Latest news with #Avram
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
Bad Botox? Six cases of botulism on the South Shore tied to possible Botox injections
South Shore Health declined to answer questions about whether they were treating suspected cases or how many they were seeing, referring instead to the Department of Public Health. Advertisement However Jason Tracy, chief medical officer at the hospital, said generally that patients are given a presumptive diagnosis made off of their clinical presentation of symptoms and history of recent injections. Related : From there, the hospital would involve both the Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control, which has an anti-toxin that it provides on a case-by-case basis. The anti-toxin helps slow the progression of symptoms, but does not reverse them, and so hospitals typically also provide supportive measures. 'This is quite rare,' Tracy said. 'This is different than a food-borne botulism type case. It's not as though there is a lot body of literature to refer clinicians to to give prognosis and historical elements and time courses for what to expect.' South Shore Hospital in Weymouth. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Use of botulinum toxin — commonly known by the popular brand name Botox — for cosmetic procedures is widely Advertisement Cosmetic treatments with botulinum toxin use doses much lower than for medical treatments, said Dr. Mathew M. Avram, director of the Mass General Hospital Dermatology Laser and Cosmetic Center.. With regulated, FDA-approved products in a healthy adult, the amount of the toxin is so small that it is exceedingly rare for it to cause botulism. 'I've never seen a patient or had a colleague of mine at Mass General or elsewhere that has told me they have had a case of this. It is not something that happens normally,' Avram said. 'Someone would have to go outside the realm of what you would typically inject to encounter these issues, for a typical patient.' Beyond injecting far too much, poor administration technique or using counterfeit products can increase risks. 'We have seen instances where injectors have used counterfeit products or products they developed on their own,' Avram said. 'These are unsafe practices that can harm patients.' According to the advisory, botulism results when the botulinum toxin circulates in the blood. Symptoms including double or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, and difficulty breathing. Such symptoms are sometimes followed by muscle weaknesses, which can progress over the course of hours or days. Advertisement DPH has asked clinicians to warn patients interested in these cosmetic injections of the potential risks, and is advising patients to receive injections only from licensed providers. 'If someone has had a botox injection and has had those symptoms they should seek medical attention,' Tracy said. 'I don't want to create worry but someone having visual changes, slurred speech and difficulty swallowing — they should not ignore it." The reports are only the latest Botox problems to surface in the South Shore. In November, 38-year-old Rebecca Fadanelli, was arrested and charged for selling counterfeit Botox out of Skin Beauté Med Spa in Easton and Randolph. Jessica Bartlett can be reached at
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Google search's AI overviews are awful, but here's a browser extension that gets rid of them
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Among the countless examples of the ever-burgeoning ens***ification of the internet, Google's AI-powered search overviews rank pretty highly. Verily, I pine for the days of reliable, organic search results devoid of AI slop. But don't despair. Well, not entirely. For the editor-in-chief of our sister website, Tom's Hardware, has come up with a browser extension that gets rid of AI overviews from Google search results. Give it up for Avram Piltch and his Bye Bye, Google AI extension. To quote the man himself, Avram says Google, "decided to push AI overviews and AI mode onto search users, regardless of the damage it causes to the user experience or the harm it may inflict on publishers and the entire open web." He also points out that Google is rolling out AI Overviews to ever more territories and countries and fears that Google may eventually want to replace all organic search results with AI Overviews . His solution is the aforementioned Bye, Bye Google AI, which works in Chrome or Edge or any desktop browser that supports Chrome extensions. He's currently working on Firefox and Safari versions. "The extension allows you to hide the AI Overview section from all of your queries and goes a step further, allowing you to hide other areas of the Google SERP that you may not want, such as the videos section, text ads, or 'People Also Ask,'" Avram says. The latest 1.5 version now supports 19 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin (Trad + Simplified), Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese. You can also now hide the AI Mode tab, not just AI Overviews. Avram also explains the other ways to kill the AI Overview, such as adding "-noai" to your search string. But if you want to permanently kill AI Overviews—or at least for as long as this extension works and Google is serving up any organic results at all—then Bye, Bye Google AI feels like a no brainer of an extension. Of course, you could just use another search engine, like DuckDuckGo. Moreover, the seemingly falling quality of Google's organic results isn't fixed by this extension. But if you just want to remove a little AI slop from your daily interneting, then this could be the tool for you. Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and gaming motherboard: The right graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Auschwitz survivors and world leaders set to mark 80 years since Nazi death camp's liberation
OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — The Soviet Red Army troops that arrived here on Jan. 27, 1945, helped uncover one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by — and against — humankind. Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people. The horrors there defied comprehension. Eighty years later, some former prisoners will return here to mark the 80th anniversary of their deliverance — a date that is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the eyes of so many around the world, the survivors' very existence is a resounding act of defiance against the world-historic cruelty and vast injustice of Adolf Hitler's reign of terror. Their stories of survival are also implicit pleas to the world: Never forget humanity's capacity to commit unthinkable crimes. Hitler's regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, including roughly 1 million people at Auschwitz. The Nazis also persecuted other peoples, including Poles, the Romani, Soviet prisoners, gay men and mentally and physically disabled Nazis tried to hide evidence of the genocide they perpetrated, including by burning the remains of roughly 900,000 Auschwitz victims who were killed in the gas chambers. Eva Umlauf was only 2 when she and her mother were liberated from the camp — too young to remember the actual day. But the Holocaust is etched onto her skin — A-26,959 tattooed on her left forearm, marking her for life, along with some other Auschwitz survivors. 'You are just a number,' Umlauf, 82, a pediatrician from Munich, told NBC News, explaining how this number will forever make her feel. 'But this number is not only on the skin. This is deeper.' For Umlauf, who traveled for the ceremony along with her sister, son and one of her grandchildren, this was more than a personal journey of memory and reflection. It was a moral responsibility.'They have to know that it's true. You know, because it's so, so unbelievable, unbelievable that nobody can believe this,' she said. But even given what has been established about the Third Reich's crimes against humanity, some of the most vital information has still not been uncovered. Notably, the names of more than a million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis are still unknown, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial center. Alexander Avram leads a team at Yad Vashem that has amassed more than 2 million 'Pages of Testimony' and historical documents in an effort to verify more identities. The project is known as the Hall of Names. 'There are no cemeteries, there are no tombstones … for most of the Holocaust victims,' Avram told NBC News. 'Each additional name that we can recover is, for us, another victory against the Nazis, because the Nazis didn't [only] want to … exterminate the Jews physically. They wanted to obliterate even their memory.'Avram said researchers have started experimenting with artificial intelligence to scour testimonial documents in the hopes of finding names that might have been previously overlooked. But that technology is useless without firsthand accounts provided by the shrinking pool of survivors. The Claims Conference estimates that only around 1,000 survivors of Auschwitz are still alive. In that regard, Avram's team is 'in a rush against time,' he said. The anniversary comes at a troubling and unsettled time. Hamas' terror attack on Israel, Israel's ensuing war in Gaza and the proliferation of hate speech on social media have fueled a worldwide spike in antisemitism. In some countries, basic knowledge of the Holocaust is eroding. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization that helps Holocaust victims seek compensation, released an eight-country survey last week showing that 46% of adults ages 18-29 in France, for example, 'had not heard or weren't sure if they had heard of the Holocaust prior to taking the survey.' Nearly half of Americans surveyed were unable to name a single Nazi camp, according to the Claims Conference's findings, and more than a quarter (26%) of Americans ages 18-29 disagreed with the following statement: 'The Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been accurately and fairly described.' World leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plan to fly in for Monday's commemoration. Dignitaries, including King Charles III, will be in attendance, too. But none of them will be allowed near a microphone. The organizers of the event have banned speeches by political leaders. 'We really believe that this is the last milestone anniversary where we'll have a visible group of survivors who are still able to tell us their stories,' Paweł Sawicki, deputy spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said in an interview with NBC News at the camp Saturday.'The choice for this year's anniversary was very simple: We need to put them into the spotlight,' he added. In recent statements, Western heads of state have attempted to underscore the importance of preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah. 'I am against turning the page, saying that was long ago,' German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a gathering of the Jewish community in Frankfurt earlier this month. 'We keep alive the memory of the civilizational split of the Shoah committed by Germans, which we pass down to each generation in our country again and again.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, visited the grounds of Auschwitz on Jan. 17, describing the 'sheer horror' he felt there and vowing to fight the rising tide of antisemitism in his country. Roughly 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps are expected to attend Monday's commemoration. In recent days, hundreds of visitors from around the world have come to the former camp to pay their respects. Josh Sesar, a 52-year-old from Los Angeles who made his second trip to Auschwitz on Friday, said he believed it is vital to see the grounds firsthand. 'I think it is not taught enough in school in America, and if you watch the news in America now, you see the philosophies that people are following now and they are happy to pretend that this never happened,' Sesar said. 'It is scary, because there are not so many survivors left, and so when there [are] no survivors, people even more so try to discredit history,' he added. Aron Krell, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and ultimately liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, said it is incumbent on Jewish people, educators, historians and other advocates to keep the legacy of the Shoah a video interview last week, Krell described his liberation as his 'second birthday.' 'I saw the light again in front of me,' Krell said. 'My second birthday is more important, really, than the first. We always celebrate it: Aron Krell has two birthdays.' Jesse Kirsch reported from Oświęcim, Poland, and Daniel Arkin from New York. This article was originally published on
NBC News
27-01-2025
- General
- NBC News
Auschwitz survivors and world leaders set to mark 80 years since Nazi death camp's liberation
OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — The Soviet Red Army troops that arrived here on Jan. 27, 1945, helped uncover one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by — and against — humankind. Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people. The horrors there defied comprehension. Eighty years later, some former prisoners will return here to mark the 80th anniversary of their deliverance — a date that is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the eyes of so many around the world, the survivors' very existence is a resounding act of defiance against the world-historic cruelty and vast injustice of Adolf Hitler's reign of terror. Their stories of survival are also implicit pleas to the world: Never forget humanity's capacity to commit unthinkable crimes. Hitler's regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, including roughly 1 million people at Auschwitz. The Nazis also persecuted other peoples, including Poles, the Romani, Soviet prisoners, gay men and mentally and physically disabled people. The Nazis tried to hide evidence of the genocide they perpetrated, including by burning the remains of roughly 900,000 Auschwitz victims who were killed in the gas chambers. Eva Umlauf was only 2 when she and her mother were liberated from the camp — too young to remember the actual day. But the Holocaust is etched onto her skin — A-26,959 tattooed on her left forearm, marking her for life, along with some other Auschwitz survivors. 'You are just a number,' Umlauf, 82, a pediatrician from Munich, told NBC News, explaining how this number will forever make her feel. 'But this number is not only on the skin. This is deeper.' For Umlauf, who traveled for the ceremony along with her sister, son and one of her grandchildren, this was more than a personal journey of memory and reflection. It was a moral responsibility. 'They have to know that it's true. You know, because it's so, so unbelievable, unbelievable that nobody can believe this,' she said. But even given what has been established about the Third Reich's crimes against humanity, some of the most vital information has still not been uncovered. Notably, the names of more than a million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis are still unknown, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial center. Alexander Avram leads a team at Yad Vashem that has amassed more than 2 million ' Pages of Testimony' and historical documents in an effort to verify more identities. The project is known as the Hall of Names. 'There are no cemeteries, there are no tombstones … for most of the Holocaust victims,' Avram told NBC News. 'Each additional name that we can recover is, for us, another victory against the Nazis, because the Nazis didn't [only] want to … exterminate the Jews physically. They wanted to obliterate even their memory.' Avram said researchers have started experimenting with artificial intelligence to scour testimonial documents in the hopes of finding names that might have been previously overlooked. But that technology is useless without firsthand accounts provided by the shrinking pool of survivors. The Claims Conference estimates that only around 1,000 survivors of Auschwitz are still alive. In that regard, Avram's team is 'in a rush against time,' he said. The anniversary comes at a troubling and unsettled time. Hamas' terror attack on Israel, Israel's ensuing war in Gaza and the proliferation of hate speech on social media have fueled a worldwide spike in antisemitism. In some countries, basic knowledge of the Holocaust is eroding. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization that helps Holocaust victims seek compensation, released an eight-country survey last week showing that 46% of adults ages 18-29 in France, for example, 'had not heard or weren't sure if they had heard of the Holocaust prior to taking the survey.' Nearly half of Americans surveyed were unable to name a single Nazi camp, according to the Claims Conference's findings, and more than a quarter (26%) of Americans ages 18-29 disagreed with the following statement: 'The Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been accurately and fairly described.' World leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plan to fly in for Monday's commemoration. Dignitaries, including King Charles III, will be in attendance, too. But none of them will be allowed near a microphone. The organizers of the event have banned speeches by political leaders. 'We really believe that this is the last milestone anniversary where we'll have a visible group of survivors who are still able to tell us their stories,' Paweł Sawicki, deputy spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said in an interview with NBC News at the camp Saturday. 'The choice for this year's anniversary was very simple: We need to put them into the spotlight,' he added. In recent statements, Western heads of state have attempted to underscore the importance of preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah. 'I am against turning the page, saying that was long ago,' German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a gathering of the Jewish community in Frankfurt earlier this month. 'We keep alive the memory of the civilizational split of the Shoah committed by Germans, which we pass down to each generation in our country again and again.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, visited the grounds of Auschwitz on Jan. 17, describing the 'sheer horror' he felt there and vowing to fight the rising tide of antisemitism in his country. Roughly 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps are expected to attend Monday's commemoration. In recent days, hundreds of visitors from around the world have come to the former camp to pay their respects. Josh Sesar, a 52-year-old from Los Angeles who made his second trip to Auschwitz on Friday, said he believed it is vital to see the grounds firsthand. 'I think it is not taught enough in school in America, and if you watch the news in America now, you see the philosophies that people are following now and they are happy to pretend that this never happened,' Sesar said. 'It is scary, because there are not so many survivors left, and so when there [are] no survivors, people even more so try to discredit history,' he added. Aron Krell, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and ultimately liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, said it is incumbent on Jewish people, educators, historians and other advocates to keep the legacy of the Shoah intact. In a video interview last week, Krell described his liberation as his 'second birthday.' 'I saw the light again in front of me,' Krell said. 'My second birthday is more important, really, than the first. We always celebrate it: Aron Krell has two birthdays.'
