An Orca-stra! .....................

I guess it’s going to be dark loads only for awhile...............

An investigator.................

Only You Can Prevent Florist Friars..................

does one need a current license.............................

are being made no longer........................

Accused of stealing nearly $300 worth of items from a Target store, a Tennessee mayor recently submitted his resignation from office. According to Target’s loss prevention department, the mayor was caught stealing at least twice on the same day.

Around 9 a.m. on September 19, Fairview Mayor John Blade, who is also President of the First Bank of Fairview, was shopping at a Target in Spring Hill when he used a self-checkout scanner and allegedly did not scan several items. Blade reportedly used his personal Target Credit Card to purchase only a few of the items while stealing at least 44 products from the store.

According to the police report, the mayor returned an hour later and committed the same crime. The store loss prevention officer “observed Mr. Blade taking multiple items and only scanning one of the items and placing these items into his shopping cart before exiting the Target store.”

Blade allegedly stole more than $281 worth of products, including household goods and skincare items. Last week, Blade turned himself in to the Maury County jail and was released on his own recognizance.

https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/10/16/tennessee-mayor-resigns-after-arrested-for-shoplifting/

Tinus Le Roux’s company, FanCam, takes high-resolution photos of crowds having fun. That might be at Busch Stadium, where FanCam is installed, or on Market Street, where FanCam set up its technology to capture Blues fans celebrating after the Stanley Cup victory.

As photos, they’re a fun souvenir. But paired with artificial intelligence, they’re something more: a tool that gives professional sports teams a much more detailed look at who’s in the audience, including their estimated age and gender. The idea, he explained Thursday on St. Louis on the Air, “is to help teams understand their fans a bit better … understand when they’re leaving their seats, what merchandise are they wearing?”

Now that the pandemic has made crowd size a matter of public health, Le Roux noted that FanCam can help teams tell whether the audience has swelled past 25% capacity — or how many patrons are wearing masks.

But for all the technology’s power, Le Roux believes in limits. He explained that he is not interested in technology that would allow him to identify individuals in the crowd.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2020-10-14/thursday-artificial-intelligence-shows-both-promise-and-peril

As the COVID-19 death toll continues to climb, Washington University researchers are testing whether lab-engineered proteins known as monoclonal antibodies can be used to treat the illness.

Though monoclonal antibodies have been used for decades to treat a variety of ailments, including cancer and arthritis, the pandemic has propelled these synthetic immune molecules into the spotlight. Results from early trials indicate certain antibodies can reduce the severity of COVID-19 in patients, but researchers say there’s still work to be done before a drug is ready for market.

For the uninitiated, the process of producing lab-grown antibodies can look a bit like science fiction.

Inside carefully controlled steel tanks, animal immune cells, often from mice or hamsters, grow in a warm nutrient slurry and create copy after copy of the antibodies. These synthetic antibodies are modeled after human antibodies collected from the blood plasma of patients who recovered from COVID-19.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2020-10-15/wash-u-researchers-test-lab-grown-antibodies-as-covid-19-treatment

Turnout.

More than 110,000 Missouri voters in the St. Louis region have already cast their ballots three weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.

Election authorities are busy processing those absentee and mail-in ballots and preparing for what could be record-breaking voter turnout. As of Oct. 15, around 112,000 more Missouri voters had registered to vote than in either the 2012 or 2016 presidential elections.

“Myself, as well as the other 116 election authorities, are working their tails off to make sure everything is run properly,” Franklin County Clerk Tim Baker said. “I mean all eyes are on us.”

Voters will elect the president, as well as decide several important state and local races, including the ones for Missouri governor, attorney general and congressional seats.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/government-politics-issues/2020-10-13/over-100-000-st-louisans-have-already-cast-ballots-in-missouri-election-officials-predict-record-turnout