Virtual Support Groups Help Grieving Spouses with Depression
As the U.S. population ages, it's estimated that half of women older than 65 are widows, while one-sixth of men of the same age have lost their spouses. Support groups have proved to be a helpful resource for those dealing with grief, but for older individuals, obstacles such as geographic location and physical immobility can sometimes make it difficult to attend support groups in person.
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'Smart Contact Lens Sensor' for Diabetic and Glaucoma Diagnosis
A recent study, affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, has proposed the possibility of in situ human health monitoring simply by wearing a contact lens with built-in wireless smart sensors. This study has been jointly conducted by Professor Jang-Ung Park of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Chang Young Lee of Life Science, and Professor Franklin Bien of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UNIST in collaboration with
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Virtual Humans Help Aspiring Doctors Learn Empathy
For medical student Katie Goldrath, the first time delivering difficult health news came when she had to tell a young woman named Robin and her mom, Delmy, that Robin had leukemia. As she broke the news, Goldrath was conscious of not only her words but also her body language: Was she leaning in, looking the patient in the eye and expressing empathy?
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Can Virtual Reality Help Us Prevent Falls in the Elderly and Others?
Every year, falls lead to hospitalization or death for hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans. Standard clinical techniques generally cannot diagnose balance impairments before they lead to falls. But researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University have found evidence that virtual reality (VR) could be a big help - not only for detecting balance impairments early,
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Biased Bots: Human Prejudices Sneak into Artificial Intelligence Systems
In debates over the future of artificial intelligence, many experts think of the new systems as coldly logical and objectively rational. But in a new study, researchers have demonstrated how machines can be reflections of us, their creators, in potentially problematic ways. Common machine learning programs, when trained with ordinary human language available online, can acquire cultural biases embedded in the patterns of wording, the researchers found.
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Which Self-Help Websites Actually Improve Health? New Research Yields a List
From depression to weight loss, insomnia to cutting back on alcohol or cigarettes, the Internet teems with sites that promise to help people improve their health. Which of these really help - with evidence from gold-standard studies to back up these claims? A new paper compiles only the best of the best: a list of over 40 sites backed by evidence from randomized controlled trials.
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Public Funding Essential for Advances in Biomedical Research
In the budget President Trump recently submitted to Congress, he asked for a reduction in the 2018 funding of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) of almost 20 percent - or $6 billion. That could have consequences for those suffering from a variety of illnesses and conditions and for biomedical innovation, based on results from an article to be published in Science and coauthored by
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