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
IT tools and gadgets
I really enjoy finding tools that just do the job and don't try to profit from you or your data. Here are some of the ones that I find useful. Send a large file or lots of files Transfer files up to 6GB in size. No registration required. No ads. Links expire. FileTransfer.io ... https://filetransfer.io/...
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 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
Psychology of panic buying
I've been fascinated by the psychology of panic buying and it is clearly an area for future research. It has an enormous impact on delivery infrastructure and I wonder if anyone has been tracking the data of the causes and the impact in the current fuel 'crisis'. A systematic review from last year identified...
Source: nih.gov
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
New WHO Global Air Quality Guidelines aim to save millions of lives from air pollution
"Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to human health, alongside climate change. New guidelines provide clear evidence of the damage air pollution inflicts on human health, at even lower concentrations than previously understood." "Global assessments of ambient air pollution alone...
Source: who.int
This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban – MIT Technology Review
Source: technologyreview.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
New WHO toolkit promotes inclusion of people with dementia in society
“Towards a dementia-inclusive society: WHO toolkit for dementia-friendly initiatives”, launched today, is WHO’s latest response for establishing and scaling-up dementia-friendly initiatives globally. The toolkit helps countries raise public awareness and understanding of dementia to support people...
Source: who.int
Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly | Commonwealth Fund
"How the 11 Countries Rank on Performance. The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The next three countries in the ranking — the U.K., Germany, and New Zealand — perform very similarly to one another." The UK was ranked #1 overall in 2017 - the last time this...
Source: commonwealthfund.org
Clinically contextualised ECG interpretation: the impact of prior clinical exposure and case vignettes on ECG diagnostic
Does teaching ECGs with a clinical vignette improve training? Not greatly ... but having seen a condition previously (and presumably the ECG that went with it) is probably best. The researchers concluded that "ECG training should therefore not rely on experiential learning
alone, but instead be supplemented...
Source: biomedcentral.com
Pegasus: Spyware sold to governments 'targets activists'
Israeli tech firm NSO denies media reports that its software has been sold to authoritarian regimes. The Android and iOS spyware can apparently see photographs and contacts, log everything that is typed, and turn on the camera and microphone.
Source: bbc.com
'Laws of Nature Turned up to 11': Astronomers Spot Two Neutron Stars Being Swallowed by Black Holes
In two separate observations, just ten days apart, astronomers discover a neutron star circling a black hole before being gobbled up.
Source: singularityhub.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
How an informant and a messaging app led to huge global crime sting
It took $100,000 plus expenses, and the opportunity for a reduced prison sentence, for the smartphone developer to collaborate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2018 and kick-start Operation Trojan Shield, according to a court document.
Source: reuters.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
An approach to Bloom's taxonomy
Taking inspiration from Don Clark http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html this is another approach to Bloom's taxonomy. I've included a worked example in diabetes. Writing learning outcomes is core tool for instructional designers. My rule of thumb is to aim high.
Source: deanjenkins.me
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
Why a U.S. hospital and oil company turned to facial recognition
Deployments of facial recognition from Israeli startup AnyVision show how the surveillance software has gained adoption across the United States even as regulatory and ethical debates about it rage.
Source: reuters.com
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