Tag: what
Missing a Dose of Biktarvy: What to Do If You Forget
Australian mum shows off her 100kg weight loss and shares what she eats after bariatric surgery
Bing Chat gets DALL-E’s text-to-image capabilities. Here’s what you need to know
What Is Google Bard? Hands-on With the AI Chatbot
![](https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Google-Bard.png?width=600&height=250&fit=crop&trim=2,2,2,2)
The AI chatbot trend was kicked off by ChatGPT, and followed with Microsoft’s Bing Chat. Google Bard is late to the game, but it has the world’s most popular search engine behind it. Does it have anything new to say?
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A fungus is spreading in hospitals at an ‘alarming rate.’ What to know.
![spores of the Candida auris fungus](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/052VGXEjKjvU9qOJPGyCDCr/hero-image.jpg)
It’s not a fungus apocalypse. But it’s a serious, growing problem.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced this week that the fungus Candida auris (C. auris) “spread at an alarming rate in U.S. healthcare facilities” during 2020-2021. This fungus is particularly problematic because it’s a strain that has emerged in recent years, can be resistant to some, or all, antifungal drugs, and has caused outbreaks in hospitals, Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an M.D., fungal infection expert, and professor of infectious diseases at UTHealth Houston, recently told Mashable.
The CDC is taking the spread, which can cause severe and fatal blood infections, seriously.
“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasizes the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” CDC epidemiologist Dr. Meghan Lyman, lead author of the new research, said in a statement.
The research, entitled, “Worsening Spread of Candida auris in the United States, 2019 to 2021,” is published in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
How worried should you be about Candida auris?
The fungus Candida auris, which is a yeast, infects people who are quite ill and have compromised immune systems.
“To experience a fungal infection, there has to be something wrong with your immune system,” Dr. Ostrosky, who is also chief of epidemiology at the academic hospital Memorial Hermann, explained. This includes people who have had organ transplants or other major, life-saving surgeries, as well as those undergoing cancer treatments, he said.
“In general, C. auris is not a threat to healthy people.”
People in hospitals who are unwell are particularly susceptible to Candia auris. “People who are very sick, have invasive medical devices, or have long or frequent stays in healthcare facilities are at increased risk for acquiring C. auris,” the CDC said.
Fortunately, like with most fungal spores, healthy people are not the group being infected or at risk. “In general, C. auris is not a threat to healthy people,” the agency noted. That’s because our advanced, healthy immune systems constantly combat fungal spores, and keep such foreign fungi microbes at bay. (For example, we inhale fungal spores every time we go outside.) “Humans are really, really good at staving off fungal infections,” Vincent Bruno, a scientist at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who researches fungal diseases, told Mashable this year.
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But for those infected with Candia auris, the CDC is raising the alarm because it’s often resistant to multiple antifungal drugs that doctors use to treat Candida infections. Candida auris is a newly emerged strain of the fungus Candida, which already causes some 25,000 infections annually. Some 30 to 60 percent of people infected with C. auris have died, the CDC said. “However, many of these people had other serious illnesses that also increased their risk of death,” the agency noted.
How much is Candida auris spreading?
Since 2016, the CDC has been increasingly concerned about Candida auris. That’s when the health agency received reports that the fungus was resistant to medicines in other parts of the world.
“It seemed hard to believe,” the CDC wrote. “CDC fungal experts had never received a report describing a Candida infection resistant to all antifungal medications, let alone Candida that spreads easily between patients.”
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Reported cases, though overall low in numbers, have been rising significantly since 2015. Cases increased 318 percent in 2018, compared to the previous few years, resulting in a total of 323 clinical cases.
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Crucially, Candida auris cases have only increased each year since 2016. “Nationwide, clinical cases rose from 476 in 2019 to 1,471 in 2021,” the CDC just concluded.
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Case counts again increased in 2022, the agency noted.
Counts of reported Candida auris cases in the U.S. in 2022.
Credit: CDC
A number of factors may contribute to these rising numbers, the agency notes. This includes poor infection control, more screening to detect the infection (a good thing), and increased fungal spread during a time of great strain on the healthcare system during peaks of the COVID pandemic hospitalizations.
To limit the spread, the CDC is sounding the alarm to aid healthcare facilities in identifying the infectious fungus, and how to contain the microbe in places like hospitals and nursing homes.
I have access to Google Bard. Here’s what it’s like.
Google Bard beta live: how to sign up and what the ChatGPT rival can do
Lego 2K Drive: I’m in for a new Lego Racing game no questions asked – but what we really need is Lego Island
![](https://asset.vg247.com/classic-lego-games.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/classic-lego-games.jpg)
If you like Lego and video games, it’s an exciting time. For the first time in years, it’s looking like we’re going to get a fairly large-budget, console-based Lego game that isn’t some sort of spin on the Traveler’s Tales formula perfected in Lego Star Wars and its kin. Not some mobile game, not a limited-scope indie-style effort like the excellent Lego Bricktales – but something mainstream, mass-market, and different.
If you’ve not been following the video game rumor circuit, this game is supposedly called Lego 2K Drive, and it’s basically been described as a ‘Mario Kart-style racer’ that also takes inspiration from the classic Lego Racing games of years gone by, of which there’s a few.
One prolific leaker (who generally specializes in reprinting things gleaned from media who have seen stuff under embargo but can’t keep their mouth shut) suggests that there’s a closed beta for the game, and screenshots have even leaked online. Lego has finally teased an announcement for later this week. The announcement features roads under construction and a logo of Octan Racing.
Lankum on their new False Lankum LP: “What we do isn’t traditional”
Lankum‘s new record, False Lankum, is one of the best of 2023 so far. Their third album proper, it finds the experimental Dublin group dragging folk into the future, with tape loops, pedals and droning noise elevating their sea-bound songs. Here, in this extended Q&A, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ian Lynch discusses the record, the ‘traditional’, […]
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