Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'old'

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

Apple knew AirDrop users could be identified and tracked as early as 2019, researchers say | CNN Business

Security researchers warned Apple as early as 2019 about vulnerabilities in its AirDrop wireless sharing function that Chinese authorities claim they recently used to track down users of the feature, the researchers told CNN, in a case that experts say has sweeping implications for global privacy.
Source: cnn.com

A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++ - Slashdot

serviscope_minor shares a Phoronix post: A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code. The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing wo...
Source: slashdot.org

I’ve Researched Time for 15 Years—Here’s How My Perception of It Has Changed

Why does time slow down in near-death situations? Does time really pass more quickly as you get older? How do our brains process time?
Source: singularityhub.com

Tetris defeated?

blog post image 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

(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

Ice Halos over Bavaria

"For suspended water to freeze into an ice fog requires quite cold temperatures, and indeed the air temperature on this day was measured at well below zero. The ice fog reflected light from the Sun setting behind St. Coleman Church."
Source: nasa.gov

High Pay Centre analysis of FTSE 350 pay ratios • High Pay Centre

Pay inequalities at UK's largest companies remain constant, despite ‘cost of living’ crisis. "The companies with lowest-paid UK employees (based on pay at the 25th percentile) were retailer JD Sports, where the lower quartile threshold was £11,240, pub chain Mitchells & Butlers (£15,161) and...
Source: highpaycentre.org

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

Coaching for Clinician Educators

Branzetti, Jeremy. Love, Linda M.. Schulte, Elaine E. Journal of Graduate Medical Education. Clinician educators (CEs) face manifold challenges, such as teaching under increasing clinical productivity pressures, satisfying evolving accreditation requirements, and combatting trainee and faculty burnout....
Source: allenpress.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

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...

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

Spem in alium nunquam habui (Hope in any other, never did I have)

This piece of music is probably like nothing you have ever heard. Maybe because it is nearly 500 years old it feels like it is from another world. Maybe because it is written for eight choirs with five voices each the forty parts it's so complex you'd be pressed even to hum some of the tune afterwards....
Source: wikipedia.org

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

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

What does the future of work look like for pharma?

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated changes to our working world. What does this mean for pharma, and what must the industry do to keep pace? PwC - future of work for pharma costs - pressures on efficienct, increasing R&D costs sustainability and societal impact - pressure on companies to address...
Source: pwc.co.uk

IBM has sold Watson Health. It was a long time coming.

"It's difficult not to see the sale as a failure of IBM's big bet on Watson to usher health care into the AI age." IBM invested over $4B in Watson Health but has sold it for $1B.
Source: protocol.com

Fatalism - the stalemate of us vs. COVID-19

Stephen Casper - medical historian at Clarkson University - offers a worrying prediction for COVID for the end of 2022. The analogy for COVID-19 won't be influenza but 'tuberculosis before the discovery of antibiotics'. A new hospital specialty might even exist - looking after COVID patients - and they...
Source: twitter.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