Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

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

gathio - events without the big tech

An easier, quicker, and much less privacy-invading way to make and share events
Source: gath.io

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

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

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

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

Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising

Homophily is the tendency for people to stick with similar people. Could this partly explain some of the gender bias in citations? "Women still tend to build more on women’s work, and men still tend to build on men’s work more." "Gender bias in paper citations is less common among younger scientists,...
Source: nature.com

2023: A year of groundbreaking advances in AI and computing

"This has been a year of incredible progress in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and its practical applications." A review of 2023 posted by Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist, Google DeepMind & Google Research, Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind, and James Manyika, SVP, Google Research,...
Source: research.google

This AI Trained on the Life Events of Every Person in Denmark. It Can Now Predict Their Future.

Artificial intelligence is very good at finding patterns. Given enough data it will start making telling you what's going to happen. "The AI can make highly accurate predictions about people’s lives, including how likely they are to die in a given time window and their personality traits." ... ...
Source: singularityhub.com

NFTs died a slow, painful death in 2023 as most are now worthless

A reminder that early adoption of technology is not without risk. "Non-fungible tokens promised to revolutionise the concept of ownership using the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, but the market seems to have all but collapsed."
Source: newscientist.com

Innovating Pedagogy 2023

blog post image Looking for something innovative to try in 2024? MedEd professionals would benefit by looking through these ideas first. Open University's, Institute of Educational Technology's latest innovating pedagogy report from August 2023. This is the 11th annual report on emerging technologies in education...
Source: open.ac.uk

Machines may be better at assisting, not replacing us.

Journalist Kawandeep Virdee sees if he can be replaced by AI by writing some predictions for 2024. "I gave ChatGPT the last 13 years of Nieman Lab predictions ... [and asked it what I'd write about in 2024]" [ChatGPT suggested] Navigating the infodemic: Strategies for media in the era of misinformation...
Source: niemanlab.org

(We are not) using eHealth Data to Inform CPD for Medical Practitioners

"There is no formal or well-established correlation between individual performance data obtained through eHealth data analysis and CPD planning and programming for medical practitioners; in particular, the literature shows no consistency in type of eHealth data to analyze, software and tools to use,...
Source: nih.gov

Development of a statistical analysis software for determining effectiveness of a comprehensive fall risk management protocol

"This quality improvement project resulted in the development of a computer application that allows clinicians and medical professionals to conduct data analysis in an in-clinic setting without the help of external statistical teams, and with minimal prior training in coding or mathematics."
Source: bmj.com

Ice Halos over Bavaria

"For suspended water to freeze into an ice fog requires quite cold temperatures, and indeed the air temperature on this day was measured at well below zero. The ice fog reflected light from the Sun setting behind St. Coleman Church."
Source: nasa.gov