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What’s Hot in Healthcare: Florida researchers can diagnose stroke with 83% accuracy

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

Cindy Krischer Goodman | South Florida Sun-SentinelIn the nation’s emergency rooms, strokes are regularly misdiagnosed, but now Florida International University researchers have created an algorithm to diagnose this medical condition more quickly and accurately.The FIU-created algorithm uses hospital data and social determinants of health data such as age, race and underlying conditions to diagnose a stroke even before the results of laboratory tests or diagnostic images are available. The researchers believe currently used pre-hospital stroke scales miss about 30% of cases.With stroke diagnosis, there is a critical window. Patients who are treated within an hour of the onset of symptoms have a much greater chance of surviving and avoiding long-term brain damage. FIU researchers say their machine learning algorithm, if used by emergency department care teams, would improve the patients’ medical outcome by allowing doctors to make better and faster decisions.The FIU study, published ...

Chris Perkins: I liked what Tua said about considering retirement, but worried about him as a human being

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

A human story broke out Wednesday during a football news conference. It’s a story of hope and trust. It’s a story of family and fatherhood. It’s a story of love and life.Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa revealed, yes, he considered retiring from football in the offseason because of the concussions he sustained.But in the end he couldn’t tear himself away from the game that he loves, not even for the family he loves even more than the game.Tagovailoa is a 25-year-old millionaire with a wife and young son. That’s one of the reasons he had retirement conversations with his family. He doesn’t need football.“But really it would be hard for me to walk away from this game,” Tagovailoa said, “with how old I am, with my son. I always dreamed of playing as long as I could to where my son knew exactly what he was watching his dad do.“And, yeah, it’s my health, it’s my body, and I feel like this is what’s best for ...

Photos: Want to be Brad Pitt’s neighbor? Rare Carmel home listed for $8.8 million

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

A property in the picturesque Carmel Highlands coastal community, an enclave popular with celebrities, is for sale for $8.8 million.A property in the Carmel Highlands, an enclave popular with celebrities, is for sale for $8.8 million. (Wayne Capili)This past summer, Brad Pitt paid $40 million for a home in the secluded area overlooking the Pacific. Other previous residents include Betty White, “Little Mermaid” composer Alan Silvestri, and others. A nearby home was also featured in the Sharon Stone thriller “Basic Instinct.”A property in the Carmel Highlands, an enclave popular with celebrities, is for sale for $8.8 million. (Wayne Capili)The previous owner of the midcentury modern-style home was Anthony Frank, the late U.S. Postmaster General and former CEO of First Nationwide Bank. The property has a coveted design built on rocks that extends over the Pacific. And it is one of few homes in the area that has a stairway that leads to a hidden beach. Today, new buildings are not allow...

MBTA targeting Blue Line speed restrictions

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said speed restrictions could remain in place on the Blue Line until the end of November, but work to eliminate them could be accelerated by shutting down service earlier on weeknights.Eng said Wednesday that the T is planning to lift seven of the 21 current speed restrictions on the Blue Line by the end of May, by suspending service at 7 p.m. on April 24-27 and May 1-4.He told the Board of Directors that the T was considering shutting down the line each night at 7 for a month to lift the remaining speed restrictions, “saying that we could take that work down from six month’s time period to a one-month time period, and that’s what we’re proposing to do.”However, the MBTA later walked back that statement, with a spokesperson stating that “his verbal remarks intended to show that this work could be accomplished within one month during evening diversions that start at 7 p.m., not for the entirety of one consecutive month.”“There are additional opportuni...

PHOTOS: Velella velellas, or By-the-Wind sailors, spotted on San Diego beaches

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

SAN DIEGO – Thousands of blue jellyfish-like creatures have been spotted on Southern California beaches in the last few weeks – from Los Angeles to San Diego.These blueish, purple creatures known as Velella velella, or By-the-Wind sailors, have been captured dotting the shoreline in piles for the first time in years, amazing scientists and beachgoers alike.“They’re kind of what I would consider an ephemeral species – a little bit rare and exciting to come across,” Anya Stajner, a PHD student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told FOX5SanDiego.com. Stajner has studied the velella velellas extensively, in addition to kinds of zooplankton. “Sometimes you’ll find them in large amounts, and sometimes, you won’t find them at all,” she continued. Sea lions at La Jolla Cove: What to know before visiting Velella velella are known as a colonial hydroid, which is a type of species similar to the Portuguese Man O’War. While they have a jelly-like appearance, they are not closel...

‘The Last Wild Horse’ cloned in San Diego

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

SAN DIEGO -- A once endangered species of wild horse has been successfully cloned -- again.A Przewalski’s horse, sometimes called “the Last Wild Horse,” was born at ViaGen Pets & Equine’s cloning facility in Texas on Feb. 17 and will soon be moved the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. That's according to an announcement by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance on Wednesday. Officials said, "Scientists are elated with the recent birth of the world’s second successfully cloned Przewalski’s horse, supporting the concept that cloning can be used as a viable tool for genetic rescue and contribute to new options for fostering resilience and genetic sustainability of endangered species."The foal is a clone of a male Przewalski’s horse stallion whose living cell line was cryopreserved over 40 years ago in the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Biodiversity Bank’s Frozen Zoo, the organization explained in a news release.Back in August 2020, the world's first cloned Przewalski’s horse, Kurt, was bor...

No vote after Uvalde parents plead for tougher gun laws

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — It was getting close to midnight when Kimberly Mata-Rubio finally got her first chance since the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde — nearly one year ago — to ask Texas lawmakers to their faces to pass proposed restrictions on guns that had finally gotten a hearing.Sobbing, she pleaded for them to raise the purchase age for semiautomatic rifles like the one an 18-year-old gunman used to kill her daughter Lexi.“Did you look at images of children running for their lives, and think, ‘What if we had enacted stricter gun laws?’'” Mata-Rubio asked a state House committee, wiping away tears.The hearing adjourned — shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday — without a vote, and with no certainty that one will happen later. The result was the end, in the middle of the night, of what may wind up as the only debate in the Texas Capitol this year over a raft of stricter gun proposals filed following the deaths of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde last May.Other than ...

Ukraine’s top prosecutor speaks of ‘evil’ Russian atrocities

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia’s invading forces are deliberately using rape, torture and kidnapping to try to sow terror among civilians in Ukraine, the top prosecutor in Ukraine told U.S. lawmakers in graphic testimony Wednesday.Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said nearly 80,000 cases of war crimes have been registered in Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.Focusing on just one area of the country that has felt the brunt of the war, Kostin described some of the discoveries made when the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson last November. He said some 20 torture chambers were found and more than 1,000 survivors have reported an array of abuses, including the use of electric shocks, waterboarding, being forced to strip naked, and threats of mutilation and death.Kostin said more than 60 cases of rape were documented in the Kherson region alone. In areas still controlled by Russian forces, residents, including children, are being forcefully relocated to other occupied territ...

Michigan man linked to extremist group pleads guilty

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — A Detroit-area man linked to an anti-government group and arrested just before the fall election pleaded guilty Wednesday to gun-related charges.Timothy Teagan had attended various rallies with an AR-style rifle while dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, clothing favored by the Boogaloo Boys, a group bracing for a U.S. civil war.Teagan, however, did not face terrorism charges. Rather, he pleaded guilty to concealing his chronic use of marijuana when applying for a gun purchase and possessing a firearm and ammunition while being a drug user, both federal crimes.Prosecutors will recommend a 13-month prison term when Teagan returns to federal court on Aug. 16, according to the plea agreement. He will get credit for his time spent in custody since his arrest. Teagan, who lived in Plymouth, was arrested by local police in October and accused of assaulting his father. FBI agents subsequently searched the home and discovered body armor, boogaloo flags and gas masks.“They were asking...

Cuba’s parliament ratifies President Díaz-Canel for new term

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:06:01 GMT

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s National Assembly ratified President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Wednesday for a new five-year term, in a decision to maintain continuity as the island faces a deep economic crisis. More than 400 representatives to the assembly who were ratified by voters in March took office early Wednesday and then convened the chamber to elect the government’s leadership and the president. Díaz-Canel obtained the votes of 459 of the 462 legislators present.In his new term, Díaz-Canel must deal with a severe recession prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, soaring inflation triggered by a series of financial policy decisions and strict sanctions imposed by the U.S. He also must grapple with discontent among many Cubans expressed in part through record rates of emigration to the U.S. and elsewhere. The president himself expressed his strong “personal dissatisfaction” in December that he was not able to improve the economic situation. But he rejected any change to Cuba’s political system. ...