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Flash Continuous Home Glucose Monitoring to Improve Adherence to Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose and Self-Efficacy in Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

Adolescents with type 1 diabetes face self-management challenges that make it difficult for them to achieve good glycemic control. In our population of adolescents with poorly controlled type 1 diabetes, the use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) improved patients’ glycemic time in range (TIR) and identified hypoglycemia more frequently than with intermittent self-monitoring of blood glucose throughout a 4-week interval. However, the adolescents were unable to synthesize this information to problem-solve or reduce the frequency of hypoglycemic events. Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) diabetes management goals and providing intensive diabetes education and support could increase adolescents’ TIR and prevent hypoglycemia.




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Continuous Glucose Monitoring As a Behavior Modification Tool

Real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) use may lead to behavioral modifications in food selection and physical activity, but there are limited data on the utility of CGM in facilitating lifestyle changes. This article describes an 18-item survey developed to explore whether patients currently using CGM believe the technology has caused them to change their behavior.




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Daily Time of Radiation Treatment Is Associated with Subsequent Oral Mucositis Severity during Radiotherapy in Head and Neck Cancer Patients

Background:

Limited treatment options are available for oral mucositis, a common, debilitating complication of cancer therapy. We examined the association between daily delivery time of radiotherapy and the severity of oral mucositis in patients with head and neck cancer.

Methods:

We used electronic medical records of 190 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who completed radiotherapy, with or without concurrent chemotherapy, at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, NY) between 2015 and 2017. Throughout a 7-week treatment course, patient mouth and throat soreness (MTS) was self-reported weekly using a validated oral mucositis questionnaire, with responses 0 (no) to 4 (extreme). Average treatment times from day 1 until the day before each mucositis survey were categorized into seven groups. Multivariable-adjusted marginal average scores (LSmeans) were estimated for the repeated- and maximum-MTS, using a linear-mixed model and generalized-linear model, respectively.

Results:

Radiation treatment time was significantly associated with oral mucositis severity using both repeated-MTS (n = 1,156; P = 0.02) and maximum-MTS (n = 190; P = 0.04), with consistent patterns. The severity was lowest for patients treated during 8:30 to <9:30 am (LSmeans for maximum-MTS = 2.24; SE = 0.15), increased at later treatment times and peaked at early afternoon (11:30 am to <3:00 pm, LSmeans = 2.66–2.71; SEs = 0.16/0.17), and then decreased substantially after 3 pm.

Conclusions:

We report a significant association between radiation treatment time and oral mucositis severity in patients with head and neck cancer.

Impact:

Although additional studies are needed, these data suggest a potential simple treatment time solution to limit severity of oral mucositis during radiotherapy without increasing cost.




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Cold Spring Harbor Protocols




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You Must Remember Meeting Clara: Remembering Clara Derber Bloomfield (1942-2020)




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5 tips for buying home during rainy season

In addition to price and legality, location with weather condition is also a very important factor to consider when buying real estate. The rainy season is beginning in Vietnam’s Southern region, especially in Ho Chi Minh City. Expert says this is an appropriate time for home buyers to learn about the location of the homes they are interested in.





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Ignoring plea from UN, Justin Trudeau refuses to lift sanctions on poor nations during pandemic

These days, any national leader not actively urging their citizens to drink disinfectant is managing to look (relatively) good on the world stage.

Certainly, compared to the neurotic leadership south of the border, Justin Trudeau has emerged as a steady hand on the tiller, quickly providing Canadians with a wide economic safety net and behaving like an adult in the crisis.

So it's all the more disappointing that, out of the limelight, he's doing a great deal to make the situation worse during this pandemic for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

I'm referring to the prime minister's decision to ignore a plea last month from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres -- and the Pope -- for nations to lift sanctions against other nations in order to help some of the weakest and poorest countries cope with the coronavirus crisis.

That sounds like a reasonable request, under the circumstances.

Indeed, even if we don't care about the world's vulnerable people, helping them deal with the crisis is in our interests too. As the UN leader noted: "Let us remember that we are only as strong as the weakest health system in our interconnected world."

Yet Canada, ignoring the plea from the UN's highest official, continues in the midst of the pandemic to impose sanctions on 20 nations, including Lebanon, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Nicaragua and Yemen.

While Canada's sanctions are typically aimed at punishing the regimes running these countries, the impact of the sanctions falls primarily on ordinary citizens, according to Atif Kubursi, professor emeritus of economics at McMaster University.

Kubursi, who also served as a UN under-secretary-general and has extensive UN experience in the Middle East and Asia, says the impact of Canada's sanctions on the people in these countries is devastating.

While the sanctions often appear to be directed exclusively at military items, they frequently end up being applied to virtually all goods -- including spare parts needed to operate machinery in hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, notes Kubursi, who signed a letter from prominent Canadians to Trudeau requesting the lifting of sanctions.

For instance, if a Syrian businessman wants to buy Canadian products, he has to open an account for the transaction. But Kubursi says the Canadian government instructs Canadian banks not to allow such accounts for the purposes of trade with Syria -- no matter how benign the Canadian product may be, or how urgently it might be needed in Syria.

For that matter, Ottawa's sanctions prevent Canadians from using our banks or financial services to transfer money to Syria -- for instance, to family members living in Syria.

The impact of sanctions, while always painful, is particularly deadly during the pandemic, when even advanced nations have struggled to obtain life-saving equipment.

While Canada's sanctions mostly date back to the Harper era or earlier, the Trudeau government has generally maintained them and even added new ones against Venezuela.

Ottawa's sanctions appear primarily aimed at appeasing the U.S., which ruthlessly enforces sanctions against regimes it wishes to destabilize or overthrow. Washington also punishes countries and companies that don't co-operate with its sanctions.

Ottawa's willingness to fall in line behind Washington is reflected in the fact it doesn't impose sanctions against U.S allies Saudi Arabia or Israel, despite Saudi Arabia's brutal murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi and Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank. Even Israel's announcement that it plans to annex the West Bank in July has produced no sanctions or criticism from Canada.

Trudeau's decision to continue sanctioning 20 nations seems quite out of sync with the spirit of the times, when it's hard to find a TV commercial that doesn't proclaim the sentiment that "we're all in this together."

That spirit of international togetherness has been amply demonstrated by Cuba, which sent Cuban doctors to Italy to help its overwhelmed health care system and has offered similar medical help to First Nations in Canada.

When 36 Cuban doctors arrived in Milan last month, a grateful Italy thanked them and Italians at the airport cheered.

Meanwhile, Canada, in the spirit of the international togetherness, rebuffs Cuban doctors, ignores the UN and imposes sanctions on some of the world's poorest nations.

Linda McQuaig is an author and journalist. This column, which appeared in The Toronto Star, is based on research from her new book The Sport & Prey of Capitalists.

Image: CanadianPM/Video Screenshot/Twitter

May 8, 2020




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Aspiring young filmmakers invited to enter Windsor showcase

If you're 13 to 24 years old and love to make movies, you'll want to enter the Windsor Youth Short Film Showcase next week. Organizer Gemma Eva says the project is meant to spotlight local "Gen-Z filmmakers."




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Robots are taking manufacturing jobs but making firms more productive

Robots are replacing manufacturing workers in France, making companies more productive and reducing employment across the industry




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TikTok: How did the video-sharing app get so big so quickly?

TikTok's rise has been meteoric. With more than 3 million people a day now downloading the app, its success is down to more than just luck




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Spring-powered shoes could help us run more than 50 per cent faster

A spring-powered exoskeleton that minimises the amount of energy our legs lose when running could help boost human running speeds by more than 50 per cent




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Vibrating clothes could make you feel like you’re wearing clouds

Fabric with tiny vibrating motors elicits sensations associated with clouds, water and rocks on the skin and has been made into a dress that could improve emotions




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Lyft, Like Uber, Will Also Now Require Drivers and Passengers Wear Face Coverings

Up until now mask-wearing had only been an unenforced suggestion by the company.




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Zens Comes Closest to Delivering the Wireless Charger Apple AirPower Promised to Be

It delivers almost all the functionality Apple promised, with a steep Apple-like price tag to match.




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Teenager Accused of Leading Ring of 'Evil Geniuses' on £19.3 Million 'Cybercrime Spree'

The hacker in question hasn't even graduated high school yet.




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‘Dead to Me’ Found a Brilliantly Soapy Way to Bring Back James Marsden in Season 2

Saeed Adyani / Netflix

This post contains spoilers for Dead to Me Season 2.

Maybe it’s the surreality of, well, everything lately—or maybe it’s just aged like the fine wines all of its characters toss back by the bottle. Whatever the reason, Dead to Me Season 2 hits even better than Season 1—fighting off a sophomore slump with a fresh batch of twists, dramatic ironies, and, most importantly, some more Christina Applegate angsting out to metal. Perhaps this season’s smartest move, however, is a trope pulled straight out of Soapy Dramas 101: Bringing James Marsden back to play his own twin.

Series creator Liz Feldman was sending the usual thank-you notes back and forth with cast and crew after Season 1 wrapped when she received a particularly amusing message from Marsden.

Read more at The Daily Beast.




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How Mobile Data Sharing Works

There are a lot of big steps you can take in a relationship. Dropping the 'L bomb', moving in together, combined finances, getting engaged. All these pale in comparison to sharing mobile data. Sharing your precious data with a significant other is big. You have to trust that your partner won't burn through it all while bingeing Netflix on the bus. You have to respect your partner's share. And you have to forgive when someone inevitably goes over the cap anyway. But how exactly does data sharing work? More »
    




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Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp reveals private meetings with Steven Gerrard during lockdown



Jurgen Klopp never got to manage Steven Gerrard at Liverpool but the pair still have a strong relationship given their connections to the club.




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Figuring out what the Milky Way looks like is akin to a murder mystery

How can we get a picture of the whole Milky Way if we are inside it? Good sleuthing is needed to combine all the clues, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein




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Pluto formed quickly with a deep ocean covering its entire surface

Pluto’s ancient oceans may have come about just after the icy world was born, melting from ice in a process that suggests the dwarf planet took just 30,000 years to form




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Our nearest star system may have a planet with a colossal set of rings

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NASA has selected three lunar landers to bring humans to the moon

NASA has awarded $967 million to three space flight companies – Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX – to build lunar landers that will be part of the Artemis programme to send humans to the moon by 2024




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DARPA Subterranean Challenge: The Scoring Rules

How autonomous robots in the underground scavenger hunt pick up points for their teams




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NASA Hiring Engineers to Develop “Next Generation Humanoid Robot”

Job postings from a NASA contractor suggest that a new humanoid robot is under development




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Video Friday: Transferring Human Motion to a Mobile Robot Manipulator

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos




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We're at IROS 2019 to Bring You the Most Exciting Robotics Research From Around the World

As always, our coverage will feature the coolest, weirdest, and most interesting things that we find at this massive robotics conference




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Caltech and JPL Firing Quadrotors Out of Cannons

The fastest, safest, and most exciting way to launch a quadrotor may be ballistically





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Xbox Series X exclusive Scorn revealed during Inside Xbox livestream



Today, Microsoft and Ebb Studios revealed that Xbox Series X would be getting the launch exclusivity for Scorn




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RPGCast – Episode 262: “Amazing Drawstring Pouch”

All our hopes and dreams for the next generation of consoles now have a fitting container! Aside from that, Mewtwo misplaces his tail and it...




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RPGCast – Episode 440: “Mandatory Pampering”

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Nicola Sturgeon "considering" relaxation of lockdown exercise restrictions

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said the Scottish Government is looking into expanding the current guidance about exercise during the lockdown.




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Light touch: eight spring dresses to lift your spirits

Whether it’s printed and high-necked or floral and ruffled, brighten your lockdown by dressing up to stay in

Continue reading...




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Cholesterol lowering drugs linked to improved gut bacteria composition in obese people

Obese Europeans who are treated with cholesterol lowering drugs have not only lower values of blood LDL cholesterol and markers of inflammation but in addition a more healthy gut bacteria profile than those obese who are not prescribed statins.




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Faces of the coronavirus pandemic: Remembering those who died

From a veteran fire chief to a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, over 71,000 people have died in the United States from the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.Those we've lost come from all backgrounds and walks of life and include the very people -- first responders and medical staff, who are working so diligently to stem the tide of the infection and care for the sick. Variously described as heroes, caring educators and loving family members, they will never be forgotten. ...





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Grocery store employee working during COVID-19 crisis: &#39;I&#39;m going to say my prayers&#39;

When his alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m., 54-year-old Jeff Reid knows it's time to begin his day and prepare for an eight-hour shift on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. As a grocery store worker, Reid never imagined he'd find himself in this position. Every day before his 5 a.m. shift, Reid prepares his morning essentials -- 1,000 milligrams of the powdered vitamin supplement Emergen-C and his morning prayers.





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Gwyneth Paltrow said starring in Shallow Hal was a 'disaster' – here’s why she is right

The actor said wearing a fat suit for the 2001 movie taught her what it is like to be humiliated as an obese person. Why are TV and film characters so rarely treated with dignity and respect?

‘Disaster” is how Gwyneth Paltrow has summed up her role in the 2001 film Shallow Hal, which will surprise few people who have actually seen it. Jack Black plays Hal, a man so shallow he has to be hypnotised in order to date a fat woman, who, through his boggled eyes, he sees as a very thin woman.

The nastiness of Shallow Hal, which has long appalled critics and fans alike, was front and centre in the trailer, where Hal’s friend attempts to “rescue” him from speaking to a fat woman, Rosemary, who is, in fact, willowy Paltrow dressed in a fat suit. But because he cannot see what she looks like, he falls for her “inner beauty”. It is an uncomfortable mix – a film that pretends to preach body acceptance while simultaneously inviting laughter at bodies that don’t fit into jeans size six and under. Take the scene where she is called a “rhino”, or the one where she cannonballs into a swimming pool causing a tidal wave. The message built into the script’s DNA is simple: fat is funny; it is OK to laugh at fat people.

Continue reading...




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CFL players preparing for the worst

The B.C. Lions made sure to count every last penny when announcing a new contract for free-agent quarterback Mike Reilly ahead of the 2019 Canadian Football League season. Reilly, who had ...




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White House Misled Public, Buried CDC Reopening Guidelines and is Now Preparing for Second Coronavirus Wave

The White House is making "contingency plans" for a second wave of coronavirus after emails reportedly contradict their claims that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to safely reopen the economy were set aside because medical experts did not approve of them.




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Putin Says Russians are 'Invincible' in Speech During Coronavirus-Hit Victory Day Ceremony

The president appeared outside the Kremlin walls to praise the Soviet effort in what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.




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Apple Is Making It Way Easier to Unlock Your iPhone While Wearing a Mask

This should be a big help at the grocery store




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Koalas Drink Water by Licking Tree Trunks during Rain

A team of Australian scientists and wildlife ecologists has captured koala drinking behavior in the wild for the first time. Each day, wild koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) eat around 510 grams of fresh eucalyptus leaves, and the water in the foliage they feed on is believed to contribute about 75% of their water intake in both [...]




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Govt disburses Rs 18,253 cr to 9.13 cr farmers under PM-KISAN scheme during lockdown




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Psychology tips for maintaining social relationships during lockdown

Touch is key to social relationships, and while coronavirus social distancing measures may limit physical interactions, there are still many ways to connect from afar, says evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar




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Celebrating Mother's Day during COVID-19 pandemic

On a Mother's Day unlike previous ones, here are a few ideas to help you celebrate, whether your mom is near, far, or socially isolating.




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SHA considering First Nations, Métis data-sharing for COVID-19 cases

"If we don't have all the information in front of us to help us make decisions, then how do we flatten the curve and stop the spread?"




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‘Hamilton’ Meets ‘Wicked’: BroadwayCon Fans Bring the Cosplay

At BroadwayCon, the phrase “I’ve never seen ‘Cats’” draws gasps and painted green witches are as common as colonial gear and trios of Schuyler sisters from the hit musical “Hamilton.” BroadwayCon took over part of the Javits Center in New York this past weekend with fans belting word-perfect renditions of show tunes amid a rotating […]




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Pogba and Fernandes can be &#39;amazing&#39; pairing with &#39;compromise&#39;, tips Neville

Gary Neville took to Twitter to answer questions around Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes, and Manchester United's future transfer policy.





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Trump considering more coronavirus economic relief measures

President Donald Trump said on Thursday his administration was considering further economic measures, possibly via executive orders, to provide help against the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic.