Free Republic

Texas Governor Greg Abbott hit out at musicians on Tuesday who are pulling out of the South by Southwest festival (SXSW) over the U.S. Army's sponsorship of the event, telling them "Don't come back" to the state. The internationally recognized event brings thousands of visitors to Austin each March, showcasing music, film and interactive media. This year's festival is running from March 8-16 and includes live panels and special events. However, it comes amid heightened tensions in the U.S. and around the world due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The U.S. is currently the foremost supplier of weapons to Israel,...

Date Issued: September 8, 2022 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is informing the public about reports of cancers, including squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and various lymphomas, in the scar tissue (capsule) that forms around breast implants. The various lymphomas reported are not the same as the lymphomas described in previous FDA Communications as Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL). The FDA learned about these reports through our continual postmarket review of breast implants and our ongoing collaboration with external stakeholders. After preliminary review of published literature as part of our ongoing monitoring of the safety of breast...

Speculation abounded Sunday after President Trump was photographed with what appeared to be a new hairstyle during a surprise visit Sunday to a Virginia church. Trump’s slicked-back hair was a far cry from his usual look, which has been the subject of mockery in the pages of The New Yorker and "Saturday Night Live."

A large clinical trial launched this week will test a new, gel-based form of male birth control, Gizmodo reported Friday. If it proves safe and effective, the gel could finally expand the very short list of contraceptive options that can be utilised by men. "Many women cannot use hormonal contraception and male contraceptive methods are limited to vasectomy and condoms," study investigator Diana Blithe, said in a statement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is funding the trial. "A safe, highly effective and reversible method of male contraception would fill an important public health need." The gel, applied...

3D printing is proving to be a potential game changer for a wide variety of fields. One group in particular that could benefit is the medical community, thanks to a recent development by scientists that could make it easier to print organs from living tissue. How? By printing structures inside of special gel that provides support during the build process. New Scientist reports that researchers from the University of Florida in Gainesville came to the breakthrough method while searching for a way to enable the printing of items that cannot support their own weight. The technique prints objects inside a...

Alcohol hand gel meant to combat swine flu has been banned from a prison after inmates became embroiled in a drunken brawl after drinking it. Hand gels supplied to a prison to combat the risk of swine flu have been removed after inmates realised it contained alcohol and began drinking it to try to get drunk. At least one prisoner at HMP The Verne on Portland, Dorset, was found intoxicated. The Prison Service confirmed that this case was being investigated but meanwhile antibacterial gel pumps had been removed as a "precautionary measure". Andy Fear, a member of the Verne's Prison...

A platelet-rich gel derived from one's own blood could speed up the healing of wounds and cuts.Researchers at the University of Cincinnati say that a topical gel derived from a patient's own blood may help prevent infection while speeding up the healing process. The finding could mean that, in the not too distant future, a concentrated "cocktail" of a person's own blood could be used to help dress wounds, particularly in patients with diabetes or other disorders that slow the healing process. Blood's healing effects lie in its platelets--sticky, disc-shaped molecules that naturally flock to the site of a wound,...

Interrogations of suspects in Pakistan lead its investigators to believe that the alleged plot to blow up US-bound jetliners was sanctioned by the Al-Qaeda leadership, a senior intelligence official said on Thursday. The terror group's No 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri probably cleared the plot, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation. The latest investigations by Pakistan also indicate that a British national arrested in Pakistan, Rashid Rauf, planned the plot and recruited people in Pakistan. He had also made contacts with people in Britain to take part, the official said. He said...

Almost half U.S. women do not mind if a man is losing his hair, but 99 percent are against comb-overs, a new survey has found. Forty-eight percent of the women in the online poll for Cargo magazine say men shouldn't even worry about hair loss, while 32 recommend going with the flow and cutting all hair off. But only 1 percent suggest hiding a balding head under a cap or a comb-over. Fifty-eight percent of the women say men look sexiest in jeans and a t-shirt, but they hate men in anything too trendy: 92 percent hated leather pants, 91...

LONDON (Reuters) - Millions of aging baby-boomers could be spared the need to use reading glasses to see the small print if a new treatment developed by scientists in Australia is proven safe and effective. The technique, which involves replacing the contents of the lens in the eye with a soft polymer gel, will initially be used to improve cataract surgery in elderly patients. "But once it is shown to be safe and effective, we think that more and more younger people who are starting to need reading glasses will adopt it as well," Arthur Ho, of the University of...