These light-emitting "smart" tattoos could act as medical monitors
Light-emitting tattoos could indicate dehydration in athletes or health conditions in hospital patients.
- Researchers at UCL and IIT have created a temporary tattoo that contains the same OLED technology that is used in TVs and smartphones.
- This technology has already been successfully applied to various materials including glass, food items, plastic, and paper packaging.
- This advance in technology isn't just about aesthetics. "In healthcare, they could emit light when there is a change in a patient's condition - or, if the tattoo was turned the other way into the skin, they could potentially be combined with light-sensitive therapies to target cancer cells, for instance," explains senior author Franco Cacialli of UCL.
Why “smart tattoos” could be beneficial
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcwNTMwNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyNDk2OTAzNX0.59Z70jErmubZzIj-mKsOnmWpArvlFbbfY7NNg3bg9M8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C299%2C0%2C299&height=700" id="15b1d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b5b5c11c8b9c8e281955c4ad742eb6ae" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="OLED light held in man's hand on black background" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />OLEDs are used to create digital displays in devices (such as television screens computer monitors, smartphones, etc).
Credit: Hanna on Adobe Stock
<p>While this is perhaps the most obvious way you could use light-emitting tattoo technology, the world of tattoo art and design could see a huge surge in new exciting trends based on light-emitting tattoo technology.</p><p><strong>It's not just about looks—this approach provides a quick and easy method of transferring OLEDs onto practically any surface.</strong> </p><p>OLEDs are used to create digital displays in devices (such as television screens computer monitors, smartphones, etc). While some may get OLED and LED confused, they are quite different, with OLED displays emitting visible light and therefore being able to be used without a backlight. The breakthrough process of being able to transfer OLEDs onto virtually any surface can be useful in many different applications and settings. </p><p><strong>Light-emitting tattoos could be used to indicate (and potentially even treat) various health conditions in the future.</strong></p><p>The eventual implementation or use of OLED tattoos could be combined with other tattoo electronics to, for instance, emit light when an athlete is dehydrated, or when a person is being exposed to too much sun and is prone to sunburn. </p><p>"In healthcare, they could emit light when there is a change in a patient's condition - or, if the tattoo was turned the other way into the skin, they could potentially be combined with light-sensitive therapies to target cancer cells, for instance." - Professor Franco Cacialli (UCL)</p>OLED tattoo devices
Credit: Barsotti - Italian Institute of Technology
<p><br><strong>Similarly, this technology could be used on the packaging of various items to give us more information about them.</strong></p><p>For example, OLEDs could be tattooed onto the packaging of a fruit to signal when the product is passed its expiration date or will soon become inedible.</p><p>In reality, creating light-emitting tattoo technology doesn't have to be expensive.</p><p>Professor Franco Cacialli explains to <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/ucl-lte022621.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eurekalert</a>: "The tattooable OLEDs that we have demonstrated for the first time can be made at scale and very cheaply. They can be combined with other forms of tattoo electronics for a very wide range of possible uses. These could be for fashion - for instance, providing glowing tattoos and light-emitting fingernails. In sports, they could be combined with a sweat sensor to signal dehydration."</p><p>"Our proof-of-concept study is the first step. Future challenges will include encapsulating the OLEDs as much as possible to stop them from degrading quickly through contact with air, as well as integrating the device with a battery or supercapacitor."</p>Here's what happened when AI and humans met in a strawberry-growing contest
Do they really need the human touch?
- In Pinduoduo's Smart Agriculture Competition, four technology teams competed with traditional farmers over four months to grow strawberries.
- Data analysis, intelligent sensors and greenhouse automation helped the scientists win.
- Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as AI are forecast to deliver huge productivity gains – but need the right governance, according to the Global Technology Governance Report 2021.
Pinduoduo
<h3>Growing potential</h3><p>Numerous studies show the potential for Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies like AI to boost economic growth and productivity.</p><p>By 2035, labour productivity in developed countries could rise by 40% due to the influence of AI, according to<a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/ai-productivity-automation-artificial-intelligence-countries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> analysis from Accenture and Frontier Economics</a>.</p><p>Sweden, the US and Japan are expected to see the highest productivity increases.</p>How one NY hospital system treated 128,000+ COVID cases
From making their own swabs to staying in constant communication across the board, Northwell Health dove headfirst into uncharted waters to take on the virus and save lives.
- Preparing for a pandemic like COVID-19 was virtually impossible. Northwell Health president and CEO Michael Dowling explains how, as the largest healthcare provider in New York, his team had to continuously organize, innovate, and readjust to dangerous and unpredictable conditions in a way that guaranteed safety for the staff and the best treatment for over 128,000 coronavirus patients.
- From making their own supplies when they ran out, to coordinating with government at every level and making sense of new statistics and protocols, Northwell focused on strengthening internal and external communication to keep the ship from sinking.
- "There was no such thing as putting up the white flag," Dowling says of meeting the pandemic head on and reassuring his front line staff that they would be safe and have all the resources they needed to beat the virus. "It's amazing how innovative you can be in a crisis."
How your social media data can become a ‘mental health X-ray’
In the future, you might voluntarily share your social media data with your psychiatrist to inform a more accurate diagnosis.
- About one in five people suffer from a psychiatric disorder, and many go years without treatment, if they receive it at all.
- In a new study, researchers developed machine-learning algorithms that analyzed the relationship between psychiatric disorders and Facebook messages.
- The algorithms were able to correctly predict the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders with statistical accuracy, suggesting digital tools may someday help clinicians identify mental illnesses in early stages.
Identifying psychiatric disorders
<p>The goal was for the algorithms to analyze patterns in these datasets, then predict which group participants belonged to: schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), mood disorders (MD), or healthy volunteers (HV). The results were promising, showing that the algorithms correctly identified:</p><ul><li>The SDD group with an accuracy of 52% (chance was 33%)</li><li>The MD group with an accuracy of 57% (chance was 37%)</li><li>The HV group with an accuracy of 56% (chance was 29%)</li></ul><p>The study also showed interesting differences in Facebook activity among the groups, such as:</p><ul><li>The SSD group was more likely to use language related to perception (hear, see, feel).</li><li>The MD and SSD groups were far more likely to use swear words and anger-related language.</li><li>The MD group was more likely to use language related to biological processes (blood, pain).</li><li>The SSD group was more likely to express negative emotions, use second-person pronouns and write in netspeak (lol, btw, thx).</li><li>The MD group was more likely to post photos containing more blues and less yellows.</li></ul><p>These differences tended to become more apparent in the months before a patient was hospitalized. But even 18 months before hospitalization, the results revealed signals that hinted participants might be on the path to developing a psychiatric disorder. That's where these tools may someday help improve early-identification efforts.</p><p>"In psychiatry, we often get a snapshot of somebody's life, for 30 minutes once a month or so," he said. "There's the potential to get much greater granularity with some of these new assessment tools. Facebook, for example, can allow us to understand somebody's thoughts and behaviors in a more real-time, longitudinal fashion, as opposed to cross-sectional moments in time."</p><p>Dr. Birnbaum noted that everyone has a unique style of <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/behavioral-health/news/insights/digital-activity-provides-more-clues-to-its-impact-on-mental-health" target="_blank">online behavior</a> and that certain behavioral changes may contain clues about mental health.</p><p>"The way that we're understanding this is that everybody has a digital baseline, a way they typically act and behave on social media and the internet," he said. "So, ultimately here we would want to identify this baseline for each individual—a fingerprint—and then monitor for changes over time, and identify which changes are concerning, and which are not."</p><p>Using digital tools to better identify psychiatric conditions could someday reduce the number of people who suffer without treatment.</p><p>"There's an alarming gap between the number of people who experience mental illness and those who receive care," said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health. "It's especially troubling when you consider that the health disparity between people with mental illness and those without is larger than disparities attributable to race, ethnicity, geography or socioeconomic status."<a href="#_msocom_1" target="_blank"></a></p>A step toward the future of psychiatry
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTU1NzkzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMjMyNTU2OX0.EP0V-l7aldnzNJKupUq4otg8r3UIE_f7vH7M4Pdisg4/img.jpg?width=980" id="6c141" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d76673b12e93ff77bf6c63245e65d9a1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2000" data-height="1125" />Credit: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images
<p>Although previous research has examined the relationship between online activity and psychiatric disorders, the new study is unique because it paired online behavior with clinically confirmed cases of psychiatric disorders.</p><p>"The vast majority of the data thus far has been extracted from anonymous, or semi-anonymous individuals online, without any real way to validate the diagnosis or confirm the authenticity of the symptoms," Dr. Birnbaum said.</p><p>But before clinicians can use these kinds of digital approaches, researchers have more work to do.</p><p>"I think that we need much larger datasets," Dr. Birnbaum said. "We need to repeat these findings. We need to better understand how demographic differences, like age, ethnicity and gender, can play a role."</p><p>Privacy is another consideration. Dr. Birnbaum emphasized that these kinds of approaches would only be conducted on a voluntary basis, and that the Facebook data used in the recent study was anonymized, and the algorithms examined only individual words, not the context or meaning of sentences.</p><p>"This isn't about surveillance, or that Facebook should somehow be monitoring us," Dr. Birnbaum said. "It's about giving the power to the patient. I imagine a world where patients could come into the doctor's office and express their concerns, but also provide some additional clinically meaningful information that they own."</p><p>Dr. Birnbaum said the long-term goal isn't for algorithms to make official diagnoses or replace physicians, but rather to serve as supplementary tools. He added that these tools would be used only for people seeking help or information about their risk of developing a psychiatric condition, or suffering a relapse.</p><p>"Hopefully one day, we'll be able to incorporate this and other information to inform what we do, the same way you go to a doctor and you get an X-ray or a blood test to inform the diagnosis," he said. "It doesn't make the diagnosis, but it informs the doctor. That is where psychiatry is heading, and hopefully this is a step in that direction."</p>The incredible physics behind quantum computing
Can computers do calculations in multiple universes? Scientists are working on it. Step into the world of quantum computing.
- While today's computers—referred to as classical computers—continue to become more and more powerful, there is a ceiling to their advancement due to the physical limits of the materials used to make them. Quantum computing allows physicists and researchers to exponentially increase computation power, harnessing potential parallel realities to do so.
- Quantum computer chips are astoundingly small, about the size of a fingernail. Scientists have to not only build the computer itself but also the ultra-protected environment in which they operate. Total isolation is required to eliminate vibrations and other external influences on synchronized atoms; if the atoms become 'decoherent' the quantum computer cannot function.
- "You need to create a very quiet, clean, cold environment for these chips to work in," says quantum computing expert Vern Brownell. The coldest temperature possible in physics is -273.15 degrees C. The rooms required for quantum computing are -273.14 degrees C, which is 150 times colder than outer space. It is complex and mind-boggling work, but the potential for computation that harnesses the power of parallel universes is worth the chase.
