The Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College London today announces the award of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to accelerate research into new integrated technology systems for accurately measuring dietary intake. The grant of $1.5M will fund key investigation projects until April 2020, supporting the research and development of passive dietary intake monitoring tools and wearables that can support nutritional studies in low and middle-income countries.

The new ORION e-health psychoeducational tool, designed to help opioid-dependent individuals prevent an overdose, can impart new knowledge and impact a person's intention to change opioid abuse behavior, but it did not improve overall self-efficacy in overdose prevention. Researchers concluded that ORION was useful for identifying individuals most in need of reducing modifiable risk factors through appropriate interventions, as reported in an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

The profile of most Americans who use popular mobile phone apps that track sleep habits is that they are relatively affluent, claim to eat well, and say they are in good health, even if some of them tend to smoke. These are some of the surprise findings, say the study authors, of the first national survey of sleep-specific mobile health app use among men and women in the United States.

A team of researchers has developed an ultrasound-based system that can non-invasively and remotely control genetic processes in live immune T cells so that they recognize and kill cancer cells. There is a critical need to non-invasively and remotely manipulate cells at a distance, particularly for translational applications in animals and humans, researchers said.

If you use your smartphone to monitor your physical activity, you're probably more active than it suggests. A new UBC study finds that the iPhone's built-in pedometer missed about 1,340 steps during a user's typical day when compared to a purpose-built accelerometer worn on the waist.

In the 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, a submarine is shrunken down and injected into a scientist's body to repair a blood clot in his brain. While the movie may be still be fiction, researchers at Caltech are making strides in this direction: they have, for the first time, created bacterial cells with the ability to reflect sound waves, reminiscent of how submarines reflect sonar to reveal their locations.

Ophthalmologists' use of electronic health records (EHR) systems for storing and accessing patients' medical histories more than doubled between 2006 and 2016, while their perceptions of financial and clinical productivity following EHR implementation declined, a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology shows.