Image cropping is an essential task in many contexts, right from social media and e-commerce to advanced computer vision applications. Cropping helps maintain image quality by avoiding unnecessary resizing, which can degrade the image and consume computational resources. It is also useful when an image needs to conform to a predetermined aspect ratio, such as in thumbnails. Over the past decade, engineers around the world have developed various machine learning (ML) models to automatically crop images. These models aim to crop an input image in a way that preserves its most relevant parts. However, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 1, 2024) – Figuring out how the tissues in our bones, adrenal glands, muscle and fat “talk” to each other could help scientists better understand what happens to our skeletons with age, when our bones tend to lose mass and become weaker, leaving us at risk for falls and fractures. “Tissues don’t function in isolation – everything in the body “talks” to everything else to keep people healthy across the lifespan,” explains Meghan McGee-Lawrence, PhD, bone biologist at the Medical College of Georgia at ...

In an innovative new study of glioblastoma, scientists used artificial intelligence (AI) to reprogram cancer cells, converting them into dendritic cells (DCs), which can identify cancer cells and direct other immune cells to kill them. Glioblastoma is the most common brain cancer in adults and also the deadliest, with less than 10% of patients surviving five years after their diagnosis. While new approaches such as immunotherapy have revolutionized treatment for other cancers, they have done little for patients with glioblastoma. That is partly because these hard-to-reach brain tumors ...

The likelihood of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) increases with higher levels of tellurium, a contaminant transferred from mining and manufacturing activities to foods. Improved monitoring of tellurium levels in specific foods could help decrease high blood pressure in the general population. The results of a study examining the relationship between tellurium exposure and hypertension were published in the journal Environment International.    The study was led by Nagoya University in Japan. According to Takumi Kagawa, one of the researchers involved in the ...

In electronic technologies, key material properties change in response to stimuli like voltage or current. Scientists aim to understand these changes in terms of the material’s structure at the nanoscale (a few atoms) and microscale (the thickness of a piece of paper). Often neglected is the realm between, the mesoscale — spanning 10 billionths to 1 millionth of a meter. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Rice University and DOE’s Lawrence ...

LA JOLLA (July 31, 2024)—The Salk Institute was awarded $3.6 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world’s largest institutions dedicated to regenerative medicine. Salk Professor Rusty Gage will lead the new CIRM-funded Shared Resources Laboratory focused on stem cell-based models of aging and neurodegeneration. The award is part of CIRM’s latest round of funding to address challenges in the regenerative medicine field. The state agency dedicated $27 million to help establish six new Shared Resources ...

A new large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) suggests incidence rates continued to rise in successively younger generations in 17 of the 34 cancer types, including breast, pancreatic, and gastric cancers. Mortality trends also increased in conjunction with the incidence of liver (female only), uterine corpus, gallbladder, testicular, and colorectal cancers. The report will be published today in the journal The Lancet Public Health. “These findings add to growing evidence of increased cancer risk in post-Baby Boomer ...

Nearly nine months of joint replacement surgery has been lost - around 160,000 fewer operations –  since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study led by the University of Bristol has found.  The research suggests returning to pre-pandemic levels will not tackle the backlog, and even with rapid expansion, it will take many years, if not decades, to fix this joint replacement crisis. The study, published in The Bone & Joint Journal today [1 August], looked in detail at the effect ...

Public health interventions that tackle dementia risk factors could yield as much as £4bn in savings in England by reducing dementia rates and helping people to live longer and healthier, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, shows that interventions – such as reformulating food products to reduce sugar and salt intake, introducing low emission zones to improve air quality in cities, and minimum alcohol unit pricing to reduce drinking – could have extensive benefits beyond just the health outcomes they are directly targeting. Lead author Dr Naaheed Mukadam (UCL Psychiatry) ...

Vision loss and high cholesterol add to 12 previously identified modifiable risk factors for dementia, concludes a new report from the 2024 Lancet Commission. The potential to prevent and better manage dementia is high if action to tackle these risk factors begins in childhood and continues throughout life, even in individuals with high genetic risk for dementia. New report outlines 13 recommendations for individuals and governments to help reduce risk, including preventing and treating hearing loss, vision loss, and depression; being cognitively active ...

A new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to allow rapid, low-cost detection of clinically actionable genomic alterations directly from tumor biopsy slides has been developed by a team led by engineers and medical researchers at University of California San Diego. A paper describing the new AI protocol for examining routine biopsies, called DeepHRD, was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Senior author Ludmil Alexandrov, Ph.D., professor of bioengineering and professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego, says the new method is designed to save weeks and thousands of dollars from clinical oncology treatment workflows ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 31, 2024)—Despite the fact that endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of the female reproductive organs, a significant percentage of women do not know that postmenopausal bleeding is a key warning sign of the disease. Worse, even fewer women report having received any type of counseling on the subject from their healthcare professionals. That’s according to a new study published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. It is estimated that 67,880 new cases of ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (August 1, 2024)—Because of the aging of the ovaries, a woman’s fertility gradually declines, and she eventually enters menopause. The onset of menopause puts women at a significantly higher risk of various diseases such as cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. A new study suggests that a shorter reproductive lifespan is linked with a higher risk of multimorbidity. Results of the survey are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society. The effect of reproductive-related factors on women’s health has become a focus of interest and study in recent years. Previous studies have identified the ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – July 31, 2024) Do neurons play a role in brain tumor growth and development? Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have evidence showing that, for childhood ependymomas, they do. There are no targeted therapies available to treat ependymoma due in large part to a lack of understanding of the tumor microenvironment. By leveraging a recently developed murine model, scientists explored the interaction between ependymoma cells and surrounding neurons. They found that hyperactivation of a specific subset ...

The University of Texas at Austin has embarked on a mission to explore the underwater edges of Greenland’s coastal glaciers to learn more about future sea level rise.  The four-week expedition conducted with international partners will investigate processes that control how these giant glaciers melt and what that means for the future of the Greenland ice sheet, which has about 23 feet (7 meters) of potential sea level rise locked away in its ice.  Joining the researchers is a robotic submersible that will gather measurements of the glaciers’ underwater walls and sediment-laden meltwater, a feat that’s never been ...

Ever wondered if your neighbourhood odour could be impacting your health? University of British Columbia researchers have uncovered surprising insights into the Vancouver region's “smellscape” using data from the Smell Vancouver app. Analyzing 549 reports from one year of app data, they discovered that “rotten” and “chemical” odours dominated, making up about 65 per cent of submissions. These unpleasant smells were linked to self-reported health issues like headaches and anxiety, leading some residents to change their behaviours, like closing windows even in stifling-hot weather. “The ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The University of Alabama at Birmingham startup TIXiMED, Inc., has obtained clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration to proceed to clinical trials under an Investigational New Drug for TIX100, its novel oral Type 1 diabetes drug. This represents a major milestone in the development of this new approach to T1D treatment and gives TIXiMED the green light to start human studies with TIX100. The development of TIX100 is based on decades of research by Anath Shalev, M.D., the Nancy R. and Eugene C. Gwaltney Family Endowed Chair in Juvenile Diabetes Research in the UAB Division ...

Recently published research shows a medical device may be beneficial for patients who have previously had a stroke and are planning to undergo a transcatheter aortic valve replacement, a type of heart valve operation.  Neel Butala, MD, an assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Colorado Department of Medicine, is the first author of the article, which was presented as a late-breaking clinical trial at the New York Valves 2024 conference and simultaneously published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, an American Heart Association journal.    The ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA — People use large language models for a huge array of tasks, from translating an article to identifying financial fraud. However, despite the incredible capabilities and versatility of these models, they sometimes generate inaccurate responses. On top of that problem, the models can be overconfident about wrong answers or underconfident about correct ones, making it tough for a user to know when a model can be trusted. Researchers typically calibrate a machine-learning model to ensure its level of confidence lines up with ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Having high blood pressure, specifically high diastolic blood pressure, was linked to a slightly higher odds of ever having migraine in female participants, according to a new study published in the July 31, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Diastolic pressure is when the heart is resting between beats. However, the study did not find an increased risk between other cardiovascular risk factors and migraine. “Previous research shows that migraine is linked to a higher ...

July 31, 2024, CLEVELAND –  Cleveland Clinic-led research has identified geographic areas in the United States where strategic efforts to promote colorectal cancer screening could help reduce healthcare gaps affecting Hispanic/Latino communities.   The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, marks a first step toward conducting larger neighborhood-level studies addressing disparities in colorectal cancer screening. The Hispanic /Latino population has the lowest colorectal cancer screening rate among U.S. racial and ethnic groups as defined by ...

A new artificial intelligence (AI) test to determine the risk of bowel cancers coming back could help patients avoid chemotherapy, according to new research led by the University of Leeds.  The test uses an AI algorithm to accurately assess the number of immune cells known as CD3 inside early-stage bowel cancer tumours. Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, is found anywhere in the large bowel, which includes the colon and rectum. It is one of the most common cancers in the world, with 1.9m cases diagnosed in 2020. *  In the study, the CD3 Score test reliably showed which stage II cancers were most likely to recur within five years of surgery – and this could ...

When 24 different state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) were administered a battery of different tests designed to reveal political orientation, a significant majority produced responses rated as left-of-center, according to a study published July 31, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Rozado from Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. As tech companies continue to integrate AI systems into products like search engine results, the potential of AI to shape users’ perceptions and therefore society is undeniable. ...

Sickle cell disease, while rare, is the most common inherited blood disorder and affects over 100,000 people in the United States, more than 90% of whom are Black according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although a medication called hydroxyurea can alleviate pain and lower the number of hospital visits, not all adults respond well to this treatment. Researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC) discovered a new small molecule that could lead to less sickled red blood cells and improved symptoms. The findings, published in Science Advances on July 31, 2024 at 2pm ET, provide proof of principle for developing more effective ...

An international research team deployed the unmanned submarine ‘Ran’ from the University of Gothenburg underneath thick ice in Antarctica. They got back the very first detailed maps of the underside of a glacier, revealing clues to future sea level rise. The autonomous underwater vehicle, Ran, was programmed to dive into the cavity of Dotson ice shelf in West Antarctica, and scan the ice above it with an advanced sonar system. For 27 days, the submarine travelled a total of over 1.000 kilometres back and forth under the glacier, reaching 17 kilometres into the cavity. An ice shelf is a mass of glacial ice, fed from land by tributary glaciers, that floats ...