2018 – Page 48 – Impact Lab

Big Problems, Healthcare, Hot Issues, Medicine

This is why Xanax is blowing up in America

June 16, 2018

From the explosion of ADHD meds to the economic crisis to the Trump presidency, this dangerous trend didn’t come out of nowhere.

It’s not exactly breaking news that Xanax has been having something of a moment. Famous musicians, at least until prominent voices like Lil Xan (yes, even him!) and Chance the Rapper began swearing off the stuff, have long been inclined to hype it. And Xanny bars have been touted across social media and even in old-school graffiti for some time now. The number of adults prescribed drugs in the class that includes Xanax (alprazolam)—known as benzodiazepines—rose by 67 percent between 1996 and 2013. Over the same period, the amount of these drugs that was actually dispensed more than tripled, according to a 2016 study.

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Science & Technology News

AI cancer detectors

June 15, 2018

Researchers suggest artificial intelligence is now better and faster at detecting cancer than clinician.

An AI system developed by a team from Germany, France and the US can diagnose skin cancer more accurately than dermatologists. In the study, the software was able to accurately detect cancer in 95% of images of cancerous moles and benign spots, whereas a team of 58 dermatologists was accurate 87% of the time.

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Gastric bypass “surgery in a pill” points to inspired new treatment for diabetes

June 15, 2018

While gastric-bypass, or bariatric, surgery can be a very successful weight-loss treatment option for those suffering from obesity, it has also been seen to be extraordinarily effective in reversing type 2 diabetes. An exciting new study from a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital has now demonstrated an oral agent that can potentially mimic the effects of bariatric surgery to reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes.

For some years, researchers have identified a connection between gastric-bypass surgery and the reversal of type 2 diabetes. The exact mechanism at play is still unclear, but it seems to operate independently of the weight loss that comes as a consequence of the procedure. One recent study comprising 20,000 patients found that gastric bypass surgery completely cured 84 percent of patients with type 2 diabetes.

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Crime Prevention, drones, Law Enforcement

A single police drone has seriously impacted crime in a Mexican city

June 15, 2018

Drones are finding a place in so many industries lately that it’s not much of a surprise that police departments have also been testing the technology for crime-fighting operations.

The city of Ensenada in Mexico, for example, has recently achieved positive results using just a single quadcopter, Wired reported this week. The flying machine has helped to cut overall crime in the city by as much as 10 percent, including a 30-percent drop in burglaries.

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Automation, Latest Trend, Robotics

This coffee bar employs futuristic robotic baristas to make and serve your coffee — and it signals how people are warming up to the automation trend

June 14, 2018

The baristas at Cafe X can make two drinks in under a minute and will get your order right every time.

They’re also not human.

The robotic coffee bar employs assembly line-style robots to build your coffee orders for you, making Cafe X a player in San Francisco’s automated eatery scene that’s also gaining traction across the country.

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Crazy Stuff, Human Behavior

How people fake their own death — and why

June 14, 2018

The Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko who faked his own death isn’t alone.

Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was recently found lying face down on the floor of his apartment in Kiev, Ukraine, blood seeping through his T-shirt. He was quickly driven away by an ambulance, pronounced dead, and delivered to a morgue.

But the three bullet holes were fake, and the blood came from a pig — Babchenko was alive.

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AI, Big Problems, Human Behavior, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

How data scientists are using AI for suicide prevention

June 14, 2018

The Crisis Text Line uses machine learning to figure out who’s at risk and when to intervene.

When horrible news — like the deaths by suicide of chef, author, and TV star Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade, or the 2015 Paris attacks — breaks, crisis counseling services often get deluged with calls from people in despair. Deciding whom to help first can be a life-or-death decision.

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drones, Latest Trend, Law Enforcement, mobile technology

The next frontier of police surveillance is drones

June 13, 2018

A major drone company and a major police-camera company are teaming up, and the possibilities are frightening.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

A company that makes stun guns and body cameras is teaming up with a company that makes drones to sell drones to police departments, and that might not even be the most worrisome part. The line of drones from Axon and DJI is called the Axon Air, and the devices will be linked to Axon’s cloud-based database for law enforcement, Evidence.com, which is used to process body-camera data too. And it could open a vast new frontier for police surveillance.

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Augmented Reality, Entertainment, Food

VRstudios launches Jurassic World VR attraction at Dave & Buster’s restaurants

June 13, 2018

VRstudios is launching its virtual reality platform in 112 Dave & Buster’s entertainment restaurant locations with the new game Jurassic World VR Expedition. That makes it the largest deployment of commercial multiplayer VR to date, the partners said.

It took almost five years of work to make happen, according to Dave & Buster’s executive Kevin Bachus, who was the co-creator of the Xbox video game console. The VR game launches ahead of the film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which arrives in U.S. theaters on June 22, 2018.

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Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Ultrasound-powered nanorobots clear bacteria and toxins from blood

June 13, 2018

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency aims to create a broad-spectrum detoxification robotic platform.

MRSA bacterium captured by a hybrid cell membrane-coated nanorobot (colored scanning electron microscope image and black and white image below) (credit: Esteban-Fernández de Ávila/Science Robotics)

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny ultrasound-powered nanorobots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria and the toxins they produce.

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Alternative Transportation, Engineering, Hyperloop, Transportation

Zoetrope effect could render Hyperloop tubes transparent to riders

June 12, 2018

An optical illusion popular in the 19th century could make trips on the Hyperloop appear to take place in a transparent tube. Regularly spaced, narrow windows wouldn’t offer much of a view individually, but if dozens of them pass by every second an effect would be created like that of a zoetrope, allowing passengers to effectively see right through the walls.

It’s an official concept from Virgin Hyperloop One and design house Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and in fact was teased back in 2016. Now the companies have shared a video showing how it would work and what it would look like for passengers — though there’s no indication it would actually be put in place in the first tracks.

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Analysis, Big Problems, Human Behavior

This one shocking factor can make you 4600 percent more likely to become an addict

June 12, 2018

It was discovered quite by accident – in part of a study of a totally different subject.

One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives, and not being able to. As I got older, I understood why. We had addiction in my family. And as I watched some of my other close relatives become addicts, I asked myself several questions, but one in particular seemed haunting and insistent: why does addiction so often run in families? Why does it seem to pass from mother to daughter, from father to son, as though it were some dark genetic twist?

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