(Press-News.org) AI can help public health agencies in the quest to end HIV. The United States is pursuing an initiative to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. To achieve this goal, public health agencies and organizations must remind the public about how best to avoid transmitting and acquiring the virus. Public health campaigns are costly, their effectiveness is seldom systematically assessed, and no systematic methods have been developed to build health campaigns in real-time. Dolores Albarracin and colleagues collected public health messages about HIV prevention and testing from US federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and HIV/STI researchers posting on social media. AI was then used to classify those that were actionable, relevant to men who have sex with men, and effective. An online experiment with men who have sex with men, and a field experiment with public health agencies showed that the classification model was successful in picking persuasive public heath messages. Specifically, posts selected by the AI classifier were six times more likely to be selected for reposting by government and community agencies in US counties than general posts about HIV prevention—and the target audience expressed greater interest in sharing AI-selected posts online. According to the authors, community-based organizations can save time and money by using AI to select publicly available public health messages to repost, allowing the organizations to share messages about prevention and testing more often.
END
Using AI to find persuasive public health messages and automate real-time campaigns
2025-06-17
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Gene therapy for glaucoma
2025-06-17
Gene editing could be used to treat millions of glaucoma patients. Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness, characterized by high pressure inside the eye. Patients often rely on daily eye drops to lower intraocular pressure, but the drops may cause significant complications including bradycardia, metabolic acidosis, and kidney stones. In addition, many patients fail to keep up with the eye drops. Yang Sun and colleagues used the CRISPR gene editing technique to knock down two genes associated with the production ...
Teaching robots to build without blueprints
2025-06-17
Bees, ants and termites don’t need blueprints. They may have queens, but none of these species breed architects or construction managers. Each insect worker, or drone, simply responds to cues like warmth or the presence or absence of building material. Unlike human manufacturing, the grand design emerges simply from the collective action of the drones — no central planning required.
Now, researchers at Penn Engineering have developed mathematical rules that allow virtual swarms of tiny robots to do the same. In computer simulations, the robots built honeycomb-like structures without ever following — or even being able to comprehend — ...
Negative perception of scientists working on AI
2025-06-17
A public survey indicates that Americans have negative opinions of scientists who work on AI. Dror Walter and colleagues collected opinions about scientists from thousands of US adults via the Annenberg Science and Public Health survey and compared the perceived credibility, prudence, unbiasedness, self-correction, and benefit of scientists working on AI with those of scientists in general and climate scientists in particular. Previous work has established that high scores on these dimensions predict support for science ...
How disrupted daily rhythms can affect adolescent brain development
2025-06-17
A new McGill University-led study suggests that disrupting the body’s internal clock during adolescence can alter how the brain responds to an in-utero risk factor linked to certain brain disorders.
Previous research has shown that a mother’s infection during pregnancy, such as the flu, can increase a child’s risk of developing conditions like schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders later in life. Irregular sleep patterns – often a sign of circadian rhythm disruption – are also associated with these conditions.
To investigate how these factors interact, researchers exposed mice to either a ...
New use for old drug: study finds potential of heart drug for treating growth disorders
2025-06-17
Bone growth occurs through the proliferation of specialized cells of the cartilage tissue, known as chondrocytes, on either end of a bone. This process requires the synthesis of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the bone growth plates. A peptide hormone, known as C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP), plays a pivotal role by binding to its specific receptors present on the chondrocytes and triggering a signaling cascade in these cells. The CNP-bound receptor activates a molecule, cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), which in turn activates ...
Head-to-head study shows bariatric surgery superior to GLP-1 drugs for weight loss
2025-06-17
WASHINGTON, DC – June 17, 2025 – Sleeve gastrectomy and gastric bypass were associated with about five-times more weight loss than weekly injections of GLP-1 receptor agonists semaglutide or tirzepatide,* at the end of two years, according to a new head-to-head real-world study presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting.
Researchers from NYU Langone Health and NYC Health + Hospitals discovered patients who had one of the bariatric procedures lost an average 58 pounds after two years compared to 12 pounds ...
Psychiatric disorders less likely after weight-loss surgery than treatment with GLP-1s
2025-06-17
WASHINGTON, DC – June 17, 2025 – People who have metabolic and bariatric surgery are significantly less likely to develop psychiatric disorders compared to those who take weekly injections of GLP-1 anti-obesity medications, according to a new study* presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting. Over a five-year period, the risk of developing cognitive deficits was 54% lower and 18% and 17% lower for anxiety disorders and substance use ...
The higher the body mass index, the higher the risk for complications after bariatric surgery
2025-06-17
WASHINGTON, DC – June 17, 2025 – The higher a person’s body mass index (BMI), the higher their risk for complications after bariatric surgery, especially those with BMI of 50 or more, according to a new study presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting.
Researchers found that the rate of complications increased by an average of 5.56% and serious occurrences rose 3.21% from the lowest BMI category to the highest, with people with a BMI 50 or more the most likely to experience complications of any kind.
The study gives new insights into the risks associated ...
Black patients have higher rate of minor complications after metabolic and bariatric surgery than white patients
2025-06-17
WASHINGTON, DC – June 17, 2025 – Black patients are more likely to experience minor complications after metabolic and bariatric surgery than White patients, according to new study* presented today at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting.
Researchers from the Yale School of Medicine found Black patients had a higher overall incidence of minor complications such as dehydration, trips to the emergency department (ED) and infections in ...
A revolution for R&D with the missing link of machine learning — project envisions human-AI expert teams to solve grand challenges
2025-06-17
The founding director of the institute, Aalto University professor Samuel Kaski has received the European Research Council Advanced Grant to develop new types of machine learning.
Many popular and widely available AI tools appear to be extremely versatile and agile, but there is still a hole in the underlying machine learning, argues Kaski. "The basic tenet of machine learning is to apply a model trained on a learning data set. But that only works if the set is representative of the deployment setting — and that seldom holds, because life happens. Unexpected factors, statistically speaking covariates ...