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Category: health – Page 223

CHIP Landmark Ideas: Ray Kurzweil

Rewriting Biology with Artificial Intelligence.

Ray Kurzweil.

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbesmagazine, he was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” PBS selected him as one of the “sixteen revolutionaries who made America.” Ray was the principal inventor of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software. Ray received a Grammy Award for outstanding achievements in music technology; he is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, holds twenty-one honorary Doctorates, and honors from three U.S. presidents. Ray has written five national best-selling books, including New York Times best sellers The Singularity Is Near (2005) and How To Create A Mind (2012). He is Co-Founder of Singularity Group and a Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google, looking at the long-term implications of technology and society.

The Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP)

CHIP, founded in 1994, is a multidisciplinary applied research and education program at Boston Children’s Hospital. For more information, please visit our website www.chip.org.

The CHIP Landmark Ideas Series.

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Research shows fatty liver disease endangers brain health

In a study examining the link between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and brain dysfunction, scientists at the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology, affiliated to King’s College London and the University of Lausanne, found an accumulation of fat in the liver causes a decrease in oxygen to the brain and inflammation to brain tissue—both of which have been proven to lead to the onset of severe brain diseases.

The paper appears in the Journal of Hepatology.

NAFLD affects approximately 25% of the population and more than 80% of morbidly obese people. Several studies have reported the negative effects of an unhealthy diet and obesity can have on however this is believed to be the first study that clearly links NAFLD with deterioration and identifies a potential therapeutic target.

Wearable skin patch could help clinicians diagnose tumors, organ malfunction and more

Electronic wearable patches have been devised to monitor various health conditions by noninvasively detecting biomolecules on the skin surface.

A new Nature Communications study discusses the development of novel skin patches capable of deep detection of biomolecules, which correlate better and more rapidly with physiological states. For example, the photoacoustic patch described by the researchers, who are engineers at the University of California San Diego, can produce a three-dimensional (3D) map of deep tissue hemoglobin.

Already Spread to Every Continent: Unusual Fungus Has the Potential To Become a Global Health Problem

Have you ever heard of the yeast Candida auris? If not, you are most likely not the only one since it hasn’t garnered much attention. Yet. That could change.

Candida auris’s story begins in 2009 when a Japanese woman in her 70s is admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital. Her ear sometimes discharges something, and the doctors routinely use a cotton swab to collect samples of it. To determine what is causing the infection, they analyze the sample.

It turns out that a yeast, different from other known yeasts, is at play. We’ve all heard of baker’s yeast, a friendly microorganism used to make beer and bread. Candida auris and other Candida yeast species are extremely different; they cause serious and persistent infections that are difficult to treat with known antibiotics.

Scientists Discover a New Daily Rhythm Providing Insight Into How Brain Activity Is Fine-Tuned

Researchers discovered a new daily rhythm in a kind of synapse that dampens brain activity using a mouse model. These neural connections, known as inhibitory synapses, are rebalanced as we sleep to allow us to consolidate new information into lasting memories. The results, which were published in the journal PLOS Biology, may help explain how subtle synaptic changes improve memory in humans. Researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, led the study.

“Inhibition is important for every aspect of brain function. But for over two decades, most sleep studies have focused on understanding excitatory synapses,” said Dr. Wei Lu, senior investigator at NINDS. “This is a timely study to try to understand how sleep and wakefulness regulate the plasticity of inhibitory synapses.”

Kunwei Wu, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lu’s lab, investigated what occurs at inhibitory synapses in mice during sleep and wakefulness. Electrical recordings from neurons in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation, revealed a previously unknown pattern of activity. During wakefulness, steady “tonic” inhibitory activity increased but fast “phasic” inhibition decreased. They also discovered a far larger activity-dependent enhancement of inhibitory electrical responses in awake mouse neurons, suggesting that wakefulness, rather than sleep, might strengthen these synapses to a greater extent.

Scientists use machine learning to get an unprecedented view of small molecules

A new machine learning model will help scientists identify small molecules, with applications in medicine, drug discovery and environmental chemistry. Developed by researchers at Aalto University and the University of Luxembourg, the model was trained with data from dozens of laboratories to become one of the most accurate tools for identifying small molecules.

Thousands of different small molecules, known as , transport energy and transmit cellular information throughout the human body. Because they are so small, metabolites are difficult to distinguish from each other in a blood sample analysis—but identifying these molecules is important to understand how exercise, nutrition, and metabolic disorders affect well-being.

Metabolites are normally identified by analyzing their mass and retention time with a separation technique called liquid chromatography followed by mass spectrometry. This technique first separates metabolites by running the sample through a column, which results in different flow rates—or retention times—through the measurement device.

How a common cold develops

Winter and rainy season is worst for those who have low immunity. Antibiotics have many side effects. But there high fever due to viral infection is also risky.

A cold is an infection caused by a virus. It’s a common and usually mild illness that affects the nose and throat. Find out more here: http://bit.ly/KV8y1c.

The content is intended for general information only and does not replace the need for personal advice from a qualified health professional.

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