Thinking Allowed

medical / technology / education / art / flub

showing posts for 'times'

Opinion: OpenAI's drama marks a new and scary era in artificial intelligence

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, professors at MIT, lend their insight to the recent drama at OpenAI. "Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense...
Source: latimes.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

China has won AI battle with U.S., Pentagon's ex-software chief says

China has won the artificial intelligence battle with the United States and is heading towards global dominance because of its technological advances, the Pentagon's former software chief told the Financial Times.
Source: reuters.com

The AI Hierarchy of Needs | Hacker Noon

Sometimes you come across something that someone has written which makes what was a whole complicated mess in your head very simple indeed. Monica Rogati has done that with AI using an analogy of Maslow's (in)famous hierarchy of needs. For AI it translates to something like collecting, storing, preparing,...
Source: hackernoon.com

Will MIT Scientists' Powerful Magnet Lead Us to Nuclear Fusion Energy? - Slashdot

"A start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it is nearing a technological milestone that could take the world a step closer to fusion energy, which has eluded scientists for decades," reports the New York Times: Researchers at M.I.T.'s Plasma Science and Fus...
Source: slashdot.org

Gout and 'Podagra' in medieval Cambridge, England - PubMed International journal of paleopathology.

"The high prevalence rate of gout in the friary is at least partly explained by the consumption of alcohol and purine-rich diets by the friars and the wealthy townsfolk. Medieval medical texts from Cambridge show that gout (known as podagra) was sometimes treated with medications made from the root of...
Source: nih.gov

The leader's brain: Neuroscience in the workplace

The brain rarely fires on all cylinders even at the best of times - what more during a pandemic?
Source: reuters.com

Cats Are Better Than Dogs (at Catching the Coronavirus)

Cats and dogs can be infected by the coronavirus — but cats are more susceptible to infection, a new study suggests.
Source: nytimes.com

Cauliflower and Chaos, Fractals in Every Floret

Scientists take a crack at recreating the hypnotic fractal spirals of the Romanesco cauliflower.
Source: nytimes.com

Reuters, New York Times win Pulitzers for coverage of racial injustice, COVID-19

Reuters and the Minneapolis Star Tribune each won a Pulitzer Prize on Friday for journalism about racial inequities in U.S. policing, while the New York Times and the Atlantic were honored for chronicling the COVID-19 pandemic, the two topics that dominated last year's headlines.
Source: reuters.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

Flat Pasta That Turns Into 3-D Shapes - Just Add Boiling Water

The engineers are in the kitchen, again.
Source: nytimes.com

Sewage discharged into rivers 400,000 times in 2020

Waterways in England had sewage discharged into them for three million hours
Source: bbc.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

Why 2021 Is Graph Data Science's Year for the Enterprise -

Graph data science is becoming increasingly important to business delivering deep insights into data and driving new business cases.
Source: enterprisetimes.co.uk

The Next Trick: Pulling Coronavirus Out of Thin Air

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s new air sampler can help monitor for airborne pathogens, and signals renewed interest in bioaerosol surveillance.
Source: nytimes.com

How to Virtually Become a Doctor

Medical schools and students alike have had to adapt to remote cadaver dissections and bedside-manner training via Zoom.
Source: nytimes.com

Adaptive testing reduces collusion in online tests

“Rensselaer-developed method proven effective in reducing collusion among students” “When a distanced online test is performed, students receive the same questions, but at varying times depending on their skill level. For instance, students of highest mastery levels receive each question after...
Source: rpi.edu

Israel Reveals Newly Discovered Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls

The finds, ranging from just a few millimeters to a thumbnail in size, are the first to be unearthed in archaeological excavations in the Judean Desert in about 60 years.
Source: nytimes.com

Tiny Town, Big Decision: What Are We Willing to Pay to Fight the Rising Sea?

On the Outer Banks, homeowners in Avon are confronting a tax increase of almost 50 percent to protect their homes, the only road into town, and perhaps the community’s very existence.
Source: nytimes.com