Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Feb 28
2022

AI Teaches Brain Tumor Surgery Better Than Human Experts

𝙈𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙡𝙜𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨’ 𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙙𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝙨𝙞𝙢𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙪𝙢𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙮, 𝙖 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙨.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙊𝙑𝙄𝘿-19 𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙝 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜. 𝙍𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙛𝙞𝙚𝙡𝙙𝙨.

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙫𝙞𝙧𝙤𝙣𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 (𝘼𝙄) 𝙩𝙪𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞… See more.

The Neuro-Network.

𝐀𝐈 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐮𝐦𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬

Artificial intelligence tutors are outperforming human instructors.

Continue reading “AI Teaches Brain Tumor Surgery Better Than Human Experts” | >

Feb 28
2022

New Stanford Research Shows Differences Between Brains of Girls and Boys With Autism

Brain organization differs between boys and girls with autism, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The differences, identified by analyzing hundreds of brain scans with artificial intelligence techniques, were unique to autism and not found in typically developing boys and girls. The research helps explain why autism symptoms differ between the sexes and may pave the way for better diagnostics for girls, according to the scientists.

Autism is a developmental disorder with a spectrum of severity. Affected children have social and communication deficits, show restricted interests and display repetitive behaviors. The original description of autism, published in 1943 by Leo Kanner, MD, was biased toward male patients. The disorder is diagnosed in four times as many boys as girls, and most autism research has focused on males.

Feb 28
2022

New Chip Can Prevent Hackers From Extracting Hidden Information From Smart Devices

Engineers build a lower-energy chip that can prevent hackers from extracting hidden information from a smart device.

A heart attack patient, recently discharged from the hospital, is using a smartwatch to help monitor his electrocardiogram signals. The smartwatch may seem secure, but the neural network processing that health information is using private data that could still be stolen by a malicious agent through a side-channel attack.

A side-channel attack seeks to gather secret information by indirectly exploiting a system or its hardware. In one type of side-channel attack, a savvy hacker could monitor fluctuations in the device’s power consumption while the neural network is operating to extract protected information that “leaks” out of the device.

Feb 28
2022

Future Day talk

Topic: James Hughes — The Future of Work (Future Day Talk) Time: Mar 1, 2022 08:00 AM Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81306102463?pwd=eDBldno3cUdZZGcxVHoxNEJ1RkgrUT09 Meeting ID: 813 0610 2,463 Passcode: Q6VzpF

As part of the annual Future Day celebration, James Hughes will join us that may concern you — ‘The Future of Work’. Zoom details coming soon!

Abstract: The pandemic has launched a debate about the future of work around the world. Those who can work remotely have often found they prefer remote or flexible, hybrid options. The Great Resignation has put upward pressure on wages and benefits in the service sector, encouraging the implementation of automation. Climate change mitigation is encouraging a shift towards “green jobs.” Rapid changes in the labor market have made the payoffs of higher education uncertain for young people, while many societies are entering an old-age dependency crisis with too few workers paying taxes for growing numbers of pensioners. Before the pandemic proposals for universal basic income (UBI) were seen as necessary adaptations to imminent technological unemployment, and the during the pandemic many countries provided temporary UBI to keep people safe. We are now poised for a global discussion about whether we need to work at all, and what kinds of jobs are desirable.

Feb 27
2022

Biologists successfully hatched gene-edited ticks for the first time

A five-year experiment to genetically modify deer ticks, or black-legged ticks, using CRISPR/Cas9 ends in success, marking a first in biology.

Feb 26
2022

Scientists become research subjects in after-hours brain-scanning project

A quest to analyze the unique features of individual human brains evolved into the so-called Midnight Scan Club, a group of scientists who had big ideas but almost no funding and little time to research the trillions of neural connections that activate the body’s most powerful organ.

The research group started in 2013 by two neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who aimed to collect a massive amount of data on individual brains. The study’s subjects were the scientists themselves and eight others, all junior faculty or graduate students.

Most efforts to analyze connections involve scanning many brains and averaging the data across groups of people. For this study, the researchers used brain-imaging techniques to evaluate brain networks that control speech and motor function, among other activities. The researchers examined individuals while resting and performing cognitive tasks such as reading.

Feb 26
2022

New therapy kills cancer without harming normal cells

A new therapy called CINDELA (Cancer-Specific InDel Attacker) is reported by scientists in South Korea, which uses CRISPR-Cas9 to kill cancer cells without harming normal tissues.

Feb 26
2022

Risks of mental health outcomes in people with covid-19: cohort study

Objective To estimate the risks of incident mental health disorders in survivors of the acute phase of covid-19.

Design Cohort study.

Setting US department of veterans affairs.

Participants Cohort comprising 153 848 people who survived the first 30 days of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and two control groups: a contemporary group (n=5 637 840) with no evidence of SARS-CoV-2, and a historical control group (n=5 859 251) that predated the covid-19 pandemic.

Feb 26
2022

Chernnobyl fungus feeds on nuclear radiation

😀 😍 circa 2018.

You know Chernobyl, right? The place of the biggest nuclear accident in the world? The are is so radioactive nobody lives in the vicinity anymore, and nearby plants are suffering major amounts of radiation. However, not everybody is sad about this event; a type of fungi (mushrooms) possess an ability beyond imagination: they can take the lethal radiation and use it as a source of energy to feed and grow. Researchers have called them radiotrophic fungus.

For some 500 million years, fungi have been inhabiting this planet, feeding on whatever they could finding, filling every biological niche they could find. But who could have actually guessed that they could feed on nuclear radiation? Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) had a hunch, and they investigated it to test. They first got the idea after reading that samples brought from Chernobyl were filled with some black fungi growing on it.

Feb 26
2022

Decentralized Manufacturing of Advanced Therapies

Medcalf: Because you’re moving away from the economics of scale to closer to the clinic, the batches are smaller and some of the traditional paradigms for quality assurance, such as proof of sterility, are harder to arrange. Thus, you need to have a manufacturing system that includes quality assurance within the system itself.

Automation is often presented as a way to remove the single largest source of infective risk, i.e. the human operator. For example, the self-sterilizing reusable units being developed at the University of Osaka under Professor Masahiro Kino-oka allow small-scale production with a high degree of confidence in the aseptic management of the environment.

Another challenge is defining a product that has variable characteristics. The main reason for decentralizing is to allow customization to a patient, which means you need to have a hierarchy of levels of specification. For example, with bioprinting, which also produces a customized product, you need to define bulk properties, but you also need to set constraints around how it’s anchored or implanted into the patient.