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NEW YORK (AP) — Brian Thompson led one of the biggest health insurers in the U.S. but was unknown to millions of people his decisions affected. Then Wednesday's targeted fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk thrust the executive and his business into the national spotlight. Thompson, who was 50, had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group Inc for 20 years and run the insurance arm since 2021 after running its Medicare and retirement business. As CEO, Thompson led a firm that provides health coverage to more than 49 million Americans — more than the population of Spain. United is the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, the privately run versions of the U.S. government’s Medicare program for people age 65 and older. The company also sells individual insurance and administers health-insurance coverage for thousands of employers and state-and federally funded Medicaid programs. People are also reading... The business run by Thompson brought in $281 billion in revenue last year, making it the largest subsidiary of the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group. His $10.2 million annual pay package, including salary, bonus and stock options awards, made him one of the company's highest-paid executives. The University of Iowa graduate began his career as a certified public accountant at PwC and had little name recognition beyond the health care industry. Even to investors who own its stock, the parent company's face belonged to CEO Andrew Witty, a knighted British triathlete who has testified before Congress. When Thompson did occasionally draw attention, it was because of his role in shaping the way Americans get health care. At an investor meeting last year, he outlined his company's shift to “value-based care,” paying doctors and other caregivers to keep patients healthy rather than focusing on treating them once sick. “Health care should be easier for people,” Thompson said at the time. “We are cognizant of the challenges. But navigating a future through value-based care unlocks a situation where the ... family doesn’t have to make the decisions on their own.” Thompson also drew attention in 2021 when the insurer, like its competitors, was widely criticized for a plan to start denying payment for what it deemed non-critical visits to hospital emergency rooms. “Patients are not medical experts and should not be expected to self-diagnose during what they believe is a medical emergency,” the chief executive of the American Hospital Association wrote in an open letter addressed to Thompson. “Threatening patients with a financial penalty for making the wrong decision could have a chilling effect on seeking emergency care.” United Healthcare responded by delaying rollout of the change. Thompson, who lived in a Minneapolis suburb and was the married father of two sons in high school, was set to speak at an investor meeting in a midtown New York hotel. He was on his own and about to enter the building when he was shot in the back by a masked assailant who fled on foot before pedaling an e-bike into Central Park a few blocks away, the New York Police Department said. Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said investigators were looking at Thompson's social media accounts and interviewing employees and family members. “Didn’t seem like he had any issues at all,” Kenny said. "He did not have a security detail.” AP reporters Michael R. Sisak and Steve Karnowski contributed to this report. Murphy reported from Indianapolis. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email.
LONDON: On Oct. 12 last year, a group of armed settlers and Israeli soldiers drove into the West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq, 10 kilometers east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. There, they seized and handcuffed three Palestinian men, subjecting them to hours of abuse and violence, later compared by one of the victims to the treatment meted out by rogue US soldiers to prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003. The abuses in Wadi Al-Seeq were led by members of the IDF’s Sfar Hamidbar (Desert Frontier) unit, notorious for recruiting into its ranks violent “hilltop youth” from the illegal farming settlements that are proliferating in the West Bank with the blessing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes, and is dependent on the support of, far-right parties. “For hours,” as an Israeli newspaper reported on Oct. 21, 2023, the Palestinians “were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed. “Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.” Israeli human rights activists who arrived at the scene were also arrested, cuffed, beaten, threatened with death and, like the Palestinians, robbed. At the time, many in Israel were shocked to read the reports of the joint operation between the IDF and settlers, exposed by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz. But as a new report from an Israeli human rights group makes clear, such events have become commonplace as, under cover of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli government and its agencies have been pursuing the ultimate goal of “realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.” In the report, “One year of war: the collapse of human and civil rights in Israel and the West Bank,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accuses the government of “excessive, unrestrained, and illegal use of force.” Furthermore, it says, Netanyahu’s government is “demolishing the judicial system and the civil service with the aim of accumulating unlimited power; increasing the use of force in the West Bank and granting tacit permission for unrestrained settler violence; using force to limit freedom of expression and protest; and systematically violating the rights of detainees and prisoners.” The list of charges levelled against the government is long, including institutionalized discrimination against Arab society, “unprecedented” infringement of the rights of suspects and prisoners, the “mass armament and creation of untrained forces” of settlers, the “destruction of democratic foundations,” attacks on freedom of expression and “normalization of citizen surveillance and disregard for privacy.” Legislative steps are being taken with the aim of excluding certain parties from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Last month a controversial bill was passed to change the rules for banning individuals or parties from membership of the Knesset if they have “supported terror,” a definition which now includes visiting the family of someone accused of an act of terrorism. Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has even accused Arab members of the Knesset of supporting terror simply on the ground of their support for Palestinian statehood. “Depriving a population of the right to protest politically and the right to political representation” is “a very slippery slope,” said Noa Sattath, the CEO of ACRI. “When there’s no political representation of a minority, then there's a radicalization of that minority.” What the ACRI report exposes on a grand scale, says Sattath, is “the excessive use of power. Of course, we see it in Gaza, and in Lebanon now, but we also see it in the West Bank. “We also see it being used against Israeli protesters. We’re also seeing it in the treatment of prisoners. In all walks of life, basically, the Israeli government has moved to using excessive power against the different players, rather than making more complicated decisions.” The headline scandal of the past year is what ACRI describes as “the quiet coup” in the West Bank. “With public attention focused elsewhere,” says the report, “the government is implementing profound changes to all aspects of control in the West Bank, most of which are flying under the radar. “In the last two years, the government has made giant strides in advancing policies aimed at accelerating the annexation process of the West Bank, while establishing Jewish supremacy and marginalizing the Palestinian population, all in pursuit of realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.” The annexation of the West Bank has long been on the agenda, said Sattath, “but the war has given cover and enabled this to happen. “Basically, they’re creating a new reality on the ground, behind the scenes, without a lot of public scrutiny, without a lot of international discourse on this new reality that they’re manufacturing.” The Israeli government has, in certain instances, issued statements that aim to distance itself from the violent actions of settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu has occasionally called for calm and condemned settler attacks on Palestinians, especially after high-profile incidents. However, ACRI fears that under the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, whose election has been welcomed so enthusiastically by far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, things are only going to get worse. “I think that the next years are going to be very difficult,” said Sattath. “The US government is one of the only checks and balances on the behavior of the Israeli government behavior and, even if we would have liked them to be more forceful in the way that they do it, we're very worried that the disappearance of that will have grave implications for the lives of Palestinians, both in Gaza, where the US is currently so involved in the humanitarian aid efforts there, and in the West Bank.” Disturbingly, she says, Israel is manoeuvring behind the scenes to end the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory under military occupation, which is how it has been defined by international law since the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967. “It seems a little strange that an organization like ACRI would be advocating for military occupation,” she said. “But under international conventions military occupation gives the protected citizens of that area many different rights and gives the occupiers obligations. “Residents in occupied territories cannot be moved. You cannot build on their territory and the occupying force has all sorts of obligations toward them, in terms of humanitarian aid. “Now, what the settler movement, through its ministers in the government, is trying to do is erase the military occupation, replacing it with government agencies and officials to facilitate the settlement enterprise.” The process began in February 2023 when, despite disquiet among some members of Netanyahu’s government, authority over many civilian issues in the West Bank was stripped from Defense Ministry agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, the religious Zionism leader and finance minister. According to a Times of Israel report, the agreement “appears to give the ultranationalist leader sweeping powers over the territory, and allows him to advance his goal of thwarting Palestinian aspirations for a state in the West Bank by enabling the Israeli population there to substantially expand.” Anti-settlement organizations denounced the agreement, with one, Breaking the Silence, saying it amounted to “legal, de jure annexation,” of the West Bank. The importance of ACRI’s report, says Sattath, lies in the sheer breadth of abuses by the Israeli government it exposes. ACRI, founded in 1972 and the oldest civil and human rights organization in Israel, has been publishing reports on the state of human rights in Israel and the West Bank for decades. But, she says, “we have never published a report showing such a severe and comprehensive deterioration as we have seen over the past year.” ACRI says it hopes its report “will deepen the public’s understanding of the damage being done to human rights and democratic institutions, and that it will stir the public to action and resistance.” It added: “Monitoring human rights violation processes is also critical for there to be any hope of correction under a different government and reality.”
CHANHASSEN, Minn. , Nov. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpheus Medical, Inc., a private, clinical-stage oncology company pioneering sonodynamic therapy (SDT) for the treatment of solid body cancers, today announced positive results from their Phase 1/2 clinical trial in patients with recurrent or refractory high-grade gliomas. The company's proprietary therapy demonstrated a strong safety profile and extended median overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) compared to historical data. The data were presented by Michael Schulder , MD, at the 2024 Society of Neuro-Oncology (SNO) Annual Meeting. "Glioblastomas are the most common and aggressive primary brain cancer, presenting a devasting diagnosis for patients and their familes," said David Reardon , MD, Clinical Director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and member of the Alpheus Medical Scientific Advisory Board. "Current treatment options are limited and often ineffective due to the diffuse spread of the disease across the blood-brain barrier and often across the entire hemisphere, making it universally fatal with a rapid timeline. The early clinical results of Alpheus's therapy are promising, offering hope for this new approach. I look forward to further exploring the potential benefits of their SDT therapy for this patient population who is in critical need of an effective solution." Alpheus Medical's non-invasive SDT treatment, which can be delivered in an outpatient setting, combines low-intensity diffuse ultrasound (LIDU TM ) with oral 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA) to target and kill cancer cells across the entire hemisphere without the need for imaging or sedation. Key findings from the study include: "In addition to the strong safety data and early indications of efficacy, Alpheus' non-invasive SDT therapy stands out for its ease of use - a significant improvement over the uncomfortable and often toxic treatments currently available for this rapidly fatal condition," stated Dr. Schulder, Director of the Brain Tumor Center at Northwell Health, and one of the trial's primary investigators. "We look forward to expanding the ability for patients to receive this promising therapy." The Phase 1/2 trial ( NCT05362409 ) is an open-label, multicenter, duration-escalation study evaluating the safety, optimal dose, and efficacy of Alpheus Medical's proprietary SDT platform. Twelve patients were enrolled across three cohorts, with treatment durations escalating to 60, 90, and 120 minutes per monthly session. The company plans to initiate a randomized, controlled trial at multiple centers across the U.S. in 2025. About Alpheus Medical, Inc. Alpheus Medical is a private, clinical-stage oncology company revolutionizing the treatment of solid body cancers with its pioneering sonodynamic therapy (SDT) platform that combines Low-Intensity Diffuse Ultrasound (LIDU TM ) with the sensitizing agent, oral 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA). The company's proprietary, non-invasive technology is designed to selectively target and destroy cancer cells in the brain while preserving healthy tissue. Learn more at www.alpheusmedical.com . Media Contact Carla Benigni carla@sprigconsulting.com View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alpheus-medical-announces-positive-phase-12-trial-results-for-the-treatment-of-recurrent-high-grade-gliomas-302314785.html SOURCE Alpheus MedicalLAS VEGAS (AP) — A team that previously boycotted at least one match against the San Jose State women's volleyball program will again be faced with the decision whether to play the school , this time in the Mountain West Conference semifinals with a shot at the NCAA Tournament on the line. Five schools forfeited matches in the regular season against San Jose State, which carried a No. 2 seed into the conference tournament in Las Vegas.
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In visit to Riyadh, Naqvi agrees to activate joint task force with Saudi ArabiaNEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) — Jayden Brown had 17 points in Cent. Conn. St.'s 64-56 victory against Binghamton on Sunday. Brown added eight rebounds for the Blue Devils (3-3). Jordan Jones scored 15 points and added five rebounds. Davonte Sweatman shot 3 of 10 from the field, including 2 for 4 from 3-point range, and went 6 for 6 from the line to finish with 14 points. Tymu Chenery led the way for the Bearcats (2-5) with 16 points and four assists. Nehemiah Benson added 14 points and six rebounds for Binghamton. Gavin Walsh also had nine points and eight rebounds. NEXT UP Cent. Conn. St.'s next game is Sunday against UMass-Lowell at home. Binghamton squares off against Niagara on Friday. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by and data from . The Associated PressGermany's Merkel recalls Putin's 'power games' and contrasting US presidents in her memoirs BERLIN (AP) — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalls Vladimir Putin's “power games” over the years, remembers contrasting meetings with Barack Obama and Donald Trump and says she asked herself whether she could have done more to prevent Brexi Geir Moulson, The Associated Press Nov 25, 2024 3:04 PM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message File - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pictured with light and shadow at the Meseberg palace near Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File) BERLIN (AP) — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalls Vladimir Putin's “power games” over the years, remembers contrasting meetings with Barack Obama and Donald Trump and says she asked herself whether she could have done more to prevent Brexit, in her memoirs published Tuesday. Merkel, 70, appears to have no significant doubts about the major decisions of her 16 years as German leader, whose major challenges included the global financial crisis, Europe’s debt crisis, the 2015-16 influx of refugees and the COVID-19 pandemic. True to form, her book — titled “Freedom” — offers a matter-of-fact account of her early life in communist East Germany and her later career in politics, laced with moments of dry wit. Merkel served alongside four U.S. presidents , four French presidents and five British prime ministers. But it is perhaps her dealings with Russian President Putin that have drawn the most scrutiny since she left office in late 2021. Putin's power games Merkel recalls being kept waiting by Putin at the Group of Eight summit she hosted in 2007 — “if there's one thing I can't stand, it's unpunctuality.” And she recounts a visit to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi that year in which Putin's labrador appeared during a photo opportunity, although Putin knew she was afraid of dogs. Putin appeared to enjoy the situation, she writes, and she didn't bring it up — keeping as she often did to the motto “never explain, never complain.” The previous year, she recounts Putin pointing to wooden houses in Siberia and telling her poor people lived there who “could be easily seduced,” and that similar groups had been encouraged by money from the U.S. government to take part in Ukraine's “Orange Revolution” of 2004 against attempted election fraud. Putin, she says, added: “I will never allow something like that in Russia.” Merkel says she was irritated by Putin's “self-righteousness” in a 2007 speech in Munich in which he turned away from earlier attempts to develop closer ties with the U.S. She said that appearance showed Putin as she knew him, “as someone who was always on guard against being treated badly and ready to give out at any time, including power games with a dog and making other people wait for him.” “One could find this all childish and reprehensible, one could shake one's head over it — but that didn't make Russia disappear from the map,” she writes. As she has before, Merkel defends a much-criticized 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine that she helped broker and her government's decisions to buy large quantities of natural gas from Russia. And she argues it was right to keep up diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow until she left power, Obama and Trump Merkel concluded after first meeting then-Sen. Obama in 2008 that they could work well together. More than eight years later, during his last visit as president in Nov. 2016, she was one of the people with whom she discussed whether to seek a fourth term. Obama, she says, asked questions but held back with an opinion, and that in itself was helpful. He “said that Europe could still use me very well, but I should ultimately follow my feelings,” she writes. There was no such warmth with Trump, who had criticized Merkel and Germany in his 2016 campaign. Merkel says she had to seek an “adequate relationship ... without reacting to all the provocations.” In March 2017, there was an awkward moment when Merkel first visited the Trump White House. Photographers shouted “handshake!” and Merkel quietly asked Trump: “Do you want to have a handshake?” There was no response from Trump, who looked ahead with his hands clasped. Merkel faults her own reaction. “He wanted to create a topic of discussion with his behavior, while I had acted as if I were dealing with an interlocutor behaving normally,” she writes. She adds that Putin apparently “fascinated” Trump and, in the following years, she had the impression that “politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits” beguiled him. Could Brexit have been avoided? Merkel says she tried to help then-Prime Minister David Cameron in the European Union as he faced pressure from British Euroskeptics, but there were limits to what she could do. And, pointing to Cameron's efforts over the years to assuage opponents of the EU, she says the road to Brexit is a textbook example of what can arise from a miscalculation. After Britons voted to leave the EU in 2016, an outcome she calls a “humiliation” for its other members, she says the question of whether she should have made more concessions to the U.K. “tortured me.” “I came to the conclusion that, in view of the political developments inside the country at the time, there would have been no acceptable possibility for me to prevent Britain's way out of the European Union from outside,” Merkel says. Giving up power Merkel was the first German chancellor to leave power at a time of her choosing. She announced in 2018 that she wouldn't seek a fifth term, and says she “let go at the right point.” She points to three 2019 incidents in which her body shook during public engagements as proof. Merkel says she had herself checked thoroughly and there were no neurological or other findings. An osteopath told her that her body was letting off the tension it had accumulated over years, she adds. “Freedom” runs to more than 700 pages in its original German edition, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. The English edition is being released simultaneously by St. Martin's Press. Geir Moulson, The Associated Press See a typo/mistake? Have a story/tip? This has been shared 0 times 0 Shares Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message More The Mix CDC chief urges focus on health threats as agency confronts political changes Nov 25, 2024 3:04 PM Alimentation Couche-Tard earns US$708.8 million in second quarter Nov 25, 2024 3:01 PM 'We need an industry': Crowsnest Pass residents voting on support for new coal mine Nov 25, 2024 2:52 PM Featured FlyerHelenius rebounds from early miscue to help Amerks
A host of rightwing politicians have been pushing a petition online calling for a general election, which has now gathered over one million signatures. The petition, started by Michael Westwood, calls for a general election, arguing that the Labour government have “gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election”. At the time of reporting, the petition had gathered over 1.3 million signatures . While Parliament will consider any petition that gets over 100,000 signatures for a debate, this isn’t guaranteed. Rightwing MPs were seen sharing the petition on social media today, calling on voters to sign it and share it in a challenge to Keir Starmer’s government. “Let’s make this the biggest petition ever in the UK – sign, share, and spread the word,” Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, wrote on X. Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith also shared the petition on X. “If this Labour government were a consumer product, after Rachel Reeves’ Budget tax rises (“we have no plans to increase tax”) people could return it under consumer mis-selling rules,” Griffith wrote on X today. The government was contacted for comment.Every Tuesday evening, people line up at the Warkworth RSA – but not to get in, or to the bar. It’s the Razza Dazzlers line dancing social group, which was started by Snells Beach locals Cath Hodder and her sister Christine Kyle in March this year. Hodder, who leads the group and calls the steps, says they had around 46 people the first night. “That was more than we expected. It was quite packed in there (on the dance floor next to the bar). Now we’re averaging about 30 dancers a week, from children to people in their 80s,” Hodder says. A session costs $5 with the money going to the RSA, or the “Razza” which inspired their name, and its popularity has meant that so far the group has raised over $6700 for the organisation. “We’ve been going for around 40 weeks, so it adds up. Obviously, we’re using the RSA’s facilities, which are really good, so they should have the money, and they’re upgrading the bathrooms and the kitchen at the moment.” The sisters first got into line dancing in February last year after one too many injuries pursuing their previous hobby – roller skating. Kyle found a class with local teacher Krista Fletcher, and the sisters would practise their steps every Friday night on the RSA dance floor with a few friends. This soon attracted an audience and led to them starting their own class on Tuesdays. Not only is line dancing safer than roller skating, Hodder says it’s good for the mind, body and soul. “You’ve got a focus, and you don’t need a partner so it’s good if you’re single. It’s still quite social because you get to dance with like-minded people. “It’s good for your body because you’re moving. People also really enjoy the music because we’ve veered away from just country and western music, so we might play Beyoncé or some old-school hip hop.” Razza Dazzler Richard Legae says he was dragged kicking and screaming to his first line dance at the RSA, but now he’s been there 12 weeks and counting. “When I came, I didn’t know any of the steps or dances so I went away and thought I’d make sure that when I come back next week that I at least know what the steps are. “I found that when I knew the steps, I actually enjoyed the dancing. And it went from there.” Hodder says the Tuesday session caters for absolute beginners and there’s only a limited number of steps you need to learn. “Everyone’s welcome. It’s pretty casual and about having fun, you just need enthusiasm. If you’re moving, you’re doing it right. “But the majority rules – if everyone’s facing one way, go that way,” Hodder says. What: Line dancing with the Razza Dazzlers for $5. Where: Warkworth RSA. When: Tuesdays, 5.30pm to 6.30pm
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Fox News Politics: Prosecutorial PassJoin our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Getting enterprise data into large language models (LLMs) is a critical task for enabling the success of enterprise AI deployments. That’s where retrieval augmented generation (RAG) fits in, which is an area where many vendors have offered various solutions. Today at AWS re:invent 2024 the company announced a series of new services and updates designed to help make it easier for enterprises to get both structured and unstructured data into RAG pipelines. Making structured data accessible for RAG requires more than just looking up a single row in a table. It involves translating natural language queries into complex SQL queries to filter, join tables and aggregate data.The challenges are further compounded for unstructured data, where by definition there is no structure for the data. To help solve those challenges AWS announced new services for structured data retrieval support, ETL (extract, transform and load) for unstructured data, data automation and knowledge base support. “Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) is a very popular technique for customizing your data, but one of the challenges with retrieval augmented generation is it’s historically been mostly for text data,” Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of AI and Data at AWS, told VentureBeat. ” And if you see enterprises, most of the data, especially operational, is sitting in data lakes and data warehouses, and that has never been ready for RAG, per se.” Improving structured data retrieval support with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases Why isn’t structured data ready for RAG? Sivasubramanian provided a few scenarios. “To build a highly accurate, secure system, you’ve got to actually understand the schema, build a custom schema embedding, and then actually understand the historical query log, and then keep up with the changes and schemas,” Sivasubramanian said. During his keynote at re:invent Sivasubramanian explained that the Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases service is a fully managed RAG capability that enables enterprises to customize responses with contextual and relevant data. “It automates the complete RAG workflow, removing the need for you to write custom code to integrate your data sources and manage queries,” he said. With structured data retrieval support in Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases, Sivasubramanian said that AWS is providing a fully managed RAG solution. It enables enterprises to natively query all their structured data to generate results for generative AI applications. Knowledge Bases will automatically generate and execute the SQL queries to retrieve enterprise data and then enrich the model’s responses. “The cool thing is, it also adjusts to your schema and data, and it learns from your query patterns and provides the customization options for enhanced accuracy,” he said. “Now with the ability to easily access structured data for your RAG, you will generate more powerful and intelligent gen AI applications in the enterprise.” GraphRAG: Bringing it all together in a knowledge graph Another key enterprise AI challenge that AWS is looking to solve for RAG is helping to improve accuracy, with more data sources. That’s the challenge that the new GraphRAG capability aims to solve. “One of the big challenges in enterprises is to piece apart distinct pieces of data and show how they are connected so that you can build explainable RAG systems,” Sivasubramanian said. “This is where knowledge graphs are super important.” Sivasubramanian explained that knowledge graphs create relationships across multiple data sources by connecting different pieces of information. “When these relationships are converted into graph embeddings for your gen AI applications, the system can easily traverse this graph and retrieve these connections to gather a holistic view of your customer data,” he said. The new GraphRAG capabilities in Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases automatically generate graphs using the Amazon Neptune graph database service. Sivasubramanian noted that itlinks the relationship between various data sources, creating more comprehensive Gen AI applications without the need for any graph expertise. Tackling the challenges of unstructured data with Amazon Bedrock Data Automation Another critical enterprise data challenge is the issue of unstructured data. It’s an issue that many vendors are trying to solve, including startups like Anomalo . When data, be it a pdf, audio or video file needs to be indexed for RAG use cases, having some kind of understanding of what’s in the data is crucial to making the data useful. “Unfortunately, unstructured data is difficult to extract and it needs to be processed and transformed to make it ready,” Sivasubramanian said. The new Amazon Bedrock Data Automation technology is AWS’ answer to that challenge. Sivasubramanian explained that the feature will automatically transform unstructured multi model content into structured data to power gen AI applications, “I like to think of this as a gen AI powered ETL [Extract,Transform and Load] for unstructured data,” he said. Amazon Bedrock Data Automation will automatically extract, transform and process an enterprise’s multimodal content at scale. He noted that with a single API, an enterprise can generate custom outputs, aligned to data schemas and parse multimodal content for genAI applications. “With these updates, we are empowering you to harness all of your data to build contextually more relevant gen AI applications,” he said. Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily By subscribing, you agree to VentureBeat's Terms of Service. Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here . An error occured.
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Edinburgh Airport shut down by IT issue just as holiday travel season gets under wayEAST LANSING, Mich. — The sight was a common one for Andrew Kolpacki. For many a Sunday, he would watch NFL games on TV and see quarterbacks putting their hands on their helmets, desperately trying to hear the play call from the sideline or booth as tens of thousands of fans screamed at the tops of their lungs. When the NCAA's playing rules oversight committee this past spring approved the use of coach-to-player helmet communications in games for the 2024 season, Kolpacki, Michigan State's head football equipment manager, knew the Spartans' QBs and linebackers were going to have a problem. "There had to be some sort of solution," he said. As it turns out, there was. And it was right across the street. Kolpacki reached out to Tamara Reid Bush, a mechanical engineering professor who not only heads the school's Biomechanical Design Research Laboratory but also is a football season ticket-holder. People are also reading... Kolpacki "showed me some photos and said that other teams had just put duct tape inside the (earhole), and he asked me, 'Do you think we can do anything better than duct tape,?" Bush said. "And I said, 'Oh, absolutely.'" Bush and Rylie DuBois, a sophomore biosystems engineering major and undergraduate research assistant at the lab, set out to produce earhole inserts made from polylactic acid, a bio-based plastic, using a 3D printer. Part of the challenge was accounting for the earhole sizes and shapes that vary depending on helmet style. Once the season got underway with a Friday night home game against Florida Atlantic on Aug. 30, the helmets of starting quarterback Aidan Chiles and linebacker Jordan Turner were outfitted with the inserts, which helped mitigate crowd noise. DuBois attended the game, sitting in the student section. "I felt such a strong sense of accomplishment and pride," DuBois said. "And I told all my friends around me about how I designed what they were wearing on the field." All told, Bush and DuBois have produced around 180 sets of the inserts, a number that grew in part due to the variety of helmet designs and colors that are available to be worn by Spartan players any given Saturday. Plus, the engineering folks have been fine-tuning their design throughout the season. Dozens of Bowl Subdivision programs are doing something similar. In many cases, they're getting 3D-printed earhole covers from XO Armor Technologies, which provides on-site, on-demand 3D printing of athletic wearables. The Auburn, Alabama-based company has donated its version of the earhole covers to the equipment managers of programs ranging from Georgia and Clemson to Boise State and Arizona State in the hope the schools would consider doing business with XO Armor in the future, said Jeff Klosterman, vice president of business development. XO Armor first was approached by the Houston Texans at the end of last season about creating something to assist quarterback C.J. Stroud in better hearing play calls delivered to his helmet during road games. XO Armor worked on a solution and had completed one when it received another inquiry: Ohio State, which had heard Michigan State was moving forward with helmet inserts, wondered if XO Armor had anything in the works. "We kind of just did this as a one-off favor to the Texans and honestly didn't forecast it becoming our viral moment in college football," Klosterman said. "We've now got about 60 teams across college football and the NFL wearing our sound-deadening earhole covers every weekend." The rules state that only one player for each team is permitted to be in communication with coaches while on the field. For the Spartans, it's typically Chiles on offense and Turner on defense. Turner prefers to have an insert in both earholes, but Chiles has asked that the insert be used in only one on his helmet. Chiles "likes to be able to feel like he has some sort of outward exposure," Kolpacki said. Exposure is something the sophomore signal-caller from Long Beach, California, had in away games against Michigan and Oregon this season. Michigan Stadium welcomed 110,000-plus fans for the Oct. 26 matchup between the in-state rivals. And while just under 60,000 packed Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, for the Ducks' 31-10 win over Michigan State three weeks earlier, it was plenty loud. "The Big Ten has some pretty impressive venues," Kolpacki said. "It can be just deafening," he said. "That's what those fans are there for is to create havoc and make it difficult for coaches to get a play call off." Something that is a bit easier to handle thanks to Bush and her team. She called the inserts a "win-win-win" for everyone. "It's exciting for me to work with athletics and the football team," she said. "I think it's really exciting for our students as well to take what they've learned and develop and design something and see it being used and executed." Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!