Lifeboat Foundation

For decades, India has relied on female sterilization as its primary mode of contraception, funding about four million tubal ligations every year, more than any other country. This year, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a major step toward modernizing that system, introducing injectable contraceptives free of charge in government facilities. The World Health Organization recommends their use without restriction for women of childbearing age.

New birth control options have long been advocated by international organizations, among them the United States Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They say Indian women — often worn out, anemic and at higher risk of death because they bear children young and often — urgently need methods to delay or space pregnancies.

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At Vanderbilt University scientists are building an artificial kidney that they envision will one day will be a standard of care over dialysis. The device consists of a silicon nanotechnology filter chip and embedded living kidney cells that would work together to mimic the functionality of a healthy kidney. The end result is expected to be about the size of a natural kidney, small enough to be implantable and powered by the body’s own blood flow.

The filter component has tiny pores that can be individually shaped to perform a specific task. These filters would sit in a series, each one performing a different filtration step. Between the filter slices there would be living kidney cells that perform tasks that the man made components are not very good at, including reabsorption of nutrients and getting rid of accumulated waste.

Here’s video with Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. William Fissell, the lead scientist on the research:

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One thing that will remain with tech for many years is jobs in cyber security — even with the layer of security that Quantum technology brings in the next 10 years; there is always a migration and retirement state that can (depending on the business and systems involved) could go on for years after Quantum platforms and networks are installed.

Then in December, aided and abetted by a Republican-controlled Congress, he eradicated those minor restrictions and replaced mindless austerity with clueless profligacy.

It proposes lifting the limits entirely from 2018. “It adheres to last year’s bipartisan budget agreement, it drives down the deficit, and includes smart savigs on health care, immigration and tax reform”.

Continue reading “Obama wants to spend $19 billion on cyber security” »

Big Blue is cool again according to investors.

NEW YORK: Here’s a vexing question for artificial mega-brain Watson: Why is IBM stock surging? Big Blue’s market value rose about $6 billion after the computer giant agreed on Thursday to buy Truven Health Analytics for $2.6 billion. Giving IBM’s artificial-intelligence platform more data to chew on is useful, but investors’ glee over an opaque addition to an enigmatic business effort is confusing.

Big Blue’s top line has been shrinking steadily for nearly four years. In the fourth quarter of 2015, all major divisions had declining sales, with overall revenue falling 8.5 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Clients need less of IBM’s hardware, and its software and consulting businesses are faltering in competition with rivals’ cloud-based versions.

Continue reading “Why is IBM surging?” »

Like the idea of using Google to vote online for the best airline, steamed dumpling or health app?

What about using Google to vote for governor or president? That seems to be Google’s plan.

The search giant received a U.S. patent for a voting user interface (VUI). The interface would appear along with search results and would allow the user to vote for one or more contestants competing in a campaign.

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Collins and Baldwin’s legislation would create the “Next Generation Researchers Initiative” within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of the Director to coordinate all current and new…

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Interesting read mostly about the SV income divide. Bottom line, is that we need technology in many ways to save humanity. I know many are questioning that remark. However, since technology has been existence, many have gained through medical treatments, research, and accessibilities to connect with people like we never did in the past. The future of tech holds great promise as a tool to help researchers and medical teams to eliminate cancer, neurological diseases and disorders, enabling the blind to see and the paralyzed to walk. The good does outweigh the bad.

Editor’s note: Income equality — a hot-button political issue — is not going to improve; technology is about to make things much worse. It will, over the next decade, begin to disrupt almost every industry, wipe out millions of jobs, and make the rich even richer. Even though everyone will be able to live better and healthier lives and benefit from the technology advances, the widening gap will cause greater resentment and create a larger cauldron of dissent. This is something we need to be prepared for, writes former Triangle tech entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa.

SAN FRANCISCO - There are very few issues that Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton all agree on. One of them is the growing problem of inequality in income and wealth. From the extreme left to the extreme right, everyone is angry about the one percent who have the majority of the wealth. There has always been an income and wealth gap, but the divide between average worker and the very wealthy has not been so great since the Roaring Twenties. This is fueling the rise of both the Tea Party and the socialists.

Continue reading “Vivek Wadhwa: Tech industry must lead smart, civil conversation on inequality” »

I was waiting for this HIPAA’s new guidelines for mobile apps (focuses a lot on IAM); this is only the first wave. We will see more when more AI is launched.

Federal regulators have issued new guidance, including material to clarify for healthcare entities and software developers various scenarios where HIPAA regulations might apply to mobile health applications, including situations when patients use smartphones to collect or transmit personal health data.

See Also: 2015 Breach Preparedness and Response Study: The Results

Continue reading “New HIPAA Guidance For Mobile Apps, Health Info Exchange” »

Good news and hope for Parkinson disease patients.

Erika Jucumin, a physician assistant at Neurology Associates in Ormond Beach, programs and monitors a deep brain stimulator for patients with Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and other neurological disorders.

As a result, Jacumin said she has seen many amazing turn-arounds in patients’ health. She spoke to The News-Journal about the device.

Continue reading “Brain stimuator helps Parkinsons patients improve quality of life” »