Health Highlights: Nov. 18, 2009

Nov. 19 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Computer Simulation Mimics Cat Brain

Researchers say they've created a computer simulation of a cat's cerebral cortex, which could prove an important step in efforts to develop computers that "think" like brains.

The simulation -- which uses 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of main memory -- doesn't mean the computer thinks like a cat, but it does provide a model of how thoughts form in the brain and how a cat brain's one billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses work together, the Associated Press reported.

The research, by an IBM team, was presented at a supercomputer conference in Portland, Ore.

Previously, the same scientists simulated the full brain of a rat, 40 percent of a mouse's brain, and 1 percent of a human's cerebral cortex, the AP reported.

The ability to make computers think like brains could lead to major advances in various fields, including medicine and economics.

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Hyper-Resistant Bacteria Major Health Threat: Experts

New, hyper-resistant bacteria that are emerging because of continued overuse and misuse of antibiotics pose a serious global health threat, experts warned at a European conference.

"Some bacteria are becoming resistant to all treatments, forcing us to use older, toxic antibiotics or combinations of drugs that we are only familiar with on paper," Dominique Monnet, a European Center for Diseases Prevention and Control specialist on the issue, told Agence France Presse.

The problem is particularly serious in southern and eastern Europe, where antibiotic use is higher than anywhere else.

Monnet and a colleague surveyed about 100 European intensive care doctors and found that in the last six months more than half had treated at least one patient with a bacterial infection that was totally or almost totally resistant to antibiotics.