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Category: robotics/AI – Page 7

Immune checkpoint inhibitor-associated myocarditis and pericarditis: a pharmacovigilance study based on the FAERS database

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are medications used in cancer immunotherapy. However, treatment with ICIs may lead to adverse effects, particularly myocarditis and pericarditis. This practical pharmacovigilance study investigates the relationship between ICIs and myocarditis and pericarditis using the FAERS (U.S. FDA Adverse Event Reporting System) database.

Data on myocarditis and pericarditis related to ICIs were extracted from the FAERS database for the period from 2014Q1 to 2023Q4. Data mining was performed using the Bayesian Confidence Propagation Neural Network (BCPNN) and the Reporting Odds Ratio (ROR).

A total of 1,112 cases involving 1,134 adverse event (AE) reports related to ICIs-associated noninfectious myocarditis/pericarditis (NM/P) were extracted from the FAERS database. After excluding reports with missing data, the primary reporters were physicians, consumers, and pharmacists, with the United States and Japan being the main reporting countries. The cases showed a greater percentage of males than females, with a median age of 67 years, a median weight of 65 kg, and a median onset time of 28 days. The signal strength of ICIs-associated NM/P, from highest to lowest, was as follows: Pembrolizumab (ROR: 12.32, 95% CI: 11.28–13.45, IC 025: 3.45) Nivolumab (ROR: 11.23, 95% CI: 10.13–12.44, IC 025: 3.30) Atezolizumab (ROR: 10.62, 95% CI: 8.67–13.02, IC 025: 3.10) Ipilimumab (ROR: 10.25, 95% CI: 8.34–12.58, IC 025: 3.04) Durvalumab (ROR: 9.25, 95% CI: 7.21–11.88, IC 025: 2.83).

Agility’s ‘hardest working’ humanoid robot hits 100,000-tote milestone

Oregon-based robotics company Agility Robotics announced Thursday that its humanoid robot Digit has moved more than 100,000 totes at a GXO Logistics facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia.

This milestone marks a significant step for the company in proving the practical value of humanoid robots in real-world logistics. Instead of polished demo clips, this result proves the robot can handle real warehouse tasks every day.

Polymathic: Simulation is one of the cornerstone tools of modern science and engineering

Using simulation-based techniques, scientists can ask how their ideas, actions, and designs will interact with the physical world. Yet this power is not without costs. Cutting edge simulations can often take months of supercomputer time. Surrogate models and machine learning are promising alternatives for accelerating these workflows, but the data hunger of machine learning has limited their impact to data-rich domains. Over the last few years, researchers have sought to side-step this data dependence through the use of foundation models— large models pretrained on large amounts of data which can accelerate the learning process by transferring knowledge from similar inputs, but this is not without its own challenges.

The Batman effect: The mere sight of the ‘superhero’ can make us more altruistic

If “Batman” appears on the scene, we immediately become more altruistic: in fact, research conducted by psychologists from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, shows that the sudden appearance of something unexpected—Batman—disrupts the predictability of everyday life and forces people to be present, breaking free from autopilot.

The study was published in the journal npj Mental Health Research, and was led by Francesco Pagnini, Full Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, Università Cattolica.

Prosocial behavior, or the act of helping others, is essential to social life, yet the spontaneous environmental factors that trigger such behavior remain little explored. This study tested the ability of an unexpected event, such as the presence of a person dressed as Batman, to increase prosocial behavior by interrupting routines and increasing people’s attention to the present moment.

New AI language-vision models transform traffic video analysis to improve road safety

New York City’s thousands of traffic cameras capture endless hours of footage each day, but analyzing that video to identify safety problems and implement improvements typically requires resources that most transportation agencies don’t have.

Now, researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering have developed an artificial intelligence system that can automatically identify collisions and near-misses in existing traffic video by combining language reasoning and visual intelligence, potentially transforming how cities improve road safety without major new investments.

Published in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention, the research won New York City’s Vision Zero Research Award, an annual recognition of work that aligns with the city’s road safety priorities and offers actionable insights. Professor Kaan Ozbay, the paper’s senior author, presented the study at the eighth annual Research on the Road symposium.

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