READ THIS NEXT: Doing This at Night May Help You Ward Off Dementia, Study Says. By comparing the vision and eye structure of 24 people with Alzheimer’s and 24 age- and gender-matched people without, the team behind the Nature study identified some surprising ways that AD affects eyesight. Using the Farnsworth and L’Anthony D15 color tests—color arrangement tests commonly used as a measurements of color vision deficiency—they observed that “color vision was significantly affected in AD patients....

Figures from the past two weeks show that as cases climb nationwide, more than 30 states have seen a rise in patients admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 over the past two weeks, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) analyzed by NBC News. But of those states, just six have seen more than half of all new hospitalizations nationwide. The most recent increase began along with the latest sustained surge in cases....

Overall, the U.S. saw even more good news in recent days as the national seven-day average of newly reported COVID-19 cases dropped slightly, down two percent from the previous week, according to data from The Post as of Apr. 20. But some states still experienced sizable jumps in figures, with 20 states reporting an increase in their weekly averages and nine seeing significant spikes in new COVID cases of 15 percent or more since last week....

READ THIS NEXT: This Party Supply Chain Is Going Out of Business and Closing All Stores. While the number of Bed Bath & Beyond banner stores set to close is staggering, the news didn’t come as a shock. In 2020, the retailer announced that 200 underperforming stores would be closed over a two-year span, and in Jan. 2022, the retailer released a list of 37 stores that would be closing before the end of February....

The sustained downward trend in the national daily case average has brought the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. down to 64,276 as of Feb. 28, according to data from The New York Times. And as numbers approach pre-Delta surge levels not seen since July, many states are beginning to remove public health protocols such as mask requirements as officials begin to reassess how we learn to live with the virus....

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. reported an 11 percent dip in newly reported COVID cases over seven days, CNN reports. But some experts warn that the numbers represent more of a stabilization of skyrocketing numbers than an actual drop, cautioning that there’s very little reason to celebrate. “These kinds of fluctuations, on a statistical basis, aren’t sustainable,” Amesh Adalja, MD, an infectious disease expert with Johns Hopkins University, told CNN....

Some of you may be wondering why an innocent garden vegetable is topping the list of the biggest emoji turn-offs. The eggplant emoji is a notorious sexual innuendo and could send any online dater on the receiving end running for the hills. According to Plenty of Fish’s findings in a 2018 survey, 75 percent of respondents said they would not reply to a message that featured an eggplant emoji, which has become synonymous with a certain male appendage....

On April 20, Fresh Acquisitions, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Dallas, Texas. Fresh Acquisitions is the parent company of some of the most recognizable—and beloved—buffet restaurants in the U.S., including Furr’s Fresh Buffet, Hometown Buffet, Old Country Buffet, Country Buffet, Fire Mountain, and Ryan’s, as well as sit-down restaurant Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse. According to the company’s bankruptcy filing, prior to COVID, Fresh Acquisitions operated approximately 90 restaurants in 27 states....

The Bed Bath & Beyond closures come as part of a broader plan to trim an expansive and expensive real estate portfolio, and invest more heavily in digital sales. According to CNBC, the company’s executives believe that downsizing will “generate annual cost savings of between $250 million and $350 million, excluding related one-time expenses.” The 200 stores slated to close reportedly brought in roughly $1 billion in annual net sales in the 2019 fiscal year, meaning the company will need to reroute a portion of those dollars to online sales or remaining stores, which may come as a challenge....

Your viral load is the amount of virus in your body—measured inversely in Ct values. If your Ct value is higher, you have a lower viral load; if your Ct is lower, you have a higher viral load. A recent December study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases found that patients with a Ct of less than 22 had more than four times the odds of dying within 30 days compared to those who had higher Ct levels, or lower viral loads....

While most cases of COVID-19 are contracted from airborne particles via person-to-person contact, the study found that the “midday sunlight in most U.S. and world cities during summer” can break down the virus in a way it can’t during winter months, with UV rays deactivating coronavirus faster than it does most strains of the flu. The authors of the study, which was published in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology, concluded that “90 percent or more of SARS-CoV-2 virus will be inactivated after being exposed [to summer sun] for 11 to 34 minutes....

This number—or one even higher—is in our future if circumstances do not change in a significant way. But, IHME has also projected that, if 95 percent of Americans wore masks in public, the number of new deaths would drop by about 45,000. That’s a 60 percent difference. In the almost universal adoption of masks scenario, the total amount of American deaths by Nov. 1 would be closer to 163,000.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb U....

Researchers compared the happiest states, according to the World Happiness Report, to the average salary in each state in the hopes of seeing how much money it actually takes to be happy. In the top 25 happiest states, the average income ranged from $69,771.36 to $33,937.92. The happiest country in the world, according to the report, is Finland. In Helsinki, Finland’s capital, the average salary is £27,936 (about $36,000). So you don’t need to make a hefty income to have a happy life, but some studies show money could even get in the way of happiness....

The consensus is that there’s value in going longer between washes, and the rule of thumb is that the gentler and more natural the products, the better. That means choosing shampoos that are free of sulfates, parabens, unnatural fragrances, and other toxins. “Your hair needs to produce natural oils,” Juliette Dallas-Feeney, senior social media manager and beauty influencer at Birchbox recently told The New York Times. “If you wash it too much, you can strip your hair of them....

But how can you distinguish between a regular, run-of-the-mill headache and something COVID-related? While doctors are still looking into a COVID headache’s distinguishing features, one recent study published in The Journal of Headache and Pain shed some light on the subject. The researchers out of Istanbul University in Turkey surveyed 3,196 patients without COVID and 262 patients with a confirmed COVID diagnosis about their symptoms. They found that there are five key signs that your headache is the result of COVID, as opposed to another illness, stress, or migraine....

First, we considered the leading cause of death in America, heart disease, consulting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find the heart disease mortality rate per capita for each state. We also looked at the number two killer in the U.S., cancer, factoring in the mortality rate for that disease, according to the CDC as well. Next, we turned to COVID-19, which is now the third leading cause of death in the U....

In a new report from Uplift Legal Funding, names were ranked according to the frequency with which they appeared as claimants in personal injury lawsuit documents associated with accidents that occurred in public, at home, or in the workplace. “With this link between us as people and the names we are given, we thought that it would be interesting to take our data and find out which names are associated with those who are more accident prone,” explained Uplift Legal Funding’s owner, Jared Stern....

Now, a new survey conducted by Upgraded Points is shedding more light on what exactly people have been drinking and where. Upgraded Points followed Google Trends search data and determined that search interest for “cocktail recipes” in March 2020 was nearly double what it was in March 2019, aligning with those aforementioned sales figures. They also looked at search data from Mar. 2020 to Mar. 2021 to determine the most popular cocktail in each state, based on the most searched recipes....

The first factor we looked at was how each carrier scored on the most recent American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) Wireless Service and Cellular Telephone Report, which ranks carriers on a 100-point scale based on a variety of consumer benchmarks, including but not limited to range of plans, dropped calls, data speed, and network coverage. Then we turned to trusted tech review and information site Tom’s Guide to see where each carrier ranked out of the 12 on the site’s best phone carriers of 2021 list....

“When telling someone to ‘relax,’ the intentions are often well-meaning, but it can be invalidating to the person who is suffering,” says Lillian Rishty, LCSW, a psychotherapist and owner of a private practice in New York City. Rishty says this word often suggests that people have control over their anxiety disorder, which isn’t the case. She says it would be as if you told “someone with epilepsy to stop having a seizure....