UPS Using Drone Delivery for Medical Supplies in Rwanda
May 9th, 2016Via: MarketWatch:
United Parcel Service Inc. has for decades been the company that delivers packages to your doorstep with its signature brown trucks, but the company has quietly begun expanding into drone delivery.
The UPS Foundation announced Monday it has entered into a partnership with drone startup Zipline and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to deliver blood for transfusions by drone throughout Rwanda. UPS offered an $800,000 grant to kick off the deliveries.
Parents’ Smartphones Harming Children’s Ability to Hold Conversation, Say Teachers
May 9th, 2016I know! Sit them in front of screens in school as well!
Increased Use of Computers in Classrooms: “More Likely to be Associated with Lower Results”
Oh.
Via: Telegraph:
Parents’ immersion in smartphones has left some neglected children starting primary school unable to hold conversations, new research warns.
Almost a third of children starting school are not ready for the classroom, with many lacking social skills, having speech problems or not toilet trained, the survey of senior primary school staff has found.
Teachers warned of children suffering from a lack of attention and interaction from parents obsessed with their smartphones.
One head teacher said: “There is limited parent/child interaction. Four year-olds know how to swipe a phone but haven’t a clue about conversations”.
Another primary school leader warned: “We are having more and more children entering our early years stage with delayed speech and a lack of school readiness.
“I feel much of this is down to challenging family circumstances alongside the rise of mobile phones and other mobile technology, which means parents are more often to be seen on the phone than talking to their children.”
Professor Suspected of Being a Terrorist Because of a Math Equation
May 8th, 2016Via: USA Today:
A math equation landed an Ivy League professor on an American Airlines flight in questioning Thursday under suspicion of being a terrorist.
Guido Menzio, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, was working on a differential equation while waiting for the Syracuse-bound plane to take off from Philadelphia, the Washington Post reported. He had to present the findings of a working paper at Queen’s University. But a passenger somehow mistook the equation for Arabic or some sort of Islamic code for a terrorist attack.
That’s how the 41-minute flight ended up delayed by two hours—a false alarm the olive-skinned, curly, dark-haired native Italian chalked up to racial profiling.
U.S.-Funded Somali Intelligence Agency Has Been Using Kids as Spies
May 7th, 2016Via: Washington Post:
For years they were children at war, boys given rifles and training by al-Qaeda-backed militants and sent to the front lines of this country’s bloody conflict. Many had been kidnapped from schools and soccer fields and forced to fight.
The United Nations pleaded for them to be removed from the battlefield. The United States denounced the Islamist militants for using children to plant bombs and carry out assassinations.
But when the boys were finally disarmed — some defecting and others apprehended — what awaited them was yet another dangerous role in the war. This time, the children say, they were forced to work for the Somali government.
The boys were used for years as informants by the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), according to interviews with the children and Somali and U.N. officials. They were marched through neighborhoods where al-Shabab insurgents were hiding and told to point out their former comrades. The faces of intelligence agents were covered, but the boys — some as young as 10 — were rarely concealed, according to the children. Several of them were killed. One tried to hang himself while in custody.
The Somali agency’s widespread use of child informants, which has not been previously documented, appears to be a flagrant violation of international law. It raises difficult questions for the U.S. government, which for years has provided substantial funding and training to the Somali agency through the CIA, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Inside the Gigafactory That Will Decide Tesla’s Fate
May 6th, 2016Via: Bloomberg:
The $5 billion Gigafactory was born of necessity. Tesla needs a hell of a lot of batteries, for both the forthcoming mass-market Model 3 sedan and the Tesla Energy product line. The timeline for getting those batteries made just became much shorter, too. On Wednesday, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk stunned investors by announcing a sped-up production schedule that calls for a half-million electric vehicles per year by 2018, not the previously stated goal of 2020. For a company that delivered just 50,658 vehicles in 2015, the ramp looks like a hockey stick.
Related: Elon Musk Is Trying to Achieve Something the Manufacturing World Has Never Seen Before
Intel: Drone 100
May 4th, 2016Via: Intel:
Britain: Google Given Access to Healthcare Data of Up to 1.6 Million Patients
May 4th, 2016Via: Guardian:
A company owned by Google has been given access to the healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients from three hospitals run by a major London NHS trust.
DeepMind, the tech giant’s London-based company most famous for its innovative use of artificial intelligence, is being provided with the patient information as part of an agreement with the Royal Free NHS trust, which runs the Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals.
It includes information about people who are HIV-positive as well as details of drug overdoses, abortions and patient data from the past five years, according to a report by the New Scientist.
DeepMind announced in February that it was developing a software in partnership with NHS hospitals to alert staff to patients at risk of deterioration and death through kidney failure.
Research Credit: Jb
1 in 3 Antibiotics Prescribed in U.S. Are Unnecessary
May 4th, 2016Would you like some chicken with that?
Via: Washington Post:
Nearly a third of antibiotics prescribed in doctors’ offices, emergency rooms and hospital-based clinics in the United States are not needed, according to the most in-depth study yet to examine the use and misuse of these life-saving drugs.
The finding, which has implications for antibiotics’ diminished efficacy, translates to about 47 million unnecessary prescriptions given out each year across the country to children and adults. Most of these are for conditions that don’t respond to antibiotics, such as colds, sore throats, bronchitis, flu and other viral illnesses.
Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in United States
May 4th, 2016Via: Washington Post:
Nightmare stories of nurses giving potent drugs meant for one patient to another and surgeons removing the wrong body parts have dominated recent headlines about medical care. Lest you assume those cases are the exceptions, a new study by patient safety researchers provides some context.
Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday, shows that “medical errors” in hospitals and other health care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading cause of death in the United States — claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s.
Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another.
“It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather than the disease for which they are seeing care,” Makary said.
Charlie Keating IV, Grandson of Notorious Banker, Identified as Navy SEAL Killed by ISIS
May 4th, 2016Really?
Via: NBC:
The U.S. Navy SEAL killed by direct fire during an ISIS-led siege in Iraq was identified Tuesday as Charlie Keating IV, a Phoenix high school graduate — and grandson of the banker who came to symbolize America’s savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
“Our state and nation are in mourning today over the loss of a U.S. serviceman — and one of America’s finest,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said in a statement.
Keating IV, 31, had been advising and assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces north of Mosul on Tuesday when he was struck, officials said earlier, without naming the Navy SEAL.
