The plight of a four-year-old boy who virtually died after his mothers dedicated him 12 alternative medicines has prompted doctors to warn against the treatments.
Doctors at Newham Hospital in east London said the mothers were “devastated” that their good intentions had attained him so unwell.
The boy took a dozen supplements supposedly to help treat his autism.
The National Autistic Society said it was crucial for physicians to talk through health risks of alternative therapies.
The boy developed a potentially fatal condition after taking supplements from a naturopath( natural health practitioner) for a number of months, which included vitamin D, camel’s milk, silver and Epsom bath salts.
He was admitted to A& E after losing 6.5 lbs( 3kg) over three weeks, suffered by symptoms including vomiting and extreme thirst.
Image copyrightScience Photo LibraryImage caption ‘Often parents think that supplements are natural, safe…but this is not true in many cases’
Dr Catriona Boyd and Dr Abdul Moodambail, writing in the British Medical Journal Case Reports , said it was not until the boy had been at Newham Hospital, which is part of St Bart’s Health Trust, for several days that his mother told them about the holistic supplements.
Dr Moodambail told the BBC: “This happens on many occasions with other patients as well.
“Often the parents think that these supplements are natural, safe and do not cause any side effects or adverse effects, but this is not true in many cases like this.”
He added: “The situation was stark because the child developed vitamin D toxicity leading to very high calcium levels, attaining the child quite unwell and this can even be fatal as well.”
The boy made a full recovery in two weeks after being treated with hyperhydration and medications to reduce his calcium level.
What are complementary and alternative therapies?
Complementary and alternative medications( CAMs) are therapies that fall outside of mainstream healthcare Generally when a non-mainstream practise is used together with conventional medicine, it is considered “complementary” When a non-mainstream practise is used instead of conventional medication, it is considered “alternative” Examples of CAMS include homeopathy, acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropractic and herbal medications Some complementary and alternative medications or treatments are based on principles and an proof base that are not recognised by the majority of independent scientists Others have been proven to work for a limited number of health conditions, such as osteopathy, chiropractic and acupuncture for treating lower back ache When a person use any health therapy – including a CAM – and experiences an improvement, this may be due to the placebo effect Osteopaths and chiropractors are regulated in the same way as mainstream medical professionals “Were not receiving” statutory professional regulation of any other CAM practitioners
It’s an oft-repeated statistic: The United States is home to less than 5 percent of the world’ s population, but it’s home to almost 25 percent of the world’s prison population.
The Obama administration believes better data within the criminal justice system could correct that imbalance. Which is why today, the White House announced its new Data-Driven Justice Initiative, through which 67 cities and states will work with one another, as well as with leading tech companies like Amazon and Palantir, to discovery new ways to use data to shrink the size of their local prison populations.
” What weve seen as weve engaged with nation and local leaders across the country is that there are people who simply do not need to be in our jails ,” Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the President, said on a bellow with journalists today. Taking a closer look at the data, she told, can help identify who those people are.
In some cities, that’s already starting to happen. The White House pointed to one example in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which began diving into its own data back in 2014 to determine low-risk people in jail who could be released early. That intervention led to a 40 percentage reduction in the district jail population.” Thats 40 percentage, and they have had no increased number of reported crime ,” Jarrett said.” Pretty amazing .”
Of course, data mining is not the forte of most local law enforcement, which is why the White House is also asking for the tech industry’s help. As part of the announcement, Amazon is convening a consortium on data interventions in criminal justice that will be attended by companies like Palantir and organizations like Code for America.
The goal of the summit, according to Lynn Overmann, senior policy advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, is to convene the country’s top data scientists, technologists, and developers together with local governments to figure out” the solutions most likely to work as broadly as possible .”
Some tech companies are donating their existing tools to the member cities and states. For instance, RapidSOS, a company that allows people to submit their exact place data to emergency personnels, is offering its product to five cities for free for the next 10 years. Several research institutions like New York University and the University of Chicago are also partnering with cities and states to research their data strategies.
In a time when Republican and Democrat can’t seem to agree on anything, prison reform has become an unlikely unifier. Recently, House speaker Paul Ryan has become an outspoken advocate for sentencing reform. That type of across-the-aisle supporting could help these data attempts spread more quickly.
Already, among the seven states that signed on to the Data-Driven Justice Initiative, three have Republican governors. As part of the commitment, they promise to merge criminal justice and health system data to identify people who are most at risk, create new protocols for first responders dealing with mental health issues, and inform pre-trial release decisions.
Of course, employing technology to decide whether person bides behind bars or not is sure to be fraught with dispute as these programs roll out all over the country. After all, if people are concerned about algorithms deciding the news they consider, what happens when algorithms choose a person’s freedom?
Infarm, a startup that has developed vertical agriculture tech for grocery stores, restaurants and local distribution centres to bring fresh and artisan make much closer to the consumer, has raised $25 million in Series A funding.
The round is led by London-based VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from TriplePoint Capital, Mons Investments, and previous investors Cherry Ventures, QUADIA and LocalGlobe.
It brings the total raised by the Berlin-based company to $35 million, including a $2.5 million award from the European Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 program.
Infarm says the new capital will be used for international expansion and to further develop its 5,000 sqm R& D centre in Berlin. This will include bringing its vertical agriculture system to Paris, London, and Copenhagen, in addition to other German cities later this year. The startup is targeting 1,000 farms become operational across Europe by the end of 2019.
Founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli, and brethren Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm has developed an “indoor vertical farming” system capable of growing anything from herbs, lettuce and other vegetables, and even fruit. It then places these modular farms in a variety of customer-facing city locations, such as grocery store, restaurants, shopping malls, and schools, thus enabling the end-customer to actually pick the render themselves.
The distributed system is designed to be infinitely scalable — you simply add more modules, space permitting — whilst the whole thing is cloud-based, entailing the farms can be monitored and controlled from Infarm’s central control centre. It’s incredibly data-driven, a combination of IoT, Big Data and cloud analytics akin to “Farming-as-a-Service”.
The idea, the founding team told me back in June last year when I profiled the nascent company, isn’t merely to produce fresher and better savor make and re-introduce forgottens or rare varieties, but to disrupt the supply chain as a whole, which remains inefficient and makes a lot of waste.
“Behind our farms is a robust hardware and software platform for accuracy agriculture, ” explained Michaeli. “Each farming unit is its own individual ecosystem, making the exact environment our plants need to flourish. We are able to develop growing recipes that tailor the sunlight spectra, temperature, pH, and nutrients to ensure the maximum natural expression of each plant in terms of flavor, colour, and nutritional quality”.
Two years since launch, Infarm tells it is now operating more than 50 farms across Berlin in supermarket aisles, restaurants kitchens, and distribution warehouses. This includes introducing in-store farming into EDEKA and METRO places, two of Germany’s largest food retailers, in which dozens of “quality herbs and leafy greens” are grown and sold at what the startup describes as affordable prices.
Noteworthy, with an output of up to 1,200 plants per month from a single farm unit, Infarm claims it has already enabled some locations to become entirely self-sufficient in their herb production.
“This is the beginning of the urban farming( r) evolution: it will redefine what it means to eat well, reshape the landscape of cities, and re-empower the person or persons to take ownership of their food, ” tells Erez Galonska in a statement. “Our ambition is to reach cities as far as Seattle in the United States or Seoul, South Korea with our urban agriculture network”.
Image copyrightNosy CrowImage caption My Brother is a Superhero is Solomons’ first book
Screenwriter David Solomons has won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize with his debut about an 11 -year-old boy preoccupied with comics.
My Brother is a Superhero is focused on Luke – named after Solomons’ own son – whose brother Zack is given special powers to help save two universes.
Winning Solomons 5,000, the book finds Luke miss out on the powers because he went to the toilet at the incorrect time.
Solomons previously adapted E Nesbit’s Five Children and It for the 2004 film.
Eddie Izzard and Kenneth Branagh both appeared in the big screen version.
Image copyrightWaterstonesImage caption Solomons received his award at Waterstones’ Piccadilly bookshop
‘Rip-roaringly exciting’
The wins of the best represented volume and best older fiction categories were also first-time writers.
David Litchfield’s The Bear and the Piano was named the best shown book, while writer and actress Lisa Williamson’s The Art of Being Normal won in the best older fiction category.
Solomons had been named as the win of the best younger fiction volume before being named as the overall win of the award, voted for by booksellers, at a ceremony at Waterstones’ Piccadilly bookshop in London.
Image copyrightWaterstonesImage caption Lisa Williamson’s The Art of Being Normal won in the best older fiction category
Waterstones children’s buyer Florentyna Martin said: “My Brother is a Superhero is that rare thing – a hugely funny book for young readers that is also rip-roaringly exciting.
“It is infused with the spirit of larger than life heroes and colourful comic book trivia that enthrals younger readers and pleasures superhero fans of all ages, yet at its heart is a touching relationship between siblings.
“Given the author’s background it’s no amaze it is hugely cinematic, but it is also full of wonderful writing and so brilliantly plotted that one never knows what to expect next.”
The book chain’s managing director James Daunt added: “The quality of the books on the shortlists this year was exceptional, reflecting the vibrant health of the children’s book marketplace.
“That our winners were all first volumes, and each from a flourishing independent publisher, reflects how blessed we are currently by the breadth of creative talent in this country.”
Litchfield’s book is about a bear who teaches himself to play the piano, while Williamson’s is focused on LGBT issues and tells the story of two adolescents and their struggle with identity.
The Leap Manifesto is an unashamedly radical plan to convert the world to 100% renewable energy, fast. And you can be a part of it
Leap day is coming up at the end of the month remember this one?
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the remainder have thirty one, except February, on its own, which has twenty eight most times. And in a leap year, twenty nine.
I get interested in leap years a few months ago when a group of us in Canada were trying to come up with a title for an independent political platform we had just drafted. The document launched during our recent federal election and signed by thousands and thousands of Canadians was a roadmap to get the country entirely off fossil fuel by the mid-century or sooner, in line with what many scientists are telling us we must do, and what technologists are telling us we now can do.
And we wanted to go further: the plan argues that in the process of fundamentally changing our country to make it green, we also have a once-in-a-century opportunity to make it fairer. We could redress terrible incorrects done to indigenous peoples; radically reduce economic, racial and gender inequalities; eliminate legal double the criteria for immigrant workers; and create a whole lot of stable, well-paying tasks. In very un-Canadian fashion, we even dared to hope that the manifesto might become a model for similar broad-based confederations in other countries.
The text we came up with was unabashedly radical, and it went on to be endorsed by more than 100 organisations. An array of Canadian celebrities also added their names: Leonard Cohen, Donald Sutherland and Ellen Page, among others.
Our first challenge was what to call it. We wanted to convey the necessity of achieving speed, since as Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, said recently: Where capital goes in the next five years will decide what kind of world we have.
One suggestion was The Leap. And yes, we worried about inevitable comparings to Mao Zedongs disastrous Great Leap Forward. But what ultimately tip-off the balance in its favour was when we realised that 2016 is a leap year.
It wasnt just good timing, we supposed, but a powerful analogy. After all, we periodically add an extra day to our calendars because if we didnt, the seasons would gradually fall out of alignment and eventually the seasons would go wacky. Imaging New Yorkers doing their Christmas shopping in T-shirts( oh right, that happened ).
It was Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, who decided to bring the 365 -day solar calendar to the Romans, throwing in that extra day every four years. He wasnt known as a humble man, but even a dictator in perpetuity realised that it was easier to change regulations written by other humen than it is to change the laws of nature.
Thats a lesson worth re-learning and fast. Like the Romans with their failing calendar, we find ourselves trapped within multiple failing systems: economic, political, even spiritual. And all these system failings have put humanity on a collision course with countries around the world, which warms and writhes the more we refuse to recognise its limits.
To much fanfare, our governments unveiled a global climate handled in Paris. Photograph: Francois Mori/ AP
Thats why we chose The Leap as the name for our manifesto: the gap between where we are and where we need to be is so great, and the time so short, that small steps simply will not cut it.
With this in mind, the manifesto not only calls for a rapid change to 100% renewable electricity, it insists that these new energy projects should be democratically controlled and that indigenous peoples should be first to receive public is supportive of their own clean energy projects. So should communities currently dealing with heavy health the health effects of polluting industrial activity.
To pay for all this, we called for dramatic changes to how public revenues are collected and spent, from an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and higher royalty rates on fossil fuel extraction, to cuts in military spending. And those are just a few of its 15 demands.
The plan captured the imagination of many Canadians. Burned out by decades of the struggle against what they dont want tar sands pipelines, explosion petroleum develops, draconian security bills they seized on the chance to rally around a vision for the world they actually wishes to. On leap day later this month, there will be sessions, teach-ins and other events across the country, all of them pushing our new government to adopt a holistic approach to the twin crisis of climate change and inequality.
Two millennia ago, Julius Caesar realised that there was something even more powerful than his empire: the planets revolution around the sunlight. Today, we need a different kind of solar revolution, one that doesnt only change how we generate our power, but also who benefits.
Heres the good news: we have the momentum to make that leap from the recent victories against Keystone XL and Shells Arctic drilling, to the surprising strength of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
So take a minute or two to be considered the extra day at the end of this month. Its a reminder that people can indeed are working together to change a failing decide of rules. The the statutes of nature , not so much.
Then lets make this 2016 the year we started to bridge the chasm between what is, and what must be. Lets make it the year we started to leap.
The Leap Manifesto, along with a listing of its original signatories, can be read in 10 languages here. To find out about leap year activities visit leapyear2 016. org. On Friday 5 February, Naomi Klein is co-hosting a leap year-themed Google hangout with Bill McKibben of 350. org, Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth and others. Register here.
Earlier this week, we reported onan endlessly creepy puzzle video that was confounding and unsettling everyone who watched it. In the working day since, the narrative has grown far strangerbut the identity of the person responsible for the threatening messages remains as clouded as ever.
The video, which spread quickly across YouTube and was allegedly discovered on a DVD on a park bench in Spain, contains a apparently endless number of puzzles, both obvious and obscure. Numerous interested parties have been working to unearth the mysteries held within, and several bits of new information have emerged.
Perhaps most disturbing revelation of all is that the Morse code puzzle, which was translated into RED LIPSLIKE TENTH, has been discovered to be an anagrams of KILL THE PRESIDENT. This, coupled with the previously discovered hidden GPS coordinates of the White House, paints a vivid menace.
The disturbing video clip hid images in its audio track that could only be decoded with advanced software. The photos, which included a woman being strangled, a disemboweled body, and other graphic scenes, have been traced to various sources on the Internet.
One of the embedded photos is from a horror movie called The Bunny Game , another is from a German film called Slasher , and a third is an actual crime-scene photo showing a victim of Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler. While all of the photos are disturbing , none of them originated with the video itself. This should offer a little bit of relief to those speculate that the clip came from a serial murderer showcasing his crimes.
As for the source of the video, one apparently promising result comes from a cached version of a now-defunct website. The blog for Triton TV, a University of California, San Diego film group, indicated a screencap of the disturbing video along with a title and description written solely in binary code. The Daily Dot reached out to Triton TV only to discover that the blog in question had been hacked only weeks prior. Whoever brought down the site chose to upload whatever creepy YouTube videos they could find, seemingly at random, in its endeavour to troll people.
Another result also failed to pan out when one Parker Wright, whose name was on one of the accounts that uploaded the video, was mistaken for another Parker Wright.
Amateur sleuths had closely watched the Twitter account of Parker J. Wright, expecting it to yield new information. The Daily Dot reached out to him to see if he participated in the video, but he was just as disturbed by it as everyone else and promptly denied any association with it or its creators.
@MikeWehner A bunch of people are tweeting me about it. No I was not involved in that video in any way.
Not all results have led to dead end. Some serious digging brought confirmation of the place where the video was shooting. The derelict building shown in the video is the Zofiwka Sanatorium located in Otwock, Poland. The now-abandoned build was once a mental-health facility.
Photoblogger Miniwycieczkicaptured an image in 2013 from a room in the facility that appears almost identical to the images seen in the video.
A more recent photo, whichSzary Burekcaptured in April2 015, also shows the room, and this time it includes all of the subtle details visible in the video clip, including the graffiti that appears as the video progresses.
There’s little doubt that this is the building in the video. Devoted that it is abandoned, it’s impossible to know who might have decided to use it as a backdrop for their unsettling puzzle.
Mike Wehner
The dates of the photos confirm that the video was generated sometime between November 2013 and April 2015. The video was first considered online on May 9, 2015.
The tech blog that most recently acquired the video, GadgetZZ, used to say the disc it received received from Poland, but the uploader of the original YouTube copy, AETBX, maintained that it was found on a park bench in Spain.
Hundreds of people continue to investigate new results and post their findings on Reddit.
Image copyright Thinkstock 
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption ‘Often parents think that supplements are natural, safe…but this is not true in many cases’ 
