My favourite tech hacks ... a thread
I started a thread on Bluesky of my favourite tech hacks earlier in the year and just added a couple more. Will keep a parallel list running here. Invidious (YouTube alternative front end) Pixabay (photos with appropriate Copyright) Etherpad (collaborate on a document with colleagues very easily)...
Source: bsky.app
65 Reasons To Celebrate The 6502
"The legendary chip from 1975 that helped start the home computer revolution." I can remember sharing the manual for the 6502 with my school friend, Chris. He had a BBC micro computer and I had a Commodore Vic 20. To do the machine code I remember you had to: compile into 6502 instructions what you...
Source: substack.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
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
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
Tetris defeated?
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
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
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
Identifying the optimal time period for detection of atrial fibrillation after ischaemic stroke and TIA, an updated systematic
There is an almost 4-fold increase in nAF detection with continuous cardiac monitoring, compared to usual care. The results also demonstrate two statistically significant time periods in nAF detection; at 0-14 days and 6-12 months following monitoring commencement. These data support the utilisation...
Source: nih.gov
ChatGPT performs well in the USMLE (nearly passes with no training)
This pre-print paper suggests ChatGPT could change how assessments might be done. “We evaluated the performance of a large language model called ChatGPT on the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE), which consists of three exams: Step 1, Step 2CK, and Step 3. ChatGPT performed at or near the...
AP exposes the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The 50th Anniversary
WASHINGTON (AP) — EDITOR’S NOTE — On July 25, 1972, Jean Heller, a reporter on The Associated Press investigative team, then called the Special Assignment Team, broke news that rocked the nation. Based on documents leaked by Peter Buxtun, a whistleblower at the U.S.
Source: apnews.com
The UK’s (new) Bill of Rights
An authoritarian resistance to scrutiny. Very un-British.
“it is becoming abundantly clear that the true objective underpinning this Bill (and the Government’s wider project) concerns not the so-called restoration of parliamentary sovereignty or the strengthening of democracy, but the entrenchment...
Source: publiclawforeveryone.com
The Lyonesse Project: a study of the coastal and marine environment of the Isles of Scilly (OASIS ID cornwall2-58903)
This project was commissioned by English Heritage and carried out between 2009 and 2013 by Historic Environment Projects, Cornwall Council with a team of specialists from Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Exeter and Plymouth Universities, English Heritage's Scientific Dating Team, volunteers and local experts and...
Source: archaeologydataservice.ac.uk
Particle physics could be rewritten after shock W boson measurement
“The standard model of particle physics has stood the test of time for decades, but now a new measurement of a particle called the W boson could indicate a chink in its armour.” The scientists took 10 years to do the analysis as it was so complex! “The analysis was so complex that the result took...
Source: newscientist.com
Senior health professionals call for urgent climate briefing of all MPs by the chief scientific adviser: open letter to
Dear prime minister,
We wish to make you aware of our concern for the health of Angus Rose, a 52 year old man, who at the time of writing is on day 34 of a hunger strike outside Parliament, consuming only fluids, vitamins, and minerals.
His not unreasonable demand is that all members of parliament...
Source: bmj.com
Beyond Omicron: what’s next for COVID’s viral evolution Callaway, Ewen. Nature 2021 600:7888.
The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months. The rapid spread of new variants offers clues to how SARS-CoV-2 is adapting and how the pandemic will play out over the next several months.
Source: nature.com
Factors affecting the uptake of new medicines: a systematic literature review - BMC Health Services Research Lublóy, Ágnes.
"This systematic literature review has provided insights into the factors that affect new drug uptake—primarily, doctors’ scientific orientation, prescribing habits, exposure to pharmaceutical marketing, and interpersonal communication." "Background The successful diffusion of new drugs is crucial...
Source: biomedcentral.com
The unhealthy industry playbook
What Public Health Practitioners Need to Know About Unhealthy IndustryTactics. Attack legitimate science. e.g. Accuse science of deception, calling it “junk science” or “bad science,” claiming science is manipulated to fulfill a political agenda. Attack and intimidate the scientists. e.g. Create...
Source: aphapublications.org
Overturning 'conventional wisdom' with 'natural experiments'
Via Reuters ... "Economists David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens won the 2021 Nobel economics prize on Monday for pioneering "natural experiments" to show real-world economic impacts in areas from minimum wage increases in the U.S. fast-food sector to migration from Castro-era Cuba." "One experiment...
Source: reuters.com
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