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The hidden meanings of texts and tweets

A ‘spherical’ AI model finds hidden themes in large collections of headlines and other short texts.

From tweets and chat messages to headlines and status updates, short bursts of text are everywhere. These snippets may be brief, but they are packed with the potential to reveal anything from emerging trends to business decisions or circulating misinformation.

While AI is becoming increasingly adept at extracting meaning from long-form text, it still struggles with these bite-sized ones.

Breakthrough 3D Bioprinted Mini Placentas May Help Solve “One Of Medicine’s Great Mysteries”

To address these shortcomings, the team behind the latest study turned to bioprinting – a type of 3D printing that uses living cells and cell-friendly materials to create 3D structures. They took trophoblast cells and mixed them with a synthetic gel before 3D-printing them in precise droplets.

The printed cells then grew into miniature placentas, and the researchers compared them to organoids made via traditional manual methods.

“The organoids we grew in the bioprinted gel developed differently to those grown in an animal-derived gel, and formed different numbers of trophoblast sub-types. This highlighted that the environment organoids are grown in can control how they mature,” first author Dr Claire Richards said.

Dietary supplement found effective for skin cancer prevention

The dietary supplement nicotinamide has been recommended by dermatologists for people with a history of skin cancer since 2015, when a clinical study with 386 participants showed that those who took the vitamin B3 derivative developed fewer new occurrences.

However, data to validate those findings in a larger study group has been lacking because nicotinamide can be purchased over the counter without being entered into patients’ medical records. In a new study published Sept. 17 in JAMA Dermatology, researchers found a way to get that data by analyzing records from the Veterans Affairs Corporate Data Warehouse.

Nicotinamide is on the VA’s official formulary, so the researchers checked the outcomes of 33,833 patients for their next skin diagnosis following baseline with 500 milligrams of nicotinamide twice daily for longer than 30 days. They looked for occurrences of basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.

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