2023-05-02 12:15:00
The topics at a glance: Monkeypox: WHO still sees great potential for danger with Mpox | US researchers read minds with AI | Fitness Content on Social Media Promotes Problem Eating | Children can pass on trauma as adults US authorities revoke launch permission for the Starship after a false start | These and other topics in the MDR WISSEN News.
05/02/2023 12:15 p.m | Monkeypox: WHO continues to see great potential for danger from Mpox
One year after the beginning of a major outbreak, monkeypox is hardly an issue in Germany – for the World Health Organization (WHO), the pathogen is still one of the three most dangerous virus groups from the animal world. They should be subject to constant monitoring. The other two virus groups that WHO closely monitors are avian influenza viruses and viral diseases transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, including dengue fever, yellow fever, zika and chikungunya.
The Mpox virus, which was practically only known from a few African countries, suddenly spread from person to person in other countries on a larger scale in 2022. More than 87,000 Mpox cases have been reported to the WHO from 111 countries since the beginning of 2022 (as of April 25), including 130 deaths. A public health emergency of international scope (PHEIC) is still in force today. This is the highest alert that WHO can issue.
Germany was among the ten countries with the highest case reports, behind the US with more than 30,000 cases, Brazil, Spain, France, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and the UK. In Germany, almost 3,700 Mpox cases and no deaths have been reported to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) since May 2022 (as of April 28). After a sharp increase, the number of cases fell significantly from August. The vast majority of those infected were men, with less than one percent women, adolescents and children. According to the RKI, no case has been registered since the end of January 2023. However, the RKI warns that the numbers could increase, for example if more events with many participants take place again in spring.
There are three vaccines that significantly reduce the risk of infection. Mpox infection spreads among humans through close physical contact. It usually brings fever, headache and muscle pain and a skin rash with pustules. The virus probably originally came from small mammals such as sun or chipmunks or giant hamster rats. Mpox is related to the classic human pox virus, which has been eradicated since the 1980s and had raged for centuries.
05/02/2023 10:30 am | Company in Saxony-Anhalt is researching wind turbine recycling
In the future, old wind turbines could be used to repair existing systems. This is the goal pursued by the Deutsche VacuumRYER company in Sangerhausen. As reported by the German Press Agency, a process has been developed to disassemble old wind turbine blades into their components resin and glass fiber. At peak times, up to 50,000 tons of scrap are produced each year, which is usually incinerated. However, the materials obtained could be used to make mats that can be used to repair broken rotor blades. The process is also interesting for space travel and boat building.
05/02/2023 09:12 am | Brain scanner: US researchers are getting closer to reading minds with AI
According to their own statements, US scientists have succeeded in using brain scanners and artificial intelligence to roughly record what people think and thus come a whole lot closer to reading minds. The researchers at the University of Texas at Austin use a speech decoder that works “on a completely different level” than current devices, said Alexander Huth, a neuroscientist at the US university and co-author of a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on the subject on Monday at a press conference.
In the future, speech decoders could enable people who have lost their ability to speak with a brain implant to spell words and even whole sentences. The “Brain-Computer Interfaces” focus on the part of the brain that controls the mouth when trying to form words. “Our system works on the level of ideas, semantics, meaning,” said Huth. It is the first system that can reconstruct speech without a brain implant.
For the study, three subjects spent a total of 16 hours in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner – a device that maps physiological functions in the body using magnetic resonance imaging – and listened to spoken podcasts. In this way, the researchers were able to record the reactions that words, sentences and meanings triggered in the brain regions responsible for processing language. They fed this data into a neural network language model using GPT-1, the predecessor of the AI technology that also uses ChatGPT.
The AI model was trained to predict how the brain would respond to the speech it heard, and then narrow down the options and match the most likely sentences. For example, if the study participant heard the sentence “I don’t have a driver’s license yet”, the model replied: “She hasn’t even started learning to drive”. Huth explained that even when the subjects made up their own stories, the decoder was able to capture the essentials. “This shows that we are decoding something deeper than speech and then turning it into speech,” the researcher said.
Bioethics professor at the University of Grenada in Spain, David Rodriguez-Arias Vailhen, who was not involved in the experiment, confirmed that the system goes beyond what had been achieved with previous brain-computer interfaces. “This brings us closer to a future where machines are able to read and transcribe minds,” he said, warning that this could potentially happen against a human’s will, such as when they are asleep.
4/28/2023 5:32 p.m | Fitness channels on social media promote problematic eating
Young adults who follow numerous fitness and health channels on social media display problematic attitudes towards nutrition. That is the conclusion of a study by Austrian media scientists.
Rebecca Scheiber, Sandra Diehl and Matthias Karmasin asked 647 German-speaking women and men about their usage habits on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram or TikTok and about their attitudes towards food. There was a clear connection: the more they were interested in health and fitness content, the more they showed a tendency towards orthorexia nervosa.
Image copyright: IMAGO/Zoonar
Researchers use this technical term to describe diet plans in which those affected deal excessively with food and often impose severe restrictions on their eating habits. “In many places, salad and Pilates, protein shakes and crunches dominate the lifestyle of young people. Healthy is then no longer just healthy,” says Rebecca Scheiber. Those affected internalized a body ideal in which people are defined as thin and muscular.
She called for more prevention to protect young people from eating disorders. “Users of social media should be more aware that the content of these accounts can have an impact on their own behavior. The influencers themselves could play an important role in this education, but also organizations in the field of public health can intervene.”
4/28/2023 3:37 p.m | Record heat wave in Spain
While spring in Germany is cool and rainy, Spain is experiencing an extremely early heat wave. In Morón de la Frontera, about 50 kilometers southeast of Seville, 37.1 degrees Celsius were measured on Wednesday, a new record for April. This weekend, peak temperatures could even reach 40 degrees Celsius.
The stark temperature differences, which are even more evident at an altitude of 1500 meters, are caused by a well-known phenomenon of climate change: the increasing waves of the jet stream, the band of high-altitude winds over the Arctic Circle. In the original form, these winds formed a solid band. Now, however, there are big loops. While such a loop holds cool air in the area of Germany, Poland and Scandinavia, a high pressure area with hot Saharan air is stuck in Spain.
4/28/2023 2:38 p.m | Doctors under severe mental stress during the omicron wave
The so-called fourth corona wave at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022 put a heavy psychological strain on both clinicians and general practitioners. Around a quarter suffered from either depression (24 percent) or anxiety disorders such as panic attacks (23 percent). This is the result of a study of 1,476 physicians from North Rhine-Westphalia, which has now been published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
At the end of 2021, the physicians were surveyed over a period of six weeks via the Internet. They were asked to provide information about their work with patients, about stress at work and about their own life situation. 1139 (77 percent) said they had treated people with Covid-19 themselves. At this point, the then emerging omicron variant was causing more infections than ever before.
Around a third stated that they felt hampered by external constraints in their medical work. Almost half of all clinicians (48 percent) and a quarter of the practitioners (27 percent) reported cases in which it was difficult to protect the patient’s dignity. More than half felt helpless, the majority suffered from sleeping problems. This hit job starters particularly hard.
The authors of the study assume that the end of the pandemic has reduced the burden again. However, research results are still missing.
This topic in the program:The First | MoMa – First thing in the morning | August 19, 2022 | 08:00 a.m
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