Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'ask'

What (else) happened? A key question for learning programmes.

blog post image Good paper from 2013 on the need to go beyond just asking 'did our programme work?' "It is clear that programme evaluations using traditional ‘outcomes-based’ models are inadequate for the health professions context. Consequently, the scholarship in health professions education has begun to incorporate...
Source: wiley.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

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

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

The Impact of Mask Distribution and Promotion on Mask Uptake and COVID-19 in Bangladesh

A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that face masks can protect against COVID-19. There is, however, limited rigorous evidence on the extent to which mask-wearing is effective in reducing COVID-19 in a real-life situation with imperfect and inconsistent mask use. In Bangladesh, researchers...
Source: poverty-action.org

U.S. employers get religion with vaccine mandates

As coronavirus infections rise again, U.S. companies mandating vaccinations are confronting an uncomfortable question rarely asked by an employer - what is an employee's religious belief?
Source: reuters.com

Covid Disguises Chronic Scarcity of Workers for U.K. Recovery

“The acute labor shortage because of self isolation is masking the systemic challenge for businesses struggling to recruit after Brexit.”
Source: bloomberg.com

Why whales in Alaska have been so happy

What will happen to Alaska's whales when tourism returns to waters stilled by Covid?
Source: bbc.com

Alaska: Biden to suspend Trump Arctic drilling leases

The president will suspend oil and gas leases in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Source: bbc.com

Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?

"The importance of airborne transmission in the pandemic was clear long before the World Health Organization finally began to acknowledge it." "If the importance of aerosol transmission had been accepted early, we would have been told from the beginning that it was much safer outdoors, where these small...
Source: nytimes.com

Founded Upon an Error

A recent post on Reddit asks, “Why was Bayes’ Theory not accepted/popular historically until the late 20th century?” Great question! As always, there are many answers to a questio…
Source: allendowney.com

Use of 360° virtual reality video in medical obstetrical education: a quasi-experimental design Vera Arents. Pieter C.

Background Video-based teaching has been part of medical education for some time but 360° videos using a virtual reality (VR) device are a new medium that offer extended possibilities. We investigated whether adding a 360° VR video to the internship curriculum leads to an improvement of long-term recall...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Can ultrasound novices develop image acquisition skills after reviewing online ultrasound modules? Elaine Situ-LaCasse.

Background Point-of-care ultrasound is becoming a ubiquitous diagnostic tool, and there has been increasing interest to teach novice practitioners. One of the challenges is the scarcity of qualified instructors, and with COVID-19, another challenge is the difficulty with social distancing between learners...
Source: biomedcentral.com

Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets

blog post image Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...

Gloves that give people with tremor a helping hand | Reuters Video

One of the word's largest electronics manufacturers has invested in a UK start-up making gloves with built-in spinning gyroscopes that help people overcome the sometimes debilitating tremors that can stop them doing some simple tasks.
Source: reut.rs

Best Way to Learn Online | Snapask

"Snapask App instantly matches students with tutors to answer difficult questions! Download and ask for free! Whether it is Primary or Secondary subjects (Malay, English, Mathematics, Phy, Chem, Bio) homework questions can be asked, and the tutor will reply instantly!" Snap a photo of your homework and...
Source: snapask.com

Data trusts: what are they and how do they work?

"The trade unions of the data economy." "How do we, the general public, gain greater control over the estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that is recorded, stored, processed and analysed, every day?" This also links to the DataSkop project from AlgorithmWatch.
Source: thersa.org

'How many dead bodies?' asked Myanmar protester killed on bloodiest day

Shocking news from Myanmar reported by Reuters. "The day before he was killed, internet network engineer Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing had posted on Facebook about the increasingly violent military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar." "“#How_Many_Dead_Bodies_UN_Need_To_Take_Action,” he wrote,...
Source: reuters.com

Feeding your cat a very meaty diet may mean it kills less wildlife

In a small trial in the UK, pet cats fed on an unusually meaty diet brought home 36 per cent fewer prey animals than cats given a typical diet. "Domestic cats seem to hunt less when their diets are richer in animal-sourced protein, suggesting that feeding cats more meat could help reduce their impact...
Source: newscientist.com