Online Videos For Kids Rife With Junk Food Messaging

Kids watching YouTube videos are being hammered with messages promoting junk food like candy, sugary drinks, fast food and sweet or salty snacks, a new study says.

About 75% of 6- to 8-year-olds and 36% of 3- to 5-year-olds were fed promotions for junk food while watching YouTube or YouTube Kids videos they chose on their own mobile device...

Typos, Slang Trip Up AI Medical Assessments

Common human typing errors can trip up artificial intelligence (AI) programs designed to aid health care workers by reviewing health records, a new MIT study says.

Typos and extra white spaces can interfere with AI’s ability to properly analyze patient records, researchers reported this week at an Association for Computing Machinery ...

Wastewater Can Accurately Predict COVID-19 Surges

Keeping tabs on COVID-19 outbreaks is as easy as tracking a city’s wastewater, a new study says.

Levels of the COVID virus, SARS-CoV-2, found in wastewater samples accurately predicted by a week the rise and fall of case counts in a community, researchers reported June 23 in the The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

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Updated COVID Vaccines Effective Against New Strains

Updated COVID-19 vaccines are keeping up with new coronavirus strains and remain effective for keeping people out of the hospital, a new study says.

The study, which examined the effectiveness of the 2023-2024 COVID vaccines against the XBB and JN.1 Omicron variant waves, found that the updated shots caused:

• A 24% lower risk ...

Education Suffers After Even A Single Brush With Childhood Trauma

Violence, addiction and abuse can keep children a step behind other kids when it comes to their education, a new study says.

Children who’ve experienced only a single traumatic event are more than twice as likely to be chronically absent from school due to health problems, researchers reported in the journal Academic Pediatrics