The Washington Court of Appeals upheld the denial of an injured worker’s request to reopen her claim due to her failure to timely perfect her appeal of the decision of…

The Washington Court of Appeals upheld a determination that a worker was not entitled to reopen his claim for a neck injury because he failed to prove that the accident contributed…

The Washington Court of Appeals upheld the suspension of an injured nurse’s benefits because she refused to participate in a telehealth evaluation requested by her employer. Case: Novalic v. PeaceHealth, No. 58451-4-II, 07/16/2024, unpublished. Facts: Eldina…

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The Claims Specialist's Start Guide: CA Adjuster Cert Process, Historical Overview, Organizational Structure of WC System, WC Terms and Concepts, Basic Benefits & TD and SJDB Vouchers.

This program focuses on how to use data. Linda Lane will share a strategy that builds a customized network that achieved the "Triple Aim" of workers' compensation - which is…

Are we doing enough in the workers compensation industry to innovate by incorporating technology and data into our daily business processes? What can we use today to drive innovation and…

Improving Communication in Workers' Compensation…

During this episode of Work Comp Matters Steve, Robert, Mike & Ted talk about governor Gavin Newsom placing a stay on the death penalty, the Nationwide college admissions scandal regarding…

The Nevada Workers’ Compensation Section opened registration for free online training classes that will be held in January. The WCS is holding a basic orientation session Jan. 8 that will cover…

West Virginia’s Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld a finding of compensability for a worker’s back injury. Case: Toyota Motor Manufacturing WV Inc. v. Adkins, No. 24-ICA-181, 10/28/2024, unpublished. Facts: Donnie Adkins worked…

West Virginia’s Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled that a worker was not entitled to reopen his claim or to receive additional benefits even though he received treatments and expanded the…

The Illinois Appellate Court upheld the denial of a disability pension to a police officer who refused surgery to address his injury. Case: Shirley v. Village of Clarendon Hills Police Pension…

Join Michael Stack as he presents this interactive course on the Workers' Compensation system. Our program is intended to give 6 hours of foundational insight to those new to the…

Join WCC + MTI America for an overview of the latest technologies in our space. Panelists will review new apps and technologies and how they are being used to impact…

n this session, we will discuss a 15-year-old law that consistently confuses and frustrates responsible reporting entities in our industry.

In this webinar, ODG by MCG’s VP of Government Affairs, Patrick F. Robinson, JD, MBA, will discuss the origin and recent trends concerning telework/home offices, how different jurisdictions have analyzed…

This course will discuss implementation and utilization of an alternative return-to-work program that offers modified duty at non-profit organizations. Experienced instructors will illustrate the value of a specialized return-to-work program…

This course will explain the prevalence, pathophysiology, evaluation, and treatment recommendations of diabetic foot ulcers. Additionally, causation analysis will also be discussed.

Join HIRMA/WorkCompCentral for a one-hour webinar as we explore the Summer 2024 Legislative Outlook in Workers Compensation. This webinar aims to provide participants with a understanding of the legislative changes…

The Utah Court of Appeals ruled that a worker can receive benefits for injuries she sustained from an idiopathic fall while she was working — if the injuries were made more…

The North Carolina Industrial Commission opened registration for its annual conference being held Sept. 30-Oct. 2 at the Raleigh Convention Center. The 29th annual North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference will…

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation on Monday said it reopened its safety grant program and that $35 million will be available to help employers purchase equipment to protect their…

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation opened registration for its 2024 Medical & Health Symposium being held in November. The free virtual event will focus on how technology in medicine is…

The Kentucky Supreme Court last week suspended an attorney for misconduct related to his representation of a client in a probate matter and a workers’ compensation claim. Barry Nathaniel Sullivan was…

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that a traveling worker was entitled to benefits for her injuries from a fall while leaving her hotel to go souvenir shopping. Kimminee Costello worked for…

The Montana Department of Labor and Industry proposed rules that would add intentional misclassification to the list of violations that justify assessing the maximum penalty. The department will hold a hearing…

A police officer in Clearwater, Florida, was arrested after investigators allegedly observed him engaging in activities that contradicted the limitations he cited when seeking workers’ compensation benefits and a disability…

The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the denial of a worker’s request to reopen his claim arising out of a car accident. Case: Parr v. Industrial Commission, No. 1 CA-IC 23-0018,…

The Louisiana Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a decision finding that a man injured while jousting was excluded from the state's workers' compensation system. On Tuesday, a 6-1…

The South Carolina Court of Appeals upheld a 10% penalty against an employer for its late payment of a worker’s award. Case: Jefferson v. South Carolina Department of Transportation, No. 2019-001643, 09/11/2024,…

DALLAS, Oct. 1, 2024 - Strokes can strike at any age, challenging survivors to overcome physical, emotional and cognitive changes. Nominations are open now for the 2025 Stroke Hero Awards from the American Stroke Association, a division of the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 8, 2024 — The American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary organization focused on heart and brain health that is celebrating its centennial birthday this year, issued the following statement in response to Congress’...

Victorian Sussex showcased remarkable displays of engineering ingenuity, where inventors tackled various cycling challenges from bumpy unpaved roads to the impracticalities of woolen clothing with boundless enthusiasm and creativity. h/t: vintag.es Among these innovators was Horsham architect Edward Burstow, who in 1882 patented the ‘pentacycle,’ an ingenious machine featuring a large central wheel driven by […]

This simple combination of Photoshop filters creates a pencil sketch effect that quickly converts a photograph into a realistic drawing. The result features a mix of rough sketch lines and shading, along with a subtle paper texture which makes the effect much more believable. Choose between a traditional graphic pencil appearance, or toggle off the […]

The post Photoshop Pencil Sketch Effect Tutorial appeared first on Spoon Graphics.

Today we release our first self-hosted Auphonic Speech Recognition Engine using the open-source Whisper model by OpenAI!
With Whisper, you can now integrate automatic speech recognition in 99 languages into your Auphonic audio post-production workflow, without creating an external account and without extra costs!

Whisper Speech Recognition in Auphonic

So far, Auphonic users had to choose one of our integrated external service providers (Wit.ai, Google Cloud Speech, Amazon Transcribe, Speechmatics) for speech recognition, so audio files were transferred to an external server, using external computing powers, that users had to pay for in their external accounts.

The new Auphonic Speech Recognition is using Whisper, which was published by OpenAI as an open-source project. Open-source means, the publicly shared GitHub repository contains a complete Whisper package including source code, examples, and research results.
However, automatic speech recognition is a very time and hardware-consuming process, that can be incredibly slow using a standard home computer without special GPUs. So we decided to integrate this service and offer you automatic speech recognition (ASR) by Whisper processed on our own hardware, just like any other Auphonic processing task, giving you quite some benefits:

• No external account is needed anymore to run ASR in Auphonic.
• Your data doesn't leave our Auphonic servers for ASR processing.
• No extra costs for external ASR services.
• Additional Auphonic pre- and post-processing for more accurate ASR, especially for Multitrack Productions.
• The quality of Whisper ASR is absolutely comparable to the “best” services in our comparison table.

How to use Whisper?

To use the Auphonic Whisper integration, you just have to create a production or preset as you are used to and select “Auphonic Whisper ASR” as “Service” in the section Speech Recognition.
This option will automatically appear for Beta and paying users. If you are a free user but want to try Whisper: please just ask for access!

When your Auphonic speech recognition is done, you can download your transcript in different formats and may edit or share your transcript with the Auphonic Transcript Editor.
For more details about all our integrated speech recognition services, please visit our Speech Recognition Help and watch this channel for Whisper updates – soon to come.

Why Beta?

We decided to launch Whisper for Beta and paying users only, as Whisper was just published end of September and there was not enough time to test every single use case sufficiently.
Another issue is the required computing power: for suitable scaling of the GPU infrastructure, we need a beta phase to test the service while we are monitoring the hardware usage, to make sure there are no server overloads.

Conclusion

Automatic speech recognition services are evolving very quickly, and we've seen major improvements over the past few years.
With Whisper, we can now perform speech recognition without extra costs on our own GPU hardware, no external services are required anymore.

Auphonic Whisper ASR is available for Beta and paying users now, free users can ask for Beta access.
You are very welcome to send us feedback (directly in the production interface or via email), whether you notice something that works particularly well or discover any problems.
Your feedback is a great help to improve the system!

Responding to your feedback, we are now proud to present new separate parameters for noise, reverb, and breath reduction to give you more flexible control for your individual, best output results.
Find all the new parameters below and listen to the Audio Examples to get a closer impression of the upgrade.

What's the update about?

Before

Previously, you could only set the Denoising Method and one reduction amount, that was used for all elements.
Depending on the selected method, you were already able to decide whether music, static, or changing noises should be removed, but there was no setting to keep the typewriter sound effects while removing the reverb, for example.

Now

With our latest upgrade, you can now set the reduction amounts separately for noise, reverb, and breathing sounds.
For example, you could completely remove the background noise while reducing the reverb just a little to enhance speech intelligibility but keep the atmosphere. Like we did in Audio Example 1.
Many of you have also asked about the possibility of slightly reducing breath sounds rather than eliminating them completely. In Audio Example 2 we demonstrate how you can prevent your audio from sounding strange and unnatural by reducing instead of eliminating all breathing sounds.

To all of you who are happy with the results and don't want anything to change, relax:
If you don't change the default settings, the noise reduction algorithms work exactly the same as before.

Note: As the 'Static Denoiser' removes only stationary noise, there are no 'Remove Reverb' and 'Remove Breathings' parameters available for this denoising method.

New Parameters

Screenshot of the new Noise Reduction Parameters in the production form.

In order to use the new noise reduction features, you may separately set the following parameters:

• Denoising Method: (unchanged) Select what kind of noise you want to remove.
  [Dynamic Denoiser (default), Speech Isolation, Static Denoiser]
  Note that the parameters 'Remove Reverb' and 'Remove Breathings' are NOT available for Static Denoiser!
• Remove Noise: Select the amount of noise you want to remove.
  [100 dB (default), Disable Denoise, 3 dB, 6 dB, ..., 100 dB (full)]
• Remove Reverb: Select the amount of reverb you want to remove.
  [100 dB (default), Disable Deverb, 3 dB, 6 dB, ..., 100 dB (full)]
• Remove Breathings: Select the amount of breathings you want to remove.
  [Off (default), 3 dB, 6 dB, ..., 100 dB (full)]

Feel free to experiment with all the options to find your preferred parameter settings! Editing and reprocessing existing productions does not cost any additional credits as long as you don't change the input file.

Listen to the results:

1. Reverb reduction with full noise elimination

For the first audio example by conduitministries.com we set the 'Remove Noise' amount to 100 dB (full) and varied the 'Remove Reverb' amount starting from 0 dB (Off) to 12 dB (medium) and to 100 dB (full). Listen to how first the noise is gone and then step by step the reverb is lower:

2. Breathing sound reduction

In the breathing reduction audio example by LibriVox.org we used the 'Remove Breathing' amounts increasing from the original audio with 0 dB (Off) to 12 dB (medium) and to 100 dB (full) reduction.
In the result files you can hear, that the 100 dB (full) elimination leads to weird, unnatural-sounding pauses, that can be prevented by just reducing the breathing sounds:

Try it now on auphonic.com!

Feedback

We hope you like our upgraded version of the Noise Reduction Algorithms with new parameters for more control.
If you have more feature requests or feedback for us, please let us know! You can also leave a comment in the feedback section on the status page of your specific production. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

In this episode, I sit down with Prentis Hemphill to explore the real meaning of healing—not as a destination, but as an ongoing process of restoring safety, belonging, and dignity in our lives. We dive into the importance of community, especially post-pandemic, and how reconnecting with our bodies through mindful practices can lead to true transformation. Prentis shares their journey, the questions that drive their work, and practical tips to help us all heal in a world that often feels disconnected. Some highlights we explore: Healing as an ongoing process, not a final destination The power of community and connection in healing Practical ways to integrate mindful moments into your daily life And more! Enjoy! FOLLOW PRENTIS HEMPHILL: instagram | patreon | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe

The post What Happens When You Add Mindful Moments to Your Day? first appeared on Chase Jarvis.

The post What Happens When You Add Mindful Moments to Your Day? appeared first on Chase Jarvis.

The Glasgow Gallery of Photography is running a month long exhibition in September called Texture. Along with shape and colour, texture is another accept of [...]

The post “Texture” Exhibition Open Call appeared first on Photocompete.

In today’s turbulent landscape of design, Penpot stands out with its commitment to open-source, free unlimited access, and its unique, robust features. An example could be its new components system that takes another leap forward in aligning design with code. Let's dive into how it empowers both designers and developers to create more maintainable and scalable design systems.

In this two-part series, Andrii Zhdan outlines common challenges faced at the start of a design career and offers advice to smooth your journey based on insights from his experience hiring designers. Learn why mastering design tools is crucial, how to build a strong portfolio, and tips for acing your first interviews.

In this two-part series, Andrii Zhdan outlines common challenges faced at the start of a design career and offers advice to smooth your journey based on insights from his experience hiring designers. In Part 2, Andrii speaks about how you can grow faster in your brand-new junior UX job.

Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the Dispatch's Summit 2024 and made clear he opposes President-elect Donald Trump's plan to pardon January 6 rioters - especially those who attacked police. "At the end of the day, I'll always believe that, by God's grace, we did our duty [on January 6] to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America," Pence said according to Dispatch on social media.

Grand Opening of our server and website!

The neurodevelomental disease Rett syndrome is usually caused by mutations in a gene called MECP2, which is located on the X chromosome. Patients lose coor

The neurodevelomental disease Rett syndrome is usually caused by mutations in a gene called MECP2, which is located on the X chromosome. Patients lose coor

The neurodevelomental disease Rett syndrome is usually caused by mutations in a gene called MECP2, which is located on the X chromosome. Patients lose coor

Breast cancer remains the most common invasive cancer diagnosed in women in the United States, accounting for about one in three new female cancers each ye

Breast cancer remains the most common invasive cancer diagnosed in women in the United States, accounting for about one in three new female cancers each ye

A UKOLN Open Forum will be held on Wednesday 14 June from 10.00-12.00, prior to the official opening of the Institutional Web Management Workshop. The Open Forum will provide an opportunity to hear about some of the wider activities UKOLN is involved in. IWMW participants are invited to join the Open Forum. [2006-05-16]