Unique Stanford Medicine-designed AI predicts cancer prognoses, responses to treatment
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Jun-2025 01:10 ET (22-Jun-2025 05:10 GMT/UTC)
Microplastics can go right through wastewater treatment plants, and researchers have engineered bacteria commonly found in there to break down this pollution before it can persist in the environment.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo added DNA to several species of bacteria found in wastewater, allowing them to biodegrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic found in carpet, clothing and containers for food and beverages.
A study led by Dr. Fengyu Wen from the Institute of Medical Technology at Peking University Health Science Center and Professor Luxia Zhang from the National Institute of Health Data Science at Peking University explored survival disparities among cancer patients based on their healthcare mobility patterns. Using data from over 20,000 cancer patients in Shandong Province, the research analyzed three mobility patterns: intra-city, local center, and national center care.
The findings revealed that cancer patients who traveled to local or national healthcare centers had higher five-year survival rates (69.3%) compared to those who received treatment within their residential cities (65.4%). The study highlights the role of advanced healthcare resources and specialized treatment in improving survival outcomes, while also pointing out the financial and logistical burdens associated with traveling for medical care.
The research team emphasizes the need for targeted interventions to enhance healthcare quality in resource-limited cities and reduce survival disparities. Future studies will incorporate additional data, such as cancer stages and diagnosis timelines, to refine insights and guide public health policies effectively.
The rise of AI, graphic processing, combinatorial optimization and other data-intensive applications has resulted in data-processing bottlenecks, as ever greater amounts of data must be shuttled back and forth between the memory and compute elements in a computer. The physical distance is small, but the process can occur billions of times per second. Inevitably, the energy and time required to move so much data adds up. In response, computer engineers are designing specialized hardware accelerators with innovative architectures to improve the performance of such applications.