Still in a Crib, yet Being Given Antipsychotics

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Andrew Rios’s seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years.

When Andrew screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew.

It was just ‘Take this, no big deal,’ like they were Tic Tacs,” said Genesis Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. “He was just a baby.”

Cases like that of Andrew Rios, in which children age 2 or younger are prescribed psychiatric medications to address alarmingly violent or withdrawn behavior, are rising rapidly, data shows. Many doctors worry that these drugs, designed for adults and only warily accepted for certain school-age youngsters, are being used to treat children still in cribs despite no published research into their effectiveness and potential health risks for children so young.

Almost 20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just one year before, according to the prescription data company IMS Health. Prescriptions for the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) rose 23 percent in one year for that age group, to about 83,000. (Read more from “Still in a Crib, yet Being Given Antipsychotics” HERE)

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Autonomous Weaponized Robots: Not Just Science Fiction

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Robots have been keeping police officers safe for years by disposing of bombs and assisting in hostage situations, but a rapid increase in technology could trigger a robot revolution over the next decade.

Robots are already being weaponized: In 2014, a South African company started selling drones that could shoot 80 pepper balls per second, and police in North Dakota have been cleared to use a type of drone that is armed with tear gas and Tasers. Police use of Tasers—they’re designed to be nonlethal but can trigger cardiac arrest—killed 540 Americans from 2001 to 2013, according to Amnesty International. Right now, this technology requires an operator to remotely control the robots and the weapons.

(Read more from “Autonomous Weaponized Robots: Not Just Science Fiction” HERE)

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Scientists Have Found a New Strain of Bacteria That Is Resistant to All Antibiotics

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FOR years experts have warned there would come a day when antibiotics would cease being effective.

And it seems that day could be sooner than first thought after scientists discovered a new superbug that is not just impervious to the last line of defence medication, but has the ability to infect other bacteria.

But instead of destroying its virulent cousins this new strain of e.coli actually strengthens them by giving them the same antibiotic shield . . .

Experts, while worried about the potential effect this discovery would have, hoped it would remain in China . . .

But this week those hopes were dashed when researchers in Denmark revealed they had found a similar strain in poultry from Germany as well as in a Danish man who had never travelled outside the country. (Read more from “Scientists Have Found a New Strain of Bacteria That Is Resistant to All Antibiotics” HERE)

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US Children Diagnosed with ADHD Explodes 43% in Last Decade

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The prevalence of ADHD diagnoses soared 43 percent in the United States in the first decade of the century, with more than one in 10 youths now diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, researchers said Tuesday.

ADHD is the most commonly identified mental disorder in the United States, often treated with psychological therapy and prescription stimulants like Ritalin to improve behavior and focus.

Its precise causes are unknown, though some research has pointed to difficulties during pregnancy, exposure to toxins and family history as playing a role. . .

When researchers looked specifically at teenagers, they found the diagnoses had risen 52 percent since 2003.

“This analysis suggests that 5.8 million US children ages five to 17 now have this diagnosis. . . (Read more from “US Children Diagnosed with ADHD Explodes 43% in Last Decade” HERE)

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A Peek Inside the Orion Spacecraft That Will Fly Us to Mars

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The length of humanity’s planned journey to Mars will be much more than the 6 months or so that it’ll take to fly there. Though NASA plans to send astronauts to the red planet sometime in the 2030s or 40s, it’s going to take decades of research and testing to develop the equipment to get us there.

The ship that will carry humans to another planet is the Orion capsule, of which NASA is already testing prototypes. And at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Popular Science got to take a look inside an Orion mock-up.

If the spacecraft looks a little cramped for a 6- to 9-month trip, that’s because the capsule won’t be going to Mars alone. The plan is to launch Orion from Earth and, once in space, have it dock with a larger habitat module (whose design is still TBD) before beginning its journey to Mars.

Plus, Orion engineer Stuart McClung says the spacecraft is not all that small compared to what we use to send astronauts to the International Space Station. “If you walk over to the Soyuz capsule on the other side of the building, this is like a big stretch limo compared to that Soyuz capsule.”

The engineers at the Johnson Space Center use the Orion mock-up for designing, training, and testing–for example, deciding on a seat layout and crew interfaces. (Read more from “A Peek Inside the Orion Spacecraft That Will Fly Us to Mars” HERE)

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Billionaire Jeff Greene Says Technology Will Kill White-Collar Jobs, Hosts Conference on Inequality

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Touch-screen ordering at fast food restaurants, robots welding car parts at Tesla factories, apps like Uber taking a bite out of the taxi and limo industry: They’re all good for innovation but perhaps not so great for the workers whose jobs are on the line, according to real estate billionaire Jeff Greene.

“What globalization did to blue collar jobs and the working class economy over the past 30 or 40 years, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics will do to the white collar economy — and at a much, much faster pace,” says Greene.

It’s a problem that will only exacerbate the growing gap between the rich and the poor, he claims, because we’ve left ourselves unprepared for the inevitable automation of many jobs traditionally done by humans.

“I realized that that is the greatest threat we have in our country today,” says Greene. “So I thought, ‘Let’s convene some of the greatest minds from academia, government, business and the nonprofit sector to come together to talk realistically about what’s happening.’”

What he devised is a two-day conference spanning Monday and Tuesday dubbed “Closing the Gap: Solutions for An Inclusive Economy,” hosted by Greene at Palm Beach’s Tideline Ocean Resort & Spa. Speakers include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, author Thomas Friedman, former Apple and Pepsi CEO John Sculley, lawyer and TV personality Star Jones and boxing legend Mike Tyson. (Read more from “Billionaire Jeff Greene Says Technology Will Kill White-Collar Jobs, Hosts Conference on Inequality” HERE)

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Is the Future of Music a Chip in Your Brain?

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The year is 2040, and as you wait for a drone to deliver your pizza, you decide to throw on some tunes. Once a commodity bought and sold in stores, music is now an omnipresent utility invoked via spoken- word commands. In response to a simple “play,” an algorithmic DJ opens a blended set of songs, incorporating information about your location, your recent activities and your historical preferences—complemented by biofeedback from your implanted SmartChip. A calming set of lo-fi indie hits streams forth, while the algorithm adjusts the beats per minute and acoustic profile to the rain outside and the fact that you haven’t eaten for six hours.

The rise of such dynamically generated music is the story of the age. The album, that relic of the 20th century, is long dead. Even the concept of a “song” is starting to blur. Instead there are hooks, choruses, catchphrases and beats—a palette of musical elements that are mixed and matched on the fly by the computer, with occasional human assistance. Your life is scored like a movie, with swelling crescendos for the good parts, plaintive, atonal plunks for the bad, and fuzz-pedal guitar for the erotic. The DJ’s ability to read your emotional state approaches clairvoyance. But the developers discourage the name “artificial intelligence” to describe such technology. They prefer the term “mood-affiliated procedural remixing.”

Right now, the mood is hunger. You’ve put on weight lately, as your refrigerator keeps reminding you. With its assistance—and the collaboration of your DJ—you’ve come up with a comprehensive plan for diet and exercise, along with the attendant soundtrack. Already, you’ve lost six pounds. Although you sometimes worry that the machines are running your life, it’s not exactly a dystopian experience—the other day, after a fast- paced dubstep remix spurred you to a personal best on your daily run through the park, you burst into tears of joy.

Cultural production was long thought to be an impregnable stronghold of human intelligence, the one thing the machines could never do better than humans. But a few maverick researchers persisted, and—aided by startling, asymptotic advances in other areas of machine learning—suddenly, one day, they could. To be a musician now is to be an arranger. To be a songwriter is to code. Atlanta, the birthplace of “trap” music, is now a locus of brogrammer culture. Nashville is a leading technology incubator. The Capitol Records tower was converted to condos after the label uploaded its executive suite to the cloud. (Read more from “Is the Future of Music a Chip in Your Brain?” HERE)

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Bacteria Resistant to All Known Forms of Antibiotics Has Now Spread from China to Europe

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Just weeks after the discovery in China of bacteria resistant to all known forms of treatment, the same strain has been found in Denmark. Worse: It’s been there since 2012.

Late last week researchers at the Technical University of Denmark announced they had found the feared ‘invulnerability’ gene among E. coli bacteria samples taken from humans and food. . .

Five more examples of bacteria containing the mcr-1 gene were found among samples taken from food imported between 2012 and 2014.

Danish researchers fear the untreatable superbug is now firmly embedded in Europe. The man suffering the blood infection had not traveled outside the country and the infected imports were German poultry products. . .

What makes mcr-1 such a threat, other than its immunity to all known antibiotics, is that it can spread fast. It has been found to reside in plasmids, mobile ‘packets’ of DNA which can be copied and transferred between different bacteria. (Read more from “Bacteria Resistant to All Known Forms of Antibiotics Has Now Spread from China to Europe” HERE)

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Cannabis Causes Psychosis-Like Effects in Healthy People That’s Similar to Schizophrenia

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Smoking cannabis can induce psychosis-like effects, similar to the symptoms people diagnosed with schizophrenia endure, scientists have said.

While past research as come this this conclusion in the past, the mechanisms underlying these effects are less clear.

Now, a team of scientists at Yale School of Medicine have found the active ingredient in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC) increases random neural activity, known as neural noise, in the brains of healthy drug-users.

Researchers studied the effects of delta-9-THC on electrical brain activity in 24 human subjects, who took part in a three-day study.

During the experiments, they received two doses of intravenous delta-9-THC or a placebo in a double-blind, randomised, cross-over and counterbalanced design. (Read more from “Cannabis Causes Psychosis-Like Effects in Healthy People That’s Similar to Schizophrenia” HERE)

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Connecticut Police Officer Who Reported Racist Letter Wrote It

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A former Bridgeport police officer who claimed someone left a racist memo on police letterhead in his mailbox at headquarters in February admitted to writing the letter himself and has been charged with filing a false report, according to police.

Former Officer Clive Higgins reported that he found a racist hate letter in his police mailbox the morning of Monday, Feb. 9 and feared for his life because of it.

The letter, printed on paper marked with the department’s official letterhead, started off with “WHITE POWER” and went on to say “Officer Clive Higgins doesn’t belong here in this Police Department” and “These Black Officers belong in the toilet.”

A month earlier, Higgins was acquitted in connection with a 2011 police brutality case in which officers were caught on camera beating a suspect at Beardsley Park and shooting him with a stun gun. Two other officers were convicted, but a federal jury found Higgins not guilty . . .

The report of the racist letter prompted the Bridgeport Guardians, a minority officers’ organization, to hold a news conference, calling the letter “racial, insensitive and threatening.” They said it was the most recent of at least three hateful notes to circulate within the department within a year. (Read more from “Connecticut Police Officer Who Reported Racist Letter Wrote It” HERE)

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