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Category: health – Page 51

A new study provided light on the role of the protein STAP-1 in activating certain immune cells. Understanding STAP-1’s involvement in these cells may help researchers gain a better understanding of immune-related diseases and potential treatments.

Hindustan Times — your fastest source for breaking news! Read now.

The researchers discovered that STAP-1 plays a key role in the activation of T cells, which are white blood cells that help the body defend itself against infections and preserve overall health. T cells are capable of identifying foreign substances that elicit an immune response (antigens) and developing tailored responses to destroy pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

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Mercedes-Benz has officially employed humanoid robots to complete manual tasks on its assembly line. Apptronik’s Apollo robot will complete simple tasks like fetching and carrying, helping lighten the load for its human colleagues.

Announced on Friday, March 15, the robots will also be employed to complete other “low skill” tasks like basic assembly. This will free up human workers to focus on more important tasks and reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries and other health and safety issues related to manual tasks.

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A blood test for colon cancer performed well in a study published Wednesday, offering a new kind of screening for a leading cause of cancer deaths.

The test looks for DNA fragments shed by tumor cells and precancerous growths. It’s already for sale in the U.S. for $895, but has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and most insurers do not cover it. The maker of the test, Guardant Health, anticipates an FDA decision this year.

In the study, the test caught 83% of the cancers but very few of the precancerous growths found by colonoscopy, the gold standard for colon cancer screening. Besides spotting tumors, colonoscopies can prevent the disease by removing precancerous growths called polyps.

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With coral reefs under attack from ongoing climate change effects, what steps can be taken to reverse the damage? This is what a recent study published in iScience hopes to address as a team of international researchers investigated how to monitor coral reef health that is impacted through climate change, specifically with altering biomineralization, which is the driving force behind coral reef formation. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how climate change impacts coral reef health and potential steps to improve conservation of corals throughout the world.

“The whole ecosystem is dying. You can listen to the death all you want, but what are you going to do to fix it?” said Dr. Mark Martindale, who is the director of the University of Florida’s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and a co-author on the study. “In order to do that, you need to understand what the problems are. And you need an experimental system to do that. Now we have that system.”

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Neural networks have been powering breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, including the large language models that are now being used in a wide range of applications, from finance, to human resources to health care. But these networks remain a black box whose inner workings engineers and scientists struggle to understand.

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How LLM #AI can make a patient-friendly— more understandable, more concise— hospital discharge summary for patients.

Generative artificial intelligence to transform inpatient discharge summaries to patient-friendly language and format.

This cross-sectional study, as part of a larger project to improve care delivery in our health system, was deemed exempt from institutional review board review based on the NYU Langone Health self-certification protocol. The study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guideline.

This was a cross-sectional review of 50 inpatient discharge summaries. The number 50 was chosen a priori based on feasibility. We used Epic Systems reporting workbench to export a dataset containing metadata for all notes of the Discharge Summary Note type across NYU Langone Health Systems from June 1 to 30, 2023, totaling 5,025 summaries. We used the Excel 2016 rand() function (Microsoft Corporation) to generate a random number corresponding to each note and selected the 200 notes with the lowest random number. A single reviewer confirmed the identified notes were actual discharge summaries written by the General Internal Medicine service and that the patients were not discharged as dead. For final inclusion in the study, we selected 50 of the remaining notes with the lowest random numbers. Our sample included discharges from all of NYU Langone’s hospital campuses and did not include more than 1 discharge from any single patient.

Continue reading “Generative AI for Patient-Friendly Language in Discharge Summaries” | >

From creating images, generating text, and enabling self-driving cars, the potential uses of artificial intelligence (AI) are vast and transformative. However, all this capability comes at a very high energy cost. For instance, estimates indicate that training OPEN AI’s popular GPT-3 model consumed over 1,287 MWh, enough to supply an average U.S. household for 120 years.

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High-intensity exercise induces brain-protective effects that have the potential to not just slow down but possibly reverse the neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s disease, a new pilot study suggests.

Prior research has shown that many forms of exercise are linked to improved symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. But there has been no evidence that hitting the gym could create changes at the brain level. Now, a small proof-of-concept study involving 10 patients showed that high-intensity aerobic exercise preserved dopamine-producing neurons, the brain cells that are most vulnerable to destruction in patients with the disease.

In fact, after six months of exercise, the neurons actually had grown healthier and produced stronger dopamine signals. Dopamine is a chemical that helps brain cells communicate with one another. The researchers published their findings in npj Parkinson’s Disease on February 9.

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