Artificial pancreas projects soon to be released
Patients with type 1 diabetes patients have traditionally relied on a glucose monitor and an insulin pump to control their high blood sugar. However, this system is not very user-friendly. Patients must figure out themselves how much insulin to pump into their body based on the numbers that appear on the monitor.
Researchers from Medtronic have managed to integrate the glucose monitor with the insulin pump to construct an artificial pancreas. The integrated system will determine how much insulin to release based on glucose measurement data. A longitudinal study that concluded in May showed that the system was administering the correct doses of insulin to bring a patient’s blood sugar to normal levels.
Another project features a smartphone app, developed by researchers from the University of Virginia and Harvard University. The app analyzes blood glucose levels to calculate exactly how much insulin is required. This project is in the midst of a clinical trial to determine its efficacy.
Retro gaming consoles make a comeback
This week has brought back two old gaming consoles from the past: the NES Classic Edition and the Sega Genesis.
The NES Classic is a smaller version of the old Nintendo Entertainment System, originally released in 1985, that comes with 30 pre-installed games. Consumers flocked to video game and electronics stores to get their hands on one of these old consoles.
However, supply was very limited with stores selling out within minutes of opening. Nintendo plans to distribute more consoles to retailers in the coming weeks.
“There will be a steady flow of additional systems through the holiday shopping season and into the new year,” Nintendo said in a statement released by the company.
Alongside the NES Classic, the Sega Genesis, originally released in 1989, is also making a comeback. However, production is limited to only Brazil. North American consumers may have to wait for a later announcement.
Brain implant allows for communication in neurology patients
A patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is using a brain implant to communicate her thoughts. ALS is a disease that kills nerves, leaving patients unable to speak, move or breathe.
The patient, who chose to remain anonymous except for her initials, HB, is now the first one to use the device to communicate and do much more, including playing games.
The device functions by connecting two electrodes on the brain to a computer. One electrode is connected to movement of the right hand, and the other is for counting backwards. The patient can translate her thoughts of typing letters to actually doing it just by visualizing her right hand clicking the letters on the computer.
However, there are limits to what the device can do because the electrodes cover only two parts of the brain. With additional research, there is potential for the device to do much more, like controlling a wheelchair, which is one of HB’s dreams.
AI Correctly Predicts Presidential Election
MogIA, an artificial intelligence system that gathers data from social media websites to make predictions, has accurately predicted the winner of each presidential election since its inception in 2004. The AI has continued that trend this year by correctly predicting that Donald Trump would win the presidential election.
Although the polls predicted a relatively comfortable victory for Hillary Clinton, MogIA uses a different method to predict the results — audience engagement.
“While most algorithms suffer from programmers/developer’s biases, MogIA aims at learning from her environment, developing her own rules at the policy layer and develop expert systems without discarding any data,” Sanjiv Rai, founder of Genic.ai and the developer of MogIA, said in a press release.
The AI analyzes how engaged a particular post or video is for a particular candidate and collects 20 million of these data points to predict which candidate will win.
In this election, there seemed to be a historically high amount of negativity aimed toward Trump; MogAI translated that negativity into engagement to predict that Trump would win.
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