Toggle light / dark theme

A Southern California police force is welcoming a robot to the department. Huntington Park police say “HP RoboCop” will provide 360-degree high-definition video footage. (June 18)
Subscribe for more Breaking News: http://smarturl.it/AssociatedPress
Website: https://apnews.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP
Facebook: https://facebook.com/APNews
Google+: https://plus.google.com/115892241801867723374
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/

You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/a1e7febf5c776eb70daeed9dfe7bea48

What causes the immune system, designed to protect us, to turn on the body and attack healthy cells? Common bacteria that reside in the human gut may be partly to blame, say Yale researchers, who studied the origins of a serious autoimmune disease that frequently affects young women.

For their study, the research team focused on cells from patients with antiphospholipid syndrome, an disorder that raises the risk of blood clots. This chronic condition can lead to lung clots, strokes, heart attacks, and in pregnant women, miscarriages or still births.

Using patient immune cells and antibodies, as well as animal models of the disease, the investigators did several experiments to explore the phenomenon. They found that a , Roseburia intestinalis, can trigger the disease in individuals who have a genetic predisposition. In those patients, the immune system’s defender T and B cells react to a blood protein involved in clotting, and also to the bacteria, in certain found in the bacteria. Over time, this ongoing “cross-reactive” response leads to tissue damage and chronic disease.

Physicists have discovered a novel kind of nanotube that generates current in the presence of light. Devices such as optical sensors and infrared imaging chips are likely applications, which could be useful in fields such as automated transport and astronomy. In future, if the effect can be magnified and the technology scaled up, it could lead to high-efficiency solar power devices.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

Being able to noninvasively control robotic devices using only thoughts will have broad applications, in particular benefiting the lives of paralyzed patients and those with movement disorders.

BCIs have been shown to achieve good performance for controlling robotic devices using only the signals sensed from . When robotic devices can be controlled with high precision, they can be used to complete a variety of daily tasks. Until now, however, BCIs successful in controlling robotic arms have used invasive brain implants. These implants require a substantial amount of medical and surgical expertise to correctly install and operate, not to mention cost and potential risks to subjects, and as such, their use has been limited to just a few clinical cases.

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health,” said lead author Andrew Wilper, M.D., who currently teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”