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Neuro Technology Paralyzed Man Walks Again Using Brain-Wave System "Even after years of paralysis, the brain can still generate robust brain waves that can be harnessed to enable basic walking." &n...

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Robot performs surgery

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37246995

Surgeons have used a robot to operate inside the eye and restore sight - in a world first.

The robot was developed by a Dutch company, a spin-out of Eindhoven University of Technology.

Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital used it, controlled via a joystick, to take away a membrane one hundredth of a millimetre thick. The robot which helps surgery is common, but until now had never been used inside the eye.

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As the formal health care system has become increasingly stressed, patients are being released from hospitals and other health care facilities still needing care. As a consequence, both laypeople and professional caregivers are making use of a wide variety of technologies, some of them quite complex, in noninstitutional settings to manage their own health, assist others with health care, or receive assistance with health management. These technologies provide support not only for care related to acute and chronic medical conditions but also for disease prevention and lifestyle choices.

The range of medical technologies used in nonclinical environments runs the gamut in complexity from simple materials used for administering first aid to sophisticated devices used for delivering advanced medical treatment, and in size from tiny wireless devices to massive machines. Some medical devices have been used in the home for many years; other devices are just beginning to migrate there; and emergent technologies present new opportunities for health care management in the home. While some of these devices were explicitly designed for use outside formal health care settings by professional home health caregivers as well as the general public, many devices were not. Consequently, many human factors challenges must be addressed to render these technologies, devices, and systems safe, usable, and effective for use in environments beyond the institution and for use by the much more varied population of users in these environments. This chapter discusses standalone medical devices used in home health care.

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NanaobotsAlthough nanobots are far from being utilized today, but the future is coming where these tiny robots can function like our own white blood cells and destroy bacteria and other pathogens.These miniature robots would function like their full-size equivalents with their own sensors, and propulsion systems and could perform small tasks like delivering chemotherapy 1000 times more powerful than using drugs and would not cause as many side-effects to patients like the current treatments do.https://getreferralmd.com/2015/02/the-10-biggest-innovations-in-health-care-technology-in-2015/

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NanaobotsAlthough nanobots are far from being utilized today, but the future is coming where these tiny robots can function like our own white blood cells and destroy bacteria and other pathogens.These miniature robots would function like their full-size equivalents with their own sensors, and propulsion systems and could perform small tasks like delivering chemotherapy 1000 times more powerful than using drugs and would not cause as many side-effects to patients like the current treatments do.https://getreferralmd.com/2015/02/the-10-biggest-innovations-in-health-care-technology-in-2015/

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The first drug that can prevent Alzheimer’s disease is finally on the horizon after scientists proved they can clear the sticky plaques from the brain which cause dementia and halt mental

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Prof David Allsop, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Lancaster, said: "This study shows convincingly that it is possible to reduce the extent of amyloid plaque formation in the brains of people with very early signs of dementia.

Encouragingly, this treatment also appeared to slow memory decline, demonstrating that amyloid formation is a direct or indirect cause of memory loss. This has been suspected for some time, but has never been proven in humans.

"These findings could be a game changer if the effects on memory decline can be confirmed in more extensive follow-on studies."

The Alzheimer's Society said the "most compelling" evidence from the trial was the fact that more amyloid was cleared when patients took higher doses of the drug.

Dr James Pickett, head of research at the charity, said: "No existing treatments for Alzheimer's directly interfere with the disease process, and so a drug that actually slows the progress of the disease by clearing amyloid would be a significant step.

"While there were hints that it might have an effect on the symptoms of the disease, we need to see the results from further, larger research trials to understand whether this is the case. These larger trials are now under way, including in the UK, and due to finish in 2020."

Prof Richard Morris, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, said: "We cannot yet say we have a cure for Alzheimer's, as this is only a first step ... but the importance of this first step cannot be understated.

"Let's keep our fingers crossed for success in the next steps."

To join a trial click here

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Alzheimer's: New drug that halts mental decline is 'best news for dementia in 25 years'

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Prof David Allsop, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Lancaster, said: "This study shows convincingly that it is possible to reduce the extent of amyloid plaque formation in the brains of people with very early signs of dementia. Encouragingly, this treatment also appeared to slow memory decline, demonstrating that amyloid formation is a direct or indirect cause of memory loss.

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https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/bioengineering/top-5-medical-technology-innovations

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A collection of health innovations 2015-2016

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https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/bioengineering/top-5-medical-technology-innovations

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in the future by 2021 the cars will no longer need human control they will be self driving cars

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Futuristic laser weapon to be developed for use by the British army. Aimed to protect ships from missile attacks or soldiers from enemies.
set to be created under a 30 million deal being finalised by the ministry of defence.
It is in examination at present to see how the system will work in various weather conditions over land and sea.

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The problem with FMRI- The past decade has brought us jaw-dropping insights about the hidden workings of our brains, in part thanks to a popular brain scan technique called fMRI. But a major new study has revealed that fMRI interpretation has a serious flaw, one that could mean that much of what we’ve learned about our brains this way might need a second look

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The past decade has brought us jaw-dropping insights about the hidden workings of our brains, in part thanks to a popular brain scan technique called fMRI. But a major new study has revealed that fMRI interpretation has a serious flaw, one that could mean that much of what we've learned about our brains this way might need a second look.

On TV and in movies, we've all seen doctors stick an X-ray up on the lightbox and play out a dramatic scene: "What's that dark spot, doctor?" "Hm..."

In reality, though, a modern medical scan contains so much data, no single pair of doctor's eyes could possibly interpret it. The brain scan known as fMRI, for functional magnetic resonance imaging, produces a massive data set that can only be understood by custom data analysis software. Armed with this analysis, neuroscientists have used the fMRI scan to produce a series of paradigm-shifting discoveries about our brains.

Now, an unsettling new report, which is causing waves in the neuroscience community, suggests that fMRI's custom software can be deeply flawed - calling into question many of the most exciting findings in recent neuroscience.

The problem researchers have uncovered is simple: the computer programs designed to sift through the images produced by fMRI scans have a tendency to suggest differences in brain activity where none exist. For instance, humans who are resting, not thinking about anything in particular, not doing anything interesting, can deliver spurious results of differences in brain activity. It's even been shown to indicate brain activity in a dead salmon, whose stilled brain lit up an MRI as if it were somehow still dreaming of a spawning run.

The report throws into question the results of some portion of the more than 40,000 studies that have been conducted using fMRI, studies that plumb the brainy depths of everything from free will to fear. And scientists are not quite sure how to recover.

"It's impossible to know how many fMRI studies are wrong, since we do not have access to the original data," says computer scientist Anders Eklund of Linkoping University in Sweden, who conducted the analysis.

How it should have worked: Start by signing up subjects. Scan their brains while they rest inside an MRI machine. Then scan their brains again when exposed to pictures of spiders, say. Those subjects who are afraid of spiders will have blood rush to those regions of the brain involved in thinking and feeling fear, because such thoughts or feelings are suspected to require more oxygen. With the help of a computer program, the MRI machine then registers differences in hemoglobin, the iron-rich molecule that makes blood red and carries oxygen from place to place. (That's the functional in fMRI.) The scan then looks at whether those hemoglobin molecules are still carrying oxygen to a given place in the brain, or not, based on how the molecules respond to the powerful magnetic fields. Scan enough brains and see how the fearful differ from the fearless, and perhaps you can identify the brain regions or structures associated with thinking or feeling fear.

That's the theory, anyway. In order to detect such differences in brain activity, it would be best to scan a large number of brains, but the difficulty and expense often make this impossible. A single MRI scan can cost around $2,600, according to a 2014 NerdWallet analysis. Further, the differences in the blood flow are often tiny. And then there's the fact that computer programs have to sift the through images of the 1,200 or so cubic centimeters of gelatinous tissue that make up each individual brain and compare them to others, a big data analysis challenge.

Eklund's report shows that the assumptions behind the main computer programs used to sift such big fMRI data have flaws, as turned up by nearly 3 million random evaluations of the resting brain scans of 499 volunteers from Cambridge, Massachusetts; Beijing; and Oulu, Finland. One program turned out to have a 15-year-old coding error (which has now been fixed) that caused it to detect too much brain activity. This highlights the challenge of researchers working with computer code that they are not capable of checking themselves, a challenge not confined just to neuroscience.

The brain is even more complicated than we thought. Worse, Eklund and his colleagues found that all the programs assume that brains at rest have the same response to the jet-engine roar of the MRI machine itself as well as whatever random thoughts and feelings occur in the brain. Those assumptions appear to be wrong. The brain at rest is "actually a bit more complex," Eklund says.

More specifically, the white matter of the brain appears to be underrepresented in fMRI analyses while another specific part of the brain - the posterior cingulate, a region in the middle of the brain that connects to many other parts - shows up as a "hot spot" of activity. As a result, the programs are more likely to single it out as showing extra activity even when there is no difference. "The reason for this is still unknown," Eklund says.

Overall, the programs had a false positive rate - detecting a difference where none actually existed - of as much as 70 percent.

Unknown unknowns: This does not mean all fMRI studies are wrong. Co-author and statistician Thomas Nichols of the University of Warwick calculates that some 3,500 studies may be affected by such false positives, and such false positives can never be eliminated entirely. But a survey of 241 recent fMRI papers found 96 that could have even worse false-positive rates than those found in this analysis.

"The paper makes an important criticism," says Nancy Kanwisher, a neuroscientist at MIT (TED Talk: A neural portrait of the human mind), though she points out that it does not undermine those fMRI studies that do not rely on these computer programs.

Nonetheless, it is worrying. "I think the fallout has yet to be fully evaluated. It appears to apply to quite a few studies, certainly the studies done in a generic way that is the bread-and-butter of fMRI," says Douglas Greve, a neuroimaging specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. What's needed is more scrutiny, Greve suggests.

Another argument for open data. Eklund and his colleagues were only able to discover this methodological flaw thanks to the open sharing of group brain scan data by the 1,000 Functional Connectomes Project. Unfortunately, such sharing of brain scan data is more the exception than the norm, which hinders other researchers attempting to re-create the experiment and replicate the results. Such replication is a cornerstone of the scientific method, ensuring that findings are robust. Eklund, for one, therefore encourages neuroimagers to "share their fMRI data, so that other researchers can replicate their findings and re-analyze the data several years later." Only then can scientists be sure that the undiscovered activity of the human brain is truly revealed ... and that dead salmon are not still dreaming.

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Much of what we know about the brain may be wrong: The problem with fMRI

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On TV and in movies, we've all seen doctors stick an X-ray up on the lightbox and play out a dramatic scene: "What's that dark spot, doctor?" "Hm..." In reality, though, a modern medical scan contains so much data, no single pair of doctor's eyes could possibly interpret it.

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Nanaobots
Although nanobots are far from being utilized today, but the future is coming where these tiny robots can function like our own white blood cells and destroy bacteria and other pathogens.

These miniature robots would function like their full-size equivalents with their own sensors, and propulsion systems and could perform small tasks like delivering chemotherapy 1000 times more powerful than using drugs and would not cause as many side-effects to patients like the current treatments do.

https://getreferralmd.com/2015/02/the-10-biggest-innovations-in-health-care-technology-in-2015/

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37246995 a robot giving eye surgery to a man.  patient says its like a fairytale.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37246995 a robot giving eye surgery to a man.  patient says its like a fairytale.

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The facebook effect:
BBC cuts food site, local news and more factual content to save £15M

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https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/weconnect-is-an-app-to-support-addiction-recovery/

WeConnect is an app supporting people through addiction of drugs and alcohol.
It aims to help people communicate with friends and family after rehab so they aren't left feeling isolated which can help with recovery.

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a cloud based invoice financing service 

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a cloud based invoice financing service 

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which allows small businesses that use cloud accounting to access the money tied up in their unpaid invoices.
raised £6.25 million already
and businesses can choose when they want to use it, and how they use it
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/19/duecourse/

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The facebook effect:BBC cuts Food site, local news and more factual content to save £15M.

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A study (conveniently co-written by Facebook) has found that "personal interactions on Facebook can have a major impact on a person's feelings of well-being and satisfaction with life just as much as getting married or having a baby." That's right: it seems that clicking "Like" on a picture of someone's soup is akin to the eternal bond of love that is marriage or the miracle of biology and coexistence that is the creation of human life.

Now before we go snort into our copies of No Logo let's take a closer look at the study. Produced by Carnegie Mellon professor Robert Kraut and CMU alum and current research scientist at Facebook Moira Burke, the study found that reading deep and heartfelt notes from people you know on Facebook is what really revs up the old pleasure sensors. Simply getting a like or scrolling past an ad for slippers won't cut it.

What needs to happen is your friend or loved one has to comment on your stuff. Lots of times.

"This can be a comment that's just a sentence or two," said Burke. "The important thing is that someone such as a close friend takes the time to personalize it. The content may be uplifting, and the mere act of communication reminds recipients of the meaningful relationships in their lives."

It takes sixty comments from close friends to improve a person's psychological well-being. The findings also caused the researchers to question whether the claims that social media caused loneliness and depression were true. Apparently, under the right circumstances, they aren't.

The study watched 1,910 Facebook users in 91 countries. Each took a monthly survey and Facebook tracked their usage, albeit anonymously. They were able to assess levels of passive reading, posting, and commenting.

The study found that actual interaction helped improve well-being and could even reduce loneliness and depression. While I doubt any psychologist will prescribe a few hours of Facebook every night, I hope this does give passive users pause: you could be making a real and notable difference in someone's life if you'd just stop watching that damn Kenzo dance video over and over again in bed.

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Your Facebook friends can actually cheer you up

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A study (conveniently co-written by Facebook) has found that "personal interactions on Facebook can have a major impact on a person's feelings of well-being and satisfaction with life just as much as getting married or having a baby."

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Surgeons have used a robot to operate inside the eye and restore sight - in a world first.

A team at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital used the device, controlled via a joystick, to remove a membrane one hundredth of a millimetre thick.

Patient Bill Beaver, 70, a curate in Oxford, said it was "a fairytale".

Surgeons hope the procedure will pave the way for more complex eye surgery than is currently possible with the human hand.

The BBC had exclusive access to the procedure.

'I can see'

Dr Beaver said: "It's almost the world of fairy tales but it's true. I'm just fortunate that I'm the first to have it."

Robot assisted surgery is commonplace, but until now had never been used inside the eye.

Prof Robert MacLaren from University of Oxford, who led the procedure, told me: "Operating at the back of the eye needs great precision, and the challenge has been to get a robot system to do that through a tiny hole in the wall of the eye without causing damage as it moves around.

"Most robots in theatre are big, with big engineering whereas this is tiny - everything had to be shrunk down."

The Preceyes surgical robot was developed by a Dutch company, a spin-out of Eindhoven University of Technology.

The surgeon uses a joystick and touch-screen to guide a thin needle into the eye, while monitoring its progress through a microscope.

The robot, which acts like a mechanical hand, has seven motors and is able to filter out hand tremors from the surgeon.

Large movements of the joystick result in tiny movements of the robot, and if the surgeon releases their grip any movement is frozen.

The patient

Dr Beaver was officiating chaplain to the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment until last year.

In July his optician spotted a membrane growing at the back of his right eye. The pressure had created a hole in his retina which was destroying his central vision.

Before his surgery said: "When I hold up a book, all I can see is mush in the centre, and my vision in that eye is restricted to the periphery."

He underwent the pioneering surgical technique at the end of August.

Prof MacLaren said: "Normally when we do this operation by hand we touch the retina and there is some haemorrhage, but when we used the robot the membrane was lifted cleanly away."

The result is that Dr Beaver's central vision in his right eye has been restored.

A gas bubble in the eye means he is currently short sighted, but normal distance vision will return in the coming months.

Dr Beaver said: "The degeneration in my vision was very scary and I was fearful I would lose my sight entirely - so for this intervention to take place so effortlessly is a real godsend."

Twelve patients will undergo surgical procedures using the robot, in a trial funded by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre.

Additional funding is being provided by Zizoz, a Dutch charity for patients with choroideremia, a genetic form of blindness which might be a future target for treatment using the robot.

Another level

The trial is designed as a proof of principle, to establish whether the robot can do what an eye surgeon does, but with greater accuracy.

But the ultimate goal is for robotics to take eye surgery to another level.

Prof MacLaren said: "There is no doubt in my mind that we have just witnessed a vision of eye surgery in the future.

"We can certainly improve on current operations, but I hope the robot will allow us to do new more complex and delicate operations that are impossible with the human hand."

Oxford is among several centres around the world which are trialling retinal gene therapy - a new treatment to prevent blindness.

Currently this treatment is done by hand, and further interventions involving stem cell injections are planned which require cells to be slowly infused into the eye.

The robot should allow surgeons to inject cells under the retina over a period of 10 minutes, something which would be impossible with the human hand.

The Dutch company which developed the robot believes that it could eventually be used outside the operating theatre.

Maarten Beelen from Preceyes said: "In the future we could see this being used in an office based setting, where only the robot would touch the eye and it would be fully automated, which would improve efficiency and reduce costs."

The robot system is a prototype and as yet the company has not revealed what it will cost to purchase.

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Robot operates inside eye in world first

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Surgeons have used a robot to operate inside the eye and restore sight - in a world first. A team at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital used the device, controlled via a joystick, to remove a membrane one hundredth of a millimetre thick. Patient Bill Beaver, 70, a curate in Oxford, said it was "a fairytale".