SAN ANTONIO —
Fatty acids for fighting cancer
We could be one step closer to figuring out how to ward off cancer but of course it not so simple.
The answer might be in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids according to new research from the University of Georgia.
250,000 people were followed for more than a decade in a United-Kingdom based study. In that study, around 30,000 people developed cancer.
The research goes on to say no studies could conclusively determine whether omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids reduced cancer rates or increased the likelihood of surviving a cancer diagnosis.
Importantly, the benefits of high levels of fatty acids were not dependent on other risk factors like BMI, alcohol use or physical activity.
But Yuchen Zhang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in UGA’s College of Public Health said Higher omega-3 and omega-6 levels were associated with lower rates of cancer from this study.
“These findings suggest that the average person should focus on getting more of these fatty acids in their diets,” Zhang said.
Participants with higher levels of omega-3s had lower rates of colon, stomach and lung cancer, in addition to lower rates of other digestive tract cancers.
High omega-6 levels led to lower rates of 14 different cancers, including brain, malignant melanoma, bladder and more.
AI and biomedical engineering
AI continues to come in handy and now it might just help in future medical diagnosis in humans even more.
Lehigh University collaborated with Massachusetts General Hospital to lead a multi-institutional research team that is transforming medical text and images into faster disease diagnonsis, enhanced medical reporting, improved drug discovery and more.
"This work combines two types of AI into a decision support tool for medical providers," explains Lichao Sun, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Lehigh University and a lead author of the study. "One side of the system is trained to understand biomedical images, and one is trained to understand and assess biomedical text. The combination of these allows the model to tackle a wide range of biomedical challenges, using insight gleaned from databases of biomedical imagery and from the analysis and synthesis of scientific and medical research reports."
BiomedGPT is led by a core Lehigh faculty team in computer science and engineering, with contributions from Sun and colleagues Lifang He, an assistant professor, and Brian D. Davison, professor and chair. Sun reports that the team's success is bolstered by the outstanding work of an active group of CSE doctoral students including Kai Zhang, Rong Zhou, Eashan Adhikarla, Zhiling Yan, Yixin Liu, and Jun Yu.
Bat beauty contest
A beauty contest but for bats and the winner is “Hoary Potter.”
“Hoary Potter,” a bat in Oregon was recently crowned this year’s winner in an annual bat beauty contest put on by the Bureau of Land Management according to AP News.
This is the third year a bat from Oregon has won the contest. Last year, “William ShakespEAR,” a female Townsend’s big-eared bat from southern Oregon took the title.
In 2022, a canyon bat named “Barbara” also from southern Oregon was declared the winner.
The federal agency has held the competition since 2019 to raise awareness about the animal’s ecological importance. The bats are part of wild populations living on public lands, and are photographed by agency staff. BLM posted the photos on its Facebook and Instagram accounts, and asked people to vote for the cutest one.
