Latest news with #KentStateUniversity
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Teen having stroke saved by friend on Snapchat
AKRON, Ohio (WJW) — A Portage County family says their teenager's Snapchat helped save her life. Eighteen-year-old Lexy Eddy was at work after school when she began feeling off and losing strength down one side of her body. Elon Musk is leaving the Trump administration after criticizing president's 'big beautiful bill' 'A big woof of just lightheadedness rushed right over me, and immediately I felt numb on my left side,' she said. The athletic and normally healthy teen admits she shrugged it off even as the symptoms intensified. 'I would take a drink of water and all the water came out of my mouth,' she said, 'Then I fell onto the floor and my coworker picked me up and put me in the chair and that's when I started snap chatting.' Her friends on Snapchat immediately became concerned. 'They were like, 'Lexi, you look like you're having a stroke, why does your face look like that? '' she said. Cleveland Clinic updates new co-pay policy after backlash She fell again, and her co-workers called 911. She was rushed to a local hospital in Portage County first. They realized she was having a stroke and quickly transferred her to the Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital, where the stroke team was waiting and confirmed the diagnosis. 'Honestly, I feel like my mind couldn't comprehend anything,' Lexi said. Her parents, Melissa and Brian Eddy, were contacted and immediately raced to the hospital. 'I asked her to squeeze my hand, and there was nothing there, so then at that point, I was like this is not good,' Melissa said. 'But the stroke team was there, and as scary as that was, it was also a relief because we knew that they all knew their jobs. They were all on it.' Fortunately, Lexi got to the hospital fast enough that doctors could treat her with the medication TPA instead of a more complicated procedure. Ex-Cleveland officer sentenced for shooting in school parking lot 'This medication breaks down the blood clot and restores blood flow to the brain, and this medication must be given only within 4.5 hours from the start of the symptoms,' said Cleveland Clinic Neurologist specializing in strokes, Dr. Yousef Mohammad. Snapchat enabled 'snappy' care and a quick turnaround. 'She was almost back to normal after medication,' Dr. Mohammad said. 'I was scared that I wasn't gonna be able to feel that hand again, so it was a big relief for me,' added Lexi. Tests showed the stroke was caused by a small hole in her heart, a patent foramen ovale or PFO. Dr. Mohammad said the condition affects about 25% of the population. Often, people are fine, but Lexi will need surgery to repair the hole in June. After that, her prognosis is great. 'Once we close it her risk of having another stroke is very low,' Dr. Mohammad said. The stroke occurred in March, right after Lexi's 18th birthday. On Thursday, she will graduate from high school and is looking forward to attending Kent State University. 'Last wish come true': Bringing the zoo to a veteran in Massillon Both she and her parents shared their story with Fox 8 News to raise awareness. They hope everyone will learn and watch for the following stroke symptoms, and if they see them, seek help immediately. They said it could make the difference between life and death. Stroke symptoms: Numbness or weakness of the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body. Confusion, trouble speaking or understanding. Trouble seeing, difficulty walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination. Severe headache 'The doctor said that 25% of people were born with what Lexi has going on with her heart, so I guess speaking to another parent. I would say if there's an issue, or a doctor said it's not a big deal, just take a second look at it because she's only 18, she had a stroke,' said Brian Eddy. 'Like a lot of people don't expect it, but it can happen, and when you see the symptoms, I bet you have to react fast,' Lexi added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Korea Herald
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
[Grace Kao] Kitsch from DEVO to K-pop
I have one big regret from my college days at the University of California, Berkeley. I chose to attend my Japanese class rather than watch a free concert by the 1980s New Wave Group Devo. There are costs to being a serious student. Earlier this month, I remedied my mistake. I attended their concert, part of their 50th Anniversary tour. Devo is an abbreviation of the term de-evolution, and refers to the decline of humanity. The members hail from Ohio and they were art students at Kent State University when they formed the group. Devo had one Top 40 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with 'Whip It' in 1980. In the music video, they wore red hats that looked like inverted plastic flower pots, called energy domes. Devo is probably best known for these hats. Lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh cracked a whip in a low-budget 80s cowboy set. The cast included a cross-eyed East Asian woman, an older woman whipping cream, young white men and women in cowboy hats, and another woman with a long cigarette. During the music video, various articles of clothing are whipped off the woman who is smoking. The video looked cheaply made, even for the 1980s. Back then, people thought the song referred to S&M (sadomasochism), so it was quite a risque song to watch on MTV or hear on Top 40 radio. Only as an adult did I realize that they purposely used their songs and costumes as a commentary on consumerism and modern US life. Their songs were simple and synth-driven, and their singing generally relied on short staccato notes. Unlike punk groups from the UK, their shows were heavily planned with video installations. They always wore identical outfits on stage. In fact, along with the B-52s, they exemplify Kitsch in American pop music. What is kitsch and what does this have to do with K-pop? Kitsch originally referred to art that is seen as low-brow, cheap, trashy and ugly. In terms of American art, these can be objects that are poorly made and in bad taste — think of garish mass-produced imitations of art, velvet paintings of dogs playing poker, Queen Elizabeth salt and pepper shakers, Thomas Kincade paintings or the reproductions of famous structures in Las Vegas. These are items that are 'so bad' they can, sometimes ironically, be enjoyed by the masses. Devo's identical outfits range from the flower pot hats, yellow jumpsuits (as worn by nuclear plant workers), full latex bodysuits to pantyhose over their heads. These objects are all associated with modern life, and Devo is purposely critiquing but also participating in the commodification of art. K-pop groups also make very effective use of kitsch in their music videos and outfits. In fact, they regularly rely on it. Crayon Pop wore helmets for the song 'Bar Bar Bar' and donned them for many of their promotional interviews. Perhaps the kitschiest K-pop video I can think of is 'Catalina' by Orange Caramel. Here the group members are offered as platters of sushi and sashimi as they rotate around a sushi bar. In Astro's 'Breathless,' bottles of orange sodas personify the members as they are carried in a cooler by the lead character. K-pop idols are literally commodified for the pleasure of the consumer. GOT7's 'Just Right' where the members appear as miniature men in a young girl's bedroom, is also kitschy. SHINee's 'Married to the Music' shows the members at a Halloween party losing various body parts. That motif appears a year earlier in EXID's 'Up & Down,' where members have lost different body parts, or are stuck inside a wall or inside boxes. In fact, the most viewed K-pop video of all time is Psy's 'Gangnam Style,' which celebrates kitsch. The song itself is about bad taste, and Psy's character shows off all of the worst stereotypes of a man from Gangnam, Seoul. In fact, Psy's songs 'Gentlemen,' 'Daddy' or 'New Face' are all kitschy. It is Psy's calling card. While not as well-known and certainly not an idol K-pop group, Norazo fully celebrates kitsch. Recent songs use everyday objects as song titles — including 'Bread,' 'Curry,' 'Mackerel' and 'Vegetables.' It also relies on exaggerated versions of these objects in the music videos. My sense is that trot songs performed by K-pop idols are more likely to rely on kitsch. Young idols using kitsch may be the most effective method of converting old-fashioned tunes to contemporary pop songs. In fact, Ive has a recent song named 'Kitsch.' This song is about a 19-year-old girl's sense of taste. I discovered that the Korean use of kitsch refers to something that is cheap and plastic, but childlike. When I looked for objects that Koreans define as 'kitsch,' they do seem to match my sense of cute, kitschy objects for girls. Still, it doesn't seem to carry the same pejorative or ironic connotation, at least not in the song. While I don't know if K-pop professionals are familiar with Devo or The B-52s, they are using kitsch similarly. Compared to classical music or jazz, K-pop and pop music in general is often considered by the public as low-brow. So, what better way to respond than by being kitschy? Grace Kao is an IBM professor of sociology and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University. The views expressed here are the writer's own. — Ed.
The Independent
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump has cut more than $1bn in research grants including one area he thrives
The Trump administration has cut more than $1 billion worth of research grants, including studies that track online misinformation and harmful content. Cuts into the grants looking to tackle the spread of online misinformation appear to stem from President Donald Trump 's executive order issued on January 20 that pledged to 'restore freedom of speech and end federal censorship.' The order says that the Biden administration 'infringed' on the free speech of Americans 'under the guise of combatting 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation.'' While the cuts are also part of the administration's broader mission to purge federal spending, the crackdown on research into misinformation aligns with the view adopted by many Trump supporters and allies that conservative Americans have been censored online, according to The New York Times. No evidence of any of the studies suggested that was the case, the newspaper notes. The National Science Foundation, the government agency that funds a significant amount of scientific research in the U.S., has now cut more than 1,400 grants, according to a list compiled by researchers at Harvard's Chan School of Public Health and rOpenSci. Research grants that have had the plug pulled on them by the Trump administration include a study by Ohio's Kent State University of how malign actors manipulate information on social media by posing as ordinary users. Another at the Rochester Institute of Technology was developing a tool that could detect fabricated videos or photos generated by AI, the Times reported. 'I'm almost certain this is going to lead to a vastly more polluted information environment,' Boston University economist Marshall Van Alstyne told the Times. Van Alstyne's team was researching ways to encourage social media users to verify sources of what they post online to promote accuracy, but the grant was canceled. The cuts come at a time when social media giants, including Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, have overhauled their policies regarding monitoring misinformation. Meta no longer uses independent fact-checkers on Instagram and Facebook, following the lead of Elon Musk's X, which uses community notes instead. On its website, the National Science Foundation said it would not prioritize research proposals that 'engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.' 'NSF will not prioritize research proposals that NSF will not support research with the goal of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation' that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advances a preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,' the foundation said. Elsewhere, at least a dozen projects were canceled by the National Institutes of Health. They included research into how conspiracy theories undercut treatment for cancer and covid-19, according to the Times. Trump - who is no stranger to sharing misinformation - was propelled back to the White House after three years of falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen. Already during his second term, Trump has been accused of spreading misinformation during January's devastating wildfires in Southern California, where he claimed that the state was deliberately blocking the flow of water from the north to the south. Last month, he shared what appeared to be a digitally altered image of the deported El Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, w hich he presented as evidence Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His peddling of conspiracy theories was particularly rife during the 2024 presidential campaign. 'He's building a coalition of people who just see the world in a very dark way,' co-author of the book American Conspiracy Theories, Joseph Uscinski, said at the time.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Administration Cancels Scores of Grants to Study Online Misinformation
The Trump administration has sharply expanded its campaign against experts who track misinformation and other harmful content online, abruptly canceling scores of scientific research grants at universities across the country. The grants funded research into topics like ways to evade censors in China. One grant at the Rochester Institute of Technology, for example, sought to design a tool to detect fabricated videos or photos generated by artificial intelligence. Another, at Kent State University in Ohio, studied how malign actors posing as ordinary users manipulate information on social media. Officials at the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation contend that the research has resulted in the censorship of conservative Americans online, though there is no evidence any of the studies resulted in that. The campaign stems from an executive order that President Trump issued on Jan. 20 vowing to protect the First Amendment right to free speech, but the scale of it has prompted criticism that it is targeting anyone researching misinformation. The intent, the critics have said, is in fact to stifle findings about the noxious content that is increasingly polluting social media and political discourse. 'When you ask Americans, these are things they're really concerned about,' said Lisa K. Fazio, an associate professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University, whose grant to study how the repetition of lies reinforced them was among those canceled. 'They want to know what can be done.' The cuts are part of the administration's broader push to cut federal spending, but they also reflect a conviction among conservatives that the government used researchers at universities and nongovernmental organizations as proxies to restrict content on Facebook, X, YouTube and other social media platforms. The researchers say those claims conflate academic study about the spread of misinformation or disinformation with decisions made by tech giants to enforce their own policies against certain kinds of content, as they did when they suspended the accounts of President Trump and others involved in inciting violence on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021. With Mr. Trump back in power, the claim of widespread government censorship has animated policy decisions across the federal government — from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which shuttered its unit tracking foreign influence operations, to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which faces a $491 million budget cut in programs that addressed election misinformation or foreign propaganda. Last month, the National Science Foundation, a government agency that finances much of the scientific research in the United States, began canceling hundreds of grants. Most focused on studies involving issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, but scores singled out work on online content. The cancellation has jeopardized research in universities in virtually every state, leaving researchers scrambling to find funding for projects that in many cases are only partly completed. Each Friday since then, the foundation has announced new cancellations. It has now cut more than 1,400 grants, including 75 more last Friday. In all, the grants were worth more than $1 billion, according to a list compiled by two researchers, Scott W. Delaney, an epidemiologist at Harvard's Chan School of Public Health, and Noam Ross, the executive director of rOpenSci, a nonprofit software foundation. None of the grant abstracts reviewed by The New York Times called for censoring content. 'That's really not the nature of our research,' said Marshall Van Alstyne, an economist at Boston University, referring to censorship. His team lost a grant for research on ways to encourage social media users to verify the sources of their posts to incentivize accuracy. The National Science Foundation declined to respond to questions but posted a series of statements on its website saying that among other things it would 'not support research with the goal of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation' that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.' (Malinformation refers to content that could be true but is manipulated to change its context. A common example cited is revenge pornography.) Many of the cuts seemed arbitrary, even by the administration's stated justification. Eric Wustrow, a computer engineer at the University of Colorado Boulder, studied ways to sidestep censorship — in China, not the United States. 'It's possible that maybe they saw the word censorship and thought that it couldn't mean anything but censoring them,' he said, referring to Republican officials. The foundation's notifications claimed that the cancellations could not be appealed, though its policies stated otherwise. 'Even though they haven't been following their own procedures guide, I'm doing my best to follow the guidance that has been laid out in prior procedures,' said Marianna Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at New York University, whose grant to study the way children adopt cultural stereotypes at a young age was canceled. The cuts have also angered Democrats on Capitol Hill. Last week, a dozen members of the House wrote the foundation's new acting director, Brian Stone, saying the administration was 'unparalleled in its hostility to American science.' The National Institutes of Health also canceled at least a dozen projects specifically involving misinformation or conspiracy theories, including ones that examined how they undercut treatments for cancer, the human papillomavirus, H.I.V. and Covid-19. The agency did not answer written questions about the cuts, but in a statement referred to the slogan popularized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the health secretary: Make America Healthy Again. 'N.I.H. is carefully reviewing all grants to assure N.I.H. is addressing the United States chronic disease epidemic,' the statement said. The Pentagon, meantime, has slashed funding for the Minerva Research Initiative, a program started in 2008 to support social science research in areas that could have an impact on national security in global hot spots. One study, completed last year by two researchers at the University of Tennessee, Catherine Luther and Brandon Prins, documented how Russia stoked anti-American sentiment in international media before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Even before the cancellations of the grants, the field of researchers examining harmful content online had been under attack from Republicans in Congress and lawsuits in courts. The social media giants that once supported the work — especially Facebook and Twitter, before it became X under Elon Musk — have also backed away from efforts to moderate what users see on their platforms. Without government support, research into the ills that inflict the internet will wither. 'I'm almost certain,' Dr. Van Alstyne said, 'this is going to lead to a vastly more polluted information environment.'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Yahoo
Horry County police say recent fentanyl bust ‘probably' largest in county's history
HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — Horry County police spoke on camera for the first time since last week's dramatic chase and eventual fentanyl bust in Myrtle Beach. HCPD says the recovered drugs, which include more than 25 pounds of fentanyl, are worth roughly $1 million. Police on Tuesday also identified the suspect in the chase — Omega Junior Wilson — who was charged with failure to stop for a blue light with great bodily injury and trafficking in fentanyl. The chase happened at about 4 p.m. Friday and ended near Pine Island Road in Myrtle Beach, police said. At least one bystander was hurt. An officer tried stopping Wilson for an improper turn near Fantasy Harbor Boulevard and Forestbrook Road, but police say Wilson sped off and threw several bricks of fentanyl out of the car window before he crashed, damaging several vehicles along the way. 'This is probably the largest fentanyl seizure that the county has seen. It's a significant amount of fentanyl that was seized,' Horry County Deputy Police Chief Mick Kathman said. 'It would be enough to be a lethal dose for the population of Horry County 13-plus times over.' Workers at nearby businesses said they were in shock when they heard and saw the crash happen right outside their windows. Officers also found meth, cocaine, three firearms and other drugs in the car, like multiple prescriptions not prescribed to Wilson. Some neighbors, like Beverly McGee, were appalled to know the bust happened in their community. 'As far as I'm concerned, get it out of here and keep it out of here,' McGee said. 'My niece was a drug addict, and fentanyl was a drug she used often. Thankfully, she's been sober now for over a year. But it could have killed her, and we were constantly worried about her.' Another person, who wanted to remain anonymous, said their wife was killed by her xanax anxiety medication being laced with fentanyl and ketamine in 2021 in Socastee. Others, like Linnea Ciavardini, were thankful for police's quick efforts. 'They say there's a market for drugs, so it's never going to go away,' Ciavardini said. 'But if we can keep it down and capture the distributors, that's wonderful. Everyone will be a lot happier.' Kathman said they're unsure if any other people were involved in the drug operation with Wilson, who lives in Georgetown. McGee says the fentanyl crisis needs to be taken even more seriously. 'The fentanyl problem is out of control,' she said. * * * Gabby Jonas joined the News13 team as a multimedia journalist in April 2024. She is from Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Kent State University in May 2023. Follow Gabby on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and read more of her work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
