Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health – Page 418

A gut punch fights cancer and infection

The bacteria that live in our bodies have a pivotal role in the maintenance of our health, and can influence a range of conditions, such as obesity and cancer. Perhaps the most important role for the community of microorganisms that live in our gut — termed the microbiota, which include bacteria, fungi and archaea — is to aid immune-system development. Writing in Nature, Tanoue et al. report the identification of 11 strains of bacteria that reside in the guts of some healthy humans and that can boost immune responses that fight infection and cancer.

Microorganisms in the human gut can affect immune-system cells. Gut bacterial strains have been discovered that boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity and that can target cancer and protect against infection. Human gut bacteria boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity.

Artificial skin could give superhuman perception

For a long time, biohackers have been playing with magnets by embedding then under their skin as a novelty extra-sensation. I, personally, don’t see the point, but morphological, taxonomic, and cladic freedom are at work so I celebrate their actions.

Our skin’s ability to perceive pressure, heat, cold, and vibration is a critical safety function that most people take for granted. But burn victims, those with prosthetic limbs, and others who have lost skin sensitivity for one reason or another, can’t take it for granted, and often injure themselves unintentionally.

Chemists Islam Mosa from UConn, and James Rusling from UConn and UConn Health, along with University of Toronto engineer Abdelsalam Ahmed, wanted to create a sensor that can mimic the sensing properties of skin. Such a sensor would need to be able to detect pressure, temperature, and vibration. But perhaps it could do other things too, the researchers thought.

“It would be very cool if it had abilities human skin does not; for example, the ability to detect magnetic fields, sound waves, and abnormal behaviors,” said Mosa.

How dirty air could be affecting our gut health

The gut microbiome is made up of billions of bacteria, and scientists have been trying to understand exactly how they affect our health, contribute to our risk of contacting diseases and how they interact with the vital organs and systems in the body, including the brain. It is quite a lot to unpick.

As countries industrialise, their air becomes dirtier – and this could have some far-reaching effects on the beneficial bacteria inside us.

We analyzed 16,625 papers to figure out where AI is headed next

Almost everything you hear about artificial intelligence today is thanks to deep learning. This category of algorithms works by using statistics to find patterns in data, and it has proved immensely powerful in mimicking human skills such as our ability to see and hear. To a very narrow extent, it can even emulate our ability to reason. These capabilities power Google’s search, Facebook’s news feed, and Netflix’s recommendation engine—and are transforming industries like health care and education.

Our study of 25 years of artificial-intelligence research suggests the era of deep learning is coming to an end.

Can AI Really Be a Game Changer in Cervical Cancer Screenings?

An artificial intelligence solution (AI) can accurately identify precancerous changes that could require medical attention in images from a woman’s cervix. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Global Good developed the computer algorithm, which is called automated visual evaluation.

Researchers created the algorithm by using more than 60,000 cervical images from a National Cancer Institute (NCI) archive of photos collected during a cervical cancer screening study that was carried out in Costa Rica in the 1990s.

More than 9,400 women participated in that population study, with follow up that lasted up to 18 years. Because of the prospective nature of the study, the researchers said that they gained nearly complete information on which cervical changes became pre-cancers and which did not.

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