In the new roundup of the most interesting science news of the past week: Alzheimer’s disease can be diagnosed using brain MRI; Canterbury stone axes turn out to be Britain’s oldest; Unexpected benefits of celibacy.
Diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease can be very difficult-especially in the early stages, when the patient can still be helped. At least, that’s what people thought until recently. However, as an experiment conducted by British scientists has shown, this disease can be diagnosed quite accurately based on the results of a single brain MRI scan. However, there is one important condition: the images obtained should not be examined by a living neurologist, but by a machine trained by him. In other words, artificial intelligence. Self-learning programs have long since learned to diagnose many diseases no worse, and some even better, than practicing physicians. This is simply because no doctor is able to remember hundreds or even thousands of x-ray images, let alone in high resolution. And even if they could, comparing each one to the “original” (a specific patient’s image) would take any neurologist days, if not weeks. The computer algorithm can complete the same task in a few hours. The question is, how accurate can the output of artificial intelligence be? The experimental answer to this question comes from scientists at Imperial College London. They “fed” an intelligent machine with MRI brain scans of nearly 800 patients with confirmed diagnoses, and then “asked” it to analyze a completely different set of images. We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. The number of offers should remain: episodes. End of story. Podcast Advertising. The artificial intelligence correctly identified Alzheimer’s syndrome in 98% of cases. In addition, the algorithm accurately determined the stage of the disease in 79% of patients, including the earliest stage. As the experiment’s organizers themselves noted, “Currently, none of the simple and widely available diagnostic methods are able to predict the progression of Alzheimer’s disease with such stunning accuracy. “Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, early detection allows patients to receive all available help and support and to begin treatment to manage symptoms and make plans for the future,” the university’s website explains. Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, a chronic and usually progressive syndrome that involves a decline in memory, language, comprehension, independent thinking, spatial orientation, and mental arithmetic. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 50 million people worldwide suffer from this disease, with an additional 6-7 million joining the ranks each year. No statistics are available for Russia. According to Olga Tkacheva, chief geriatrician at the Ministry of Health, there is no national registry of patients in the country.
When archaeologists in the 1920s discovered a cache of prehistoric tools used by ancient inhabitants of an island in southern Britain, the find was not initially considered extraordinary. After all, hand-held stone axes like the ones found at Fordwich (Canterbury) could be found in any European country. For almost 100 years, the discovery was kept in the British Museum. Only now has it become clear that the age of the artifacts found is no less than 560 thousand years. This makes them not only the oldest ever found in the country, but also one of the earliest in all of Europe. The discovery was made by a team of archaeologists from the University of Cambridge using the latest dating technique (infrared fluorescence method). This allowed the team to date the tools found to between 560 and 620 thousand years ago – the time when the ancestors of modern humans first arrived in the area of modern Britain. Scientists say that stone axes were most likely used for butchering animals and processing skins, which were later used to sew primitive clothing. According to Professor Stinger of the British Museum of Natural History, it is difficult to say exactly which species of human in southern Britain was involved, but it is most likely the Heidelberg Man, from which the first Neanderthals evolved about half a million years ago. After receiving the results, the scientists decided that it was worth digging more thoroughly around the Canterbury Hideaway – and they were not wrong. During the excavations, many new pieces of evidence of ancient human activity were discovered.
Many religious organizations require their clergy to observe chastity, that is, never to engage in sexual relations and to devote themselves entirely to serving a higher power. This obligation may seem strange, especially when one considers that the instinct for reproduction and procreation is the main engine of evolution, allowing species to evolve through natural selection. Therefore, its suppression is unnatural, and for the idea of celibacy (as Catholics call it) to arise, a very weighty reason is needed. Some scientists believe that at some point, people began refusing to have children, following established social norms, because cooperation and mutual aid are another cornerstone of human evolution. Others believe that religious leaders instituted the mandatory vow of celibacy to satisfy their own selfish interests – so that the property of a person who has decided to devote himself to serving God ends up belonging to the religious community. Anthropologists from University College London conducted their own research, studying the peculiarities of life in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. An article published as a result of this study in the journal of the British Royal Society (equivalent to the Academy of Sciences) claims that, until recently, it was customary for some Tibetan families to send one of their sons to a local monastery to maintain chastity for the rest of his life. As a result, on average, every seventh boy became a monk. Usually, parents cite religious reasons for sending a child to a convent. But British researchers have discovered at least one more important reason. The villages of highland Tibet live by raising yaks and goats and working tiny plots of land. Wealth is usually passed down through the male line, and by sending a boy to the monastery, families have effectively reduced the potential for conflict between brothers in the competition for inheritance. Therefore, there are few first-born children among the monks-usually they remain in the world and inherit the parental home, but already the second or third son is given to the monastery. A study by anthropologists confirmed that men who have a monk brother are generally wealthier (they own more livestock) and more fertile (they have more children) than others. A woman’s financial situation is in no way affected by the presence or absence of a monastic brother.