May/June 2020

Ethics in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Author(s)3: Art Johnson
Ethics in the Era of Artificial Intelligence 150 150 IEEE Pulse
Ethics can be interesting and fascinatingly compelling because of the subtle natures of its solutions in ambiguous situations. Articles on ethical issues and college courses on ethics rarely present answers to the questions that are posed. That is because ethical responses are highly situational and depend a lot on commonly accepted, but not codified, beliefs, and attitudes. read more

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Psychiatry

Author(s)3: Summer Allen
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Psychiatry 1364 750 IEEE Pulse
An estimated 792 million people live with mental health disorders worldwide—more than one in ten people—and this number is expected to grow in the shadow of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough mental health professionals to treat all these people. Can artificial intelligence (AI) help? While many psychiatrists have different views on this question, recent developments suggest AI may change the practice of psychiatry for both clinicians and patients. read more

The Great Exhale: Using Breath Analysis to Detect Disease

Author(s)3: Leslie Mertz
The Great Exhale: Using Breath Analysis to Detect Disease 1000 750 IEEE Pulse
Your breath gives away a lot of information. Besides betraying that you’ve had garlic or onions for lunch, it also contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that provide quite telling biomarkers of disease. Building on the potential capability of VOCs to detect illness, the U.K. company Owlstone Medical is now developing a testing platform called Breath Biopsy [1] as a noninvasive diagnostic method and is collaborating with clinicians, researchers, and other biomedical companies around the world on its potential application for early detection of various cancers, respiratory illnesses, and immune diseases. read more

DNA-like Materials Could Open New Computing Frontiers

Author(s)3: David L. Chandler
DNA-like Materials Could Open New Computing Frontiers 1000 667 IEEE Pulse
As computers have progressed over the last few decades, with their component transistors getting ever smaller and ever more numerous on a single chip, that relentless progress, famously described by Moore’s Law, has begun to bump up against fundamental physical limits to what can be done with the present etched-lines-on-silicon technology. But now, a new twist involving an inorganic molecule that has a DNA-like helical shape may provide an alternative pathway that could shrink transistors down to atom-sized scales. And even DNA molecules themselves might ultimately become the bits and bytes and logic gates of the future. read more

Chips Hold the Key to Reproductive Health

Author(s)3: Jim Banks
Chips Hold the Key to Reproductive Health 1000 666 IEEE Pulse
Female reproductive medicine may not have been entirely overlooked in the history of medical research, but it has never been given the attention that it deserves. There are signs, however, that the spotlight is turning toward the most essential of human processes. read more

E-Textiles for Health Monitoring: Off to a Slow Start, but Coming Soon

Author(s)3: Leslie Mertz
E-Textiles for Health Monitoring: Off to a Slow Start, but Coming Soon 1000 667 IEEE Pulse
Smart technology is in cellphones, televisions, cars, and home appliances, but smart textiles haven’t inundated the market yet. While engineers have been developing new and interesting ways to marry electronics and fabrics for several years now, the average person isn’t wearing e-tights to audit vital signs during a workout, switching to electronically enhanced bed sheets to track sleep patterns, or adding smart base layers to the everyday wardrobe. If the technology is moving forward as rapidly as it appears to be, why aren’t e-textiles flooding the market? read more

The Rise of Biometrics in Sports

Author(s)3: Mary Bates
The Rise of Biometrics in Sports 540 608 IEEE Pulse
Athletes—and the cadre of professionals who surround them—are always looking for an edge over their opponents. Advances in technology have now made a whole new class of information readily available to athletes, coaches, trainers, and even fans. It’s called biometrics, the science of measuring and analyzing data collected from the body, such as heart rate or hormone levels. read more

Organismic Sets: What Are They?

Author(s)3: Max Valentinuzzi
Organismic Sets: What Are They? 150 150 IEEE Pulse
The term Organismic Sets described a puzzling and difficult area of research that apparently appears nowadays forgotten, for recent publications cannot be pinpointed. The objective here intends to find out what this subject deals with, not trying to go deeper in its intrincacies, for it would exceed by far the possibilities of the article. Instead, the article only calls the attention and perhaps stimulates the young mathematically oriented researcher. read more

A Comprehensive Physically Based Approach to Modeling in Bioengineering and Life Sciences,1st ed.

Author(s)3: Paul King
A Comprehensive Physically Based Approach to Modeling in Bioengineering and Life Sciences,1st ed. 150 150 IEEE Pulse
When this reviewer opted to receive and review this text, it was hoped that it would present as a complementary text to those of Drs. Carson and Cobelli [Modelling Methodology for Physiology and Medicine (2013) and Introduction to Modeling in Physiology and Medicine, 2nd ed. (2019)]. This was not to be the case. read more