Newly published data provides clearer picture of volcano collapse

Clinicians and surgeons are increasingly using medical devices based on artificial intelligence. These AI devices, which rely on data-driven algorithms to inform health care decisions, presently aid in diagnosing cancers, heart conditions and diseases of the eye, with many more applications on the way. Given this surge in AI, two Stanford University faculty members are calling for efforts to ensure that this technology does not exacerbate existing heath care disparities. In a new perspective paper, Stanford faculty discuss sex, gender and race bias in medicine and how these biases could be perpetuated by AI devices. The authors suggest several short- and long-term approaches to prevent AI-related ...

BOSTON - Peripheral artery disease (PAD), or blockages in the arteries outside of the heart, affects more than 200 million people worldwide and 12.5 million people in the United States. Patients with this circulatory disorder may develop severe leg pain or unhealing wounds that require a minimally invasive revascularization procedure to open the blood vessels to improve blood flow. For nearly a decade, proceduralists and surgeons have depended on devices coated with a drug called paclitaxel -- which reduces the need for another procedure by up to 50 percent -- during procedures to open the arteries of the leg. However, in the wake of a 2018 study that found a potential link between ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio ­- Up to 38.6% of people with colon cancer who have a hereditary cancer syndrome--including 6.3% of those with Lynch syndrome--could have their conditions remain undetected with current universal tumor-screening methods, and at least 7.1% of people with colorectal cancer have an identifiable inherited genetic mutation, according to new data published by scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James). Experts say their data, which was gathered from a cohort of more than 3,300 colorectal cancer patients treated at 51 hospitals across Ohio, makes a strong scientific argument for implementing multi-gene panel ...

A team of Welsh academics has developed a new method of supporting health professionals to make clinical decisions about people who may be at risk of taking their own lives. While the UK may have one of the lowest rates of suicide in the world, it is still the biggest cause of death in men under 45, so being able to make a Structured Professional Judgement about who might attempt suicide and knowing how to intervene is vitally important. Researchers at Swansea and Cardiff universities have put together the Risk of Suicide Protocol (RoSP) which guides a professional to look at 20 aspects of a person's life known ...

PHILADELPHIA (May 17, 2021) - Researchers have known for some time that insulin plays a vital role in regeneration and growth in some types of neurons that relay environmental sensory information to our brains, such as sight. However, they know relatively little about the role of insulin in the sense of smell. Now, investigators at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have shown that insulin plays a critical role in the maturation, after injury, of immature olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs). The team published their findings in eNeuro earlier this month. "Our findings suggest ...

One of the projected effects of a warming climate for species living on mountain slopes is moving their distributions upslope as their habits shift upwards. Eventually, since mountains have a limit to their elevation, a species may have no more habitat to move up to and therefore go extinct. Tracking how and where this is happening is tough, though, if you don't have a good idea of where the species are now. That's the situation in places such as Africa, which have tremendous biodiversity but spotty ecological baseline data. So University of Utah researchers set out to assess the status of bird species in Ethiopia's Bale Mountains through six years' worth of bird banding efforts at five sites. The sites spanned ...

Mothers who are Hispanic or who come from rural or low socioeconomic status neighborhoods are less likely to have their child's critical heart condition diagnosed before birth, according to a new study in the journal Circulation. This is the largest and most geographically diverse study of these challenges to date. The study compared patient data of more than 1,800 children from the United State and Canada diagnosed with two of the most common, and the most serious, critical congenital heart defects: hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), when the left side of the heart is not developed completely, and transposition of ...

Patients with chronic kidney disease and Type 2 diabetes who took the experimental drug finerenone were about 30% less likely to develop the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation (AFib) than those taking a placebo, according to data presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. Last year, researchers reported that the trial, called FIDELIO-DKD, met its primary endpoint showing a significant benefit of finerenone, a nonsteroidal, selective mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, in terms of a composite of sustained decrease in kidney function, kidney failure and renal death. The new analysis reveals that patients derived these benefits regardless of their history with AFib and suggests that taking finerenone also reduced the rate of ...

A subgroup of patients who experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) that did not respond to standard advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), were immediately transported to a cardiac care center, and placed on a device similar to a heart-lung bypass machine were more likely to have survived with good brain function six months later than similar patients who received standard care at the site where the OHCA occurred. The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 70th Annual Scientific Session. "This study--the largest randomized clinical trial that has been conducted to address this question--shows that a hyperinvasive ...

The ocean is a big place with many deep, dark mysteries. Humans have mapped no more than 20% of the sea, and explored less. Even the kelp forests of Southern California -- among the best studied patches of ocean on the planet -- hide species not yet described by science. Now, UC Santa Barbara's Thomas Turner has published a paper in the journal Zootaxa describing four new species of sponges. These novel specimens weren't dredged from the murky depths or found on some distant seamount, but collected locally from popular dive spots. The study brings Turner's new species count to five, and the scientist believes there may be dozens yet to discover and describe along the West ...