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No doubt you've heard people complain they have "stomach flu." You may have complained about it yourself after a bout of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea that seems to come from nowhere. In fact, though, stomach flu is a misnomer. There’s no such thing.
The flu, influenza, is a respiratory infection that affects the lungs. But when people say stomach flu, they usually mean vomiting or diarrhea, says Jay Solnick, MD, professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine. "Stomach flu is a vague, fuzzy way to describe these things," he says.
Doctors prefer the term gastroenteritis, which means irritated and inflamed stomach and intestines (the gastrointestinal tract) and may be any number of things, including bacteria or viruses.
Here, Solnick and other experts tell WebMD more about gastroenteritis, what causes it, what symptoms to expect, what self-treatment works, and when to seek medical help.

What Is Gastroenteritis?

The term gastroenteritis is broad even when used by doctors, Solnick says. "If I was talking to a colleague and told him a patient of mine had gastroenteritis, my colleague would expect that I meant he had nausea or vomiting or diarrhea," he says.
Generally, however, doctors use the term gastroenteritis to describe the sudden onset of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, says David Burkhart, MD, a staff physician at the Indiana University Health Center in Bloomington.
Usually, gastroenteritis is caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites, which can spread quickly through contaminated food or water.

• Bacteria that cause gastroenteritis include Escherichia coli. Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Shigella. These bacteria are usually found in food, but can be spread person to person, Burkhart says.
• Viruses that trigger gastroenteritis include adenoviruses, rotaviruses, calciviruses, astroviruses, and norovirus. Certain viruses are found in specific places, Burkhart says. For instance, norovirus often shows up on college campuses, lingering on doorknobs and shared keyboards, spreading the gastroenteritis among students.
• Parasites and protozoans that commonly lead to gastroenteritis include Giardia and cryptosporidium. The parasite Giardia lives in the intestines of infected people or animals, and often spreads when someone swallows polluted water.
• Chemical toxins in seafood can also cause gastroenteritis. So can exposure to heavy metals, such as lead in drinking water.

Other causes of non contagious gastroenteritis include food allergies, caffeine, or medications such as antibiotics, steroids, aspirin, and laxatives.

Gastroenteritis Symptoms

Besides the nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, symptoms of gastroenteritis can include a low-grade fever of about 99 degrees.
The diarrhea is typically mild to moderate: two to four loose stools a day for teens and adults. For babies, it typically means the stools seep through the diapers. Many people also complain of painful bloating.
More serious symptoms include:

• Vomit or stool that contains blood
• Long-duration vomiting, such as more than 48 hours
• Fever that is 101 degrees F. or higher
• Abdominal swelling or pain in the right lower side of the abdomen
• Dehydration

Malignant mesothelioma (me-zoe-thee-lee-O-muh) is a rare cancer that occurs in the thin layer of tissue that covers the majority of your internal organs (mesothelium).

Mesothelioma is an aggressive and deadly form of cancer. Mesothelioma treatments are available, but for many people with mesothelioma, a cure is not possible.

A little over two years after its iOS-only launch, eight months after its acquisition, five months after designer Cole Reinke leaked an image of Instagram’s efforts to bridge mobile and web, and one week after the company hit its most photographed event ever, Instagram has finally bulked up its web presence.

Citing overwhelming user demand as the motivation, the fourteen-person team behind Instagram has built a simplified web interface for User Profiles, viewable at http://www.instagram.com/alexia (or whatever your username is). While it’s currently launched to a whitelist, the web functionality should roll out to all 100 million registered users by the end of this week.

Microsoft may be working to completely retire Windows Live Messenger (formerly named MSN Messenger) in the coming months, with plans to integrate the service into Skype, reports the Verge.

An official announcement revealing this change could come as soon as this week, although Microsoft has yet to confirm or deny anything. This decision would make quite a lot of sense, if true, as Microsoft has been in the process of retiring the entire Windows Live brand for months.

On Friday, two men were sentenced to jail and fined in the Eastern District Court of Virginia after pleading guilty to several counts of copyright infringement. Willie Lambert, 57, and Sean Lovelady, 27, were part of a larger group called IMAGiNE, whose members recorded movies in theaters and then uploaded those recordings to BitTorrent.

 Facebook is testing a new Wi-Fi hot spot service for local businesses that lets users surf the net for free if they do a Facebook check-in.

First noticed by developer Tom Waddington today, the social network's experiment has businesses providing the Internet service in exchange for a Facebook router that will direct customers to the businesses' Facebook page after they check in.

As far as I am concerned there is nothing better than finding a great, fun game for the PlayBook that is free and Monster Dash is just that.

The plot is simple. You control an elite soldier who runs from left to right and as well as jumping over obstacles you must shoot the bad guys that are out to get you. With your lives shown as hearts on the top right of the screen you can pick up more along the way but fall down a hole and it is game over. In terms of weapons there are a selection to collect along the way. The flame-thrower is a personal favourite of mine.

Apple‘s tablet market share has dropped to 50.4% in Q3 2012, down from 59.7% in the same period last year, IDC’s latest report reveals.

Samsung, on the other hand, has experienced huge growth, jumping from 6.5% to 18.4% in that same period. Amazon holds the third place with 9%, followed by Asus with 8.6% and Lenovo with 1.4%.

The Xbox 360 isn’t the only console getting a UI revamp. While Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 isn’t getting an OS update to its XMB interface, the completely redesigned PlayStation Store is now officially live in North America. The good news for PlayStation users is that finding and navigating between new PlayStation Store content on the new UI is a much easier affair now. New releases are prominently displayed with prices and are no longer hidden under layers and layers of icons. The new Store is also much cleaner looking, faster to load and its search is more intelligent. Sony’s video walkthrough of for the redesigned PlayStation Store follows below.

We’re not in the “post-PC world” yet, but new data from NetMarketShare says that we’re getting there. According to NetMarketShare’s latest tracking numbers, smartphones and tablets accounted for 10.3% of all web browsing in October 2012, the first time mobile browsing has ever crossed the 10% threshold in the firm’s measurements.

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Windows Phone 8 is officially in the race. It probably isn't time to count the horses just yet but Team Windows seems ready to bounce - major OEMs have backed Microsoft up with flagships and mid-range options. Redmond is doing its part with what looks like one of the biggest OS overhauls this year.

If you're looking to pick up a new BlackBerry PlayBook in Canada, there is a fantastic deal going on this weekend only at Future Shop. From 8PM EST to 10AM EST tonight and 5PM EST to 10AM EST Sunday you can grab a 32GB PlayBook for just $129 with free shipping.

Not every developer had the luxury of putting a flight to Redmond on the corporate tab so that they could attend Microsoft's Build 2012 conference in person. Much to their delight, they won't have to. The company has posted streaming video for every session addressing Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and beyond, ranging from the two keynotes through to nuts-and-bolts framework talks.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t stop Apple fans from coming out in droves in New York City to get their hands on the new iPad mini tablet, but the kickoff event was a bit less enthusiastic than previous product launches in recent history. It also started a bit later than scheduled.

Although an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Mashable on Thursday the launch would begin at 8 a.m. ET on Friday, doors didn’t open until 10 a.m. Once the line started moving, shoppers could get in and out relatively quickly.

 Android distribution numbers for October are in and Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean are still short of the reach Google might have hoped for.

Calling all six billion humans who are not yet members of Facebook: should you decide to join the world’s largest social network, the company will now make sure you understand "how sharing works."

While that may sound like a lesson you (should have) learned in kindergarten, Facebook wrote Friday that it new users would be taken through a "more prominent and detailed educational privacy information to new users as soon as they begin the process of signing up for Facebook. These updates to our sign-up process will be visible to most new users around the globe starting today."

Beta version mandates a secure channel before connecting to sensitive sites.

Developers of Mozilla's Firefox browser are experimenting with a new security feature that connects to a specified set of websites only when presented with a cryptographic certificate validating the connection is secure.

A beta version of the open-source browser contains a list of sites known to deploy the HTTP Strict Transport Security mechanism that requires a browser to use the secure sockets layer or transport layer security protocols when communicating. HSTS is designed to provide an additional layer of security by mandating the channel is encrypted and the server has been authenticated using strong cryptography.

Twitter plans to alter its mobile apps in the coming months and add photo filters so that its members can skip Facebook-owned Instagram, according to a report by The New York Times.

If the juicy rumor proves true, and it probably will as the Times’ Nick Bilton is well-sourced at Twitter, it speaks to the information network’s naiveté over what’s attracted more than 100 million users to Instagram.

The specifications for the Wii U's internet browser have been made public, and it's no surprise that the software shares its technical underpinnings with the 3DS' browser. Specifically, the Wii U's window into the web is actually NetFront NX, which is a WebKit-based browser designed for smart TVs, mobile devices, game consoles and the like. NetFront, in one form or another, has powered the 3DS, PSP, PlayStation 3 and Vita's browsers.

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Roughly a year after Motorola brought the RAZR franchise back to the masses, we have the second generation of the popular DROID on our hands. The Motorola DROID RAZR HD for Verizon Wireless comes to the market hot on the heels of its frameless baby brother, bringing a few extra tricks to go with the more impressive screen.