Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
As health officials investigate more than 30 cases of infant botulism linked to ByHeart baby formula since August, parents who say their children were sickened with the same illness months before the current outbreak are demanding answers, too.California public health officials confirmed late Friday that six babies in that state who consumed ByHeart formula were treated for botulism between November 2024 and June 2025, up to nine months before the outbreak that has sickened at least 31 babies in 15 states.At the time, there was “not enough evidence to immediately suspect a common source,” the California Department of Public Health…
The message is hammered over and over, in news conferences, hearings and executive orders: President Donald Trump and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., say they want the government to follow “gold standard” science.Scientists say the problem is that they are often doing just the opposite by relying on preliminary studies, fringe science or just hunches to make claims, cast doubt on proven treatments or even set policy.This week, the nation’s top public health agency changed its website to contradict the scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. The move shocked health experts nationwide.Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who resigned…
Donald “Frue” McAvoy and his fiancée, Rachel Leaptrott, were taking it easy on a Sunday in early December 2023, making a cheese board and turning on a football game.After one bite, McAvoy began to choke. He couldn’t swallow or breathe.Leaptrott leapt into action. She cleared his throat, but realized that McAvoy’s pupils were locked in place. He was talking, but couldn’t see anything. Leaptrott’s daughter called 911. “It’s like trying to remember a dream. That’s the best way I can describe it,” McAvoy said. “I remember bits and pieces. I get chills, because I couldn’t see and that was extremely…
A Texas A&M committee agreed that the university was wrong to fire a professor earlier this year after a controversy over a classroom video that showed a student objecting to a children’s literature lesson about gender identity.The internal committee ruled that the university didn’t follow proper procedures and didn’t prove there was good cause to fire Melissa McCoul, who was a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience. Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had called for her termination after seeing the video.The committee unanimously voted earlier this week that “the summary dismissal of…
Harry Stebbings isn’t shy about sliding into inboxes. And he’s persistent — just ask Marc Benioff.Stebbings, the 29-year-old founder of venture capital firm 20VC, interviewed the Salesforce CEO in 2023 for his podcast. He wasn’t the easiest guest to score, but Stebbings was committed to getting him on the show.Stebbings spoke about his strategy for getting Benioff to say yes — which involved sending 53 cold emails over a year — during a November 12 episode of the “Biography” podcast with Wouter Teunissen. It’s a skill that Stebbings has honed over the years of hitting up potential guests.Stebbings shared his…
ChatGPT just added a group chat feature, which is intriguing and slightly confusing. You add your friends to a new chat inside the app, and then as you and the real humans chat away, the AI chatbot can weigh in as needed.Like I said, intriguing. The idea of moving your group chat with friends to something that lives inside ChatGPT is, well, somewhat headache-inducing, if only from a privacy and security standpoint. I won’t even touch on the freakiness of moving our social lives into an AI chatbot app — I’ll let you ponder the implications of that all on…
Thomas Lee Young doesn’t sound like your typical Silicon Valley founder. The 24-year-old CEO of Interface, a San Francisco startup using AI to prevent industrial accidents, is a white guy with a Caribbean accent and a Chinese last name, a combination he finds amusing enough to mention when he’s first introduced to business contacts. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the site of substantial oil and gas exploration activity, Young grew up around oil rigs and energy infrastructure because his entire family worked as engineers, stretching back generations to his great-grandfather, who immigrated to the island nation from China.…
GRAYS HARBOR COUNTY, Wash. (AP) — A Washington state man is believed to be the first person to die from a rare strain of bird flu, but state health officials said Friday the risk to the public is low.The man, an older adult with underlying health conditions, was being treated for a bird flu called H5N5 after becoming seemingly the first known human infected by the strain, according to a statement from the Washington State Department of Health.The man from Grays Harbor County, about 78 miles (125 kilometers) southwest of Seattle, had a backyard flock of domestic poultry that had…
Everyday tasks like clearing the dinner table and loading the dishwasher are a major dexterity challenge for home robots that can require a lot of training data and capital.A new startup says it spent less than two years and a fraction of the costs to figure it out.On Thursday, Sunday Robotics emerged from stealth to demonstrate Memo, a fully autonomous home robot on wheels that can complete household tasks.A video posted on X by the company’s cofounder, Tony Zhao, showed Memo move from the dining room to the kitchen to clear the table of dishes and load them in the…
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. flu season is starting slowly, and it’s unclear if it will be as bad as last winter’s, but some health experts are worried as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Friday shows a new version of the virus has emerged.An early analysis suggests current vaccines may still be somewhat effective against the new version of the flu, which has been the main driver of recent infections, CDC data shows.Some scientists and medical professionals are more worried about disappointing vaccination rates, a main reason why flu hospitalizations and deaths were unusually bad…