Latest news with #Dartmouth
WebMD
16 hours ago
- Health
- WebMD
How Tick Experts Protect Themselves Against Ticks
June 27, 2025 — Growing up in the rural Midwest, I had a tick routine after walking in the woods: Shower, scrub my scalp, and feel for ticks. Pluck any I found — a regular occurrence — with tweezers. No problem and no symptoms. But how do tick experts — people who know where ticks are and how they spread, and employ the latest strategies — handle this growing scourge? After all, ticks are everywhere. In certain regions, if you're bitten by a tick, there's a good chance it's carrying Lyme. A Dartmouth study found that half of black-legged ticks and a quarter of nymphal black-legged ticks in the Northeast tested positive for the disease over three decades of data. Other tickborne diseases throughout the country include anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and tularemia. And while vaccines to prevent Lyme and other tickborne diseases are on the horizon, they're not available yet, so bite prevention is key. Turns out much of the advice today is the same as when I was a kid in the '90s, but these days technology offers some upgrades. Here's what tick experts do. Tick Expert Panel 1. They wear pretreated clothing and accessories. Wearing clothes treated with permethrin (an insecticide that also repels insects) is one of the best ways to protect yourself from ticks and mosquitoes — much more effective than simply wearing long sleeves and pants. Mather did a study of outdoor workers and found that treated clothes reduced tick bites by 65%. L.L. Bean has a whole line of insect-repellent clothing, and brands like Shoo For Good, Craghoppers, and Insect Shield all offer permethrin-treated pieces. Permethrin-infused accessories like tick gaiters are also growing in popularity. Treated clothes are a great option for those who can't do proper tick checks because of vision or mobility limitations. Use them for everyday activities like dog-walking, Mather said — don't save them for hiking trips. 'When people have a technology like that, they think it's for a special occasion. Then it actually doesn't get used when it's best to be used.' 2. They re-treat their clothes at least once a year. In the study's second year, participants had 50% fewer tick bites — a drop from the first year, which is why Mather says to re-treat clothes annually. You can use an at-home spray (like Sawyer Permethrin Fabric Treatment), or ship your items to a company like Insect Shield, which will treat them for you. 3. They check the EPA's online search tool to find repellent spray. This tool lets you filter products by active ingredient, protection time, and target pest. Look for options with at least 30% DEET, 20% picaridin, or 20% IR3535 — all proven to repel ticks. Oil of lemon eucalyptus (30%) is also effective but needs to be reapplied more often, is toxic to cats, and is not recommended for children under 3. Spray any exposed skin. If you're sweating a lot, you'll likely need to reapply more often than the label says, said Haines and Davis. 4. They go for clothing hacks. In tick-heavy areas, pull long socks over your pant legs, Swiger said. 'If you plan to be out for a long time, putting tape around the tops of your socks is recommended. The tape is wrapped so the sticky part is facing out and will collect any ticks crawling up the shoes and pant legs.' Choose light-colored clothes to help you 'find the ticks faster and prevent them from accessing your skin,' said Swiger. And don't wait until you're home to do a scan — if you drove to the trail, check before getting back in the car. 5. They use online tick tracking systems. Of course there are AI-powered apps for identifying ticks, but Mather said they're not reliable yet. One resource you can rely on is TickSpotters, a crowd-sourced service that Mather manages through TickEncounter (and which Haines and Davis recommend). Anyone can submit a photo of a tick on their body or recently removed (take the shot from above — the top of the insect makes it easier to identify), along with information about how long they think it was attached, for Mather or a colleague to identify. Within roughly 24 hours, you'll receive an email that lets you know if you indeed were bitten by a tick, what kind of tick it is, and what stage of life it was in (all factors that affect disease transmission risk). Swiger, Haines, and Davis also use the CDC's map of the historical number of Lyme disease cases per state. It could help you avoid areas that are the most tick-infested or take extra precaution where your risk is high. 6. They don't rely on doctors. Many medical doctors won't be able to identify all ticks and their life stages, so consulting with an entomologist or acarologist through a program like TickSpotters is extremely useful. The information you get can change treatment plans. For example, doxycycline can be used to reduce the risk of Lyme after a tick bite, but if you know the tick that bit you isn't a carrier of Lyme, you can skip this treatment. You can also use apps like The Tick App to report your experiences with ticks. Researchers use this info to monitor tick populations and disease risk in various places. 7. They keep their property neat and protected. Mather sprays the wooded edges of his property with synthetic pyrethroid once a year. He also recommends tick tubes (he invented them!). These are biodegradable tubes filled with permethrin-treated cotton, which mice use for their nests, making them less likely to carry ticks. These work best around properties where many mice are present and won't work with all tick-carrying animals, Mather said. Keeping your lawn well-groomed helps keep ticks away. These insects seem to prefer the protection, moisture, and complexity of tall grass and some non-grass lawns, Mather said. Keep grass short, rake up leaf litter (especially oak leaves), and trim overgrown vegetation in the spring and autumn. A robotic lawn mower — like a Roomba for your yard — can reduce tick habitats around your home even when you're away on vacation. Adding a wood chip or gravel border between your yard and wooded areas, and fencing your yard to keep out deer (a common tick host) are also good ideas, said Haines and Davis. 8. They use a special tool to remove ticks. Mather recommends a tick remover, which lays flat against the skin and can be easier to use than standard tweezers. 'The most important thing to remember is that the tick should be pulled straight up out of the skin,' said Swiger. Don't twist the tick; you'll pull it apart and leave the mouth attached. But if you don't get it all out, don't panic. Mather said if a tiny bit of the tick's mouth is left behind, it doesn't change your risk of infection and your body will naturally expel it. But picking at it could make infection risk worse. He recommends wiping the area with an alcohol pad after removal and keeping the tick in a bag in the freezer for identification and potential disease testing. Check your state health department to see if it offers free testing, said Swiger.
CTV News
a day ago
- General
- CTV News
Fire crews called to Dartmouth fire on Thursday
Fire crews called to Dartmouth fire on Thursday Fire crews are reporting no injuries after a fire at a residential building in Halifax.
CTV News
2 days ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives outpaced rivals in fundraising last year
An Elections Nova Scotia ballot box is seen at a polling station in Dartmouth, N.S., Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese HALIFAX — Nova Scotia's governing Progressive Conservatives outpaced their rivals in fundraising last year, though the NDP had more individual donors. Elections Nova Scotia says the Tories raised $1,157,677, the Opposition NDP collected $839,465, and the Liberal party received $633,163. The annual report lists the name and community of each person who contributed $200 or more, and the amount donated to each political party, riding association and registered candidate. Donors are limited to giving a maximum of $5,000 to an individual party, its riding associations and candidates — but can donate to multiple parties. The Tories had the highest average donation, at about $1,105 per donor, while the average for the Liberals was $826 and for the NDP it was $689 per donor. However, the New Democrats had the highest number of individual donors who gave them $200 or more, with 1,218 people listed in that category, ahead of 1,048 for the Progressive Conservatives and 766 for the Liberals. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 26, 2025.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Mira Murati's Startup Might Rival OpenAI, Anthropic
Heads with colorful cubes as a symbol of mentoring and psychotherapy. People are talking about a new startup that's poised to offer detailed custom services around LLMs. Thinking Labs, according to news from The Information and other sources, will look to offer clients customized AI platforms based on KPIs and other business intelligence, using reinforcement learning. That sounds like big news in the current context, where there's a big need for any detailed implementations that can be customized for a business. So with all of the brouhaha around Thinking Labs, who is its fearless leader? Because since the news is so scant around the business itself, any context that you get as a reporter would have to deal with Murati's past career moves. Murati's Background So with that said, what do we know about Mira Murati? She's from Albania, born in 1988, and has significant experience at both OpenAI and Tesla. She also has a mechanical engineering degree from Dartmouth College. As CTO at OpenAI, Murati led the development, deployment, and scaling of flagship products like ChatGPT and DALL·E. Then she actually became temporary CEO during Altman's ouster. So it makes sense, given the potential business rivalry, to ask: what is her connection to Sam Altman? A post from The Decoder in 2024 shows Murati has publicly denied conflict with Altman, calling the board's decision to fire him 'perplexing' and claiming that herself and others worked to get him back. Famously, Altman was rather quickly reinstated, to continue leading OpenAI into the future, while writing some pretty cogent essays on AI which I've covered recently. As for the connection between Musk and Murati, since she also worked at Tesla, I'll cite another Inc. piece from last June titled: 'Open AI's Pushback of Elon Musk's Criticism Shows How to Defend Your Company Reputation.' 'Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, knows more than Musk does about how her company's systems work,' wrote tech reporter Kit Eaton. 'Using carefully chosen words in a speech, she made that very clear.' I thought Eaton's characterization of Musk's challenge, and the resulting pushback, was pretty well written, even though it sounds a little sensationalized at the end: 'Normally bearish on AI tech, Musk swore he'd ban Apple devices from his companies if OpenAI tech was integrated at a deep level, and even warned the public in an X posting he thought Apple was 'selling you down the river' with 'creepy spyware.' OpenAI's CTO has now addressed Musk's outrage, and her words put Musk in his place.' Anyway, this serves to illustrate how, at the helm, Murati had to address Musk's input. Aside from that, there don't seem to be a lot of public examples of anything significantly interesting happening between the two prominent tech people (Murati and Musk, that is.) Ok, enough tea. But again, the reason that people will be looking into Mira Murati goes as follows: 1. Thinking Labs will be a big player. 2. There's a dearth of public information about Thinking Labs and what it is doing. 3. Our ability to contextualize rests with Murati's past job experience as a pro at both rival firms, with two tech moguls who later had words. Why Does This Matter So Much? Not to put too fine a point on it, but the reason that tech news will be covering this in the first place is that today is the era of microservices, and of services in general. In another post, I covered how my friend and colleague Dave Blundin was talking about digital services needing technical support, with the promise of an AI Internet evolving. He specifically mentioned CRM, as an example. That made sense to me: too many vendors are selling 'Cadillac' CRM systems that are not sufficiently customized to what the firm needs. If this customization can be automated – the result is anybody's guess, really. That said, I believe that Thinking Labs is probably going to be on the vanguard along with its rivals in offering the hundreds of thousands of companies across the U.S. tools to compete in today's business world, which now often seems to have been injected with AI adrenaline. And we're seeing a kind of all-or-nothing consolidation playing out across the tech industry: a few special firms (like OpenAI) are going to reap the fruits of the universal move toward AI-native systems. Keep an eye out for Thinking Labs and other dark horse companies as the race continues.
CTV News
3 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Ikea's offer of free kids' meals 5 days a week not coming to Canada
An Ikea store is seen in Dartmouth, N.S. on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan A promotion billed by Ikea as an effort to reduce customers' 'cost-of-living pressures' is not coming to Canada – at least not as initially billed. Ikea announced Wednesday it was offering half-price adult meals and free kids meals Monday through Friday in markets around the world. The news release listed Canada as among the 14 countries involved. Yet in an email Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson for Ikea Canada told that a portion of the news release was 'incorrect for Canada.' Instead, only Canadian customers who are members of the store's reward program, known as Ikea Family Members, will be able to get 50 per cent off during the week, with the caveats that this deal applies to 'select main dishes' only and is 'while supplies last,' Ikea's Alicia Carroll said in an email. Kids' meals are free, but only on Wednesdays with the purchase of an adult meal. This promotion runs July 10 through August. Ikea and its parent company, Ingka, billed the discount as a way to 'help people stretch their budgets.' But a food distribution and policy expert said the public-relations strategy comes 'probably a year or two too late.' 'If you look at the G7 (countries) right now, their food inflation is under four per cent. Canada is at 3.4, which is slightly above average,' Dalhousie University's Sylvain Charlebois said in a phone interview with Wednesday from Brazil. 'I think the message would have resonated even more two years ago when people were actually hurting. Right now, people are just coping, and they're accepting that food prices are going to remain high, but they've actually adjusted, they've made adjustments to their budgets accordingly.' Charlebois said it was likely a move to recruit new customers and encourage more frequent visits for existing clientele. While customers might only need furniture once a year or every few years, they do need to eat, so a food-based promotion is a way to bring in shoppers who aren't currently looking for furniture. 'If you can use food as bait and get people in more often, and generate more traffic, that's powerful,' Charlebois said, adding that chances are that once a customer is in the store they'll buy something, even if just smaller impulse items.
