Google is testing an AI system to help vision-impaired people run races

https://www.engadget.com/google-project-guideline-blind-vision-impaired-accessibility-202659152.html

Google is testing an artificial intelligence system designed to help blind and vision-impaired people to run races by themselves. Project Guideline, which is an early-phase research program, is an attempt to give those people more independence. They wouldn’t necessarily need to rely on a tethered human guide or a guide dog to help them around a course.

To use the system, a runner attaches an Android phone to a Google-designed harness that goes around their waist, according to VentureBeat. A Project Guideline app can use the phone’s camera to track a guideline that’s been laid down on a course. The app then sends audio cues to bone-conducting headphones when a runner veers away from the line — the sound will get louder in one ear the further they stray to the side. The app doesn’t need an internet connection to work, and it can account for a number of lighting and weather conditions.

Google developed the system with the help of Thomas Panek, president and CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind and an avid runner. It’s looking to team up with other organizations to set up courses with painted guidelines in a number of communities. 

The company has rolled out a number of other features in recent years to assist blind and vision-impaired people. Detailed spoken walking directions in Google Maps may help them to move around town independently. Chrome’s AI can recognize images and provide descriptions of what they depict. Google’s Lookout app, meanwhile, can give users an audio cue if there’s a possible obstacle in their path and read documents out loud.

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

November 20, 2020 at 02:36PM

Hypoallergenic Cats: Scientists Are Developing Treatments to Make Cats Allergy-Free

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/hypoallergenic-cats-scientists-are-developing-treatments-to-make-cats


Every year, around 3.2 million cats are placed in U.S. animal shelters, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There are many reasons why these pets are given up, but one of the most common is allergies. Cats are one of the most common allergy triggers in the world, with at least 10 percent of Americans exhibiting some symptoms. These symptoms can be mild, but they can also cause serious health complications, particularly among younger children who are at risk of developing asthma through prolonged exposure. And while there are a variety of ways to treat allergies, most of them only address the symptoms rather than removing the underlying cause. The only way to do that, for now, is to remove the cat itself.  

“With any disease, you want to address the root cause, rather than just the symptoms, and that’s all that is available today,” says Gary Jennings, a biochemist and the CEO of Swiss biotech company HypoPet. “It’s suboptimal.”   

Luckily for cat lovers, researchers and companies like HypoPet are working on alternative treatments to cat allergies –– ones that treat the cat instead of the human. And although this research is still in its beginning phases, don’t be surprised if cat allergies become a thing of the past sometime soon.      

Allergy Vaccine for Cats

HypoPet, which spun off from research conducted at the University of Zurich in 2014, aims to prevent household cats from producing a key allergen called Fel d 1. It’s a protein produced in various cat glands and is found in their saliva and on their skin. Fel d 1 is the primary cause of allergic reactions to cats among humans.  

HypoPet is working on an experimental vaccine called Fel-CuMV (or HypoCat), which incorporates particles from the cucumber mosaic virus attached to a Fel d 1 protein. The vaccine tricks the cat’s immune system into recognizing the protein as a foreign intruder. This induces the production of antibodies that neutralize the Fel d 1 proteins, essentially eliminating their presence in the cat’s body.  

Although HypoPet has been developing this treatment since 2014, in the past year they’ve made accelerated progress toward their vaccine. In July 2019, they published a paper in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reporting the results of a number of studies they did on the vaccine’s effects on 70 cats, showing that it successfully induced a sustained antibody response in the felines. They also noted that cat saliva samples contained lower concentrations of the allergenic protein, and that overall, the vaccine didn’t seem to harm the animals.  

In March of this year, they published the results of a long-term clinical study on 10 cat owners with feline allergies. The cats were vaccinated, and over the course of two years, the symptoms of the human allergy sufferers were tracked. Cat owners showed a significant reduction in their allergy symptoms, and they could spend longer periods of time directly interacting with their cats before developing symptoms, according to the work published in the journal Viruses.  

Recently, HypoPet began working with a new business partner. Jennings declined to name names, but says they’re one of the top global animal health companies. They hope to get the vaccine on the market in the next two to three years, Jennings adds.    

Jennings says the HypoCat vaccine is a practical solution for cat owners with allergies because of how long the antibiotic reaction lasts. After the initial vaccination, cats will only have to be vaccinated roughly every six months to a year to maintain the effects. This treatment is a stark contrast to decongestant sprays or daily allergy pills, which require consistent use to effectively prevent allergy symptoms.  

“We think it’s going to be cost-effective and convenient for the cat owner,” Jennings says. “And we know it’s safe and well tolerated for the cat.”     

CRISPR Cat

Another preventative method for cat allergies is to delete the gene that produces Fel d 1 proteins altogether, effectively making the cat completely hypoallergenic. This method is being tested by a Virginia-based company, Indoor Biotechnologies, which researches and develops tools to measure different types of indoor allergens. President and CEO Martin Chapman, a former professor of microbiology at University of Virginia, says the company has been researching CRISPR gene-editing software in cats for the last two years.  

The project, known as CRISPR Cat, is being led by biologist Nicole Brackett. Brackett says her research started by sequencing Fel d 1 from 50 cat tissue samples, and finding DNA regions that were consistent among the cats and were suitable to test CRISPR editing on. Brackett then tested the CRISPR technology on a feline kidney cell line, using 10 different synthetic RNA guides targeting the genes that produce Fel d 1. The project ended with a 50 to 55 percent success rate in editing the genes out of the samples. Because the team was only working with cells, no cats were harmed.  

“50 to 55 percent efficiency is great,” Brackett says. “Especially because the cell type that we were using was not a very easy cell type to work with, and the target is a bit difficult as well. So that was a great sign.”  

Brackett says her team is currently working on acquiring and testing samples from different types of cats, such as big cats or wild cats, to compare the genetic structures and Fel d 1 production of different feline species. Because there isn’t that much research on cat allergens, Brackett hopes the project can shed more light on how Fel d 1 is produced among all feline species, as well as house cats.         

Brackett says there is some concern that CRISPR technology could cause negative effects in the cats. The genetic scissors they use called Cas9 is only intended to cut or modify a specific part of the DNA, but it’s possible that it could change another part of the genome and cause unanticipated mutations in the cat. Fortunately, Brackett says there are several newly developed tools that improve gene-editing accuracy, which has helped to minimize the risk CRISPR has on its subject.  

Chapman says the CRISPR technology has a major advantage over other forms of potential allergy treatments because it’s the only method that removes allergy risk permanently. Others only reduce allergen levels temporarily, whereas CRISPR editing allows for the complete elimination of Fel d 1 proteins from a house cat.

Furthermore, Chapman says the team hopes that their CRISPR research can determine the function of the protein in the cat, and why it is produced in the first place.  “If that were the case, then one could look for other alternatives to control the allergen,” Chapman says. “So that, big picture, is what we’re looking at.”

via Discover Main Feed https://ift.tt/2rbDICG

November 20, 2020 at 01:09PM

It’s Time to Embrace Cloud Gaming, Especially GeForce Now

https://gizmodo.com/its-time-to-embrace-cloud-gaming-especially-geforce-no-1845589233


Screenshot: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

GeForce Now is on iOS. Luna is on iOS. Stadia and xCloud are coming to iOS in the not too distant future. Ideally, this would have been through a stand-alone app and not the Safari browser, but hey, when Apple says you have to submit every individual game on your cloud gaming platform for review to get it on the App Store, you improvise. These companies have likely been working on iOS web app support long before Epic Games vs. Apple saga started. But that’s not as important as cloud gaming hitting one of its major promises: playing games on any device. We’re there. The cloud has made gaming more accessible to those who might not have the cash or the desire to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars on a gaming PC or laptop.

Yet every single one of these platforms does cloud gaming in a different way. Each one is crafted for a different kind of user in mind, but right now none are as consumer-friendly as GeForce Now. Not only can you use it on PC, Mac, Android, iOS, Chromebook, and Shield (a media streaming device like Chromecast), but it’s free to use and it’s compatible with over 650 games that you might already own on Steam, Epic, GOG, or Ubisoft.

GeForce Now has a “bring your own games” model, which connects to accounts you have on other digital storefronts to let you play the same games over the cloud instead of your local machine. It’s the only dedicated cloud gaming service that doesn’t require a subscription nor you to purchase games from its service. Of course, if you want to pay $5 a month you can play games with ray tracing, get extended play sessions, and get priority access to re-join the server queue, but if you ever decide to stop paying for all those extra perks, you won’t lose your games. They’re still right where you bought ‘em.

Call me old-school, but growing up in a time long before downloadable copies of games existed has made me a staunch advocate of consumers owning the games they purchase. Sure, you pay more money up front, but if you play a game often enough and long enough, that $50 or $60 game more than pays for itself in a few months. And you can always return to it without restarting a subscription. GeForce Now combines the best of that old-school model with cloud gaming.

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The only catch is that if there’s a game you want to play that GeForce Now isn’t compatible with, you have to either find it on another service, play it locally on your PC (if you can), or wait until it comes to GeForce Now. But every cloud gaming platform has its limitations on the library front, and other than that GeForce Now is cut-and-dry. Straight forward. Uncomplicated. In a world that is dominated by subscription services for practically everything, it’s so nice not to have to worry about one for video games.

Stadia, Luna, and xCloud are all great, but I see them as the back-ups to GeForce Now. Their libraries are much smaller at the moment, and they all use subscription models that revoke access to your games once you stop paying. In the case of Luna ($6/month) and xCloud ($15/month with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) your ability to access the cloud and play games on different devices goes when your subscription is up. Stadia does have individual games for purchase, but any games you get for “free” on its $10 a month Pro subscription tier disappear once your subscription is up.

Each service gets a little more complicated from there. Luna, for instance, has positioned itself early on to offer channels like Prime Video. That $6 a month will get you around 50 games already included with “base” Luna, but if you want to add on the Ubisoft game channel, that’s another $15 a month. You don’t need the base service to get the Ubisoft channel, but if you want both that monthly price becomes $21 a month. Some people might like that model, but if there’s a game I want, I just want that game.

One of the most annoying things about the subscription cloud model for games, movies, and TV shows is that feeling like I have to hunt around for that one game I want to play or that one movie I want to watch. I get it—studios are going to make deals with specific streaming services so they can attract more people to their service. Hell, I bought a PS4 in the past just so I could play an exclusive title. When Fable 4 is eventually released, I’ll buy an Xbox Series X just to play it if it’s not on PC. But these days I often find myself heading to Amazon first to rent or purchase something specific just so I don’t have to waste time looking across Hulu, Netflix, Shudder, CBS All Access, whatever. If I can get a physical copy of a movie, even better. When Friends left Netflix, I bought the entire collection on Blu-ray because I didn’t want to subscribe to yet another streaming service.

I feel the same way with Stadia and xCloud. I’ve already invested in so many individual copies of games on Steam, Epic, and Ubisoft that it makes zero sense for me to purchase another copy on Stadia or get an Ubisoft subscription just to play it in the cloud when GeForce Now is around. (Not to mention I’ve claimed nearly every free game Epic has offered over the last year. No subscription required.) And sure, you can buy stand-alone copies of all the xCloud-enabled games, but if you want to play in the cloud, which is limited to Android devices at the moment, you have to get the subscription.

Cloud gaming is for everyone, but gaming subscriptions? Not so much. If you spend all of your free time playing games, or want to try out a few games on the cheap before committing to a stand-alone copy, OK, paying for a subscription for just a month or two is a logical choice, especially since game demos aren’t really a thing anymore. No cloud gaming service stands a chance against a bad internet or mobile connection, but in a world where scalpers buy up all the new graphics cards and processors and consoles the day of release, cloud gaming is the best go-to alternative to play the games you want if you don’t have the system you want—and when it comes to cost and convenience, GeForce Now has the best model.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

November 19, 2020 at 11:36AM