Lifeboat Foundation

Sure, chatbots are useful for service industries like hospitality and food delivery, but in health care? Some groups are testing the use of chatbots to retrieve medical information from within a messaging app. At first glance, that seems a bit impersonal, but a closer look reveals a wide range of use cases where bots could make your next visit to the hospital, doctor’s office, or pharmacy faster and more effective.

Let’s run this back a bit. If you’re not familiar with bots, here’s a brief explanation. Bots are software applications that run automated tasks or scripts that serve as shortcuts for completing a certain job, but they do it faster (a lot faster) and with verve. And in health care, we spend a lot of time spent generating and retrieving information.

By putting a trained army of bots inside an application — smartphone, desktop, whatever-top — health care workers can rapidly improve throughput by simply cutting out a bunch of steps. That’s something most care providers today would welcome, especially with millions of new people entering the system as a result of the Affordable Care Act and the aging of baby boomers. With the crush of increased data entry and new regulations, costs and rote work are skyrocketing.

Continue reading “How the most connected hospitals will use chatbots” »

Russian development of a nuclear rocket engine for deep space exploration to the moon and Mars received a funding boost of about $60 for 2016–2018.

A smartphone with direct cloud integration to enable the automatic switch over to cloud when space on the phone runs out.

Cloud computing is the future and unleasing its power on your smartphone is the next big thing. San Francisco-based device maker Nextbit has made a quick switch with its flagship “Cloud first” Android device Robin in India. IANS | Jul 29, 2016, 09.01 AM IST

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Plastic packaging may seem impenetrable, and often nearly impossible to remove, but water molecules can still pass through. This permeability to moisture can reduce the lifespan of a product.

Packaging is everywhere, even for individual vegetables or fruits. Wrapping products ranging from electronics to food in plastic films protect them from bacteria, dust, and to some extent water.

According to Praveen C. Ramamurthy, the lifespan of a moisture-sensitive organic light-emitting diode can be maximized for more than a year if the packaging has the ability to restrict water vapor from penetrating at a rate less than 10^-6 grams per square meter every day. Modern day packaging is not capable of accomplishing that goal, however Ramamurthy and colleagues wanted to find out if combining graphene to flexible polymer was sufficient.

A new material for a portable device for hemodialysis could soon be created by scientists of Tomsk State University. The team is working on changing physicochemical properties of zeolites using thermal and mechanical treatment.

Changing properties of zeolites to develop a portable device for hemodialysis.

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Dubbed the ‘Sea Hunter’, the 132ft ship is designed to travel thousands of miles out at sea without a single crew member on board.

The self driving warship has now completed its first trials — and passed with flying colours.

Continue reading “World’s largest self-driving warship aces its first sea trials: US Navy’s 132ft-long ‘Sea Hunter’ drone will scour oceans for enemy subs” »

Back in 1992; me and another peer who worked with me on ORNL’s ELIMS use to wish we had this technology then. And, now it looks like we’re getting closer to this capability.

An Algoma University professor has made strides in developing technology that lets ALS patients compose emails without typing.

Continue reading “Algoma professor develops way to send emails — using only your mind” »

Cancer ever since a million years ago.

Maybe cancer isn’t so modern after all. A new discovery suggests the disease is more than a million years old.

Researchers have discovered that mutation in a gene can led to a form of hereditary colon cancer which was not identified earlier. The researchers discovered genetic changes in the MSH3 gene in patients and identified a new form of colon cancer.

“The knowledge about molecular mechanisms which lead to cancer is also a precondition for the development of new targeted drugs,” said Stefan Aretz from University of Bonn Hospital in Germany.

The formation of large numbers of polyps in the colon has a high probability of developing into colon cancer, if left untreated.

Continue reading “New rare form of hereditary colon cancer identified” »