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Archive for the ‘health’ category: Page 140

Sep 12, 2022

Nigeria’s rising Yellow fever epidemic

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Yellow fever epidemics are happening across Nigeria spreading state by state. The yellow fever is another haemorgic disease like ebola.


Over 160 million people, more than half of Nigeria’s current estimated population, are at risk of yellow fever in the country, reports by the World Health Organisation Africa Region have recently highlighted. Lately, the yellow fever virus has become of serious global health concern more because the wakes of its historic outbreaks are trailed by devastating outcomes.

The WHO says the virus is spreading rapidly across Africa, warning that the rising trend could cause an epidemic in Nigeria particularly, mainly because of its large population. Consequently, it issued an advisory for travellers to and out of Nigeria to consult their healthcare provider on precautionary measures required against the virus if need be.

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Sep 11, 2022

Psilocybin therapy seems to help some people give up drinking alcohol

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, neuroscience

Psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, may help people with alcohol dependencies abstain from drinking. Nearly half of those who took the drug as part of a 12-week therapy programme no longer drank more than eight months later, according to results from the largest trial to date on psilocybin and addiction.

Michael Bogenschutz at NYU Langone Health in New York and his colleagues recruited 95 adults who were diagnosed with alcohol dependence. None of the participants had any major psychiatric conditions or had used psychedelics in the past year.

Everyone in the group went through a 12-week therapy programme. Most weeks, they had a roughly 1-hour long session with a therapist and a psychiatrist where they received cognitive behavioural therapy for alcohol use disorder.

Sep 11, 2022

Trust in AI-based preventive healthcare low among users

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, robotics/AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can perform preventive healthcare activities such as health screening, routine check-up and vaccination with expert-level accuracy that can turn out to be cost-effective in the long run. Yet, a new research found that individuals show less trust in preventive care interventions suggested by AI than when the same interventions are prompted by human health experts.

The researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore studied 15,000 users of a health mobile application and found that emphasising the involvement of a human health expert in an AI-suggested intervention could improve its acceptance and effectiveness.

These findings suggest that the human element remains important even as the healthcare sector increasingly adopts AI to screen, diagnose and treat patients more efficiently. The findings could also contribute to the design of more effective AI-prompted preventive care interventions, said the researchers.

Sep 11, 2022

Top 10 Interesting ML Dissertations from Ph.D. Students

Posted by in categories: health, information science, robotics/AI, wearables

Choosing interesting dissertation topics in ML is the first choice of Master’s and Doctorate scholars nowadays. Ph.D. candidates are highly motivated to choose research topics that establish new and creative paths toward discovery in their field of study. Selecting and working on a dissertation topic in machine learning is not an easy task as machine learning uses statistical algorithms to make computers work in a certain way without being explicitly programmed. The main aim of machine learning is to create intelligent machines which can think and work like human beings. This article features the top 10 ML dissertations for Ph.D. students to try in 2022.

Text Mining and Text Classification: Text mining is an AI technology that uses NLP to transform the free text in documents and databases into normalized, structured data suitable for analysis or to drive ML algorithms. This is one of the best research and thesis topics for ML projects.

Recognition of Everyday Activities through Wearable Sensors and Machine Learning: The goal of the research detailed in this dissertation is to explore and develop accurate and quantifiable sensing and machine learning techniques for eventual real-time health monitoring by wearable device systems.

Sep 10, 2022

Scientists Have Made a Human Microbiome From Scratch

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

Our bodies are home to hundreds or thousands of species of microbes — nobody is sure quite how many. That’s just one of many mysteries about the so-called human microbiome.

Our inner ecosystem fends off pathogens, helps digest food and may even influence behavior. But scientists have yet to figure out exactly which microbes do what or how. Many studies suggest that many species have to work together to do each of the microbiome’s jobs.

To better understand how microbes affect our health, scientists have for the first time created a synthetic human microbiome, combining 119 species of bacteria naturally found in the human body. When the researchers gave the concoction to mice that did not have a microbiome of their own, the bacterial strains established themselves and remained stable — even when the scientists introduced other microbes.

Sep 10, 2022

Researchers Discover a Gene That Makes Your Muscles Significantly Stronger

Posted by in category: health

Researchers have discovered a gene that increases muscle strength when activated by exercise, opening the door to the creation of therapeutic treatments that replicate some of the benefits of working out.

The University of Melbourne-led research, which was published in Cell Metabolism, demonstrated how various forms of exercise alter the molecules in our muscles and led to the identification of the new C18ORF25 gene, which is activated by all forms of exercise and is responsible for enhancing muscle strength. Animals lacking C18ORF25 have weaker muscles and worse exercise performance.

Dr. Benjamin Parker, project leader, said that by activating the C18ORF25 gene, the research team could observe muscles grow significantly stronger without necessarily becoming larger.

Sep 9, 2022

New York declares state of emergency over polio to boost low vaccination rates

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Some New Yorkers who completed their vaccine series should receive a single lifetime booster shot, health officials said. These individuals include people who might have contact with someone infected or thought to be infected with poliovirus or members of the infected person’s household.

Health care workers should also get a booster if they work in areas where poliovirus has been detected and they might handle specimens or treat patients who may have polio. People who might be exposed to wastewater due to their job should also consider getting a booster, health officials said.

All children should receive four doses of the polio vaccine. The first dose is administered between 6 weeks and 2 months of age, the second dose is given at 4 months, the third at 6 months to 18 months, and the fourth dose at 4 to 6 years old.

Sep 9, 2022

Stretchable, self-powered bioelectronics mimic skin in form and function

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, engineering, health, nanotechnology

Skin-like electronics could seamlessly integrate with the body for applications in health monitoring, medication therapy, implantable medical devices, and biological studies.

With the help of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Sihong Wang, an assistant professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, has secured patents for the building blocks of these novel devices.

Drawing on innovation in the fields of semiconductor physics, solid mechanics, and energy sciences, this work includes the creation of stretchable polymer semiconductors and transistor arrays, which provide exceptional electrical performance, high semiconducting properties, and mechanical stretchability. Additionally, Wang has developed triboelectric nanogenerators as a new technology for harvesting energy from a user’s motion—and designed the associated energy storage process.

Sep 8, 2022

Physicists invent intelligent quantum sensor of light waves

Posted by in categories: health, mathematics, quantum physics, space

University of Texas at Dallas physicists and their collaborators at Yale University have demonstrated an atomically thin, intelligent quantum sensor that can simultaneously detect all the fundamental properties of an incoming light wave.

The research, published April 13 in the journal Nature, demonstrates a new concept based on quantum geometry that could find use in health care, deep-space exploration and remote-sensing applications.

“We are excited about this work because typically, when you want to characterize a wave of light, you have to use different instruments to gather information, such as the intensity, wavelength and polarization state of the light. Those instruments are bulky and can occupy a significant area on an optical table,” said Dr. Fan Zhang, a corresponding author of the study and associate professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Sep 8, 2022

10 Seconds to the Future | Mutation | Free Documentary

Posted by in categories: education, existential risks, genetics, health, nanotechnology, robotics/AI, space travel

2077 — 10 Seconds to the Future — Mutation | Science Documentary.

2077 — 10 Seconds to the Future | Global Estrangement: https://youtu.be/CTOduDIkcdM

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