The FDA recently gave market authorization for LetsGetChecked for the Simple 2 Test, which it said is "the first diagnostic test with at-home sample collection" to get the go-ahead and the only home test allowed for a sexually-transmitted disease (STD) other than HIV. In 2021, around 1.6 million chlamydia and 700,000 gonorrhea cases were recorded in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, almost 130 million picked up chlamydia the year before, when around 82 million gonorrhea cases were recorded.
Known once upon a time for its tangy ciders and flattish warmish ales, Britain, like other Anglo-Saxon countries, has seen an explosion in recent years of so-called craft beer and breweries. But the future of the industry is not looking good, going by official insolvency data procured by accountancy firm Price Bailey: 35 craft breweries went to the wall in the first half of 2023 almost as many as all of last year.
46% of people in 33 countries say they are paying the same for smaller quantities of food or other products, with 48% of them finding such "shrinkflation" to be unacceptable. More than 6 out of 10 people in Britain, France and Germany said they have noticed product sizes being made smaller. Food businesses have been reducing the size or weight of products in the wake of inflation eating into the cost of production, with raw materials getting more expensive along with inputs such as fuel, electricity and transport.
There have been legion studies published in recent years showing the apparent effects of constant clicking and doom-scrolling, many of them homing in social media such as Instagram and Tiktok and on their potential to harm children and teenage girls. But there may not, after all, be much truth to the links between too much surfing and poor mental health. Or at least nothing that can be confirmed, going by research done at the University of Oxford and published by the journal Clinical Psychological Science, which, in something of a revisionist outcome, found "links between internet adoption and psychological well-being" to be "small at most."
"Inhalation of traffic-related air pollution while in a car with unfiltered air was associated with a 4.5 mm Hg [mercury] increase in blood pressure," the Seattle-based researchers found. There is some good news, however, for people who have no choice but to commute to work by road: air filters help keep blood pressure down even when driving through traffic pollution.