Lifeboat Foundation

Environmental sensors are a step closer to simultaneously sniffing out multiple gases that could indicate disease or pollution, thanks to a Penn State collaboration. Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics in the College of Engineering, and Lauren Zarzar, assistant professor of chemistry in Eberly College of Science, and their teams combined laser writing and responsive sensor technologies to fabricate the first highly customizable microscale gas sensing devices.

They published their technique this month in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

“The detection of gases is of critical importance to various fields, including pollution monitoring, public safety assurance and personal health care,” Cheng said. “To fill these needs, sensing devices must be small, lightweight, inexpensive and easy to use and apply to various environments and substrates, such as clothing or piping.”

Saúl Morales RodriguézAuthor

The success of deep learning depends heavily on the availability of large datasets, but in robotic manipulation there are many learning problems for which such datasets do not exist. Collecting these datasets is time-consuming and expensive, and therefore learning from small datasets is an important open problem. Within computer vision, a common approach to a lack of data is data augmentation. Data augmentation is the process of creating additional training examples by modifying existing ones. However, because the types of tasks and data differ, the methods used in computer vision cannot be easily adapted to manipulation. Therefore, we propose a data augmentation method for robotic manipulation. We argue that augmentations should be valid, relevant, and diverse.

Probiotics show a new to battle cancer and other diseases keeping the host body healthy with its anti inflammation abilities.

Gut microbiota is widely considered to be one of the most important components to maintain balanced homeostasis. Looking forward, probiotic bacteria have been shown to play a significant role in immunomodulation and display antitumour properties. Bacterial strains could be responsible for detection and degradation of potential carcinogens and production of short-chain fatty acids, which affect cell death and proliferation and are known as signaling molecules in the immune system. Lactic acid bacteria present in the gut has been shown to have a role in regression of carcinogenesis due to their influence on immunomodulation, which can stand as a proof of interaction between bacterial metabolites and immune and epithelial cells. Probiotic bacteria have the ability to both increase and decrease the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines which play an important role in prevention of carcinogenesis. They are also capable of activating phagocytes in order to eliminate early-stage cancer cells. Application of heat-killed probiotic bacteria coupled with radiation had a positive influence on enhancing immunological recognition of cancer cells. In the absence of active microbiota, murine immunity to carcinogens has been decreased. There are numerous cohort studies showing the correlation between ingestion of dairy products and the risk of colon and colorectal cancer. An idea of using probiotic bacteria as vectors to administer drugs has emerged lately as several papers presenting successful results have been revealed. Within the next few years, probiotic bacteria as well as gut microbiota are likely to become an important component in cancer prevention and treatment.

Cancer is considered as one of the most significant causes of death. The treatment of tumors has received much attention in the last years; however, the number of people suffering neoplastic syndrome is still increasing. Thus, researchers are trying to face this process searching for innovative therapies and prophylaxis. Despite the fact that cancer risk indisputably depends on genetic factors, immunological condition of the organism plays a considerable role in it, that being closely associated with probiotic bacteria and commensal bacterial flora presented mainly in the digestive tract. Probiotic strains, inter alia Bifidobacterium, or Lactobacillus, widely present in commonly consumed fermented milk products, are known to have various beneficial effects on health. To date, there is a plethora of studies investigating the correlation between intestinal microbiota and carcinogenesis which have been evaluated in this article.

Blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health, but it’s tough to frequently and reliably measure outside of a clinical setting. For decades, cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard. But now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today.

“Blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure, but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively, without a cuff, are very limited,” said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin and one of the co-leaders of the project, which is documented in a new paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

High blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated. It can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because that only measures a moment in time, a single data point.

In a surprise finding, researchers have found that getting at least one flu shot makes it 40 percent less likely for people over the age of 65 to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, up to four years later.

While it’s still far too early to determine if there are any direct causal links between the common vaccine and neurological health outcomes like Alzheimer’s — in other words, we don’t know if it’s the flu vaccine itself or something else responsible for the results — the research is certainly an eyebrow-raising new development that could, potentially, point in the direction of easily accessible treatments.

In a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers at UTHealth Houston compared the incidence rate of the disease in patients with and without at least one flu vaccination in a nationwide sample of US adults aged 65 and up, which included 935,887 vaccinated and 935,887 non-vaccinated individuals.

Leading bipartisan moonshots for health, national security & functional government — senator joe lieberman, bipartisan commission on biodefense, no labels, and the centre for responsible leadership.

Senator Joe Lieberman, is senior counsel at the law firm of Kasowitz Benson Torres (https://www.kasowitz.com/people/joseph-i-lieberman) where he currently advises clients on a wide range of issues, including homeland and national security, defense, health, energy, environmental policy, intellectual property matters, as well as international expansion initiatives and business plans.

Continue reading “Senator Joe Lieberman — Leading Bipartisan Moonshots For Health, National Security And Government” »

Patients with worsening heart failure who received colchicine, a common gout medication, had a survival rate of 97.9% compared with a 93.5% survival rate for patients who did not take colchicine.

Colchicine, a common gout medication, dramatically increased the survival rates of patients with worsening heart failure who were hospitalized, according to a recent University of Virginia (UVA) Health study. In individuals with an accumulation of cholesterol in their arteries, the researchers think colchicine might also lower the risk for heart attack and stroke.

More than 1,000 patients who were hospitalized at the University of Virginia Medical Center between March 2011 and February 2020 due to worsening heart failure had their records examined. Patients who took colchicine for a gout flare had a survival rate of 97.9%, as opposed to patients who did not receive colchicine, who had a survival rate of 93.5%.

As cyberattacks on medical networks continue to affect healthcare institutions across the country, organizations who are directly at risk of these attacks are seeking government assistance.

From January through June, the Office of Civil Rights tallied 256 hacks and information breaches, up from 149 for the same period a year ago. It’s a continuing trend from last year: Cybersecurity outfit Sophos reports that in 2021, attacks on health systems were up 66 percent over 2020.

Now some health systems are asking the federal government to step in and provide more security for what they consider critical national infrastructure.

Artificial Intelligence is touching almost every aspect of our lives. It’s reasonable to expect AI influence will only increase in the future. One of many fields heavily influenced by AI is the military. Particularly in the development of Supersoldiers. The notion of super-soldiers enhanced with biotechnology and cybernetics was once only possible in the realm of science fiction. But it may not be too long before these concepts become a reality.

A new worldwide arms race is pitting countries against each other to be the first to successfully create real genetically modified super soldiers by using tools such as CRISPR. Understandably many of these human enhancement technologies raise health and safety questions and it is more likely these enhancements will first gain traction in countries that do not place as much weight on ethical concerns.

Continue reading “The Rise of Supersoldiers — How AI Changes Everything” »