Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.
The Vesuvius Prize reward has encouraged work on deciphering scans of ancient charred scrolls from Herculaneum. "First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Marchant, Jo. Nature 2024. ... Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts,...
Source: nature.com
Kenya's push to make 'boda-boda' motorbike taxis go electric
"The government wants Kenya's three million motorbike taxi riders to go green but only a few have done so." I last went to Kenya over 10 years ago and I got around Kitale on the back of push bikes by local riders. Motorised bikes 'boda-boda' were only just being introduced at the time. Apparently there...
Source: bbc.com
Predicting students’ academic progress and related attributes in first-year medical students: an analysis with artificial
"Background Dropout and poor academic performance are persistent problems in medical schools in emerging economies. Identifying at-risk students early and knowing the factors that contribute to their success would be useful for designing educational interventions. Educational Data Mining (EDM) methods...
Source: biomedcentral.com
OpenAI announces first partnership with a university
"Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise." "With the OpenAI partnership, ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor for students, not only for certain courses, but also for study topics. STEM subjects are a focus and are “the make-or-break...
Source: cnbc.com
Project Wayward: A wearable for the elderly and those with Dementia.
Get an instant alert for help if the elder falls down, wanders away outside, or in case of an accident. "Hemesh's grandmother was one of many, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She had severe cases of wandering, where she would walk away without the caregiver noticing, resulting in a number...
Source: projectwayward.com
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
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
Development and validation of Simulation Scenario Quality Instrument (SSQI)
A validated scale for measuring quality of simulation scenarios in medical education. "Background Due to the unmet need for valid instruments that evaluate critical components of simulation scenarios, this research aimed to develop and validate an instrument that measures the quality of healthcare...
Source: biomedcentral.com
Artificial intelligence for healthcare and medical education: a systematic review
"After searching and reading a large amount of literature, we were surprised to find that most of the literature related to “AI+medical/medical education” was of low quality... This suggests us to conduct new research or improve the quality of research related to AI and medical/medical education....
Source: nih.gov
Learning Outcomes of High-fidelity versus Table-Top Simulation in Undergraduate Emergency Medicine Education: Prospective,
The student's performance on quantitative medical-knowledge assessment was equivalent between the high-fidelity control and low-fidelity experimental simulation groups. Analysis of knowledge acquisition between the two groups also demonstrated statistical equivalence.
Source: nih.gov
In the ’80s, We Decided Bike Helmets Make Riders Safe. Cyclists Have Paid for It Ever Since.
Good review of the complex science around cycle helmets and safety. The article also touches on the unintended effects of helmet mandate laws (which have been repealed in many US cities). Shout out to Ian Walker of Swansea University and his heroic measuring of passing distance of vehicles with various...
Source: slate.com
Gender differences in individual variation in academic grades fail to fit expected patterns for STEM - Nature Communications
Fewer women than men pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), despite girls outperforming boys at school in the relevant subjects. According to the ‘variability hypothesis’, this over-representation of males is driven by gender differences in variance; greater male...
Source: nature.com
GCSE pass rate in UK by gender 2022 | Statista
In 2022, 76.7 percent of female students and 69.8 percent of male students achieved a C/4 grade or higher at GCSE level in the United Kingdom.
Source: statista.com
Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance
JERUSALEM (AP) — Majd Ramlawi was serving coffee in Jerusalem’s Old City when a chilling text message appeared on his phone. “You have been spotted as having participated in acts of violence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” it read in Arabic.
Source: apnews.com
Aymptomatic testing for COVID could reduce hospital admissions
"The city-wide pilot of community based asymptomatic testing for SARS-CoV-2 was associated with substantially reduced covid-19 related hospital admissions. Large scale asymptomatic rapid testing for SARS-CoV-2 could help reduce transmission and prevent hospital admissions."
Source: bmj.com
Thales Alenia Space wins EU feasibility study for 'Ascend' space data centers
"Orbital data centers to offload compute and emissions." "The European Commission has contracted Thales Alenia Space to lead the ASCEND feasibility study for data centers in orbit."
Source: datacenterdynamics.com
Wildlife photography: Magic of Skomer's puffins captured
As puffin breeding season draws to a close, Drew Buckley shares his photos of the birds.
Source: bbc.com
The man filling the City with working-class stars
A recruitment firm has launched an algorithm that weeds out privileged, mediocre people, and identifies talent from disadvantaged backgrounds
Source: positive.news
Quantum microphone works even better than a regular one
By detecting tiny movements of particles of light, a quantum microphone has recorded human speech that is easier to understand than if it is captured by an equivalent classical version
Source: newscientist.com
Will electric motorbike sales take off across Asia?
"Soaring petrol prices could speed up the transition to electric much faster than expected." Could electric motorbikes become a thing in the UK? Not so much in hilly Cornwall perhaps but cities maybe. The smaller size of a motorbike battery lends itself to being swappable.
Source: bbc.com
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