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Deciphering ancient charred texts - the power of a prize.

blog post image 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

AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation

blog post image "Generative AI allows people to produce piles upon piles of images and words very quickly. It would be nice if there were some way to reliably distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content. It would help people avoid endlessly arguing with bots online, or believing what a fake image purports...
Source: eff.org

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

Integrating basic sciences into clerkship rotation utilizing Kern’s six-step model of instructional design: lessons learned

Worked example of curriculum design using Kern's six-step approach. "Background It is generally agreed that basic and clinical sciences should be integrated throughout the undergraduate medical education, however, there is still need for continued formal integration of basic sciences into clinical...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Three Epochs of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care Michael D. Howell. Greg S. Corrado. Karen B. DeSalvo. JAMA.

This Special Communication examines the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) over the years, and how developments with AI can help decision-makers improve health care while also recognizing its risks.
Source: jamanetwork.com

'It hasn't delivered': The spectacular failure of self-checkout technology Sam Becker.

Unstaffed tills were supposed to revolutionise shopping. Now, both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks.
Source: bbc.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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