🔗 Articles: Tuesday 21.May.2024


US FDA: Do Not Use Cue Health’s COVID-19 Tests Due to Risk of False Results: FDA Safety Communication

Date Issued: May 13, 2024

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning home test users, caregivers, and health care providers not to use Cue Health’s COVID-19 Tests for Home and Over-the-Counter (OTC) Use and its COVID-19 Test intended for patient care settings due to increased risk of false results.

The FDA issued a Warning Letter to Cue Health on May 10, 2024, after an inspection revealed the company made changes to these tests and these changes reduced the reliability of the tests to detect SARS-CoV-2 virus.

via Pratik


InsideEVs: Study Finds Just 2.5% Of EVs Have Had Their Battery Replaced

The new study found that battery replacement rates for EVs built before 2015 are as high as 13%, but for vehicles from 2016 or newer, they drop to 1% or less. The oldest EVs included in the study were from 2011, and about one in three needed a new battery, but this was due to several factors, not just their age.


Electric Car Charger Vandalism Continues To Surge Nationwide

A Tesla Supercharging station in the Bay Area was recently targeted by vandals who severed the charging cord from every stall. A few days prior, 5 separate Supercharger locations were stripped in Houston, TX. In Fresno, CA, over 50 of the city’s 88 EV charging stations have been pillaged – some multiple times.

Still, sometimes the vandalism is not about the money at all. Property damage is also performed by petty, anti-EV actors all over the world just looking to make life more miserable for others. An individual in British Columbia, Canada dipped the charging plugs of a Tesla Supercharger in a sealant, which when dried rendered the station inoperable.

Once they get more surveillance cameras installed, we’ll find out who these people are. In the meantime, costs rise.


The Atlantic: Scientists Are Very Worried About NASA’s Mars Plan

If, that is, the samples ever make it back to Earth. NASA officials recently announced that the sample-return effort has become too expensive and fallen worryingly behind schedule. The latest estimated cost of as much as $11 billion is nearly double what experts initially predicted, and the way things are going, the samples won’t arrive home until 2040, seven years later than expected. At a press conference last month, NASA chief Bill Nelson repeatedly called the state of the Mars Sample Return mission “unacceptable,” a striking chastisement of his own agency, considering that MSR is an in-house effort. Officials have put out a call—to NASA’s own ranks and to private space companies—for “quicker and cheaper” plans that don’t require “huge technological leaps” to bring the samples home.


Guardian: Donald Trump removes video on Truth Social with ‘unified reich’ reference

Donald Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account referencing a “unified reich” if Trump wins the presidential election in November – then, after being criticized for it in some quarters for more than half a day, removed it.

The video posted on Monday remained up for 15 hours into Tuesday morning despite the reference being pointed out by media outlets. The former president’s account removed it by about 10am ET on Tuesday.


TorStar: There’s only so one way to fix Canada. Everyone will hate it

Today, some provinces are hitting eject just for kicks. Saskatchewan is using the clause to bully transgender kids at school, Ontario wielded it to pass a political advertising law, and Quebec has used it to tell religious minorities how to dress on the job. Pierre Poilievre even wants to use it to pass cruel, inhumane, ineffective, unconstitutional criminal sentencing laws

Trudeau’s strategy has been to leave it to the courts, hoping against hope that they would find some ingenious way to reinstall the glass box marked “DO NOT PRESS.” This is a legal fantasy. The only way to uninstall this constitutional vestige — or, at least, to make it harder to use — is to amend the constitution.


TorStar: Impact of pot legalization on older Canadians has been stark

A year after legalizing dried cannabis flowers, Canadian older adults were the age group with the largest growth in overall cannabis use. Yet, little is known about the health effects of legalizing edible cannabis on older adults.

Our study published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that Canada’s legalization of cannabis was associated with increased rates of emergency department visits for cannabis poisoning among older adults in Ontario. The largest increases occurred after edible cannabis became legally available for retail sale in January 2020 (three times greater than pro-legalization, and 1.5 times greater then when only dried cannabis flower was legally available for retail sale).

A study of Canadian children found that legalization of edible cannabis was associated with marked increases in poisoning hospitalizations. Older adults are similarly prone to unintentional poisonings because edible cannabis products are visually attractive and palatable, and may be taken in error, being easily confused with non-cannabis foods and candies.

Some of the harms we observed were likely related to intentional ingestions, including for recreational purposes. Compared to inhaled cannabis, edibles have delayed drug effects of about three hours. Older adults may be more accustomed to the instantaneous high of inhaled cannabis, and ingest excessive doses of edibles before peak effects have occurred. This is known as ‘dose-stacking’ and is a contributor to cannabis poisoning.


MacRumors: New ‘Parkour’ Immersive Video Coming to Vision Pro on Friday

A description of the Parkour episode invites Vision Pro wearers to join the “world’s leading parkour athletes” as they go on a “gravity-defying trek across the streets and rooftops of Paris.”


MacRumors: Next Emoji Coming to iOS Could Include Face With Eye Bags, Shovel, Fingerprint, Splatter and More

Apple adds new emoji to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other devices regularly based on updates made to the emoji catalog by the Unicode Consortium, and the there are seven new emoji that we could see sometime in late 2024 or early 2025.

The next emoji characters being considered include face with bags under eyes, fingerprint, leafless tree, root vegetable, harp, shovel, and splatter.

Apple last introduced new emoji with the iOS 17.4 update that was released in March 2024. Characters added in iOS 17.4 include lime, an edible brown mushroom, a phoenix, a broken chain, shaking head vertically (as in a “yes” nod), and shaking head horizontally (a “no” head shake).


Last Updated: 21.May.2024 22:47 EDT

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