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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Randomised trial of general practitioner online education for prescribing and test ordering Andrew Bonney. Conrad Kobel.

Potentially inappropriate medicine prescriptions and low-value diagnostic testing pose risks to patient safety and increases in health system costs. The aim of the Clinical and Healthcare Improvement through My Health Record usage and Education in General Practice study was to evaluate a scalable online...
Source: nih.gov

“Meet the patient” session: a strategy to teach medical students about autonomic dysfunction after spinal cord injury

Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system is an important long-term consequence of spinal cord injury (SCI). Yet, there is a scarcity of teaching resources about this topic for preclinical medical students. Given the association of SCI sequelae with emergency complications and mortality, it is imperative...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Recent waning snowpack in the Alps is unprecedented in the last six centuries - Nature Climate Change Carrer, Marco. Dibona,

Snow cover in high-latitude and high-altitude regions has strong effects on the Earth’s climate, environmental processes and socio-economic activities. Over the last 50 years, the Alps experienced a 5.6% reduction per decade in snow cover duration, which already affects a region where economy and...
Source: nature.com

Was Brexit About Tax Avoidance?

Several years ago I published an article “Is Brexit Really About Tax Avoidance?”, and it’s probably about time to revisit the topic, in the past tense, especially since the Anti Tax Avoidance Directive has now been implemented, and we have the EU/UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement to consider....
Source: politax.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

Mind-controlled wheelchairs let people dodge obstacles with ease Nature 2022.

A brain—machine interface allows people with paralysis in all four limbs to navigate a real-world environment. A brain—machine interface allows people with paralysis in all four limbs to navigate a real-world environment.
Source: nature.com

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

Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million

We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12–16%...
Source: nature.com

How the War in Ukraine Could Get Much Worse

The West and Russia may be entering into the terminal stages of an insecurity spiral, which could produce a larger European war even if it doesn’t go nuclear.
Source: foreignaffairs.com