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'''<h4>Hello Students, read the below article then on your own webpage on www.goodtoknow.com, write a short constructed response using "R-A-C-E-A-C-E" as instructed in class.</h4>'''
 
'''<h4>Hello Students, read the below article then on your own webpage on www.goodtoknow.com, write a short constructed response using "R-A-C-E-A-C-E" as instructed in class.</h4>'''
 
      
 
      
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       '''What happened to the research participants during the study?'''
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       '''How is the Boston Dynamics' robot assisting during the COVID-19 Pandemic?'''
 
       '''Use two details from the passage to support your response.'''
 
       '''Use two details from the passage to support your response.'''
  
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'''<h4>Wish To Cleanse Your Brain Of Toxins? Get Your ZZZs</h4>'''
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'''<h4>Boston Dynamics' Robot "Dog" Joins The Fight Against COVID-19</h4>'''
  
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BY HANNAH SHARIFF
 
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<br><br>Though considered a waste of time by some, sleep is essential for the health and wellbeing of humans. Over the years, researchers have found sleeping allows the body to repair and restore cells, get rid of irrelevant memories, and even help kids grow taller and obtain better grades. Now, it appears that snoozing for an average of 8 hours daily enables the brain to cleanse itself and get rid of harmful toxins.
 
  
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<br><br>The latest research follows up on a 2013 study, which found a dramatic increase in the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the brains of rats and baboons during sleep. The fluid helped wash away harmful waste proteins accumulated in their brain cells during the day. The process acts a bit "like a dishwasher," said Dr. Maiken Nedergard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester who led the 2013 effort.
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<br><br>While the novel coronavirus is dangerous for everyone, it is particularly so for the first responders who are being exposed to the illness daily. In the US alone, almost 5,500 nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals have been infected with COVID-19. Of these, dozens have succumbed to the disease. Now, hospital workers worldwide may get some reprieve thanks to Spot, a semi-autonomous four-legged robot developed by Waltham, Massachusetts-based robotics company, Boston Dynamics.
  
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<br><br>Since one of the waste products removed from the mammals' brain was beta-amyloid, a substance that forms a sticky plaque associated with Alzheimer's, Nedergard wondered if his findings could offer a new understanding of the progressive disorder, which causes human brain cells to break down and die. Though the idea was certainly possible, more research is needed to be conducted to know that human brains "cleanse" in a similar fashion.
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<br><br>“Starting in early March, Boston Dynamics started receiving inquiries from hospitals asking if our robots could help minimize their staff’s exposure to COVID-19,” the company writes in a blog post. “One of the hospitals that we spoke to shared that, within a week, a sixth of their staff had contracted COVID-19 and that they were looking into using robots to take more of their staff out of range of the novel virus.”
  
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<br><br>A team of scientists led by Dr. Laura Lewis, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, recently set out to do just that. To observe the brain during sleep, the researchers asked the study's 13 participants to avoid their comfortable beds and instead spend the night sleeping inside an MRI machine. Each person was also required to wear an EEG (electroencephalography) cap. The MRI machines allowed the scientists to measure the brain's blood oxygen and cerebrospinal fluid levels, while the EEG caps enabled them to monitor its electrical currents. "We had a sense each of these metrics was important, but how they change during sleep and how they relate to each other during sleep was uncharted territory for us," Dr. Lewis remarked. To emulate a realistic sleep cycle, the tests were conducted at midnight, and the subjects were asked to stay up late the night before to ensure they would drift into a deep sleep during the process.
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<br><br>In response, the company reconfigured the 3-foot tall, 70-pound robot to operate as a mobile telemedicine platform, enabling healthcare providers to determine a patient's condition remotely. The first four-legged "medical practitioner" was deployed to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard University on April 9, 2020. Equipped with an iPad "face" and a two-way radio that allows for real-time conversation, Spot helps doctors to speak to patients without coming in contact with them.
  
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<br><br>The scientists, who published the results of the study in the journal Science in late 2019, found that similar to rats and baboons, large waves of cerebrospinal fluid washed through the participants' brains during non-REM sleep, the deepest part of the cycle. Even more interesting, the EEG readings showed that during this time, neurons started to turn off and on in a synchronized fashion. "There would be this electrical wave where all the neurons would go quiet," Dr. Lewis said. The halt in neuron activity caused less blood to flow into the brain, creating more room for the "cleansing" cerebrospinal fluid. The researchers are not sure how brain waves, blood flow, and CSF coordinate so perfectly. They speculate that as the blood leaves, pressure in the brain drops, and CSF quickly flows in to maintain a safe level of pressure.
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“With current protocols at local hospitals, patients suspected to have COVID-19 are asked to line up in tents outside to answer questions and get initial assessments for temperature. This process requires up to five medical staff, placing those individuals at high risk of contracting the virus,” Boston Dynamics explains. “With the use of a mobile robot, hospitals are able to reduce the number of necessary medical staff at the scene and conserve their limited PPE [personal protective equipment] supply.” The company says the doctors can even use Spot to talk to patients from the safety of their own homes.
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<br><br>Since patients with Alzheimer's have been observed to have less frequent and weaker brain waves, the researchers suspect that poor sleep in patients with neurological disorders may be impacting the brain's cleansing process and causing toxins to accumulate, eventually leading to degeneration.
 
  
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<br><br>"So we might expect that there are also fewer and smaller waves of cerebrospinal fluid in those disorders, and that might have an impact on how waste products are cleared," Dr. Lewis says. "We're running new studies to test how these CSF waves may change in healthy aging and in neurological disorders. We're also going to test whether this would be associated with less waste removal from the brain during sleep in these patients."
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<br><br>While Boston Dynamics does not have enough "Spots" to lend to hospitals worldwide, they believe any robot can do the job. “With the deployment of our first healthcare-focused robot, we’re open-sourcing all of our work to empower any mobile robotics platform to leverage the same hardware and software stack that we’ve developed to help frontline healthcare workers,” the company says. “None of the services... are reliant on Boston Dynamics hardware or software. In many instances, we imagine wheeled or tracked robots may be a better solution for these applications.”
  
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<br><br>William Jagust, a professor of public health and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the study, believes the findings also suggest that people can reduce their risk of brain disorders like Alzheimer's by ensuring they prioritize high-quality sleep. So be sure to get your zzzs!
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<br><br>Though Spot has already proved extremely helpful, the robotics manufacturer believes it can be even more so. The engineers are currently working on "teaching" the robot to perform tasks like temperature checks and respiratory rate calculations using thermal camera technology. The company is also developing new technology that will allow Spot to aid in the disinfection or decontamination of hospitals as well as other public areas.
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<br><br>“By attaching a UV-C light to the robot’s back, Spot could use the device to kill virus particles and disinfect surfaces in any unstructured space that needs support in decontamination — be it hospital tents or metro stations,” the company says.
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<br><br>Though this is Spot's first healthcare assignment, Boston Dynamics has been beta-testing the customizable robot for several other hazardous tasks since late 2019. These include helping Boston police detect bombs and assisting miners in troubleshooting problems from a safe distance.

Revision as of 03:39, 28 April 2020

Hello Students, read the below article then on your own webpage on www.goodtoknow.com, write a short constructed response using "R-A-C-E-A-C-E" as instructed in class.

 
      How is the Boston Dynamics' robot assisting during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
      Use two details from the passage to support your response.

Boston Dynamics' Robot "Dog" Joins The Fight Against COVID-19




While the novel coronavirus is dangerous for everyone, it is particularly so for the first responders who are being exposed to the illness daily. In the US alone, almost 5,500 nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals have been infected with COVID-19. Of these, dozens have succumbed to the disease. Now, hospital workers worldwide may get some reprieve thanks to Spot, a semi-autonomous four-legged robot developed by Waltham, Massachusetts-based robotics company, Boston Dynamics.



“Starting in early March, Boston Dynamics started receiving inquiries from hospitals asking if our robots could help minimize their staff’s exposure to COVID-19,” the company writes in a blog post. “One of the hospitals that we spoke to shared that, within a week, a sixth of their staff had contracted COVID-19 and that they were looking into using robots to take more of their staff out of range of the novel virus.”



In response, the company reconfigured the 3-foot tall, 70-pound robot to operate as a mobile telemedicine platform, enabling healthcare providers to determine a patient's condition remotely. The first four-legged "medical practitioner" was deployed to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard University on April 9, 2020. Equipped with an iPad "face" and a two-way radio that allows for real-time conversation, Spot helps doctors to speak to patients without coming in contact with them.

“With current protocols at local hospitals, patients suspected to have COVID-19 are asked to line up in tents outside to answer questions and get initial assessments for temperature. This process requires up to five medical staff, placing those individuals at high risk of contracting the virus,” Boston Dynamics explains. “With the use of a mobile robot, hospitals are able to reduce the number of necessary medical staff at the scene and conserve their limited PPE [personal protective equipment] supply.” The company says the doctors can even use Spot to talk to patients from the safety of their own homes.



While Boston Dynamics does not have enough "Spots" to lend to hospitals worldwide, they believe any robot can do the job. “With the deployment of our first healthcare-focused robot, we’re open-sourcing all of our work to empower any mobile robotics platform to leverage the same hardware and software stack that we’ve developed to help frontline healthcare workers,” the company says. “None of the services... are reliant on Boston Dynamics hardware or software. In many instances, we imagine wheeled or tracked robots may be a better solution for these applications.”



Though Spot has already proved extremely helpful, the robotics manufacturer believes it can be even more so. The engineers are currently working on "teaching" the robot to perform tasks like temperature checks and respiratory rate calculations using thermal camera technology. The company is also developing new technology that will allow Spot to aid in the disinfection or decontamination of hospitals as well as other public areas.



“By attaching a UV-C light to the robot’s back, Spot could use the device to kill virus particles and disinfect surfaces in any unstructured space that needs support in decontamination — be it hospital tents or metro stations,” the company says.



Though this is Spot's first healthcare assignment, Boston Dynamics has been beta-testing the customizable robot for several other hazardous tasks since late 2019. These include helping Boston police detect bombs and assisting miners in troubleshooting problems from a safe distance.