According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic resistance is a top public health risk that was responsible for 1.27 million deaths across the globe in 2019. When repeatedly exposed to antibiotics, bacteria rapidly learn to adapt their genes to counteract the drugs—and share the genetic tweaks with their peers—rendering the drugs ineffective.
Superpowered bacteria also torpedo medical procedures—surgery, chemotherapy, C-sections—adding risk to life-saving therapies. With antibiotic resistance on the rise, there are very few new drugs in development. While studies in petri dishes have zeroed in on potent candidates, some of these also harm the body’s cells, leading to severe side effects.
What if there’s a way to retain their bacteria-fighting ability, but with fewer side effects? This month, researchers used AI to reengineer a toxic antibiotic. They made thousands of variants and screened for the ones that maintained their bug-killing abilities without harming human cells.
Increasing serotonin can change how people learn from negative information, as well as improving how they respond to it, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications.
The study by scientists at the University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry and the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Oxford Health Biomedical Research Center (OH BRC) found people with increased serotonin levels had reduced sensitivity to punishing outcomes (for example, losing money in a game) without significantly affecting sensitivity to rewarding ones (winning money).
The study involved 26 participants who were given the drug to increase serotonin, with a further 27 in a control group, who were asked to do a series of tasks measuring learning and behavioral control. State-of-the-art models were then used to understand participant behavior.
Strengthening Public Health Systems For Healthier And Longer Lives — Dr. Ashwin Vasan, Commissioner, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/ab…).
Dr. Vasan is a primary care physician, epidemiologist and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare and public policy for marginalized populations here in New York City, nationally and globally. Since 2014 he has served on the faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he continues to see patients as a primary care internist in the Division of General Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Dr. Vasan most recently served as the President and CEO of Fountain House, a national nonprofit fighting to improve health, increase opportunity, and end social and economic isolation for people most impacted by mental illness. During his tenure, he grew the organization from a New York-based community mental health organization to a national network across eight markets, and grew the budget by nearly $20 million annually. He helped navigate the organization through COVID-19 by driving new telehealth and digital mental health programs while its physical locations closed, as well as developing new community-based outreach and accompaniment programs. Further, Dr. Vasan led the creation of a national policy office in Washington, D.C., working to change national mental health policy on the issues of crisis response services and funding for and quality of community-based mental health services.
From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Vasan served as the founding Executive Director of the Health Access Equity Unit at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which focused on the intersection of clinical and social services for the care of people involved in the justice system and other vulnerable populations — a first-of-its-kind government program in the nation. Under his leadership the team launched the NYC Health Justice Network — an innovative partnership between community-based primary care providers, criminal legal system reentry organizations, the Health Department and the Fund for Public Health — to embed tech-enabled, peer community health workers to promote health and wellness of people reentering the community from incarceration, and their families. The program is currently under evaluation through the CDC Prevention Research Center grant to NYU and CUNY.
The wearables market has been dominated, so far, by smartwatches and fitness trackers. The first Apple Watch was launched in April 2015, and wearable technology now includes jewelry that tracks your steps and notifies you of an incoming call, VR headsets for gamers, earbuds, smart glasses with Internet access, smart clothing integrated with electronic devices and a range of health monitors.
But the world’s first eyelid wearable device opens up a whole new world of opportunity.
Blink Energy’s device weighs just 0.4 grams (0.014 ounces) — less than half the weight of a paperclip – and is fitted to one eyelid. You barely notice it, says Bar-On. “After two minutes you forget it’s there.”
Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem, and it’s expected to worsen with the production of new kinds of flexible electronics for robotics, wearable devices, health monitors, and other new applications, including single-use devices.
A new kind of flexible substrate material developed at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta has the potential to enable not only the recycling of materials and components at the end of a device’s useful life, but also the scalable manufacture of more complex multilayered circuits than existing substrates provide.
The development of this new material is described in the journal RSC Applied Polymers (“Photopatternable, Degradable, and Performant Polyimide Network Substrates for E-Waste Mitigation”), in a paper by MIT Professor Thomas J. Wallin, University of Utah Professor Chen Wang, and seven others.
PROVO — A new study from a BYU professor is giving insights into the quality of popularly consumed carbohydrates in the U.S. with a new glycemic index and database developed with the use of artificial intelligence.
Nutrition and dietetics professor Karen Della Corte developed a national glycemic index and glycemic load database that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. A news release from BYU said the data offers insights into the “evolving quality of carbohydrates consumed in the United States, something that hadn’t been done previously.”
She hopes this database helps increase awareness on the importance of carbohydrate quality in one’s diet and how, with other lifestyle factors, it can help prevent diseases and extend an individual’s health span.
New data on the rotation around both long and short axes of plastic strands may help researchers track and remove microplastics that pollute the ocean.
Pollution from tiny plastic particles (microplastics) increasingly threatens ocean and river ecosystems, and potentially human health, but researchers don’t have a good understanding of how and where these pollutants are transported by flowing waters. Now a research team has observed 1.2-mm-long, 10-µm-wide strands—similar to the most common type of microplastic particles—as they moved in turbulent flows mimicking those in natural environments [1]. The experiments reveal new aspects of their motion, including the rates at which fibers spin around their long axes. The researchers hope that their results will help engineers design structures that can concentrate plastics for easier removal.
Scientists currently have a limited understanding of where microplastics tend to accumulate in the environment, says fluid dynamics expert Alfredo Soldati of the Vienna University of Technology. Where plastics gather depends on natural fluid flows and on the nature of the plastic objects themselves.
ACE, a groundbreaking DNA-powered signal amplification technology, significantly enhances the sensitivity of mass cytometry, providing new insights into various biological and pathological processes.
Since the 1950s, researchers have employed “flow cytometry,” a renowned technique devised by Wallace Coulter, to characterize various types of immune cells in research studies and human blood samples. This method has significantly enhanced our understanding of immune cell development and provided innovative approaches for evaluating human health and diagnosing various blood cancers. Eventually, flow cytometry was extended to analyze other cell types as well.
In traditional flow cytometry, cell surface and intracellular proteins are detected with antibody molecules that are linked to fluorescent probes. However, while providing single-cell sensitivity, this method is limited in detecting multiple proteins by the number of fluorophores that can be clearly distinguished within the entire spectrum of fluorescent light.
It seems that Silicon Valley giants, AAA game developers, and other companies desperately clinging to the AI trend and trying to integrate the technology into any product they own will soon have to rethink their marketing strategies, as a new study conducted by researchers from Washington State University indicates that using terms like “AI” or “artificial intelligence” in product descriptions can negatively impact sales.
To explore the impact of including “AI” in goods and service descriptions on consumers’ purchase intentions, the team conducted six experiments and surveyed over a thousand people, discovering that the use of these terms decreases purchase intention and lowers emotional trust, leading to what any company fears the most – diminishing sales numbers.
Furthermore, the researchers found that putting artificial intelligence in the spotlight can be even more detrimental when it comes to high-risk products – those consumers typically think twice about buying, such as expensive gadgets and medical services – compared to low-risk items, primarily because of the greater likelihood of incurring monetary losses or facing health risks.
A UCSF study reveals that higher inflammation levels in young adults are associated with poorer cognitive performance in midlife, underscoring the importance of lifestyle choices in reducing inflammation and preventing cognitive decline.
Higher levels of inflammation in young adults, associated with factors like obesity, physical inactivity, chronic illness, stress, and smoking, are linked to decreased cognitive function in midlife, according to a new study from UC San Francisco.
Researchers previously linked higher inflammation in older adults to dementia, but this is one of the first studies to connect inflammation in early adulthood with lower cognitive abilities in midlife.
