All posts tagged: sharply

AI identifies people with sharply elevated risk of skin cancer within 5 years

AI identifies people with sharply elevated risk of skin cancer within 5 years

Published by Jenni Sidey

A skin cancer diagnosis can seem to arrive out of nowhere. But buried in years of health records, prescription histories, and demographic data, researchers say there may be clues that help flag people at especially high risk before melanoma appears. That is the idea behind a large Swedish study that tested whether artificial intelligence could sort through routine healthcare registry data and identify adults more likely to develop melanoma within five years. The work drew on records from more than 6 million people, making it one of the broadest efforts yet to use national population data for melanoma risk prediction. During the five-year study window, 38,582 of the 6,036,186 adults in the dataset developed melanoma, including melanoma in situ. That amounts to about 0.64% of the population studied. “Our study shows that data which is already available within healthcare systems can be used to identify individuals at higher risk of melanoma,” said Martin Gillstedt, a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy and a statistician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital’s Department of Dermatology and …

New brain-inspired device sharply reduces AI hardware energy use

New brain-inspired device sharply reduces AI hardware energy use

Published by Jenni Sidey

A tiny change at the boundary between two oxide layers may point to a less power-hungry future for artificial intelligence. Researchers led by the University of Cambridge have built a nanoelectronic device that behaves a bit like a brain synapse, storing and processing information in the same place instead of shuttling data back and forth as standard computer chips do. That matters because today’s AI hardware burns through vast amounts of electricity, and the demand is still rising. The team’s device is a memristor, a component designed to mimic how neurons and synapses adjust their connections. In this case, the memristor is made from a modified form of hafnium oxide containing strontium and titanium. The work appears in Science Advances. “Energy consumption is one of the key challenges in current AI hardware,” lead author Dr. Babak Bakhit of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy said in a statement. “To address that, you need devices with extremely low currents, excellent stability, outstanding uniformity across switching cycles and devices, and the ability to switch between many …

‘The Saviors’ review: Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler delve into suburban paranoia in a sharply funny thriller

‘The Saviors’ review: Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler delve into suburban paranoia in a sharply funny thriller

Published by skeptic

We all tend to imagine ourselves as the hero of our stories. The trouble with that is it requires someone to be the villain. That way of thinking can get dangerous when tumbled into our personal wells of prejudice, paranoia, and need for validation. From this well of mind-bending emotions springs The Saviors, a clever genre thriller with a lot to say beneath its slippery surface.  Following in the footsteps of eavesdropping-centric thrillers like Rear Window and The ‘Burbs, The Saviors begins with a middle-aged white man with too much time on his hands. In an average suburban American town, Sean Harrison (a smartly cast Adam Scott) is unemployed and on the verge of divorce from his wife, Kim (Till‘s Danielle Deadwyler). He’s hungry for a purpose when he meets Muslim siblings Amir (Theo Rossi) and Jahan (Nazanin Boniadi), who are renting the Harrisons’ guest house for a few days. So, when Sean notices some strange things around his home after their arrival, his suspicious eye travels to the guest house’s door.  What follows is …

New contraceptive vaccine sharply reduces fertility enabling humane wildlife management

New contraceptive vaccine sharply reduces fertility enabling humane wildlife management

Published by Jenni Sidey

A shot that keeps a mare from getting pregnant sounds simple. In practice, it is one of the messier problems in wildlife management, where every extra dose means another chase, another dart, another round of stress for an animal that already lives on the move. A team at Purdue University thinks it has a cleaner approach: an immunocontraceptive vaccine built around a sperm protein called IZUMO1. In early tests in mice, their formulations cut fertility sharply, in some cases leaving vaccinated females with only a fraction of the pups seen in unvaccinated animals. The work, led by Dr. Harm HogenEsch and Dr. Raluca Ostafe, was published Feb. 6 in the journal Vaccine. HogenEsch, a distinguished professor of immunopathology in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said the goal is a humane tool for animal overpopulation in species such as feral horses, deer and swine. Ostafe directs Purdue’s Molecular Evolution Protein Engineering and Production Facility. Both are members of the Purdue Institute for Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease. Purdue University researchers Dr. Raluca Ostafe and Dr. Harm …

Oil prices rise sharply after US, Israeli attacks on Iran | Israel-Iran conflict News

Oil prices rise sharply after US, Israeli attacks on Iran | Israel-Iran conflict News

Published by Sam Flores

Listen to this article | 5 mins info Oil prices have risen sharply, and stocks have slid as United States and Israeli attacks on Iran and retaliatory strikes against Israeli and US military installations in the Middle East have disrupted the global energy supply chain. West Texas intermediate, the light, sweet crude oil produced in the US, was selling at $72.79 a barrel early on Monday, up 8.6 percent from its trading price of about $67 on Friday, according to data from the CME Group. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, was trading at $79.41 per barrel early on Monday, according to FactSet, up 9 percent from its trading price of $72.87 on Friday, at the time a seven-month high. Traders were betting the supply of oil from Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East would slow or grind to a halt as US President Donald Trump suggested that attacks would continue until US objectives were met. Military strikes by the US and Israel on Iran showed …

Oil prices rise sharply in market trading after attacks in Middle East : NPR

Oil prices rise sharply in market trading after attacks in Middle East : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Fishermen work in front of oil tankers south of the Strait of Hormuz on Jan. 19, 2012, offshore of the town of Ras Al Khaimah in United Arab Emirates. Kamran Jebreili/AP hide caption toggle caption Kamran Jebreili/AP NEW YORK — Oil prices rose sharply when market trading began Sunday, as U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and retaliatory strikes against Israel and U.S. military installations around the Gulf sent disruptions through the global energy supply chain. Traders were betting the supply of oil from Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East would slow or grind to a halt. Attacks throughout the region, including on two vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, have restricted countries’ ability to export oil to the rest of the world. Prolonged attacks would likely result in higher prices for crude oil and gasoline, according to energy experts. West Texas Intermediate, the light, sweet crude oil produced in the United States, was selling for about $72 a barrel Sunday night, according to data from …

The UN says al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families

The UN says al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families

Published by Sam Flores

DAMASCUS (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Islamic State group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain. Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.” “Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said. He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.” The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or …

Experimental drug can sharply reduce amyloid beta’s impact on Alzheimer’s

Experimental drug can sharply reduce amyloid beta’s impact on Alzheimer’s

Published by Jenni Sidey

Early in Alzheimer’s disease, your brain can begin to change long before anyone notices a lost name or missed appointment. Toxic proteins quietly collect inside cells, support cells turn restless, and inflammation smolders in the background. By the time memory problems show up, much of this damage is already in motion. A new study from Northwestern University suggests that this early window may be your best chance to fight back. The team has uncovered a previously hidden, highly toxic form of amyloid beta and shown that an experimental drug, called NU-9, can sharply reduce its impact in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. A Silent Disease That Starts Decades Earlier Alzheimer’s does not start when you first feel confused. It begins many years earlier as small clusters of amyloid beta, called oligomers, build up inside neurons and support cells. These clusters are thought to be more damaging than the larger plaques that appear later. ACU193 and NU4 probe different amyloid beta oligomer subtypes in subiculum of 12-week mice; ACU193+ puncta predominate. (CREDIT: Alzheimer’s & Dementia) …

Fentanyl Overdose Deaths Are Now Falling Sharply, and You’ll Never Guess Why

Fentanyl Overdose Deaths Are Now Falling Sharply, and You’ll Never Guess Why

Published by José Betancourt

For many years, the United States has waged a bitter battle against fentanyl. The staggering number of overdose deaths caused by the drug has been used by Donald Trump’s administration to justify attacking boats in the Caribbean, deploy militarized forces to detain legal citizens, and impose sweeping tariffs — despite having little data to prove that its target countries, including Canada, were actually to blame. The president went as far as to sign an executive order calling the highly addictive and extremely potent synthetic opiate a “weapon of mass destruction.” Yet the latest research shows something inconvenient for that narrative: a sharp reduction in fentanyl overdoses that started before Trump took office, almost certainly in response to policy under his predecessor Joe Biden. As researchers noted in a paper published in the journal Science this week, fatal overdoses from synthetic opioids like fentanyl plummeted after peaking at 76,000 in 2023 in the US, dropping by over a third by the end of 2024. (Full numbers aren’t in yet for 2025, but provisional data from the …