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Tag: Avoid

  • Singaporeans should avoid overseas travel, government says

    Singaporeans should avoid overseas travel, government says

    Singaporeans should avoid overseas travel, government says 1

    SINGAPORE: Singapore’s health ministry on Sunday urged its citizens to defer all non-essential travel abroad in an unprecedented move for the Asian transport hub, as part of new measures to control the coronavirus that is fast spreading around the world.

    Singapore will also tell all entering the country with recent travel history to the Asean group of nations, Japan, Switzerland or the United Kingdom to quarantine themselves at their place of residence for 14 days, the ministry added.

    The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam.

    Countries, such as the UK and Switzerland have “abandoned” any attempt at containing the spread of the infection, said Lawrence Wong, a minister who co-heads Singapore’s virus fighting taskforce.

    “That’s why we are more concerned that Singapore may well be exposed to a new wave of infections, which is potentially larger than what we have seen previously.”

    The majority of new infections being reported in Singapore, an island nation with a population of 5.7 million, over the past few days have been people returning from overseas rather than local transmissions.

    At least five cases of Singaporeans have been linked to a large religious gathering in Malaysia that was attended by more than 10,000 people from several countries.

    Short-term visitors who are nationals of its Southeast Asian neighbours will also have to seek prior approval from the health ministry before their journey to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.

    The restriction comes after a number of cases that entered Singapore with the specific purpose of seeking healthcare, the health ministry said. There have been two cases of Indonesians who had coronavirus symptoms at home before arriving in Singapore, known for its superior healthcare facilities.

    The measures will be reviewed after a month. They will not apply to sea and land crossings with Malaysia, which will have separate precautions. Wong said 300,000 people a day move across the land checkpoints with Malaysia.

    The Asian travel hub has previously announced bans on visitors from several coronavirus-hit countries, including China, Italy and France.

    Singapore has won international praise for its painstaking onslaught on the virus since it initially emerged with one of the highest tallies of infections outside China. But other nations have since outpaced it.

    Singapore has reported 212 infections, but no fatalities. Globally, more than 150,000 people have been infected while over 5,800 have died, a Reuters tally shows. — Reuters

    Singaporeans should avoid overseas travel, government says
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    https://www.thesundaily.my/world/singaporeans-should-avoid-overseas-travel-government-says-XI2129044

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  • 3 mistakes to avoid during a market downturn

    3 mistakes to avoid during a market downturn

    Vanguard highlights common investor missteps amid market downturns.
    3 mistakes to avoid during a market downturn
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    https://investornews.vanguard/3-mistakes-to-avoid-during-a-market-downturn/

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  • Working at home to avoid coronavirus? This tech lets you (almost) replicate the office

    Working at home to avoid coronavirus? This tech lets you (almost) replicate the office

    Working from home is already so common it has its own acronym, and it’s about to get even more common still. Companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are now advising employees to “WFH” to avoid exposure to the novel coronavirus.

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  • Trump ban on travel from Europe escalates pain for airlines

    Trump ban on travel from Europe escalates pain for airlines

    President Donald Trump’s decision Wednesday to impose a 30-day ban on most Europeans entering the United States is the latest calamity for airlines already reeling from falling bookings and cancelled reservations as people try to avoid contracting the coronavirus.

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  • FAA waives rules that led airlines to fly empty planes

    FAA waives rules that led airlines to fly empty planes

    Federal regulators waived a rule Wednesday that was causing airlines to fly nearly empty planes just to avoid losing takeoff and landing rights at major airports.

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  • COVID-19: IFRC, UNICEF and WHO issue guidance to protect children and support safe school operations

    GENEVA/NEW YORK – The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) today issued new guidance to help protect children and schools from transmission of the COVID-19 virus. The guidance provides critical considerations and practical checklists to keep schools safe. It also advises national and local authorities on how to adapt and implement emergency plans for educational facilities. 

    In the event of school closures, the guidance includes recommendations to mitigate against the possible negative impacts on children’s learning and wellbeing. This means having solid plans in place to ensure the continuity of learning, including remote learning options such as online education strategies and radio broadcasts of academic content, and access to essential services for all children. These plans should also include necessary steps for the eventual safe reopening of schools.

    Where schools remain open, and to make sure that children and their families remain protected and informed, the guidance calls for:

    • Providing children with information about how to protect themselves;
    • Promoting best handwashing and hygiene practices and providing hygiene supplies;
    • Cleaning and disinfecting school buildings, especially water and sanitation facilities; and
    • Increasing airflow and ventilation.

    The guidance, while specific to countries that have already confirmed the transmission of COVID-19, is still relevant in all other contexts. Education can encourage students to become advocates for disease prevention and control at home, in school, and in their community by talking to others about how to prevent the spread of viruses. Maintaining safe school operations or reopening schools after a closure, requires many considerations, but if done well, can promote public health.

    For example, safe school guidelines implemented in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone during the outbreak of Ebola virus disease from 2014 to 2016 helped prevent school-based transmissions of the virus.

    UNICEF is urging schools – whether open or helping students through remote learning – to provide students with holistic support. Schools should provide children with vital information on handwashing and other measures to protect themselves and their families; facilitate mental health support; and help to prevent stigma and discrimination by encouraging students to be kind to each other and avoid stereotypes when talking about the virus.

    The new guidance also offers helpful tips and checklists for parents and caregivers, as well as children and students themselves. These actions include:

    • Monitoring children’s health and keeping them home from school if they are ill;
    • Encouraging children to ask questions and express their concerns; and
    • Coughing or sneezing into a tissue or your elbow and avoid touching your face, eyes, mouth and nose.

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    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/10-03-2020-covid-19-ifrc-unicef-and-who-issue-guidance-to-protect-children-and-support-safe-school-operations

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  • The unmet need for social context in family planning

    The unmet need for social context in family planning

    New evidence on the relationship between sexual health and social context finds a strong association between gender equality, education and family planning

    Twenty-five years ago, two global events – the International Conference on Population and Development and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing – formally recognized that women’s health and reproductive choices cannot be separated from the social context of their lives.

    Now, researchers have created a dataset which brings together national surveys from 74 countries, representing 3 million women. For the first time, it allows them to describe trends in demand/use of modern contraceptives alongside social and economic indicators.

    The data is published in The Lancet Global Health and is authored by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization.

    It shows that, over time, women are more likely to have their demand for modern contraception met in countries where gender equality and their educational opportunities improve.

    Gender equality and education increases access to modern contraception

    Trends in sexual activity and demand for use and use of modern contraceptive methods in 74 countries: a retrospective analysis of nationally representative surveys finds that met need for modern contraception is strongly correlated with positive shifts in social structures.
    For every 0.1-point increase in a country’s gender development index, it found a 6.7% rise in women who were sexually active and did not want to conceive. Of those women, an additional 13.5% used modern methods to prevent a pregnancy.

    Expectations of every girl’s right to education also made a difference. Each extra year in schooling is linked to an increase of 2.3% in demand, and a 4.7% increase in use of modern contraceptive methods.

    “This study shows how every woman must negotiate her reproductive autonomy within the social framework in which she lives, responding to barriers and opportunities as they emerge,” says Dr Lale Say, one of the authors of the study and Unit Head at WHO and HRP.

    “Gender equality is both a precondition and a driving force for securing women’s reproductive health and rights – as well as the sustainable development targets, which are our best chance for delivering health and well-being for all.”

    Global trends reveal new challenges in family planning

    Overall, the data reinforce global trends: more time spent sexually-active and single, postponement of parenthood, and the near-universal desire for smaller families.

    The study also highlights where action is needed at country-level to avoid family planning services falling behind demand.

    Out of the 74 countries analyzed, 42 showed an increase in demand for contraception. Only 37 countries show an increase in use of a modern method to prevent pregnancy.

    Although unmet need for contraception declined in 34 countries, it increased in 14 countries. Significantly more progress is needed, and faster, to ensure each girl and woman is able to access the sexual and reproductive health services she needs.

    Barriers and solutions to reproductive health and rights

    Gender equality can affect contraceptive use in many ways. From the personal and political degree to which women are free to choose their sexual activity, to accessing family planning services it can also shape any power imbalances within personal relationships. This study supports recent efforts by WHO to adopt a broader, integrated concept of sexual and reproductive health – and to translate it into a framework for policy and practice.

    The authors argue that family planning targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will not be met without a profound shift: from focus on ‘access to contraception’, to broader aspects of sexual health and social context.

    Since reproductive health and women’s empowerment are intertwined, trends in contraceptive use can also reveal progress towards another global target: progress towards gender equality.

     

    The unmet need for social context in family planning
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    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/10-03-2020-the-unmet-need-for-social-context-in-family-planning

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  • PedestriANS: A bipedal robot that adapts its walking style in response to environmental changes

    PedestriANS: A bipedal robot that adapts its walking style in response to environmental changes

    Humans are generally able to adapt their walking style based on the environment they are moving in, for instance, speeding up if the consistency of the ground below their feet allows it, slowing down when the floor is slippery, changing direction to avoid puddles or holes in the ground, and so on. To navigate a variety of environments, robots should be able to adapt their walking behavior in a similar way, adjusting their structure in response to environmental changes.

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  • Why deep networks generalize despite going against statistical intuition

    Why deep networks generalize despite going against statistical intuition

    Introductory statistics courses teach us that, when fitting a model to some data, we should have more data than free parameters to avoid the danger of overfitting—fitting noisy data too closely, and thereby failing to fit new data. It is surprising, then, that in modern deep learning the practice is to have orders of magnitude more parameters than data. Despite this, deep networks show good predictive performance, and in fact do better the more parameters they have. Why would that be?

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