Thursday 13 June 2019

Breaking the code: How is a mother's immunity transferred to her baby?

One of the most successful interventions in reducing infectious disease worldwide, vaccination still has limited effectiveness in protecting one group of patients—newborn infants. Now a study based at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard has determined how a pregnant woman's vaccine-induced immunity is transferred to her child, which has implications for the development of more effective maternal vaccines. The report will be published in the June 27 issue of Cell and is receiving early online release.

* This article was originally published here

The surprising reason why some lemurs may be more sensitive to forest loss

Duke University scientists have given us another way to tell which endangered lemur species are most at risk from deforestation—based on the trillions of bacteria that inhabit their guts.

* This article was originally published here

Spain urges youth to always carry condoms amid STI rise

Spain will launch a campaign to urge young people to "always carry a condom on them" as the number of sexually transmitted infections (STI) surges, the government said Thursday.

* This article was originally published here

The power of a love song: Dopamine affects seasonal hearing in fish and facilitates mating

Many people associate dopamine with reward or attention. Some might think of the part it plays in addiction, or Parkinson's disease, which kills off dopamine-making neurons.

* This article was originally published here

Research finds pre-pregnancy weight affects infant growth response to breast milk

In the first study of its kind, LSU Health New Orleans researchers report that women's pre-pregnancy overweight or obesity produces changes in breast milk, which can affect infant growth. The research findings are published in PLOS ONE, available online here.

* This article was originally published here

Connecting the dots between voice and a human face

Once again, artificial intelligence teams tease the realm of the impossible and deliver surprising results. This team in the news figured out what a person's face may look like just based on voice. Welcome to Speech2Face. The research team found a way to reconstruct some people's very rough likeness based on short audio clips.

* This article was originally published here

Researchers show glare of energy consumption in the name of deep learning

Wait, what? Creating an AI can be way worse for the planet than a car? Think carbon footprint. That is what a group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst did. They set out to assess the energy consumption that is needed to train four large neural networks.

* This article was originally published here

Early autism screening has limited effect

Screening for autism at three years of age only identifies those with significant developmental delay, and not those with less severe autism. Early screening may therefore not be as beneficial as previously thought, according to data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study.

* This article was originally published here

Second patient dies of Ebola in Uganda: health official

A 50-year-old woman who tested positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, a health ministry official told AFP Thursday, the second fatality since the virus spread from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

* This article was originally published here

Novel denoising method generates sharper photorealistic images faster

Monte Carlo computational methods are behind many of the realistic images in games and movies. They automate the complexities in simulating the physics of lights and cameras to generate high-quality renderings from samples of diverse image features and scenes. But the process of Monte Carlo rendering is slow and can take hours—or even days—to produce a single image, and oftentimes the results are still pixelated, or "noisy."

* This article was originally published here

Weighing risks and benefits of drug treatment for major depression

Depression is a common and serious problem for older adults. Some 15 to 20 percent of people aged 65 and older who live independently deal with symptoms of major depressive disorder. For residents of nursing homes, the rates of depression may be as high as 50 percent.

* This article was originally published here

Telegram hit by cyber-attack, CEO points to HK protests, China

Encrypted messaging service Telegram suffered a major cyber-attack that appeared to originate from China, the company's CEO said Thursday, linking it to the ongoing political unrest in Hong Kong.

* This article was originally published here