Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 3,492

Cyber Security: How to Protect Your Firm and its Clients

Law Firms are prime targets for hackers.

Law firms are considered by many hackers to be soft targets with a wealth of valuable information. Data from social security numbers, credit cards, and client confidences is enough to make the criminal mind salivate with malicious intent. Between 31–45% and 10–20% of firms have been infected by spyware or experienced security breaches respectively. But what can a private practitioner or law firm do to prevent these trespasses on their networks?

In this episode of The Florida Bar Podcast, host Adriana Linares welcomes cyber security expert Sherri Davidoff to discuss the dangers to data that exist for law firms today. To begin their dialog, they define what ransomware is and tell us why so many firms give in to its extortion.

Tune in to learn what practitioners can do to counteract or mitigate some of the risks. Spam filters, employee training, role-based access controls, and anti-virus software are among many countermeasures available for even small firms. In addition, lawyers may want to consider network monitoring, cloud-based software platforms, and comprehensive backup and retrieval systems. The key to successfully implementing the latter is to test your IT firm’s ability to restore lost files.

Military-Funded Study Predicts Twitter Uprisings

I must admit that appears that almost anything in tech is being called out as a threat. FB, Twitter, Smartphones, CRISPR, AI, etc. Tech advancements do bring greater freedoms & opportunities to express one’s ideas and beliefs as well as enable a greater access to people, information, and geographical locations; however, and that does pose some level of risk in small pockets of the greater poulation. Nonetheless, I hope that the government spying pendullum swing doesn’t go overboard.

Who tweets at you, what you tweet back, and why can predict your next protest act on social media.

Health care is about to get smarter: The artificial intelligence boom

I still see AI as a supportive solution to handle more standardized operations still requiring oversight by people. As long as hacking exist the level of allowing systems to own and manage processes without people oversight is not going to happen until hacking is resolved.

It is predicted that the use of AI in health care will grow tenfold in the next five years, and not all of the medical applications will be for doctors. The technology is accelerating drug discovery, increasing compliance and even tracking changes in markers of ‘youthfulness,’ empowering people to better manage their own health.

Virtual reality the tool in the quest to end phobias

Nathalie is agoraphobic and acrophobic, both anxiety disorders, the former involves fear of places or situations that may cause panic, the latter a pathological fear of heights.

To treat her doctors at the Van Gogh hospital in Charleroi, Belgium, are using virtual reality to help her control her fears.

Scientists are using virtual reality to treat bipolar disorder and phobias http://t.co/qR95oeCzLL pic.twitter.com/tWkJpUp5fl — Dave Asprey (@bulletproofexec) August 6, 2015

This VR Company Helps Soldiers Cope With War Injuries

MindMaze has received $100 million to further medical research and launch a VR gaming system.

For a soldier who has endured an amputation, severe phantom limb pain can be debilitating.

Virtual reality company MindMaze has designed a medical virtual reality, augmented reality, and motion capture video game system that immerses the amputee in a virtual environment, where moving the existing arm will move the non-existing arm of the avatar. Neuroscientist and MindMaze founder and CEO Tej Tadi says this “mirroring” tricks the brain into believing the severed limb is actually there, and has proven benefits in phantom pain management.

Virtual reality treatment helps depression patients in study

Here is a concept; “could VR be used to rehabilitate criminals to experience through VR what their victims have experienced?” I do know in the recent 20 yrs a part of rehabilitation has included the criminal facing their victims so that the criminal develops a new level of empathy. However, could VR be a better solution? And, should it be?

LONDON, Feb. 15 (UPI) — Depression patients who interacted with characters in a virtual reality environment were less critical and more compassionate toward themselves, researchers found in a small study in England.

Researchers at University College London found some of the self-directed negativity of people feel in depression can be mitigated through role-playing in virtual reality.

Dropping people into an immersive electronic world using a virtual reality headset gives them an opportunity to experience different scenarios — in this case, by embodying either somebody comforting a distressed child or by receiving the comfort as the distressed child.

Depression Treatment: Virtual Reality A New Therapy To Reduce Depressive Symptoms

People may soon use virtual reality to treat their depression and to be less critical and more compassionate towards themselves, a new study shows. A new virtual reality therapy has effectively reduced depressive symptoms of patients with some reporting significant drop in depression severity.

In the study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry Open, patients claim virtual reality therapy changed their response to real-life situations in which they would previously have been self-critical.

The findings come from the analysis of the effect of the therapy to 15 depression patients, aged 23 to 61. Researchers, from University College London (UCL) and ICREA-University of Barcelona, asked the participants to wear a virtual reality headset to see from the perspective of a life-size “avatar” or virtual body.

Ground Zero for Alzheimer’s Disease found at base of brainstem

Very interesting since many complex neural diseases also have ties to the brain stem such as Dystonia.

Feb. 22, 2016 — There is a new ground zero for Alzheimer’s Disease, according to a new discovery of a critical but vulnerable region in the brain that appears to be the first place affected by late onset Alzheimer’s disease. It also may be more important for maintaining cognitive function in later life than previously appreciated.

The locus coeruleus is a small, bluish part of the brainstem that releases norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter responsible for regulating heart rate, attention, memory, and cognition. Its cells, or neurons, send branch-like axons throughout much of the brain and help regulate blood vessel activity, says a new review of the scientific literature.

Its high interconnectedness may make it more susceptible to the effects of toxins and infections compared to other brain regions, said lead author Mara Mather.

/* */