Zoran Popović knows a thing or two about video games. A computer science professor at the University of Washington, Dr. Popović has worked on software algorithms that make computer-controlled characters move realistically in games like the science-fiction shooter "Destiny."
But while those games are entertainment designed to grab players by their adrenal glands, Dr. Popović's latest creation asks players to trace lines over fuzzy images with a computer mouse. It has a slow pace with dreamy music that sounds like the ambient soundtrack inside a New Age bookstore.
The point? To advance neuroscience.
Since November, thousands of people have played the game, "Mozak," which uses common tricks of the medium — points, leveling up and leader boards that publicly rank the performance of players — to crowdsource the creation of three-dimensional models of neurons.
The Center for Game Science, a group at the University of Washington that Dr. Popović oversees, developed the game in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a nonprofit research organization founded by Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, that is seeking a better understanding of the brain. Dr. Popović had previously received wide attention in the scientific community for a puzzle game called "Foldit," released nearly a decade ago, that harnesses the skills of players to solve riddles about the structure of proteins.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/science/citizen-science-video-game-neurons.html?
Thursday, April 27, 2017
The Winner Of The $1 Million TED Prize Is Bringing Health Care To The World’s Most Remote Communities - Fast Company
If you live in a remote village in Liberia and you get sick, seeing a doctor might involve a canoe ride down a river and two days of walking through the rainforest. Clinics are similarly hard to reach for roughly a billion people around the world.
The winner of this year's $1 million TED Prize–Rajesh Panjabi, the founder of a nonprofit called Last Mile Health–has a solution for poor, remote communities that can't afford to hire doctors and nurses. Instead of recruiting trained medical professionals, the organization hires local community members, some of whom may have only a middle-school education. Then it gives them the training needed to screen and treat common illnesses like malaria, providing local jobs as it fills the health care gap.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/40412591/the-winner-of-the-1-million-ted-prize-is-bringing-healthcare-to-the-worlds-most-remote-communities?
The winner of this year's $1 million TED Prize–Rajesh Panjabi, the founder of a nonprofit called Last Mile Health–has a solution for poor, remote communities that can't afford to hire doctors and nurses. Instead of recruiting trained medical professionals, the organization hires local community members, some of whom may have only a middle-school education. Then it gives them the training needed to screen and treat common illnesses like malaria, providing local jobs as it fills the health care gap.
More ...
https://www.fastcompany.com/40412591/the-winner-of-the-1-million-ted-prize-is-bringing-healthcare-to-the-worlds-most-remote-communities?
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Idaho sets example: Tiny facility lights the way for stressed rural hospitals - Salon.com
Arco, Idaho — Just before dusk on an evening in early March, Mimi Rosenkrance set to work on her spacious cattle ranch to vaccinate a calf. But the mother cow quickly decided that just wasn't going to happen. She charged, all 1,000 pounds of her, knocking Rosenkrance over and repeatedly stomping on her. "That cow was trying to push me to China," Rosenkrance recalls.
Dizzy and nauseated, with bruises spreading on both her legs and around her eye, Rosenkrance, 58, nearly passed out. Her son called 911 and an ambulance staffed by volunteers drove her to Lost Rivers Medical Center, a tiny, brick hospital nestled on the snowy hills above this remote town in central Idaho.
Lost Rivers has only one full-time doctor and its emergency room has just three beds — not much bigger than a summer camp infirmary. But here's what happened to Rosenkrance in the first 90 minutes after she showed up: She got a CT scan to check for a brain injury, X-rays to look for broken bones, an IV to replenish her fluids and her ear sewn back together. The next morning, although the hospital has no pharmacist, she got a prescription for painkillers filled through a remote prescription service. It was the kind of full-service medical treatment that might be expected of a hospital in a much larger town.
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/23/idahos-admirable-project-tiny-facility-lights-the-way-for-stressed-rural-hospitals_partner/
Dizzy and nauseated, with bruises spreading on both her legs and around her eye, Rosenkrance, 58, nearly passed out. Her son called 911 and an ambulance staffed by volunteers drove her to Lost Rivers Medical Center, a tiny, brick hospital nestled on the snowy hills above this remote town in central Idaho.
Lost Rivers has only one full-time doctor and its emergency room has just three beds — not much bigger than a summer camp infirmary. But here's what happened to Rosenkrance in the first 90 minutes after she showed up: She got a CT scan to check for a brain injury, X-rays to look for broken bones, an IV to replenish her fluids and her ear sewn back together. The next morning, although the hospital has no pharmacist, she got a prescription for painkillers filled through a remote prescription service. It was the kind of full-service medical treatment that might be expected of a hospital in a much larger town.
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/23/idahos-admirable-project-tiny-facility-lights-the-way-for-stressed-rural-hospitals_partner/
The Blood of the Crab
Horseshoe crab blood is an irreplaceable medical marvel—and so biomedical companies are bleeding 500,000 every year. Can this creature that's been around since the dinosaurs be saved?
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a26038/the-blood-of-the-crab/?
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a26038/the-blood-of-the-crab/?
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