Firearms are leading cause of death among U.S. youth

Funding urgently needed for research-based prevention efforts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF CHICAGO

Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents 0-19 years of age, with a staggering 83 percent increase in youth firearm fatalities over the past decade, according to a commentary published in Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. Nearly two-thirds of youth firearm deaths were from homicides. Strikingly, Black youth had an unprecedented 40 percent increase in firearm fatalities between 2019 to 2020.

These tragic statistics come in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Texas earlier this week, pointing to the urgent need to take action to prevent more youth from dying by firearms.

“We must reverse this deeply troubling and unacceptable trend in youth firearm fatalities, especially among youth of color,” said co-author Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH, Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician and Medical Director of Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Professor of Pediatrics, Medical Education and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We need more funding allocated to research-based prevention efforts so that we can save young lives before it’s too late.”

The authors also note that although firearm fatality rates started to rise in 2014, the dramatic societal upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic likely accelerated this increase with the escalation of mental health stressors and existential despair experienced by youth. The seismic shift in youths’ lives during the pandemic occurred in the context of a decades’ long void of prevention efforts to decrease firearm injuries and deaths.

After Congress passed the Dickey Amendment in 1996, federal funding of firearm research was effectively halted, until 2019 when $25 million in research funding was appropriated. This pales in comparison to research funding for other pediatric diseases and does not meet the current needs to advance the field. Congress has continued to fund firearm research at this same level for the last three years, while studies estimate that $600 million should be appropriated in fiscal years 2022-2026 for data infrastructure and research funding for firearm injury prevention research.

“In addition to better understanding the risk and protective factors for firearm injuries and deaths, more funding is essential to develop, implement, and evaluate firearm injury prevention interventions at the individual, hospital, community, and policy levels,” said co-author Samaa Kemal, MD, MPH, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellow at Lurie Children’s.

Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The Manne Research Institute is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. It is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Emergency medicine-focused research at Lurie Children’s is conducted through the Grainger Research Program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.

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JOURNAL

The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health

DOI

10.1016/S2352-4642(22)00158-4 

PROTESTS AFTER MASS KILLING IN TEXAS SCHOOL TWO DAYS AGO

FOR MORE PHOTOS SEE Husband of teacher killed in Texas shooting dies of heart attack (thenationalnews.com)

AUSTERITY A GLOBAL CRISIS


UK
Norfolk hospitals set up food banks for staff struggling in the cost of living crisis

A trade union has described it as a 'shocking state of affairs'

Ashlea Hickin

Trainee Reporter

26 MAY 2022
NEWS

Trussell Trust food bank at Queens road Baptist church in Coventry (Image: © SWNS)

Hospitals in Norfolk have set up food banks for NHS staff who have been left unable to afford basic food due to the rising cost of living prices. At leas six NHS trusts have brought in food banks amid fears that healthcare worker are not able to keep up with the rising prices.

Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust and Norfolk Community Health and Care have joined a number of other NHS Trusts across the country in setting up the food banks, after they found that some staff were "struggling to stay afloat".

A spokesperson from the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust said: “As a large employer in Norfolk and Suffolk we are concerned about the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on our staff. We have recently set up a food bank to support staff who may be struggling to afford increasing household costs including food and bills. We will keep talking to our staff about how best we can support them and do everything we are able to to help.”

A spokesperson from the Norfolk Community Health and Care said: “NCH&C is one of several NHS trusts in the region that is providing its staff with access to food banks. We are finalising a process to enable our Staffside trade union colleagues to give vouchers to staff that need access to local food banks.

UK 

BUT THE PROBLEM IS GLOBAL
Ambulances are approaching 'Titanic moment' that could see them stop responding to 999 calls

'within WEEKS' as staff are overwhelmed, service chief warnsWest Midlands Ambulance Service could stop responding to 999 calls in August

 
Service director said patients were 'dying every day' from avoidable causes

He said the service had severe ambulance delays due to overcrowded wards

Patients are being kept for hours outside the hospital in ambulances

By DAVID AVERRE FOR MAILONLINE

and PA MEDIA
25 May 2022

West Midlands Ambulance Service could stop responding to 999 calls in August as the ambulance trust approaches a 'Titanic moment' amid overcrowding in hospitals, its nursing director has said.

Mark Docherty, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, said patients were 'dying every day' from avoidable causes created by ambulance delays and that he could not understand why NHS England and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) were 'not all over' the issue.

In an interview with the Health Service Journal (HSJ), Mr Docherty said rising numbers of people were waiting in the back of ambulances for 24 hours before being admitted to hospital, and that serious incidents have quadrupled in the past year, largely due to severe delays.

He said the situation was now so serious that he is predicting the service will collapse in August.

'Around August 17 is the day I think it will all fail... I've been asked how I can be so specific, but that date is when a third of our resource (will be) lost to delays, and that will mean we just can't respond.

'Mathematically it will be a bit like a Titanic moment.

'It will be a mathematical (certainty) that this thing is sinking, and it will be pretty much beyond the tipping point by then.'

It comes as documents from a quality governance meeting at the trust in March showed another director warning that 'deaths are happening which should not be happening' and, nationally, patients are being let down in a 'catastrophic situation'.

Ambulance crews transport patients into City Hospital in Birmingham. The West Midlands Ambulance Service may stop responding to calls in August amid excess strain on the service and overcrowded hospitals

Mark Docherty, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, said patients were 'dying every day' from avoidable causes created by ambulance delays

England-wide NHS data for March shows ambulance trusts across the country missing a raft of targets, including too-slow response times to the most urgent incidents.

The document also noted more than 100 serious incidents recorded at West Midlands Ambulance Service relate to patient deaths where the service has been unable to respond because its ambulances are held outside hospitals.

MR Docherty continued: 'It would make me the happiest person in the world if everyone in the system proves to me that actually the ambulance service in the West Midlands isn't going to fail on August 17, and I've got it completely wrong.'

The nursing director told HSJ that hospital patients who are fit to leave need to be discharged as a priority in order to free up beds for those arriving by ambulance.


He described the large number of medically fit patients occupying hospital beds as 'criminal … when I've got teenagers dying on the street from things that are completely reversible'.

The nursing director said NHS England officials had downplayed tackling the problem of delayed discharge and questioned why the CQC had issued improvement notices about hospital corridor care, but not about handover delays.

West Midlands Ambulance Service raised its risk rating for handover delays to 25 in October, the highest in its history.

'The 25 reflects that patients are dying every day that shouldn't be dying every day,' Mr Docherty said.

'Their deaths are entirely predictable, and of a scale that means we need to be taking this really seriously.'

He added: 'All of the issues that we're building for the future are huge. And I don't know why the CQC are not all over this, I don't know why NHS England is not all over this.'

Ambulance crews transport patients into City Hospital in Birmingham (PA)

An NHS spokesman said: 'The NHS has been working hard to reduce ambulance delays and £150 million of additional system funding has been allocated for ambulance service pressures in 2022-23.

'There is no doubt the NHS still faces pressures, and the latest figures are another reminder of the crucial importance of community and social care, in helping people in hospital leave when they are fit to do so, not just because it is better for them but because it helps free up precious NHS bed space.'

Victoria Vallance, CQC's director of secondary and specialist healthcare, told HSJ the impact of 'escalating pressure on the NHS is severe' with 'unacceptably long delays for patients'.

She added: 'There are very real concerns about the significant risk to patients and the impact on paramedics and hospital staff as they do all they can to deliver safe care under the most demanding circumstances, and we have highlighted these concerns in our public board meeting. We will continue to monitor services and use our regulatory powers where necessary.'

In home of world’s biggest nuclear plant, a vote may shape Japan’s atomic future

By Kantaro Komiya and Yoshifumi Takemoto
Posted on May 27, 2022

A view shows a street with shuttered stores in Kashiwazaki

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (Reuters) – Three days before a vote to choose their region’s next governor, a handful of residents in Kashiwazaki, a sleepy coastal town in northern Japan, stood by a road to hear the race’s long-shot contender warning of the dangers of nuclear power.

Four years ago, Naomi Katagiri, who is challenging the incumbent in an election on Sunday for governor of Niigata prefecture, might have drawn a bigger, more attentive crowd.

Back then, when they chose their governor the last time, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was fresh in voters’ minds and policy on what was an important source of power for Japan was front-and-centre in a town that is home to the world’s largest nuclear power station, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, operated by Fukushima Daiichi owner Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco).

Today, voters have other concerns.

Economic pain from soaring energy costs and the COVID-19 pandemic have taken centre stage, and nuclear energy ranked only fifth among important issues for voters, according to a recent survey by the Niigata Nippo newspaper.

In the 2018 race, it was the main issue.

As the war in Ukraine and a weaker yen hit households, the vote in Niigata will be closely watched as a gauge for the readiness of Japanese voters to re-embrace nuclear energy.

Dozens of Japan’s reactors were idled after the Fukushima disaster, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami. Just 10 are operational now, compared with 54 before the Fukushima disaster.

Proponents of restarting the plants as quickly as possible in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) say a clear victory for the incumbent governor, Hideyo Hanazumi, whom they back, could speed things up.

Polls point to an easy win for Hanazumi.

Resources-poor Japan imports almost all of its fuel and a ban on Russian oil and coal as part of sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine has encouraged pro-nuclear lawmakers to push their case.

“We want to use his victory as an opportunity to speed up the restarts nationwide,” a senior LDP lawmaker told Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Political sources said efforts to get nuclear plants back to work would likely begin in earnest after an Upper House election in July.

The government plans to raise the nuclear contribution in its energy mix to 20-22% by 2030. Mindful of concern over safety, and Tepco’s repeated compliance breaches since the 2011 disaster, Kishida has said restarts would only happen after proper safety clearance and with public approval.

TOWN IN DECLINE

The Kashiwazaki plant used to send power to the Tokyo area, 265 km (165 miles) to the south, and the impact of its idling is clear to see.

On the town’s main shopping street, many businesses are shut. “For Rent” signs are common.

A few years ago, major supermarket chain Ito-Yokado pulled out after decades, dealing the town what residents said was a big blow. Three multi-storey hotels face the main train station but their rooms are mostly empty.

The city’s population has shrunk by 12% since the nuclear plant was switched off to fewer than 80,000. The town says its economy contracted by 11% between 2012 and 2019.

People on both sides of the nuclear debate say votes can’t ignore the economic malaise.

“Voters’ priority must be economic policies now, not nuclear power,” Shigeo Makino, who heads Niigata’s biggest labour organisation, Rengo Niigata, told Reuters this week.

The trade union is backing Hanazumi after supporting his anti-nuclear opponent in 2018, citing his record on labour.

Still, resentment of the nuclear utility Tepco runs deep. Nuclear regulators last year objected to a Tepco plan for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s restart after identifying inadequate security safeguards including the misuse of ID cards.

Hanazumi himself has tried to steer clear of the nuclear issue and when asked about it, has echoed the government line that safety is the priority.

Even anti-nuclear activists concede that their favoured candidate’s warnings about the dangers of nuclear plants are largely falling on deaf ears.

“Many people used to think nuclear power was dangerous,” said Takashi Miyazaki, a former Kashiwazaki city councilman with the anti-nuclear Japanese Communist Party.

“But a desperate desire to do something about this town’s economic decline may have helped spread the feeling that maybe nuclear restarts are the quick answer.”

(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Yoshifumi Takemoto; Additional reporting by Kentaro Sugiyama and Nobuhiro Kubo; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim, Robert Birsel)

Naomi Katagiri, candidate in the upcoming Niigata Prefectural governor election, campaigns in Kashiwazaki

A view shows a street with shuttered stores in Kashiwazaki

PAINT BY NUMBERS

Robot artist paints a portrait of the Queen for the Platinum Jubilee

 

Anugraha SundaraveluFriday 27 May 2022

Ai-Da uses cameras in her eyes and computer memory to paint and draw images. (Picture: http://www.ai-darobot.com)

A portrait of the Queen painted by a humanoid robot artist has been unveiled just in time for the Platinum Jubilee.

The artwork, titled Algorithm Queen, was painted by Ai-Da — an artificial intelligence robot built in 2019 that creates drawings, painting, and sculptures.

To start with, Ai-Da uses cameras in her eyes and computer memory, before using a variety of unique algorithms to paint and draw images.

A robotic arm lets Ai-Da turn digital formations into physical drawings and paintings.

Algorithm Queen was layered and scaled to produce the final multi-dimensional portrait of the monarch.

The machine’s artistic process was designed to reflect the different aspects of technological change that have taken place during the Queen’s 70-year reign.

Queen portrait by AI humanoid robot

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Ai-Da — named after 18th century mathematician and scientist Ada Lovelace — is also able to converse using a specially designed language model.

‘I’d like to thank Her Majesty the Queen for her dedication, and for the service she gives to so many people,’ said the humanoid robot.

‘She is an outstanding, courageous woman who is utterly committed to public service,’

‘I think she’s an amazing human being, and I wish The Queen a very happy Platinum Jubilee,’

The artwork, titled Algorithm Queen, was painted by Ai-Da (Picture: http://www.ai-darobot.com)

Ai-Da was devised in Oxford by Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art, before being built in Cornwall by Engineered Arts and programmed internationally.

The robot’s capabilities were developed by PhD students and professors at the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham.

‘We are excited Ai-Da Robot has made history just in time for the Queen’s Jubilee,’ said Meller.

‘We are in unprecedented technological times, and so we are pleased we can take a moment to think about all that has changed during the Queen’s life,’

Algorithm Queen will be exhibited publicly in London later this year and revealed on the Ai-Da Robot artist website at 10 am on May 27.

 

Will AI text-to-image generators put illustrators out of a job?

Imagen, from Google, is the latest example of an AI seemingly able to produce high-quality images from a text prompt – but they aren't quite ready to replace human illustrators

TECHNOLOGY | ANALYSIS 26 May 2022

By Alex Wilkins

Examples of images created by Google’s Imagen AI

Imagen/Google

Tech firms are racing to create artificial intelligence algorithms that can produce high-quality images from text prompts, with the technology seeming to advance so quickly that some predict that human illustrators and stock photographers will soon be out of a job. In reality, limitations with these AI systems mean it will probably be a while before they can be used by the general public.

Text-to-image generators that use neural networks have made remarkable progress in recent years. The latest, Imagen from Google, comes hot on the heels of DALL-E 2, which was announced by OpenAI in April.

Both models use a neural network that is trained on a large number of examples to categorise how images relate to text descriptions. When given a new text description, the neural network repeatedly generates images, altering them until they most closely match the text based on what it has learned.

While the images presented by both firms are impressive, researchers have questioned whether the results are being cherry-picked to show the systems in the best light. “You need to present your best results,” says Hossein Malekmohamadi at De Montfort University in the UK.

One problem in judging these AI creations is that both firms have declined to release public demos that would allow researchers and others to put them through their paces. Part of the reason for this is a fear that the AI could be used to create misleading images, or simply that it could generate harmful results.

Read more: AI illustrator draws imaginative pictures to go with text captions

The models rely on data sets scraped from large, unmoderated portions of the internet, such as the LAION-400M data set, which Google says is known to contain “pornographic imagery, racist slurs, and harmful social stereotypes”. The researchers behind Imagen say that because they can’t guarantee it won’t inherit some of this problematic content, they can’t release it to the public.

OpenAI claims to be improving DALL-E 2’s “safety system” by “refining the text filters and tuning the automated detection & response system for content policy violations”, while Google is seeking to address the challenges by developing a “vocabulary of potential harms”. Neither firm was able to speak to New Scientist before publication of this article.

Unless these problems can be solved, it seems unlikely that big research teams like Google or OpenAI will offer their text-to-image systems for general use. It is possible that smaller teams could choose to release similar technology, but the sheer amount of computing power required to train these models on huge data sets tends to limit work on them to big players.

Despite this, the friendly competition between the big firms is likely to mean the technology continues to advance rapidly, as tools developed by one group can be incorporated into another’s future model. For example, diffusion models, where neural networks learn how to reverse the process of adding random pixels to an image in an effort to improve them, have shown promise in machine-learning models in the past year. Both DALL-E 2 and Imagen rely on diffusion models, after the technique proved effective in less-powerful models, such as OpenAI’s Glide image generator.

“For these types of algorithms, when you have a very strong competitor, it means that it helps you build your model better than those other ones,” says Malekmohamadi. “For example, Google has multiple teams working on the same type of [AI] platform.”

Read more: https://zephr.newscientist.com/article/2322056-will-ai-text-to-image-generators-put-illustrators-out-of-a-job/#ixzz7UTh2uhH8