Using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, an international research team led by Chinese scientists has developed a rapid and accurate screening model to detect lymph nodes, which can assist doctors in cancer treatment.

Lymph nodes are the human immune system's first line of defense, protecting people from illnesses and virus infections. In the human body, lymph nodes are hundreds of small, round or bean-shaped glands that gather in the neck, armpit, abdomen and groin, reports Xinhua.

However, the current MRI screening methods are time-consuming and can not identify all the lymph nodes in the scan regions, lowering the detection accuracy.

Based on MRI image data selected from 293 patients with rectal cancer at the Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University from 2013 to 2016, researchers developed the AI-assisted screening model.

The researchers tested the AI model in patients at four medical centers in Guangzhou, Beijing, Suzhou and Guizhou, and compared its results with those of four Chinese radiologists, specializing in gastrointestinal diseases.

The results showed that it can accurately identify 3-mm-diameter lymph nodes with a detection accuracy of 80 percent.

The results were recently published in the journal EBioMedicine under The Lancet. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health also participated in the study.

The AI model can also be used to detect metastatic cancers in other human organs or tissue, according to lead researcher Gao Xin.

"We believe the AI-assisted screening model can save a great deal of manual labor and improve clinical efficiency, which will benefit more patients," said Gao.

NeckSense, a new technology, can detect in the real world when people are eating, how fast they chew, how many bites they take and how many times their hands head to their mouths, according to a study of Northwestern University (NU).
 
The data, along with other information like heart rate, will help scientists understand what leads to binging or troublesome eating behaviors and how to intervene to stop those behaviors in real time, said the study posted on the website of NU on Wednesday.
 
The data also will include self-reported physical details such as and how hungry or satiated you feel or psychological details such as how depressed or how anxious you are. The user also will upload photos of their food via a smartphone app.
 
The technology includes wearing a tiny camera pendant to validate what the necklace is sensing. Eventually the camera will be removed.
 
A Northwestern Medicine study with 20 participants has validated the technology.
 
"The arsenal of the dietician has been upgraded," said lead study author Nabil Alshurafa, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at NU Feinberg School of Medicine. "The ability to easily record dietary intake patterns allows dieticians or even laypeople making use of our tech to deliver timely digital interventions that occur as eating is happening to prevent overeating."
 
"The beauty of this is that it requires almost no effort on the part of the wearer," he said.
 
Measuring people's eating patterns allows scientists to begin to understand how these variables are associated with overeating, providing them with new ways to intervene.
 
Currently, dieticians must rely on self-reporting based on 24-hour recall by the patient, a notoriously unreliable method because people forget what they ate or fabricate their diet. Another method, journaling food/drink consumption as it occurs, is subject to error because it is burdensome and disruptive to day-to-day routine.
 
In the next step, the researchers will test NeckSense along with several other wearable devices with 60 participants who have obesity and validate the device against standard 24-hour recall, and will tweak the necklace to make it more fashionable and test the feasibility of real-time interventions.
 
NeckSense is part of a broader study called SenseWhy, which will assess if wearing sensors will help us understand people's problematic eating behaviors in real time.
 
The technology has been published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.

The Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) became the latest institution to sequence the genome of coronavirus samples from Bangladesh, revealing the 3 samples they worked with strongly suggested the virus arrived here from Europe. 

BCSIR completed sequencing of three SARS-CoV-2 samples at its laboratory.

The detailed information of the successful sequencing is viewable through the website of the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), where the database is stored.

“According to analysis, this Bangladeshi virus has 99.99 percent similarity with European sources, particularly Sweden,” said Dr Md Selim Khan, Principal Scientific Officer, project director and the team leader of the researchers.

Data analysis showed that nine variants were available at the amino acid level.

This brings the total number of genomes sequenced in Bangladesh to 23. And yet 

“twenty-three complete sequencing data, including three from BCSIR, are not enough for detail knowledge or to come to a conclusion,” the media statement said.

Bangladesh needs more sequencing data from different places to speed up its research activities including that of developing a vaccine. 

Earlier, Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman and the ministry’s secretary directed to collect samples from all possible places of the country and sequence them at genomic research laboratory of BCSIR.

“Once the work is done, it will help develop antidote, medicine and vaccine,” the statement said.

Bangladesh is grappling with a rising number of coronavirus cases. On Saturday, it reported 28 deaths and 1,764 cases. So far, the country has confirmed 44,608 cases and 610 deaths.

Also read: Coronavirus: Bangladesh sees record 28 deaths in a day, 1,764 new cases

The bones of about 60 mammoths were found at an under-construction airport north of Mexico City, reports AP.

Archaeologists say the discovery was made near the human-built 'traps' where more than a dozen mammoths were found last year. This could possibly indicate that humans may have been smarter — and mammoths clumsier — than people had previously thought.

"There are too many, there are hundreds," said archaeologist Pedro Sánchez Nava, of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

The institute began digging in three large but shallow areas in October, when work started to convert an old military airbase into a civilian airport. In about six months, the bones of 60 mammoths were found, and Sánchez said that the pace — about 10 mammoths a month — may continue.

The airport project is scheduled for completion in 2022, at which the dig will end.

The excavations were conducted on the shores of an ancient lake, once known as Xaltocan and now disappeared. The shallow lake apparently produced generous quantities of grasses and reeds, which attracted mammoths who often ate 150kg of the stuff every day.

"It was like paradise for them," Sánchez Nava said.

But the new excavations at the airbase have not yet turned up any of the distinct cut marks that would suggest human butchering of the animals.

Read Also:Russian scientists present ancient puppy found in permafrost

Sánchez said the most recently discovered mammoths had apparently got stuck in the mud of the ancient lake and died, or were eaten by other animals.

But the bones will be subject to further study because Sánchez said humans might have carved up the mammoths once they got stuck.

And, he said, ancient human could possibly have used the mud pools and flats around the lake shore as a sort of natural trap. "It's possible they may have chased them into the mud," he noted, adding, "They (ancient humans) had a very structured and organised division of labour" for getting mammoth meat.

The discovery also challenges the notion that mammoth was a chance, sporadic item on our ancestors’ menu.

Sánchez Nava said the large numbers of remains will allow scientists to research how mammoths fed and whether they were already suffering genetic inbreeding or decline, which could have contributed — along with human hunting — to their extinction on the mainland about 10,000 years ago.

Read Also:Fossil of extinct giant wombat discovered in Australia

NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems for the agency's Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the moon by 2024.

The three companies are Blue Origin of Kent, Washington; Dynetics of Huntsville, Alabama; and SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, according to a release of the agency on Thursday night.

The human landing system awards are firm-fixed price, milestone-based contracts, and the total combined value for all awarded contracts is 967 million U.S. dollars for the 10-month base period, the release said.

"With these contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

"This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program," he said.

NASA's commercial partners will refine their lander concepts through the contract base period ending in February 2021. During that time, the agency will evaluate which of the contractors will perform initial demonstration missions.

NASA will later select firms for development and maturation of sustainable lander systems followed by sustainable demonstration missions. NASA intends to procure transportation to the lunar surface as commercial space transportation services after these demonstrations are complete, according to the release.

Charged with returning to the moon in the next four years, NASA's Artemis program will reveal new knowledge about the moon, Earth, and the origins in the solar system.

The human landing system is a vital part of NASA's deep space exploration plans, along with the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and Gateway.