer, the iPad mini 2 and newer and the sixth-generation iPod Touch. Before you choose your sacrificial iDevice, though, read on to get a better sense of what works in the beta, what doesn’t, and how Apple’s approach to software continues to evolve. The Caveat I’ve been using the public beta build on an iPhone 6s for two days, and so far it’s been remarkably stable. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already encountered a handful of hiccups and bugs, but I haven’t run into any full-blown showstoppers either. Still, if you’d prefer not to troubleshoot or restart your phone, you’re better off steering clear of Apple’s Beta Software Program. But that goes without saying. Here’s what you need to keep in mind: Not all of the features Apple previewed at WWDC are live yet. In fact, some of the most interesting ones aren’t. (Same goes for Apple’s macOS Sierra preview , as a matter of fact.) Most of Siri’s improvements center on linking up with third-party apps to let you send money through Square Cash, for instance, or track runs with MapMyRun just by asking. Sorry! You can’t do that today; it’ll be a few months yet before developers get their SiriKit -enabled apps ready. Ditto for applications like Skype and WhatsApp: When updated this fall, they’ll display calls on your lock screen as though they were regular phone calls. This version of iOS 10 also doesn’t consistently transcribe your voicemails either, or get lyrics for your songs, or let you use Apple Pay on the web . The list goes on. Suffice to say the software going live today is just a taste of the software Apple plans to ship in the fall. The look It’ll likely be a while yet before we see a redesign as thorough as what we got with iOS 7 , but hey: iOS 10 still feels like a refreshing change of pace. Apple’s typeface is thicker by default and notifications and widgets are neatly contained in bubbles, all of which goes a long way toward making things feel cleaner. Speaking of notifications, you can use 3D Touch on supported iPhones to take action without even having to jump between apps. Think: giving a Facebook message a thumbs up or archiving emails in Outlook. Alas, you can’t do any of this while the phone is locked. Those bubbly new widgets appear when you use 3D Touch on supported apps too, and from there it takes one more touch to add it to your Today feed. They can be a little temperamental, though: Only after two days of testing did the weather widget finally decide to display the outside temperature. (The answer: too darn hot .) Naturally, Apple redesigned lots of other bits and bobs for this release. The Control Center you invoke by dragging up from the bottom of the screen has been split into two pages, one of which is reserved for music controls. Now, back to the big, bold aesthetic Apple is pushing this year: It can be hard to avoid. Perhaps the best example of this is the radically redesigned Music app, which is… divisive, to say the least. It’s all about punchy colors and extreme legibility. I don’t mind it, but others who have seen it are not thrilled. Pro tip: You can change the font size used in the Music app from the device’s settings. This new aesthetic carries over into other redesigned apps like Health (which now also lets you opt-in for organ donation) and the Clock app (which now has a bedtime mode to keep you well-rested). The fun Nearly all of the neat features in the updated Messages app work just fine. You can “handwrite” notes by turning the iPhone on its side, send heartbeats with digital touch, leave “tapback” reactions on things people send you, and more. My favorite so far: using bubble effects to basically yell at other people using iOS 10. Quickly sending GIFs with the included #images iMessage app is a close second; in case you forgot, Messages is one of those Apple-made apps that will soon benefit from third-party developer support. For now, though, the only other available iMessage apps let you share your recently played music or share animated images like the ones Apple uses on its Watch. It’s also now dead simple to share a recent photo since you have a live camera preview as soon as you tap the photo icon. One touch snaps a shot and preps it for sending, though there’s a noticeable delay in this beta build. Oh, word to the wise: If you don’t want to get caught in flagrante delicto , hold off on sending racy messages. If you send a message obscured by invisible ink to someone who doesn’t have iOS 10, the message appears normally with a follow-up that says “sent with invisible ink.” The app sometimes says the secret message hasn’t been delivered to the non-iOS 10 device, but it almost always was. Apple has added plenty to the traditional messaging experience, and it’s all pretty fun, but it sometimes feels like a bit much. Apple is facing stiff competition from Snapchat, Facebook’s Messenger and others, but with all that’s going on here, I can’t help but think the company is just throwing stuff against a wall to see what sticks. It’s not strictly part of the upgraded Message app, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with the keyboard as well. By default, the keyboard suggests an emoji when it detects a word that matches it. If you switch to the emoji keyboard in that case, all the words that can be emoji-fied glow orange. Tapping any of them replaces the word with the pictograph. Too bad that other keyboard tricks, like free time suggestions based on your calendar, don’t seem to work all the time yet. For now, only specific phrasing (like “I am available at…”) seems to trigger the schedule suggestion. The helpful You’d be forgiven for thinking Apple didn’t do much with its Photos app; at first glance, there aren’t many obvious changes. (Your albums are now laid out in a grid instead of a list, so enjoy.) The biggest difference here is that iOS doesn’t just use your photos’ metadata to organize everything; it can organize them based on what’s depicted in them too. It’s a lot like Google Photos , except all of the machine learning magic happens on the phone itself. The downside? If you have a ton of photos like I do, it takes iOS a long time to initially scan them all. Side note: Don’t be shocked if this blows through your battery. The results are usually great. You can now search for broad categories like “cat” or “drink” or “bikes” in addition to just places, and the results have been almost completely been right on the mark. One search result for “bikes” returned a photo from Barcelona where a moped lay at the bottom of the frame, shrouded in shadows. Not bad, Apple. Your photos automatically get bunched into Memories too, like “Best of the Year” and “Last weekend.” There’s more to memories than just an array of photos; you’ll get to see where the photos were taken and who’s in them. It’s too bad the auto-created video montages Apple (“memory movies”) have never loaded properly for me. Maybe your luck will be better than mine. On the plus side, you can edit Live Photos now, and all the changes you make apply to the still and the video that surrounds it. Live Photos still aren’t my thing, but this is still a welcome move nonetheless. Engadget’s parent company might own MapQuest (which is apparently still a thing), but I’m all about Google Maps. My devotion has been more or less unwavering, but Apple Maps in iOS 10 just scored major points with me thanks to the improved (and enlarged) navigation interface. Seriously, it’s so much easier to read at a glance than Google Maps that I can almost see myself switching. There’s also a little weather display in the corner, and the app is better about suggesting places you might want to go to and how to get there. You’ll eventually see other apps like OpenTable hook into listings you find in Maps, but we’ll have to wait a few months before that functionality becomes available. The overdue There’s a lot more going on with the Music app than just a new look: The whole flow has changed. By default, you’re dropped off in the Library upon launch, where you can access all the songs you’ve saved or downloaded. Simple enough. It’s the For You section that seems to have gotten the most attention. Instead of just giving you a bunch of random playlists you might like, Apple now does a better job of explaining why its choices might be up your alley. The Connect tab is gone this time, so posts from acts you follow are in For You as well. Thankfully, they’re buried at the bottom and easy to ignore if you find them as utterly pointless as I do. Perhaps the most important interface change is that search gets a tab of its own, making it easier to find your perfect summer jam. Like Music, Apple News also received a facelift that’s big on bright colors and big text. And again, the biggest change is the For You section, which is to say it now actually works. The Top Stories were the same between devices running iOS 9 and the iOS 10 beta, but the update brings subsections of stories that seem better tuned to your interests. In my case, those subsections included the Middle East, currency markets, startups and technology — all things I dig, and have searched for recently. Throw in notifications for breaking news and we finally have an Apple News that feels like it’s worth using. The odds and ends Not everything fits neatly into a box, but here are a few changes to the iOS formula that you should definitely be aware of. Yes, you can remove Apple’s first-party apps , and yes, it is glorious. Technically, it’s just user data that’s deleted; the app itself remains hidden on the device, but I’ll take that symbolic victory. Raise to Wake does exactly what it says, and it works remarkably well for checking the time and your notifications You can swipe left from the lockscreen to launch the camera. (It takes a little getting used to.) I didn’t always love how fast the TouchID sensor worked on the 6s and 6s Plus. Coincidentally, Apple now requires you to push the home button to unlock instead of just laying a finger on it. No more inadvertent unlocks (though you can revert to the old way in settings)! You can access Spotlight search from just about anywhere, since the search bar now appears at the top of the drag-down notifications shade. Apple’s Home app is pretty (there’s that bold aesthetic again), but I couldn’t properly test it since I didn’t have any HomeKit gear on hand. Check back for our impressions in our eventual full review. We can’t issue a verdict on iOS 10 until it launches this fall, but Apple has taken some significant steps forward here. iOS 9 built the foundation for a lot of these features, and with iOS 10 we’re seeing Apple try to figure out how they best work together. Sometimes that means rewriting the rules, and other times that means letting other people build on top of the existing platform. How well that will all work is the big question, and we should have our answer in a few months.
Excerpt from:
iOS 10 preview: Apple’s software takes a big step forward
An anonymous reader writes from a report via CNN: Helium is an incredibly important element that is used in everything from party balloons to MRI machines — it’s even used for nuclear power. For many years, there have been global shortages of the element. For example, Tokyo Disneyland once had to suspend sales of its helium balloons due to the shortages. The shortages are expected to come to an end now that researchers from Oxford and Durham universities have discovered a “world-class” helium gas field in Tanzania’s East African Rift Valley. They estimate that just one part of the reserve in Tanzania could be as large as 54 billion cubic feet (BCf), which is enough to fill more than 1.2 million medical MRI scanners. “To put this discovery into perspective, global consumption of helium is about 8 billion cubic feet (BCf) per year and the United States Federal Helium Reserve, which is the world’s largest supplier, has a current reserve of just 24.2 BCf, ” said University of Oxford’s Chris Ballentine, a professor with the Department of Earth Sciences. “Total known reserves in the USA are around 153 BCf. This is a game-changer for the future security of society’s helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away, ” Ballentine added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Continue reading here:
Researchers Find Game-Changing Helium Reserve In Tanzania
jaa101 writes: The Australian state of South Australia is being sued for refusing to stop using CHIRON, an MS-DOS-based software from the ’90s that stores patient records. Their license expired in March of 2015, but they claim it would be risky to stop using it. CHIRON’s vendor, Working Systems, says SA Health has been the only user of CHIRON since 2008 when they declined to migrate to the successor product MasterCare ePAS. SA Health has 64 sites across South Australia — all of which are apparently still using the MS-DOS-based health software from the 1990s. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read this article:
South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software
An anonymous reader writes: After it was reported three weeks ago that scientists have held a secret meeting to consider creating a synthetic human genome, the participants of that meeting have officially published their plans. They announced a plan to launch a project that would radically reduce the cost of synthesizing human genomes — a revolutionary development in biotechnology that could enable technicians to grow human organs for transplantation. The Washington Post reports: “The announcement, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest sign that biotechnology is going through a rapidly advancing but ethically fraught period. The promoters of synthetic genomes envision a project that would eventually be on the same scale as the Human Genome Project of the 1990s, which led to the sequencing of the first human genomes. The difference this time would be that, instead of ‘reading’ genetic codes, which is what sequencing does, the scientists would be ‘writing’ them. They have dubbed this the ‘Genome Project-write.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read this article:
Scientists Announce Plans For Synthetic Human Genomes