Stressed out? Learn To Say No, When Possible
By Chelsea Slovensky
UAB News
Speechless: North Carolina Man Left Mute After Third Big Lottery Win In As Many Years
A North Carolina man was so stunned at his third big lottery win in as many years that he lost the ability to speak.
Gregg Hensley of Marion won 200,000 dollars on the Multiply the Cash second-chance drawing on April 11.
The big scoop followed his 10,000-dollar win earlier this year and another, 20,000-dollar win in 2020.
The North Carolina Education Lottery said in a statement on April 19: “So overcome with emotion that he couldn’t speak, Gregg Hensley of Marion said he had to just hand his phone to his wife so she could see the 200,000-dollar prize that he won in a second-chance drawing.
“Hensley, a 63-year-old woodworker, won the grand prize in the April 11 Multiply the Cash second-chance drawing.”
Hensley was quoted as saying: “I had to hold on to something I was so stunned.”
The statement continued: “Hensley is no stranger to winning big prizes in lottery drawings. The second-chance win marks his third big win as he won 20,000 dollars in a 2020 drawing and 10,000 dollars in a drawing earlier this year.”
Hensley said: “With as many folks who are entering drawings, to actually win one is hard to comprehend, so to actually win three, it’s mind-boggling.”
The statement continued: “Hensley arrived at lottery headquarters Monday and, after required state and federal tax withholdings, took home 142,020 dollars. He said he would like to buy a new truck and do some home repairs.
“His win occurred in the first of four drawings in the Multiply the Cash second-chance promotion. His entry was picked from more than 66.9 million entries.
“Players get a second chance with their Multiply the Cash tickets by scanning them into their lottery accounts where they are automatically entered into the next drawing. Each drawing offers a 200,000-dollar prize, ten 10,000-dollar prizes, and fifty 500-dollar prizes. The date of the second drawing is June 8.”
Hensley’s win comes off the back of big scoops by Josh Buster of West Burlington, Iowa, and Paul and Teresa Hartsoe of Conowingo, Maryland.
Buster won a cool 1 million dollars on the Iowa Lottery’s Mega Millions draw after the store clerk accidentally gave him one play instead of five and then printed the other four out on a separate ticket, which he believes is what gave him his lucky break.
And the Hartsoes also scooped a whopping 1 million dollars on the Maryland Lottery’s Mega Millions draw, with the Lottery reporting that they “could not stop smiling”.
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Walmart Now Paying College Grad Wage To Truckers
Walmart is offering a starting salary of 110,000 dollars to its in-house truck drivers, which an industry expert says is a response to a critical need for truckers in the US who are vital to the delivery of goods around the country.
The retail giant announced this week that its drivers can earn as much as 110,000 dollars in their first year, while some can earn more, depending on tenure and other factors. Current drivers, whose salaries are no lower than 95,000 dollars, will get raises, having risen from an average of 87,000 dollars.
Currently, Walmart drivers earn far more than recent graduates of 4-year institutions, who earned an average of 55,260 dollars in 2021, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Many college graduates, even those from state universities, face significant debt too.
Non-drivers employed by Walmart also have a shot at getting into trucks through its 12-week in-house training course.
The company is following the lead of trucking companies such as Utah-based C.R. England, which announced in 2021 its biggest pay rise for drivers in its history, having already boosted those salaries by 50 percent since 2018.
In an extensive interview with Zenger News, Nick Geale, V.P. for Workforce Policy at the American Trucking Associations (ATA), referred to his organization’s 2021 analysis of the freight industry in the US in terms of drivers.
Geale said: “It determined that based on freight need, we were about 81,000 drivers short of what we need to have in an effective and resilient supply chain. That’s based on long-term data analysis.”
ATA economist Bob Costello had recently underscored the continued demand for drivers, saying: “Demand for trucking freight services remains strong, but for-hire contract carriers are capacity constrained due to the driver and equipment markets. The spot market has been surging as these carriers can’t haul all of the freight they are asked to move.”
Costello added: “So the fact that the tonnage index hasn’t fully recovered is a supply problem, not a lack of demand. Other ATA data shows that for-hire carriers are operating around 7 percent fewer trucks, both company and independent contractor equipment, than prior to the pandemic.”
Change in the industry is driving change for drivers, Geale said in the interview. He said: “About 14 years ago, drivers drove on average 125,000 miles per year. Today, that’s down to 100,000. So, we’ve had a 20 percent reduction in the amount of miles per driver in this country since then.”.
This translates, he said, to a 20-percent rise in demand for drivers, and trucks.
To entice hires, Geale said Walmart and other ATA members have offered pay increases to over-the-road truck drivers of 8.7 percent each year for the last three years. He said truckers earn an average of 59,000 dollars per year.
This figure is based, he said, on US Bureau of Labor Statistics data on weekly earnings for long-haul truckers.
Geale said, “That figure has been rising at five times the historical average as fleets compete for drivers, and if annualized gets to an average of 59,000 dollars per year.”
That figure, he said, is expected to rise this year.
According to Geale, when drivers are given increased pay, they “choose to drive less for lifestyle reasons – so drivers make more while they’re working, but work less.”
The retaining and hiring of drivers are complex problems.
According to a February 2022 report by the US Department of Transportation, it is because of “challenging working conditions.”
The report said that “as e-commerce creates additional demand for warehousing jobs and short-haul freight, long-haul trucking positions may become harder to fill”, citing the time drivers spend away from home and high turnover rates as reasons for drivers seeking employment elsewhere.
According to the ATA, there is no single cause of driver shortage. An ATA statement noted that one factor is truckers’ high average age, which leads to retirements.
Many “would be and current drivers,” said an ATA statement, cannot pass a drug test, “a problem exacerbated by an increasing number of states legalizing marijuana,” which the federal government still prohibits.
Also, women make up only 7 percent of drivers, which is below their representation in the labor market.
Another limitation is imposed by federal regulation prohibiting commercial drivers under 21 from crossing state lines, thus reducing access to what Geale characterized as “good-paying jobs that lead to the middle class.”
Noting that there is no single cause for the driver shortage, the ATA statement said: “The solution to the driver shortage will most certainly require increased pay, regulatory changes and modifications to shippers’, receivers’ and carriers’ business practices to improve conditions for drivers.”
In the interview, Geale said, “Eighty percent of this country gets 100 percent of its freight delivered by truck, which means if trucks go away or we don’t have enough, 80 percent of this country potentially won’t have delivered their food, medical supplies, and other necessities.”
Geale said that the economy will still need truck drivers in the future, despite the prospect of driverless vehicles.
The Teamsters labor union, which represents drivers, pilots, law enforcement officers, health workers, and others did not wish to comment when contacted about Walmart’s offer. The union did, however, verify that it does not represent Walmart drivers.
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VIDEO: Texas Couple Use Handheld Massager To Whip Up Huge Piles Of Hidden Dirt In Car Carpet
This video – viewed a whopping 14 million times in five days – shows a shrewd car owner using a handheld massager to whip up piles of hidden dirt in his car carpet.
The video was shared on TikTok by netizens ‘Queenfirecrotch’, better known as Lanie Green, 19, from Houston in Texas, where it has been viewed 13.9 million times in less than a week.
In the footage, Lanie’s boyfriend William Vaughan is seen using a massage gun to whip up huge amounts of hidden dirt in his car carpet before scooping it up with a vacuum cleaner.
Lanie, who is studying to become a licensed cosmetologist, told Zenger News that the video was her boyfriend’s brainwave after he had seen someone else carrying out the ‘life hack’ before.
While cleaning William’s car over the weekend, the couple decided to give the cleaning method a try and record the “satisfying” results.
Lanie said they used a Vybe Pro massage gun that William had ordered from Amazon a while ago.
She explained: “The video and idea came from my boyfriend who had seen it before and wanted to try it while we were deep cleaning his car this past weekend.
“He asked me to record it because we thought it was a cool and satisfying video to watch. Then we thought ‘we may as well post it on TikTok too’ not thinking that it would get as much attention as it did.
“A lot of people were amazed by the video and how much dirt came out of the carpet using the machine to ‘shake’ the dirt out. I got a lot of positive feedback and comments and overall a great outcome from the public!”
She added: “The car was cleaner than when we started!”
Lanie told Zenger News: “We really didn’t expect the video to get as much attention as it did so it was really cool to see everyone comment and watch the numbers grow during the week.
“Thank you to everyone who liked our video. We’re willing to find more things to post about that people are interested in!”
The couple filmed the video at their home in Houston, the most populous city in Texas and famously home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center, home to the Mission Control Center.
Houston has the second-most Fortune 500 headquarters of any US municipality within its city limits (after New York City) and has become a global city, with strengths in culture, medicine, and research.
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Revolutionary: New Pioneering Technique Uses Sound Waves To Blast Cancer Cells That Dont Come Back
A new pioneering technique developed at the University of Michigan can blast tumors in a non-invasive way, with experts saying that in 80 percent of cases, they do not grow back.
The experts think that the discovery could revolutionize cancer treatment and Zenger News has spoken to one of the study’s authors in an exclusive, follow-up interview.
Zenger News obtained a statement from the University of Michigan on Monday, April 18, saying: “Noninvasive sound technology developed at the University of Michigan breaks down liver tumors in rats, kills cancer cells and spurs the immune system to prevent further spread—an advance that could lead to improved cancer outcomes in humans.”
The statement also said that “by destroying only 50 percent to 75 percent of liver tumor volume, the rats’ immune systems were able to clear away the rest, with no evidence of recurrence or metastases in more than 80 percent of animals.”
And clinical trials using the technique in humans are already underway in the US and Europe.
Zhen Xu, a Professor Of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan and one of the study’s authors, said: “Even if we don’t target the entire tumor, we can still cause the tumor to regress and also reduce the risk of future metastasis.”
Professor Xu told Zenger News in an exclusive, follow-up interview on Thursday, April 21, that sometimes it is better to avoid blasting the whole tumor, opting instead to target only some of it. She explained: “Histotripsy can be used to target the entire tumor. In many clinical situations, the entirety of a cancerous tumor cannot be targeted directly in treatments for reasons that include the mass’ size, location or stage.
“Thus, we targeted part of the tumor to mimic a conservative treatment in a non-optimal clinical scenario.”
Professor Xu and other researchers say that histotripsy “is the first non-invasive, non-ionizing, and non-thermal ablation technology guided by real-time imaging. Using focused ultrasound delivered from outside the body, histotripsy mechanically destroys tissue through cavitation, rendering the target into acellular debris.”
Histotripsy uses targeted ultrasound waves to destroy malignant tissues with a high level of precision.
Speaking about how histotripsy can cause the immune system to be triggered, allowing it to reduce the size of a tumor or destroy it completely, Professor Xu said: “Histotripsy mechanically disrupts the cells in the target tumor to [on the one hand] release tumor antigen that can be detected by the body’s immune system, and [on the other hand] cause immunogenic cell death.”
She added: “These two effects combined triggers both innate and adaptive immune response to destroy the residual tumors.”
The results of their research are promising, with it believed that the technique could even be combined with other forms of cancer treatment. Professor Xu said: “We are currently investigating combining histotripsy with immunotherapy, and our early results indicate that histotripsy has the potential to enhance immunotherapy.”
Professor Xu said: “We have recently obtained promising results on histotripsy treatment of brain therapy. We have successfully used histotripsy to treat live pig brain through excised human skull with histotripsy. Histotripsy applied from outside the skull has also been used to treat inside the brain of whole human cadavers.
“Our studies in mouse tumor models have shown that histotripsy stimulates potent local, regional, and systemic immune response. Histotripsy treatment of a tumor can lead to the reduction of metastases. Initial data also show increased tumor growth inhibition using histotripsy combined with immunotherapy compared to histotripsy or immunotherapy alone.”
The researchers believe that this new potential treatment, already undergoing a separate human liver cancer trial in the US and Europe, could completely revolutionize how cancer is treated.
Professor Xu also said: “The #HOPE4LIVER histotripsy trial for patients with liver cancer is being conducted in 15 clinical sites in the US and Europe. HistoSonics is hoping to expand to other cancers in the abdominal region (e.g., kidney, pancreas). However, no additional trial is scheduled at this point.”
She added: “The clinical protocol of the current human trials is designed to destroy the entirety of the target tumor. However, almost all enrolled patients have multiple tumor nodules. The patients will have 1-3 of the tumor nodules treated, not all the tumor nodules.”
These special ultrasound waves are different to those found in, say, a typical medical ultrasound device, with Professor Xu saying: “Both histotripsy and ultrasound imaging use micro-second length ultrasound pulses, but histotripsy uses ultrasound a pulse with much higher amplitude and lower frequency.”
To do this, the experts use what is called an ultrasound transducer array, with Professor Xu saying: “There is a plastic membrane placed outside the patient’s chest, which is connected to the ultrasound array transducer.
“The membrane is then filled with degassed water to form a water bag between the transducer and the patient’s skin. The ultrasound travels from the transducer to the patient’s skin via the water, because ultrasound cannot propagate through air.”
It is currently unclear why some of the tumors do not return after being treated in rats, with Professor Xu saying: “Histology from our animal study showed no tumor cells in the treatment site at the 3-month study endpoint. However, we do not have any human data to answer this question yet.”
But some promising news is that this technique could be used to treat metastatic cancer patients, with Professor Xu saying: “Based on our current animal study results, treating one tumor nodule can lead to the reduction of the metastases. We have some early human data to support this, but further investigation is needed.”
Although she also added that they were lacking data regarding the effects of treatment if the cancer had reached a patient’s bone marrow or bloodstream, saying “we don’t have data on this and don’t know the answer yet.”
The next steps Professor Xu plans to take in her research, along with her colleagues is geared towards “making technological advancements to expand histotripsy to other cancer types and increase the suitable patient population for histotripsy”.
She also plans to “further study histotripsy immune-stimulation and combination with immunotherapy.”
And she added that her research will also focus on “developing transcranial histotripsy for non-invasive brain surgery”, because “brain surgery presents unique technical challenges for histotripsy.”
The new technique could also be used to treat a wide variety of cancers too. Professor Xu said: “Histotripsy has been studied to treat cancers in the kidney, breast, prostate, pancreas, thyroid, and brain in animal tumor models.
“Histotripsy has also been studied as a non-invasive surgery tool for applications outside cancer, for example, removing blood clots or softening calcified cardiac valve.”
The study has been published in the academic journal Cancers.
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Animal Wrangler Coaxes Perfect Screen Performances From Her Pets
Animals are more than just companions — sometimes they are also careers.
Bozena Bienkowska has worked as an “animal wrangler” for 20 years, after working as an equine behaviorist for the BBC.
She currently has 22 Andalusian horses, which are used in films, due to their beauty and nature. Bienkowska also breeds poodle-cross dogs, which appear in movies. She has even coaxed perfect screen performances from her pets, including a raven and a wolf-hybrid.
A recent production she worked on was “Man & Witch,” a movie sequel to “The NeverEnding Story” series.
Bienkowska, from Glasgow, Scotland, has worked on everything from commercials for the soft drink Irn Bru to the British children’s TV channel CBeebies to films starring Colin Firth, who she said loves animals.
Her wolf-hybrid Kali appeared in “Wuthering Heights” as a pet belonging to Heathcliffe’s adoptive brother’s son.
“I’ve not yet come across an animal that I don’t get on with,” she said. “I don’t rush up to dogs in the street and pet them, it’s so disrespectful to the animal. I don’t approach them until they approach me.
“My job is to be happy and relaxed. I have to stay in a very calm place. I can jump through hoops, but I can’t change nature. Sometimes, I have to say: ‘I know you want this, but it can’t happen.’”
Among her eclectic collection of pets are a raven named Riot and poodle Zeus, She also keeps Maine coon cats and her horse, Premarosa.
Bienkowska said goats are the easiest to work with, as they are motivated by food.
“I breed the dogs I use on film sets,” she said. “Poodles are very clever. I had a dog called Truffles, who worked with Colin Firth. She was amazing — she loved being on set and on location.
“My job is making sure the animal is happy in its skin. You get asked if you can get a dog to jump up and wag its tail. Animals want someone to follow; they want to be safe.
“There are so many levels of intelligence — it’s not just cerebral, it’s everything.”
Part of her role includes bringing in experts, such as eagle therapists, to work with animals she isn’t familiar with. Bienkowska also acts as a go-between with the assistant director, who keeps the production running smoothly.
Another of her wolf-hybrids was named Shakespeare. She said wolves are more like cats than dogs. “Wolves are magical.”
Despite working with actors such as Gerard Butler, she said CeeBeebies was her favorite job, crediting the staff of “amazing people.”
The veteran trainer believes the intelligence of animals is widely underestimated.
“Some things you have to teach, most things you don’t.
“They are much more capable than people think. People think of them like children, but they’re not. Animals are unique in their own right, and they have their own intelligence.”
Edited by Fern Siegel and Matthew B. Hall
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Digital Cash Cow: Metaverse Numbers Are Skyrocketing
The metaverse is a lucrative business.
Valued at well over $1 trillion by various private companies, including Citi Bank, the metaverse is seen as big business for investors and entrepreneurs. Citi thinks the metaverse will also find practical applications in social collaboration and healthcare — and become a $13 trillion industry by 2030.
The meta idea exploded in the tech world when Mark Zuckerberg decided to concentrate his company’s efforts on building one. In October 2021, he even changed the company’s name from Facebook to Meta.
What is the metaverse?
It’s a “digital reality that combines aspects of social media, online gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and cryptocurrencies to allow users to interact virtually,” according to Investopedia.com. “Augmented reality overlays visual elements, sound and other sensory input onto real-world settings to enhance the user experience. In contrast, virtual reality is entirely virtual and enhances fictional realities.
“As the metaverse grows, it will create online spaces where user interactions are more multidimensional than current technology supports. Instead of just viewing digital content, users in the metaverse will be able to immerse themselves in a space where the digital and physical worlds converge.”
Rupantar Guha, project manager for GlobalData’s thematic research team, sees the metauniverse as a boost for startups.
“Enterprises are the prime market for the metaverse in 2022. New use cases are emerging, as Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta and HTC bolster their metaverse capabilities and startups develop specific solutions around data visualization, collaboration and training,” he said.
Earlier this year, JP Morgan Chase became the first bank to set up shop in the metaverse, which it viewed as a $1 trillion opportunity, according to Interesting Engineering.
Social Media Boost
Across platforms, the rate at which metaverse and involved topics are being mentioned is increasing. The density of topics and overall positive rating concerning the metaverse are up 44 percent this quarter from last year.
The reason this is significant: Despite losses and setbacks, Meta and the metaverse have had a profound effect on the nature of the market discourse. There is increased traffic in the metaverse and a huge influx of funds going to various projects and sites.
Adidas, Nike, Disney, Walmart, among various big-name brands, have announced plans to become part of the metaverse. Goldman Sachs estimates that the metaverse market will grow to $8 trillion, per Fortune, setting in motion a profound technology shift.
Produced in association with MetaNews.
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Medicaid extension in Alabama will reduce maternal mortality, say area leaders
