Sandy Hetherington, The University of Edinburgh and Holly-Anne Turner, University College Cork
If your eyes have ever been drawn to the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, the texture of a pineapple or the scales of a pinecone, then you have unknowingly witnessed brilliant examples of mathematical patterns in nature.
Joshua Krook, University of Southampton
For the first time, researchers have managed to use GPT1, precursor to the AI chatbot ChatGPT, to translate MRI imagery into text in an effort to understand what someone is thinking.
April 26, 2023 /Lifestyle/ — The most important changes in cognition with normal aging are declines in performance on cognitive tasks that require one to quickly process or transform information to make a decision, including measures of speed of processing, working memory, and executive cognitive function.
However, not all thinking abilities decline with age. In fact, vocabulary, reading and verbal reasoning remain unchanged or even improve during the aging process.
There are many lifestyle choices that can help to maintain cognitive function as we age. Some of the most important include: Continue reading
New research in the March 2023 issue of JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network highlights how the lack of genomic research for people with African ancestry, particularly those from the Sub-Saharan region, is hampering efforts to reduce disparities for people with cancer. In a first-of-its-kind study, the researchers evaluated molecular genetic results for 113 Black South African men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer to find evidence for increased and potentially unique genetic testing recommendations. Continue reading
Healthy.io, the global leader in transforming the smartphone camera into a medical device, announced today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded the company three patents for the technology behind its Minuteful Wound app. The app enables nurses and healthcare assistants to scan chronic wounds using a standard smartphone camera, with the simple process of shooting an ordinary five-second video. Following this scan, the app runs a set of computer-vision and deep-learning algorithms to analyze the data and translate it into clinical outputs. These include a 3D reconstruction of the wound area, a breakdown of the state of the tissues, and the exact size of the wound. Continue reading
A study reveals a previously unknown way in which cannabidiol (CBD), a substance found in cannabis, reduces seizures in treatment-resistant forms of pediatric epilepsy.
Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new study found that CBD blocked signals carried by a molecule called lysophosphatidylinositol (LPI). Found in brain cells called neurons, LPI is thought to amplify nerve signals as part of normal function, but can be hijacked by disease to promote seizures. Continue reading
Emma Beckett, University of Newcastle
Many of us want (or should I say need?) our morning coffee to give us our “get up and go”. Altogether, the people of the world drink more than two billion cups of coffee each day.
You might think coffee gives you the energy to get through the morning or the day – but coffee might not be giving you as much as you think.
Foods rich in nutrients with antioxidant properties are regularly encouraged as part of a healthy lifestyle, and research suggests that a diet high in antioxidant-rich foods may even help to reduce the risk of premature death.1 While fruits and vegetables are often thought of as high-antioxidant foods, a new study conducted by Cornell University and published in the journal, Nutrients, produced surprising results2. Pistachios have a very high antioxidant capacity, among the highest when compared to values reported in research of many foods commonly known for their antioxidant capacity, such as blueberries, pomegranates, cherries, and beets. Continue reading
Andrea Sturchio, Karolinska Institutet; Kariem Ezzat, Karolinska Institutet, and Samir EL Andaloussi, Karolinska Institutet
In 1906, Alois Alzheimer, a psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, reported “a peculiar severe disease process of the cerebral cortex” to a gathering of psychiatrists in Tübingen, Germany. The case was a 50-year-old woman who suffered from memory loss, delusions, hallucinations, aggression and confusion – all of which worsened until her untimely death five years later.
Love Dalén, Stockholm University and Anders Götherström, Stockholm University
The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for 2022 has been awarded to Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”.
