Category Biology/Biotechnology

When Lab-Trained AI Meets the Real World, ‘Mistakes can Happen’

AI and pathology
When humans examine tissue on slides, they can only look at a limited field within the microscope, then move to a new field and so on.

Tissue contamination distracts AI models from making accurate real-world diagnoses. Human pathologists are extensively trained to detect when tissue samples from one patient mistakenly end up on another patient’s microscope slides (a problem known as tissue contamination). But such contamination can easily confuse artificial intelligence (AI) models, which are often trained in pristine, simulated environments, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

“We train AIs to tell ‘A’ versus ‘B’ in a very clean, artificial environment, but, in real life, the AI will see a variety of materials that it hasn’t trained on...

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Low-frequency Ultrasound can Improve Oxygen Saturation in blood

Research conducted by a team of scientists from Kaunas universities, Lithuania, revealed that low-frequency ultrasound influences blood parameters. The findings suggest that ultrasound’s effect on haemoglobin can improve oxygen’s transfer from the lungs to bodily tissues.

The research was undertaken on 300 blood samples collected from 42 pulmonary patients. The samples were exposed to six different low-frequency ultrasound modes at the Institute of Mechatronics of Kaunas University of Technology (KTU).

The changes in 20 blood parameters were registered using the blood analysing equipment at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU) laboratories. For the prediction of ultrasound exposure, artificial intelligence, i.e...

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Scientists discover First Therapeutic Target for Preserving Heart Function in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension

heart
Human heart. Credit: copyright American Heart Association

A research team has discovered a possible therapeutic target for pulmonary hypertension. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, identifies the first therapeutic target that can be modulated to preserve cardiac function in pulmonary hypertension, providing hope in the fight against this rare but fatal disease for which there is currently no cure.

Pulmonary hypertension is a condition of elevated blood pressure in the arteries that carry deoxygenated blood to the lungs. This increased pulmonary blood pressure puts the heart under continuous strain as it has to work harder to pump blood to the lungs.

Pulmonary hypertension affects between 15 and 50 people per million of the world’s population...

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New Medicine can Create a New Life for Diabetes Patients—Without Needles

New medicine can create a new life for diabetes patients—without needles!
These capsules containing nano-carriers with insulin will be tested on humans in 2025. Credit: Nicholas Hunt

There are approximately 425 million people worldwide with diabetes. Approximately 75 million of these inject themselves with insulin daily. Now, they may soon have a new alternative to syringes or insulin pumps. Scientists have found a new way to supply the body with smart insulin.

The new insulin can be eaten by taking a capsule or, even better, within a piece of chocolate.

Inside these are tiny nano-carriers in which the insulin is encapsulated. The particles are 1/10,000th the width of a human hair and so small that you cannot even see them under a normal microscope.

“This way of taking insulin is more precise because it delivers the insulin rapidly to the areas of t...

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