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Category: health

Regular visits to the dentist are an important part of keeping your teeth healthy. But what if you could give your oral health a boost by receiving a vaccine on top of your regular dental care routine?

Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIOV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are working on such a vaccine, and their study has just been published in Scientific Reports.

Led by WIOV scientist Yan Huimin, the researchers tested a fusion of proteins to prevent the development of dental caries. Better known as dental cavities, caries is caused by the bacteria Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans).

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Ed Whiting, director of policy at the Wellcome Trust agreed and said: “There is no doubt of the urgency – the world is running out of effective antibiotics and drug-resistant infections already kill 700,000 people a year globally. We’ve made good progress in getting this on the political agenda. But now, a year on from a major UN agreement, we must see concerted action – to reinvigorate the antibiotic pipeline, ensure responsible use of existing antibiotics, and address this threat across human, animal and environmental health.”

The report’s authors have found 51 new antibiotics and biologicals currently in development that may be able to treat the diseases caused by these resistant bugs. But that will not be anywhere near enough because of the length of time it takes to get drugs approved and onto the market, and because inevitably some of the drugs will not work.

“Given the average success rates and development times in the past, the current pipeline of antibiotics and biologicals could lead to around 10 new approvals over the next five years,” says the report. “However, these new treatments will add little to the already existing arsenal and will not be sufficient to tackle the impending antimicrobial resistance threat.”

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The US is in a opioid addiction crisis that has been described as a national epidemic by health officials. Each day 91 people die after overdosing on the drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More Americans now die from drug overdoses than in car accidents or from gun violence put together, and more than 2.6m are addicted to opioids, according to CDC figures.

Health insurance system is partly to blame for the epidemic that is costing companies $18bn a year.

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The ‘singularity’ event that scientists talk about in artificial intelligence (AI) — when robots would outsmart human beings in reasoning — has just been moved up, according to a top scientist at HP Inc. The progress in AI and machine learning has been so rapid that scientists have upped the estimate for the ‘singularity’ to happen in 2029 from 2040, shaving off 11 years of development time, says Shane Wall, Chief Technology Officer at HP, who also heads the HP Labs which is at the centre of innovation within the company.

Wall, who was speaking at the HP Reinvent Partner Forum here, said there may be some who watch with fear for that event to happen but taken adequate precautions, this change would bring in much good for everyone — be it in manufacturing, health, innovation or elsewhere. He said AI handles huge amount of data and can discern patterns to take decisions. “Machine learning uses AI and big data to learn and it can find things that no humans can see,” Wall noted.

According to him, already there are massive data farms which are crunching big numbers and there are research labs and companies where machines are taught how to use data to managing things around us. Wall, who joined HP over a decade ago, drives the company’s technology vision and its strategy and helms the innovation community within. According to him, machines have become smart enough to predict failures within a system and 3D manufacturing is a massive revolution in the making. “Already, 3D printing is handling intricate products and in the future this will bring about a disruptive change,” Wall said.

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In Unexpected Futurist, we profile the lesser known futurist side of influential individuals. This episode’s unexpected time-traveler: Benjamin Franklin. Ben Franklin was an inventor, observer, electricity pioneer, and serial experimenter, so it’s not entirely surprising he looked to the future. But it turns out he was looking to the far, far future. In 1780 he wrote a letter to a friend in which he lamented that he was born during the dawn of science.

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Alison Sommer graduated from Carleton with a degree in Asian Studies, and now works as an academic technologist at Macalester College. She believes that awareness is the first step to improving problems within mental health care, and will be speaking about anxiety disorders and panic attacks based on her own constantly evolving understanding of her anxiety disorder, OCD. Alison’s greatest loves are her family, hockey and Star Wars.

My first goal here today is not to have a panic attack right on stage. I have an anxiety disorder called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD. Obsessive Compulsive…I have a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that causes me to become anxious or frightened when something wrong or unexpected happens. Like if somebody sits at my seat at the table.

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BOSTON (AP) — IBM is planning to spend $240 million over the next decade to create an artificial intelligence research lab at MIT.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday announced the formation of the new MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. It will support joint research by IBM and MIT scientists.

Its mission will include advancing the hardware, software and algorithms used for artificial intelligence. It also will tackle some of the economic and ethical implications of intelligent machines and look at its commercial application for industries ranging from health care to cybersecurity.

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HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 35 million lives so far, and the “cured” man is one of just 50 people currently undergoing this experimental therapy, a small percentage of the estimated 36.7 million people currently living with HIV, only 54 percent of whom know their status.

While the results of the treatment out of the UK are promising, those dormant T cells could still be lurking in the patient, so this new treatment can’t yet be considered a “cure.” However, it is another encouraging step forward on the path to one.

“We will continue with medical tests for the next five years and at the moment we are not recommending stopping Art but in the future, depending on the test results we may explore this,” said Fidlar.

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