Thinking Allowed

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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

Can ultrasound novices develop image acquisition skills after reviewing online ultrasound modules? Elaine Situ-LaCasse.

Background Point-of-care ultrasound is becoming a ubiquitous diagnostic tool, and there has been increasing interest to teach novice practitioners. One of the challenges is the scarcity of qualified instructors, and with COVID-19, another challenge is the difficulty with social distancing between learners...
Source: biomedcentral.com

The role of motivational profiles in learning problem-solving and self-assessment skills with video modeling examples Lisette

In the current study, we examine the role of situation-specific motivational profiles in the effectiveness of video modeling examples for learning problem-solving and self-assessment accuracy in the domain of biology. A sample of 342 secondary school students participated in our study. Latent profile...
Source: springer.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

Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets

blog post image Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...

Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race

"COVID-19 has provided a vivid reminder of the power of biological threats. But the threat doesn’t come from natural sources alone. Weaponized contagious diseases — which were abandoned by the United States, but developed in large numbers by the Soviet Union, right up until its collapse — have...
Source: 80000hours.org

UK PM pledges 3 billion pounds for England's bus network

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will invest 3 billion pounds ($4.17 billion) in England's bus network, aiming to provide more frequent, cheaper services to encourage people to catch the bus instead of using the car.
Source: reuters.com

PAIRED: A New Multi-agent Approach for Adversarial Environment Generation

This Google AI blog describes a method for machine learning using paired agents. The gap between the one that did the best and the one that did the worst is regret. That feeling of 'could have done' better is what pushes the 'unsupervised environment design' algorithm towards a better solution. "The...
Source: googleblog.com

The Power of Asynchronous Video

"A set of seven articles discusses the benefits of asynchronous video and provides specific guidance about how to effectively incorporate these tools to improve learning. Unbounded by Time: Understanding How Asynchronous Video Can Be Critical to Learning Success Putting Your Best Self Forward: 6 Keys...
Source: educause.edu

Some like it hot: don’t forget to warm up online learning spaces

‘Warming up’ the screen needs to become a priority for educators, especially for video-based tutorials and seminars, says Lucinda McKnight
Source: timeshighereducation.com

A Psychologist's Journey to Treating Phobias with VR - VR for Health

VRforHealth invites you to learn about the work of Howard Gurr, licensed psychologist in New York State, and his journey toward the use of Virtual Reality Therapy in helping patients overcome phobias and anxieties and assist in the enhancement of mindfulness. Since the pandemic, Howard practices VR therapy...
Source: vrforhealth.com

Is the UK destined to be the next life science hub?

Jason Shafrin explores the question in The Economist about the role of British science in the pandemic and the future of the UK life sciences activity. "With good data, efficient regulation, an international collection of talent, R&D funds focused on the health care, the UK could see big gains...
Source: healthcare-economist.com

Drones fly to protect rare New Zealand dolphins

New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern said on Friday (February 26) that her government was backing a new project that uses drone technology to understand and protect the endangered Maui dolphins in the country. Gloria Tso reports. Reuters Video.
Source: reut.rs

Rocket Report Cornwall

Cornwall says “LOL, no” to space tourism. "If we're being blunt about it ... One council member, John Fitter, was more explicit, saying, 'If we were to entertain this, it would be quite ridiculous and send out the wrong message to those people in Cornwall who could possibly be suffering on below...
Source: arstechnica.com

Cornish couple feel 'discriminated against' over wedding language

"Steph Norman and Aaron Willoughby cannot have their ceremony entirely in Cornish." Apparently they could conduct it English obviously but also in Welsh (which is close to Cornish) but it highlights the lack of legal formality to the Cornish language.
Source: bbc.com

Most brain activity is "background noise"

"Most brain activity is "background noise" and that's upending our understanding of consciousness." This complexity view of the mind is not new but this article explains it quite clearly.
Source: salon.com

Ancient Northland swamp kauri solves 42,000 year old mystery

NZ Herald: Ancient Northland swamp kauri shows breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago. "For the first time ever, we have been able to precisely date the timing and environmental impacts of the last magnetic pole switch," Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science and co-lead author of the...
Source: nzherald.co.nz

AI uses "ugly duckling" technique to spot melanoma with high accuracy

"Artificial intelligence is starting to combine with smartphone technology in ways that could have profound impacts on the way we monitor health, from tracking blood volume changes in diabetics to detecting concussions by filming the eyes." "Using the technology to spot melanoma in its early stages is...
Source: newatlas.com

Python pioneer assesses the 30-year-old programming language

At age 30, the Python programming language has never been used by more developers across more use cases than it is today.
Source: venturebeat.com

Using the right tools for the job

Since this blog has been up I've fiddled with some text analysis stuff by analysing the text and making recommendations for similar blog entries. Did it all in PHP and MySQL just to understand how the algorithms work. Eventually it started to take about 5 hours to: tokenise and stemming the textcalculate...