A new method of treating brain cancer could use magnetism to destroy cancer cells from the inside, according to a study published in March in Science Advances. The method, which the researchers call mechanical nanosurgery, could provide a much-needed new treatment option for patients with glioblastoma, a terminal form of brain cancer. The new method […]
Although your brain has chronologically the same number of years in the world as the rest of you, determining its medical “age,” a measure of how processes of aging impact the brain, is far from obvious or straightforward. Now, researchers are testing an AI-based model that determines brain age via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, […]
Mucus plays a key role in protecting the body from harm, preventing potentially dangerous substances from reaching the gastrointestinal system. But it also makes it virtually impossible to give certain medications orally, including insulin. That means people with diabetes must regularly inject insulin, which is unpleasant and can cause people with diabetes to be inconsistent […]
A killer could be stopped cold—or at least be limited in its deadly toll—thanks to AI. Apart from COVID-19, tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death by an infectious disease worldwide, despite being largely preventable and treatable. While the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends using chest X-rays to help identify likely cases of TB, […]
If someone is seeking medical care, the color of their skin shouldn’t matter. But, according to new research, pulse oximeters’ performance and accuracy apparently hinges on it. Inaccurate blood-oxygen measurements, in other words, made by pulse oximeters have had clear consequences for people of color during the COVID-19 pandemic. “That device ended up being essentially […]
The messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccines, including ones made by Moderna and Pfizer, notched some famous successes and pioneered the use of mRNA technology along the way. Now, scientists are testing similar technologies as treatments for a variety of conditions, including heart injury. New research presented in April at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biomedicine 2022 conference […]
Brain cancer is notoriously hard to treat, and surgery can be highly invasive and dangerous. With that in mind, researchers have created a technique that uses a magnetically guided “thermoseed” to precisely target and kill cancer cells using heat. The new method, which the researchers call minimally invasive image-guided ablation (MINIMA), is detailed in a […]
New visual sensors inspired by the human eye could help the blind see again and provide powerful new ways for machines to sense the world around them. Recent research shows that more faithfully copying nature’s hardware could be the key to replicating its powerful capabilities. Efforts to build bionic eyes have been underway for several […]
A team of researchers at DeepMind and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL), has used a kind of AI called deep reinforcement learning (RL) to control the magnetic coils of a tokamak, a donut-shaped reactor used for fusion research and one of the leading candidates to generate electric power from fusion. […]
A heart attack might seem like a completely random event, but there are signs when a person might be at risk. What if you could pick up on these signs from a simple, relatively cheap scan of a person’s eye? “You get it every time you go to [get] a pair of glasses,” said Alex […]