Drowning

Local Collegiate Swimmer Makes a Splash By Opening British Swim School

Retrieved on: 
Friday, March 1, 2024

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., March 1, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School, the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise company, continues its rapid expansion across North America with the opening of its newest franchise location in Bloomington. Kelci Wood, one of the youngest franchisees in the brand's history, is leading the new location that's set to open on March 4, 2024.

Key Points: 
  • BLOOMINGTON, Ind., March 1, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School , the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise company, continues its rapid expansion across North America with the opening of its newest franchise location in Bloomington.
  • While in college, she spent three years as a swim instructor at another British Swim School location.
  • The first pool from British Swim School of Bloomington is located at Home2 Suites by Hilton Bloomington (1410 N Walnut St).
  • "We're thrilled to welcome Kelci Wood to our British Swim School family," said Ashley Gundlach, British Swim School President.

Women in Entertainment Announces Seventh Annual Summit

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 13, 2024

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Women in Entertainment (WIE) announced today that it will host its seventh annual summit on February 28, 2024 at the iconic Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California. This year's summit brings together renowned and innovative figures from the television, film, and media industries for a lineup of inspiring fireside chats and informative panel discussions.

Key Points: 
  • This year's summit brings together renowned and innovative figures from the television, film, and media industries for a lineup of inspiring fireside chats and informative panel discussions.
  • Founded by Renee Rossi ( Relativity Ventures ) and Gretchen McCourt, WIE brings together experienced leaders in the entertainment and marketing worlds to address a range of pivotal and timely issues that affect women.
  • "We're excited to continue our mission, spotlighting amazing, successful people in entertainment and media who generously share their valuable guidance and expertise," said Renee Rossi, Co-founder of Women in Entertainment.
  • Additional Summit sponsors include Dreamworks Animation, Morgan Stanley Global Sports & Entertainment, FOX Entertainment, Amazon MGM Studios, STX, MoviePass, Lionsgate, Buzzer PR amongst others.

Forget flowers, the greatest gift for 18th century romantics was the heart of a deceased lover

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 13, 2024

My research into 18th century preservation practices led me to a favourite book that details these heart histories of the famous and infamous: historian Charles Bradford’s quirky tome, Heart Burial (1933).

Key Points: 
  • My research into 18th century preservation practices led me to a favourite book that details these heart histories of the famous and infamous: historian Charles Bradford’s quirky tome, Heart Burial (1933).
  • Amazingly sweeping and entertaining, the book narrates the heart journeys of many – primarily western – military, religious and political figures.
  • One such figure, the diplomat Sir William Temple (1628-1699), is buried next to his wife in Westminster Abbey.
  • The practice of preserving the heart – the ancient symbol of the soul and emotion – was not uncommon.
  • But for people in the 18th century, as this case and others show, it also symbolised lovers being united in death.

Literary hearts

  • Perhaps the most storied literary heart is that of poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
  • Italian law required the cremation of a drowning victim’s body, so Shelley’s corpse was laid upon a funeral pyre on the shores of the sea, with literary luminaries such as Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt in attendance.
  • The Shelleys’ son, Sir Percy Florence, had his father’s heart encased in silver and placed on display at Boscombe Manor.
  • Upon his death in 1889, the heart was laid to rest in the family vault at St Peter’s Church, Bournemouth.

Hungry hearts

  • In May 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte’s corpse was autopsied over two days before it was to be transported from St Helena to France.
  • Napoleon had requested his intestines be preserved and given to his son, and his heart be sent to his wife Empress Marie-Louise.
  • When rumours circulated in January 1928 regarding the heart of renowned English novelist Thomas Hardy, many were in disbelief.
  • Placing the dead cat with the remainder of the heart in a box, he left the Hardy residence, surrounded by mourners, and proceeded to St Michael’s where the contents were buried.
  • Though Napoleon’s and Hardy’s storied hearts also serve as reminders, perhaps, that we shouldn’t take romantic traditions too seriously.


Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Jolene Zigarovich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Can ChatGPT edit fiction? 4 professional editors asked AI to do their job – and it ruined their short story

Retrieved on: 
Monday, February 12, 2024

We are professional editors, with extensive experience in the Australian book publishing industry, who wanted to know how ChatGPT would perform when compared to a human editor.

Key Points: 
  • We are professional editors, with extensive experience in the Australian book publishing industry, who wanted to know how ChatGPT would perform when compared to a human editor.
  • To find out, we decided to ask it to edit a short story that had already been worked on by human editors – and we compared the results.

The experiment: ChatGPT vs human editors

  • The story we chose, The Ninch (written by Rose), had gone through three separate rounds of editing, with four human editors (and a typesetter).
  • The first version had been rejected by literary journal Overland, but its fiction editor Claire Corbett had given generous feedback.
  • We had a wealth of human feedback to compare ChatGPT’s recommendations with.
  • By comparing it with human examples, we tried to determine where and at what stage in the process ChatGPT might be most successful as an editorial tool.

Round 1: the first draft

  • (Authors submitting stories to magazines and journals generally don’t give human editors a detailed, prescriptive brief.)
  • Interestingly, ChatGPT did not pick up that the story was now published and attributed to an author.
  • Nor did it define the genre, which is one of the first assessments an editor makes.
  • And the advice for more foreshadowing, dialogue and description, along with shorter paragraphs and an alternative ending, was generally sound.

Stage two: AI (re)writes

  • Could you please suggest places in the story where the pace needs to speed up or slow down?
  • Could you please suggest places where there is too much imagery and it needs more action storytelling instead?
  • Could you please suggest places in the story where the pace needs to speed up or slow down?
  • Could you please suggest places where there is too much imagery and it needs more action storytelling instead?
  • ChatGPT also changed the text from Australian English (which all Australian publications require) to US spelling and style (“realization”, “mom”).

What did the human editors do?

  • The biggest problem is that final transition – I don’t know how to read the narrator.
  • For me stories are driven by choices and I’m not clear what decision our narrator, or anyone else, in the story faces.
  • It’s entirely possible I’m not getting something important, but I think that if I’m not getting it, our readers won’t either.
  • It incorporates intellectual, creative and emotional capital – all gained from lived experience, complemented by technical skills and industry expertise, applied through the prism of human understanding.
  • (After all, the author doesn’t have to do what we say – ours is a persuasive profession.)

Round 2: the revised story

  • Next, we submitted a revised draft that had addressed Claire’s suggestions and incorporated the conversations with Nicola.
  • Again, it didn’t pick up that the story had already been published, nor did it clearly identify the genre.
  • It was a laborious process: the 2,500-word piece had to be submitted in chunks of 300–500 words and the revised sections manually combined.
  • Read more:
    'The entire industry is based on hunches': is Australian publishing an art, a science or a gamble?

Round 3: our final submission

  • In the third and final round of the experiment, we submitted the draft that had been accepted by Meanjin.
  • This time, we followed up with separate prompts for each element we wanted ChatGPT to review: title, pacing, imagery/description.
  • ChatGPT came back with suggestions for how to revise specific parts of the text, but the suggestions were once again formulaic.
  • There was no attempt to offer – or support – any decision to go against familiar tropes.


Sometimes editorial expertise shows itself in not changing a text. Different isn’t necessarily good. It takes an expert to recognise when a story is working just fine. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It also takes a certain kind of aerial, bird’s-eye view to notice when the way type is set creates ambiguities in the text. Typesetters really are akin to editors.

The verdict: can ChatGPT edit?

  • But we recommend editors and authors don’t ask it to give individual assessments or expert interventions any time soon.
  • A major problem that emerged early in this experiment involved ethics: ChatGPT did not ask for or verify the authorship of our story.
  • Human editors demonstrate their credentials through their work history, and keep their experience up-to-date with professional training and qualifications.
  • In Rose’s case, her oceanic allegory about difference, with a nod to the supernatural, was turned it into a story about a fish.

ChatGPT is ‘like the new intern’

  • AI suggestions can be scrutinised – and integrated or dismissed – by authors or editors during the creative process.
  • But when used by human editors, it’s like any other tool – as good, or bad, as the tradesperson who wields it.
  • Renée Otmar is affiliated with the Institute of Professional Editors, the Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria, Small Press Network and Life Stories Australia.
  • She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Health, Deakin University.

Morocco dinosaur discovery gives clues on why they went extinct

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, February 11, 2024

And that suggests their demise came suddenly, with the impact of a giant asteroid.

Key Points: 
  • And that suggests their demise came suddenly, with the impact of a giant asteroid.
  • The discovery of the 180km-wide Chixculub asteroid impact crater in Mexico suggested a sudden extinction of dinosaurs and other species, driven by the impact.
  • But others have argued that a long, slow decline in dinosaur diversity contributed to their extinction.
  • It’s not just that dinosaur fossils are so rare; the fossil record is also patchy.
  • Because it’s such a huge landmass, Africa probably had far more dinosaur species than North America.

What we’ve found

  • Dinosaurs may have swum out to islands searching for food, as deer and elephants do today, and some might have drowned.
  • Other dinosaurs might have been washed out to sea by floods or storms, or drowned in rivers that carried them downstream to the ocean.
  • And so, studying marine beds, and working over many years, we’ve slowly put together a picture of Africa’s last dinosaurs, bone by bone.
  • It was smaller than Chenanisaurus, about five metres long – small by dinosaur standards, but large compared to modern predators.
  • If so, that means dinosaurs were cut down in their prime; burning out rather than fading away.

What our findings show

  • For over 100 million years, they evolved and diversified, producing a remarkable range of species: predators, herbivores, aquatic species, even flying forms, the birds.
  • Then in a single, catastrophic moment, everything was wiped out in the months of darkness caused by dust and soot from the impact.


Nicholas R. Longrich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

British Swim School Expands Presence to Northeastern Florida

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 7, 2024

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 7, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School, the nation's leading "learn to swim'' franchise, proudly announces its newest location in St. Johns County, Florida. British Swim School of St. Johns-St. Augustine is owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Carlo Bellatin and Nancy Linares. They are located within the LA Fitness at 11250 Old St. Augustine Road Jacksonville, FL 32257 with lessons on Tuesday through Thursday and Saturdays.

Key Points: 
  • JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 7, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School , the nation's leading "learn to swim'' franchise, proudly announces its newest location in St. Johns County, Florida.
  • British Swim School of St. Johns-St. Augustine is owned and operated by husband-and-wife team Carlo Bellatin and Nancy Linares.
  • Nancy's priority is the safety skills taught by British Swim School.
  • Ashley Gundlach, President of British Swim School, shared her enthusiasm about the new franchisees.

British Swim School Proud to Expand in Northern Delaware

Retrieved on: 
Friday, February 2, 2024

NEWARK, Del., Feb. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School, the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise, proudly announces the opening of its first location in the state of Delaware. British Swim School of Northern Delaware is owned and operated by Freddy and Susie Hunt and is held at the Newark Senior Center at 200 Whitechapel Drive in Newark.

Key Points: 
  • NEWARK, Del., Feb. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School , the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise, proudly announces the opening of its first location in the state of Delaware.
  • British Swim School of Northern Delaware is owned and operated by Freddy and Susie Hunt and is held at the Newark Senior Center at 200 Whitechapel Drive in Newark.
  • "We were especially drawn to British Swim School because of the safety aspect of it —'the survival of the littlest.'"
  • "Susie and Freddy's journey from seeking swim lessons for their daughter to becoming franchise owners is a testament to the impact and importance of our mission at British Swim School," said Ashley Gundlach, President of British Swim School.

Locked-in syndrome is predominant outcome when children survive drowning, larger study confirms

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 26, 2024

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Jan. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- It is a far cry from the traditionally thought-of "vegetative state" in which the mind is absent while the body lives on. Indeed, it is the opposite. Children with "locked-in syndrome," unable to move or speak, are awake and fully aware of their surroundings.

Key Points: 
  • Children with "locked-in syndrome," unable to move or speak, are awake and fully aware of their surroundings.
  • Now, in follow-up research published in the journal Pediatric Neurology, the team reports the largest study to date on the subject.
  • The recently published analysis of 154 children confirms that the predominant outcome of non-fatal pediatric drowning is locked-in syndrome.
  • In the research, 60% of children who survived drowning events (93 of 154) were classified as locked in by family caregivers surveyed by UT Health San Antonio.

British Swim School Expands Footprint in Southern California

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 24, 2024

GLENDORA, Calif., Jan. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School, the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise company, is making waves again in southern California with its newest location in Los Angeles County. British Swim School of Pomona Valley officially opened this month. Owners Kyle and Angela Turner will hold lessons at the 24-Hour Fitness on E. Gladstone Street and offer lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Key Points: 
  • GLENDORA, Calif., Jan. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- British Swim School , the nation's leading "learn to swim" franchise company, is making waves again in southern California with its newest location in Los Angeles County.
  • British Swim School of Pomona Valley officially opened this month.
  • Coupled with Angela's childcare and education experience, their mission to open a British Swim School in Kyle's hometown of Glendora is a natural and heartfelt endeavor.
  • For more information about British Swim School, visit https://britishswimschool.com/pomona-valley/
    To learn more about the benefits of British Swim School's franchising opportunities, visit http://www.britishswimschoolfranchise.com .

Mary Alexander Files Lawsuit On Behalf of Young Man Killed After Falling into Uncovered Manhole

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, January 18, 2024

MANTECA, Calif., Jan. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Mary Alexander, principal and founder of Mary Alexander & Associates, filed a lawsuit against the City of Manteca in San Joaquin Superior Court on behalf of the mother of a young man who was killed when he fell into an uncovered manhole.

Key Points: 
  • MANTECA, Calif., Jan. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Mary Alexander, principal and founder of Mary Alexander & Associates, filed a lawsuit against the City of Manteca in San Joaquin Superior Court on behalf of the mother of a young man who was killed when he fell into an uncovered manhole.
  • Lori Fernand brought the lawsuit on behalf of her deceased son.
  • The complaint further states that these water pump stations were built, engineered, designed, maintained, and inspected by the City of Manteca.
  • "This is a tragic circumstance that could have been avoided had the proper precautions been taken by the City of Manteca to keep all park-goers safe," said Mary Alexander.