“App helps detect ear infections for... - Arlington Times” plus 3 more

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• App helps detect ear infections for... - Arlington Times
• Infected Android App with 100M Downloads Found in Google Play - Tom's Guide
• These startups are tackling the most frustrating women's health issues - Fast Company
• Detecting early signs of banana diseases - Cosmos

App helps detect ear infections for... - Arlington Times Posted: 28 Aug 2019 01:30 AM PDT By Sharon Salyer For the Globe MARYSVILLE – Kelly Estes is a veteran of ear infection "wars." Her daughter, Ella, began suffering painful infections when she was 5-months old. "She had infections every six weeks," her mom said. The problem was, she didn't have some of the symptoms — such as fever — that typically signal ear infections. When asked about symptoms, Estes told doctors of her child's moodiness and crankiness, that she was not sleeping well and that "she was just not being nice." But when taken to a clinic, her daughter was diagnosed with multiple ear infections, Estes said. A few years later, Kelly and her husband, Josh, began noticing the oh-too-familiar symptoms following the birth of their second daughter, Reese. "A kid can be happy one day and the next day be a screaming mess," Estes said. Her reaction was immediate when told that a University of Washington doctor is developing a smartphone app that sends sound waves into the ear to help detect whether children have ear infections. "That's amazing," she said. "It would have at least given me peace of mind to call the doctor and say I've used the app and yes, there's a potential rather than saying she's just moody." The app can be used on both Android and iPhone smartphones. Dr. Randall Bly, who worked with a three-member team of UW computer scientists to develop the app, said he hopes it can be available to the public in about a year, following review by the federal Food and Drug Administration. It's too early to know exactly how much it will cost, but "we're not going to be happy unless it's accessible and affordable," he said. A small paper cone, which could be made at home, is attached to the phone to direct a sound wave into the ear canal. The app measures the sound waves that bounce off the eardrum. The shape of the acoustic "fingerprint" that's created indicates if there's middle ear fluid. The app was tested on children who were about to undergo getting tubes temporarily implanted in their ears to reduce pressure and future infections. Tests showed the app predicted ear infections 85 percent of the time. Parents began sending Bly messages asking when the app would be available following the May publication of a study of the app's effectiveness in a professional journal. He said its need is underscored every day in the young patients he sees. Kids do tend to outgrow ear infection, but it's often not until they are 8 or older. Concern that a child may have an ear infection is one of the most common reasons for kids' visits to a doctor, Bly said. Parental concern goes beyond their child being in pain. Frequent ear infections caused by fluid that builds up in the ear canal can cause hearing loss, which can lead to speech and language delays, Bly said. "I can see the frustration on parent's face," he said.

Infected Android App with 100M Downloads Found in Google Play - Tom's Guide Posted: 28 Aug 2019 08:06 AM PDT An Android app with more than 100 million downloads from the official Google Play Store contained a backdoor that permitted the installation of any kind of malicious software without the phone user's knowledge, Kaspersky researchers disclosed yesterday (Aug. 27). The app, called CamScanner, lets you digitize text and create PDFs from documents by simply taking photographs of them, and was removed from the Play Store after Kaspersky notified Google of it. But the simple fact that it was in there at all shows how difficult -- or, alternately, what a lousy job Google is doing -- to keep malware out of the official Android app store. If you've got a copy of CamScanner on your Android phone, uninstall it. If you've got good Android antivirus software on your phone, run a scan. If you don't, get some. MORE: Best Android Antivirus Apps On the upside, not everyone who installed CamScanner got the backdoor on their phones, especially if they didn't bother updating the app.  "CamScanner was actually a legitimate app, with no malicious intensions whatsoever, for quite some time," a Kaspersky blog posting yesterday said. "However, at some point, that changed, and recent versions of the app shipped with an advertising library containing a malicious module." Igor Golovin and Anton Kivva, the Kaspersky researchers who documented the malware, theorize that CamScanner's developer, INTSIG Information Co., Ltd., might not even have been aware of the infection.  "It can be assumed that the reason why this malware was added was the app developers' partnership with an unscrupulous advertiser," they wrote in the Kaspersky technical writeup.  A screenshot of the CamScanner HD page, which has the same logo as the removed CamScanner app, on the Google Play Store website. (Image credit: INTSIG/Google) That's certainly possible. Many mobile apps have only limited control over where their ads come from, and malicious ad injection -- "malvertising" -- has plagued legitimate websites for many years. But the upshot was that the backdoor -- a "dropper" in information-security parlance -- would open up a clandestine avenue to far-off servers, which could then push down any kind of software for installation on phones running CamScanner. "The owners of the module can use an infected device to their benefit in any way they see fit, from showing the victim intrusive advertising to stealing money from their mobile account by charging paid subscriptions," Golovin and Kivva wrote. Ironically, or perhaps tragically, the backdoor had been removed from the most recent version of CamScanner before Google kicked the app out of the Play Store, the researchers said. (An app that creates a "license" for the paid version of CamScanner is still in Google Play, as is an older version of the app called CamScanner HD.) How to avoid infection So how do you keep malware out of your Android phone when even the official Play Store can be infected?  First, check the user comments on every app before you install it. The Kaspersky researchers were tipped off to the CamScanner problem because "negative user reviews that ha[d] been left over the past month have indicated the presence of unwanted features." Second, check the permissions on the app. On a desktop or laptop, scroll all the way down on the app's Play Store web page and click "View details" under Permission. On a phone or tablet, click "About this app" on the Play Store app page, scroll all the way down to "App permissions" and tap "See More." If an app that doesn't need to make calls, use audio or get your specific location takes those permissions anyway, that should raise red flags. Third, install and use good Android antivirus software, as mentioned earlier. Kaspersky naturally recommends its own Kaspersky Internet Security for Android, which is pretty good, but we like Bitdefender Mobile Security and Norton Mobile Security either. Bitdefender even has a no-cost version called Bitdefender Antivirus Free for anyone who doesn't want to pay $15 a year.

These startups are tackling the most frustrating women's health issues - Fast Company Posted: 03 Sep 2019 04:00 AM PDT Vaginas are complex, self-regulating organs that use acidity levels to keep out infection—at least for most women. Those who frequently suffer sexually transmitted infections like gonorrhea, chlamydia, or bacterial vaginosis, however, have to rely on antibiotics to stay healthy. However, antibiotics tend to strip out both the good and bad bacteria, making one's vagina more vulnerable to future infection. Bacteria has also gotten more resistant to antibiotics, leaving women with even fewer treatment options when they get sick. advertisement advertisement None of this is good news. But a recently released study offers a bright spot. It indicates that when vaginal ecology is in harmony, it naturally protects against chlamydia. A new bioscience company called LUCA Biologics wants to harness that strength. It's currently developing a series of therapeutics that creates a healthy vaginal microbiome as a way of preventing disease. The first product the company is working on is a treatment for urinary tract infections [UTI] that increases a certain type of bacteria in the vagina in order to create an environment that's more resistant to infection. The approach is similar in concept to eating yogurt to create a healthy gut. This is not a solution to a rare problem. Half of all women in the U.S. will get a UTI at some point in their lives, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. UTIs account for roughly six million annual visits to the doctor. While there are treatments available for UTIs, there's no prevention. "It's really a testament to how underserved the community feels and how far behind the science is when the best recommendation that doctors and the medical community have is to remind women to wipe from front to back," says Raja Dhir, cofounder and chairman of LUCA. "Honestly, that's a little—it's appalling, right?" Women first, finally LUCA is one of several companies developing new therapies for women that deal with some of their most persistent issues through medicines with fewer side effects. In the #MeToo era, women have put on their power suits and taken center stage to talk about the most pervasive social structures that have been holding them back. Now the spotlight is turning to those in the medical and bioscience community who are making women's health a priority. This year a public company called Evofem Biosciences, which is developing a nonhormonal birth control gel, signed a  securities deal with PDL BioPharma for up to $80 million in financing. PDL BioPharma was once a high-flying drug company until several of its key patents for cancer drugs expired. Evofem has sold PDL 6.6 million per shares of stock at $4.50 per share—well above its current share price. The company's drug, Amphora, is set to launch in 2020. It's a gel that women apply up to an hour before they have sex. It's supposedly leak-resistant and has the added bonus of providing lubrication. advertisement "Women are more empowered than they've ever been," says Saundra Pelletier, CEO of Evofem. "We think it's about time that a company truly stepped into clinical innovation just focused on women because we know that women are the healthcare decision makers." Pelletier is referring to a 2015 industry research survey that found that 94% of working moms make healthcare decisions for themselves and others. Despite women being major consumers of health products, there has been little innovation into prescribed women's health products over the past 20 years. For TherapeuticsMD, which was cofounded in 2008 by gynecologist Brian Bernick and former medical device sales executive Rob Finizio, the dearth of investment in women's health looked like an opportunity. "What I saw was massive growing markets with an aging demographic with almost no investment in products since— God—the early 2000s?" says Finizio, the company's CEO. He notes that the majority of investment and innovation in this space happened in the three decades preceding the new millennium. TherapeuticsMD makes three products, all of which were approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, including birth control, a lubricant for menopausal women who experience pain during sex, and a treatment for hot flashes. Women's health is expected to be a $50 billion market by 2025 worldwide, according to CBInsights. As of the second quarter of 2019, venture-backed companies in this arena had raised $500 million. Much of the early investment in the field has gone into so-called fem tech: apps and direct-to-consumer services that deliver better care for women. Fertility technology and marketplaces that deliver everything from birth control to retinol have gotten the lion's share of the attention. In this year alone, Pill Club, a platform that both prescribes and fills birth control orders, raised $51 million; Modern Fertility, an at-home fertility test, raised $15 million; Ro, parent company to women's menopause relief brand Rory, raised $90 million; and Tia, a women's health-focused app, launched its first clinic to address women's health in a more holistic way. Less talked about are the new drug therapies for women's health issues. In 2017, GlaxoSmithKline released a U.K. based spinoff of a spinoff called KaNDy Therapeutics to research the use of a potential new drug on the effects of menopause symptoms. That same year, ObsEva, a Merck Ventures-backed company that makes therapeutics for complications that arise prior to giving birth, went public, raising $97 million in the process. Last year, AbbVie garnered approval for its endometriosis related pain reliever. Part of the reason for the interest in women's health is a new focus on value-based care, says LUCA Biologics CEO Luba Greenwood. "The health insurers are saying to pharma and biotech companies that we're not going to reimburse these medications that are actually causing adverse events and not improving outcomes for women," she says. advertisement In the past decade, insurers have been moving away from fee-for-service and investing in value-based care models. Under that structure, health insurers pay health providers a monthly fee per patient to treat illness and keep patients healthy. Doctors are pressed to make cost-effective choices for their patients and reconsider prescribing medications that have more side effects and worse health outcomes than a competing treatment. These dynamics are creating a competitive landscape for bioscience companies that are putting women's health and comfort first. "The number one reason that women stop hormonal contraception is because of side effects, whether it's weight gain or bleeding, or headaches, or they just don't feel like themselves," says Evofem's Pelletier. She says, that gives her company a potential advantage in the market as a nonhormonal option. Part of what has made way for newcomers like Pelletier is that larger drug development companies have found that it's more profitable to generate drugs that sell for big money, even if in small quantities. "The market has shifted to high-cost, low-volume products on Wall Street that are getting funded," says Finizio, adding that big companies are not going to make some of these more cost-effective therapeutics, because it doesn't pay for them to do so. But for the entrepreneurial set, developing new low-cost therapies has become ripe territory to refresh outdated products that have not served women well. advertisement

Detecting early signs of banana diseases - Cosmos Posted: 03 Sep 2019 07:58 AM PDT New technology could help protect the world's most important fruit crop, the banana. A smartphone app developed by scientists on three continents can detect early signs of diseases that affect and eventually decimate banana trees, according to a paper published in the journal Plant Methods. In field studies in India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Colombia and Uganda, it has been shown to be more than 90% accurate overall in identifying fungal, viral and bacterial diseases. Recommended Bananas are a staple food throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, with around 145 million tonnes grown each year. Existing disease-detecting techniques mostly rely on identifying symptoms on leaves, missing out on other disease-affected parts such as the fruit or pseudostem. They also don't identify the diseases and pests in real time. To find a better alternative, a team led by Michael Gomez Selvaraj from the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, developed a computer model using a deep learning algorithm then trained it with 18,000 images of disease- and pest-affected banana plants from farms in India and Africa. When tested in fields, the app was able to detect the difference between healthy and infected plant parts for diseases such as banana bacterial wilt, the lethal fungal infection Panama disease, leaf-spot fungal diseases, bunchy top viral disease and the corm weevil pest. The researchers say the app would allow for early identification of pest and diseases and their management in banana farms using a simple hand-held device. Next, they plan to devise a model and an application for smartphone devices for detecting diseases in other crops such as common bean, cassava, potato and sweet potato.

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