In Japan, 'Robot Babies' To Make Lonely People Happy

Toyota Moto Corp on 3 October unveiled a doe-eyed palm sized robot, dubbed Kirobo Mini, designed as a synthetic baby companion in Japan, where plummeting birth rates have left many women childless. Toyota’s non automotive venture aims to tap a demographic trend that has put Japan at the forefront of aging among the world’s industrial nations, resulting in a population contraction unprecedented for a country not at war or racked by famine or disease. He wobbles a bit, and this is meant to emulate a seated baby which hasn’t fully developed the skills to balance itself. This vulnerability is meant to invoke an emotional connection. Toyota plans to sell Kirobo Mini, which blinks its eyes and speaks with a baby-like high pitched voice, for $392 in Japan next year. It also comes with a “cradle” that doubles as its baby seat designed to fit in car cup holders.

The Toyota baby automation joins a growing list of companion robots, such as the upcoming Jibo, designed by robotics experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that resembles a swiveling lamp, and Paro, a robot baby seal marketed by Japanese company Intelligent System Co. Ltd. as a therapeutic machine to soothe elderly dementia sufferers. Around a quarter of Japan’s population is over 65 with a dearth of care workers putting a strain on social services. Exacerbated by a reluctance to invite immigrants to bolster its working-age population, Japan’s demographic crunch shows little sign of easing, with the government looking at robots to replenish the thinning ranks of humans. In the past half century births in Japan have halved to around a million a year, according to government statistics, with one in 10 women never marrying. Birth out of wedlock is frowned upon in Japan and much less common than in Western developed nations.

Japan is already a leading user of industrial robots. It has the second-biggest concentration after South Korea with 314 machines per 100,000 employees, according to the International Federation of Robots. New technology to help them better interacts with human’s means robots have begun moving beyond factory floors into homes, offices, shops and hospitals. Kirobo Mini is a stepping stone to more advanced robots that will be able to recognize and react to human emotions.

Body's Natural Defenses Can Treat Eczema

The body’s own natural defenses could be harnessed in a potential therapy for a common skin condition. The discovery may help create new treatments for atopic eczema; the condition causes distressing itchy lesions that can lead to broken skin with increased susceptibility to infection. It can have a severe impact on people’s lives, work and sleep. The discovery follows recent studies that show having an intact natural skin barrier is important in preventing eczema. Now, researchers in the UK have found a way to use the body’s own defense system, to repair tiny breaks in the skin’s natural barrier, which make people more vulnerable to eczema. This is a great chance to work with something that the body makes naturally to develop new therapy for atopic eczema, which affects so many people’s lives. The skin’s barrier can be impaired by genetic flaws, environmental factors or bacterial infections. People with eczema are much more likely to carry bacteria known as Staphylococcus aureus on their skins. In people with eczema, these bacteria can infect skin lesions and cause damage to the skin barrier.

UK Scientists On Verge Of Curing HIV

A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities. The therapy is combining standard antiretroviral drugs with another one that reactivates dormant HIV and vaccine that induces the immune system to destroy the infected cells. Antiretroviral drugs alone are highly effective at stopping the virus from reproducing but do not eradicate the disease, co must be taken for life. The 44-year old Briton is the first among 50 people to complete a trial of the treatment, designed by scientists and doctors from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, University College London and King’s College. Early tests show no signs of the virus in his blood. If successful, it offers hope of an irreversible cure for millions of people infected with the virus.

But the person will have to wait for some months before confirmation on whether the treatment has permanently cleared the disease. It is possible that the absence of the virus could be down to the conventional drugs that he has also been taking which can temporarily clear the body of the disease. HIV is able to hide from the immune system in dormant cells where sophisticated testing cannot find it, and therefore resist therapy. The treatment endeavours to trick the virus into emerging from its hiding places and then trigger the body’s immune system to recognize it and attack it, an approach that has been called “kick and kill”. The new therapy works in two stages. Firstly, a vaccine helps the body recognize the HIV infected cells so it can clear them out. Secondly, a new drug called Vorinostat activated the dormant T-cells so they can be spotted by the immune system.

New Dental Fillings Repair Tooth Decay

Researchers claimed on 2 October to have developed new dental fillings that can repair tooth decay, prolong the life of composite fillings and reduce the need for mercury-based amalgams. The new bioactive glass composites release fluoride as well as significant quantities of calcium and phosphate that are needed to form tooth mineral. Researcher noted that while current dental fillings include inert materials, the bioactive glass composite interacts with the body providing minerals that replace those lost to tooth decay. The new bioactive glass also creates an alkaline environment that discourages the bacteria that caused the initial decay. Researcher said this will prolong the life of fillings and slow secondary tooth decay.

You Can See, Hear And Feel Quakes Now

You can now eavesdrop on some of the world’s largest earthquakes from deep inside the Earth, thanks to a new project that lets you seem hear and feel seismic waves created by massive temblors. A group of scientists and sound artists at US’s Columbia University, who leads the Seismic Sound Lab, have turned seismic waves into sound and images for an educational performance about earthquakes. The SeismoDome project coupled the sound of seismic waves to visualizations that researcher’s team created using computer code written by an astrophysicist to visualize models of formation of stars. The team sped up both the sound and visuals by a factor of several thousand. They also filtered the sound and visualized data to illuminate different types of waves in the Earth.

A Robotic Surgeon With A Sense Of Touch

Researchers, including one of Indian origin, claimed to have developed the world’s first robotic surgical system that can give surgeons the sense of touch while they conduct keyhole surgery using a computer. The HeroSurg robot is a major breakthrough to current technology, which now limits robotic surgery to the sense of sight. This means laparoscopic or keyhole/micro surgery will be safer and more accurate than ever before by reducing trauma and lowering risk of blood loss and infection. HeroSurg was developed by engineers from Deakin University in Australia and Harvard University in the US. The HeroSurg’s sense of touch, provided through technology known as haptic feedback, would lead to better patient outcomes.

The major drawback of the current system in the lack of tactile feedback. Tactile feedback allows a surgeon to differentiate between tissues and to ‘feel’ delicate tissues weakened by infection or inflammation and dissect them more carefully. Tactile feedback will allow them to use finer and more delicate sutures in microsurgery. The haptics technology would also improve the ability to distinguish between tissues involved with cancer from normal tissue. HeroSurg’s Unique features include collision avoidance capability, modularity and automatic patient/bed adjustment.

New Drug May Help Treat Alcohol Addiction

A new medicine that targets parts of the brain’s stress system may help in curing people with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Researchers conducted a clinical trial of a new compound, called ABT-436, designed to block the effects of vasopressin, a neuropeptide produced in the brain’s hypothalamus. Vasopressin helps to regulate the pituitary adrenal axis and other brain circuits involved in emotion. As such, it plays a role in regulation stress, anxiety and their interaction with AUD. Researchers recruited 144 alcohol dependent adult men and women for the 12 week study. During a 28 day baseline period, female participants consumed at least 28 drinks per week, while male participants consumed at least 35 drinks per week. Participants were then randomized to receive either placebo tablets or ones containing ABT-436 compound. Researchers found that participants who received ABT-436 abstained from alcohol for more days than those who were given the placebo. Participants who reported high levels of stress appeared to respond better to ABT-436 abstained from alcohol for more days than those who were given the placebo. Participants who reported high levels of stress appeared to respond better to ABT-436. Smokers also benefitted from ABT-436. Experts suspect that ABT-436 targeted the same areas in the brain that related to withdrawal and stress, and, in the process, influenced both tobacco and alcohol use disorders.