Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando star in Elia Kazan’s acclaimed adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ landmark play – back in UK cinemas from 7 February.
Category Archives: News
Mayo Clinic Health Video: Dangers Of “Sepsis” Now Require Response Teams In Intensive Care Units
Our bodies are very good at fighting infection. The immune system reacts and attacks bacteria and viruses that make us sick. But sometimes the immune reaction is so strong that it damages the body. This is called a septic reaction or sepsis, and the mortality rate associated with it can be high.
In fact, a new study suggests that sepsis is responsible for 20 percent of all deaths worldwide. That’s more deaths than are estimated to be attributable to cancer. At Mayo Clinic, doctors like Kannan Ramar, M.B.B.S., M.D., are trying to change that with a sepsis response team in intensive care units. Their goal: to stop sepsis and save lives.
More health and medical news on the Mayo Clinic News Network. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/
Travel: How The Dutch Windmills Are Causing The Netherlands To Sink
From an Undark.org online article:
This subsidence means that in a low-lying nation famous for engineering its way around rising seas, the ground is also sinking lower, creating huge problems for the structures built on top. At a certain point, building foundations begin to crack, sinkholes appear, roads destabilize, and the risk of flooding increases. More construction results in more pressing down of the peat — and more subsidence.
TOURISTS VISITING the Netherlands often stop to take selfies in front of one of the country’s more than 1,000 windmills. Afterward, they might taste one of the many varieties of cheese for which the nation is famous. But most are unaware that these two icons of the Netherlands are responsible for causing the nation’s land to sink.
The windmills were used for centuries to drain peatland for cattle grazing and agriculture at large, and that draining — these days done by pumping stations — is causing the land in some places to sink at an average rate of 8 millimeters per year, or about one-third of an inch. (In some areas, researchers put that number higher, at several centimeters per year.)
Future Of Housing: California Architect And Builder Launch Luxury Container Tiny Homes
From a Dwell.com online article:
Drawing upon Garnero’s six years of cargotecture experience and Burdge’s design expertise, the duo recently launched the Buhaus: a tiny pre-permitted container home designed for indoor/outdoor living. “People appreciate great design, and most shipping container designs seem to be more low-end,” says Burdge. “We wanted to create a higher-end shipping container living unit.”
In the wake of the 2018 Woolsey Fire that devastated Southern California, Malibu architect Doug Burdge and builder Nate Garnero sought to provide their clients with temporary housing by repurposing shipping containers into fire-resistant tiny homes.
Buhaus—a combination of the words Bauhaus and Malibu—takes cues from the 20th-century movement with its clean, geometric form and focus on functionality. At 160 square feet, the Buhaus Studio Unit is efficiently divided into three sections: a living/sleeping area with a kitchenette, a bathroom, and an outdoor deck.
International Lectures: Former British Prime Minister Theresa May (Oxford Union Video)
May served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2019. Assuming office following the 2016 Brexit referendum, she was tasked with one of the most intractable challenges of any post-war Prime Minister, and successfully negotiated a withdrawal deal with the EU in late 2018. Beyond Brexit, May reversed course on the Conservative government’s controversial programme of austerity, delivering the largest single cash-boost to the NHS in its history, and championed human rights and social justice initiatives, such as ending modern slavery.
The Benazir Bhutto Memorial Lecture was established to honour the life and legacy of Benazir Bhutto, the first female leader of a majority-Muslim country, and a former President of the Oxford Union.
ABOUT THE OXFORD UNION SOCIETY: The Oxford Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. Since 1823, the Union has been promoting debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
Politics: Mark Shields & David Brooks On The Latest In Washington (PBS)
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s political news, including the opening of President Trump’s Senate trial and the announcement of his legal team, public opinion on impeachment, 2020 Democrats’ final debate before the Iowa caucuses and Michael Bloomberg’s remarkable ad spend.
Digital Medicine: Apps For Smartphones, Machine Learning To Treat Kidney Disease (The Lancet)
From a The Lancet online article (January 18, 2020):
Smartphone app-based platforms for urine testing could improve adherence to albumin creatinine ratio (ACR) testing. One study showed screening of at-risk patients almost doubled with a home urine test kit that uses a smartphone camera to easily and accurately quantify ACR from a user-performed urine dipstick. If independently validated in a large, diverse population, this low-cost strategy could change the often dim trajectory for individuals with declining kidney function. 
In the outpatient setting, a Japanese team used machine learning and natural language processing to predict disease progression and need for dialysis over 6 months in patients with diabetic nephropathy. And while the increased risk of contrast-induced acute kidney injury has been long appreciated, a machine learning algorithm trained and tested on 3 million adults effectively quantified the degree of kidney injury on the basis of the volume of contrast used and individual patient-level characteristics.
Interview: James Bond 007 Series Producers Barbara Broccoli, 59 And Michael G. Wilson, 77 (Variety UK)
From a Variety.com online interview (January 17, 2020):
“He brought flesh and blood to the character,” she says. “Bond in the novel is a silhouette. Daniel has given him depth and an inner life. We were looking for a 21st-century hero, and that’s what he delivered. He bleeds; he cries; he’s very contemporary.”
(On Daniel Craig)
“For better or worse, we are the custodians of this character,” says Barbara Broccoli, who oversees the franchise with her half-brother Michael G. Wilson. “We take that responsibility seriously.”
It’s an arrangement that was first hammered out by Broccoli’s father, the producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, when John F. Kennedy was president and the Twist was all the rage. Miraculously, that pact has prevailed through the decades and generations, enduring everything from corporate mergers and bankruptcies to shifting consumer tastes and geopolitical upheavals. The elder Broccoli died in 1996. but not before ceding control to his two children with the 1995 release of “GoldenEye,” a film that proved a sexist superspy, conceived by novelist Ian Fleming in the 1950s, still had a role to play in post-Cold War cinema.
Top New Science Podcasts: Lack Of Clinical Trial Reporting, Gut Microbe Links To Chronic Disease
Though a law requiring clinical trial results reporting has been on the books for decades, many researchers have been slow to comply. Now, 2 years after the law was sharpened with higher penalties for noncompliance, investigative correspondent Charles Piller took a look at the results. He talks with host Sarah Crespi about the investigation and a surprising lack of compliance and enforcement.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Brett Finlay, a microbiologist at the University Of British Columbia, Vancouver, about an Insight in this week’s issue that aims to connect the dots between noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer and the microbes that live in our guts. Could these diseases actually spread through our microbiomes?
Study: “Probiotic Drink” Developed That Thwarts Antibiotic Resistance
From a Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News online article:
“We were able to show that if you can stop the plasmid from replicating, then most of the bacteria lose the plasmid as the bacteria grow and divide. This means that infections that might otherwise be hard to control, even with the most powerful antibiotics available, are more likely to be treatable with standard antibiotics.”
Researchers headed by a team at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. have developed a probiotic drink containing genetic elements that are designed to thwart antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in gut bacteria at the genetic level. The drink targets small DNA elements called plasmids that carry antibiotic resistance genes, and which are able to replicate independently and spread between bacteria. By preventing these plasmids from replicating, the antibiotic resistance genes are displaced, effectively resensitizing the bacteria to antibiotics.
Boomers Daily 