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Category: health – Page 165

Task Force Updates Breast Cancer Screening Guidance

Yesterday the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force (USPSTF) announced an updated recommendation for breast cancer screening focusing on encouraging more women to begin biennial (every other year) mammograms at age 40. This recommendation, available online now in draft form, is an update to the Task Force’s January 2016 recommendation that women aged 50 – 74 receive mammograms every other year. At the same time, the USPSTF noted that women in their 40s should make an individual choice regarding regular breast cancer screening.

The USPSTF, comprised of experts in disease prevention and evidence-based medicine, serves as an independent team striving to improve the health of people throughout the United States. The Task Force recommends preventative healthcare based on evidence and clinical data. While the recommendations levied by the Task Force pertain to various preventative services, including cancer screening, behavioral counseling, and preventive medicines, the group’s overarching focus remains to help stay healthy.

Importantly, the USPSTF does not conduct its own studies or clinical trials. Instead, this group reviews evidence on preventative approaches to different diseases to conclude the potential pros and cons of such measures.

Combining Two Nobel Prize-Winning Techniques: A New Microchip Technology

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have developed a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning methods for the first time. The microchip is capable of accurately measuring distances in materials, which could have applications in areas such as underwater measurement and medical imaging.

The new technology, which utilizes sound vibrations instead of light, could be useful for obtaining high-precision position measurements in materials that are opaque. This breakthrough could result in the development of new methods for monitoring the Earth’s climate and human health. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

<em>Nature Communications</em> is a peer-reviewed, open-access, multidisciplinary, scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It covers the natural sciences, including physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, and earth sciences. It began publishing in 2010 and has editorial offices in London, Berlin, New York City, and Shanghai.

AI runs 10,000 experiments a day on bacteria to speed up discoveries

Scientific work often involves sifting through enormous amounts of data, a task that’s overwhelmingly mundane for humans but a piece of cake for artificial intelligence. A new platform dubbed BacterAI can conduct as many as 10,000 experiments per day to teach itself – and us – more about bacteria.

The human body is home to trillions of microbes, covering almost every surface inside and out. Many of them are vital to specific bodily functions, while many others make you sick. Research continues to uncover how inextricably linked our overall health is to our microbiomes, but managing and exploring the data involved remains a daunting task.

“We know almost nothing about most of the bacteria that influence our health,” said Paul Jensen, corresponding author of the new study. “Understanding how bacteria grow is the first step toward reengineering our microbiome.”

U.S. Surgeon General Warns Of Loneliness Epidemic And Some Say That Generative AI ChatGPT Is The Cure

The U.S. Surgeon General has released an advisory alerting the public at large that loneliness has become an epidemic and represents an urgent public health concern. You might be tempted to think that this advisory is somewhat over the top and that loneliness is merely something that we all need to contend with from time to time. It seems obvious that loneliness happens. It seems obvious that loneliness is challenging.

Why should the nation’s highest official public health advisor make such a seemingly outsized clamor over a matter that we take for granted and assume is a natural part of living our lives?

BacterAI: New AI system enables robots to conduct 10,000 scientific experiments a day

Artificial intelligence-powered BacterAI accurately predicts the necessary amino acid combinations for growth 90% of the time.

A group of scientists has created a system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that enables robots to conduct as many as 10,000 scientific experiments independently in a single day.

The AI system, named BacterAI, could significantly accelerate the pace of discovery in a range of fields such as medicine, agriculture, and environmental science. In a recent research study released in Nature Microbiology, the team successfully utilized BacterAI to map the metabolic processes of two microbes linked with oral health.

Vaccine for Bee Venom Allergy

Stinging of Hymenoptera can induce IgE-mediated hypersensitivity reactions in patients with venom allergies, ranging from local to severe systemic reactions and even fatal anaphylaxis. Allergic patients’ quality of life can be primarily improved by injecting increased venom doses to alter their immune response to tolerate venom. This venom-specific immunotherapy is very effective and well tolerated, especially in the administration of vaccines. Creative Biolabs is a world leader in the field of vaccine development. With our extensive experience and advanced platform, we are therefore confident in offering the best vaccine development services for allergic disease.

Creative Biolabs provides vaccine development services for bee venom allergy according to customer’s detailed requirements.

Exercise can increase the number of immune cells in the bloodstream of cancer patients

Exercise decreases the risk of cancer and reduces side effects of cancer treatments. In addition, it improves patients’ quality of life and the prognosis of cancer patients. This is according to two new Finnish studies.

“It was previously thought that cancer patients should just rest after a . Today, we have more and more researched information that can even improve the prognosis of cancer. However, it is not yet fully known how exercise controls cancer,” explains Research Assistant Tiia Koivula.

Previous preclinical studies have found that exercise affects the functioning of the immune system so that more are transferred to the tumor site and they become more active in destroying . Two studies conducted at the Turku PET Center of the University of Turku in Finland aimed to find out whether a short exercise bout affects the mobilization of immune cells in cancer patients.

AI Weekly: AI Leaders At White House, OpenAI Adds $300 Million, Empathetic Pi Chatbot Launches

Some of the big AI tech companies (Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic) sat with Vice-President Kamala Harris for two hours on Thursday. President Biden stopped by the meeting, telling the execs “What you’re doing has enormous potential and enormous danger.” An “independent exercise” at DEF CON 31, a major hacker event in August, will provide a transparent public assessments of how well existing generative AI systems meet the Biden administration’s AI Bill of Rights blueprint.

Is it possible to get ahead of unintended consequences?

Dr Erwin Gianchandani — Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. NSF

Accelerating Breakthroughs in Critical and Emerging Technologies — Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. — Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Dr. Erwin Gianchandani, Ph.D. is Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, U.S. National Science Foundation, leading the newly established TIP Directorate (https://new.nsf.gov/tip/leadership).

The TIP Directorate is focused on harnessing the nation’s vast and diverse talent pool to advance critical and emerging technologies, addressing pressing societal and economic challenges, and accelerating the translation of research results from lab to market and society, ultimately improving U.S. competitiveness, growing the U.S. economy and training a diverse workforce for future, high-wage jobs.

Prior to becoming the Assistant Director for TIP, Dr. Gianchandani served as the senior advisor for Translation, Innovation and Partnerships, where he helped develop plans for the new TIP Directorate in collaboration with colleagues at NSF, other government agencies, industry, and academia.

During the previous six years, Dr. Gianchandani was the NSF deputy assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), twice serving as acting assistant director. His leadership and management of CISE included the formulation and implementation of the directorate’s $1 billion annual budget, strategic and human capital planning, and oversight of day-to-day operations for a team of over 130.

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A new nondestructive method for assessing bioengineered artificial tissues

Engineering organs to replace damaged hearts or kidneys in the human body may seem like something out of a sci-fi movie, but the building blocks for this technology are already in place. In the burgeoning field of tissue engineering, live cells grow in artificial scaffolds to form biological tissue. But to evaluate how successfully the cells develop into tissue, researchers need a reliable method to monitor the cells as they move and multiply.

Now, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a noninvasive method to count the in a three-dimensional (3D) . The real-time technique images millimeter-scale regions to assess the viability of the cells and how the cells are distributed within the scaffold—an important capability for researchers who manufacture complex biological tissues from simple materials such as living cells.

Their findings have been published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A.