Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology can now assess a person’s intelligence in moments with nothing more than a brain scan and an AI algorithm, university officials announced this summer.

Caltech researchers led by Ralph Adolphs, PhD, a professor of psychology, neuroscience and biology and chair of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center, said in a recent study that they, alongside colleagues at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Salerno, were successfully able to predict IQ in hundreds of patients from fMRI scans of resting-state brain activity. The work is pending publication in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Adolphs and his team collected data from nearly 900 men and women for their research, all of whom were part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-driven Human Connectome Project. The researchers trained their machine learning algorithm on the complexities of the human brain by feeding the brain scans and intelligence scores of these hundreds of patients into the algorithm—something that took very little effort on the patients’ end.

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About 40 percent of all the energy consumed by buildings worldwide is used for space heating and cooling. With the warming climate as well as growing populations and rising standards of living—especially in hot, humid regions of the developing world—the level of cooling and dehumidification needed to ensure comfort and protect human health is predicted to rise precipitously, pushing up global energy demand.

Much discussion is now focusing on replacing the greenhouse gases frequently used as refrigerants in today’s air conditioners. But another pressing concern is that most existing systems are extremely energy-inefficient.

“The main reason they’re inefficient is that they have two tasks to perform,” says Leslie Norford, the George Macomber (1948) Professor in Construction Management in the Department of Architecture. “They need to lower temperature and remove moisture, and doing both those things together takes a lot of extra energy.”

Sexually transmitted infections can be worrisome and embarrassing, but with a few notable exceptions, most of them are quite treatable these days. Unfortunately, a new one may be on the rise. British public health officials say that Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterial infection known as MGen for short, could soon become immune to antibiotics. If this happens, the bacterium would become what’s known as a superbug, the growing class of bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotic drugs.

The bacterium, which can live in humans’ urinary and genital tracts, is transmitted through sexual intercourse. Women infected with the bacterium can experience pelvic inflammation and cervical inflammation, while men can experience inflammation of the urethra. An infected patient would feel these symptoms, generally speaking, as pain. Perhaps most disconcertingly, though, sometimes the infection will not cause any noticeable symptoms, meaning that an infected person can transmit it without even realizing that they’re doing so. If the infection is left untreated for too long, it can cause female patients to become sterile.

In response to the emerging threat posed by MGen, the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV on Sunday issued its draft guidelines for dealing with MGen. The organization also warned that antibiotic-resistant MGen could become much more prevalent in the coming years.

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The BUGS that REVERSE Damage

(HealthDay)—Get up off of the couch: Sitting too much may kill you even if you exercise regularly.

If you sit for six hours a day or more, your risk of dying early jumps 19 percent, compared with people who sit fewer than three hours, an American Cancer Society study suggests.

And, the study authors added, sitting may kill you in 14 ways, including: cancer; heart disease; stroke; diabetes; kidney disease; suicide; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); lung disease; liver disease; peptic ulcer and other digestive disease; Parkinson’s disease; Alzheimer’s disease; nervous disorders; and musculoskeletal disorders.

Faraday Future, the fledgling Tesla competitor working to build a $300,000 electric SUV, has been thrown a financial lifeline.

Evergrande Health, a division of a large Hong Kong conglomerate, has committed to invest $2 billion to keep alive the all-electric luxury SUV project, according to a report in TechCrunch.

Faraday Future showed off its ultra-futuristic—and ultra expensive—FF91 electric SUV at the 2017 CES show, but has struggled to bring the car to market.

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Babylon Health’s AI-powered robo-docs could save insurers and governments billions.

Ali Parsa’s AI-powered robo-docs could save insurers and governments billions. He’s already transformed a swathe of Britain’s socialized healthcare system, now he’s bringing it to the United States.

Recorded at “Contra Krugman: The Economic Myths of the 2016 Election”: the Mises Circle at Seattle’s historic Town Hall, on 21 May 2016.

Presidential candidates promise everything from living wages to free health care and college. Proposals about how to run whole segments of the economy are made with a straight face. The most tired and hackneyed ideas about income equality, corporate greed, creating jobs, and paying one’s fair share of taxes are trotted out. And millions of voters apparently believe it all, falling for the same promises of free stuff and prosperity from Washington.

Continue reading “The Single Greatest Economic Myth” »