AI pen can detect Parkinson's disease through handwriting
Scientists have developed a self-powered pen — with magnetic ink — that can potentially discover early signs of Parkinson's disease by analyzing handwriting.
'Detection of subtle motor symptoms unnoticeable to the naked eye is critical for early intervention in Parkinson's disease,' Jun Chen, PhD, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Parkinson's News Today.
'Our diagnostic pen presents an affordable, reliable, and accessible tool that is sensitive enough to pick up subtle movements and can be used across large populations and in resource-limited areas.'
More than 130 Royal Caribbean passengers gets sick from stomach bug
With an average accuracy of 96.22%, the pen recorded handwriting signals for patients with Parkinson's. It also successfully analyzed one-dimensional convolutional neural network-assisted analysis.
'This pen is diagnosing the problem with handwriting, which is just one of the many symptoms that we see in our patients,' Chrystalina Antoniades, University of Oxford, acknowledged to The Guardian. 'But it can be complementing what we already found, picking up something that might be difficult to see.'
The pen's cost is significantly lower than commercial electronic pens for tablets and digital pens for writing pads.
Parkinson's disease affects 10 million people worldwide.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
15 minutes ago
- CBS News
Maryland therapist worries less LGTBQ+ youth will seek help with 988 changes in effect
It's been nearly two weeks since the 988 dedicated lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth discontinued, and a Maryland therapist is worried about the long-term impact this will have. When the Trump administration announced in June that the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline dedicated to these youth would end, advocates warned it would have life-threatening implications. It was better known as the Press 3 option. For at least one therapist, she said the impacts could lead to these youth hesitating to get help. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, said the 988's dedicated LGBTQ+ youth lifeline ended because the funding for it had been exhausted. The agency stressed these youth would still be able to get help if they still called 988. However, Xiomara Arrieta, a therapist with ThriveWorks, said she heard these youth feel like they're losing representation in this support. "Some people don't have that availability of people in the community who they can look up living their truth," Arrieta said. Arrieta adds that losing the lifeline takes away the ability for these youth to talk to someone who may fully understand their problems. "With the way gender is affirmed or not important for people to kind of come in and get it — as opposed to explaining the genre or how someone is presenting and why they are," Arrieta said. Earlier this month, WJZ reported local advocates were preparing to step up to fill the gap. One of them is the Pride Center of Maryland. Its CEO, Cleo Manago, said he wasn't surprised when he first heard about this lifeline ending. In response, Manago said they were bolstering youth programming and other suicide prevention resources, as well as creating a suicide warm line. "[A suicide warm line] means that there'll be live people to speak to about any suicide concerns or ideations [during traditional work hours]," Manago said. "For the rest of the time, there will be a recording that will alert people where they can call, where they can go." Behavioral Health System Baltimore stressed that the Central Maryland 988 helpline is still going to provide dedicated support for LGBTQ+ youth. The 988 Central Maryland helpline gets about 4,500 calls a month.
Forbes
15 minutes ago
- Forbes
10 Tiny Habits That Make Or Break A Founding Team
The habits that define strong startup teams aren't flashy - they're consistent. Learn 10 small, ... More high-leverage rituals that early-stage founders use to build alignment, trust, and momentum. The success of an early-stage startup often comes down to a few key habits. Not vision. Not funding. Not product. Just the repeatable behaviors a team establishes in the first few months. These small patterns shape how decisions get made, how conflict is resolved, and how momentum builds or stalls. Here are ten habits that often fly under the radar but make a disproportionate difference. 1. Start Every Week With A Quick Priorities Check High-functioning teams get aligned often. A 10-minute Monday standup (async or live) focused solely on what matters most for the week helps avoid drift. It's not a status update. It's a coordination tool. Just one shared Google Doc or Slack thread each week can clarify who's pushing what forward. 2. Write Things Down Before Debating Them Discussions go faster and deeper when each person writes their thinking down first. Stripe famously used written memos for key decisions, helping to clarify logic and reduce groupthink. In small teams, this habit prevents dominant voices from steering conversations without scrutiny. 3. Close The Loop, Every Time It sounds basic, but closing the loop - on a bug report, a sales follow-up, or a customer message builds trust. Early teams that make this a reflex are more operationally tight. Users and teammates start to feel like action follows words. That makes everything else easier. 4. Default To Showing, Not Telling Instead of talking about a problem for 30 minutes, show a mockup, spreadsheet, or quick Loom video. A rough version beats a vague explanation. Founders at Figma and Superhuman made this a habit early - visual, concrete communication shortened feedback loops and made their teams feel faster. 5. End Each Week With A Lightweight Retro Even a 15-minute end-of-week reflection helps early teams improve. What worked? What didn't? What felt off? You don't need fancy tooling. Just capture a few bullet points and a single improvement to try next week. Tiny improvements compound faster than you'd think. 6. Discuss How You Communicate, Not Just What You're Communicating Most teams wait until things are tense to talk about how they talk. But tiny misalignments in communication style create friction early. Do you use Slack or email for decisions? Are async replies expected within hours or days? These patterns can quietly sabotage trust if they're not clarified early. You can check our Startup Communication & Negotiation Guide for a bit more in-depth insights into the importance of how to communicate effectively in the team and with outside stakeholders. 7. Name The Hard Stuff Out Loud It's tempting to avoid naming difficult truths like a strategy that's not working or a cofounder dynamic that's drifting. But high-trust teams normalize surfacing tension early. That doesn't mean oversharing. It just means saying the quiet part out loud, before it becomes resentment. 8. Keep The Calendar Sacred In the early days, teams often overbook meetings or swing to the other extreme and meet only when there's a fire. A consistent cadence, like for example a product review every Friday, a retro every two weeks, helps establish a rhythm. Rituals aren't bureaucracy. They're a defense against chaos. 9. Limit Who Touches What Too many founders try to "co-own" everything. But the strongest teams make clear calls on ownership. Who owns marketing copy? Who decides on design changes? Ownership creates clarity. Clarity reduces churn. It doesn't mean people stop collaborating - it just means someone decides. 10. Celebrate Progress Publicly (Even If It's Small) Momentum is fragile. Especially in a startup's first year. Teams that develop a habit of sharing wins, even small ones, build morale. This doesn't require parties or bonuses. A simple Slack thread or internal weekly email can remind everyone that forward motion is happening.
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Alien: Earth' Screens Blockbuster First Episode at Comic-Con
The upcoming Alien television series crash landed into Comic-Con with a blockbuster Hall H panel that got thousands of geeks sitting on the edge of their seats to an encroaching otherworldly horror. Alien: Earth, the FX series based on the classic 20th Century Studios science fiction horror movies, saw its first episode play on a giant screen in front of over 6,500 fans ahead of the show's premiere on FX and Hulu on Aug. 12. It was an ear-splitting, body-shaking experience that showcased epic moments, intimate moments and icky moments. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Rick and Morty' Spinoff 'President Curtis' a Go at Adult Swim 'The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon' Renewed for Fourth and Final Season at AMC "James Fraser Dies" in First 'Outlander' Season 8 Footage 'This is by far the biggest thing I've ever made,' said Noah Hawley, the showrunner who wrote and directed the pilot episode. 'But I made it like I make everything else: By hand, and love for you.' The series is ostensibly about a crashed spacecraft that brings the dreaded Alien xenomorph to Earth. But as expected, in Hawley's hands, there is much more going on. There are themese of humanity's quest for immortality, the greed of corporations (and inter-corporate warfare) and sibling love. Sydney Chandler plays a young woman named Wendy who is a first of her kind hybrid, a humanoid robot infused with human consciousness made by one of the mega-corporations who run the world. When a research starship owned by another mega-corporation crashes in a Southeast Asian metropolis, the childlike Wendy leads a rescue mission in order to find her brother. Unbeknownst to all, a xenomorph is on the ship… and so are a bunch of brand new alien creatures. 'Each hour has to have its horror elements but it has to be a drama,' explained Hawley. 'It has to be a character journey and be themactically rich. You have to worry that I may kill one of these people. I just might.' Timothy Olyphant, who plays a father figure of sorts to Chandler's characters, concurred, adding that by the time audiences gets four episodes in, it will be the character moments they will remember. But let's get back to the new creatures. Hawley said that the idea behind that was creating new feelings of 'genetic revulsion.' 'The one feeling you can't get back is the discovery of the life cycle of this creature (we all know so well now),' he said. 'How every step along the way is worse than the step before.' That said, there is plenty of xenomorph action. And it was mostly practical effects. The xenomorph was a man in a suit, not CG. 'I almost peed,' Chandler said when she saw him on set for the first time. Alien: Earth has a strong presence at Comic-Con as it also has an elaborate activation on the grounds of the convention center and nearby hotel. The interactive site allows guests to visit the crash site of the space ship holding the alien specimens and even allows for 'missions' in the evening as well as giveaways. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
