Emergency department packed to the gills? Someday, AI may help

UCSF-led study finds artificial intelligence is as good as a physician at prioritizing which patients need to be seen first. Emergency departments nationwide are overcrowded and overtaxed, but a new study suggests artificial intelligence (AI) could one day help prioritize which patients need treatment most urgently. Using anonymized records of 251,000 adult emergency department (ED) … Read more

Chatbot outperformed physicians in clinical reasoning in head-to-head study

ChatGPT-4, an artificial intelligence program designed to understand and generate human-like text, outperformed internal medicine residents and attending physicians at two academic medical centers at processing medical data and demonstrating clinical reasoning. In a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, physician-scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) compared a large language model’s (LLM) … Read more

If faces look like demons, you could have this extraordinary condition

Imagine if every time you saw a face, it appeared distorted. Well, for those who have a very rare condition known as prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), which causes facial features to appear distorted, that is reality. As the Dartmouth-based website about prosopometamorphopsia explains, “‘Prosopo’ comes from the Greek word for face ‘prosopon’ while ‘metamorphopsia’ refers to perceptual … Read more

AI can now detect COVID-19 in lung ultrasound images

Artificial intelligence can spot COVID-19 in lung ultrasound images much like facial recognition software can spot a face in a crowd, new research shows. The findings boost AI-driven medical diagnostics and bring health care professionals closer to being able to quickly diagnose patients with COVID-19 and other pulmonary diseases with algorithms that comb through ultrasound … Read more

Lives could be saved from tropical disease with new rapid test

Globally, more than half of patients die after infection with the neglected tropical disease, melioidosis, often before they are diagnosed. A new rapid test could save lives by diagnosing patients in hours, rather than several days taken by current bacterial culture methods, meaning they receive the correct antibiotics faster. The test uses CRISPR to detect … Read more

Accessibility toolkit for game engine Unity

The growing popularity of video games is putting an increased focus on their accessibility for people with disabilities. While large productions are increasingly taking this into account by adding accessibility features, this aspect is usually completely absent in indie productions due to a lack of resources. To facilitate the implementation of accessibility features, Klemens Strasser … Read more

Bethenny Frankel Slammed For Calling Kelly Rowland A ‘Diva’

Bethenny Frankel’s recent criticism of Kelly Rowland may not have landed the way she thought it would. The former “Real Housewives of New York City” star has received backlash on social media since last week for criticizing the singer in a since-deleted post on TikTok. Frankel had called out Rowland for reportedly walking off the … Read more

This common medication could save half a million children’s lives each year. So why is it underprescribed?

Health care providers in developing countries know that oral rehydration salts (ORS) are a lifesaving and inexpensive treatment for diarrheal disease, a leading cause of death for children worldwide — yet few prescribe it. A new study published in Science suggests that closing the knowledge gap between what treatments health care providers think patients want … Read more

3D-printed pneumatic modules replace electric controls in soft robots

Research team at the University of Freiburg develops 3D-printed pneumatic logic modules that control the movements of soft robots using only air pressure. These modules enable logical switching of the air flow and can thus imitate an electrical control system. The modules make it possible for the first time to produce flexible and electronics-free soft … Read more