Kara is not a lawyer. Her background is in public health and communications. Yet she now leads a company that has used AI to summarize more than 3.3 million judicial opinions and made them free and publicly available. In our conversation on "Notes to My (Legal) Self," she explained how justice, like health, is a public good. And access to law is one of its critical delivery systems.
For Grandma: A tariff! Did they not want tariffs? That's what we got everyone. Sorry. For Uncle Greg: A TINY CAR!!! (We're making these now.) For Her: A photoshoot with Vanity Fair. Nothing says "glamour" like Vanity Fair. Usually. But sometimes the picture they take of you comes out looking like Dorian Gray's DMV photo-unflattering, but in a way that implies deep spiritual corruption. This gives a fun Russian-roulette aspect to the gift!
Clouds settle low in the sky as dusk sets in across Pajaro Valley. Fields of strawberries stretch out as far as the eye can see, catching the last amber rays of the day. In the distance, the twin stacks of Moss Landing Power Plant sit among factories pushing plumes of smoke into the air. On the exterior wall of a house in Castroville, a newly installed sensor glows green with an important message: It's safe to go outside.
Although relational AI has potential therapeutic benefits, recent studies and emerging cases suggest potential risks of emotional dependency, reinforced delusions, addictive behaviors, and encouragement of self-harm,
An intense surge in flu cases driven by a newly dominant virus strain is sweeping across Europe, placing healthcare systems in several countries under severe pressure, the World Health Organization has said. The WHO said on Wednesday that at least 27 of the 38 countries in its European region were reporting high or very high influenza activity, with more than half of patients with flu-like symptoms testing positive in six countries including Ireland, Serbia, Slovenia and the UK.
Last Tuesday afternoon, Dean Andrea Baccarelli at the Harvard School of Public Health sent out a brief message announcing that one of the country's most experienced and accomplished public health leaders, Dr Mary T Bassett, would step down as director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. The email struck a polite, bureaucratic tone, thanking her for her service and offering an upbeat rationale for a new focus on children's health.
The more we dug, the more we realized there was a gap between the procedure's public perception as a routine, normal part of giving birth and what experts were saying. We set out to figure out why. We also wanted to better understand the complexity involved in a procedure that can be life-saving and is also performed around double the rate the World Health Organization says is "ideal" for maternal and infant health.
Toronto is seeing rapidly increasing flu activity particularly among children, with flu season coming early this year, Dr. Michelle Murti said in a statement Tuesday. It's being driven by influenza A, she said, which has affected children more severely. This early surge is leading to more pediatric cases requiring hospital care, underscoring the seriousness of the current season, she said, saying influenza A has also been spreading to adults and people in long-term care.
One of our mandates at Grub Street is to take an obsessive approach not only to the pleasures of restaurants but the business of building and running restaurants. The year's most popular stories demonstrate it's a topic that interests you, too: reports on a restaurant group's debt, industry memoirs, woes at the Tin Building, reservation worries, and even a look into how much salt we're all eating (spoiler: it's too much) were part of our 20 most-read articles, defined by total minutes of audience engagement.
Pregnant people who get a COVID vaccine are dramatically less likely to experience severe symptoms of the disease or to give birth prematurely, according to a comprehensive new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Those who got the shot during pregnancy, rather than before they were pregnant, showed even lower odds of health complications. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that COVID vaccines are safe and beneficial across different populations.
"You're standing for what's supposed to be 35 minutes, which can go on up to 45 minutes. I've had previous surgeries, so my back is just locking up from the standing - I'm hobbling on to the train at this stage,"
Smoking is one of the clearest public-health failures of our time. More than 500,000 Americans still die each year from smoking-related illnesses, and globally the picture is even more alarming. In the United States, anti-smoking campaigns have reduced the number of new cigarette users, but the effectiveness of these measures may be fading. Indeed, the headline of a widely-shared news story notes "Celebrities Are Making Smoking Cigarettes Cool Again". Yikes.
A quintessential holiday spice made by a single manufacturer has been recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for possible contamination. The FDA recalled Lucky Foods brand cinnamon powder on Tuesday after an analysis conducted by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets found high levels of lead. It's unclear how the product became contaminated. Lead may be present in food products as a result of the environment in which they're grown or processed.
Ultrafine particles are impossible to see and are often missed by conventional monitoring techniques, and therefore they are not covered by air pollution laws. In 2021, the Dutch Health Council and the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the growing evidence that ultrafine particles are damaging our health. This includes 75 studies, mostly relating to lung inflammation, blood pressure and heart problems, along with risks to foetal growth. Technical differences between the studies, however, meant that the WHO was unable to set a standard.
The climate crisis supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse, scientists have reported. Monsoon rains often bring some flooding but the scientists were clear: this was not normal. In Sri Lanka, some floods reached the second floor of buildings, while in Sumatra, in Indonesia, the floods were worsened by the destruction of forests, which in the past slowed rainwater running off hillsides.
Scientists have issued an urgent warning that some of the synthetic chemicals that help underpin the current food system are driving increased rates of cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions and infertility, while degrading the foundations of global agriculture. The health burden from phthalates, bisphenols, pesticides and Pfas forever chemicals amounts to up to $2.2tn a year roughly as much as the profits of the world's 100 largest publicly listed companies, according to the report published on Wednesday.
East Bay parks officials say hikers should beware of an unusually large number of toxic and potentially deadly mushrooms sprouting across the region. The East Bay Regional Parks District issued an advisory Tuesday warning park visitors about the fast-growing fungi, which include the death cap and western destroying angel varieties. Both species benefitted from a spate of early-season rain storms that allowed them to appear in greater volume than usual for this time of the year.
Over the past year, I've noticed a pattern among some of my colleagues in public health, biomedical research, and the university settings in which I work. It's a strange, reflexive tic: Faced with bad-faith criticism from malign actors, we shrink back, saying, "Oh, it's not you. It's me," and walk onto their terrain with accommodation in our hearts. Some may think that, faced with the full fury of the far right, some kind of retreat is the only option.
More than 50 groups connected to transport and public health have urged the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, to set specific targets for levels of walking and cycling in England, warning that plans as they stand are too vague. A letter from groups including British Cycling, Cycling UK, the National Trust and the British Medical Association says the government's proposals for active travel must move from good intentions to a clear, long-term, fully deliverable national plan comparable to other strategic transport programmes.
"For too long, our Department has been bogged down by bureaucracy and busy-work; even the most productive public servants are mired in paperwork and process. Across our mission space - from research, to health care delivery, to public health - we've layered administrative red tape on innovators," HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill wrote in an introductory letter for the strategy. "We will harness AI technologies to streamline operations and enhance support for care delivery throughout the entire health care industry. We call it OneHHS."
We are used to being concerned about air pollution outdoors, but we aren't used to thinking about air pollution when we're inside our homes," Rob Jackson, the study's senior author and an earth system science professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, told SFGATE. "For the average American, one quarter of all the asthma-triggering nitrogen dioxide that they breathe comes from their stove indoors. That's not something most people are aware of.
Next time you chow down on your morning cereal, you could be consuming dangerous 'forever chemicals', scientists have warned. A new study from Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe has detected a toxic 'forever chemical' in cereal products sold across the continent. The synthetic substance, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), comes from pesticides sprayed over crops like wheat and corn. Worryingly, TFA is known to have several adverse effects on human health. This includes disruptions to breathing pathways, liver function and the development of babies in the womb.
