Expecting parents Dustin and Sierra Yoder were handed dreadful news during a routine prenatal ultrasound. The pair were told their baby boy had encephalocele, a rare birth defect that causes the brain to grow outside the brain cavity due to a hole in the skull. Normally a fatal condition, this story has a happy outcome thanks to a pair of surgeons who used 3D printing to devise a successful treatment, reports STAT.
The story of Bentley and his miracle treatment started in early 2015 when Dustin and Sierra Yoder discovered they were expecting their second child. This joy turned to despair when the couple received the encephalocele diagnosis and were told by doctors that the “baby would be ‘incompatible with life,” said Sierra Yoder to STAT.
Immediately following the diagnosis, the Yoders had to make the difficult decision whether to continue the pregnancy or terminate it at that point. Because she was already more than 22 weeks along, this decision had to be made immediately. After briefly considering an abortion, the pair decided to deliver the baby and care for him until he passed. “The night before the procedure, I told Dustin I couldn’t do it,” Yoder said to the Washington Post.
Months later, Yoder went into labor, and the couple traveled to the hospital with just a small bag of essentials to care for Sierra during her labor and delivery, and a little outfit for the baby to wear during his first and final hours of life. After he was born, the baby, named Bentley Ross Yoder, was rushed to his parents so they could hold and comfort him. Instead of passing quietly as expected, Bentley was thriving. “But he was crying, and he was breathing, and he was moving,” said Sierra Yoder to the Washington Post. “We were all just staring at him. For the first four or five hours of his life, we were all just waiting for something to happen.”
Defying all odds, Bentley was able to return home with his parents after three days in the hospital. While at home, he endured several health issues, including two lung infections that required treatment with a breathing machine. Despite these setbacks, he continued to grow and thrive. The couple sought the advice of neurosurgeons who confirmed baby Bentley was using his brain, including the part that protruded outside his skull. Unfortunately, the doctors did not know how to move Bentley’s brain tissue, which extended several inches outside his head, back into the safety of his skull. Not satisfied with the prognosis, the Yoders traveled from their home in Ohio to Boston to seek treatment from the doctors at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.
Neurosurgeon-in-chief Mark Proctor and plastic surgeon John Meara took on Bentley’s case and worked together to formulate a treatment plan. In most cases, doctors remove the portion of the brain that is outside the skull and then close the cranium to protect the remaining brain tissue. Bentley’s case was unusual because he was using all of his brain tissue. Doctors could not remove his brain, so they decided instead to expand his skull and allow the brain to slide back into his cranium.
To prepare for this challenging surgery, the surgeons created several 3D-printed models of Bentley’s skull. These models allowed the surgeons to plan the operation and practice it several times before entering the operating room. With a plan in hand, the doctors completed the surgery in just five hours. In the month following the surgery, Bentley has improved dramatically — “He is now able to hold up his head. He’s eating. He’s smiling. He’s jabbering,” said Sierra in a Washington Post interview.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.