Germ Communities in Our Gut Talk to Our Brain

There are trillions of microbes inside the human body, and University College Cork professor Dr John Cryan’s studies indicate that these germ communities appear to influence both the brain and its behaviors. Since that groundbreaking and contested 2014 announcement, much more research has continued to support the idea that the human microbiome impacts depression, dementia, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and even Parkinson’s disease. All of this …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Eavesdropping flowers, enormous digital photography, AI for medicine and more

AI Diagnoses Genetic Disorders Using Facial Photos While doctors can identify genetic disorders with an accuracy between 70% and 75%, DeepGestalt—an AI project by FDNA—can do so with accuracy of 90% and over. By analyzing the face piece-by-piece, the system finds a corresponding disorder for that crop, moves on to the next and then pools the results to find the most proper diagnosis for the patient. …

Flowers Are Eavesdropping

According to a new study, plants can “hear” when a bee passes and they subsequently create more sweet nectar to attract them. A recent study by scientists at three Tel Aviv University schools has found that a plant picks up sounds (signaled by the vibration of its petals) and responds (signaled by the excretion of additional nectar). With proof that the flowers responded to all of …