Wednesday 19 June 2019

Comcast remote lets people with physical disabilities control the TV with their eyes

Most TV viewers take for granted the ability to change the channel from their couches with a remote control. That task may be near impossible for viewers with the most severe physical challenges.

* This article was originally published here

New research finds increased CT use for suspected urolithiasis patients in ED

A new study performed in conjunction with the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute examines changing characteristics of utilization and potential disparities in US emergency department (ED) patients undergoing CT of the abdomen and pelvis (CTAP) for suspected urolithiasis. The study is published online in the Journal of American College of Radiology (JACR).

* This article was originally published here

Simple scan could direct treatments for angina

A 40 minute test for angina could help patients avoid an overnight stay in hospital, according to research funded by the NIHR Guy's and St Thomas' Biomedical Research Centre.

* This article was originally published here

Survey sees biggest US honeybee winter die-off yet

Winter hit U.S. honeybees hard with the highest loss rate yet, an annual survey of beekeepers showed.

* This article was originally published here

Oceanographers investigate the ocean's carbon-absorbing processes over time

It's a well-known fact that the ocean is one of the biggest absorbers of the carbon dioxide emitted by way of human activity. What's less well known is how the ocean's processes for absorbing that carbon change over time, and how they might affect its ability to buffer climate change.

* This article was originally published here

Patients of surgeons with unprofessional behavior more likely to suffer complications

Patients of surgeons with higher numbers of reports from co-workers about unprofessional behavior are significantly more likely to experience complications during or after their operations, researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) reported today in JAMA Surgery.

* This article was originally published here

Human-on-a-chip model tests cancer drug efficacy and toxicity for therapeutic index

A reconfigurable "body-on-a-chip" model could transform drug development by simultaneously measuring compound efficacy and toxicity, for both target cells and other organs, such as the heart and liver. These findings, published in Science Translational Medicine, demonstrate the ability of a body-on-a-chip model to truly revolutionize biomedical research and personalized medicine through more accurate and efficient preclinical testing without the use of animal studies.

* This article was originally published here

Investigating coral and algal 'matchmaking' at the cellular level

What factors govern algae's success as "tenants" of their coral hosts both under optimal conditions and when oceanic temperatures rise? A Victoria University of Wellington-led team of experts that includes Carnegie's Arthur Grossman investigates this question.

* This article was originally published here

Automated cryptocode generator is helping secure the web

Nearly every time you open up a secure Google Chrome browser, a new MIT-developed cryptographic system is helping better protect your data.

* This article was originally published here

Serotonin linked to somatic awareness, a condition long thought to be imaginary

An international team spearheaded by researchers at McGill University has discovered a biological mechanism that could explain heightened somatic awareness, a condition where patients experience physical discomforts for which there is no physiological explanation.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook's currency Libra faces financial, privacy pushback

Facebook is getting a taste of the regulatory pushback it will face as it creates a new digital currency with corporate partners.

* This article was originally published here

How to head off a pain in the neck

(HealthDay)—Neck pain can sneak up on you over time. While it can be caused by an accident or injury, your everyday posture and body mechanics can also be to blame, from the way you carry a shoulder bag, cradle your phone while multitasking or sit at your desk. These tips will help you better protect your neck.

* This article was originally published here

'Goldilocks' neurons promote REM sleep

Every night while sleeping, we cycle between two very different states of sleep. Upon falling asleep, we enter non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep where our breathing is slow and regular and movement of our limbs or eyes are minimal. Approximately 90 minutes later, how-ever, we enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This is a paradoxical state where our breathing becomes fast and irregular, our limbs twitch, and our eyes move rapidly. In REM sleep, our brain is highly active, but we also become paralyzed and we lose the ability to thermoregulate or maintain our constant body temperature. "This loss of thermoregulation in REM sleep is one of the most peculiar aspects of sleep, particularly since we have finely-tuned mechanisms that control our body temperature while awake or in non-REM sleep," says Markus Schmidt of the Department for BioMedical Research (DBMR) of the University of Bern, and the Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. On the one hand, the findings confirm a hypothesis proposed earlier by Schmidt, senior author of the study, and on the other hand represent a breakthrough for sleep medicine. The paper was published in Current Biology and highlighted by the editors with a comment.

* This article was originally published here

New AI system manages road infrastructure via Google Street View

Geospatial scientists have developed a new program to monitor street signs needing replacement or repair by tapping into Google Street View images.

* This article was originally published here

Californians agree: Don't build in wildfire-prone areas

Almost three-quarters of California voters think limits should be imposed on new housing developments in high-risk wildfire areas, according to a new Berkeley IGS Poll.

* This article was originally published here

Brain anatomy links cognitive and perceptual symptoms in autism

Neuroscientists at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) and University College London have found an anatomical link between cognitive and perceptual symptoms in autism. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the study identified a posterior region of the brain whose amount of gray matter is related to both cognitive rigidity and overly stable visual perception, two symptoms of autism that until now were only conceptually related.

* This article was originally published here

Gut bacteria from breastfeeding linked to improved infant response to vaccines

Higher levels of a customary gut bacteria enhanced by breastfeeding in early infancy were found to be coupled with an improved response to vaccines in infants through two years of age, according to a first-of-its-kind study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their colleagues.

* This article was originally published here

Popcorn as a snack—healthy hit or dietary horror show?

Popcorn, with its ample dietary fiber and typically low calorie count, makes it easy to understand why many people think a giant bucket at the movie theater qualifies as a healthy snack.

* This article was originally published here

A new approach for unsupervised paraphrasing without translation

In recent years, researchers have been trying to develop methods for automatic paraphrasing, which essentially entails the automated abstraction of semantic content from text. So far, approaches that rely on machine translation (MT) techniques have proved particularly popular due to the lack of available labeled datasets of paraphrased pairs.

* This article was originally published here

Now your phone can become a robot that does the boring work

If any factory worker could program low-cost robots, then more factories could actually use robotics to increase worker productivity.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers use biological evolution to inspire machine learning

As Charles Darwin wrote in at the end of his seminal 1859 book On the Origin of the Species, "whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Scientists have since long believed that the diversity and range of forms of life on Earth provide evidence that biological evolution spontaneously innovates in an open-ended way, constantly inventing new things. However, attempts to construct artificial simulations of evolutionary systems tend to run into limits in the complexity and novelty which they can produce. This is sometimes referred to as "the problem of open-endedness." Because of this difficulty, to date, scientists can't easily make artificial systems capable of exhibiting the richness and diversity of biological systems.

* This article was originally published here