If you've ever thought you may be running a temperature yet couldn’t find a thermometer, you aren't alone. A fever is the most commonly cited symptom of COVID-19 and an early sign of many other viral infections. For quick diagnoses and to prevent viral spread, a temperature check can be crucial. Yet accurate at-home thermometers aren't commonplace, despite the rise of telehealth consultations.

Pangolins are fascinating creatures. This animal looks like a walking pine cone, as it is the only mammal completely covered with hard scales. The scales are made of keratin, just like our hair and nails. The scales overlap and are directly connected to the underlying soft skin layer. This special arrangement allows the animals to curl up into a ball in case of danger.

In a study to determine how the Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer or ChatGPT would fare in medical specialist examinations compared to human candidates without additional training, the Artificial Intelligence chatbot performed better than human candidates in a mock Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) specialist clinical examination, used to assess the eligibility of individuals to become O&G specialists.

In a recent experiment published in JAMA, physician-researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) tested one well-known publicly available chatbot's ability to make accurate diagnoses in challenging medical cases. The team found that the generative AI, Chat-GPT 4, selected the correct diagnosis as its top diagnosis nearly 40 percent of the time and provided the correct diagnosis in its list of potential diagnoses in two-thirds of challenging cases.

A groundbreaking machine-learning study has unmasked the best drug combinations to prevent COVID-19 from coming back after an initial infection. It turns out these combos are not the same for every patient.

Using real-world data from a hospital in China, the UC Riverside-led study found that individual characteristics, including age, weight, and additional illness determine which drug combinations most effectively reduce recurrence rates.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a simple, low-cost clip that uses a smartphone's camera and flash to monitor blood pressure at the user's fingertip. The clip works with a custom smartphone app and currently costs about 80 cents to make. The researchers estimate that the cost could be as low as 10 cents apiece when manufactured at scale.

Huge libraries of drug compounds may hold potential treatments for a variety of diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. Ideally, scientists would like to experimentally test each of these compounds against all possible targets, but doing that kind of screen is prohibitively time-consuming.

In recent years, researchers have begun using computational methods to screen those libraries in hopes of speeding up drug discovery.