Lifeboat Foundation

Watch this robot conduct a human orchestra.

With some reports predicting the precision agriculture market will reach $12.9 billion by 2027, there is an increasing need to develop sophisticated data-analysis solutions that can guide management decisions in real time. A new study from an interdisciplinary research group at University of Illinois offers a promising approach to efficiently and accurately process precision ag data.

A swallowable capsule that can identify warning signs of colorectal cancer is moving closer to the American market, promising an Israeli-led revolution in colorectal cancer prevention.

“When we ask patients and physicians, we get a clear answer that the device has the potential to change the natural history of colon cancer screening,” said Ovadia. “Since the device is safe, not an intervention and there is no need for preparation, we have resolved most of the barriers preventing any patient of the recommended age from undergoing screening. There is no reason now for a patient not to perform the study.”

According to Prof. Nadir Arber, the principal investigator for C-Scan clinical trials and the head of the Health Promotion Center and Integrated Cancer Prevention Center at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, the C-Scan system “can change the landscape of colorectal cancer prevention worldwide.”

Continue reading “Israeli-made x-ray capsule identifies warning signs of colorectal cancer” »

The majority have focused on outlining high-level principles that should guide those building these systems. W hether by chance or by design, the principles they have coalesced around closely resemble those at the heart of medical ethics. But writing in Nature Machine Intelligence, Brent Mittelstadt from the University of Oxford points out that AI development is a very different beast to medicine, and a simple copy and paste won’t work.

The four core principles of medical ethics are respect for autonomy (patients should have control over how they are treated), beneficence (doctors should act in the best interest of patients), non-maleficence (doctors should avoid causing harm) and justice (healthcare resources should be distributed fairly).

The more than 80 AI ethics reports published are far from homogeneous, but similar themes of respect, autonomy, fairness, and prevention of harm run through most. And these seem like reasonable principles to apply to the development of AI. The problem, says Mittelstadt, is that while principles are an effective tool in the context of a discipline like medicine, they simply don’t make sense for AI.

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Do you want to stop ageing? Do you want to live forever? Can science help you cheat death? In this pioneering documentary, Professor Rose Anne Kenny takes us through the science and the consequences of living longer lives.

Imagine for a moment that old age became a thing of the past. Today, for better or for worse, it would appear that eternal life may soon be a reality. Some scientists are forecasting that the only way many humans will die is if they are shot or run over by a bus.

Continue reading “When Living 200 Year Becomes Normal — The End of Ageing (Medical Science Documentary) | Only Human” »

Doctors wanted to ensure they didn’t compromise parts of the brain necessary for playing the violin, so they asked their musician patient to play for them mid-operation.

Were humans designed to eat meat? Did we evolve to consume other creatures? Is flesh eating enshrined in our DNA? Here, we discuss these divisive queries.

Never in history have we seen wealth concentrated (Apple is worth over a trillion dollars). Money and congressional power answers why legislators: let drug companies squeeze dollars from sick people, refuse to stop a president who winks and nods at Putin, at right-wing agitators, who stoke bigotry, or singles out Black, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees (let’s just lump them together). Fear of others comes from seeds planted early in life. Fear is personal — you don’t feel mine, I don’t feel yours.

But, alas, the future will be like nothing we have experienced. It’s a HUUUGE planet, with decades to come, which, if we lived long enough would from today’s vantage be unrecognizable. What we do know from our lives is that we are but a small part, not only small in terms of our kind or beliefs (political, religious, cultural), but small in influence over the planet’s trajectory (war, maybe atomic, population growth, immigration, climate, economy, racial, ethnic composition, e.g., in the U.S.).

Continue reading “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” »