Skype announced on Thursday that it will launch a set of cordless phones that do not require a running computer to work. The phones will be supplied by the VoIP service provider’s hardware partners. The new class of phone will enable Skypers to make and receive both landline andSkype ( News – Alert) calls without a computer. The first series of products to be launched in this class are the Philips VOIP841 cordless phone and NETGEAR’s cordless phone. ‘We are broadening our reach to mass consumers by offering them the opportunity to communicate via Skype without having to be tied to the computer,’ said Stefan Öberg, general manager, desktop and hardware at Skype in a statement. ‘Skype has already introduced WiFi (News – Alert) phones and Skype for PocketPC wireless. Now Skype is taking the next step and working together with Philips and NETGEAR to introduce PC-free cordless phones. The cordless phones for Skype launched today, give Skype users the flexibility to enjoy free Skype to Skype calls and inexpensive calls to ordinary and mobile phones anywhere in the house, at any time without a running computer,’ he added. Both the Philips and NETGEAR cordless […]
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — A Caesarean delivery more than triples a woman’s risk of dying in childbirth compared to a vaginal birth, according to a new study from France. The risk is still quite small, but many developed countries have seen a dramatic rise in the number of Caesareans performed each year as more women elect to avoid a vaginal delivery. Researchers, led by Catherine Deneux-Tharaux of the Maternite Hopital Tenon in Paris, looked at 65 maternal deaths recorded in the French National Perinatal Survey from 1996 to 2000. All of the deaths followed births of a single child and were not due to conditions existing prior to delivery. The women had also not been hospitalized during pregnancy. The researchers found that the risk of death — from blood clots, infection or complications from anesthesia — was 3.6 times higher for women who had Caesareans. The risk of death after childbirth was increased whether or not the Caesarean was performed before the onset of labor or during labor. The study was published in the September issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Although rates of maternal death in most developed countries are relatively low […]
ROCK FALLS, Ill. — Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid. So instead of heading to work, Mr. Beggerow, now 53, fills his days with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style – all activities once relegated to spare time. He often stays up late and sleeps until 11 a.m. ‘I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,’ he said. To make ends meet, he has tapped the equity in his home through a $30,000 second mortgage, and he is drawing down the family’s savings, at the rate of $7,500 a year. About $60,000 is left. His wife’s income helps them scrape by. ‘If things really get tight,’ Mr. Beggerow said, ‘I might have to take a low-wage job, but I don’t want to do that.’ Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow – men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 […]
BETHESDA, Maryland — Instead of using surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation, researchers from the National Institutes of Health are finding so-far limited but inspiring success in a new approach for fighting cancer, using the immune system to attack the tumors the way it would a cold or flu. The human immune system doesn’t usually fight cancer on its own, so Dr. Steven Rosenberg and his NIH colleagues are trying to genetically engineer it, using a virus they created in the lab that seeks out cancer tumors and attaches to them. Rosenberg’s idea: Mix the cells that seek out the cancer with the immune cells that destroy things and see whether it would create a sort of smart bomb for the cancer. (Rosenberg: ‘Just a start’) In the study, Rosenberg tested the approach in 17 patients with advanced melanoma, a dangerous form of skin cancer. All the conventional treatments for the disease already had failed in all of the patients. In 15 of the patients Rosenberg’s engineered immune-cell treatment didn’t work, but in two of the patients the cancer seems to have completely disappeared. The findings are published in this week’s issue of the journal Science. (Watch how […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
