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A new PEN America report shows that there are no signs of decreasing school book bans
The US’ American Library Association (ALA) released data on the number of attempts to ban library books over the course of eight months. “To allow a group of people or any individual, no matter how powerful or loud, to become the decision-maker about what books we can read or whether libraries exist, is to place all of our rights and liberties in jeopardy,” it said.
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Discrimination has made it difficult for people of color to live in urban areas
Urban heat islands are more expensive to live on than white or richer areas, according to a study published in Nature. It found that the average person of colour lives in census tracts with higher summer daytime SUHI [surface urban heat island] intensity than non- Hispanic whites in all but six of the 175 largest urbanised areas in the continental US.
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For health equity, location is important
Scientists at the University of British Columbia and the University of Washington have found that fixing air pollution can dramatically improve health in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. A total of over 3,200 people were interviewed by the researchers, who compared the health outcomes of residents from disadvantaged neighbourhoods with those living near sources of pollution like oil refineries and coal-burning power plants.
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The Apple watch series 9 review had a new chip and watchOS 10 health updates
Apple on Monday announced that it has rolled out a new feature in the Apple WatchOS 10 to let users search for health-related items like prescriptions and appointments on the platform. Users can search using the double tap gesture and can access the data within the app. The new feature has been rolled out as an update to the Series 9 and Ultra 2.
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Some years of progress toward cleaner air are being erased by wildfire smoke
A new study by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed that the amount of air pollution caused due to wildfires in the US is about the same as it would have been without the Clean Air Act. As per the study, wildfires cause “uncontrollable air pollution events in the US due to wildland fires”.
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The first human trials of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface are being sought
Elon Musk’s Neuralink has received US Food and Drug Administration’s approval to conduct a human test of its brain-to-computer device for helping people with paralysis control prostheses and to restore vision. It is seeking people who are over the age of 22 with a reliable and consistent family member to participate in the study. The implant is not visible when implanted.
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DeepMind’s new technology can make predictions about genetic diseases
Bioinformatician iga Avsec has predicted rare diseases by using’AlphaMissense’ model of missense genetic variation. It can predict rare diseases by looking for genetic alterations that are linked to disease. The missense variant, found in over four million humans, is labelled either benign or pathogenic after years of research. The model claims to be the most accurate predictor for the next few years.
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Tropical Storm Warnings were issued for New England because of Hurricane Lee
A tropical storm warning has been issued for part of coastal Massachusetts including Nantucket, Martha’s and Cape Cod due to the “supersonic Lee Event”. The National Hurricane Center has said its hurricane and tropical storm watches referred to conditions expected on Saturday. The storm surge will be 2 to 4 feet above ground if the storm surge peaks along with high tide, forecasters said.
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Child growth is faltering in low resource settings
We have used randomized and longitudinal studies of ki project to quantify the incidence of the proportion of wasting between birth and 24 months of age in low-income countries. We estimated wasting outcomes within specific cohorts and pooling estimates within each age using random-effects models. The pooled age-specific means allowed for a random effect of the mean in each cohort.
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In low-resource settings there are causes and consequences of child growth faltering
We first estimated the mean in each cohort, and then pooled age-specific means across cohorts, while allowing for a cohort-level random effect. The mean difference between the LAZ at older ages compared to the stunting reversal at the younger ages was estimated within each age interval. The effect of an individualized intervention on an exposure was estimated using a variable importance measure methodology.
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