Pokemon Go's health benefits moderate, short-lived: study

December 14, 2016

Boston, Dec 14: The health benefits of playing the popular augmented reality game Pokemon GO are moderate and wear off after just six weeks, according to a new Harvard study.

PokemonGo2 Pokemon Go improves physical activity among adults who use the game, but the effect is moderate and not sustained over time, researchers said.

Results show that the daily average steps during the first week of installation increased by 955 additional steps - equivalent to half of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommendation for physical activity per week.

The following weeks saw a gradual reduction in the number of steps, and this effect was lost after six weeks of game playing.

Pokemon GO is an augmented reality game that projects graphics onto the real world using smartphones, and has been downloaded over 500 million times since its launch in July this year.

It has been suggested that the game can increase physical activity and promote public health, because it incentivises walking. However, these claims are based on anecdotal evidence.

So researchers from Harvard University, co-led by Katherine Howe, Christian Suharlim and Peter Ueda, set out to determine whether playing the game had any effect on physical activity among young adults in the US.

They conducted an online survey of 1,182 participants, aged 18-35, who used smartphones, during August 2016.

In total, 560 (47.4 per cent) of the participants reported playing Pokemon GO at "trainer level" of five or more, which is reached after walking for around two hours.

Data was analysed from automatically recorded step count from the participants' phones and used to estimate the change in daily steps after installation of the game.

The findings show the daily average steps during the first week of installation increased by 955 additional steps.

Assuming steps of 0.8 metre at a pace of four kilometres per hour, the change would translate into 11 minutes of additional walking daily - around half of the WHO's recommendation of 150 or more minutes weekly.

However, the number of steps gradually decreased over the following five weeks, and by the sixth week the number had returned to pre-installation levels.

The results remained the same even after accounting for a number of factors that may have influenced the findings, such as age, sex, race, weight status, and walkability of the area of residence.

"Our results indicate that the health impact of Pokemon GO might be moderate. Even if smaller amounts of physical activity might also be important for health outcomes, the increase in steps from Pokemon GO, as with many physical activity interventions, was not sustained over time," researchers said.

The study was published in The BMJ.

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Wearable sensor to predict worsening heart failure

News Network

February 26,2020

New York, Feb 26: A new wearable sensor that works in conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI) technology could help doctors remotely detect critical changes in heart failure patients days before a health crisis occurs, says a study.

The researchers said the system could eventually help avert up to one in three heart failure readmissions in the weeks following initial discharge from the hospital and help patients sustain a better quality of life.

"This study shows that we can accurately predict the likelihood of hospitalisation for heart failure deterioration well before doctors and patients know that something is wrong," says the study's lead author Josef Stehlik from University of Utah in the US.

"Being able to readily detect changes in the heart sufficiently early will allow physicians to initiate prompt interventions that could prevent rehospitalisation and stave off worsening heart failure," Stehlik added.

According to the researchers, even if patients survive, they have poor functional capacity, poor exercise tolerance and low quality of life after hospitalisations.

"This patch, this new diagnostic tool, could potentially help us prevent hospitalizations and decline in patient status," Stehlik said.

For the findings, published in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, the researchers followed 100 heart failure patients, average age 68, who were diagnosed and treated at four veterans administration (VA) hospitals in Utah, Texas, California, and Florida.

After discharge, participants wore an adhesive sensor patch on their chests 24 hours a day for up to three months.

The sensor monitored continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) and motion of each subject.

This information was transmitted from the sensor via Bluetooth to a smartphone and then passed on to an analytics platform, developed by PhysIQ, on a secure server, which derived heart rate, heart rhythm, respiratory rate, walking, sleep, body posture and other normal activities.

Using artificial intelligence, the analytics established a normal baseline for each patient. When the data deviated from normal, the platform generated an indication that the patient's heart failure was getting worse.

Overall, the system accurately predicted the impending need for hospitalization more than 80 per cent of the time.

On average, this prediction occurred 10.4 days before a readmission took place (median 6.5 days), the study said.

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First open source all-atom models of COVID-19 protein developed

Agencies

June 22,2020

A team of scientists has produced first open source all-atom models of full-length COVID-19 Spike protein that facilitates viral entry into host cells – a discovery that can facilitate a faster vaccine and antiviral drug development.

The group from Seoul National University in South Korea, University of Cambridge in the UK and Lehigh University in the US produced the first open-source all-atom models of a full-length S protein.

The researchers say this is of particular importance because the S protein plays a central role in viral entry into cells, making it a main target for vaccine and antiviral drug development.

"Our models are the first full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein models that are available to other scientists," said Wonpil Im, a professor in Lehigh University.

"Our team spent days and nights to build these models very carefully from the known cryo-EM structure portions. Modeling was very challenging because there were many regions where simple modeling failed to provide high-quality models," he wrote in a paper published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Scientists can use the models to conduct innovative and novel simulation research for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

Though the coronavirus uses many different proteins to replicate and invade cells, the Spike protein is the major surface protein that it uses to bind to a receptor.

The total number of global COVID-19 cases was nearing 9 million, while the deaths have increased to over 467,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

With 2,279,306 cases and 119,967 deaths, the US continues with the world's highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities, according to the CSSE.

Brazil comes in the second place with 1,083,341 infections and 50,591 deaths.

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