Category: Medicine

ENG: A researcher from The University of British Columbia Okanagan (UCBO) is cautioning that a person’s poor eating habits established during post-secondary studies can contribute to future health issues including obesity, respiratory illnesses and depression. Dr. Joan Bottorff, a Professor with UBCO’s School of Nursing, is one of several international researchers who published a multi-site study looking at the eating habits of university students. Almost 12,000 medical students from 31 universities in China participated in the study that aimed to determine the association between eating behaviours, obesity and various diseases.

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ENG: A new artificial intelligence system called a semantic decoder can translate a person’s brain activity — while listening to a story or silently imagining telling a story — into a continuous stream of text. The system developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin might help people who are mentally conscious yet unable to physically speak, such as those debilitated by strokes, to communicate intelligibly again.

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ENG: Northwestern University researchers have developed the first smart wearable device to continuously track how much people use their voices, alerting them to overuse before vocal fatigue and potential injury set in. The first-of-its-kind, battery-powered, wireless device and accompanying algorithms could be a game-changer for professional singers, teachers, politicians, call-center workers, coaches and anyone who relies on their voices to communicate effectively and make a living. It also could help clinicians remotely and continuously monitor patients with voice disorders throughout their treatment.

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ENG: Engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo are successfully using a robot to help keep children with learning disabilities focused on their work. Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been working on robotics in the context of disability for many years and incorporates principles of equity, inclusion and diversity in research projects. Students with learning disabilities may benefit from additional learning support, such as one-on-one instruction and the use of smartphones and tablets. Educators have in recent years explored the use of social robots to help students learn, but most often, their research has focused on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. As a result, little work has been done on the use of socially assistive robots for students with learning disabilities.

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