Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'read'

My favourite tech hacks ... a thread

blog post image 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

blog post image "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

A checklist for reporting, reading and evaluating Artificial Intelligence Technology Enhanced Learning (AITEL) research

blog post image "This paper proposes a checklist for reporting on AI systems, and covers the initial protocols and scoping, modelling and code, algorithm design, training data, testing and validation, usage, comparisons, real-world requirements, results and limitations, and ethical considerations. The aim is to have...
Source: tandfonline.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

Embracing Authenticity: Why Non-Algorithmic Social Media Platforms Are More Social Than Instagram, Tumblr, or Threads

The fallacy shared both by social media services and educational services is one of trying to engineer the perfect mix of content for their clients. What we find, I think, in both education and online media is that authentic content - that is, content based in a person's actual life and relations with...
Source: downes.ca

AI information retrieval: A search engine researcher explains the promise and peril of letting ChatGPT and its cousins search

A new generation of artificial intelligence-based information access systems, which includes Microsoft’s Bing/ChatGPT, Google/Bard and Meta/LLaMA, is upending the traditional search engine mode of search input and output. These systems are able to take full sentences and even paragraphs as input and...
Source: ampproject.org

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

Shared decision making learning package | Shared decision making | Guidance | NICE

"To support implementation of the NICE guideline on shared decision making, Keele University and NICE have worked in partnership to develop an online learning package. This is suitable for all healthcare professionals and aims to equip people with the skills and knowledge they need to have good-quality...
Source: nice.org.uk

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

Biopharma futures

blog post image I've been looking at a few industry reports on the future of biopharma as part of a course I'm on with INSEAD Business School on Business Strategy and Financial Performance. I thought I'd share some of my ramblings on Biopharma Futures. Expectations are high Pharmaceutical companies are operating...
Source: deanjenkins.me

Thich Nhat Hanh, poetic peace activist and master of mindfulness, dies at 95

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist who in the 1960s came to prominence as an opponent of the Vietnam War, died on Saturday aged 95 surrounded by his followers in the temple where his spiritual journey began. "Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less...
Source: reuters.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

Rediscovering Cryptpad

Cryptpad is for working collaboratively on documents such as Rich Text, Spread Sheets, Presentations, Whiteboards, and Project Boards. The server has no access to any of your data and the encryption is based on zero knowledge. You don't even need to give an email address to register - you pick a username...
Source: cryptpad.fr

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

The pandemic slashed the West Coast’s emissions. Wildfires already reversed it.

Major fires and resulting emissions are set to continually increase across the world’s forested regions, fueling more warming and more fires to come.
Source: technologyreview.com

Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants

 All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, change over time. Most changes have little to no impact on the virus’ properties. However, some changes may affect the virus’s properties, such as how easily it spreads, the associated disease severity, or the performance...
Source: who.int

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

Building customer relationships with conversational AI

We’ve all been there. “Please listen to our entire menu as our options have changed. Say or press one for product information…” Sometimes, these automated customer service experiences are effective and efficient—other times, not so much. Many organizations are already using chatbots and virtual...
Source: technologyreview.com

Medical educators’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and knowledge: development of a new framework

Interesting paper about beliefs among medical educators. This has been developed with a qualitative study of undergraduate educators but the framework makes for good reading for those of us involved in urging colleagues and expert speakers to become more learner-centred. "The sharp divide between...
Source: biomedcentral.com