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Chief Product Officer at Actuate, Ben Ziomek, joins the podcast to discuss a new and potentially life-saving application of artificial intelligence and computer vision technology. Tune in to learn the following:
Over the last several years in the U.S., there has been an unprecedented number of mass shootings and active shooter events. Unfortunately, even one second in the delay of an emergency response can cost several innocent lives. Actuate is an AI computer vision-based company that set out to address this problem. They began by speaking directly with law enforcement officers about what would help them mount more effective responses to these situations. One of the most consistent requests from these officers was for a way to determine where an active shooter is located within a building, and what type of weapon they have.
In response, the team at Actuate has developed an AI and computer vision technology-based solution that can plug into virtually any security camera system that exists and instantly detect a visible weapon with better-than-human accuracy. In less than a single second, this technology can identify a weapon and alert the authorities.
Each time there is an alert, a unique link is generated that can be shared with anyone who needs it, allowing those individuals to instantaneously track the person around the facility. Actuate is working with every type of security platform, and can notify teachers as well as automatically trigger the lock down of any facility when necessary.
Press play for all the details and learn more by visiting actuate.ai.
Clinical psychologist and sleep expert, Yelena Blank, Ph.D., discusses sleep health and her approach to helping those who suffer from a variety of sleep and psychological disorders.
On this episode, you'll learn the following:
When Dr. Blank graduated from college with a degree in psychology, she wasn't sure how she wanted to apply what she'd learned. She decided to take a couple of years away from school to determine what exactly she wanted to do, and it was during that time that she encountered the world of sleep health and medicine, as well as the way in which trauma, PTSD, depression, and anxiety can affect sleep health. She was fascinated by it all, and decided that's what she wanted to pursue.
She's currently a licensed clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area who provides sleep therapy and online events using evidence-based practices and tips combined with a nonjudgmental and collaborative approach to addressing her clients' challenges. She discusses insomnia, the ways in which she can fill a gap in treatment for those with sleep apnea, circadian rhythm sleep disorder, shift work sleep disorder, and the fallacy that being a "night owl" is somehow inherently "bad."
She also touches on the ways in which the recent quarantine for coronavirus is affecting many of her patients, and how she's helping them use this time to their advantage. Press play to hear the full conversation and check out https://www.yelenablankphd.com/ to learn more.
Author Kevin Brown established and curated the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in London. He tells listeners about
Among other books, Kevin Brown authored Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution. In this conversation he talks about what it's like to be a historian in this sciences.
He tells listeners that he studies the history of medicine because it's a subject which affect most of us—he is studying at a wider history that's also political and societal and affects all of us on a daily level.
He adds that the communication of history is where he wants to be: he likes explaining the stories to people, feeling like he is walking in the footsteps of health and medicine history. He comments that there's an excitement that comes to talking to visitors and seeing the excitement in their eyes—perhaps inspiring some to be the Alexander Flemings of tomorrow.
He continues with details of setting up the museum, procuring items, accepting special loans, and writing the material. Fleming's son gave the museum some items, in fact, and is a great supporter of the project. Brown shares the story of the summer Fleming made the infamous penicillin discovery, including details about other project of Fleming that lead to his mindset at the time. He also gives some perspective of the scientific mind and health and medicine history from the ancient Greeks to current ways we handle knowledge.
For more, see the museum web site at https://fleminglaboratory.wordpress.com/ and email Kevin Brown through the museum at Kevin.Brown@imperial.nhs.uk.
Dr. Richard Allen White began RAW Molecular Systems, LLC, eight years after his mother's death from streptococcus complications. His mission is to push science from addressing the theoretical basics to advance to applied states to better serve people and agriculture.
He explains to listeners
Dr. Richard Allen White, III, has been focused on microbiology for the majority of his educational life. He has a PhD in microbiology and immunology from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a Master's from Cal State East Bay, where he worked on HIV GEC responses.
His company works on viruses that affect people, plants, fungi, and bacteria, though currently they are focused primarily on agricultural blights, namely the fire blight, which is a pathogenic bacteria that affects pears and apple crops, and a potato disease called verticillium, which is a devastating fungal pathogen. However, they are moving toward targeting human and bee diseases as well.
He describes the very complex yet ancient arms race between viruses and bacteria, and how nature has given us an "Excalibur" of sorts with phages and the benefits viruses can offer us. In this constant battle between bacteria and viruses, a virus will take a clip of bacteria and uses it to defend itself against it later. This constant dynamic means viruses offer researchers numerous means to battle pathogenic bacteria and even other viruses.
His company envisions that a wave of new therapeutics will come from synthetic microbiology. He explains that scientist can use natural viruses and combine them with a synthetic process involving phages. Researchers start from nature, knowing how a virus can infect a population, but then predict what will be infected and what they can do to magnify certain actions through synthetic means to fight pathogenic bacteria.
For more, see the company's web site at https://www.rawmolecularsystems.com/index.
In addition, Dr. Richard Allen White has started a YouTube channel to explain more about their research.
A specialist in pediatric transplantation for children facing liver and intestinal disease, Dr. Mazariegos discuss current practices. He explains
Dr. George V. Mazariegos is the director of Pediatric Transplantation at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He is an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the departments of Surgery, Anesthesiology, and Critical Care Medicine. While he specializes in children with liver and intestinal disease, the center cares for all pediatric transplantation issues. He gives listeners an overview of transplantation history and explains the particular quality-of-life issues that involve pediatric patients.
He comments that most pediatric patients, about 95%, require lifelong immunosuppression; a big focus of his research is understanding why that 5% doesn't need those drugs and what we can learn from them. Dr. Mazariegos explains that advances in viral detection and other monitoring tools have made it possible to reduce the amount of drugs patients need to take to the bare minimum. Therefore, they've been able to monitor the side effects and adjust the dosing before complications become significance. He adds a summary of the ways these drugs would change according to life stages various patients face.
Finally, he addresses the near-term future of his field, describing the challenge of trying to balance what's "around the corner" with what doctors can and should proceed with for now. For example, gene therapies have been touted as "just around the corner" for 20 years. Therefore, while gene therapy is very promising as half these kids suffer from a genetic condition, it isn't a usable treatment yet. While there has been progress in the delivery of the gene vector, the efficacy hasn't been proven.
For more, see his information page at https://www.chp.edu/find-a-doctor/service-providers/george-mazariegos-519, follow him on Twitter with @CHPtransplant, and email him through his CHP web site information page. He's Happy to chat with parents and patients.
In this informative podcast, Luis P. Villarreal, Professor Emeritus, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine, provides an overview of his thoughts on biological changes, virus evolution, viral gene therapy, and more.
Podcast Points:
As a Founding Director of the Center for Virus Research, Villarreal has long been interested in research related to viruses. Villarreal holds a PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and a BS from California State University at Los Angeles, in Biochemistry.
Dr. Villarreal discusses the current state of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), commonly referred to as simply, coronavirus. He provides specific information on the origin of coronaviruses. As Dr. Villarreal states, most emerging viruses that go on to cause acute epidemics or a pandemic, typically come from a particular species found in the region that has a persistent lifelong infection.
Bats, in particular, harbor a great deal of coronaviruses, as well as other viruses. These viruses are specific to the species and within the host species, they typically show almost no evidence of disease. These viruses are passed from generation to generation in bats, but have almost no effect on bat health; it's an epigenome of the bat.
The research doctor provides some interesting examples of specific studies of mice. He explains the research that shows how mice, like some other species, benefit from the viruses they carry because the virus can act as a way of ensuring a particular colony's survival. For example, when mice engage in reproductive contact between colonies, the mice that are not colonized with the virus will die off.
Dr. Villarreal talks about the ways that coronavirus establishes itself in hosts. This coronavirus is particularly difficult to tackle because it is quite successful at transmission, because hosts who carry the virus will often have no signs, or few signs, of any actual infection. He states that this virus presents a complex problem because it, unlike some other viruses, seems to be acting as if it is trying to establish a persistent infection in humans, in a similar manner to how persistent infections become established in animal species.
In this event that is happening now, Dr. Villarreal states that this is an event of communication that has brought technology and science to its knees with the power it has exerted over human biology. Unfortunately, the United States' delayed reaction, its slow response to the coronavirus, is going to make things worse than they might have been if the virus had been taken seriously at the beginning.
Dr. Villarreal talks about some of the medications that are being repurposed for possible treatment of coronavirus. He discusses the clinical trials that are in progress and the need for immediate action. Continuing, Dr. Villarreal talks about the damage to the immune system that coronavirus creates, but details are thin at this point as to why it is happening. Going further, Dr. Villarreal talks about the virus and how it continues to retain its ability to harm in other species.
Dr. Villarreal is an SACNAS Distinguished Scientist, and he was recognized with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from California State University, the National Science Foundation Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, and was elected as Fellow of the American Society of Microbiology.
Dr. Adam Arkin's research focuses on the synthetic biology of microorganisms, environmental genomics, and molecular ecosystems biology.
On today's episode, you will learn:
At the University of California, Berkeley, Adam Arkin, Ph.D. is researching one of his primary interests, which is how microbes (i.e. bacteria, archaea, viruses) transform the environment and impact various processes, including the processes that occur in our own bodies.
He is working on how to track and characterize groups of microbes, understand how they operate together, and determine the ways in which we may be able to intervene in order to get microbes to do things that are beneficial to us.
The largest projects he's working on involve terrestrial environments, such as the subsurface of a watershed. In particular, Dr. Arkin and his team are researching the microbes in a field behind the Oak Ridge National Lab, where the soil is contaminated with uranium and has the highest level of nitrates on Earth.
In that location, microbes breathe in the metals and transform them to immobile and relatively harmless substances. Dr. Arkin explain how this may be applied to the agricultural arena in order to use microbes that mobilize nutrients for crops, protect them from pathogens, increase resilience to drought, and improve their ability to sequester carbon, thereby reducing greenhouse gasses.
He continues by discussing the potential of a human microbiome that is resistant to invasion by pathogens and allows us to make better use of nutrients. What's stopping the development of this? Dr. Arkin explains that despite the growing amount of data being gathered in the field, there are still huge gaps in basic data about the composition and function of microbial genes in a wide range of conditions.
Consider, for example, that a single gram of soil contains one million microbes and about 10,000 different species of microbes, and that the human gut contains just as many, if not more. He explains the approach that has allowed his research and the research of others to show that most large community microbial dynamics can be described by much smaller numbers of pairwise interactions. In other words, predictions about a large community of microbes can be made based on observations of smaller number of pairwise interactions among community members.
In addition to all of this, Dr. Arkin takes a look at viruses and phages, bacteriocin, mechanisms of cell sensing, the various uses of phages (including those in the therapeutic realm), in what ways his research relies on machine learning and computational biology, and so much more.
Tune in for the full conversation and visit http://genomics.lbl.gov/ and http://enigma.lbl.gov/ to learn more.
CEO of Limina Sleep Consulting, Matthew Anastasi, discusses the current state of sleep medicine and health in the U.S.
Tune in to learn the following:
For over 20 years, Matthew Anastasi has worked in the sleep industry in various capacities, including as a sleep technologist, author, researcher, volunteer, and conference organizer. On today's show, he shares his insights on sleep and the valuable knowledge he has gained over the course of his career.
He begins by discussing the impact of the homeostatic drive and the circadian clock on our bodies and level of alertness. "The circadian clock is actually embedded in every living cell in our body…every cell in our body…knows what time of day it is, and when you change that, even by one hour, that has a huge impact on the function that each cell has throughout the circadian rhythm," says Anastasi.
With a combination of his years of research and clinical experience in the field, Anastasi established Limina Sleep Consulting as a way of providing a variety of services in the sleep industry, such as advice for companies that want to put forth evidence-based best practices, expert strategic analysis for investment companies, conference organization and lectures for sleep professionals who want to stay ahead of the curve, and support for industry sales and marketing.
He explains the specific ways in which sleep medicine practices and policies have changed over the past 20 years, how providers and patients alike are being affected by these changes, and what needs to be done in order to ensure and maintain a safe environment for patients, sleep technologists, and respiratory therapists.
He also discusses why it can take months just to see a sleep professional, and five months for a patient to receive treatment after being diagnosed. For patients who are healthy enough, the trend is to move more toward in-home sleep studies, sleep diagnosis, and treatment.
Press play to learn about the ways in which Limina Sleep Consulting is working against the challenges and barriers to sleep health and treatment, uncovering avenues for better sleeping problem solutions, and teaming up with other organizations in the process.
For more information, visit https://liminasleepconsultingllc.weebly.com/.
You may or may not remember learning about the periodic table in chemistry class and why it's shaped the way it is. Dr. Preston MacDougall explains the orbital model that's behind it, and why orbitals are actually just invented mathematical entities.
Tune in to learn the following:
Preston J. MacDougall, Ph.D. is an author and professor at Middle Tennessee State University, and returning guest on today's episode. He begins by explaining the orbital model, which he says is a convenient model for teaching early students of chemistry how to understand electron configurations and why the periodic table is organized in the way that it is.
However, he says that orbitals are actually just mathematical entities that do not apply to anything but single electrons. Why? Dr. MacDougall explains that it's because the orbital model assumes that an individual electron is not influenced by the motions of all of the other electrons around it.
As opposed to the orbital model, Dr. MacDougall prefers to consider the probabilistic picture, which is that every electron in an atom has a certain probability of being found at a certain point around the nucleus at any given time. This is referred to as the charge or cloud density, and he explains how it changes with relation to the proximity of the electron to the nucleus of the atom.
He continues by discussing the vibrational timescale of molecules, which is less than a trillionth of a second. So, how is it that scientists conduct experiments on molecules that vibrate so quickly? He explains the method of obtaining x-ray diffraction data, which begins by the cooling of crystals with liquid nitrogen or liquid helium until they reach a temperature of about -250 degrees Celsius.
At that point, molecules reach the lowest possible energy state of zero-point motion, where chemists can then "deconvolute" the electron cloud and make it appear as though a molecule is standing still. Dr. MacDougall expounds on the ways in which the pressure produced by atoms on other atoms can be modified to produce electron cloud changes, explains the octet rule and stability of noble gasses, touches on the applications of quantum chemistry and molecular modeling in drug design, and so much more.
To learn more, visit https://www.mtsu.edu/faculty/preston-j-macdougall.
Richard Marshall is the Business Development Director for the company that has created Cutii, an autonomous robot created to enlarge social connection for seniors who want to age in place at home.
He describes some of the robot's functions, including
Richard Marshall describes the goal in creating Cutii as a tool to combat loneliness for seniors. He reminds listeners that there's a tidal wave of people entertaining retirement as well as a growing problem of disconnection and loneliness in society, especially for seniors.
Therefore, they hope to use Cutii to connect people who want to age in place at home, to allow people to stay at home as long as possible while still communicating in a fuller way with the outside world.
He adds that they've deliberately designed it to not imitate a human; rather it is a fully-operated robot that moves along on wheels, is about five feet tall, and it is sturdy and accessible. He provides examples of its usefulness such as a senior's kids' ability to call their mother up and send Cutti to find her in the living space if they are concerned or just want to chat.
The kids can control Cutii remotely and find her and then talk with her. Conversely, the senior can control Cutti with their voice and tell it to come where they are for any need, including social connection with distance family and friends.
Richard Marshall also explains several design features and how it may serve well in an emergency yet also as an enrichment, for example, as a way to participate in a cooking class in real time. It is in the market now in France and has been successful and well-received.
He remarks that it's not YouTube on wheels, rather a newer more flexible way to offer live interactions when you are limited to being in your home. They are starting product trials in the U.S. and should be hitting the market in late 2020 and are ready to talk to channel partners in the U.S. now as well.
For more, see the web page at https://www.cutii.io/en/
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