science and technology – News Agency nabakhabar https://www.en.3danews.ir Find the latest breaking news and information on the top stories, weather, business, entertainment, politics, and more. Tue, 11 Jun 2024 21:31:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://dlen.3danews.ir/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/cropped-2-1-32x32.jpg science and technology – News Agency nabakhabar https://www.en.3danews.ir 32 32 Most Life on Earth is Dormant, After Pulling an ‘Emergency Brake’ https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70388/most-life-on-earth-is-dormant-after-pulling-an-emergency-brake https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70388/most-life-on-earth-is-dormant-after-pulling-an-emergency-brake#respond Tue, 11 Jun 2024 23:50:28 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=70388 Many microbes and cells are in deep sleep, waiting for the right moment to activate. Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast.

The post Most Life on Earth is Dormant, After Pulling an ‘Emergency Brake’ appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> Many microbes and cells are in deep sleep, waiting for the right moment to activate. Biologists discovered a widespread protein that abruptly shuts down a cell’s activity — and turns it back on just as fast.

Researchers recently reported the discovery of a natural protein, named Balon, that can bring a cell’s production of new proteins to a screeching halt. Balon was found in bacteria that hibernate in Arctic permafrost, but it also seems to be made by many other organisms and may be an overlooked mechanism for dormancy throughout the tree of life.

For most life forms, the ability to shut oneself off is a vital part of staying alive. Harsh conditions like lack of food or cold weather can appear out of nowhere. In these dire straits, rather than keel over and die, many organisms have mastered the art of dormancy. They slow down their activity and metabolism. Then, when better times roll back around, they reanimate.

Sitting around in a dormant state is actually the norm for the majority of life on Earth: By some estimates, 60% of all microbial cells are hibernating at any given time. Even in organisms whose entire bodies do not go dormant, like most mammals, some cellular populations within them rest and wait for the best time to activate.

“We live on a dormant planet,” said Sergey Melnikov, an evolutionary molecular biologist at Newcastle University. “Life is mainly about being asleep.”

But how do cells pull off this feat? Over the years, researchers have discovered a number of “hibernation factors,” proteins that cells use to induce and maintain a dormant state. When a cell detects some kind of adverse condition, like starvation or cold, it produces a suite of hibernation factors to shut its metabolism down.

Some hibernation factors dismantle cellular machinery; others prevent genes from being expressed. The most important ones, however, shut down the ribosome — the cell’s machine for building new proteins. Making proteins accounts for more than 50% of energy use in a growing bacterial cell. These hibernation factors throw sand in the gears of the ribosome, preventing it from synthesizing new proteins and thereby saving energy for the needs of basic survival.

Earlier this year, publishing in Nature, researchers reported the discovery of a new hibernation factor, which they have named Balon. The protein is shockingly common: A search for its gene sequence uncovered its presence in 20% of all cataloged bacterial genomes. And it works in a way that molecular biologists had never seen before.

Previously, all known ribosome-disrupting hibernation factors worked passively: They waited for a ribosome to finish building a protein and then prevented it from starting a new one. Balon, however, pulls the emergency brake. It stuffs itself into every ribosome in the cell, even interrupting active ribosomes in the middle of their work. Before Balon, hibernation factors had only been seen in empty ribosomes.

“The Balon paper is amazingly detailed,” said the evolutionary biologist Jay Lennon, who studies microbial dormancy at Indiana University and was not involved in the new study. “It will add to our view of how dormancy works.”

Melnikov and his graduate student Karla Helena-Bueno discovered Balon in Psychrobacter urativorans, a cold-adapted bacterium native to frozen soils and harvested from Arctic permafrost. (According to Melnikov, the bacterium was first found infecting a pack of frozen sausages in the 1970s and then rediscovered by the famed genomicist Craig Venter on a trip to the Arctic.) They study P. urativorans and other unusual microbes to characterize the diversity of protein-building tools used across the spectrum of life and to understand how ribosomes can adapt to extreme environments.

Because dormancy can be triggered by a variety of conditions, including starvation and drought, the scientists pursue this research with a practical goal in mind: “We can probably use this knowledge in order to engineer organisms that can tolerate warmer climates,” Melnikov said, “and therefore withstand climate change.”

Introducing: Balon

Helena-Bueno discovered Balon entirely by accident. She was trying to coax P. urativorans to grow happily in the lab. Instead she did the opposite. She left the culture in an ice bucket for too long and managed to cold-shock it. By the time she remembered it was there, the cold-adapted bacteria had gone dormant.

Not wanting to waste the culture, the researchers pursued their original interests anyway. Helena-Bueno extracted the cold-shocked bacteria’s ribosomes and subjected them to cryo-EM. Short for cryogenic electron microscopy, cryo-EM is a technique for visualizing minuscule biological structures at high resolution. Helena-Bueno saw a protein jammed into the stalled ribosome’s A site — the “door” where amino acids are delivered for the construction of new proteins.

Helena-Bueno and Melnikov didn’t recognize the protein. Indeed, it had never been described before. It bore a similarity to another bacterial protein, one that’s important for disassembling and recycling ribosomal parts, called Pelota from the Spanish for “ball.” So they named the new protein Balon for a different Spanish word for “ball.”

Balon’s ability to halt the ribosome’s activity in its tracks is a critical adaptation for a microbe under stress, said Mee-Ngan Frances Yap, a microbiologist at Northwestern University who wasn’t involved in the work. “When bacteria are actively growing, they produce lots of ribosomes and RNA,” she said. “When they encounter stress, a species might need to shut down translation” of RNA into new proteins to begin conserving energy for a potentially long hibernation period.

Notably, Balon’s mechanism is a reversible process. Unlike other hibernation factors, it can be inserted to stall growth and then quickly ejected like a cassette tape. It enables a cell to rapidly go dormant in an emergency and resuscitate itself just as rapidly to readapt to more favorable conditions.

Balon can do this because it latches on to ribosomes in a unique way. Every ribosomal hibernation factor previously discovered physically blocks the ribosome’s A site, so any protein-making process that’s in progress must be completed before the factor can attach to turn off the ribosome. Balon, on the other hand, binds near but not across the channel, which allows it to come and go regardless of what the ribosome is doing.

Despite Balon’s mechanistic novelty, it’s an exceedingly common protein. Once it was identified, Helena-Bueno and Melnikov found genetic relatives of Balon in upward of 20% of all the bacterial genomes cataloged in public databases. With help from Mariia Rybak, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, they characterized two of these alternate bacterial proteins: one from the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis, and another in Thermus thermophilus, which lives in the last place you’d catch P. urativorans — in ultra-hot underwater thermal vents. Both proteins also bind to the ribosome’s A site, suggesting that at least some of these genetic relatives act similarly to Balon in other bacterial species.

Balon is notably absent from Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, the two most commonly studied bacteria and the most widely used models for cellular dormancy. By focusing on just a few lab organisms, scientists had missed a widespread hibernation tactic, Helena-Bueno said. “I tried to look into an under-studied corner of nature and happened to find something.”

Everybody Hibernates

Every cell needs the ability to go dormant and wait for its moment. The laboratory model bacterium E. coli has five separate modes of hibernating, Melnikov said, each of which on its own is sufficient to enable the microbe to survive a crisis.

“Most microbes are starving,” said Ashley Shade, a microbiologist at the University of Lyon who was not involved in the new study. “They’re existing in a state of want. They’re not doubling. They’re not living their best life.”

But dormancy is also necessary outside periods of starvation. Even in organisms, like most mammals, whose entire bodies do not go completely dormant, individual cellular populations must wait for the best time to activate. Human oocytes lie dormant for decades waiting to be fertilized. Human stem cells are born into the bone marrow and then go quiescent, waiting for the body to call out to them to grow and differentiate. Fibroblasts in nervous tissue, lymphocytes of the immune system, and hepatocytes in the liver all enter dormant, inactive, nondividing phases and reactivate later.

“This is not something that’s unique to bacteria or archaea,” Lennon said. “Every organism in the tree of life has a way of achieving this strategy. They can pause their metabolism.”

Bears hibernate. Herpes viruses lysogenize. Worms form a dauer stage. Insects enter diapause. Amphibians aestivate. Birds go into torpor. All of these are words for the exact same thing: a dormant state that organisms can reverse when conditions are favorable.

“Before the invention of hibernation, the only way to live was to keep growing without interruptions,” Melnikov said. “Putting life on pause is a luxury.”

It’s also a type of population-level insurance. Some cells pursue dormancy by detecting environmental changes and responding accordingly. However, many bacteria use a stochastic strategy. “In randomly fluctuating environments, if you don’t go into dormancy sometimes, there’s a chance that the whole population will go extinct” through random encounters with disaster, Lennon said. In even the healthiest, happiest, fastest-growing cultures of E. coli, between 5% and 10% of the cells will nevertheless be dormant. They are the designated survivors who will live should something happen to their more active, vulnerable cousins.

In that sense, dormancy is a survival strategy for global catastrophes. That’s why Helena-Bueno studies hibernation. She’s interested in which species might remain stable despite climate change, which ones might be able to recover, and which cellular processes, like Balon-assisted hibernation, might help.

More fundamentally, Melnikov and Helena-Bueno hope that the discovery of Balon and its ubiquity will help people reframe what is important in life. We all frequently go dormant, and many of us quite enjoy it. “We spend one-third of our life asleep, but we don’t talk about it at all,” Melnikov said. Instead of complaining about what we’re missing when we’re asleep, maybe we can experience it as a process that connects us to all life on Earth, including microbes sleeping deep in the Arctic permafrost.

The post Most Life on Earth is Dormant, After Pulling an ‘Emergency Brake’ appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70388/most-life-on-earth-is-dormant-after-pulling-an-emergency-brake/feed 0 China is awash in $10,000 EVs. Importing them could have changed everything https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70365/china-is-awash-in-10000-evs-importing-them-could-have-changed-everything https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70365/china-is-awash-in-10000-evs-importing-them-could-have-changed-everything#respond Mon, 10 Jun 2024 19:10:05 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=70365 A tiny electric car called the Seagull, designed by a former Lamborghini designer, starts at less than $10,000 in China. A version with a battery that can go 250 miles on a charge costs a little more, at $12,000.

The post China is awash in $10,000 EVs. Importing them could have changed everything appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]>

A tiny electric car called the Seagull, designed by a former Lamborghini designer, starts at less than $10,000 in China. A version with a battery that can go 250 miles on a charge costs a little more, at $12,000.

The car—made by BYD, the Chinese manufacturer that overtook Tesla as the world’s biggest seller of EVs late last year—isn’t available in the U.S. Neither is the Zhidou Rainbow, another tiny Chinese car that starts at $4,400. More expensive Chinese cars, like the sleek Xiaomi SU7 (which looks like a Porsche, at a fifth of the price) or the XPeng G9 SUV, are also priced to undercut competitors like Tesla. The cheapest EV for sale in the U.S., by contrast, is the $28,000 Nissan Leaf.

New tariffs from the Biden administration make it unlikely that Chinese EVs will be sold in the U.S. anytime soon. But if they had, they almost certainly would have sped up the shift to cleaner transportation.

“If the goal is to try to drive a transition and to get more EVs on the road, putting up trade barriers is counterproductive,” says Michael Lenox, a business professor at the University of Virginia who studies the EV industry.

Zhidou Rainbow [Image: Zhidou]

CONSUMERS STILL SEE EV COST AS A BARRIER

In a recent survey, more than half of Americans who don’t yet own electric cars said they were interested in buying one. But 64% said cost was a significant barrier.

Ever since Tesla pioneered high-end EVs—recognizing that early electric cars would be more expensive to make, and the luxury market offered more room for margin—other American automakers have also focused more on expensive cars. “The next push will be toward those less expensive categories of cars,” says Lenox. “Clearly, Nissan with the Leaf and Chevy with the Bolt have been playing in that area for a while. But the numbers coming out of China are just game changers.”

That’s not to say that Americans would have necessarily wanted to buy Chinese cars. For decades, American automakers have moved toward bigger, heavier vehicles and away from sedans, arguing that that’s what consumers want.

“With these tariffs, we’re just not going to put that assumption to the test. It’s entirely possible that you could have companies like BYD bringing their low-cost smaller vehicles and American consumers might not be interested,” says Ilaria Mazzocco, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But it’s also possible that consumers might respond in the same way that they have in many other parts of the world, by changing their preferences because the cost is so low, and they’re really efficient, and there are all these other benefits to the vehicles.”

In parts of the developing world, where low-cost Chinese EVs are on the market, the share of electric vehicles on the road is quickly growing. In Thailand, for example, one out of every 10 new car purchases is electric. That’s on par with the rate of EV sales in the U.S., despite the fact that experts once believed EVs would grow fastest in high-income countries and then trickle down to other markets. For the growing middle class in countries like Brazil and Indonesia, someone’s first car is now increasingly likely to be an EV.

Xiaomi SU7 [Image: Xiaomi]

A RANGE OF OPTIONS

In the U.S., some of China’s lowest-cost electric cars—with a small size and often limited battery range—might have appealed to consumers in cities with short commutes. (Other cars have incredibly long ranges, like a plug-in hybrid electric car that can drive for 1,300 miles before charging.) And Chinese companies do make larger vehicles that likely would have had broader appeal. “I just got back from China last week, and there were so many different models on the road,” says Mazzocco. “I was in a DiDi, which is the Chinese Uber, in a small electric SUV that looked fairly affordable. I asked my driver about it, and he said, ‘These days you can just get any car you want in electric. Why would you even buy a [gas] vehicle?’” More than 70 new models are coming out this year in China.

The variety of EVs available in the U.S. also keeps growing, and the cost is dropping as batteries get cheaper and manufacturing becomes more efficient. By some estimates, EVs will be cheaper than gas cars, even without any tax credits or other incentives, by 2030. Others say it could happen even faster.

The fundamental design is simpler than a gas car. “You do not have all the systems that you need in an internal combustion engine—you don’t have a coolant system, you don’t have an exhaust system, you don’t have a fuel injector,” says Lenox. “All of these things add cost to the vehicle.” (EVs are also cheaper to operate because electricity is cheaper than gas and because the vehicles need fewer repairs.)

The shift to EVs is happening whether or not Chinese cars are sold in the U.S. But if they were on the market, it would have happened faster. With the world running out of time to tackle climate change, it could have helped cut American emissions faster. Transportation is the biggest source of emissions in the country, and passenger cars and trucks are responsible for most of that pollution.

[Photo: VCG/Getty Images]

A SLOWER PACE OF INNOVATION

The Biden administration does want to cut emissions—and by 2030, it wants half of all U.S. car sales to be electric. Still, it’s not surprising that the tariffs exist. Biden worries that if cheap Chinese cars flood the market, American automakers will suffer. (Trump put smaller tariffs in place while in office, and says he also wants to keep Chinese cars out if elected.)

Biden is also concerned that China’s cars, full of smart tech, could be used to spy on Americans. “I’m realistic about the geopolitical moment that we are in with our relationship with China and the concerns about national security risk and even just simply job creation and retention,” Lenox says. China has also given its EV industry massive financial support. Biden argues that’s “unfair,” though arguably if governments boost climate tech—as the U.S. is doing itself in several ways—everyone ultimately benefits.

To help his climate goals succeed, Biden is taking a long-term strategy. Without the support of American car companies and their workers, EVs would struggle. Now, even if Biden were to lose the next election, there are dozens of new factories making EVs and EV parts in such states as Georgia, South Carolina, and Michigan, thanks to requirements for American manufacturing in the Inflation Reduction Act. The existence of those jobs makes it more likely that EVs will continue to grow. But protectionist policies come at a cost.

XPeng G9 [Image: Xpeng]

“On the one hand, you need to protect these industries,” says Mazzocco. “I think we all know it’s politically untenable that the U.S. just lets the automotive industry go without a fight. But on the other hand, there’s not a great track record for just completely protecting the market and protecting companies, avoiding competition, and ensuring that they’re still innovating. Basically, what’s going to push these car companies to actually make the EVs that people want to buy unless they have some competition?”

In China, intense competition has led to more innovation. Some companies offer battery-swapping, so drivers don’t have to wait to charge their car. Batteries keep getting smaller, lighter, and more powerful. With smaller batteries, there’s more space for storage or legroom. Chinese companies are also moving faster toward self-driving technology, for better or worse. Some innovations are wilder: One hybrid SUV from BYD is designed to work underwater in the case of flash flooding.

The U.S. could have taken the approach that some other countries are taking, encouraging Chinese companies to sell locally without tariffs if they set up local factories. The same thing happened here in the 1980s, when Japanese car companies started manufacturing in the U.S.—and pushed American automakers to improve and become more efficient to compete.

American car companies resisted making electric cars for decades. (GM, for example helped hold the technology back in the 1990s; it’s currently planning to shift fully to EVs.) Now, with bumpy early sales and an uncertain political future, some automakers may want to pull back again. Meanwhile, China’s EV makers are racing ahead.

The post China is awash in $10,000 EVs. Importing them could have changed everything appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/70365/china-is-awash-in-10000-evs-importing-them-could-have-changed-everything/feed 0 West Asia’s biggest space center under construction in Iran https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69961/west-asias-biggest-space-center-under-construction-in-iran https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69961/west-asias-biggest-space-center-under-construction-in-iran#respond Thu, 06 Jun 2024 12:51:06 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69961 Iran is constructing the largest space center of the West Asia region in its southeastern port city of Chabahar, Minister of Communications and Information Technology (ICT) Issa Zarepour said.

The post West Asia’s biggest space center under construction in Iran appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]>

Iran is constructing the largest space center of the West Asia region in its southeastern port city of Chabahar, Minister of Communications and Information Technology (ICT) Issa Zarepour said.

During a visit to Sistan and Baluchestan Province on Thursday, the ICT minister said the Chabahar Space Center, currently under construction, will become the largest space center in the West Asia region.

The first phase of the center, 56% of which has been completed, will come into operation in early February 2025, he said.

Zarepour also unveiled plans for the first launch from the new base in the current Persian year, which will end on March 20, 2025.

The space facility, planned to cater to Iranian satellite launches, will also promote the country’s cooperation with international partners and increase its revenue.

Iran’s pursuit of space exploration and its associated advantages has prompted the nation to take significant strides in satellite technology.

The Imam Khomeini National Space Center, Iran’s inaugural fixed launch site, has played a pivotal role in the country’s space endeavors since its inauguration in 2017. This facility encompasses all stages of space missions, from satellite preparation to launch, control, and guidance.

Situated in the northern province of Semnan, the Imam Khomeini National Space Center effectively fulfills Iran’s requirements in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) during its final phase.

The Chabahar Space Center is explicitly designated as a non-military launch center, intended for live payload launches, as well as the deployment of Earth observation and communication satellites into geosynchronous orbit. These operations necessitate specific conditions, ideally close to the equatorial region, to minimize launch costs and orbital adjustments.

The Chabahar Space Center is poised to unlock new possibilities in the realm of space exploration, enhancing both Iranian capabilities and international collaboration.

The post West Asia’s biggest space center under construction in Iran appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69961/west-asias-biggest-space-center-under-construction-in-iran/feed 0 Samsung refutes report of failing Nvidia’s AI memory chip test https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69589/samsung-refutes-report-of-failing-nvidias-ai-memory-chip-test https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69589/samsung-refutes-report-of-failing-nvidias-ai-memory-chip-test#respond Sat, 25 May 2024 17:21:39 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69589 Samsung Electronics refuted a Friday news report that it failed to pass a test of Nvidia's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. It said its "tests with various global partners to supply HBM are on track."

The post Samsung refutes report of failing Nvidia’s AI memory chip test appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> Samsung Electronics refuted a Friday news report that it failed to pass a test of Nvidia’s high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. It said its “tests with various global partners to supply HBM are on track.”

Samsung is currently testing its HBM chips with U.S. graphic chip giant Nvidia to supply the memory chips for Nvidia’s AI processors, but Reuters reported that Samsung did not pass the test due to issues with heat and power consumption.

“Samsung Electronics’ latest high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips have yet to pass Nvidia’s tests for use in the U.S. firm’s AI processors due to heat and power consumption problems, three people briefed on the issues said,” Reuters reported.

Nvidia is the leading company in the global AI chip market. While SK hynix lags behind Samsung in overall memory semiconductor market share, it holds the largest share in the rapidly growing AI memory chip market by exclusively supplying its HBM chips to Nvidia. To expand its presence in the fast-growing HBM market, Samsung is following in SK hynix’s footsteps.

Regarding the report, Samsung answered it is “smoothly” conducting tests with multiple customers for their HBM chips.

“Samsung Electronics is smoothly conducting tests for HBM supply with various global partners. We are closely collaborating with many companies and continuously testing technology and performance,” the company said in a statement.

The company added that it is working on verifying the quality and performance of HBM chips. “Samsung Electronics is continuously improving quality and enhancing reliability for all products, and we aim to provide the best solutions to our customers,” it said.

Amid the concerns for Samsung, its stock price ended at 75,900 won on Friday, down 3.07 percent from the previous day.

Experts said that Samsung may have encountered these issues in an effort to deliver products quickly and that these types of issues are not uncommon in the semiconductor industry.

“According to the media report, Samsung’s products might have issues with power consumption and heat, which are common problems when the optimization process in semiconductor manufacturing is not properly carried out,” said Lee Jong-hwan, a professor of semiconductor engineering at Sangmyung University.

The professor, however, believes that Nvidia needs Samsung’s participation to diversify its suppliers and expects both sides to continue testing the products.

“AI memory chips are essential for Nvidia’s AI processors. Nvidia needs Samsung’s participation to maintain the price competitiveness of its AI processors, so they will continue the testing process with Samsung,” the professor said.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, left, poses with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Silicon Valley, California, April 24. Captured from Chey’s Instagram
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, left, poses with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Silicon Valley, California, April 24. Captured from Chey’s Instagram

Jim Handy, a U.S.-based analyst from chip market research company Objective Analysis, said that while SK hynix currently leads the HBM market, Samsung could also stand out.

“When the 2022 price collapse occurred, all DRAM prices fell except for HBM. Suddenly, HBM was the only profitable part of the DRAM market. Samsung and Micron changed their minds about it and decided to compete with SK hynix,” the analyst told The Korea Times.

“Part of Samsung’s corporate culture is to be No. 1 in any market they enter. In memory chips, this has been DRAM, SRAM, Mask ROM, NOR flash and NAND flash, in that order. Now they want to become No. 1 in HBM. I fully expect them to do that.”

In the fierce HBM race, Samsung’s rival SK hynix is seeking to strengthen its grip on the market as it is exploring whether it can manufacture HBM in other countries, such as the United States and Japan, according to SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won.

The chairman expressed his intention to further strengthen cooperation with companies from Japan and around the world in an interview with Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper on Thursday.

“In the advanced manufacturing fields, including AI semiconductors, collaboration with the Japanese supply chain is indispensable. We will further strengthen collaboration and investment with Japanese manufacturers of devices and materials in the semiconductor field,” Chey told the Japanese newspaper. “We are continuously investigating whether (HBM) can be manufactured in Japan and the U.S.”

The post Samsung refutes report of failing Nvidia’s AI memory chip test appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69589/samsung-refutes-report-of-failing-nvidias-ai-memory-chip-test/feed 0 Plan for patient ID checks at hospitals snagged by tech issues https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69474/plan-for-patient-id-checks-at-hospitals-snagged-by-tech-issues https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69474/plan-for-patient-id-checks-at-hospitals-snagged-by-tech-issues#respond Sun, 19 May 2024 20:20:14 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69474 Concerns are rising over technological challenges potentially hindering a government plan to require patients to present their ID cards at hospitals to verify their identity.

The post Plan for patient ID checks at hospitals snagged by tech issues appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> Concerns are rising over technological challenges potentially hindering a government plan to require patients to present their ID cards at hospitals to verify their identity.

While the scheme aims to prevent individuals ineligible for national health insurance benefits from accessing them by using another person’s ID, some system errors and loopholes have been identified. Health authorities have pledged to address those issues promptly.

Starting Monday, patients are required to present at hospitals either their ID cards bearing a photo or their health insurance cards stored on mobile phones. Hospital staff are then tasked with verifying their eligibility for health insurance benefits using those IDs.

Previously, patients could receive medical services under the national health insurance system by simply providing their resident registration number at hospitals.

IDs that can be used as identification at hospitals include a resident registration card, a driver’s license, a certificate of alien registration and a mobile health insurance card, which can be easily downloaded through the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) app, a process that requires mobile verification.

However, there’s a loophole where individuals can fraudulently download and possess another person’s mobile health insurance card to illicitly obtain state benefits. Additionally, it poses a challenge for hospital staff to verify if the holder of the mobile card is indeed the health insurance beneficiary, as the card lacks a photo unlike other identification methods.

In response, the government has announced plans to update the NHIS app within a month to prevent the misuse of the mobile card. Authorities intend to reduce the duration of time the mobile account remains logged in, thereby mitigating potential abuses of the system.

However, due to budget constraints, adding a photo of the ID holder to the mobile national health insurance card is not feasible, the government stated.

Another issue arises with the new Republic of Korea passport, introduced in 2022 with a blue cover. It lacks the last seven digits of the holder’s resident registration number, rendering it unsuitable for identification purposes. Those passports can only be utilized at hospitals alongside a separate passport information certificate.

According to the NHIS, an average of 35,000 cases of illegal use of other people’s names and resident registration numbers were detected annually over the past five years. The state agency suspects that the actual number could be significantly higher.

Both individuals who use another person’s ID for health insurance and those who allow their own to be used by others are liable to fines of up to 20 million won ($14,766) or imprisonment for up to two years. Hospitals failing to confirm a patient’s identity may also face fines of 1 million won.

The post Plan for patient ID checks at hospitals snagged by tech issues appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69474/plan-for-patient-id-checks-at-hospitals-snagged-by-tech-issues/feed 0 As AI expands into the search world, here’s what the current players are up to https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69381/as-ai-expands-into-the-search-world-heres-what-the-current-players-are-up-to https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69381/as-ai-expands-into-the-search-world-heres-what-the-current-players-are-up-to#respond Mon, 13 May 2024 19:12:18 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69381 The search engine market could be on the verge of a tidal shift. Reuters, last week, reported that OpenAI was planning to launch an artificial intelligence-powered search product as early as this week, putting it in direct competition with Google, but also with its close partner Microsoft. OpenAI has denied the details of that report, but didn’t completely reject the premise.

The post As AI expands into the search world, here’s what the current players are up to appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]>

The search engine market could be on the verge of a tidal shift. Reuters, last week, reported that OpenAI was planning to launch an artificial intelligence-powered search product as early as this week, putting it in direct competition with Google, but also with its close partner Microsoft. OpenAI has denied the details of that report, but didn’t completely reject the premise.

Google, meanwhile, is expected to talk a bit about its own AI search plans at its annual I/O conference, along with lots of other AI announcements tied to its Gemini AI, on Tuesday, making it very clear that the market for finding things online is evolving very quickly.

While things are certain to change considerably in the coming months as the technology gets smarter and search engines, both giant and startup, adapt to user habits, here’s where things stand with AI and search today.

GOOGLE

The search leader is already testing AI-generated answers in its regular search results as it hurries to catch up with the competition. These “AI Overviews,” which have been slipping into the search results fields of some users for the past month or so, anticipate questions and come up with a summary tied to the search query.

Google, meanwhile, has also been experimenting with incorporating generative AI into search in its Search Labs. Among the areas it’s exploring are plain-spoken answers to user questions, suggestions for specific user needs, and helping with visualizations via a generative art tool. For now, users have to opt in to play with those features, but the experiments could foreshadow some of Google’s longer-term plans.

BING

Microsoft’s search engine got a head start on the AI race when it incorporated OpenAI’s generative AI. While the initial rollout was flawed, with some high-profile hallucinations, Microsoft quickly updated it, cutting down on troubles and adding source links, so people can decide whether to trust the answers it gives.

Now known as Copilot, the chatbot offers detailed answer that are up-to-the-minute, thanks to its internet connection. Last December, Microsoft unveiled “deep search,” an enhanced search mode that expands a query into a more comprehensive description in order to better capture a user’s intent and expectations—and lets it search deeper than it would with just a few keywords. Then, in March, Microsoft upgraded the tool to use GPT-4 Turbo, giving it a deeper well of knowledge to draw from.

PERPLEXITY

This startup, one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2024, uses AI to give more accurate and contextualized answers to user searches. It uses a combination of large language models (including OpenAI’s GPT-4) along with Web crawler to help users find the answers they need in a quick fashion—and it has quickly become one of the most buzzworthy products in tech.

There’s both a free and paid version of the search engine. Those who shell out $20 per month have access to more powerful AI models. Rather than giving you a list of links, which you’ll use to find the answer yourself, it does the research for you, writing a summary and then listing its sources. (It will also suggest follow-up questions.) And its Copilot feature will help you narrow your search to give you the most useful responses.

BRAVE

While not as well known as some of the others on this list, Brave uses AI to provide fast, accurate results. It has the added bonus of not tracking users or their searches, removing privacy fears that your data will be sold to third-parties. In an update earlier this month, the company said it received nearly 10 billion queries in the past year—some 27 million queries per day. The engine also supports multiple languages in its responses.

Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the final deadline, June 7.

The post As AI expands into the search world, here’s what the current players are up to appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69381/as-ai-expands-into-the-search-world-heres-what-the-current-players-are-up-to/feed 0 KDDI to deploy drones at 1,000 Japan locations to aid disaster relief https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69371/kddi-to-deploy-drones-at-1000-japan-locations-to-aid-disaster-relief https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69371/kddi-to-deploy-drones-at-1000-japan-locations-to-aid-disaster-relief#respond Mon, 13 May 2024 15:11:21 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69371 KDDI Corp. said Monday it will deploy drones at 1,000 locations across Japan to use the flying devices, equipped with cameras and sensors, as part of efforts to respond quickly to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The post KDDI to deploy drones at 1,000 Japan locations to aid disaster relief appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> KDDI Corp. said Monday it will deploy drones at 1,000 locations across Japan to use the flying devices, equipped with cameras and sensors, as part of efforts to respond quickly to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Through a partnership with U.S. drone company Skydio Inc., the Japanese telecom company aims to build a network of drones, enabling the devices to reach disaster-hit areas anywhere in Japan in about 10 minutes, to help find people stranded at disaster sites, inspect roads, bridges and other disaster-affected structures, KDDI said.

The two companies concluded a capital tie-up last week that will see KDDI invest about 10 billion yen ($64 million) in Skydio, which utilizes artificial intelligence technology.

KDDI said it plans to complete the deployment in the next three years. Drone locations may include Lawson Inc. convenience store outlets, with KDDI slated to acquire a 50 percent stake in the company.

“The drones will be useful in finding survivors during disasters, as they can fly in the dark and are equipped with temperature sensors,” Hiromichi Matsuda, KDDI managing executive officer, said at a press conference in Tokyo.

While the global drone market is still dominated by Chinese giant SZ DJI Technology Co., the U.S. drone venture is growing rapidly on the back of rising tensions between the United States and China over economic security, according to industry experts.

A drone flies in the dark during a demonstration at a KDDI Corp. press conference in Tokyo on May 13, 2024. (Kyodo)

The post KDDI to deploy drones at 1,000 Japan locations to aid disaster relief appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69371/kddi-to-deploy-drones-at-1000-japan-locations-to-aid-disaster-relief/feed 0 New AI Tools Predict How Life’s Building Blocks Assemble https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69327/new-ai-tools-predict-how-lifes-building-blocks-assemble https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69327/new-ai-tools-predict-how-lifes-building-blocks-assemble#respond Sat, 11 May 2024 22:19:56 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69327 Proteins are the molecular machines that sustain every cell and organism, and knowing what they look like will be critical to untangling how they function normally and malfunction in disease. Now researchers have taken a huge stride toward that goal with the development of new machine learning algorithms that can predict the folded shapes of not only proteins but other biomolecules with unprecedented accuracy.

The post New AI Tools Predict How Life’s Building Blocks Assemble appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]>

Proteins are the molecular machines that sustain every cell and organism, and knowing what they look like will be critical to untangling how they function normally and malfunction in disease. Now researchers have taken a huge stride toward that goal with the development of new machine learning algorithms that can predict the folded shapes of not only proteins but other biomolecules with unprecedented accuracy.

In a paper published today in Nature, Google DeepMind and its spinoff company Isomorphic Labs announced the latest iteration of their AlphaFold program, AlphaFold3, which can predict the structures of proteins, DNA, RNA, ligands and other biomolecules, either alone or bound together in different embraces. The findings follow the tail of a similar update to another deep learning structure-prediction algorithm, called RoseTTAFold All-Atom, which was published in March in Science.

While the previous versions of these algorithms could predict protein structures — a remarkable achievement in itself — they didn’t go far enough to dispel the mysteries of biological processes because proteins rarely act alone. “Every time I would give an AlphaFold2 talk, I could almost guess what the questions were going to be,” said John Jumper, who leads the AlphaFold team at Google DeepMind. “Someone was going to raise their hand and say, ‘Yes, but my protein interacts with DNA. Can you tell me how?’” Jumper would have to admit that AlphaFold2 didn’t know the answer.

But AlphaFold3 might. Along with other emerging deep learning algorithms, it goes beyond proteins to a more challenging, and more relevant, biological landscape that includes the vast diversity of molecules interacting in cells.

“Now you’re getting at all the complex interactions that matter in biology,” said Brenda Rubenstein, an associate professor of chemistry and physics at Brown University who was not involved with either study. “You’re starting to get more of the bigger picture.”

Understanding those interactions is “fundamental to biological function,” said Paul Adams, a molecular biophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was also not involved in either study. “Both groups have made significant progress in addressing [this].”

Both algorithms have limitations, but they have the potential to evolve into even more powerful prediction tools. In the coming months, scientists will begin to test them, and in doing so they will reveal how useful these algorithms might be.

AI Advances in Biology

Deep learning is a flavor of machine learning that’s loosely inspired by the human brain. These computer algorithms are built using complex networks of informational nodes (called neurons) that form layered connections with one another. Researchers provide the deep learning network with training data, which the algorithm uses to adjust the relative strengths of connections between neurons to produce outputs that get ever closer to training examples. In the case of protein artificial intelligence systems, this process leads the network to produce better predictions of proteins’ shapes based on their amino-acid sequence data.

AlphaFold2, released in 2021, was a breakthrough for deep learning in biology. It unlocked an immense world of previously unknown protein structures, and has already become a useful tool for researchers working to understand everything from cellular structures to tuberculosis. It has also inspired the development of additional biological deep learning tools. Most notably, the biochemist David Baker and his team at the University of Washington in 2021 developed a competing algorithm called RoseTTAFold, which like AlphaFold2 predicts protein structures from sequence data.

Portrait of John Jumper
John Jumper, who joined Google DeepMind in 2017, led the team that produced AlphaFold3, which can predict the structures of biomolecular complexes. “I can’t wait to see what [researchers] do with AlphaFold3,” he said.

Introduction

Since then, both algorithms have been updated with new features. RoseTTAFold Diffusion could be used to design new proteins that don’t exist in nature. AlphaFold Multimer could look at the interaction of multiple proteins. “But what we left unanswered,” Jumper said, “was: How do proteins talk to the rest of the cell?”

The success of the first iterations of protein-predicting deep learning algorithms rested on the availability of good training data: around 140,000 validated protein structures that had been deposited over 50 years into the Protein Data Bank. Increasingly, biologists have also deposited the structures of small molecules, DNA, RNA and their combinations. In this expansion of AlphaFold’s algorithm to include more biomolecules, “the biggest unknown,” Jumper said, was whether there’d be enough data to enable the algorithm to accurately predict complexes of proteins with these other molecules.

Apparently there was. At the end of 2023, Baker and then Jumper released the preliminary versions of their new AI tools, and since then they have subjected their algorithms to peer review.

Both AI systems address the same question, but the underlying architectures of their deep learning methods differ, said Mohammed AlQuraishi, a systems biologist at Columbia University who is not involved in either system. Jumper’s team used a process called diffusion — the technology that powers most non-text-based generative AI systems, such as Midjourney and DALL·E, which generate art based on text prompts, AlQuraishi said. Instead of predicting the molecular structure directly and then improving it, this type of model first produces a blurry image and refines it in an iterative fashion.

Portrait of David Baker.
The biochemist David Baker has spearheaded the development of RoseTTAFold, a leading protein-prediction AI system. He released an update that models biomolecular complexes just a couple of months before Google DeepMind released theirs. / BBVA Foundation

Introduction

From a technical standpoint, there’s not a huge jump from RoseTTAFold to RoseTTAFold All-Atom, AlQuraishi said. Baker didn’t massively change the underlying architecture of RoseTTAFold, but updated it to include known rules of biochemical interactions. The algorithm doesn’t use diffusion to predict biomolecular structures. However, Baker’s AI for designing proteins does. The latest iteration of this program, known as RoseTTAFold Diffusion All-Atom, can design new biomolecules in addition to proteins.

“The kind of dividends that could come from being able to apply generative AI technologies to biomolecules is only partially realized with protein design,” AlQuraishi said. “If we’re able to do as well with small molecules, that would be kind of amazing.”

Sizing Up the Competition

Side by side, AlphaFold3 appears to be more accurate than RoseTTAFold All-Atom. For example, in their analysis in Nature, the Google team found that their tool is about 76% accurate in predicting structures of proteins interacting with small molecules called ligands, compared to about 42% accuracy for RoseTTAFold All-Atom and 52% for the best alternative tools out there.

AlphaFold3’s structure-prediction performance is “very impressive,” Baker said, “and better than that of RoseTTAFold All-Atom.”

However, those testing figures are based on a limited data set that is not very challenging, AlQuraishi said. He doesn’t expect all protein-complex predictions to score so highly. And certainly the new AI tools aren’t yet powerful enough to support a robust drug-discovery program on their own, since that requires researchers to understand complex biomolecular interactions. Still, “it’s definitely promising,” he said, and meaningfully better than what existed previously.

Adams agrees. “If anybody’s going to claim that they can use this tomorrow to accurately develop drugs, I don’t buy that,” he said. “Both methods are still limited in their accuracy, [but] both are dramatic improvements on what was possible.”

Introduction

They’ll be especially useful for creating rough predictions that can then be tested out computationally or experimentally. The biochemist Frank Uhlmann had the opportunity to pretest AlphaFold3 after running into a Google employee in a hallway of the Francis Crick Institute in London, where he works. He decided to look up a protein-DNA interaction that has been “really puzzling for us,” he said. AlphaFold3 spit out a prediction that they’re now experimentally testing in the lab. “We already got some new ideas that really might work,” Uhlmann said. “It’s an amazing discovery tool.”

Still, there is much to improve upon. When RoseTTAFold All-Atom predicts the structures of complexes of proteins and small molecules, it sometimes places the molecules in the correct pocket in a protein but not in the correct orientation. AlphaFold3 sometimes incorrectly predicts a molecule’s chirality — the distinct “left-handed” or “right-handed” geometric orientation of its structure. Occasionally it will hallucinate or create inaccurate structures.

And both algorithms still produce static images of proteins and their complexes. In a cell, proteins are dynamic and can change depending on their environment: They move around, rotate and go through different conformations. It will be challenging to address this, Adams said, mainly due to a lack of training data. “It would be great to have some concerted efforts to collect experimental data designed to inform these challenges,” he said.

One major change in Google’s new product is that it will not be open-source. When the team released AlphaFold2, they published the underlying code, which allowed biologists to reproduce and play with the algorithm in their own labs. But AlphaFold3’s code will not be publicly available.

“They do appear to describe the method in detail. But for the time being, at least, no one can run and use it like they did with [AlphaFold2],” AlQuraishi said. That is “a big step back. We will, of course, try to reproduce it.”

Google did, however, announce that they are taking steps to make the product accessible by offering a new AlphaFold server to biologists running AlphaFold3. Predicting biomolecular structures takes a ton of computing power: Even at a lab institute like Francis Crick, which hosts high-performing computing clusters, it takes about a week to spit out a result, Uhlmann said. Google’s more powerful servers, by comparison, can make a prediction in 10 minutes, he said, and scientists around the world will be able to use them. “It’s going to completely democratize protein-prediction research,” Uhlmann said.

The true impact of these tools won’t be known for months or years, as biologists begin to test and use them in research. And they will continue to evolve. What’s next for deep learning in molecular biology is “going up the biological complexity ladder,” Baker said, beyond even the biomolecule complexes predicted by AlphaFold3 and RoseTTAFold All-Atom. But if the history of protein-structure AI can predict the future, then these next-generation deep learning models will continue to help scientists reveal the complex interactions that make life happen.

“There’s so much more to be understood,” Jumper said. “It’s the beginning.”

The post New AI Tools Predict How Life’s Building Blocks Assemble appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69327/new-ai-tools-predict-how-lifes-building-blocks-assemble/feed 0 Nurses push for involvement in AI decision-making https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69275/nurses-push-for-involvement-in-ai-decision-making https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69275/nurses-push-for-involvement-in-ai-decision-making#respond Fri, 10 May 2024 19:20:12 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69275 Union leaders and technology experts say health systems should be open with nurses about how they plan to use artificial intelligence and educate them on such tools in light of staffing and other concerns.

The post Nurses push for involvement in AI decision-making appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> Union leaders and technology experts say health systems should be open with nurses about how they plan to use artificial intelligence and educate them on such tools in light of staffing and other concerns.

Hundreds of nurses at Kaiser Permanente and HCA Healthcare protested last month, worried about the systems’ use of AI to measure the severity of patients’ illnesses and perform other clinical tasks. The nurses cited concerns about the technology’s potential to put patient safety at risk and cause job losses. Healthcare unions have increasingly pushed for contract language that sets up guardrails for AI use and asked to be included in hospitals’ decision making processes around such technology.

AI is widely used by health systems to generate diagnostic recommendations and personalized treatment plans, monitor patients’ vital signs, analyze X-rays and alert healthcare workers to declines in patients’ condition.

While AI can be useful, input from nurses is crucial before health systems roll out such technology to make sure it won’t be detrimental to clinical practice, said Cathy Kennedy, president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

At an April 22 protest at Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Medical Center in Oakland, California, members of the California Nurses Association raised alarms about the health system’s use of algorithms to help assess patients and set staffing levels, as well as the potential use of robotic patient sitters. Kennedy said the system’s use of AI is largely reliant on nurse charting and patient data, which may be incomplete due to staffing shortages that leave nurses unable to document all patient care in real time. Using incomplete date could in turn lead to inadequate nurse-to-patient ratios and limit clinicians’ ability to care for patients, she said.

“We need [Kaiser Permanente] to pause and really take a look at what they’re doing,” said Kennedy, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente’s Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, CA. “Is it important to spend millions of dollars on technology, gadgets and devices, or is it better to utilize some of the money for staff nurses in the hospital and clinics? The artificial intelligence that they’re utilizing — is it going to harm patients?”

Possible upcoming use of remote monitoring technologies as patient sitters could also complicate staffing. Remote monitoring technologies are often unable to detect subtle changes in patients’ condition and signs of delirium or skin breakdown that certified nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, nurses or other bedside caregivers can more easily pick up on, said Jessica Early, patient advocacy coordinator for National Union of Healthcare Workers.

“If you don’t have someone there laying eyes on the patient to provide that data, these algorithms could be making erroneous determinations about a patient’s status and spit out staffing decisions that are inappropriate and would compromise care,” Early said.

Kaiser said clinicians are still at the center of patient care decisions. The health system is working with unions to monitor how emerging technologies might impact jobs and avoid employee displacement, Kaiser Permanente said in a statement.

“We have consistently invested in and embraced technology that enables nurses to work more effectively, resulting in improved patient outcomes and nurse satisfaction,” Kaiser Permanente said. “We ensure the results from AI tools are correct and unbiased.”

The system said its Advance Alert Monitor program, which analyzes electronic health record data at 21 hospitals across Northern California to identify at-risk patients in need of clinical intervention, saves an estimated 500 patient lives per year. In December, Kaiser Permanente awarded grants up to $750,000 to five medical centers to fund projects on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms’ potential to improve diagnostic decision-making.

HCA Healthcare, which nurses also protested over AI use, launched a pilot program in early 2023 giving emergency room physicians at four hospitals access to speech-to-text processing technology aimed at facilitating easier documentation of data during patient visits.

HCA Healthcare did not respond to questions about how it is using AI.

Ahead of additional AI roll-outs, members of the National Union of Healthcare Workers at various health systems have been bargaining for contract language that ensures job protections for clinicians and prevents the implementation of technology initiatives as a means of cost cutting, Early said.

At Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, strong contract language has limited untested and unregulated AI use, as nurses’ agreement says they must be consulted before the center fully introduces new technology to the workplace.

In one instance, nurses’ trial run of an AI-powered thermometer revealed faulty technology when the devices listed 30 intensive care unit patients as having the same temperature, said Nancy Hagans, president of the New York State Nurses Association and registered nurse at Maimonides Medical Center. Following these erroneous readings, the nurses returned to using old-fashioned thermometers and found that several patients actually had high fevers, Hagans said.

By allowing nurses to assess the technology’s impact on patient care, the facility was able to avoid terrible outcomes, she said.

More than half of nurses are not comfortable with integrating AI technology into their practice, according to a 2024 survey of 1,100 nursing professionals and students conducted by Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and technology and workforce advisory firm Cross Country Healthcare.

Although some caution is warranted around AI use, most of nurses’ concerns can be mitigated by a better understanding of how the technology works and how it will be applied, said Richard Kenny, healthcare executive advisor at SAS Institute, an AI software developer based in Cary, North Carolina.

Health systems should take the time to establish a culture of trust and transparency, ask clinicians for their feedback and involve them in AI implementation decisions, Kenny said. Organizations should also avoid using terms like “AI doctor” or “AI nurse” that cause confusion and exaggerate the use of technology in clinical care, he said.

For the most part, health systems are trying to think responsibly about AI, and the best systems are applying AI toward optimizing operational processes and relieving administrative burden, Kenny said. Kaiser Permanente has developed its own frameworks and guidelines to dictate best practices with the technology.

“The truth of the matter is, AI cannot replace the nurse,” he said. “More than anything, it gives us an opportunity to go back to practicing at top of license, which is what every nurse wants.”

To educate clinicians on the benefits and uses of AI in healthcare, Kenny said he holds training sessions with frontline staff at different facilities, starting conversations about digital literacy and discussing concerns.

The Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing in Boca Raton, Florida, makes it a point to teach students and faculty about the various applications of AI and Chat GPT through workshops and curriculum that incorporate the technology and telehealth platforms used in hospitals and clinical centers.

“As educators, we need to make sure that nursing students at least understand how AI can be integrated into healthcare and have exposure to it,” said Dr. Safiya George, dean of the college. “Usually when people aren’t comfortable with something, it’s often because [they don’t] have enough information about or experience with it.”

As part of the school’s combined degree program, students can complete their Bachelor of Science in Nursing and spend an additional year working toward a Master of Science degree with a focus on either AI or biomedical engineering.

The program helps prepare nurses to give input on the development and implementation of AI solutions and make sure technology is helpful for clinicians’ day-to-day practice, George said.

The more AI is used to improve efficiency in clinical documentation and research, the less fearful nurses will be about the technology, said John Martins, president and CEO of Cross Country Healthcare.

“Over time, I believe clinicians and nurses in particular will come to embrace the technology because they’ll see that the outcomes are the same if not better,” Martins said. “If you program the algorithms right, you may actually take away biases that actually happen with human nature.”

The post Nurses push for involvement in AI decision-making appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69275/nurses-push-for-involvement-in-ai-decision-making/feed 0 Reverse engineering the insect brain https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69071/reverse-engineering-the-insect-brain https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69071/reverse-engineering-the-insect-brain#respond Fri, 03 May 2024 19:03:30 +0000 https://www.en.3danews.ir/?p=69071 Until now, most efforts to create machines able to operate autonomously in the world have drawn on so-called deep learning techniques: a vastly expensive, computationally intensive suite of approaches that effectively attempt to replicate aspects of the human brain.

The post Reverse engineering the insect brain appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> Until now, most efforts to create machines able to operate autonomously in the world have drawn on so-called deep learning techniques: a vastly expensive, computationally intensive suite of approaches that effectively attempt to replicate aspects of the human brain.

But UK technology startup Opteran is taking a different route, tapping into 600 million years of evolution to unravel and mimic the highly efficient navigational and decision-making abilities of insects.

Spun out from the University of Sheffield in 2020, Opteran – named after the Hymenoptera order of insects, which includes wasps, bees and ants – has now developed a commercially available product: the Opteran Mind – which it claims could help usher in a new era of higher performance autonomy at a fraction of the cost of existing approaches.

Now employing 45 people, the company is growing rapidly, and last month announced a major partnership that will see its technology embedded in advanced warehouse robots developed by German autonomous picking and transportation robot manufacturer Safelog.

But as Opteran CEO David Rajan recently told The Engineer, this is just the beginning, and the company is already exploring and developing further commercial applications in sectors ranging from logistics and automotive, to mining, security and beyond.

The firm has its origins in research carried out at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Computer Science by co-founders Prof James Marshall and Dr Alex Cope.

Over the course of a decade, their group set about advancing the understanding of the structure and function of insect brains, using a host of techniques to figure out exactly how insects see the world, localise themselves in space, navigate over huge distances, and respond to all the uncertainty and chaos of the world around them.

By distilling these capabilities into a series of algorithms, the team arrived at a concept it refers to as “natural intelligence”: a potentially game-changing idea that it claims represents a vastly more sensible and efficient way of solving the autonomy challenge.

“Insects like honeybees have about a million neurons by comparison to around 86 billion in a human being, but the central systems are there,” said Rajan.  “They see the world, localise themselves in space and can even navigate up to 10 kilometers consuming just micro watts of power. If you really want to see state of the art autonomy, don’t go to California…..look at a garden.”

All of these capabilities are now in the process of being embedded in an actual product – the Opteran’ Mind- an edge computing solution composed of a series of insect-inspired algorithms. Crucially – and in stark contrast to most other efforts to crack the autonomy nut  – this technology runs with low-cost cameras and chips and doesn’t require training, infrastructure or connectivity to work.

The technology currently includes algortihms that enable machines to spatially navigate and know where they are in the world. Over the coming months, the team plans to add further capabilities including collision avoidance and – at some point next year –  decision making algorithms that will allow machines to prioritise tasks.

Explaining how Opteran Mind works in practice, the company’s chief product officer, Charlie Rance, contrasted it with the so-called SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping) approach to autonomous navigation, which is the most widely used  solution to the problem of robot navigation.

Opteran’s technology is now being used on autonomous warehouse robots produced by Germany company Safelog –

Using SLAM, a machine equipped with advanced cameras and huge amounts of processing power builds a highly accurate map and localises itself on that map at the same time. It’s a sophisticated technique that has been at the heart of autonomous development in recent years, but it’s not without its limitations: It’s expensive, it needs to be trained on huge amounts of data, and the maps it creates can fail or mislocalise if there are sudden, unexpected changes to the environment such as the lights being turned off or something being moved.

Opteran’s approach is fundamentally different. By mimicking the way an insect is able to find its way around using a brain the size of a pinhead and fewer than a million neurons, Opteran’s technology is able to solve this problem with, said Rance “the tiniest amount of compute and the lowest data footprint you can possibly think of.”

Alongside all of this, added Rajan, it’s also inherently better suited to dealing with the unpredictability of the  real word: “Things happen, things change: the weather is horrible, the lighting is bad, in a warehouse everything gets moved around all the time.  We’re operating  as nature can, instead of in this kind of engineered way of using sensors and compute to try and solve 80 per cent of the problem.”

What’s more, unlike existing systems, Opteran’s technology doesn’t need to be trained on vast amounts of data before being deployed. “We’re not gathering data to train a system in a datacenter,” said Rance. “The algorithms are innate, so they know how to move around the world on their own, they can respond to the dynamic variability, they adapt to the world as it’s happening around them.”

The Safelog application is a good illustration of this.  Typically, deploying an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) into a warehouse takes a fair bit of setting up with operators having to painstakingly scan the entire facility and process huge amounts of data before the robots can be let loose on the warehouse floor. The set up using Opteran’s technology is, said Rance, orders of magnitude less onerous: “All it takes for them to do is to drive one robot at the speed that robot operates and off it goes. We’re essentially creating a solution that allows their AGVs to autonomously map in one shot, so it’s a very quick set up time and you can share that with the rest of your AGVs. We can remove fixed infrastructure, so we’re not using any kind of reflectors or QR codes or anything. And we’re keeping the system at a lower cost.”

 

Alongside the Safelog deal, the company also has a number of other ongoing commercial applications which, for the time being, are subject to client confidentiality agreements. However, Rajan told The Engineer that these include an application on an indoor security drone for the consumer market, as well as use of the technology in the mining and automotive sectors. Whilst the range of potential application areas is almost unlimited, Rajan stressed that there are some applications that the company is keen to avoid. “We are not in favor of kinetic applications”, he said, “we’ve already turned down projects in the drone industry that would have been kinetic.”

The company is now very consciously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, but its longer-term ambitions are huge: “The real opportunity here is every single machine that moves could have an Opteran mind inside,” said Rajan. “That means all the humanoid robots, all the vacuum cleaners, all the lawn mowers, all the warehouse robots, all the drones. That’s the opportunity in front of us: full general purpose autonomy inside every machine that moves on the planet. We want to be the autonomy company, the company that enables machines to move around the whole world with their own brain. That’s our ambition. We’re building the brain for everybody else’s brawn.”

The post Reverse engineering the insect brain appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

]]> https://www.en.3danews.ir/news-header/69071/reverse-engineering-the-insect-brain/feed 0