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Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and three other men were indicted on Tuesday by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy related to a dog fighting operation. The charges included buying, breeding and training pit bull dogs, transporting the dogs across state lines to illegally participate in fights, and gambling on the fights.

The indictments stemmed from a search of Vick’s Smithfield, Virginia home in April, in which 54 pit bulls were removed, along with equipment used in dog fighting.

The indictment said that Vick had bought the property in Smithfield for US$34,000 to run the dog fighting under the name “Bad Newz Kennels” with two other people named in the indictment. Purnell Peace, Quanis Phillips, and Tony Taylor were all named in the indictment along with Vick.

The indictment stated that Vick took part in the killing of eight dogs that didn’t pass test fights, called “rolling”. The pit bulls were allegedly killed by hanging, drowning and slamming at least one dog onto the ground.

If convicted of both portions of the conspiracy charge, Vick could face six years in prison and a $350,000 fine. His property, located in Surry County, would be subject to forfeiture under U.S. laws dealing with illegal activities that are carried out at an interstate level. The indictment alleges that the dog fighting operation, involving American Pit Bull Terriers, spilled over into Alabama, North Carolina and New York.

Vick has a court date on July 26 for a bond hearing and to hear the charges. Vick has said that he had a kennel operation on the property, but had no involvement or knowledge of a dog fighting ring.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Newly named Prime Minister of France Dominique de Villepin has had his cabinet accepted by President of the Republic Jacques Chirac.

Head of the majority Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes as a second-in-command as Minister of the Interior, with the honorific rank of Minister of State. The Ministry of the Interior is traditionally one of the most important positions in the cabinet, with that of Finances; the Minister of the Interior is in charge, notably, of law enforcement and relationships with local governments. There is some uneasiness in having the head of a party in a position that is partly in charge of electoral redistrictings. Also, this arrangement creates a peculiar situation: it is public knowledge that Villepin and Sarkozy consider each other a dangerous political rival with respect to the 2007 presidential election, and they are widely said to loathe each other.

The cabinet was presented as a “restricted” cabinet. However, as many as 31 ministers, delegate ministers and secretaries of state were named; still, this is a reduction from the preceding 43. While the cabinet is for a large part copied from the preceding one, some ministers who had provoked controversy and animosity were removed or moved to another less risky position. François Fillon, formerly Minister of National Education, whose plan for reforming public education was lambasted by members of his own party, including president of the National Assembly Jean-Louis Debré, was ruled partly unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council, and provoked widespread student protests and unrest in high schools, is no longer a minister. Dominique Perben, who pushed for controversial law which opponents allege curtail fundamental constitutional freedoms while Minister of Justice, was moved to the less sensitive position of Minister of Transportation and Equipment. It is also possible that the movement of Brigitte Girardin from Minister for the Oversea (relationships with French overseas departments and territories) to (international) Cooperation was motivated by the crisis that occurred in French Polynesia between Gaston Flosse and his opponent Oscar Temaru.

While the Union for French Democracy (UDF) party, led by François Bayrou, formally remains in the ruling coalition along with the UMP, it has decided that, because the new government would probably do more of the same policies, it would not participate in it. The only member of the government from UDF is Gilles de Robien, as in the preceding government.

Previous head of government Jean-Pierre Raffarin had lost the confidence of the French, with polls putting him as low as 22% confidence. President Chirac’s confidence among the citizenry is also a record low of 24%.

Mr Dominique de Villepin is Prime Minister.

1. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy — Minister of State, Minister of the Interior and of the management of the Territory (law enforcement, French National Police, French Gendarmerie; relationships with local governments; safety regulations; territory subdivisions)
2. Mrs Michèle Alliot-Marie — w:Minister of Defense (France)
3. Mr Philippe Douste-Blazy, Minister of Foreign Affairs
4. M. Jean-Louis Borloo, Minister of employment, social cohesion and housing
5. M. Thierry Breton, Minister of Economy, Finances and Industry
6. M. Gilles de Robien, Minister of National Education, of Higher Education and Research;
7. M. Pascal Clément, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice;
8. M. Dominique Perben, Minister of Transportation, Equipment, Tourism and the Sea (national roads, help to local governments for transportation, some government constructions)
9. M. Xavier Bertrand, Minister of Health and Solidarities;
10. M. Dominique Bussereau, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries;
11. M. Christian Jacob, Minister of the Civil Service|;
12. M. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Minister of Culture and Communications; (museums, cultural activities, supervision of broadcasting)
13. Mrs Nelly Olin, Minister of Ecology and sustainable development;
14. M. François Baroin, Minister for the Oversea;
15. M. Renaud Dutreil, Minister for small and middle businesses, Commerce, artisans, and self-employed professionals
16. M. Jean-François Lamour, Minister of Youth, Sports and associative life.

Delegate ministers operate as subordinates of ministers.

1. Mr Henri Cuq, delegate minister for relationships with Parliament;
2. Mr Azouz Begag, delegate minister for the promotion of the equality of chances;
3. Mr Jean-François Copé, delegate minister for budget and the reform of the State, spokesman of the Government;
4. M. Gérard Larcher, delegate minister for employment, work, and the professional insertion of the young;
5. Mrs Catherine Vautrin, delegate minister for social cohesion and parity [of the sexes];
6. Mrs Brigitte Girardin, delegate minister for [international] cooperation, development and francophonie;
7. Mr Brice Hortefeux, delegate minister for local governments;
8. Mrs Catherine Colonna, delegate minister for European affairs (relationships with the European Union and other members thereof);
9. Mr François Goulard, delegate minister for higher education and research;
10. Mr Léon Bertrand, delegate minister for tourism;
11. Mr Philippe Bas, delegate minister for Social Security, the elderly, the handicapped, and family;
12. Mr François Loos, delegate minister for industry;
13. Mrs Christine Lagarde, delegate minister for foreign commerce;
14. Mr Hamlaoui Mékachéra, delegate minister for war veterans;
15. M. Christian Estrosi, delegate minister for the management of the territory.

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Yesterday, the state government of Victoria, Australia announced their decision to trial self-driving vehicles on two of the state’s major connecting motorways, the CityLink and Tullamarine Freeway. The trial is to use autonomous vehicles from automobile companies including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Tesla. The two-year trial is to have three phases.

The cars are to drive alongside commuters, but in public testing a driver is always to be present, as Victorian law requires drivers always keep a hand on the steering wheel. However, in occasional closures of the Burnley Tunnel, with no other drivers to endanger, the cars are to be tested with nobody in the vehicle.

Lane assist, cruise control, and recognition of traffic signs are in the trial’s first phase, expected to complete before the end of the year. This includes monitoring how the driver-less cars respond to road conditions, including lane markings and electronic speed signs.

“Victoria is at the forefront of automated vehicle technology — we’re investing in this trial to explore ways that this technology can be used to reduce crashes and keep people safe on our roads”, said Luke Donnellan, the Victorian Minister for Roads and Road Safety. He noted, “Ninety per cent of the fault of accidents is human error […] so we know that if we can take out human error we will have less accidents”.

Tim Hansen, Victoria Police’s Acting Assistant Commissioner, said that police had founded a project team to investigate how self-driving vehicles would change policing on roads. “Can we intercept vehicles more safely to avoid pursuits and ramming?”, he asked.

The trial is a partnership between the state government, Victoria’s road management authority VicRoads, owner of the CityLink toll road Transurban, and insurance company RACV.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Chemotherapy is usually associated with a collection of side effects ranging from digestive problems to hair loss, but a study published this week in Human Reproduction demonstrated that female cancer patients may find they have something in common with much younger women in one specific area — their ovaries.

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh examined donated ovarian tissue from fourteen female cancer patients, most of whom had Hodgkin lymphoma, and compared it to tissue from healthy women. They found the samples from women who had been treated with a specific chemotherapeutic regimen known as ABVD not only contained greater numbers of dormant ova — egg cells — than those from women treated with harsher regimens but also more than samples from healthy women. ABVD is named for combining several drugs known as adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine.

These reproductive cells were not merely more plentiful in ABVD patients. They also appeared immature, “new” in the words of lead researcher Evelyn Telfer. This challenges the conventional belief that girls are born with all the ova they will ever have and the numbers can only go down as the cells are either used up by the reproductive cycle or succumb to damage or natural aging. However, further research is needed to confirm this. The study covered relatively few patients by scientific standards, and David Albertini of the Center for Human Reproduction in New York has suggested the cells may not actually be freshly grown. Instead, they may have always been there and were merely rendered more detectable by ABVD treatment.

The ability to grow new egg cells may have significant implications for women in Western societies, many of whom postpone childbearing to establish careers, sometimes into their late thirties or forties. However, Telfer warns against making use of these findings too soon: “There’s so much we don’t know about the ovary. We have to be very cautious about jumping to clinical applications.”

The experiments had been discussed earlier this year at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

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