Week 6 [20-26.05.2019] Something about music & medicine & technology

Dear All,

I'd like to share with my new interests:

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/music-therapy-clinical/#dementia

The article indicates, how the music can influence on us, our health & diseases.

All of us know the music can help to get out of bad mood and feel better, sometimes even very fast. But this is not such issue.
I think the sounds (not only melodies) composed together in a specific way, can treat us from serious diseases. Some scientists also believe in hypotheses like that and lead specific researches on various detailed fields, like cancer, Alzheimer, Autism
And also, of course, many psychiatric cases use music therapy, like depression, schizophrenia etc.
But the most surprising for me were the effects achieved by scientists working with cancer cells, because there were many experiments proving decreasing or even liquidating them thanks to the sounds with specific frequency. Many other interesting issues I've met till now, I've read for example, that the sound of steps can help people after stroke with their legs' rehabilitation.

But coming to my questions:

1. Have you ever met with someone, who used such kind of healing (it may be either patient, or a doctor)?
2. Have you ever heard about technical tools enabling such therapies? If not, can you imagine such tool? What kind of?
3. Can you imagine that computer can support such treatments? How?
4. What was the most surprising for you in this article?
5. Do you consider this kind of methods as serious ones or just "magic" for naive people? Why?


Have a nice day,
Marta

Week 6 [20-26.05.2019] 3D printing of organs and tissues

Recently I came across a few articles about 3D printing of organs and tissues.

Sample articles:

https://mymodernmet.com/3d-printed-heart/

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/japanese-researchers-use-scaffold-free-3d-bioprinted-tissues-for-regenerative-medicine-150838/ 

   The greatest success so far has been achieved by scientists from Tel Aviv University. They were the first to print an exact replica of the heart with blood vessels and chambers. The heart was printed from human cells and specific biological materials (substances consisting of sugars and proteins). The printed heart has the size of a rabbit's heart. His cells may shrink, but they must learn to pump so that they can cooperate.

   On the other hand, researchers from the University of Nagasaki and Saga are studying the method of printing 3D structures without scaffolding to create tissues for transplantation. Methods using scaffolds are widely known in medicine, but problems such as immunogenicity, scaffold degradation, and immune response may occur. Treatments based on scaffolding are also limited by materials that can be used to create scaffoldings. Thanks to the MCS (multicellular spheroids) method, in which the cells have the possibility of joining one another individually, the scientists were able to create the structures of esophageal tissue and then transplant them in rats. After surgery, none of the rats showed any complications.

   Biomaterials used in 3D printing of organs should have the same biochemical, mechanical and topographic properties as the patient's own tissues. By using biomaterials from patients, scientists eliminate the risk of implant rejection. This is extremely important because about 50% of transplants are rejected within 10-12 years of transplantation.

   3D printing in biomedicine creates great opportunities. Thanks to it, the waiting time for transplant can be shortened many times and the percentage of transplants rejected by the organism may be lowered.

1. What other organs or implants can be obtained by 3D printing method?

2. In the next 10-20 years, do you think that 3D bioprinters will be present in most hospitals, and most patients will have access to printed organs?

3. What technology could potentially replace the 3D printing of organs or be available faster?

4. Do you see any other advantages or disadvantages of the ability to implant 3D printed organs?

Week 6 [20-26.05.2019] The weather prediction with AI

Hello everybody,
today I would like to present two articles on the use of artificial intelligence in predicting the weather. After reading the articles, please answer the following questions:

1. Do you think that artificial intelligence will be used on a large scale in predicting the weather?
2. Will the weather predicted using artificial intelligence (numerical prediction of weather) be more accurate than the weather forecasted by applying weather data to weather maps?
3. Why do you need very efficient computers to predict the weather, or maybe you can speed up calculations in a different way?
4. Where can weather prediction be used?
Articles: 1. https://interestingengineering.com/ai-might-be-the-future-for-weather-forecasting2. https://medium.com/syncedreview/ai-local-rainfall-forecasting-using-weather-radar-maps-d4aa041343a

Week 5 [13-19.05.2019] Top programming languages

I would like to present you article about programming languages. Here you have  links to articles: https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/the-2018-top-programming-languages

https://spectrum.ieee.org/static/ieee-top-programming-languages-2018-methods

In the presented articles, the Python language is the language No. 1 in 2018.  
The authors mentioned also that creating the ranking list of top languages it is not a 
simple task because of  the fact that in some cases “the ranking list” depends on 
the point of view and applications. 
IEEE organization did several ranking lists of top programming languages from 
the following perspectives: job market, growth of popularity, open source development. 
In each ranking list Python is on the first place. This language might be applied in web, 
mobile, enterprise and embedded applications. Python is very handy in certain
applications to play with attached hardware via an interactive prompt or dynamically 
reload scripts on the fly. The analysis of large datasets 
gained great popularity and they are often applied in machine learning. 
Python libraries for both statistics and machine learning are among the first reasons 
putting Python on the first place.

11 metrics from 9 sources were applied to develop an overall ranking of
language popularity. The sources cover contexts that include social character, 
open-source code production, 
and job postings. Among over 300 programming languages the 47 selected languages 
were chosen and the ranking including 47 languages was created. 
The information about each language was obtained from Google Search,
Google Trends, twitter, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Reddit, 
Hasker News, Career Builder, Dice, IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

The presented ranking concerns Top programming language in 2018 year.
I found also the same ranking list but for 2016. 
In 2016, the first three places belonged to ( in order): 
C, Java , Python. In turn, in 2018 the order was as follows: Python, C++, Java. 
The word of IT is developing very fast so whiting two next years 
everything can change by 180 degrees. 

Please answer some questions about this article

1. Which programming language do you use in scientific research?

2. Do you agree with authors of the article that the Python is on the first place in the list of Top programming languages. Please, explain your point of view.

3. Which language from the ranking list do you know and which language do you like the most?

4. What do you think - what trend in programming will be in future?

Week 5 [13-19.05.2019] Storing info in molecules

Today we store a huge amount of information in many kinds of storage such as DVD, Hard Disk, paper etc. Some of them are easy to be corrupted. A team of researcher proposed a new method of storing information that use molecules as a information carrier. They relied on techniques common in organic and analytical chemistry, and developed an approach that uses small, low molecular weight molecules to encode information.

Link to the article
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190501081949.htm

Please answer some questions about this article
1. What are the pros and cons using molecules to store information?
2. Will this method replace other methods of storing information?
3. In what industries this method can be helpful and why?
4. What kind of information is worth storing in molecules?

Week 4 [06-12.05.2019] Robotic Exoskeletons: Their Benefits and Limitations

Hello everyone!

The recent marathon in Poznan "Wings for Life Polska" inspired me to do some research with regards to exoskeletons, their application and future. I was really astonished to hear that there were actually participants wearing them during the run. Of course, they managed to cover a distance of couple of meters, but still this was their great victory, as they overcame their disease, disability and were able to take part in a marathon that was created to help people like them.

Anyway, below there is a link to an interesting article with regards to exoskeletons. I really hope you will find it interesting.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6153133/

I also prepared some questions to open discussion on the subject:

1. Have you hear about the marathon "Wings for Life Polska"? Do you know any of its rules and regulations?

2. What are the pros and cons of exoskeletons as per the article?

3.  Do you think that it's possible to overcome the problem of the production cost of exoskeletons? Is it possible to make them available for a decent price for all the people in need?

4. As per the article "Future directions highlight the need to use exoskeletons in conjunction with other existing and emerging technologies similar to functional electrical stimulation and brain-computer interface to address major limitations". Do you agree with this statement? Do you think that this is a good direction to deal with problems related to exoskeletons usage?

5. Do you know any other inventions that can make so much difference when it comes to disabled people's life?

Week 4 [06-12.05.2019] Language models too dangerous?

Some time ago OpenAI announced new, better English language model: GPT-2, successor to its previous GPT model. It can take off after human-provided text snippet, continuing with similar style and quite coherently. Other applications are text summarization, or question answering.

https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/

Upon announcement, researchers stated that due to concerns of safety they decide to withhold full model and release only smaller model. In recent update, they propose staged, gradual release, and partnership with security/AI communities to prepare societies for full models.

1. Do you think it's valid concern, that people are not ready for deluge of AI-generated fake news and comments in propaganda wars? Or whole withhold is just a public stunt to gain more news coverage?

2. Is it inevitable that sometime in the future AI researchers - just like security researchers now - will be following responsible disclosure practices?

3. Do you think that further development of statistical language models might result in "true" understanding of the meaning?

Week 4 [06-12.05.2019] Drone delivery

Companies like Amazon have big ideas for drones that can deliver packages right to your door. But even putting aside the policy issues, programming drones to fly through cluttered spaces like cities is difficult. Being able to avoid obstacles while traveling at high speeds is computationally complex, especially for small drones that are limited in how much they can carry onboard for real-time processing. However such drones can be used to save lives, where every second is important, such as transporting human organs or blood for transfusion.

Articles:
https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/programming-drones-fly-face-uncertainty
https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/robotics/drones/test-run-confirms-that-drones-can-safely-deliver-organs-for-transplant

Please read article and answer questions:
1. Do you think that autonomic drones are the future of supply? Where will they work better than other forms of delivery?
2. Will such solutions be of social concern and pose a threat to us?
3. As in the case of autonomous cars, there are many variables here. Do you think Artificial Intelligence algorithms can cope with all variables such as weather conditions, obstacles or other unpredictable events?
4. Have you heard of other projects that may change the way goods are delivered and transported in the future?