California’s beaches now have another layer of protection from rip tides and undertow in the form of a robotic lifeguard assistant called ‘Emily.’

A vessel similar to a jet ski, the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard patrols the Malibu beach in search of distressed swimmers and offers support until human help can arrive.

Sharon Reich of Reuters explains that though the model has some flaws, it will greatly aid lifeguards during the busy summer months.

It just got that much easier to go to a foreign country and get by. That’s because a new app understands your fears. The app for Android and iPhone called Word Lens will use your phone’s built-in camera to recognize text and then translate it into English. Voila!

The app works at this point for French, Spanish and Italian. After you take a picture of the text in the original language, the translation software in your phone turns it to English and pasts it over the original location.

The app has already been working overtime for Spanish on the iPhone for about 18 months. Now, it will be available on both smartphone platforms and will have the additional language choices.

The translation is then pasted over the original location, practically in real time.

While the app doesn’t take on every nuanced phrase – it does do a pretty impressive job of translating road signs, restaurant menus and typical language phrases.

As Otavio Good, one of the Word Lens developers told TechCrunch,

“It tries to find out what the letters are and then looks in the dictionary. Then it draws the words back on the screen in translation.”  He continued by explaining that, “The translation isn’t perfect, but it gets the point across.”

 

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A recent study has revealed that coffee may reduce the risk of basal cell carcinoma- the most common type of skin cancer. According to the data, only caffeinated coffee seems to have an effect on the cancer risk.

Dr. Jiali Han of Brigham and Women’s Hospital explained that the data “indicates that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma.”

He continued, “I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone. However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.”

The cancer is known to be a slow developer, but the illness is still great and affects more than 150,000 people in the U.S. and UK each year. Han explains that this figure implies that simple dietary changes like coffee intake are likely to have a significant impact on public health.

The study, which comes from data from the Nurses’ Health Study, also analyzed the effect of decaffeinated coffee on the cancer’s appearance as well. It revealed that de-caf coffee does not decrease the risk of cancer whatsoever.

According to Dr. Han, “these results really suggest that it is the caffeine in coffee that is responsible for the decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma associated with increasing coffee consumption.

This would be consistent with published mouse data, which indicate caffeine can block skin tumor formation. However, more studies in different population cohorts and additional mechanics studies will be needed before we can say this definitively.”

It should come as no big surprise that researchers have found that drinking large quantities of caffeine can have a serious impact on changes for conception.  Following almost 4000 IVF and ICSI patients, researchers from the Fertility Clinic of Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark showed that drinking five or more cups of coffee a day reduced pregnancy rates by 50% and live birth rates by 40%.

As Dr Ulrik Schixler Kesmodel explained, “Although we were not surprised that coffee consumption appears to affect pregnancy rates in IVF, we were surprised at the magnitude of the effect.”

This large study included 3,959 women who were undergoing either IVF or ICSI treatments. They controlled for a number of variables including age, smoking habits and alcohol usage, infertility causes and more.

Interestingly, for those who drank less than five cups a day, no negative effect was found from the coffee consumption. Researchers went so far as to compare the adverse effect of the coffee consumption to the terrible effects of smoking.

Dr Kesmodel further explained the results as he said “There is limited evidence about coffee in the literature, so we would not wish to worry IVF patients unnecessarily. But it does seem reasonable, based on our results and the evidence we have about coffee consumption during pregnancy, that women should not drink more than five cups of coffee a day when having IVF.

He continued, “The fact that we found no harmful effects of coffee at lower levels of intake is well in line with previous studies on time-to-pregnancy and miscarriage, which also suggest that, if coffee does have a clinically relevant effect, it is likely to be upwards from a level of four-to-six cups a day.”

The results would be explained and presented at the annual meeting of ESHRE which is the world’s largest event in reproductive science and medicine taking place in Istanbul.

Summer is upon us and if you have yet to plan an overseas trip, consider exploring the African wilderness- but with hotel-quality accommodations.
Elephant Bedroom camp is located in Kenya, 300 kilometers from Nairobi. The unique accommodations allow visitors to relax in a luxurious environment while experiencing the exhilarating wilderness of the African Serengeti first hand.

Twelve furnished tents, equipped with hot and cold running water, electricity and numerous amenities, rest quietly amongst the roaming elephants, leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles, lions and hundreds of birds that are native to the region. With interiors designed to enhance the African atmosphere, the getaway provides the perfect combination of nature and luxury.

Nanyukinow.com provides some information on Elephant Bedroom camp. It explains:

“The tents at Elephants Bedroom camp in Samburu are large and breezy, and the service is terrific. The small size of the perfectly set camp with only 12 tents really affords the guest an opportunity to get to know the staff as well as other travelers. The tents are amazingly spacious and beautifully decorated, therefore small and intimate.

The camp offers a menu which usually comprises beef, chicken, or seafood as well as vegetarian dishes. Food is exquisite- breakfast is served as a buffet, lunch as a three-course meal with different choices and dinner four courses, also with different choices. Guests with any special or extra wishes or requirements are free to ask.”