Friday 31 May 2019

'Miracle baby': Woman gets pregnant after having fallopian tubes removed

Elizabeth Kough had been pregnant before. She knew how it felt. She just couldn't believe it had happened this time.

* This article was originally published here

Finally, a tool to predict response to chemotherapy before bladder cancer surgery

University of Colorado Cancer Center led clinical trial data show that a predictive tool called COXEN may show which bladder cancer patients will respond to pre-surgical chemotherapy, a step towards allowing doctors to offer such chemotherapy to patients likely to respond, while moving more efficiently to other treatment options with patients unlikely to benefit. Results will be presented Monday, June 3 at 8:00am as oral abstract at the 2019 American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting (ASCO abstract #4506).

* This article was originally published here

More opioids given than prescribed in emergency department

(HealthDay)—The rate of emergency department visits with opioids only given during the visit is higher than the rate for visits with opioids only prescribed at discharge and for visits with opioids given and prescribed, according to a May data brief published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics.

* This article was originally published here

Google's rebellious employees take aim at contractor firms

Google workers on Thursday expanded their rebellion against company practices, sending letters to three firms they say provide contract workers to Google, asking them to end mandatory arbitration for those workers.

* This article was originally published here

FDA approves first test for Zika in human blood

(HealthDay)—The first test to detect the Zika virus in human blood has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

* This article was originally published here

Report: Huawei cuts meetings with US, sends US workers home

The Financial Times reported Friday that tech giant Huawei has ordered its employees to cancel technical meetings with American contacts and has sent home numerous U.S. employees working at its Chinese headquarters.

* This article was originally published here

Defense against wireless attacks using a deep neural network and game theory

A growing number of devices are now connected to the internet and are capable of collecting, sending and receiving data. This interconnection between devices, referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), poses serious security threats, as cyberattackers can now target computers and smartphones, but also a vast array of other devices, such as tablets, smart watches, smart home systems, transportation systems and so on.

* This article was originally published here

NASA plans to send equipment to Moon from 2020

For the first time since the 1970s, the United States is planning to send equipment to the surface of the Moon in 2020 and 2021, in anticipation of a crewed lunar mission in 2024, NASA said Friday.

* This article was originally published here

Is traffic-related air pollution killing us?

It's summer getaway season. According to AAA, two-thirds of American families are taking a summer vacation this year, and more than half of us are planning a road trip.

* This article was originally published here

Stanford Doggo: a highly agile quadruped robot

Researchers at Stanford University have recently created an open-source quadruped robot called Stanford Doggo. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv and set to be published by IEEE Explore, exceeds the performance of many state-of-the-art legged robots in vertical jumping agility.

* This article was originally published here

Politicians walk the walk, when it comes to financial investments

For the most part, politicians do put their money where their mouths are. A recent study of U.S senators and representatives finds that the more liberal a politician's voting record is, the more likely the politician is to invest in socially responsible stocks.

* This article was originally published here

Sensor-packed glove learns signatures of the human grasp

Wearing a sensor-packed glove while handling a variety of objects, MIT researchers have compiled a massive dataset that enables an AI system to recognize objects through touch alone. The information could be leveraged to help robots identify and manipulate objects, and may aid in prosthetics design.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers add 'time-travel' feature to drives to fight ransomware attacks

One of the latest cyber threats involves hackers encrypting user files and then charging "ransom" to get them back. In the paper, "Project Almanac: A Time-Traveling Solid State Drive," University of Illinois students Chance Coats and Xiaohao Wang and Assistant Professor Jian Huang from the Coordinated Science Laboratory look at how they can use the commodity storage devices already in a computer, to save the files without having to pay the ransom.

* This article was originally published here

Smoke from Canadian wildfires drifts into 5 US states

Smoke from large wildfires in Canada's Alberta province has drifted into five U.S. states and is causing haze and air quality issues.

* This article was originally published here

In hot pursuit of dinosaurs: Tracking extinct species on ancient Earth via biogeography

One researcher at the University of Tokyo is in hot pursuit of dinosaurs, tracking extinct species around ancient Earth. Identifying the movements of extinct species from millions of years ago can provide insights into ancient migration routes, interaction between species, and the movement of continents.

* This article was originally published here

Ancient DNA tells the story of the first herders and farmers in east Africa

A collaborative study led by archaeologists, geneticists and museum curators is providing answers to previously unsolved questions about life in sub-Saharan Africa thousands of years ago. The results were published online in the journal Science Thursday, May 30.

* This article was originally published here

Bipedal robot Digit seen as final step in autonomous delivery system

Self-driving cars for delivering packages is already familiar enough as a "vision." As Ford continues sketching out the self-driving car as part of the transportation future, the delivery system that needs to fulfill the customer's one-click shopping wish adds to its interest.

* This article was originally published here

How the immune system keeps the Epstein-Barr virus in check

A protein called PD-1, which is found on immune cells called CD8+ T cells, plays a key role in controlling infection with the Epstein-Barr virus, according to a study published May 30 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Christian Münz of the University of Zurich, and colleagues. The results from this study indicate that monitoring PD-1 signaling during future vaccination and immunotherapy studies may inform patient outcomes.

* This article was originally published here

Transgenic fungus rapidly killed malaria mosquitoes in West African study

According to the World Health Organization, malaria affects hundreds of millions of people around the world, killing more than 400,000 annually. Decades of insecticide use has failed to control mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite and has led to insecticide-resistance among many mosquito strains. In response, scientists began genetically modifying mosquitoes and other organisms that can help eradicate mosquitoes. Until now, none of these transgenic approaches made it beyond laboratory testing.

* This article was originally published here

REPLAB: A low-cost benchmark platform for robotic learning

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a reproducible, low-cost and compact benchmark platform to evaluate robotic learning approaches, which they called REPLAB. Their recent study, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, was supported by Berkeley DeepDrive, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Google, NVIDIA and Amazon.

* This article was originally published here

Swapping water for CO2 could make fracking greener and more effective

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China University of Petroleum (Beijing) have demonstrated that CO2 may make a better hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid than water. Their research, published May 30 in the journal Joule, could help pave the way for a more eco-friendly form of fracking that would double as a mechanism for storing captured atmospheric CO2.

* This article was originally published here