Datasets:
Recag
/
C4_1

Dataset card Data Studio Files Community
1
text
stringlengths
10
56.7k
Katie Price and her new baby return home after holidaying in Europe.
Alex Reid has tweeted a message of support for his ex-wife Katie Price.
Price gave birth to her first child with current husband Kieran Hayler eight weeks early last month.
She was rushed to hospital while holidaying in Europe, and was told her labour would be induced early as her baby was at risk of infection and had a dangerously low heart rate.
The model confirmed that she and Hayler arrived home with son Jett Riviera last week.
She tweeted on Tuesday (September 10): "It's been a week since me @kieran0322 and Jett been home haven't told people we are home as wanted to settle in! Thankyou to all tweets x"
Reid messaged her directly in reply, stating that he was happy to hear her family was safe.
Very glad to hear @kieran0322 @MissKatiePrice & baby Jet are all home safe & sound!
Alex Reid and Katie Price have not been on good terms since their split in 2011.
He recently sold his wedding ring to Now magazine to give away in a reader competition.
Katie Price recently told Digital Spy that her latest pregnancy had "been more difficult" than those before.
Do as I did, started my own business and see how much work it takes and then go from there. I have had all kinds of workers over the years; too many are just lazy wanting money. That young black girl was my best worker.
Stopping nearsightedness in kids and more.
This week, Dr. Sydney Spiesel discusses a way to stop the progression of nearsightedness in kids, a better method of hormone replacement therapy for women after menopause, and new developments in the search for a cause for autism. His column will start appearing a couple of times a month.
Condition: Nearsightedness, or myopia, is the most common eye problem. In the United States and Europe, about 25 percent of the adult population is nearsighted, and in much of Asia the condition is more common still. Significant myopia can have serious medical consequences. It has long been understood that the condition has a strong genetic component: Nearsighted parents are more likely to have nearsighted children. But recent research has shown that other factors contribute. For example, just as our mothers warned us, there is now evidence that doing close-up work, like reading, seems to promote the condition.
How it progresses: The eyeball of a nearsighted person is deeper than the eyeball of a person with normal vision and becomes deeper as nearsightedness progresses. Myopia often begins to develop between the ages of 6 and 8. As children grow, their nearsightedness worsens, continuing to do so long after they have stopped growing taller. Though we know a lot about factors associated with nearsightedness and its progression, we have no good ideas yet about the mechanism. But can we stop it?
New research: A recent study by Wei-Han Chua and colleagues at the Singapore National Eye Center elegantly built on older research and successfully used atropine eye drops to treat myopia in children. Atropine is a longer-lasting version of the pupil-dilating drops your doctor uses when you go for an eye exam. Available by prescription in the United States, the drops are mainly used to treat amblyopia (lazy eye) instead of the older treatment, patching, which children often hate.
Dr. Chua and his co-workers studied the progression of nearsightedness in 400 children between 6 and 12 years of age. Half the children were treated with atropine eye drops, and the other half were treated with placebo eye drops. Both kinds of drops were administered nightly to one eye, so the untreated eye could be compared with the treated one. The children were followed for two years. All used eyeglasses to correct their nearsightedness, and because atropine dilates the pupil, the lenses of the glasses self-darkened in bright light, to avoid discomfort for the children whose pupils were dilated.
Findings: The effects were extraordinary: After two years, on average, the children’s nearsightedness had not progressed in the atropine-treated eyes but had dramatically worsened in the placebo-treated and untreated eyes. Similarly, atropine-treated eyes did not become deeper, while placebo-treated and untreated eyes did. No serious adverse effects were observed in the course of the research.
Conclusion: This is extremely promising. Further work needs to be done to determine the ideal concentration of atropine in the eye drops, to find out how long the treatment needs to last, and if the effects are permanent. Because atropine interferes with close focusing, children will probably need to wear bifocals while they’re using the atropine drops. Much more research must be done to help us understand why nearsightedness develops and progresses. But in the meantime, we may have a way to head off this common problem.
Treatment: Hormone replacement therapy was introduced in 1941, when the FDA approved the use of estrogen for this purpose. Early on, HRT was prescribed with great enthusiasm. It relieved troublesome symptoms associated with menopause, including hot flashes, sleep problems, and, for some women, difficulty in concentration. And HRT (usually estrogen plus a progestin) was shown to improve the bone density of elderly women and decrease their risk for fractures.
Downside: Time and further research has shown that these gains come at a cost, however: increased risk for cardiovascular problems, stroke, and blood clots in the veins and lungs. Postmenopausal women on HRT also seem to be an increased risk for breast cancer and possibly dementia. This made many women feel they had to choose between improved quality of life and a risk of ill health and early death.
New study: Now research reported in the journal Circulation suggests a way around the blood clotting problem, at least. The researchers studied about 270 women who had developed blood clots in their veins, almost all of them postmenopausal. They were compared with more than 600 women who did not suffer from blood clots but similar in age, smoking status, and age at menopause. Among women in either group who used HRT, the study tracked whether the estrogen medication was taken orally or applied through the skin as a patch or a gel. The nature of the progestin component, if any, was also studied.
Findings: Estrogen HRT increased the risk for blood clots in the veins—but only if it was administered orally. This result is not as surprising as it might seem. A medication that’s given orally collects in the blood supply of the intestines and passes through the liver before it is distributed to the rest of the body. This causes changes in the proteins synthesized by the liver, some of which are known to increase the clotting of blood. When the estrogen in HRT is administered through the skin, by contrast, it bypasses the liver. The study also established that some progestins (there are many kinds) increase the risk of blood clotting and that others do not.
Conclusion: If these findings are confirmed, HRT skin patches or gels and careful choice of the progestin component could normalize the risk of blood clots in the veins, and also blood clots that migrate to the lungs, causing pulmonary embolism, and to the brain, causing stroke. Unfortunately, other studies suggest that administering HRT through the skin won’t affect the rate of heart disease or risk of breast cancer associated with it. HRT will still be a difficult choice. But this study at least lowers the risk and may well shift the balance for many women.
Search for a cause: It has long been clear that autism is primarily genetic in origin. The disorder is almost certainly the result not of a single abnormal gene, but rather the interaction of several. In the past, a few locations on human chromosomes have been suspected of playing a role for a scattering of patients. Now researchers have identified a genetic location on a specific chromosome that seems to be associated with the expression of autism in many patients.
Newresearch: Described in a paper with 137 authors representing 67 worldwide institutions, this finding is the first result of an audacious project conducted by the Autism Genome Project Consortium. The project started with a set of almost 1,500 families with at least two people who fall on the autism spectrum. Of this group, DNA samples from about 1,200 families could be analyzed for chromosomal similarities.
Findings: This analysis points to a hitherto unsuspected “hot spot” on chromosome 11, which seems to be related to an increased risk for the expression of autism. (The genetic function of the hot-spot location is still unclear.) Besides identifying the chromosome 11 hot spot, the data also tantalizingly hint that flaws in the gene coding for a material called neurexin, which plays a role in the development of certain cell-to-cell transmission sites (synapses), can cause autism in some cases. This trigger for autism is probably quite rare. But it suggests that the disorder is somehow related to abnormalities in the connections between nerve cells that make use of glutamate for information transmission, and defects in those transmissions. How (or even if) these two observations—the hot spot and the neruexin flaws—fit together is as yet unknown.
Conclusion: This study doesn’t tell us exactly which gene on chromosome 11 is important, but it does tell us just where to focus our attention. And the neurexin-related discovery hints at the mechanism of what might go wrong in neurodevelopment to lead to autism. These discoveries reinforce the value of collaborative work that puts together information about patients with a relatively rare disorder, from many locales, to create a pool large enough for serious research.
A large, brand-new movie studio in Palm Beach County already has a potential box-office hit.
Twentieth Century Fox will film interior scenes for Speed II, sequel to the popular 1994 action movie, in the 20,000-square-foot sound stage at Palm Beach Ocean Studios in West Palm Beach, the studio's chief executive said on Thursday.
"I said when we opened in April we'd be lucky to get something in here by September," said Thorpe Shuttleworth, president and developer of the 42,000-square-foot studio at the Vista Center on Okeechobee Boulevard, west of Florida's Turnpike.
"And now we've got a high-budget action-adventure feature. Yes, that's a coup," he said.
Speed II will star Sandra Bullock, making a return appearance in the sequel, and Jason Patric, who is taking over the role played by Keanu Reeves in the original, according to Variety, the movie industry's trade publication.
Speed II will help get the studio's name out among film producers, said Chuck Eldred, executive director of the county's Film and Television Commission.
Eldred pushed for the county to give Shuttleworth $208,000 in job growth incentives.
"This is exactly what we needed to attract this kind of attention here," Eldred said.
And the studio is benefiting from the increased attention being paid to South Florida by Hollywood producers after recent films such as The Birdcage and Striptease, Shuttleworth said.
The film's producers will hire extra cast members in Florida, and other technical support workers may be hired locally as well.
Film industry publications estimate the cost of making Speed II at $40 million to $70 million.
The movie's producers toured the studio in April and have been working there since Monday. Sets are under construction in preparation for filming later this year.
In this Sept. 1, 2014 photo released by the U.S. Geological Survey, fluid lava streams from the June 27 lava flow from the Kilauea volcano in Pahoa, Hawaii. The June 27 lava flow is named for the date it began erupting from a new vent. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory issued a warning Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014 to a rural community in the path of a lava flow on Hawaii's Big Island, as the molten rock moved to within a mile of homes. Observatory scientists said lava from the Kilauea volcano could reach the Kaohe Homesteads in five to seven days if it continues advancing through cracks in the earth.
PAHOA, Hawaii — Lava from one of the world's most active volcanos has been advancing at a slower pace the past few days and is now moving parallel to a sparsely populated subdivision on Hawaii's Big Island.
Lava from Kilauea volcano was still at least a mile from any homes in Kaohe Homesteads, Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira said.
Oliveira took a helicopter flight over the area Monday and saw the lava had crept about 150 yards from the previous day. It's moving north for now but could still stop or change directions.
"It's been doing that for the last several days," he said of its northern pull. Prior to Friday, it was going northeast toward the subdivision.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has warned the lava could reach the subdivision in a matter of days.
Oliveira said he didn't anticipate issuing an evacuation order Monday. But residents should be prepared because it's difficult to predict the lava's movement. It was also raining over the flow site, he noted, which meant there wasn't a wildfire threat.
"That's good for today," he said. "But it doesn't get us out of any potential threat down the road. It just means it's going to be a very slow process."
The lava warning has created an "edgy" mood in Puna, the rural region on the southeast side of the Big Island that is at risk from the lava, said Bill Parecki, a real estate agent who has lived in the area for 42 years. The area is still recovering from the damage from a tropical storm about a month ago.
"Everybody's a little concerned," he said. "Everybody's a little worried. We just have to see where the lava goes. There's no control. It's Mother Nature."
A big concern is lava crossing roads and blocking Puna off from the rest of the island, or becoming "lava-locked," he said.
Business has been quiet since Tropical Storm Iselle made landfall over the region last month, said Mary Bicknell, owner of Big Island Book Buyers, a bookstore in downtown Pahoa.
"We're always watching it, but we're not usually threatened by it," she said of the lava.
Bengaluru — Gold prices rose on Thursday as the growing expectation that the US Federal Reserve will pause its rate tightening cycle in 2019 and an impasse between US President Donald Trump and Democrats on funding for a border wall weighed on the dollar.
Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,295.85/oz as of 4.36am GMT, hovering near Friday’s peak of $1,298.42 — a level last seen in mid-June.
US gold futures gained 0.4% to $1,297.2/oz.
Minutes from the Fed’s December 18-19 policy meeting showed that several policymakers said they could be patient about future interest rate hikes and a few did not support the central bank's rate increase that month.
“Gold is getting a bit of support out of a dovish Fed and institutional instability in the US,” said Kyle Rodda, a market analyst at IG, Australia.
“We have got the markets pricing in the possibility of a Fed rate cut rather than a hike in the year ahead,” Rodda said, adding that the Fed minutes gave the dollar a bit of a “kick down” and there were chances for gold prices to break the $1,300 level with the present sentiment.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against major currencies, hit its lowest level in nearly three months.
Gold prices are highly sensitive to declining interest rates, which decrease the opportunity cost of holding the nonyielding bullion while pressuring the dollar.
Meanwhile, Trump walked out of talks with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday over funding for a border wall with Mexico and reopening the government, saying the meeting in the White House was “a total waste of time”.
Asian equities took a breather after an extended rally, as markets awaited more news on US-China trade talks that have raised the hope of a deal to avert an all-out trade war between the economic giants.
China’s commerce ministry said on Thursday that trade talks between Washington and Beijing were progressing, but gave no details on the issues at stake.
“With the government shutdown still far from resolved and Chinese trade talks just partly concluded, we are not sure that the turbulence in the equity markets is over just yet,” INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir said in a note.
Holdings in the world’s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund (ETF), SPDR Gold Trust, rose 0.33% to 799.18 tons on Wednesday.
Among other precious metals, silver was flat at $15.75/oz.
Palladium fell 0.5% to $1,320.50/oz. It scaled a record high of $1,342.43 on Wednesday after a Chinese official said the government was contemplating policies to increase domestic buying of cars.
Platinum inched up 0.1% to $825.60.
The air ambulance was mobilised following reports that a man had fallen on a tree branch and impaled his neck in Durrington, a spokesman said.
The ambulance service spokesman confirmed two response cars and an ambulance were sent to the sports ground in Pond Lane at around 11.40pm last night (Tuesday, August 28).
The air ambulance was also mobilised but stood down when it was reported on scene that his neck had not been impaled, the spokesman said.
The 32-year-old patient was taken to Worthing Hospital for treatment to a neck injury, confirmed the spokesman.
The fire service assisted with the extrication of the patient, added the spokesman.
The fire service confirmed that one fire engine and a heavy rescue tender from Worthing were sent to the scene after the ambulance service asked for assistance.
Crews left the scene at 12.20am.
After your business is up and running, your focus naturally shifts to increasing efficiency. The small things you do to lower costs and increase output can be the difference between a failing business and soaring profits. No matter how good your team members are, you should tweak the environment in which they work to insure the best possible results.
There are many reasons why developing a protocol to measure efficiency benefits your business. You are able to pinpoint areas that need improvement, and you can break your team’s performance down by tasks. Perhaps you will notice that the whole process is going smoothly except for one minor operation that can be eliminated to improve efficiency. This kind of insight can help you restructure the physical environment or delegate tasks in a new way to increase efficiency. You can also evaluate the performance of individual employees. Take a look at how much you get out of employees versus how much you pay them.
Employees might be a bit nervous about your new methods of close observation and evaluation. This is acceptable and sometimes even beneficial, as employees will make an increased effort if they know their performance is being tracked. However, you don't have to be an intimidating taskmaster. This is a good opportunity to mix in positive reinforcement and show your appreciation for your team. You can offer incentives, such as public recognition, time off or a share in productivity gains. Whatever mode you choose, employees are sure to improve efficiency if they feel that good work is rewarded and they develop a sense of the needs of the business as a whole.
Employees need to have the appropriate equipment and technology to carry out their functions efficiently. A lazy and incompetent worker on a tractor will most likely outperform even the hardest-working person who is plowing manually. Regular maintenance and upgrades of your equipment might seem costly and burdensome, but they are critical to the success of your business. Making sure that your employees have the tools they need to get the job done will drastically improve your output per dollar spent or per unit of time. Keeping equipment up to par also prevents on the job injuries, possible lawsuits and time lost to malfunctions.
Skill is another side of employee efficiency. Your team must have the requisite skill sets to produce up to par, making on-the-job training and education generally worthwhile. Even though specialization and division of labor are important, your team's efficiency can benefit greatly through cross-training, which gives workers a broader perspective and an understanding of the context in which their work fits. It allows them to help each other and to prioritize more effectively, resulting in overall efficiency. This increased workforce agility allows workers to shift their capacity to where it is needed and reduces problems due to worker absences.
The University of Maryland President Wallace Loh.
University of Maryland President Wallace Loh stood before reporters Aug. 14 and apologized to the family of Jordan McNair, a football player who died days after a team workout. That day, Loh also announced a commission charged with examining the culture inside the school's embattled football program, an undertaking that could prompt sweeping changes at the state's flagship university.
In June, the school had contracted with an outside consulting firm to investigate the events surrounding McNair's death. But the commission Loh announced nearly two months later would be charged with a broader inquiry into the culture of the school's football program - a "thorough investigation by an independent group," Loh said - following media reports that suggested some coaches were abusive toward players, relying on fear, intimidation and bullying.
Few details about the group's work to date are publicly available, but the commission's directives and composition reveal some of the inherent obstacles that arise when independent bodies investigate problems in university athletic departments.
In an initial email to the newly-appointed commission members, a copy of which was viewed by The Washington Post, Loh advised that some of the allegations they would be investigating "probably occur in every football program" and that the line between aggressive and abusive training techniques is "imprecise."
Also, several of the commission members have previous ties with the university and the stakeholders in the affair. One served as a personal advisor to Loh. Another is the brother of an influential booster.
Almost immediately after the commission's unveiling, the University System of Maryland's board of regents took control from the College Park campus, adding five additional members to the three named by Loh and suggesting that key decisions about the football program's future would be made by the regents, not necessarily the school president. The vice chair of the board of regents is a prominent donor to the athletics department and has voiced public support for head football coach DJ Durkin.
This investigation could go a long way to determining the fate of Durkin, who was placed on administrative leave along with three other member of the athletic staff in the immediate aftermath of the media reports. One of those, football strength and conditioning coach Rick Court, has negotiated a settlement and resigned.
According to multiple people familiar with the process, Durkin was interviewed by investigators on the morning of Aug. 22, and they were particularly keen on questioning Durkin about his alleged use of food to demean players, possible verbal abuse and his handling of injuries.
The commission's review is expected to also look at the actions of other prominent coaches and staff members, including Damon Evans, who was promoted to athletics director less than two weeks after McNair's death. Loh, too, could find himself scrutinized by one or both of the external probes. He nixed a plan recommended by the school's athletic director to fundamentally change the way athletes receive medical treatment and athletic training less than a year before McNair died.
There is no formal deadline for the commission to complete its review of the football program.
"We're trying to get that all done this month, one way or another, so that all the facts we can gather are in front of the board and the campus and then decisions can be made about the future," Robert Caret, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said in an interview last week, "both to protect student-athletes themselves but also to create the kind of environment we want."
A day after he addressed reporters, Loh sent an email to his three new commission members, as well as a handful of school officials, laying out the assignment. He told them "to interview a sufficiently large sample of current and former players, their parents, athletics staff , and any other relevant stakeholders, in order to make an assessment on whether the relatively few (but deeply troubling) cases of alleged 'abuse,' reported anonymously in the media, indicate the existence of a widespread 'toxic culture' . . . or, do these reported cases represent only a small portion of the population of football players, present and past."
Loh told the members that "arguably, a hyper-masculine and insular culture is the norm, rather than the exception, in college football." Furthermore, he advised them that "some of the alleged verbally abusive or demeaning behaviors probably occur in every football program. It is part of the 'football culture.' There is, of course, an imprecise line between training practices that aggressively push players to the limit and are acceptable, and practices that most reasonable persons would deem to be physical and/or emotional abusive conduct.'"
Asked about Loh's email, Maryland spokesperson Katie Lawson said: "The president acknowledges that athletic programs are by their nature demanding and intense, and he asked commission members to investigate if Maryland's program crosses a line into destructive or abusive, which is absolutely unacceptable. President Loh has been clear that if such behavior did exist here, it will not be tolerated."
After assuming ownership of the investigation two days later, the board of regents added five more members to the commission, including former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich and Tom McMillen, the former Terps' basketball star who served three terms in Congress.
In expanding the panel, the regents faced the delicate task of appointing people who are sufficiently knowledgeable about football and the school but not too partisan.
"Ideally, you want somebody who has more than a passing familiarity with that space and the cultures that exist in that space," said a veteran college sports administrator, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly about the process. "At the same time, that can cause people to be apologists for all that behavior. That's one of the inherent challenges. I know some of the people on the Maryland committee. They're good people, but many are affiliated with the University of Maryland.