Smartphone App may Help Older Adults Manage Serious Mental Illness and Chronic Health Conditions
The use of new technologies in geriatric psychiatry shows promise for advancing personalized medicine and improving patient care. A new study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry describes the successful adaptation of an integrated medical and psychiatric self-management intervention to a smartphone application for middle-aged and older adults with serious mental illness.
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Novel Software can Recognize Eye Contact in Everyday Situations
"Until now, if you were to hang an advertising poster in the pedestrian zone, and wanted to know how many people actually looked at it, you would not have had a chance", explains Andreas Bulling, who leads the independent research group "Perceptual User Interfaces" at the Excellence Cluster at Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics.
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New Noninvasive Method of Intracranial Pressure Monitoring
Researchers from Klinikum Stuttgart and the University of Erlangen, Germany, report preliminary findings that show a noninvasive method of monitoring intracranial pressure (ICP) that could rival the gold standards of invasive intraventricular and intraparenchymal monitoring. To date no noninvasive method of ICP monitoring has proved adequate to replace invasive ones. The new noninvasive monitoring device uses advanced signal analysis algorithms to evaluate properties of acoustic signals that pass through the brain in order to determine ICP values.
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Improving Students' Academic Performance - There's an App for That
A mobile learning app that uses game elements such as leaderboards and digital badges may have positive effects on student academic performance, engagement, and retention, according to a study published in the open access International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia developed a fully customizable app that allowed lecturers to push quizzes based on course content directly to their students' devices in order to motivate them, increase their competitiveness, and keep them engaged with the course.
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The Danish Reference Genome
After close to 5 years of work, the GenomeDenmark consortium has now finalized the efforts to establish a Danish Reference genome. The result is a reference of unrivalled quality and information depth, as compared to other similar international references and studies. Due to the unique and high quality approach, the consortium consisting of three Danish universities and the genomics company BGI Europe has been able to analyze otherwise intractable genomics regions for the first time.
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Designing Soft Robots: Ethics-Based Guidelines for Human-Robot Interactions
Soft-bodied robots offer the possibility for social engagement, and novel tactile human-robot interactions that require careful consideration of the potential for misplaced emotional attachments and personally and socially destructive behavior by users. The ethical challenges related to human-robot interactions and how these should contribute to soft robotics design in the context of social interaction are discussed in a compelling new article in Soft Robotics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
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Google Searches can be Used to Track Dengue in Underdeveloped Countries
An analytical tool that combines Google search data with government-provided clinical data can quickly and accurately track dengue fever in less-developed countries, according to new research published in PLOS Computational Biology by Shihao Yang of Harvard University and colleagues. The research builds on a methodology previously developed by the team to track influenza in the United States.
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