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Vaccine offers hope in fight against dengue fever
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AI can somehow tell if you’ll die soon
SIE/GWC/LEIBNIZ-IZW/NCNP
ARTIFICIAL intelligence can use heart scans to predict a person’s chance of dying within a year, even if the scans look normal to medics. How it does so is a mystery. Brandon Fornwalt at healthcare provider Geisinger in Pennsylvania and his colleagues tasked an AI with examining 1.77 million electrocardiogram (ECG) results from nearly 400,000 people to predict who was at a higher risk of dying within the next year.
Tiny ‘deer’ isn’t extinct after all A species of small deer-like animal has been spotted in Vietnam for the first time in almost 30 years. The rediscovery of the silver-backed chevrotain near the city of Nha Trang is reassuring, given previous suspicions that it might have died out as a result of poaching and habitat loss (Nature Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/ s41559-019-1027-7).
Space flight causes changes in the activity of thousands of genes in heart cells, but these revert mostly to normal within weeks of being back on Earth (Stem Cell Reports, doi.org/ddww). A team made the discovery by sending heart cells to the International Space Station.
A grand genome sequencing plan A project to record the genomes of 60,000 species of animals, plants, fungi and complex cells found in the British Isles is about to get under way. The Darwin Tree of Life project has raised the £9 million needed to collect and sequence the first 2000 species.
Tropical diseases
used by doctors range between 0.65 and 0.8, says Fornwalt. The AI accurately predicted risk of death even in people deemed by cardiologists to have a normal ECG. Three cardiologists who separately reviewed normallooking ECGs weren’t able to pick up the risk patterns that the AI detected. It is still unclear what patterns the AI is picking up, which makes some physicians reluctant to use such algorithms. The research will be presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Dallas, Texas, on 16 November. Donna Lu Wildlife
Arctic melt may have let killer virus spread
YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Going to space changes the heart
An ECG records the electrical activity of the heart. Its pattern changes in cardiac conditions like heart attacks and atrial fibrillation. The team trained two versions of the AI: in one, the algorithm was only given the raw ECG data. In the other, it was fed ECG data and the age and sex of the people. The researchers measured the AI’s performance using a metric known as AUC, which is used to evaluate risk prediction models. Both of the versions of the AI consistently scored above 0.85, where a perfect score is 1. The AUCs for risk-scoring models currently
Vaccine offers hope in fight against dengue fever OUR arsenal of weapons to combat dengue fever could get a welcome boost. An experimental vaccine is 80 per cent effective at preventing infections, according to preliminary results from a large clinical trial. Dengue is a mosquito-borne illness affecting around 390 million people each year. If untreated, it kills one in five of those infected. Prevention often relies on methods such as insecticide sprays (pictured above – in Venezuela). An existing vaccine, called Dengvaxia, causes problems in anyone who hasn’t already had dengue. It was approved by the US earlier this year but only for people
who have already had the virus. The new vaccine, developed by Japanese pharmaceutical firm Takeda, doesn’t seem to have this drawback. In a trial involving more than 20,000 children aged 4 to 16 in Asia and Latin America, it appeared to work well both for those with previous exposure to the virus and for those without (NEJM, doi.org/ddwk). However, longer term tests are needed. There are four versions of the dengue virus circulating. The new vaccine seems to offer good protection against one type and partial protection against at least two of the others. Sam Wong
THE spread of a deadly disease in seals may be connected to loss of Arctic sea ice as the world warms. Phocine distemper virus (PDV) causes a disease affecting the brain and lungs. It kills many harbour seals, says Tracey Goldstein at the University of California, Davis. To chart its spread, Goldstein and her team collected blood and nasal swab samples from over 2500 sea otters, sea lions and seals in the north Pacific between 2001 and 2016, testing them for PDV. Using satellite images, they also assessed the presence of open water routes through the Arctic Ocean, due to melting sea ice, over the same period. Such routes could allow infection, which is relatively common in parts of the Atlantic, to reach the Pacific. The team detected major peaks in infection in north Pacific otters, sea lions and seals in 2003 and 2009, which were associated with the presence of a route through melted Arctic sea ice in the preceding years. Sea otters and sea lions can spread the virus to seals. The idea the virus can spread via ice-free routes is bolstered by a large Atlantic outbreak in 2002, just a year before the first Pacific PDV cases (Scientific Reports, doi.org/ddwn). Layal Liverpool 16 November 2019 | New Scientist | 19
Get the latest scientific discoveries in your inbox newscientist.com/sign-up Technology
Really brief
AI can somehow tell if you’ll die soon
SIE/GWC/LEIBNIZ-IZW/NCNP
ARTIFICIAL intelligence can use heart scans to predict a person’s chance of dying within a year, even if the scans look normal to medics. How it does so is a mystery. Brandon Fornwalt at healthcare provider Geisinger in Pennsylvania and his colleagues tasked an AI with examining 1.77 million electrocardiogram (ECG) results from nearly 400,000 people to predict who was at a higher risk of dying within the next year.
Tiny ‘deer’ isn’t extinct after all A species of small deer-like animal has been spotted in Vietnam for the first time in almost 30 years. The rediscovery of the silver-backed chevrotain near the city of Nha Trang is reassuring, given previous suspicions that it might have died out as a result of poaching and habitat loss (Nature Ecology & Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/ s41559-019-1027-7).
Space flight causes changes in the activity of thousands of genes in heart cells, but these revert mostly to normal within weeks of being back on Earth (Stem Cell Reports, doi.org/ddww). A team made the discovery by sending heart cells to the International Space Station.
A grand genome sequencing plan A project to record the genomes of 60,000 species of animals, plants, fungi and complex cells found in the British Isles is about to get under way. The Darwin Tree of Life project has raised the £9 million needed to collect and sequence the first 2000 species.
Tropical diseases
used by doctors range between 0.65 and 0.8, says Fornwalt. The AI accurately predicted risk of death even in people deemed by cardiologists to have a normal ECG. Three cardiologists who separately reviewed normallooking ECGs weren’t able to pick up the risk patterns that the AI detected. It is still unclear what patterns the AI is picking up, which makes some physicians reluctant to use such algorithms. The research will be presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Dallas, Texas, on 16 November. Donna Lu Wildlife
Arctic melt may have let killer virus spread
YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Going to space changes the heart
An ECG records the electrical activity of the heart. Its pattern changes in cardiac conditions like heart attacks and atrial fibrillation. The team trained two versions of the AI: in one, the algorithm was only given the raw ECG data. In the other, it was fed ECG data and the age and sex of the people. The researchers measured the AI’s performance using a metric known as AUC, which is used to evaluate risk prediction models. Both of the versions of the AI consistently scored above 0.85, where a perfect score is 1. The AUCs for risk-scoring models currently
Vaccine offers hope in fight against dengue fever OUR arsenal of weapons to combat dengue fever could get a welcome boost. An experimental vaccine is 80 per cent effective at preventing infections, according to preliminary results from a large clinical trial. Dengue is a mosquito-borne illness affecting around 390 million people each year. If untreated, it kills one in five of those infected. Prevention often relies on methods such as insecticide sprays (pictured above – in Venezuela). An existing vaccine, called Dengvaxia, causes problems in anyone who hasn’t already had dengue. It was approved by the US earlier this year but only for people
who have already had the virus. The new vaccine, developed by Japanese pharmaceutical firm Takeda, doesn’t seem to have this drawback. In a trial involving more than 20,000 children aged 4 to 16 in Asia and Latin America, it appeared to work well both for those with previous exposure to the virus and for those without (NEJM, doi.org/ddwk). However, longer term tests are needed. There are four versions of the dengue virus circulating. The new vaccine seems to offer good protection against one type and partial protection against at least two of the others. Sam Wong
THE spread of a deadly disease in seals may be connected to loss of Arctic sea ice as the world warms. Phocine distemper virus (PDV) causes a disease affecting the brain and lungs. It kills many harbour seals, says Tracey Goldstein at the University of California, Davis. To chart its spread, Goldstein and her team collected blood and nasal swab samples from over 2500 sea otters, sea lions and seals in the north Pacific between 2001 and 2016, testing them for PDV. Using satellite images, they also assessed the presence of open water routes through the Arctic Ocean, due to melting sea ice, over the same period. Such routes could allow infection, which is relatively common in parts of the Atlantic, to reach the Pacific. The team detected major peaks in infection in north Pacific otters, sea lions and seals in 2003 and 2009, which were associated with the presence of a route through melted Arctic sea ice in the preceding years. Sea otters and sea lions can spread the virus to seals. The idea the virus can spread via ice-free routes is bolstered by a large Atlantic outbreak in 2002, just a year before the first Pacific PDV cases (Scientific Reports, doi.org/ddwn). Layal Liverpool 16 November 2019 | New Scientist | 19