Author: Alerts CC

A former Vietnamese refugee suffering from a brain injury named Dinh Van Nguyen is reconnecting with music with the help of a custom, one-handed guitar, setting high hopes that designers could further modify the instrument to help others who suffer from similar debilitating injuries and conditions.

As a young man, Nguyen was the guitarist and singer in a Vietnamese band, but when he was 23-years-old he lost the use of the left side of his body after suffering from a traumatic brain injury. As music was always such a big part of his life, he refused to let it beat him and continued to sing, though he couldn’t continue to play the guitar.

Jason Kenner, a music therapist and fellow musician, became part of Nguyen’s rehabilitation, and hoped to bring music back to Nguyen’s life. Kenner said, “[Nguyen] plays music with his carer Quan, but Quan plays the guitar and Dinh sings along, but if we put a guitar in Dinh’s hand and we played the chord, than Dinh would strum along.”

Kenner started to tool around and modify old guitars laying in his garage. Basing his idea off of a harp’s design, he incorporated a similar build into the body of a guitar, changing its tuning and shortening its neck. When Kenner handed the prototype to Nguyen, he said something just clicked.

“He just played it instantly, didn’t have to explain how it worked, so it met its brief really well,” said Kenner. “We were able to utilise music, to achieve some therapeutic aims.”

The one-handed guitar could be the next step in the instrument’s evolution. The instrument has been around for centuries, but ever since it seized the attention of pop music, innovators have made their own changes to the instrument. From the invention of the electric guitar, to advancements in amplifying technology, to the more recent innovation of guitar multi-effects pedals that came into prominence as late as the 1960s, the guitar has undergone many transformations. The one-handed model may very well become a new iteration of the popular instrument.

If successful, it could help the 12% of America suffering from a disability learn to play music for the first time, or reconnect with the art, as is the case with Nguyen.

Kenner isn’t the only person to design a one-handed guitar, either. Popular engineer Ben “Heck” Heckendorn received a similar challenge from Ian Pierce, who lost his arm in a tragic railroad accident. Heck’s model works by placing one-hand on the neck, while an automated pick is worked by two foot pedals to strum.

Kenner is taking his one-handed, harp-guitar hybrid to a national conference in Brisbane in the hopes to help more disabled persons with his prototype.

The trial of Billy Roger Bailey, the driver who swerved around a bus and killed an 11-year-old boy in December, 2012, began last week. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter and passing a stopped school bus. One of the main issues is whether or not the school bus was actually stopped with its stop arm down and red lights flashing at the time of the accident.

Naturally, both sides are offering conflicting reports about whether the bus was properly stopped when the boy, Hasani Wesley, a sixth-grader at Forsyth Middle School, was killed.

In early testimony, Odina Wesley, the boy’s mother, and several other witnesses testifying for the prosecution on Tuesday said that the bus was completely stopped. She said she remembers the red lights flashing when she looked out her front door.

But the defense team presented a different scene during opening statements. George Cleland, one of Bailey’s attorneys, told the jury they would hear other witnesses tell the opposite story.

“As he passed the bus, there was no stop sign, no red lights,” Cleland said. “He never saw him.”

“I knew the yellow lights had come on,” Bailey added. “I was looking to see if she was going to stop.

The popular yellow school buses that have become synonymous with field trips and early-morning shenanigans alike first appeared in North America in 1939. Today, millions of kids depend on them to get safely to and from school and extracurricular activities. Safety regulations, like the red stop sign and not passing stopped buses, are vital for keeping them safe.

Regardless of how the trial turns out, parties on both sides of the tragic story are saddened. Even Bailey, a pastor at Cross Roads Ministry of Walkertown who also works at a publishing company and part-time at a gun store, expressed a desire to save the child.

“I noticed something laying behind the bus,” Bailey said. “I went to him. He was face down. I put the back of my hand to his mouth to see if he was still breathing. I assumed that he was.

“Being in the field I was, I just started praying for him.”

Odina Wesley got a hug from her son in the morning, but it was the last one she would ever get.

“I grabbed his hand and said ‘Please Hasani, fight,’” she said. “That’s when they told me there was nothing else they could do.”

Residents in Los Angeles County are looking for answers. The county, home to Tinseltown, is a thriving center of the growing food truck movement in the United States. At present, the county hosts more than 3,200 food trucks, selling everything from tacos to sushi. For the most part, L.A. County residents are perfectly happy to have such a successful, economically viable new food-scene. That being said, there is growing concern among residents and the county’s Department of Public Health that food trucks are serving a little bit more than their customers asked for.

A number of L.A. residents are reporting that after eating at some of the city’s popular food trucks, they came down with some nasty stomach bugs. Now, you might be thinking that getting an upset stomach from a bad piece of sushi is to be expected from time to time, but what if you heard that it could probably have been avoided? Consider, according to a recent report, 40% of the county’s food trucks haven’t been inspected in three years. The other 60% were only inspected once in the last year, despite state mandates calling for at least two annual inspections.

Because food trucks are inherently mobile, surprise inspections, a tactic the DPH relies on to get a real picture of an eatery’s compliance, are nearly impossible. For now, as the county mulls over greater oversight, the Department of Public Health is advising patrons of the food truck scene to visit the DPH website and take a look at the list of recent inspections, ensuring that the vendor they’re about to buy from is up to date.

Foodborne Illness is a Constant Concern in the States
For many, the lack of inspection of these mobile establishments is a non-issue. After all, a plethora of countries across the world allow their citizens to run unregulated restaurants on the streets without issue. Japan, most notably, let’s residents serve food for money out of their homes with minimal issues. For many in the worldly Los Angeles, complaints from the Department of Public Health and others are simply overreactions.

It’s important to note, however, that foodborne illness in the United States afflicts millions of people every year. The most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show that 48 million Americans become ill after eating bad food each year, with 128,000 needing to seek medical treatment. While annual deaths from foodborne illness are relatively low, only measuring around 3,000 annually, there’s no denying that food poisoning is a real issue.

Increased Oversight isn’t Going to Stop the Food Truck Revolution
In the end, increased oversight and enforcement of public health laws needs to become a reality in L.A. County and throughout California. Critics of instituting any new rules against what has traditionally been a volatile, sensitive market say that increased oversight will hinder the growth of a micro-economy that has been a great source of income for the county.

However, those criticisms are likely unfounded. Food trucks throughout the United States have gained stable footing, now generating an estimated $650 million in revenue per year. Whether at New York’s award-winning Red Hook Lobster Pound, winner of the Daily Meal’s coveted number one spot for best food truck in the States or at Kogi BBQ, L.A.’s own golden child, a little oversight isn’t going to be slowing anybody down. Delicious food that’s safe to eat, it’s no stretch to say, will likely improve the fate of the food truck movement overall.

There’s an old Gatorade commercial where all-star basketball player Michael Jordan faces off with pro women’s soccer champion Mia Hamm in a variety of athletic showdowns to determine, once and for all, whether guys and girls are really equal as far as sports are concerned. The music says it all, featuring a hard-rock version of the old Broadway musical song “Anything You Can Do.” The point of the ad, other than selling the popular sports drink, is that men and women truly are equals when it comes to athletic competitions.

While that might be true, a new study shows that boys and girls have different ways of dealing with concussions. Worse yet, the findings suggest that girls who suffer head injuries that result in concussions tend to suffer worse than boys, with more severe symptoms that last longer.

The study, released recently by Dr. Shayne Fehr of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, found that the 235 girls who participated in the research took over three weeks longer to recover from their concussions than the 314 boys did. As the American Academy of Pediatrics reports, a concussion is any injury that disrupts the brain’s normal function, typically resulting from any collision involving the head and common in contact sports like hockey, soccer and football.

In Fehr’s study all the patients were between the ages of 10 and 18 and were treated between 2010 and 2012. On average, the girls reported their symptoms took about 56 days to completely subside, while the boys said theirs were gone in about 44. Over three-quarters of the injuries were related to sports.

Most people think of concussions only taking about a week to 10 days to get better, but research shows that for younger athletes, it can be far longer than that. Then, there are the post-concussion dealings to worry about. As the Mayo Clinic documents, post-concussion syndrome involves a piling-up of different symptoms like headaches and dizziness that can last for weeks or even months. And the younger the injured person, the greater the chance for serious brain damage down the line.

These latest findings are all in keeping with an NBC News report from two years ago which found that concussions in teen girls’ soccer games were alarmingly on the rise. One doctor even referred to it as a “concussion crisis” and pointed to statistics that showed girls facing sports-induced concussions at a rate of nearly twice as frequent as boys. The worst of it, in addition to soccer, seems to come from the other two sports mentioned above — hockey and football.

So, what’s to be done? For starters, coaches need to be aware of the dangers so they may provide their players with the immediate help they need if they face an injury. On top of that, the athletes should be left in the care of their doctors, not their coaches, when it comes to determining the right time to reenter the game. After all, nothing’s more important than your health.

Remember the classic viral video from 2010 featuring Antoine Dodson? After a would-be rapist broke into his sister’s bedroom and tried to assault her, Dodson warned his fellow Alabama neighbors to “hide your kids, hide your wives and hide your husbands” in order to protect them from similar attacks.

Now, instead of hiding spouses and children, certain establishments in Florida have steps taken to hide their laser hair removal machines. That’s because a series of break-ins in Miami-area cosmetic skin centers and spas have led proprietors to tighten up their facility’s security measures.

In January, burglars hit the Spyros Laser Medspa and smashed the clinic’s front windows before making off with the large piece of machinery, estimated to be worth between $70,000 and $100,000. That set off a string of 12 similar robberies throughout the state, with criminals targeting either laser hair removal machines or other valuable technological appliances like laptops. The owner of Spyros Laser Medspa said the machine was insured, but the incident led to a week’s worth of lost business.

So far, police have identified a list of individuals they believe to be involved with the burglaries and attempts. Those who lifted the hair removal machine from Spyros Laser Medspa attached it to a dark-colored Ford F-150 pickup with the license plate 190XBD, according to police. That bit of information has helped investigators slowly piece together who may be responsible. One of the suspects, Kelsey Williams, was booked by police last week in Miami Beach and charged with burglary, grand theft and criminal mischief.

As for why police didn’t arrive to stop any of the burglaries, the owner of Spyros Laser Medspa says his clinic has an alarm system, but the criminals were in and out in less than three minutes.

Laser hair removal is a cosmetic medical procedure that’s been gaining popularity since its initial commercial introduction in the 1990s. Instead of trimming the hair with blades, the laser removal process uses a pulsating beam of light to remove unwanted hair from arms, legs, armpits and parts of the face. When the light beam reaches the hair follicle at its growing point, the heat destroys the follicle instantly.

CBS’ Miami affiliate was granted an inside look at the property and evidence room of the South Miami Police Department, where two recovered laser hair removal machines currently reside. That’s a good sign, police chief Rene Landa says, but there’s more work to be done to right what’s been wronged with the other break-in sites.

Fraudulent contractors who don’t deliver the results that they initially promised are a thorn in the sides of homeowners from all over the country. The problem has gotten so bad in some areas, like Topeka, that new legislation has been enacted to help protect homeowners who hire contractors. Last year, legislators approved the Roofing Contractor Registration Act that requires every contractor that charges for a roof to obtain a registration certificate from the attorney general’s office.

The law originally took effect on the first day of July last summer. Since then, some 700 roofers had registered, according to Attorney General Derek Schmidt.

Shmidt hopes to encourage homeowners to use the law as a resource when they need to renovate or install a new roof, especially with the spring storm season arriving. Homeowners should ask for a copy of their contractor’s registration certificate and see if they can find it in the online directory maintained by Schmidt’s office.

It is particularly important for homeowners to protect themselves from uninsured roofers to make sure that they get what they pay for. Contractors might promise fast and cheap installation of additions like slate roofing, which requires little to no maintenance, only to take weeks to finish, if they do at all. By using the registry, Kansas residents will be better able to protect their investment and make sure the roof they install will withstand the stormy weather.

In Frankfort, Kentucky, similar problems have resulted in a contractor has pleaded guilty to theft by deception, a class D felony. That prompted Attorney General Jack Conway to give homeowners in the state notice to be careful about the contractors they hire in a news release.

“Never pay in advance for labor,” the statement says. “Scam artists often take advance payments from consumers and never return to complete the work. If an advance is needed to purchase materials, offer to purchase the materials yourself.”

It also says, “Use local, reputable contractors for repairs, if possible. If local contractors bring in out-of-town workers, ask who will be responsible for their work if it is not satisfactory.” And, like Schmidt, he says homeowners should ask if the contractor is licensed, bonded, and insured.

Unfortunately, there are lots of contractors in the U.S. who commit fraud and fail to deliver what they originally agreed to and rip off thousands from homeowners. Hopefully, new legislations and careful homeowners can put an end to that troubling trend.

The United States regained 8.8 million private sector jobs, previously lost in the recession, suggesting the economy is finally on the mend. “The participation rate is rising again — which is a sign that Americans are feeling more confident about the economy and are coming back into the market to look for work,” ABC News reported Monday. American industries also created 192,000 jobs in March — a slight, but notable record.

“Despite less-than-encouraging news from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ recent jobs report, Gallup’s Job Creation Index shows Americans’ perceptions of the job market have improved,” Gallup adds. Perhaps as a result of this confidence, a growing number of young Americans are braving the job marketing and actively pursuing jobs, financial experts add. The introduction of 8.8 million private sectors jobs was no small feat. The regrowth took “a painfully slow six years,” according to ABC. Lower debts, climbing prices and values on the housing market, and rising stocks are stabilizing American household funds. This stabilization will lead to increased spending and a job growth rate of an estimated 225,000 new positions per month, economists project.

The promising news comes with several caveats. The U.S. population also experienced considerable growth. For that reason, the unemployment rate remains solidly at 6.7% — despite economic gains and the creation of nearly 9 million new jobs. Public sector jobs are still considerably behind — with 400,000 jobs still lost to the recession. Staples, for example, announced that it will be closing 225 stores in March, thereby eliminating thousands of jobs. Shares have already dropped by as much as 10%.

Experts add that lower-paying industries also added the most jobs, while higher-paying ones added an insignificant amount or — in some cases — even cut jobs in the recent fiscal year. Even so, economists remain confident. “Steady hiring, greater business and consumer confidence, and fewer government spending cuts should accelerate growth to about 3 percent for the rest of this year,” ABC News predicts.