How the Post Office's Horizon system failed: a technical breakdown
"From bugs to unqualified staff, the Post Office's point-of-sale system was inadequate on many levels." The code was poor from the start and the small team of developers were not up to the job. However, the problems were apparent in 1999 before it was launched. Includes a discussion of the Dalmellington...
Source: theguardian.com
Yaws could soon be eradicated — 70 years behind schedule Jones, Sam. Nature 2024.
Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the neglected tropical disease could be gone by 2030, but new barriers — including antibiotic resistance and primate reservoirs — might stand in the way. Researchers are cautiously optimistic that the neglected tropical disease could be gone by 2030, but...
Source: nature.com
Assessing learners - a mindset for the era of generative AI.
ChatGPT assignments to use in your classroom today. "Teachers and faculty everywhere first need to adopt a mindset that acknowledges the availability of AI and the likelihood that students will use it. As a result, we need to adjust our expectations of students. With online tests, maybe we should stop...
Source: ucf.edu
The Vulnerable World Hypothesis
"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
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
AI will be deeply disruptive to Higher Education
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...
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
20 Years Later, the Y2K Bug Seems Like a Joke—Because Those Behind the Scenes Took It Seriously
Some of the fixes put in place in 1999 are still used today to keep the world’s computer systems running smoothly
Source: time.com
Tetris defeated?
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
gathio - events without the big tech
An easier, quicker, and much less privacy-invading way to make and share events
Source: gath.io
The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again
The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.
Source: rollingstone.com
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
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
Monkeys in Thailand took up stone tools when covid-19 stopped tourism
Long-tailed macaques on the island of Koh Ped appear to have learned a new way to forage when the pandemic put a stop to feeding by tourists
Source: newscientist.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
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