In the last few years, research has shown that deep learning can match expert-level performance in medical imaging tasks like early cancer detection and eye disease diagnosis. But there’s also cause for caution. Other research has shown that deep learning has a tendency to perpetuate discrimination. With a health-care system already riddled with disparities, sloppy applications of deep learning could make that worse.

Now a new paper published in Nature Medicine is proposing a way to develop medical algorithms that might help reverse, rather than exacerbate, existing inequality. The key, says Ziad Obermeyer, an associate professor at UC Berkeley who oversaw the research, is to stop training algorithms to match human expert performance.

The paper looks at a specific clinical example of the disparities that exist in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis, an ailment which causes chronic pain. Assessing the severity of that pain helps doctors prescribe the right treatment, including physical therapy, medication, or surgery. This is traditionally done by a radiologist reviewing an x-ray of the knee and scoring the patient’s pain on the Kellgren–Lawrence grade (KLG), which calculates pain levels based on the presence of different radiographic features, like the degree of missing cartilage or structural damage.

But data collected by the National Institute of Health found that doctors using this method systematically score Black patients’ pain as far as far less severe than what they say they’re experiencing. Patients self-report their pain levels using a survey that asks how much it hurts to do various things, such as fully straightening their knee. But these self-reported pain levels are ignored in favor of the radiologist’s KLG score when prescribing treatment. In other words, Black patients who show the same amount of missing cartilage as white patients self-report higher levels of pain.

This has consistently miffed medical experts. One hypothesis is that Black patients could be reporting higher levels of pain in order to get doctors to treat them more seriously. But there’s an alternative explanation. The KLG methodology itself could be biased. It was developed several decades ago with white British populations. Some medical experts argue that the list of radiographic markers it tells clinicians to look for may not include all the possible physical sources of pain within a more diverse population. Put another way, there may be radiographic indicators of pain that appear more commonly in Black people that simply aren’t part of the KLG rubric.

#Covid19Treatment; #HowCovid19AttacksHumanBody; #GlobalResearch; #cytokines

New York, Apr 18 (Canadian-Media): Development of an effective treatment or vaccine to stop the global pandemic for COVID-19 pandemic is dependent on full understanding of how COVID-19 attacks human body, and the response of humanbody, media reports said.

Coronavirus. Image credit: Twitter handle

In an attempt to fully understand the virus, researchers around the world are compiling and sharing their early observations of COVID-19 patients.

These findings, though preliminary, are  pointers to research in the right directions.

Researchers have observed that in severe cases, COVID-19  our respiratory cells are attacked triggering an immune system response targeting those infected cells.

This occurrence leads to the destruction of lung tissues, clogs our airways and cuts off oxygen supply, and ultimately in organs failure.

The organs most at risk of damage were found to be kidney  heart.

It is yet to be researched by them if the organs or being shut down of in a new way or it is similar other infections that cause such common complications.

The deadliness of the virus can be determined by how our body responds to fight the virus when the body is infected by it.

Cytokines, released by the immune system, to co-ordinates an immune response against an infection or injury, but sometimes the infection causes the overproduction of these rampage through the bloodstream and severely damage the body. ​

​Dr. Douglas Fraser, an ICU doctor at London Health Sciences Centre and a researcher at Western University in London, Ont., said there are different types of cytokines released in the body at unusual times in all of the very sick patients: requiring the ICU admissions, and those having difficulty  breathing and those that are ultimately dying.

The researchers said after understanding of what's going on, therapies and vaccines can be developed.​​​

#Covid19PandemicVaccine; #Research; #RedTape; #ScietificEvidence; Ethics; #ClinicalTrials

New York, Apr 16 (Canadian-Media): In an effort to end the humanity's lockdown globally, accelerated efforts are being made by at least 70 research teams, including some in Canada, to develop a potential pandemic vaccines within a year by bypassing some of the usual red tape that slows down the vaccine approval process, media reports said.

Pandemic Vaccine Research. Image credit: Facebook page

Scientists said the goal of the vaccine is to expose our immune system to part of the virus so our antibody fighters can prepare to attack the virus that causes COVID-19, since in a pandemic, no one has immunity to the virus because it is new. 

Dr. Scott Halperin, of the Canadian Immunization Research Network, stressed the importance to have  multiple versions of the vaccine that achieve the same purpose but work in different ways.

He said with the first phase of clinical trials focused on safety, with about 30 to 50 volunteers testing out different doses of shots, next step of Phase 2 trials is critical as it involves larger number of people and takes about from seven to 10 years normally for the vaccine to go from the lab to the arms of patients.

"What's mainly being accelerated are the various administrative steps, not the safety steps," he said and added Canadian researchers hope to have some potential vaccines in clinical trials within the next four to six weeks.

​However, Jonathan Kimmelman, a biomedical ethics professor at McGill University in Montreal, who watches both scientific and ethical standards are followed was concerned that in a hurry to develop a vaccine, we may be tempted to tolerate less than optimal science and said, 

"That to me seems unacceptable. The stakes are just as high right now in a pandemic as they are in non-pandemic settings."​

To show how long the process can take, Kimmelman points to the example of the ongoing search for an effective HIV vaccine that began in the 1990s

In the meantime second phase of testing a vaccin, adapted from the company's Ebola research is being started by China's CanSino Biologics, according to China's Ministry of Science and Technology. Still another vaccine candidate is in Phase 1.

In the U.S., Pennsylvania-based Inovio Pharmaceuticals began last week a Phase 1 trial of its vaccine candidate that uses the DNA sequence extracted from the key spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Earlier this week, the first person received a second dose of another potential U.S. vaccine from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Massachusetts-based biotech company Moderna Inc.

#U.S.; #Johnson&Johnson; #JansenDivision; #DevelopmentOfVaccine; #Coronavirus

New York, Apr 1 (Canadian-Media): A commitment of  $456 million has been made by the U.S. government, through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the development of a vaccine against the new coronavirus with Johnson & Johnson (J&J)'s commitment to match roughly an equal amount by its Janssen division effort in development of the vaccine, media reports said.

Johnson & Johnson. Image credit: Twitter handle

Built around an engineered version of adenovirus 26 (Ad26), Janssen’s vaccine, which normally causes common colds has been disabled to replicate.

Same Ad26 platform has been tested against Ebola, HIV, respiratory syncytial virus, and Zika. J&J last year had $42 billion in pharmaceutical sales.

Company scientists stich into this Ad26 “vector” a gene for the surface protein from the new coronavirus spreading around the world.  

Although skepticism about its advantage over pharmaceutical companies was raised by Florian Krammer, a researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who has co-authored a status report in Immunity about the COVID-19 vaccine,  Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer and a veteran HIV drug developer said the effort will be nonprofit and the vaccine will be accessible to all through some global mechanism still to be determined.  

J&J also said that staffed by 50,000 people, it can make 300 million vaccines, in a 2000-liter vessel, on an annual basis and that testing on animals is being done with criteria to neutralizing antibodies.

With 4000 people in clinical research all over the world, J&J hopes to launch its large phase II study in six weeks and by early winter the vaccine could ready for that large trial at Northern Hemisphere in the temperate regions.

Bats are just one of the animals, sold at these markets,  including domestic livestock and pigs, chickens, civet cats, bamboo rats and porcupines.
​
The main concern with these markets is a spill over event causing the transfer of viruses  from one species to another and then cross over to humans, said Kerry Bowman, an assistant professor and bioethicist at the University of Toronto.

"If we do not deal with this, there is nothing to say that we could not in eighteen months' time have another outbreak, and it could be worse," Bowman said. 

#NatureExperiences; #Happiness; #AI

Singapore, Mar 11 (Canadian-Media): An AI analysis of photographs posted on social media revealed a positive association between nature and happiness globally, sciencedaily.com/releases reported.

Image credit: Twitter

Analysis of 31,500 photographs across 185 countries showed that images of fun activities and vacations are more likely to contain elements of nature.

The economic and ecological impact of nature on humans have long been established with prevalent environmental issues such as climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources being the first to cross one's mind. On the other hand, much less attention has been paid to the cultural and social values nature brings to humans.

Even though natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Swiss Alps have been named some of the top holiday destinations, the intangible benefits people gain from experiencing nature are still difficult to quantify, and such studies typically require resource-intensive surveys and interviews.

In order to evaluate the benefits of nature experiences more efficiently and effectively, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) turned to social media and artificial intelligence (AI) in a study published in Scientific Reports on 5 March 2020.

Led by Associate Professor Roman Carrasco and Dr Chang Chia-chen from the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS Faculty of Science, the research team analysed over 31,500 photographs across 185 countries on social media with the help of an automated image recognition technology.

"Integrating social media data and AI opens up a unique opportunity for us to carry out unprecedented large-scale global studies such as this to better understand our interactions with nature in our daily lives," said Dr Chang, Research Fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS Faculty of Science and first author of the study.

The team's analysis of the photographs uploaded on social media revealed that photographs tagged as #fun, #vacations and #honeymoons are more likely to contain elements of nature such as plants, water and natural landscape as compared to photographs tagged #daily or #routines. This finding, which is consistent across different countries, provides global evidence of biophilia hypothesis -- human's innate tendency to seek connection with nature -- and implies a positive association between nature and fond memories in memorable events like honeymoons.

The team also found that the amount of nature experiences in a country is linked to the life satisfaction of its residents. Countries which have more elements of nature in photographs tagged as #fun such as Costa Rica and Finland, for instance, possess higher llfe national satisfaction scores according to scores reported in the World Happiness Report 2019.

Collectively, the findings suggest the importance of nature in contributing to emotional happiness, relaxation and life satisfaction in communities worldwide.

Assoc Prof Carrasco said, "Our study brings to light the cultural and social values that nature brings to humans. It further emphasises the importance of preserving our natural environment for the loss of nature may mean more than losing quantifiable economic and ecological benefits; it could also mean losing the background to our fondest memories."
​
"Our next step is therefore to establish how nature experiences may benefit human well-being such as how it improves our satisfaction in life, hence enabling the development of constructive solutions to better environmental conservation," he added.

#UniversityOfPortsmoth; #AgriculturalWaste; #LaundryDetergentAddtive; #Biotechnology 

New York, Feb 26 (Canadian-Media): An international team of researchers has developed an enzyme produced from agricultural waste that could be used as an important additive in laundry detergents, phys.org/news reports said.

Dr Pattanathu Rahman. Image Credit: University of Portsmouth

By using an enzyme produced from a by-product of mustard seeds, they hope to develop a low-cost naturally derived version of lipase, the second largest commercially produced enzyme, which is used in various industries for the production of fine chemicals, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and biodiesel including detergents.

Thousands of tons of lipase are used annually for the production of laundry detergents as an additive or to replace the chemical detergents because of its advantage of being eco-friendly and better ability to remove oil stains without harming the texture of the cloth.

Lipase is one of the most rapidly growing industrial enzymes in the market and is worth $590.5million. However, the cost of biotechnologically produced lipases has always been a challenge, mainly due to the high cost of feedstocks.

In this collaborative project, Dr. Pattanathu Rahman, a microbial biotechnologist from the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth worked with Professor Subudhi and scientists from the Centre for Biotechnology at Siksha O Anusandhan University in Odisha, India, where Dr. Rahman is also a visiting Professor.

They examined a lipase produced from mustard oil cakes, which are the by-products of oil extraction from the mustard seeds. Oil cakes are a very good resource for growth of microbes to produce enzymes. They fermented the oil cakes with the bacteria Anoxybacillus sp. ARS-1, living in a tropical hot spring Taptapani, Odisha, India to produce the lipase enzyme.

Mustard are the third most produced oilseed crops in the world after soybean and palm oil seed. These seeds are produced in tropical countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Northern India. The mustard oil extracted from the seeds are used as cooking oils. Oil cakes that are the by-products of oil extraction contain relatively high amounts of protein with small amounts of anti-nutritional compounds like glucosinolates and their breakdown products, phenolics and phytates.

Dr. Rahman said: "We further investigated suitability of the lipase enzyme in detergent formulations. Anoxybacillus sp. ARS-1 produced lipase was found to be stable and resist almost all chemical detergents as well as common laundry detergent such as Ezee, Surf, Ariel and Ghadhi, proving it to be a prospective additive for incorporation in the new detergent formulations."
​
The study 'Parameter optimization for thermostable lipase production and performance evaluation as prospective detergent additive' is published in the journal Preparative Biochemistry & Biotechnology.

#California, #FossilFuels, #Diamond; 


California (United States), Feb 25 (Canadian-Media): A new study from Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory reveals how, with careful tuning of heat and pressure, that recipe can produce diamonds from a type of hydrogen and carbon molecule found in crude oil and natural gas, phy.org/news reports said.

Yu Lin shows models of diamondoids with one, two and three cages, which can transform into the intricate, pure-carbon lattice of diamond – seen in the larger, blue model at right – when subjected to extreme heat and pressure. Image Credit: Andrew Brodhead

It sounds like alchemy: take a clump of white dust, squeeze it in a diamond-studded pressure chamber, then blast it with a laser. Open the chamber and find a new microscopic speck of pure diamond inside.

"What's exciting about this paper is it shows a way of cheating the thermodynamics of what's typically required for diamond formation," said Stanford geologist Rodney Ewing, a co-author on the paper, published Feb. 21 in the journal Science Advances.
​
Scientists have synthesized diamonds from other materials for more than 60 years, but the transformation typically requires inordinate amounts of energy, time or the addition of a catalyst—often a metal—that tends to diminish the quality of the final product. "We wanted to see just a clean system, in which a single substance transforms into pure diamond—without a catalyst," said the study's lead author, Sulgiye Park, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth).

Understanding the mechanisms for this transformation will be important for applications beyond jewelry. Diamond's physical properties—extreme hardness, optical transparency, chemical stability, high thermal conductivity—make it a valuable material for medicine, industry, quantum computing technologies and biological sensing.

"If you can make even small amounts of this pure diamond, then you can dope it in controlled ways for specific applications," said study senior author Yu Lin, a staff scientist in the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

A natural recipe

Natural diamonds crystallize from carbon hundreds of miles beneath Earth's surface, where temperatures reach thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. Most natural diamonds unearthed to date rocketed upward in volcanic eruptions millions of years ago, carrying ancient minerals from Earth's deep interior with them.

As a result, diamonds can provide insight into the conditions and materials that exist in the planet's interior. "Diamonds are vessels for bringing back samples from the deepest parts of the Earth," said Stanford mineral physicist Wendy Mao, who leads the lab where Park performed most of the study's experiments.

After squeezing diamondoid samples and blasting them with a laser, the researchers used a second, cooler laser beam to help characterize the resulting diamond. Credit: Andrew BrodheadTo synthesize diamonds, the research team began with three types of powder refined from tankers full of petroleum. "It's a tiny amount," said Mao. "We use a needle to pick up a little bit to get it under a microscope for our experiments."

At a glance, the odorless, slightly sticky powders resemble rock salt. But a trained eye peering through a powerful microscope can distinguish atoms arranged in the same spatial pattern as the atoms that make up diamond crystal. It's as if the intricate lattice of diamond had been chopped up into smaller units composed of one, two or three cages.

Unlike diamond, which is pure carbon, the powders—known as diamondoids—also contain hydrogen. "Starting with these building blocks," Mao said, "you can make diamond more quickly and easily, and you can also learn about the process in a more complete, thoughtful way than if you just mimic the high pressure and high temperature found in the part of the Earth where diamond forms naturally."

Diamondoids under pressure

The researchers loaded the diamondoid samples into a plum-sized pressure chamber called a diamond anvil cell, which presses the powder between two polished diamonds. With just a simple hand turn of a screw, the device can create the kind of pressure you might find at the center of the Earth.

Next, they heated the samples with a laser, examined the results with a battery of tests, and ran computer models to help explain how the transformation had unfolded. "A fundamental question we tried to answer is whether the structure or number of cages affects how diamondoids transform into diamond," Lin said. They found that the three-cage diamondoid, called triamantane, can reorganize itself into diamond with surprisingly little energy.

At 900 Kelvin—which is roughly 1160 degrees Fahrenheit, or the temperature of red-hot lava—and 20 gigapascals, a pressure hundreds of thousands of times greater than Earth's atmosphere, triamantane's carbon atoms snap into alignment and its hydrogen scatters or falls away.
​
The transformation unfolds in the slimmest fractions of a second. It's also direct: the atoms do not pass through another form of carbon, such as graphite, on their way to making diamond.
The minute sample size inside a diamond anvil cell makes this approach impractical for synthesizing much more than the specks of diamond that the Stanford team produced in the lab, Mao said. "But now we know a little bit more about the keys to making pure diamonds."

#ResearchJunctionCollaboation; #UrbanIssues; #SaskatoonWasteWater

Saskatoon (S.K.), Feb 21 (Canadian-Media): New funding of $100,000 was awarded to the five projects through the Research Junction Development Grant program to the new Research Junction collaboration between the City of Saskatoon and the University of Saskatchewan, media reports said.

Research Junction Development Grant program is a jointly funded university-municipal research partnership announced in September of 2019.

One of these five projects would be devoted to the measurement pharmaceuticals in Saskatoon’s wastewater.

Saskatoon Wastewater. Image credit: Twitter

Markus Brinkmann,  a researcher from the University of Saskatchewan’s Toxicology Centre and the College of Engineering will work on this project with Mike Sadowski, the operations manager of the City of Saskatoon’s wastewater treatment plant.

These grants would enable researchers to access to the City’s resources, data and expertise through these as well as the city staff to analyses and data resulting from the projects in informed decision-making process. 

Projects funded through the initiative also create hands-on learning and research opportunities for USask students and post-doctoral fellows, helping them prepare for future careers. 

“It is incredible to see City employees and university researchers come together to solve problems...helps us move forward as a community and shows how we can lead the country through collaboration to create the best results for our community and residents...can create real benefits and build a healthy, strong and sustainable future,” said Mayor Charlie Clark

They will undertake comprehensive measurements of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, pain killers, beta-blockers, and hormone-like substances in the wastewater treatment plant and downstream in the South Saskatchewan River. The researchers will also work to better understand and stay current with technology and new solutions to treat wastewater.

Projects funded through the initiative also create hands-on learning and research opportunities for University of Saskatchewan students and post-doctoral fellows.

“Through the power of research, these collaborative projects will address some tough challenges in our community,” said University of Saskatchewan President Peter Stoicheff. “It is exciting to see from this list of approved projects the first concrete ways in which this strategic partnership will help build a better Saskatoon.”