Tired of dramas and with no kids or man, I’m planning the big day with just me and the dogs. Don’t pity me, I can’t wait... Aaaah, Christmas . That magical time of joy, wonder and goodwill to all mankind. But is it, really? Surely I can’t be the only person to find being rammed into confined places with extended family , lame decorations and all the enforced cheerfulness, rather tense? Less “peace on earth”, more “silent relative rage,” perhaps? Throw in copious amounts of booze which (let’s be honest) is necked more to “take the edge off” than in celebration. And it’s no surprise everyone ends up ruddy-cheeked in wonky paper hats, hissing at each other over burnt parsnips while perched on the wobbly table extender dragged out for special occasions. I realise I sound like the Grinch, but come on, can’t Christmas be hell? All the festivities are so geared around couples and families. It’s the season of love – of little blue Tiffany boxes, kisses under the mistletoe, families decorating trees together, dads dressed as Santa , mums stuffing stockings and sugar-hyped children in awe of it all.

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell broadly on Friday as Wall Street closed out a holiday-shortened week on a down note. The losses were made worse by sharp declines for the Big Tech stocks known as the “Magnificent 7”, which can heavily influence the direction of the market because of their large size. The S&P 500 fell 66.75 points, or 1.1%, to 5,970.84. Roughly 90% of stocks in the benchmark index lost ground, but it managed to hold onto a modest gain of 0.7% for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 333.59 points, or 0.8%, to 42,992.21. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 298.33 points, or 1.5%, to 19,722.03. Semiconductor giant Nvidia slumped 2.1%. Microsoft declined 1.7%. Each has a market value above $3 trillion, giving the companies outsized sway on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq. A wide range of retailers also fell. Amazon fell 1.5% and Best Buy slipped 1.5%. The sector is being closely watched for clues on how it performed during the holiday shopping season. Energy stocks held up better than the rest of the market, with a loss of less than 0.1% as crude oil prices rose. “There’s just some uncertainty over this relief rally we’ve witnessed since last week,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial. The S&P 500 gained nearly 3% over a 3-day stretch before breaking for the Christmas holiday. On Thursday, the index posted a small decline. Despite Friday's drop, the market is moving closer to another standout annual finish . The S&P 500 is on track for a gain of around 25% in 2024. That would mark a second consecutive yearly gain of more than 20%, the first time that has happened since 1997-1998. The gains have been driven partly by upbeat economic data showing that consumers continued spending and the labor market remained strong. Inflation, while still high, has also been steadily easing. A report on Friday showed that sales and inventory estimates for the wholesales trade industry fell 0.2% in November, following a slight gain in October. That weaker-than-expected report follows an update on the labor market Thursday that showed unemployment benefits held steady last week. The stream of upbeat economic data and easing inflation helped prompt a reversal in the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy this year. Expectations for interest rate cuts also helped drive market gains. The central bank recently delivered its third cut to interest rates in 2024. Even though inflation has come closer to the central bank's target of 2%, it remains stubbornly above that mark and worries about it heating up again have tempered the forecast for more interest rate cuts. Inflation concerns have added to uncertainties heading into 2025, which include the labor market’s path ahead and shifting economic policies under incoming President Donald Trump. Worries have risen that Trump’s preference for tariffs and other policies could lead to higher inflation , a bigger U.S. government debt and difficulties for global trade. Amedisys rose 4.7% after the home health care and hospice services provider agreed to extend the deadline for its sale to UnitedHealth Group. The Justice Department had sued to block the $3.3 billion deal, citing concerns the combination would hinder access to home health and hospice services in the U.S. The move to extend the deadline comes ahead of an expected shift in regulatory policy under Trump. The incoming administration is expected to have a more permissive approach to dealmaking and is less likely to raise antitrust concerns. In Asia, Japan’s benchmark index surged as the yen remained weak against the dollar. Stocks in South Korea fell after the main opposition party voted to impeach the country’s acting leader. Markets in Europe gained ground. Bond yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.62% from 4.59% late Thursday. The yield on the two-year Treasury remained at 4.33% from late Thursday. Wall Street will have more economic updates to look forward to next week, including reports on pending home sales and home prices. There will also be reports on U.S. construction spending and snapshots of manufacturing activity.It is probably the scariest movie trailer you’ll hear this year. No, not “see”, though the visuals are frightening enough – a bloodied body hanging upside-down, towers of skulls, a Ghostface mask – but “hear”. The trailer for 2025’s 28 Years Later , the final movie in Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s zombie trilogy after 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later in 2002 and 2007 respectively, is soundtracked by a recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots . No music track could be more unsettling nor discordant, and few could have captured the collective online imagination the way Boots has, with thousands of social media shares and approving comments. Written in 1903, Boots imagines the thoughts of a British Army infantryman forced to march in South Africa during the Second Boer War which had just ended. Deliberately monotonous and repetitive, the poem is precisely metered: reading the first four words of each line at the rate of two words per second gives the exact time to which the soldiers marched. The trailer uses only certain sections of the poem, the horror mounting with every line. Seven – six – eleven – five – nine-an’ twenty mile today Four – eleven – seventeen – thirty-two the day before – Boots – boots – boots – boots – movin’ up and down again! There’s no discharge in the war!

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Hear this! Transforming health care with speech-to-text technology November 21, 2024 Acoustical Society of America Researchers study the importance of enunciation when using speech-to-text software in medical situations. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIN Email Speech-to-text programs are becoming more popular for everyday tasks like hands-free dictation, helping people who are visually impaired, and transcribing speech for those who are hard of hearing. These tools have many uses, and researcher Bożena Kostek from Gdańsk University of Technology is exploring how STT can be better used in the medical field. By studying how clear speech affects STT accuracy, she hopes to improve its usefulness for health care professionals. "Automating note-taking for patient data is crucial for doctors and radiologists, as it gives the doctors more face-to-face time with patients and allows for better data collection," Kostek says. Kostek also explains the challenges they face in this work. "STT models often struggle with medical terms, especially in Polish, since many have been trained mainly on English. Also, most resources focus on simple language, not specialized medical vocabulary. Noisy hospital environments make it even harder, as health care providers may not speak clearly due to stress or distractions." To tackle these issues, a detailed audio dataset was created with Polish medical terms spoken by doctors and specialists in areas like cardiology and pulmonology. This dataset was analyzed using an Automatic Speech Recognition model, technology that converts speech into text, for transcription. Several metrics, such as Word Error Rate and Character Error Rate, were used to evaluate the quality of the speech recognition. This analysis helps understand how speech clarity and style affect the accuracy of STT. Kostek will present this data Thursday, Nov. 21, at 3:25 p.m. ET as part of the virtual 187th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running Nov. 18-22, 2024. "Medical jargon can be tricky, especially with abbreviations that differ across specialties. This is an even more difficult task when we refer to realistic hospital situations in which the room is not acoustically prepared." Kostek said. Currently, the focus is on Polish, but there are plans to expand the research to other languages, like Czech. Collaborations are being established with the University Hospital in Brno to develop medical term resources, aiming to enhance the use of STT technology in health care. "Even though artificial intelligence is helpful in many situations, many problems should be investigated analytically rather than holistically, focusing on breaking a whole picture into individual parts." Story Source: Materials provided by Acoustical Society of America . Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Cite This Page :AP Sports SummaryBrief at 5:24 p.m. EST

Chicago is set to have its warmest year on record, beating the previous benchmark set in 2012, according to the National Weather Service. Based on preliminary data, Chicago’s average temperature for 2024 is on track to be between 54.8 and 55.0 degrees, breaking the previous record of an average of 54.5 degrees in 2012, the weather service said. Prior to that, the previous year average record was 54.4 degrees set in 1921. Official numbers for 2024 will be released on or just after Jan. 1. National Weather Service meteorologist Gino Izzi cited climate change and a fall drought as factors behind the high temps, which allowed for greater temperature fluctuations. Air is easier to heat and cool than water, so less moisture meant bigger jumps in temperature throughout the day. This also exacerbated Chicago’s higher night temperatures caused by heat dissipating off the “concrete jungle,” Izzi said. “It’s a very unique situation,” Izzi said. “When conditions are really dry, temperatures more quickly fluctuate. ... That allowed temperature swings to be more drastic.” Five months of the year were in the top 10 warmest on record ; February set a new record with an average of 39.5 degrees — beating the previous 1882 record of 39 degrees — and September was the second warmest on record, averaging 70.6 degrees, less than a degree shy of the 1931 record. And Chicago isn’t alone. Rockford is also set to have one of its top five warmest years on record, ending with an average between 52 and 53.1 degrees. If temperatures close out the year higher, it could beat records set in 1921 and 1931, and on the lower end would beat a 2021 record. The pattern extends beyond months, as the last several years have also seen record-breaking averages, which Izzi said is more attributable to climate change than single-year outliers, which can be influenced by things like droughts. “That’s a 152-year period of record, and in the last 11 years, five of them have been the top 10 warmest,” Izzi said. Looking at the year ahead, Izzi said another record year of tornadoes wouldn’t be surprising — it has been broken two years in a row — but that was more due to advancements in technology that allows them to retroactively document tornadoes. The tornadoes seen in and near the city have had longer paths though, which is a change caused by climate factors. For the near future, Izzi said Chicagoans can expect a drier January with a possibility for “closer to or below average” temperatures, though snow may spring up toward the end of the month. “There will still be cold periods mixed in,” Izzi said. “But on the whole, climate change is making it easier for warmer conditions to happen more often.”Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100