#Artificial intelligence System Solves SAT Geometry As well as 11th Graders The Allen Institute for Artificial intelligence (AI2) and University of Washington researchers have created an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can solve SAT geometry questions as well as the average American 11th-grade student, a breakthrough in AI research.
This system, called Geos, uses a combination of computer vision to interpret diagrams, natural language processing to read
and understand text and a geometric solver to achieve 49 percent accuracy on official SAT test questions.
the computer roughly achieved an SAT score of 500 (out of 800), the average test score for 2015.
Combining Text and Diagram Interpretation, was a joint effort between the UW Computer science & Engineering department and AI2.
senior research manager for Vision at AI2 and UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering, e are excited about Geos performance on real-world tasks.
Our biggest challenge was converting the question to a computer-understandable language. One needs to go beyond standard pattern-matching approaches for problems like solving geometry questions that require in depth understanding of text, diagram and reasoning.
How Geos Works Geos is the first end-to-end system that solves SAT plane geometry problems. It does this by first interpreting a geometry question by using the diagram
which is an important dimension of learning. Today, Geos can solve plane geometry questions; AI2 is moving to solve the full set of SAT math questions in the next three years.
all data sets and software are available for other researchers to use. AI2 is also building systems that can tackle science tests,
How Embedded Optical Sensors Could Make Robotic Hands More Dexterous Carnegie mellon creates sensor rich robotic hand and new stretchable sensor.
Optical sensors may be suited uniquely for use in robotic hands, according to Carnegie mellon University researchers who have developed a three-fingered soft robotic hand with multiple embedded fiber optic sensors.
They also have created a new type of stretchable optical sensor. By using fiber optics, the researchers were embed able to 14 strain sensors into each of the fingers in the robotic hand,
giving it the ability to determine where its fingertips are in contact and to detect forces of less than a tenth of a newton.
The new stretchable optical sensing material not incorporated in this version of the hand, potentially could be used in a soft robotic skin to provide even more feedback. f you want robots to work autonomously
and to react safely to unexpected forces in everyday environments, you need robotic hands that have more sensors than is said typical today
Yong-Lae Park, assistant professor of robotics. uman skin contains thousands of tactile sensory units only in the fingertip
and a spider has hundreds of mechanoreceptors on each leg, but even a state-of-the-art humanoid such as NASA Robonaut has only 42 sensors in its hand and wrist.
Adding conventional pressure or force sensors is problematic because wiring can be complicated, prone to breaking and susceptible to interference from electric motors and other electromagnetic devices.
But a single optical fiber can contain several sensors; all of the sensors in each of the fingers of the CMU hand are connected with four fibers,
although, theoretically, a single fiber could do the job, Park said. And the optical sensors are impervious to electromagnetic interference.
The Carnegie mellon researchers will discuss the robotic hand, developed together with researchers at Intelligent Fiber optic Systems Corp.,with support from NASA, Sept. 29 at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2015, in Hamburg, Germany.
A report on the highly stretchable optical sensors will be presented Oct 1 at the same conference. Industrial robots
working in a controlled environment where people don venture, are capable of extremely precise manipulation with only limited sensors.
But as roboticists at CMU and elsewhere work to develop soft robots that can interact routinely and safely with humans,
increased attention to tactile and force sensing is said essential, Park. Image shows the robotic hand. ach of the fingers on the robotic hand mimic the skeletal structure of a human finger, with a fingertip,
middle node and base node connected by joints. The skeletal onesare 3-D-printed hard plastic and incorporate eight sensors for detecting force.
Credit: The researchers/Carnegie mellon University. Each of the fingers on the robotic hand mimic the skeletal structure of a human finger, with a fingertip,
middle node and base node connected by joints. The skeletal onesare 3-D-printed hard plastic and incorporate eight sensors for detecting force.
Each of the three sections is covered with a soft silicone rubber skin embedded with a total of six sensors that detect where contact has been made.
A single active tendon works to bend the finger, while a passive elastic tendon provides opposing force to straighten the finger.
The hand developed with mechanical engineering students Leo Jiang and Kevin Low, incorporates commercially available fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors,
which detect strain by measuring shifts in the wavelength of light reflected by the optical fiber.
Despite their advantages, conventional optical sensors don stretch much glass fibers stretch hardly at all and even polymer fibers stretch typically only 20-25 percent, Park noted.
That is a limiting factor in a device such as a hand, where a wide range of motion is essential.
Park has developed previously highly stretchable microfluidic soft sensors membranes that measure strain via liquid-conductor-filled channels
but they are difficult to make and can cause a mess if the liquid leaks out.
So Park working with mechanical engineering students Celeste To from CMU and Tess Lee Hellebrekers from the University of Texas, invented a highly stretchable and flexible optical sensor, using a combination of commercially available silicone rubbers.
These soft waveguides are lined with reflective gold; as the silicone is stretched, cracks develop in the reflective layer,
allowing light to escape. By measuring the loss of light, the researchers are able to calculate strain or other deformations.
Park said this type of flexible optical sensor could be incorporated into soft skins. Such a skin would
not only be able to detect contact, as is the case with the soft components in the CMU hand,
but also measure force a
#A Natural light Switch: Identifying and Mapping Protein Behind Light Sensing Mechanism MIT scientists, working with colleagues in Spain, have discovered
and mapped a light-sensing protein that uses Vitamin b12 to perform key functions, including gene regulation.
First, it expands our knowledge of the biological role of Vitamin b12, which was understood already to help convert fat into energy,
and to be involved in brain formation, but has now been identified as a key part of photoreceptor proteins the structures that allow organisms to sense
and made it a light sensor, says Catherine Drennan, a professor of chemistry and biology at MIT.
The findings are detailed this week in the journal Nature. The paper describes the photoreceptors in three different states:
to understand how it works at each stage, Drennan says. The paper has nine co-authors,
graduate students Percival Yang-Ting Chen, Marco Jost, and Gyunghoon Kang of MIT; Jesus Fernandez-Zapata and S. Padmanabhan of the Institute of Physical chemistry Rocasolano, in Madrid;
and Maria Carmen Polanco, of the University of Murcia, in Murcia, Spain. The researchers used a combination of X-ray crystallography techniques
and in-vitro analysis to study the bacteria. Drennan, who has studied enzymes that employ Vitamin b12
since she was a graduate student, emphasizes that key elements of the research were performed by all the co-authors.
Jost performed crystallography to establish the shapes of the structures, while the Spanish researchers, Drennan notes, id all of the control experiments to show that we were really thinking about this right,
of which exactly three are bound to the genetic material something Drennan says surprised her. hat the best part about science,
says Rowena Matthews, a professor emerita of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan, who has read the paper.
#New Prosthesis Could Help Alzheimer Patients Re-Encode Memories Scientists to bypass brain damage by re-encoding memories.
Researchers at USC and Wake Forest Baptist Medical center have developed a brain prosthesis that is designed to help individuals suffering from memory loss.
The prosthesis, which includes a small array of electrodes implanted into the brain, has performed well in laboratory testing in animals
and is currently being evaluated in human patients. Designed originally at USC and tested at Wake Forest Baptist,
the device builds on decades of research by Ted Berger and relies on a new algorithm created by Dong Song,
both of the USC Viterbi School of engineering. The development also builds on more than a decade of collaboration with Sam Deadwyler and Robert Hampson, of the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology of Wake Forest Baptist,
who have collected the neural data used to construct the models and algorithms. Signals and sensory input When your brain receives sensory input,
it creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that travels through multiple regions of the hippocampus,
That why an individual with hippocampal damage (due to Alzheimer disease, for example) can recall events from a long time ago things that were translated already into long-term memories before the brain damage occurred
using data obtained by Deadwyler and Hampson, first from animals, and then from humans. Their prosthesis is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section
and provide the next region with the correctly translated memory. That despite the fact that there is currently no way of eadinga memory just by looking at its electrical signal. t like being able to translate from Spanish to French without being able to understand either language,
Accurate readings The effectiveness of the model was tested by the USC and Wake Forest Baptist teams.
With the permission of patients who had implanted electrodes in their hippocampi to treat chronic seizures,
the algorithm accurately predicted how the signals would be translated with about 90 percent accuracy. eing able to predict neural signals with the USC model suggests that it can be used to design a device to support
#Uncovering Clues About Abnormal Embryo Development with Artificial intelligence Melanoma-like cells in tadpoles may mimic variability in human responses to cancer stimuli.
His brother, leading a similar lifestyle, succumbs to cancer at age 55. Why do some individuals develop certain diseases
or disorders while others do not? In newly reported research that could help provide answers, scientists at Tufts University,
in collaboration with the University of Florida, have developed a novel approach that uses artificial intelligence to illuminate cellular processes
and suggest possible targets to correct aberrations. The findings, published Oct 6 in Science Signaling online in advance of print, are believed to mark the first time artificial intelligence has been used to discover a molecular model that explains why some groups of cells deviate from normal development during embryogenesis,
said senior author Michael Levin, Ph d.,the Vannevar bush Professor of Biology at Tufts and director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental biology.
The paper builds on the center earlier studies to understand development and metastasis of melanoma-like cells in tadpoles as well as work applying artificial intelligence to help explain planarian regeneration.
The new findings, Levin said, indicate that ur methodology can be taken well beyond simple organisms and applied to the physiology of cell behavior in vertebrates. or the Science Signaling work,
the researchers applied a type of artificial intelligence called evolutionary computation to pinpoint the molecular mechanisms underlying earlier research in which they induced normal pigment cells in embryonic Xenopus laevis frogs to metastasize.
Researchers used a series of drugs to disrupt the cellsnormal bioelectrical and serotonergic signaling at a crucial stage of development.
the pigment cells of the affected embryos acquired bizarre, branch-like shapes and developed other melanoma-like characteristics,
proliferating uncontrollably and invading the frogsinternal organs. Depending on which protein in the bioelectric pathway was tweaked, only a certain percentage of the frogs developed melanoma,
while the rest remained healthy. here randomness to this process. It doesn have the same result in all animals exposed to precisely the same agent,
which may mimic the variability in human responses to cancer-inducing stimuli, said Levin. Furthermore, the tadpoles that did develop melanoma developed it in every pigment cellach frog was either 100 percent metastatic or completely normal.
Essentially said Levin, all pigment cells in a tadpole are part of a single coin, which either flips heads (normal) or tails (cancerous).
etastasis appears to be a group dynamic rather than a single-cell decision, he said.
The recent research applied evolutionary computation to understand this complex cell behavior. Maria Lobikin, Ph d.,recent doctoral graduate from the Levin laboratory and first author on the Science Signaling paper, first identified the building blocks receptors, hormones and other signaling
proteins of the serotonergic signaling pathway that regulated the melanoma-like cellsbehavior. Then, the team applied artificial intelligence which mimicked evolution to generate a chemical signaling network in a irtual embryothat exhibited the same behavior that the researchers observed in their experiments with real tadpoles.
Like biological evolution evolutionary computation does not randomly or exhaustively test each possibility, but instead uses incremental improvement and selection to rapidly converge on a solution. he artificial intelligence system evolved a pathway that correctly explains all the existing and very puzzling data.
Best of all, it also made correct predictions on data it had seen never, Levin said. The knowledge gleaned about these molecular signaling pathways has implications for finding new treatments
and targets for tumor prevention and better understanding many other seemingly random decisions made by cells in living organisms.
When enough data are said available, Levin, researchers could use this approach to develop a system to help doctors understand patientsindividual genetic responses to treatments as well as environmental factors that cause cancer.
In addition to Levin and Lobikin, paper authors were Douglas J. Blackiston and Elizabeth Tkachenko of the Department of biology and Center for Regenerative and Developmental biology, Tufts University;
Daniel Lobo, formerly of the Levin laboratory and now at the University of Maryland in Baltimore;
and Christopher J. Martyniuk of the Center for Environmental and Human Toxicology and Department of Physiological Sciences, UF Genetics Institute, University of Florida.
Funding: This work was supported by the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation. Computation used a cluster computer awarded by Silicon Mechanics and the Campus Champion Allocation for Tufts University TG-TRA 130003 at the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment,
which is supported by NSF grant ACI-1053575 i
#Noninvasive Brain Palpation May Soon Be Possible If there is one technique used by the physician to explore the human body during every medical examination
in order to make a diagnosis or prescribe further tests, it is palpation. By its nature, however, the brain cannot be palpated without using a highly invasive procedure (craniotomy,
or opening the skull), which is limited to rare cases. By drawing on seismology, Inserm researchers led by Stéfan Catheline (Inserm Unit 1032,
herapeutic Applications of Ultrasound have developed just a noninvasive brain imaging method using MRI that provides the same information as physical palpation.
Ultimately it could be used in the early diagnosis of brain tumours or Alzheimer disease. This work is published in PNAS.
Many diseases involve structural changes in tissues, which are reflected in a change in their mechanical properties, such as elasticity.
Using the sensitivity of their hands, and their detailed knowledge of the body, physicians, through an examination known as palpation, can assess the size and stiffness of a tumour, the presence of inflamed lymph nodes,
or the size and position of the foetus in a pregnant woman, to mention a few examples.
This palpation has been supplemented or replaced by modern techniques that give the physician an indication of the elasticity of a biological tissue.
They are based on the generation and detection of waves that propagate through the body at varying speeds depending on the stiffness of the organs (the stiffer the tissue, the slower the wave propagation, and vice versa).
However, this method cannot be applied to the brain, which, doubly protected by the cranium and cerebrospinal fluid, is difficult for externally applied waves to access.
It is therefore impossible to directly or indirectly palpate the brain, something that greatly complicates the work of neurosurgeons.
On the other hand, the brain is the seat of natural vibrations created by the blood pulsating in the arteries and the circulating cerebrospinal fluid.
There remained a significant unprecedented challenge: how to capture this complex field of natural shear waves,
and represent it on a computer screen. In this article, Inserm researchers, using MRI, have succeeded in detecting natural shear waves in the brain using computational techniques borrowed from seismologists
says Stéfan Catheline, Inserm Research director and main author of this work. lzheimer disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and hydrocephalus involve changes in the stiffness of the brain tissues.
This new technique allows their detection, and could be used to avoid brain biopsies. his method for palpating the brain could have other areas of application,
such as for analysing the development of neurodegenerative processes, the impact of a lesion from a trauma or tumour, response to treatment, etc.
Source: Stéfan Catheline INSERMIMAGE Credit: The image is credited to Inserm/Stéfan Cathelineoriginal Research: Abstract for rain palpation from physiological vibrations using MRIBY Ali Zorgani, Rémi Souchon, Au-Hoang Dinh, Jean-Yves Chapelon, Jean-Michel Ménager, Samir
Lounis, Olivier Rouvière, and Stefan Catheline in PNAS. Published online October 5 doi: 10.1073/pnas. 1509895112abstractbrain palpation from physiological vibrations using MRIWE present a magnetic resonance elastography approach for tissue characterization that is inspired by seismic noise correlation and time reversal.
The idea consists of extracting the elasticity from the natural shear waves in living tissues that are caused by cardiac motion, blood pulsatility,
In contrast to other magnetic resonance elastography techniques, this noise-based approach is, thus, passive and broadband and does need not any synchronization with sources.
and diseases are foreseen. o
#Single Drop of Blood in Brain Can Trigger Immune response Akin to Multiple sclerosis Disruption of the blood-brain barrier triggers a cascade of events that results in autoimmunity and brain damage characteristic of multiple sclerosis.
A new study from the Gladstone Institutes shows that a single drop of blood in the brain is sufficient to activate an autoimmune response akin to multiple sclerosis (MS). This is the first demonstration that introduction of blood in the healthy brain
is sufficient to cause peripheral immune cells to enter the brain, which then go on to cause brain damage.
A break in the blood-brain barrier (BBB) allows blood proteins to leak into the brain and is a key characteristic of MS,
a disabling autoimmune disease of the brain and spinal cord. However, it was unclear whether the BBB disruption caused the autoimmune response
the scientists created a new animal model of disease to determine if BBB leakage can cause autoimmunity.
and it is the primary site of injury in MS. What more, the scientists were able to pinpoint a specific protein in the blood, the blood-clotting factor fibrinogen,
as the trigger for the disease-causing process. hese findings offer a completely new way of thinking about how the immune system attacks the braint puts the blood in the driver seat of the onset
and progression of disease, says senior author Katerina Akassoglou, Phd, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes and professor of neurology at the University of California,
San francisco. his opens up the possibility for new types of therapies that target blood coagulation factors, upstream of autoimmune processes.
a staff research scientist at the Gladstone Institutes. ot only did we confirm that the presence of blood in the brain recruits peripheral immune cells to the area,
The researchers are now attempting to block fibrinogen using biological and small-molecule approaches as potential new therapies to suppress autoimmunity directed against the brain,
and it is the primary site of injury in MS. Image is for illustrative purposes only. hese findings question a long-held paradigm that myelin-specific T cells initiate inflammation in the brain through activation of microglia
and brain macrophages, says Scott Zamvil, MD, Phd, a professor of neurology at the University of California,
but also in other brain diseases that involve inflammation or a break in the BBB, including traumatic brain injury, stroke, Alzheimer disease,
and other dementias e
#Blood test to Detect Alzheimer Disease Close to Development Early detection presents new opportunities to slow or perhaps even halt disease progression.
Researchers from the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine are nearing development of a blood test that can accurately detect the presence of Alzheimer disease,
which would give physicians an opportunity to intervene at the earliest, most treatable stage. Robert Nagele, Phd, presented his team most recent findings October 18 at OMED 15 in Orlando.
Dr. Nagele work focuses on utilizing autoantibodies as blood-based biomarkers to accurately detect the presence of myriad diseases
and pinpoint the stage to which a disease has progressed. By detecting Alzheimer disease long before symptoms emerge
Dr. Nagele hopes those with disease-related autoantibody biomarkers will be encouraged to make beneficial lifestyle changes that may help to slow development of the disease.
The blood test developed by Dr. Nagele has shown also promise in detecting other diseases, including Parkinsons, multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.
Image is for illustration purposes only. Credit: Tannim101. here are significant benefits to early disease detection
because we now know that many of the same conditions that lead to vascular disease are also significant risk factors for Alzheimer.
People found to have preclinical disease can take steps to improve their vascular health, including watching their diet,
exercising and managing any weight and blood pressure issues to help stave off or slow disease progression,
Nagele said. While the cause of Alzheimer remains elusive, it is clear that maintaining a healthy blood-brain barrier is a critical preventative measure.
Diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure stroke and being overweight jeopardize vascular health. As blood vessels in the brain weaken
or become brittle with age, they begin to leak, which allows plasma components including brain-reactive autoantibodies into the brain.
There, the autoantibodies can bind to neurons and accelerate the accumulation of beta amyloid deposits, a hallmark of Alzheimer pathology.
The blood test developed by Dr. Nagele has shown also promise in detecting other diseases, including Parkinsons, multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.
His team research on the role of autoantibodies explains that: All humans possess thousands of autoantibodies in their blood;
These autoantibodies specifically bind to blood-borne cellular debris generated by organs and tissues all over the body;
An individual autoantibody profile is influenced strongly by age, gender and the presence of specific diseases or injuries;
Diseases cause characteristic changes in autoantibody profiles that, when detected, can serve as biomarkers that reveal the presence of the disease.
In Alzheimer, the brain begins to change years before symptoms emerge. Detecting Alzheimer antibodies at the preclinical stage would give patients an opportunity to work with their physician to make lifestyle changes
or receive available treatments before they become symptomatic. Potentially, this early intervention could help those with preclinical Alzheimer avoid
or delay the most devastating symptoms. s osteopathic physicians, we constantly tell patients that a healthy lifestyle is the best medicine for preventing disease.
We also know that many people tune out messages about nutrition and exercise until a health crisis gets their attention,
said Jennifer Caudle, DO, assistant professor of family medicine at Rowan University. can think of a single patient who wouldn take steps to prevent the progression of Alzheimer
if they could directly affect their prognosis. Today, there is no definitive FDA-approved blood test for Alzheimer,
which affects an estimated 5. 3 million Americans. It is among the top 10 causes of death in America
#New Drug Delivery Technique Bypasses Blood-brain barrier Breakthrough could help countless patients with neurological conditions that are currently hard to treat.
Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical school and Boston University have shown successfully neuroprotection in a Parkinson mouse model using new techniques to deliver drugs across the naturally impenetrable blood-brain barrier.
Their findings, published in Neurosurgery, lend hope to patients around the world with neurological conditions that are difficult to treat due to a barrier mechanism that prevents approximately 98 percent of drugs from reaching the brain
and central nervous system. e are developing a platform that may eventually be used to deliver a variety of drugs to the brain,
Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical school. lthough we are currently looking at neurodegenerative disease, there is potential for the technology to be expanded to psychiatric diseases, chronic pain,
seizure disorders and many other conditions affecting the brain and nervous system down the road. Using nasal mucosal grafting,
a therapeutic protein in testing for treating Parkinson disease, to the brains of mice. They showed through behavioral
and histological data capture that their delivery method was equivalent to direct injection of GDNF the current gold standard for delivering this drug in Parkinson disease despite its traumatic nature and high complication rates in diffusing drugs
because the therapy has been shown to delay and even reverse disease progression of Parkinson disease in preclinical models.
rain diseases are notoriously difficult to treat due to the natural protections the body builds against intrusion,
and we look forward to the next stage of research to further test its utility in people with Parkinson disease.
Nasal mucosal grafting is a technique regularly used in the ENT field to reconstruct the barrier around the brain after surgery to the skull base.
ENT surgeons commonly use endoscopic approaches to remove brain tumors through the nose by making a window through the blood-brain barrier to access the brain.
with the nasal lining protecting the brain from infection just as the blood brain barrier has done. Illustration of a brain.
Drugs used to treat a variety of central nervous system diseases may be administered through the nose and diffused through an implanted mucosal graft (A,
which represents part of the blood-brain barrier (B). After endoscopic skull base surgery (C), all of these layers are removed
surgeons may create a creen doorto allow for drug delivery to the brain and central nervous system. The technique has the potential to benefit a large population of patients with neurodegenerative disorders,
where there remains a specific unmet need for blood-brain penetrating therapeutic delivery strategies. e see this expanding beyond Parkinson disease,
as there are multiple diseases of the brain that do not have good therapeutic options, Dr. Bleier said. t is a platform that opens doors for new discovery
and could enable drug development for an underserved population
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