Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'al'

The Vulnerable World Hypothesis

blog post image "This paper introduces the concept of a vulnerable world: roughly, one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default, i.e. unless it has exited the ‘semi-anarchic default condition’. Several counterfactual historical and...
Source: doi.org

Is Vaccination Approaching a Dangerous Tipping Point? Peter Marks. Robert Califf. JAMA.

This Viewpoint discusses declining vaccination rates in the US, specifically against COVID-19, and the ways in which clinicians and the Food and Drug Administration can counter the current large volume of vaccine misinformation.
Source: jamanetwork.com

Workplace well-being initiatives don't boost employee mental health

"The mental health of people who undertake mindfulness or meditation courses offered by their employer is generally no better than those who are not offered such programmes." "Instead of offering these initiatives, Fleming suggests that employers focus on bettering the work environment. For example,...
Source: newscientist.com

Elevated genetic risk for multiple sclerosis emerged in steppe pastoralist populations

"The last 10,000 years have seen some of the most extreme global changes in lifestyle, with the emergence of farming in some regions and pastoralism in others. While 5,000 years ago farmer ancestry predominated across Europe, a relatively diverged genetic ancestry arrived with the steppe migrations around...
Source: nature.com

How machine learning might unlock earthquake prediction

Researchers are applying artificial intelligence and other techniques in the quest to forecast quakes in time to help people find safety.
Source: technologyreview.com

A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless.

New AI-generated digital replicas of real experts expose an unnerving policy gray zone. Washington wants to fix it, but it’s not clear how.
Source: politico.com

Isomorphic Labs kicks off 2024 with two pharmaceutical collaborations - Isomorphic Labs

Isomorphic Labs kicks off 2024 with two pharmaceutical collaborations
Source: isomorphiclabs.com

Wearable Soft Robot Helps Parkinson's Patients Avoid 'Freezing'

A collaboration between Harvard University and Boston University, this device offers a solution to one of the most debilitating hallmarks of Parkinson's disease.
Source: extremetech.com

AI will be deeply disruptive to Higher Education

blog post image Paul LeBlanc and George Siemens are teaming up to explore how AI is going to change higher education. "LeBlanc transformed SNHU from 2500 students in 2003 to over 200,000 students in 20 years by using technology to switch delivery online." Siemens is one of the proposers of connectivism - a theory...

Nikon, Sony and Canon fight AI fakes with new camera tech

Digital signatures to provide way to tell real photos from deepfakes
Source: nikkei.com

I’ve Researched Time for 15 Years—Here’s How My Perception of It Has Changed

Why does time slow down in near-death situations? Does time really pass more quickly as you get older? How do our brains process time?
Source: singularityhub.com

Tetris defeated?

blog post image 34 years later, a 13-year-old hits the NES Tetris “kill screen” says ArsTechnica. "BlueScuti forces the game to crash after 40 minutes and 1,511 lines." Having tried to play the game I can appreciate how difficult - and what an outstanding feat - this has been to basically break the game.
Source: arstechnica.com

Newspocalypse now

"We will learn that the less something looks like what we have now, the better chance it has of being the thing on the other side of death."
Source: niemanlab.org

Sustained decrease in latent safety threats through regular interprofessional in situ simulation training of neonatal emergencies

Simulation training at trainees' actual workplace offers benefits over traditional simulation-based team training. We prospectively investigated whether regular in situ simulation training of neonatal emergencies in an interprofessional and interdisciplinary team could be used to identify and rectif...
Source: nih.gov

Changes in Hospital Adverse Events and Patient Outcomes Associated With Private Equity Acquisition.

"Private equity acquisition of hospitals, on average, was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events despite a likely lower-risk pool of admitted Medicare beneficiaries, suggesting poorer quality of inpatient care."
Source: jamanetwork.com

We're getting closer to OpenAI's first device

Sam Altman and Jony Ive have tapped Apple executive Tang Tan to build their new AI device.
Source: businessinsider.com

Apple’s iPhone Design Chief Enlisted by Jony Ive, Sam Altman to Work on AI Devices

Legendary designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are enlisting an Apple Inc. veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities.
Source: bloomberg.com

Why Are Alaska's Rivers Turning Orange?

Streams in Alaska are turning orange with iron and sulfuric acid. Scientists are trying to figure out why
Source: scientificamerican.com

Educational Effectiveness of Telementoring as a Continuing Professional Development Intervention for Surgeons in Practice:

"Moderate-level evidence demonstrates the use of telementoring as effective in changing surgeons’ knowledge and competence in both educational and workplace-based settings. Its use is also associated with changes in patient outcomes."
Source: lww.com

Discovery of a structural class of antibiotics with explainable deep learning.

One of the challenges with deep learning (neural networks) is that although they find patterns the reasoning disappears into an endless detail of numbers. In this paper the researchers built an 'explainable' AI to discover antibiotics instead of such a 'black box'. "The discovery of novel structural...
Source: nature.com