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In the battle over healthcare costs, private equity plays both sides
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In the battle over healthcare costs, private equity plays both sides

Insurance companies have long accused privately owned hospitals and medical associations of exorbitant billing that drives up healthcare costs. But a private equity-backed tool is helping insurers make billions of dollars and shift costs to patients.The tool, Data iSight, is the flagship offering of a cost-containment company called MultiPlan that has attracted continued private equity investment since it positioned itself as a central player in the lucrative field of medical payments. Today Hellman & Friedman, the California-based private equity giant, and the Saudi Arabian government's sovereign wealth fund are among the company's largest investors.The evolution of Data iSight, which recommends the amount to pay for each medical bill, is an untold chapter in the story of privat...
La principessa Reema, ambasciatrice saudita, naviga in acque agitate a Washington
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La principessa Reema, ambasciatrice saudita, naviga in acque agitate a Washington

Ha frequentato l'elite Holton-Arms School for girls nei sobborghi fuori Washington. Nei fine settimana passeggiava con gli amici durante lo shopping nel centro commerciale Tysons Corner Center nella Virginia del Nord. Tre segretari di stato americani - Colin L. Powell, James A. Baker e Madeleine Albright - erano ospiti abituali a casa dei suoi genitori.In questi giorni, la principessa Reema Bandar al-Saud, 48 anni, figlia del principe Bandar bin Sultan, uno dei diplomatici più potenti di Washington quando era ambasciatore dell'Arabia Saudita negli Stati Uniti per più di due decenni, occupa il vecchio lavoro di suo padre.Non è stato facile.È arrivata a Washington come prima donna a ricoprire l’incarico nel luglio 2019, meno di un anno dopo che Jamal Khashoggi, editorialista del Wa...
Historians find that the New England Journal of Medicine ignored Nazi atrocities
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Historians find that the New England Journal of Medicine ignored Nazi atrocities

A new article in the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the oldest and most respected publications for medical research, criticizes the journal for paying only “superficial and idiosyncratic attention” to the atrocities perpetrated in the name of medical science by the Nazis.The magazine was "an exception in its sporadic coverage of the rise of Nazi Germany," wrote the article's authors, Allan Brandt and Joelle Abi-Rached, both medical historians at Harvard. Often, the paper simply ignored the Nazis' medical depredations, such as the horrific experiments conducted on twins at Auschwitz, which were largely based on Adolf Hitler's spurious "racial science."By contrast, two other major scientific journals – Science and Journal of the American Medical Association – covered th...
Peter Pellegrini wins the presidential elections in Slovakia
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Peter Pellegrini wins the presidential elections in Slovakia

Voters in Slovakia strengthened the grip of pro-Russian political forces in Central Europe on Saturday, handing victory in the presidential election to a candidate who opposes providing military and financial aid to Ukraine.With 99% of votes counted, the official tally showed Peter Pellegrini, an ally of populist Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, the winner with 53% of the vote in the presidential runoff. Despite the limited powers of the presidency in Slovakia, the elections were widely seen as a test of strength between political camps with sharply different views on Russia.The defeated candidate, former Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok, is a staunch supporter of Ukraine and critical of Fico, a combative veteran politician who aligned himself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in o...
How tech giants cut corners to collect data for artificial intelligence
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How tech giants cut corners to collect data for artificial intelligence

The race to lead artificial intelligence has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain such data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta cut corners, ignored company policies and debated how to change the law, according to a New York Times analysis.According to recordings of internal meetings obtained by the Times, last year managers, lawyers and engineers at Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, discussed buying the Simon & Schuster publishing house to procure long-form works. They also agreed to collect copyrighted data from across the Internet, even if it meant facing legal action. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said.Like OpenAI, Google transcribed Y...
La guerra di Gaza punta i riflettori sul lungo canale di armi statunitensi verso Israele
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La guerra di Gaza punta i riflettori sul lungo canale di armi statunitensi verso Israele

Nell’autunno del 2016, l’amministrazione Obama ha siglato un importante accordo militare con Israele che impegnava gli Stati Uniti a donare al Paese 38 miliardi di dollari in armi in 10 anni."La continua fornitura della tecnologia bellica più avanzata al mondo garantirà che Israele abbia la capacità di difendersi da ogni tipo di minaccia", ha affermato il presidente Barack Obama.All’epoca l’accordo non era controverso. Fu un periodo di relativa calma per Israele, e pochi funzionari a Washington espressero preoccupazione su come un giorno le armi americane avrebbero potuto essere utilizzate.Ora quel pacchetto di aiuti militari, che garantisce a Israele 3,3 miliardi di dollari all’anno per l’acquisto di armi, insieme ad altri 500 milioni di dollari all’anno per la difesa missilistica, è div...
Die Kunst der Gesundheit: Arztspezialist.de
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Die Kunst der Gesundheit: Arztspezialist.de

In der heutigen hektischen Welt ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, auf unsere Gesundheit zu achten. Bei arztspezialist.de verstehen wir, dass Ihre Gesundheit Ihr wertvollstes Gut ist, und wir sind hier, um sicherzustellen, dass Sie die bestmögliche medizinische Versorgung erhalten. Arzt Speizalist: Ihr Weg zur Gesundheit Unsere Ärzte sind wahre Spezialisten auf ihren Gebieten. Von Orthopädie und Traumatologie über Andrologie bis hin zur Dermatologie bieten wir Ihnen eine umfassende Palette an medizinischen Dienstleistungen. Unser Ziel ist es, Ihnen zu helfen, Ihre Gesundheitsziele zu erreichen und ein erfülltes Leben zu führen. Orthopädie Und Traumatologie: Den Körper in Bewegung halten Ein gesunder Bewegungsapparat ist entscheidend für Ihr Wohlbefinden. Unsere Orthopäden und...
Teen drug habits are changing for the better.  With warnings.
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Teen drug habits are changing for the better. With warnings.

Historically speaking, it's not a bad time to be a teenager's liver. Or the lungs.Regular alcohol, tobacco, and drug use among high school students has seen a long downward trend.In 2023, 46% of older adults said they had had a drink in the year before being surveyed; that's a steep decline from 88% in 1979, when the behavior peaked, according to the annual Monitoring the Future survey, a closely watched national survey of youth substance use. A similar downward trend was observed among eighth and tenth graders and for these three age groups regarding cigarette smoking. In 2023, only 15% of older adults reported having smoked a cigarette in their lifetime, compared to a peak of 76% in 1977.Illicit drug use among adolescents has remained low and fairly stable over the past t...
Indignate dal programma nucleare statunitense, le comunità si rivolgono al Congresso per chiedere aiuto
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Indignate dal programma nucleare statunitense, le comunità si rivolgono al Congresso per chiedere aiuto

Quando il padre di Diane Scheig, Bill, tornava a casa dal lavoro presso la fabbrica Mallinckrodt di St. Louis, si spogliava nel garage e consegnava i suoi vestiti alla madre di lei perché li lavasse immediatamente, senza osare contaminare la casa con i residui delle sue fatiche. .Il signor Scheig, un metalmeccanico che contribuì a costruire il famoso arco della città, non raccontò mai alla famiglia esattamente cosa stesse facendo nello stabilimento, dove gli scienziati iniziarono per la prima volta a lavorare l'uranio per il Progetto Manhattan nel 1942. Ma all'età di 49 anni, aveva sviluppato cancro ai reni, perse la capacità di camminare e morì.Decenni dopo, la sorella maggiore di Diane, Sheryle, che anni prima aveva dato alla luce un bambino nato con un tumore delle dimensioni di...
What to know about tech companies using AI to teach their AI
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What to know about tech companies using AI to teach their AI

OpenAI, Google, and other tech companies train their chatbots with massive amounts of data collected from books, Wikipedia articles, news stories, and other sources on the Internet. But in the future they hope to use something called synthetic data.That's because tech companies may be running out of high-quality text the Internet has to offer for AI development. And companies are facing copyright lawsuits from authors, news organizations and computer programmers for using their works without permission. (In one of these lawsuits, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft.)According to them, synthetic data will help reduce copyright issues and increase the supply of training materials needed for artificial intelligence. Here's what to know about it.What is synthetic data?It i...