Wednesday 19 June 2019

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

Florida city pays $600,000 ransom to save computer records

A Florida city agreed to pay $600,000 in ransom to hackers who took over its computer system, the latest in thousands of attacks worldwide aimed at extorting money from governments and businesses.

* This article was originally published here

From one brain scan, more information for medical artificial intelligence

MIT researchers have devised a novel method to glean more information from images used to train machine-learning models, including those that can analyze medical scans to help diagnose and treat brain conditions.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook research focuses on lifelike environments for AI-powered assistants

Virtual Robots have moved up to an elite platform dedicated to stepping up their game. The platform is dubbed AI Habitat.

* This article was originally published here

First-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm without brain implants

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has made a breakthrough in the field of noninvasive robotic device control. Using a noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI), researchers have developed the first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.

* This article was originally published here

Toward artificial intelligence that learns to write code

Learning to code involves recognizing how to structure a program, and how to fill in every last detail correctly. No wonder it can be so frustrating.

* This article was originally published here

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

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

Scientists chart course toward a new world of synthetic biology

Genetically engineered trees that provide fire-resistant lumber for homes. Modified organs that won't be rejected. Synthetic microbes that monitor your gut to detect invading disease organisms and kill them before you get sick.

* 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

'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

Plate tectonics may have driven Cambrian Explosion, study shows

The quest to discover what drove one of the most important evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth has taken a new, fascinating twist.

* This article was originally published here

Study: How arousal impacts physiological synchrony in relationships

A team of researchers led by a member of the Colorado School of Public Health faculty at the Anschutz Medical Campus examined what type of social interaction is required for people to display physiological synchrony—mutual changes in autonomic nervous system activity. The study also looked at whether the levels of autonomic arousal people share predicts affiliation and friendship interest between people.

* This article was originally published here

Sleep training for your kids: Why and how it works

For thousands of years, mothers have sung lullabies to help their babies and children fall asleep. In more recent times, gadgets and devices have been invented and marketed to help the tired child—and weary parent.

* This article was originally published here

Facebook to unveil new cryptocurrency

Facebook is set Tuesday to unveil a bid to bring cryptocurrency payments into the mainstream, reportedly with the endorsement of governments and financial giants.

* This article was originally published here

One day of employment a week is all we need for mental health benefits: study

As automation advances, predictions of a jobless future have some fearing unrest from mass unemployment, while others imagine a more contented work-free society.

* This article was originally published here

Another climate change threat: More 'flesh-eating' bacteria?

(HealthDay)—A flesh-eating bacteria has migrated into the Delaware Bay between Delaware and New Jersey, drawn north by the warmer waters of climate change, doctors say.

* This article was originally published here

NVIDIA going full stack for ARM boosts supercomputing presence

NVIDIA and ARM make one power couple for supercomputing. NVIDIA has announced its chips will work with ARM processors. Outside observers got busy earlier this week assessing why this was a big deal to empower both companies and the effort to explain was not at all difficult.

* This article was originally published here

Skinflow: A soft robotic skin based on liquid transmission

Researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the University of Bristol have recently developed a new soft robotic skin-like sensor that is based on fluidic transmission. This sensor, presented at the second IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), could have interesting applications in a variety of fields, ranging from robotics to virtual reality (VR).

* This article was originally published here