Published: 09:38 EST, 27 September 2016 | Updated: 12:37 EST, 27 September 2016
A retired Michigan
man decided it wasn't enough to put a Donald Trump campaign sign in his front
yard to show his support for the controversial Republican candidate.
Instead, Almont
resident Wally Maslowsky, decided to mow 'TRUMP' in huge letters into the grass
of his 8-acre lawn in LapeerCounty.
Drone footage taken
from the air shows how expansive the sign spreads across the land.
Measured from the
front of the 'T' to the back of the 'P', is 330 feet, while the letters are
176-feet high, making the entire creation over 58,000 square feet, Maslowsky
told CBS Detroit.
Maslowsky worked at
General Motors before retiring, and came up with the idea during his spare time
gardening.
'I was cutting out
there one day and I said, well, it would be pretty neat to put a sign in here,'
he told CBS.
'Being that I've got
a design background I just kind of came in the house and laid it out and
plotted some points kinda like you're doing a survey when you're laying out a
basement for a house.'
Maslowsky says the
project took about four or five hours over the weekend to complete.
Maslowsky told the
station that there is a lot of support for Donald Trump in the area around
Almont.
Hillary Clinton still
leads Trump 38%-35% in Michigan,
according to the latest polls.
'I decided, well, I
could do this; so just for the heck of it I did it,' Maslowsky said.
'I mean, that's what
retired people do to keep busy, right? …Either that or sit in front of the TV
and get old.'
Maslowsky said he
didn't think the sign would become a big deal, until his daughter-in-law posted
pictures of what he had done to Twitter.
'And I said, well,
you know, I didn't do this for the news or anything, I'm not looking for any
kind of publicity, and she says, ''Well, why'd you do it?''
'I said, just for
fun, just to do it! Let the planes see it when they fly over.'
After three years of research, a Ph.D. student at the University of Melbourne may have discovered a way to
killsuperbugswithout
the use of antibiotics.
Shu Lam believes that she has found the key to averting a health
crisis so severe that the United Nations recently declared it a "fundamental threat"
to global health.
Antibiotic-resistantsuperbugs killabout 170,000 people a year and,
according to aBritish study, are
estimated to kill up to 10 million people a year by 2050 and cost the world
economy $100 trillion.
"If we fail to address this problem quickly and
comprehensively, antimicrobial resistance will make providing high-quality
universal healthcare coverage more difficult if not impossible," UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moontold The Guardian.
"It will undermine sustainablefoodproduction. And it will put the
sustainable developmentgoalsin
jeopardy."
In what is beinghailedby scientists in the field as "a
breakthrough that could change the face of modern medicine," Lam and her
team developed a star-shaped peptide polymerthat
targets the resistant superbugs, rips apart their cell walls and kills them.
"These star polymers screw up the way bacteria
survives," Lamtold VICE. "Bacteria need to divide and
grow but when our star is attached to the membrane it interferes with these
processes. This puts a lot of stress on the bacteria and it initiates a process
to kill itself from stress."
A
bacterium cell before (left) and after being treated by the star-shaped
polymers.University
of Melbourne
Lamtold The Telegraphthe polymers have been effective in
treating mice infected by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and are relatively
non-toxic to the healthy cells in the body. The reduction in toxicity is
because of the larger size of the polymers which make them too big to enter
healthy cells.
Lam's findings were recently published in theNature Microbiologyjournal
and while the results are promising in the lab and on mice, she said there is
still a long way to go.
"We still need to do a lot of studies and a lot of tests—for
example, to see whether these polymers have any side effects on our
bodies," she explained to Vice. "We need a lot of detailed
assessments like that, [but] they could hopefully be implemented in the near
future."
Professor Greg Qiao, her Ph.D. supervisor, told The Telegraph they
will need at least five more years to fully develop her project unless millions
of dollars are invested into speeding up the process.
However, "The really good news about this is that, at the
moment, if you have a superbug and you run out of antibiotics, there's not much
you can do. At least you can do something now," he said.
So what would the star polymer treatment look like in the future?
As Lam explained in aninterview with VICE:
"The quickest way to make this available to
the public is through topical application, simply because you go through less
procedures as opposed to ingesting these molecules into the body. So when you
have a wound or a bacterial infection on the wound then you [generally] apply
some sort of antibacterial cream.
"The star polymers could potentially become
one of the anti-bacterial ingredients in this cream. Ultimately, we hope that
what we're discovering here could replace antibiotics. In other words, we also
hope that we will be able to inject this into the body to treat serious
infections, or even to disperse it in the form of a pill which patients can
take, just like somebody would take an antibiotic."
Does
this 25 year-old hold the key to winning the war against superbugs?
Not
many 25-year-olds can claim to get up at 4am and work weekends to save the
world from an impending Armageddon that could cost tens of millions of lives.
But for
the past three years, Shu Lam, a Malaysian PhD student at the University of Melbourne,
has confined herself to a scientific laboratory to figure out how to kill
superbugs that can no longer be treated with antibiotics.
She
believes that she has found the key to averting a health crisis so severe that
last week the United Nations convened its first ever general assembly meeting
on drug-resistant bacteria.
\\
The
overuse and incorrect use of antibiotics has rendered some strains of
bacteria untreatable, allowing so-called “superbugs” to mutate. Last
Wednesday, the problem was described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a
“fundamental threat” to global health and safety.
Superbugs
kill an estimated 700,000 people a year, among them 230,000 newborns. But,
according to a recent British study, this number will rise to a
staggering 10 million a year by 2050 – as many as cancer – if no
action is taken. It could cost the world economy $100 trillion.
Following
a UK-led drive to raise awareness of the potential impact of antimicrobial
resistance, UN members pledged to deliver an update on the superbug war by
2018, but in her small laboratory on the other side of the world, Lam is
already several steps ahead.
She
believes her method of killing bacteria using tiny star-shaped molecules, built
with chains of protein units called peptide polymers, is a ground-breaking
alternative to failing antibiotics.
On current trends, a common disease like
gonorrhoea may become untreatable.
“We’ve
discovered that [the polymers] actually target the bacteria and kill it in
multiple ways,” says Lam, who leads a half-a-dozen-strong research team. “One
method is by physically disrupting or breaking apart the cell wall of the
bacteria. This creates a lot of stress on the bacteria and causes it to start
killing itself.”
Her
research, published this month in the prestigious journal, Nature Microbiology,
has already been hailed by scientists as a breakthrough that could change the
face of modern medicine.
Lam
builds the star-shaped molecules at Melbourne’s
prestigious school of engineering. Each star has 16 or 32 “arms” made from
peptide polymers, a process she likens to putting together small blocks of
Lego.
When
unleashed, the polymers attack the superbugs directly, unlike antibiotics,
which create a toxic swamp that also destroys nearby healthy cells.
Lam successfully tested the polymer treatment on six
different superbugs in the laboratory, and against one strain of bacteria in
mice. Even after multiple generations of mutations, the superbugs have proven
incapable of fighting back.
“We found
the polymers to be really good at wiping out bacterial infections,” she says.
“They are actually effective in treating mice infected by antibiotic-resistant
bacteria. At the same time, they are quite non-toxic to the healthy cells in
the body.”
The
reduction in toxicity is because the larger size of the peptide polymers, about
10 nanometres in diameter, means they cannot enter healthy cells.
Her
scientific breakthrough has left Lam little time for socialising. Due to the
sensitivities of her biological experiments, even her weekends cannot be
regarded as her own. “For a time, I had to come in at 4am in the morning to
look after my mice and my cells,” she says.
But for the ambitious doctor’s daughter, the sacrifice has been worth it. “I wanted
to be involved in some kind of research that would help solve problems,” she
says.
“This
research is significant because everyone is worried about superbugs. Suddenly,
a lot of people have been telling me that either they themselves or their
relatives have been infected, that they have been in intensive care because of
a superbug, and that people they know have actually died,” added Lam.
“I really
hope that the polymers we are trying to develop here could eventually be a
solution.”
The
growing superbug crisis has been described by scientists as a “slow-motion
tsunami”.
The
world is slowly waking up to the nightmare threat of a post-antibiotic era that
could end modern medicine and create a situation where mundane problems such as
a sore throat or a grazed knee could prove fatal.
But it
was Alexander
Fleming, the Scot who in 1928 discovered penicillin, the world’s
first antibiotic, who first sounded a warning about the consequences of its
misuse. “There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself
and, by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them
resistant,” he cautioned while accepting his Nobel Prize in 1945.
“On
current trends, a common disease like gonorrhoea may become untreatable,” Chan
said last week. “Doctors facing patients will have to say: ‘I’m sorry – there’s
nothing I can do for you.’”
An
outbreak of a tough strain of typhoid in Africa
and a form of tuberculosis found in 105 countries have already proven
impervious to antibiotics. Gram-negative bacteria, which cause diseases like
pneumonia and meningitis, and wound- or surgical-site infections, is also
proving resistant.
Meanwhile, only two new classes of antibiotics have entered the market in the last
half-century.
For
pharmaceutical companies, antibiotics have proven to be a poor investment,
because development costs are high, the resulting drugs rid the patient of the
target disease after a short period of time. By contrast, chronic illness such
as high blood pressure require treatments to be taken daily for the rest of a
patient’s life.
“Incentives
must be found to recreate the prolific era of antibiotic discovery that took
place from 1940 to 1960,” said Chan.
Lam hopes
her “innovative” research will encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest. “I
hope it will attract some interest, because what we have discovered is quite
different from antibiotics,” she says.
“Some
people have been telling me ‘Please work harder, so that we can have a solution
and put it out on the market.’ But with research, you need to have a lot of
patience because we still have quite a long way to go.”
Donald Trump,
Hillary Clinton debate at Hofstra is most-watched debate in history
Bulk of viewers
watched on the four major broadcast networks
Monday’s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was seen by
81.4 million viewers across numerous broadcast and cable networks, according to
Nielsen, making it the most-watched debate in history. The 1980 encounter
between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter was seen by 80.6 million.
The bulk of viewers watched on the four major broadcast networks, with
43.8 million tuning in. An estimated 26.1 million watched the three cable news
networks with Fox News (11.359 million) attracting the most viewers.
The bulk of viewers watched on the network-owned stations, but other
networks simulcast the debate, including Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, PBS,
CNBC, MSNBC, Univision, Telemundo and C-SPAN. The networks’ websites also
simulcast the debate. Numerous other websites, from BuzzFeed to Yahoo, streamed
the debate, but those numbers are not counted by Nielsen.
There
are 115.6 million homes in the United
States with TVs; however, Nielsen doesn’t
count one person per viewing household, but — on average — over two.
Pundits in recent days had thrown around a figure of 100 million viewers
as the benchmark that could be possibly be achieved, or even exceeded.
If polls only included media
pundits, Hillary Clinton would have won Monday’s debate by a landslide, but
online surveys had Donald Trump as theyugewinner.
The
Drudge Report online vote had 80 percent of respondents giving the victory to
Trump, and a Time.com survey had the Republican nominee leading Clinton by 4 percentage
points – 52 percent to 48 percent – after more than 1,300,000 votes were cast.
CNBC and Breitbart votes also had Trump winning the event, at New
York’s HofstraUniversity.
A Fox
News online vote had Trump winning with 50 percent of respondents, Clinton at
35 percent and the other 15 percent declaring no one won.
The
online surveys are not scientific and, in many cases, supporters of either
candidate can cast multiple ballots. Still, the disconnect in judging Trump’s
performance was reminiscent of the Republican Party primary, when pundits often
said his competitors bested him while online polls put him on top.
Experts
say the online votes are a good gauge of enthusiasm, which could mean Trump’s
performance was enough to energize those who already backed him.
Experts
were near unanimous in finding Clinton was more disciplined and armed with
greater recall of facts, but Trump’s supporters believe his blunt style and
unconventional background are among his best attributes.
Trump’s
best moment, according to Stuart Tarlow, of American Thinker, came when he
distinguished himself from Clinton
based on their disparate backgrounds. Trump characterized his opponent as a
"typical politician," who knows how to make statements and promises
that sound good, but who never actually gets things done, Tarlow wrote.
Most
experts agree the winner and loser won’t be determined based on arcane rules of
debating. Hillary’s mission was to come off as well-versed on the facts and
warm, while Trump’s goal was to appear capable of filling the role of chief
executive.
The real
test of who won and who lost will likely come in the next wave of scientific
polling in what has become a dead-even race. If Trump continues to surge in key
battleground states, it will be taken as evidence he accomplished what he
needed to in the debate. If Clinton
stops or even reverses his momentum, she may be retroactively declared the
winner.
Edward
Panetta, professor of communication studies at the University of Georgia and
director of the Georgia Debate Union, said Trump got out of the gate fast, but
then struggled.
“While
Donald Trump was strong in the first 20 minutes of the debate he faltered badly
as the debate progressed,” Panetta said.
America has many heroes in
the form of celebrities and personalities but what makes Arnold Palmer unique
among giants is that it was Arnie, Arnie's Army, the sport of golf, and
television broadcasting that exploded together and defined for all time the
characteristics of a true American hero.
When Arnold Palmer first
came to the attention of a war weary nation in the 1950's, at the same time
television was just beginning to realize the importance of sports in the
broadcast world, and the image was changing from black and white to color, golf
was an obscure and elitist sport for the rich.
Palmer was the son of a
greenskeeper and professional from Pennsylvania,
a member of the working class who maintained the course for the rich and
powerful. From 1954 on Arnold Palmer was
the face of golf in America
and the world in one of the greatest meteoritic climbs to fame and fortune in
our history.
One day in 1954 an unknown
Arnold Palmer won the US Amateur Golf tournament and just four years later, in
1958, he won the Masters, the most prestigious tournament in the world of
professional golf. Besides popularizing
golf for the masses, he became the first professional athlete to become a
commercial icon through endorsements.
Palmer was the first
sports client signed by legendary Mark McCormack, founder of powerful IMG, the
International Management Group.
McCormack summed up Palmer's astonishing appeal in the following words.
McCormack listed five
attributes that made Palmer especially marketable: his good looks; his
relatively modest background (his father was a greenskeeper before rising to be
club professional and Latrobe was a humble club); the way he played golf,
taking risks and wearing his emotions on his sleeve; his involvement in a
string of exciting finishes in early televised tournaments; and his affability.
Arnie the Icon (double click for full screen)
The following is a wonderful tribute to Arnie by Adam Schupak of Golfweek
magazine.
Golf Week Magazine
Golf’s most beloved figure,
Arnold Palmer, dies at 87
Arnold Palmer, a seven-time major
winner who brought golf to the masses and became the most beloved figure in the
game, died Sunday in Pittsburgh from heart complications. He was 87. Palmer, a native of Latrobe, Pa.,
had been admitted to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he was
scheduled to have heart surgery Monday, according to the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette.
Reaction poured in from “Arnie’s
Army” of admirers in the world of golf.
“We loved him with a mythic
American joy,” said Palmer biographer James Dodson. “He represented everything
that is great about golf. The friendship, the fellowship, the laughter, the
impossibility of golf, the sudden rapture moment that brings you back, a moment
that you never forget, that’s Arnold Palmer in spades. He’s the defining figure
in golf.”
No one did more to popularize the
sport than Palmer. His dashing presence singlehandedly took golf out of the
country clubs and into the mainstream. Quite simply, he made golf cool. “I used to hear cheers go up from
the crowd around Palmer,” Lee Trevino said. “And I never knew whether he’d made
a birdie or just hitched up his pants.”
Golfweek subscriber Bob Conn of Guilford, Conn.,
in a letter to the editor, captured the loyalty and devotion that the public
felt for Palmer.
“If Arnold Palmer sent me a
personal letter asking me to join the cleanup crew at Bay Hill, I would buy a
green jumpsuit, stick a nail in a broom handle, grab some Hefty garbage bags
and shake his hand when I arrived.”
It wasn’t just the fans. His
fellow competitors revered him, and the next generation and the generation
after that worshipped him. When reporters at the 1954 U.S. Amateur asked
Gene Littler to identify the golfer as slender as wire and as strong as
cable cracking balls on the practice tee, Littler said: “That’s Arnold
Palmer. He’s going to be a great player some day. When he hits the ball, the
earth shakes.”
Palmer attended WakeForest
on a golf scholarship. At age 24, he was selling paint and living in Cleveland, just seven
months removed from a three-year stint in the Coast Guard, when he entered the
national sporting consciousness by winning the 1954 U.S. Amateur at the Country
Club of Detroit.
“That victory was the turning
point in my life,” he said. “It gave me confidence I could compete at the
highest level of the game.”
Palmer’s victory set in motion a
chain of events. Instead of returning to selling paint, Palmer played the next
week in the Waite Memorial in Shawnee-on-Delaware,
Pa., where he met Winifred
Walzer, who would become his wife of 45 years until her death in 1999. On Nov.
17, 1954, Palmer announced his intentions to turn pro, and golf would never be
the same.
In his heyday, Palmer famously
swung as if he were coming out of his shoes.
“What other people find in
poetry, I find in the flight of a good drive,” Palmer said.
He unleashed his corkscrew-swing
motion, which produced a piercing draw, with the ferocity of a summer
squall. In his inimitable swashbuckling style, Palmer succeeded with both
power and putter. In a career that spanned more than six decades, he won 62 PGA
Tour titles from 1955 to 1973, placing him fifth on the Tour’s all-time victory
list. He collected seven major titles in a six-plus-year explosion, from the
1958 Masters to the 1964 Masters.
Palmer didn’t lay up or leave
putts short. His go-for-broke style meant he played out of the woods and
ditches with equal abandon, and resulted in a string of memorable charges. At
the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills near Denver,
Palmer drove the first green and with his trademark knock-kneed, pigeon-toed
putting stance went out and birdied six of the first seven holes en route to
shooting 65 and winning the title in a furious comeback.
“Palmer on a golf course was Jack
Dempsey with his man on the ropes, Henry Aaron with a three-and-two fastball,
Rod Laver at set point, Joe Montana with a minute to play, A.J. Foyt with a lap
to go and a car to catch,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist
Jim Murray.
Even Palmer’s setbacks were epic.
He double-bogeyed the 18th hole at Augusta in the 1961 Masters after accepting
congratulations from a spectator whom he knew in the gallery. Palmer lost
playoffs in three U.S. Opens, the first to Jack Nicklaus in 1962; the second to
Julius Boros in 1963; and the third to Billy Casper in 1966 in heart-breaking
fashion. Palmer blew a seven-stroke lead with nine holes to go in regulation at
Olympic Club and lost to Casper
in an 18-hole playoff the next day.
Arnold Daniel Palmer, born Sept.
10, 1929, grew up in the working-class mill town of Latrobe, in a two-story frame house off the
sixth tee of Latrobe Country Club, where his father, Milfred “Deacon” Palmer,
was the greenskeeper and professional.
Though for decades Palmer made
his winter home in Orlando, Fla.,
he never lost touch with his western Pennsylvania
roots in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains.
“Of all the places I’ve been,
there isn’t any place that I’m more comfortable than I am right here,” he told Golfweek
in 2009 in Latrobe ahead of his 80th birthday.
Palmer was 3 years old when his
father wrapped his hands around a cut-down women’s golf club in the classic
overlapping Vardon grip, and instructed him to, “Hit it hard, boy. Go find it
and hit it hard again.”
Palmer’s combination of
matinee-idol looks, charisma and blue-collar background made him a superstar
just as golf ushered in the television era. He became Madison Avenue’s favorite
pitchman, accepting an array of endorsement deals that generated millions of
dollars in income on everything from licensed sportswear to tractors to motor
oil and even Japanese tearooms. Credit goes to agent Mark McCormack, who sold
the Palmer personality and the values he represented rather than his status as
a tournament winner.
Palmer’s business empire grew to
include a course-design company, a chain of dry cleaners, car dealerships, as
well as ownership of Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando. He even bought Latrobe Country Club,
which his father helped build with his own hands and where as a youth Palmer
was permitted only before the members arrived in the morning or after they had
gone home in the evening. Palmer designed more than 300 golf courses in 37
states, 25 countries and five continents (all except Africa and Antarctica),
including the first modern course built in China, in 1988.
Palmer led the PGA Tour money
list four times, and was the first player to win more than $100,000 in a
season. He played on six Ryder Cup teams, and was the winning captain twice. He
is credited with conceiving the modern Grand Slam of the Masters, U.S. Open,
British Open and PGA Championship during a conversation with golf writer Bob
Drum on a flight to Ireland
for the 1960 Canada Cup. Palmer won the Masters four times, the British
Open twice and the U.S. Open once.
It was Palmer who convinced his
colleagues that they could never consider themselves champions unless they had
won the Claret Jug. Nick Faldo, during Palmer’s farewell at St. Andrews in 1995, may have put it best when he said,
“If Arnold hadn’t come here in 1960, we’d probably all be in a shed on the
beach.” Mark O’Meara went a step further. “He made it possible for all of us to
make a living in this game,” he said.
In 1974, Palmer was one of the
original inductees into the World Golf Hall of Fame. As he grew older,
Palmer was let down by a shaky putter, but his popularity never waned. The
nascent Senior PGA Tour hitched its star to golf’s first telegenic personality
when Palmer turned 50. He relished winning again and became a regular on the
senior circuit, remaining active until 2006.
Palmer maintained a high profile
in the game, presiding over the Arnold Palmer Invitational every March, the
only living player with his name attached to a PGA Tour event. He also served
as the longtime national spokesperson for the USGA’s member program, and was an
original investor and frequent guest on Golf Channel. To countless others, he
became known for his eponymous drink consisting of equal parts iced tea and
lemonade.
On Sept. 12, 2012, Palmer was
awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He became just the sixth athlete to
receive the honor. Coupled with the Presidential Medal of Freedom that he was
awarded in 2004, Palmer held both of the highest honors that the U.S. can give
to a civilian. Palmer, who gave up his pilot’s
license in 2011, had been in deteriorating health since late 2015.
A ceremonial tee shot at the 2015
British Open was his last public golf shot. Palmer looked increasingly frail in
public appearances at the API in March and as an onlooker instead of an active
participant during the opening tee shot at the 2016 Masters in April.
“Winnie once said to me, ‘When
Arnold Palmer gives up flying his airplane and his ability to hit a golf ball,
he won’t be with us long,’ ” said Dodson, the biographer.
Palmer is survived by his second
wife, Kit, daughters Amy Saunders and Peggy Wears, six grandchildren, including
Sam Saunders, who plays on the PGA Tour, and nine great-grandchildren.
As a measure of his popularity,
Palmer, like Elvis Presley before him, was known simply as “The King.” But
in a life bursting from the seams with success, Palmer never lost his common
touch. He was a man of the people, willing to sign every autograph, shake every
hand, and tried to look every person in his gallery in the eye.
