World Diabetes Day Today

World Diabetes Day is the primary global awareness campaign of the diabetes world and is held on November 14 each year. It was introduced in 1991 by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization in response to the alarming rise of diabetes around the world. World Diabetes Day is a campaign that features a new theme chosen by the International Diabetes Federation each year to address issues facing the global diabetes community. While the campaigns last the whole year, the day itself marks the birthday of Frederick Banting who, along with Charles Best and John James Rickard Macleod, first conceived the idea which led to the discovery of insulin in 1922.

Each year, World Diabetes Day is centred on a theme related to diabetes. Topics covered have included diabetes and human rights, diabetes and lifestyle, diabetes and obesity, diabetes in the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, diabetes in children and adolescents. People with diabetes get to take a day off work or school on this day^[1] and talking about Diabetes.^[2]

World Diabetes Day is celebrated worldwide by the over 230 member associations of the International Diabetes Federation in more than 160 countries and territories, all Member States of the United Nations, as well as by other associations and organizations, companies, healthcare professionals and people living with diabetes and their families.

The global diabetes community including International Diabetes Federation member associations, diabetes organizations, NGOs, health departments, civil society, individuals and companies develop an extensive range of activities, tailored to a variety of groups. Activities organized each year include:

 Background

Close to 350 million people in the world have diabetes, a chronic disease that occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin or when it cannot effectively use the insulin it does produce to help the body metabolize the sugar that is formed from the food we eat.

Insulin is a hormone that regulates blood sugar, which gives us the energy we need to live. Unable to get into the cells to be burned as energy, the sugar can build up to harmful levels in the blood.

In 2012, diabetes was the direct cause of some 1.5 million deaths, with more than 80% of them occurring in low- and middle-income countries. WHO projects that diabetes will be the 7thleading cause of death by 2030.

There are two main forms of the disease. People with type 1 diabetes typically make none of their own insulin and therefore require insulin injections for survival. People with type 2 diabetes, the form that comprises some 90% of all cases, usually produce their own insulin, but not enough or they are unable to use it properly. People with type 2 diabetes are typically overweight and sedentary.

Over time, high blood sugars can wreak havoc on every major organ system in the body, causing heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, blindness, impotence and infections that can lead to amputations.

But, properly treated, the impact of diabetes can be minimised. Even people with type 1 diabetes can live long and healthy lives if they keep their blood sugars under tight control.

 

Phones need ‘bed mode’ to protect sleep

Image copyrightThinkstock

Smartphones, tablets and e-readers should have an automatic “bedtime mode” that stops them disrupting people’s sleep, says a leading doctor.

Prof Paul Gringras argued the setting should filter out the blue light that delays the body clock and keeps people awake later into the evening.

The doctor, from Evelina Children’s Hospital in London, said every new model was “bluer and brighter”.

He said manufacturers needed to show more “responsibility”.

As it gets darker in the evening, the body starts to produce the sleep hormone melatonin – which helps people nod off.

Certain wavelengths of light, those at the blue-green end of the spectrum, can disrupt the system.

Prof Gringras was part of a study, published in Frontiers in Public Health, analysing the light emitted by devices.

It concluded there was a clear trend for new devices to be bigger, brighter, have higher levels of contrast and emit more blue light.

The professor of children’s sleep medicine told the BBC News website: “That is great for use in the day, but awful for use at night.

“There is converging data to say if you are in front of one of these devices at night-time it could prevent you falling asleep by an extra hour.”

He said some sleep-aware apps had already been designed to reduce blue-green light emissions.

And that a bedtime mode could automatically filter out the blue as software such as f.lux already does.

He said there needed to be “more responsibility from manufacturers” and the “key is to automate it”.

Prof Gringras added: “It’s not good enough to say do less and accept this is the world we live in, they’re fun devices but we do need some protection on what they do at night-time.”

Pigeons identify breast cancer ‘as well as humans’

Image copyrightUniv. Iowa/Wassermann Lab 

Image captionThe birds were rewarded with food pellets when they correctly identified tumour samples

Pigeons, with training, did just as well as humans in a study testing their ability to distinguish cancerous from healthy breast tissue samples.

The pigeons were able to generalise what they learned, correctly spotting tumours in unseen microscope images.

They also did well at a particular mammogram-classifying task, though a second mammogram test (recognising suspicious lumps) proved too tricky.

The pigeons’ ability could help improve new image-based diagnosis technologies.

It is described in the open access journal Plos One.

Bird brain

Likely no bigger than the tip of your index finger, the pigeon’s brain nonetheless has impressive capabilities.

“Pigeons can distinguish identities and emotional expressions on human faces, letters of the alphabet, misshapen pharmaceutical capsules, and even paintings by Monet vs Picasso,” said Prof Edward Wasserman from the University of Iowa, a co-author of the study.

“Their visual memory capacity is equally impressive, with a proven recall of more than 1,800 images.”

Given these abilities, scientists started wondering how well pigeons would do at pathology tests.

Each bird was taught to distinguish microscope images of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue, by being rewarded only when a correct answer was provided.

The birds learned to recognise tumours at a range of magnifications and image compression levels, as well as in the absence of colour.

Image copyrightLevenson et al., PLOS One 

Image captionHow would you do? These are some of the images shown to the pigeons

After two weeks of training, the pigeons reached a level of 85% accuracy. Because they successfully identified cancerous tissue from images they had not seen before, the researchers ruled out rote-learning of the images as an explanation.

“The birds were remarkably adept at discriminating between benign and malignant breast cancer slides,” said lead author Prof Richard Levenson, from the University of California, Davis.

The researchers also tried a “flock-sourcing” approach. This involved pooling the decisions from a group of four birds, and led to an impressive 99% accuracy in diagnosis.

Improving imaging

As well as microscope slides, the birds were also tested for their diagnostic ability on images from mammograms. Here, they did well when asked to spot “microcalcifications”: small deposits that can suggest a pre-cancerous growth.

However, when the team put the pigeons to work classifying suspicious masses – an important but difficult job for clinicians themselves – they were unable to recognise the lumps with malignant potential.

“As this task reflects the difficulty even humans have, it indicates how pigeons may be faithful mimics of the strengths and weaknesses of humans in viewing medical images,” Prof Levenson said.

Image copyrightThinkstock 

Image captionSmarter than they look?

Other seemingly outlandish diagnosticians have included dogs sniffing out various types of cancer, and giant African pouched rats detecting tuberculosis. “We are not (yet) proposing such a role for pigeons,” the authors write.

But the birds might be able to assist researchers and engineers in developing imaging-based cancer diagnostic tools.

Such tools have to be validated by trained clinicians, to ensure quality and reliability. This is a tedious and expensive process – which the common pigeon may be able to help with in the future.

Why do farmers give animals antibiotics?

Antibiotics are used in farming to treat infections. But most are used preventatively in healthy animals to avoid infection or, controversially, as a way of boosting weight gain (although the latter was banned in Europe in 2006).

Image copyrightSPL

Worryingly, some medically important “last-resort” antibiotics for humans are being used extensively in animals.

Last month, researchers in China identified a strain of infectious bacteria calledEscherichia coli(E. coli) that was highly resistant to polymyxins, the last group of antibiotics left after all others have failed.

The E. coli strain showing resistance to the polymyxin drug colistin was isolated from an intensively farmed pig in Shanghai during routine testing.

The report in the Lancet Infectious Diseases showed resistance in a fifth of animals tested, 15% of raw meat samples and in 16 patients.

---

Can we stop the use?

In the UK, nearly half of all antibiotics used are in farming. We cannot stop all antibiotic use in food animals. The drugs are useful for reducing animal disease and suffering.

Image copyrightThinkstock

But experts say there is massive scope for curbing their use.

Denmark remains one of the biggest exporters of pork in the world but has greatly reduced its levels of antibiotic use in livestock.

As well as reducing the quantity of use, more restrictions are needed on the types of antibiotics used in animals, the government report says.

Countries need to come together and agree to restrict or even ban the use in animals of antibiotics that are important for humans, it adds.

One of Amazon Echo's Babies Might Outshine the Parent

Amazon launched two new versions of Echo last week: the Echo Dot and the Amazon Tap. I've actually had the chance to look at both, and they flesh out the line nicely -- but I think the Dot actually could outshine the original Echo.

I'll share some of my reactions to both devices and speculate about what could come next as Amazon expands this product line.

I'll close with my product of the week: Given that I just returned from a vacation in Hawaii, it is the wonderful (but far from inexpensive) resort I stayed at there.

The Echo

The Amazon Echo is one of the few products I've ever brought into the home that my wife absolutely loves. She likes to listen to music much more than I do when she works and cooks (I mostly just listen to music when I'm exercising).

Even though I've popped a Sonos speakers into virtually every room of the house, the patio and garage, the Echo has become her go-to music solution.

So, to net this out, I spent nearly US$5K on Sonos, but my wife, who listens to more music than I do, prefers the $189 Echo. She doesn't use it just to listen to music, either. It is her cooking timer, it's where she creates shopping lists, and it's the thing she uses most often to prove my memory of something is wrong. Sadly, it actually is pretty good at that.

The only issue with the product has been that from time to time, it hears something that sounds like "Alexa," its wakeup name, and it then appears to go rogue. Since we've bought it, Amazon has added significant additional functionality. It now will command Insteon, Wemo, Samsung SmartThings, Hue and Ecobee.

It connects to services like Domino's Pizza and Uber (though I still prefer to use my smartphone for the latter). It now connects to Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn. Unfortunately, it doesn't connect to Slacker, but I've largely shifted to Amazon Prime Music now, so that isn't as big a problem as it once was.

In short, the Amazon Echo was the closest thing we had to an iPod in 2015, but there is a better alternative out this year, and it is Echo's little sister.

My New Love: The Echo Dot

Here is the issue with the Echo I never really thought through. As good as the built in speakers are -- and they are very good -- most folks have their own sound systems. If, like me, you have something like a Sonos, the Echo is a tad redundant.

Well, the Echo Dot is the Echo -- for about $90 less -- and without the big built-in speakers.

It does have a built-in speaker that isn't bad in a pinch, but it's nothing like what the original Echo has. As for appearance, it looks like Amazon lopped off the Echo's head. The resulting hockey puck-like product really isn't bad looking at all, and it's incredibly intuitive to use if you've already experienced the Echo.

Ideally you plug this into your own stereo or speaker system (like Sonos), and you turn your high-end system into an Echo. So for less than half the price of the Echo, you potentially get better sound through the system you already have.

You can use its Bluetooth capability to put the unit next to where you sit and still connect to your system in your stereo cabinet (I used an Amazon Basics Bluetooth receiver). The end result is both cheaper and sounds better than the Echo.

Perhaps the coolest thing is that once it is connected to the Sonos, if you set the Sonos app for external source from the connected speaker, then the Echo Dot controls all of your linked speakers throughout the home.

So, for $89, you can enable voice control for Sonos or any connected speaker system -- even one of those in home speaker/intercom systems, as long as it has an accessory-in port.

I literally bought as many of these things as they let me (which is two at the moment) and hardly can wait to voice-enable my whole house. Be aware, right now, you can order the Dot only if you have an Echo, because you need to order it over the Echo. I think Amazon knows this is the best deal of the bunch.

Amazon Tap

The Amazon Tap is a portable Echo, but it has one glaring fault that I'll get to in a minute.

Unlike the Echo and the Echo Dot, it looks very different. That's because of a critical need to preserve its battery. That means no halo ring on top, but it has lights that do pretty much the same thing and show its state of charge. While it does look very different, it actually may be the most attractive product in the family, so the difference isn't as bad as it otherwise might be.

It has a charging base that uses a physical connection rather than an inductive one, which means you have to watch it around moisture and dirt. Both could get into and possibly damage the connection. While it clearly has smaller speakers than the Echo, it still has them, and they sound surprisingly good for such a small device -- but don't expect good lows, as the speakers are just too small.

The Tap is for people who want their sound to move with them, and its use is more similar to a Bluetooth speaker for your phone. This is where the problem crops up: To save battery, Amazon designed the Tap so you can't just speak a command as you can do with the other Echo offerings. You have to hit the microphone button first.

For anyone who's become used to Echo's original button-free experience, this is kind of annoying. I'd give it a command from across the room, and it would just sit there looking at me like it wanted me to say "please." The button-pushing is to save battery, but I'd expect a future patch so that either you could turn on hands-free functionality, or it would come on automatically when the Tap was in its charging cradle.

Having said that, the Amazon Tap is still one of the best Bluetooth speakers on the market in terms of sound and convenience, but I found it far better to use the Alexa app than voice command, thanks to the darn speaker button. It has an impressive nine hours of battery life.

Given that most of its features require a WiFi connection, the Amazon Tap likely is best for folks who know how to turn on tethering on their smartphone, or those who carry a mobile WiFi hotspot.

Wrapping Up: Nice Family and What's Next

Of the Echo line of products, the Dot is by far my favorite. It provides the greatest value if you have your own speakers. It has the greatest flexibility in terms of solution, and its design is consistent with the original Echo. It got me thinking about what could come next:

• A family control feature that you could use to control more than one Echo in the house. It would let you link them all, so that a command to any one of them would command all of them. That way, when connected to Sonos or just playing individually during a party or while you are cleaning, you could just tell them all to do something at the same time.
• A way to disable the push-to-talk button on the Tap. That would make a massive difference to me, particularly if it happened automatically when the device was in its dock.
• A pocket or headphone solution for gyms and exercising. It would have radio capability so you could listen to the TV in the gym if you wanted to, and get the Echo experience during a bike ride, walk or run.
• An outdoor version that you could leave plugged in to use the Echo outside, and that wouldn't be impacted by the weather.
• An automotive solution (you could likely do this with the Echo Dot, a DC power supply, and a Bluetooth link to your radio now) that would give you the Echo experience in your car. The Dot and Tap both use a generic smartphone charger. However, it would be better if it were easier to connect a phone to the car as well -- otherwise, it would be too painful for many to use it this way.

Much of this can be done with software -- and some with just a unique accessory or two -- but it will be interesting to see what Amazon comes up with next. For now, we just have the Echo, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap. I expect that for most, that will be more than enough. Who would have thought a decade ago that what once was largely the iPod market would move to Amazon?

I don't go on vacations often -- I think my last one was about three years ago. So when I go, I like to go someplace a bit different and approaching spectacular. My last really impressive vacation was Atlantis on Paradise Island, which was marred only by the marginal rooms, which didn't tie into the huge Jules Verne Atlantis theme of the rest of the resort. The water slides, though, were amazing.

Montage Kapalua Bay is very different, in that initially it was designed to be a high-end time share facility. When the market crashed, it was sold and turned into a high-end hotel.

The rooms, food and views are spectacular, because you basically are renting a condominium with high-end appliances, full kitchen, washer and dryer, huge master bedroom and master bathroom, and a real luxury feel.

The owners have shifted to selling condos at the facility; they sell in the $4M range, so this isn't a cheap date. It has a decent gym and spa, but prices are where you'd expect them to be for a high-end service. We got a couples bath and massage and felt like royalty for about 90 minutes.

Insulation on the rooms was very good, so if there were festivities outside just closing the windows shut out the noise so we could sleep. There weren't a lot of kids there, and it generally was a great place to relax and be a bit pampered.

If you want to experience what millionaires likely take for granted, the Montage is a really nice choice for Maui.

Montage Kapalua Bay

Just don't take Waze to the resort, because it will take you around the back side of the island and onto a one-lane road with cliff drop-offs and few passing locations, and where the rental car companies tell you your insurance is void.

I had a large Chrysler 300, and the road would have been tight for a Miata so the drive was far more exciting than I intended. (I should point out that the views -- those few times I could take my eyes off the road -- were spectacular.)

In the end, Montage was one of the best vacation locations I've ever been to and certainly one of the most spectacular in Hawaii. I'd go there again, and it is my product of the week.

Home Alone? Now Nest Can Tell

Nest on Thursday announced two new features, Family Accounts and Home/Away Assist.

Family Accounts would let up to 10 people access the Nest products in a connected home from their Android or iOS devices. That means an end to sharing logins and passwords, the company said. Users can be added or removed seamlessly from the Family Account, which can provide notifications to the entire family. Users also can get updates from Nest Protect, check in with the Nest Cam and receive a monthly report on product usage.
"Family Accounts allows everyone in the home to connect to the Nest app with their own Nest Account. The whole family can now control products, view live video streams from Nest Cam, receive notifications and get their own copy of the monthly home report," a Nest spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company rep Ivy Choi.
Home/Away Assist was designed to track the patterns of household members, utilizing learning algorithms and activity sensors that are built into products such as the Nest Learning Thermostat. The feature also works with a smartphone's location services to determine which, if any, users are at home.
"With Home/Away Assist, the company is getting even better at knowing when people are home or away, so Nest products can use the location of your phone in addition to built-in sensors and algorithms to do the right thing at the right time," the Nest spokesperson said.

Tracking Multiple Handsets

The features utilize sensor data, algorithms and location data from multiple handsets to help ensure that users will have the temperature just where they want it as they enter and exit certain areas of a house.
"There are plenty of benefits that this system offers, and it goes part and parcel with the smart connected home," said Susan Schreiner, principal analyst at C4 Trends.
"This is about more than just energy efficiency. It becomes a question of how this can fit into your lifestyle to make the home more comfortable, but it comes with some trade-offs," she told TechNewsWorld.

Privacy Concerns

One trade-off is the level of tracking and monitoring that Nest would need to utilize to make its system work. People who have privacy concerns may not be ready to have smart home devices track their movements inside and outside the home, according to Schreiner.
"For this system to really work you need to give away a certain level of privacy, so people are going to have to come to grips with their own definition and security," she said.
"There is going to be a trade-off between in-home functionality and privacy," said Roger Kay, principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates.
"Since information is reflected through servers -- cloud -- private data is going to the outside world," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Some people don't care, but even a small amount of metadata can tell you a lot about what's going on," Kay added.

Safety and Security

Security is another potential concern.
Home/Away Assist needs to know only whether you're home, and the information would be encrypted, Nest said.
If that personal data were to fall into the wrong hands, however, it could allow someone to monitor patterns and routines of family members.
"If you recall a couple of years ago, there were some warnings that people shouldn't advertise that they were traveling and that you should be discreet on social media when on vacation so as not to advertise that you aren't home," warned Schreiner.
"This isn't really the same, but it does suggest that there is a reason to consider how much you might want any system to track or monitor your movements," she said.
"Clearly what is happening isn't a one size fits all," Schreiner added. "Some may be more willing to adapt to the benefits of a smart home, but if you look at this closely, there are some creepy aspects to this new technology."