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Mars Base

Game on! Researchers use online crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ne-crowd-sourcing-malaria.html

scibyte45 crowdsourcing medical

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 12 - No Cached
  • Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases
  • crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.
  • recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
  • Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists
  • School of Medicine at UCLA
  • found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.
  • The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children
  • if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive
  • if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis
  • could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria
  • current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites
  • process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge
  • significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations
  • t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field
  • By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac
  • research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.
  • Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images
  • one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics
Mars Base

June 7 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on June 7th, died, and events - 0 views

www.todayinsci.com/...6_07.htm

scibyte133 LookingBackJun

shared by Mars Base on 29 May 14 - No Cached
  • Ultrasound article
  • In 1958, a seminal article that launched the widespread use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis was published in The Lancet by Ian Donald, an English physician. After a few years developing the experimental use of ultrasound, Donald had applied it to treat patients in his hospital. In the Lancet article, Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound, he described how he was able to make the life-saving diagnosis of a huge, easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others as having inoperable stomach cancer. Donald knew about sonar from his service in WW II, and industrial use of reflected ultrasound waves for flaw detection in materials, and with help from others, he launched its use in medicine
Mars Base

Breath Test Could Sniff Out Infections in Minutes | Observations, Scientific American B... - 0 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...niff-out-infections-in-minutes

scibyte77 MedicalDevice

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Researchers have developed a test that can detect the presence of common infectious bacteria based just on the breath
  • The test picks up signature volatile organic compound (VOC)—particles emitted in gasses—profiles that the bacteria produce that are distinct those that the body—or other bacteria—give off
  • researchers
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • conducted the studies in lab mice that were infected with different types of common bacteria
  • two different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause pneumonia, and one strain of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause respiratory infections
  • The next day, the researchers tested the animals’ breath by ionizing breath samples then shooting them through a mass spectrometer to analyze concentrations of various VOCs in a process called secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
  • The test detected the different bacterial infections as well as differentiated between healthy and infected
  • also located the difference between the two strains of P. aeruginosa
  • technique will have to be tested in large human trials before it makes an appearance in the clinic
  • the rapidity of the test is appealing. And it could at least make it a good first step in detecting bacterial infections, with a follow-up culture coming later if deemed necessary—to detect drug-resistant TB, for example
  • suspect that we will also be able to distinguish between bacterial, viral and fungal infections of the lung
  • Similar breath tests have also been studied for detecting other ailments, such as diabetes and cancer
Mars Base

This breathalyzer reveals signs of disease (w/ Video) - 0 views

phys.org/...zer-reveals-disease-video.html

scibyte46 breathalyzer diagnosis

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer, and when you blow into it, you get tested for a biomarker—a sign of disease
  • blow into a small valve attached to a box that is about half the size of your typical shoebox and weighs less than one pound
  • lights on top of the box will give you an instant readout
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • green light means you pass (and your bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it’s just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently
  • red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor’s office to check if something more serious is an issue.
  • sensor chip that
  • It's coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath
  • nanowires enable the sensor to detect just a few molecules of the disease marker gas in a 'sea' of billions of molecules of other compounds that the breath consists of
  • can't buy this in the stores just yet
  • individual tests such as an acetone-detecting breathalyzer for monitoring diabetes and an ammonia-detecting breathalyzer to determine when to end a home-based hemodialysis treatment--are still being evaluated clinically
  • researchers envision developing the technology such that a number of these tests can be performed with a single device
  • you might be able to self-detect a whole range of diseases and disorders, including lung cancer, by just exhaling into a handheld breathalyzer.
  • nanowires can be rigged to detect infectious viruses and microbes like Salmonella, E. coli or even anthrax
Mars Base

Novel noninvasive therapy prevents breast cancer formation in mice - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...y-breast-cancer-formation.html

scibyte115 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • A novel breast-cancer therapy that partially reverses the cancerous state in cultured breast tumor cells and prevents cancer development in mice
  • a new way to treat early stages of the disease without resorting to surgery, chemotherapy or radiation
  • The therapy emerged from a sophisticated effort to reverse-engineer gene networks to identify genes that drive cancer
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases
  • The findings open up the possibility of someday treating patients who have a genetic propensity
  • idea would be start giving it early on and sustain treatment throughout life to prevent cancer development or progression
  • more women than ever are undergoing early tests that reveal precancerous breast tissue
  • early diagnosis could potentially save lives; however, few of those lesions go on to become tumors and doctors have no good way of predicting which ones will
  • many women currently undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation who might never develop the disease.
  • some women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer have chosen to undergo preemptive mastectomies.
  • A therapy that heals rather than kills cancerous tissue could potentially help all these patients, as well as men who develop the disease
  • to date the only way to stop cancer cells has been to kill them.
  • he treatments that accomplish that, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, often damage healthy tissue, causing harsh side effects
  • First they had to identify the culprit genes among the thousands that are active in a cell at any moment
  • Molecular biologists typically
  • looking for cancer-causing genes, they search for individual genes that become active as cancer develops.
  • But because genes in cells work in complex networks
  • innocent genes being fingered for crimes they did not commit.
  • To improve the odds of finding the real culprits,
  • a systems biology expert who has developed a sophisticated mathematical and computational method to reverse-engineer bacterial gene networks.
  • honed the computational network to work for the first time on the more complex gene networks of mice and humans
  • The refined method helped the scientists spot more than 100 genes that acted suspiciously just before milk-duct cells in the breast begin to overgrow
  • The team narrowed their list down to six genes that turn other genes on or off, and then narrowed it further to a single gene called HoxA1 that had the strongest statistical link to cancer
  • researchers wanted to know if blocking the HoxA1 gene could reverse cancer in lab-grown cells
  • grew healthy mouse or human mammary-gland cells in a nutrient-rich, tissue-friendly gel
  • Healthy cells ensconced in the gel formed hollow spheres of cells akin to a normal milk duct
  • cancerous cells, in contrast, packed together into solid, tumor-like spheres.
  • treated cancerous cells with a short piece of RNA called a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that blocks only the HoxA1 gene
  • The cells reversed their march to malignancy, stopping their runaway growth and forming hollow balls as healthy cells do
  • they specialized as if they were growing in healthy tissue
  • The siRNA treatment also stopped breast cancer in a line of mice genetically engineered to have a gene that causes all of them to develop cancer
  • They packed the siRNA into nanoparticles called lipidoids that allow for genes to be silenced for weeks inside the body
  • they injected these nanoparticles
  • The treated mice remained healthy, while untreated mice developed breast cancer
Mars Base

Knee Ligament Described in 19th Century Rediscovered: Scientific American Gallery - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/gallery_directory.cfm

scibyte110

shared by Mars Base on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • ACL tear takes about eight to 12 months to heal, and they’ve always been difficult to treat
  • Until recently, doctors were at a loss as to why patients kept complaining about instability in their knees after recovering from successful ACL-repair surgeries
  • knees would consistently fail the so-called pivot-shift test, used by physicians to evaluate sprains in the anterior and lateral parts of the knee
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Flemish researchers has finally uncovered the problem: a previously unknown ligament in the knee
  • scientists were prompted to find the ligament after reading an article published in 1879
  • The French surgeon described a “pearly, fibrous band” and hypothesized it was an additional ligament located on the anterior part of the human knee
  • Over a century later knee surgeons and an anatomist
  • set out to determine whether the flexible connective tissue
  • exists
  • After investigating 41 unpaired knees from human cadavers the doctors found that all but one knee displayed the described ligament, now named the anterolateral ligament (ALL).
  • The discovery
  • has given basic anatomy a fresh jolt
  • hopes the study will encourage students to look to anatomy as an exciting science, where new features of the human body may be discovered
  • Other researchers, such as orthopedic surgeon
  • are currently trying to find a technique to repair that ligament
  • In the meantime they hope clinicians will take the ALL into consideration when making a diagnosis or planning reconstructive surgery.
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Resumes Science After Analysis of Voltage Issue - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Activities over the weekend included use of Curiosity's robotic arm to deliver portions of powdered rock to a laboratory inside the rover
  • The powder has been stored in the arm since the rover collected it by drilling into the target rock "Cumberland" six months ago
  • Several portions of the powder have already been analyzed. The laboratory has flexibility for examining duplicate samples in different ways
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The decision to resume science activities resulted from the success of work to diagnose the likely root cause of a Nov. 17 change in voltage
  • made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one
  • Science operations were suspended for six days while this analysis took priority
  • The likely cause is an internal short in Curiosity's power source, the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator
  • this short does not affect operation of the power source or the rover
  • Similar generators on other spacecraft, including NASA's Cassini at Saturn, have experienced shorts with no loss of capability
  • Testing of another Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator over many years found no loss of capability in the presence of these types of internal shorts
  • early Nov. 23
  • that the rover had returned to its pre-Nov. 17 voltage level. This reversal is consistent with their diagnosis of an internal short in the generator on Nov. 17, and the voltage could change again
  • analysis work to determine the cause of the voltage change gained an advantage from an automated response by the rover's onboard software when it detected the voltage change
  • The rover stepped up the rate at which it recorded electrical variables, to eight times per second from the usual once per minute, and transmitted that engineering data in its next communication with Earth
  • In subsequent days, the rover performed diagnostic activities commanded by the team, such as powering on some backup hardware to rule out the possibility of short circuits in certain sensors
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