Week of October 9, 2023
For the second year in a row, fall in our household is filled with college applications, personal statements, and school information sessions. My younger son is also producing a supplemental "about me" video. The online examples of these essays and videos are humbling - there are some extraordinarily talented and accomplished students. While I suspect only the great examples get shared, I am again amazed I was admitted to college, much less any post-graduate education.
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In the U.S., at the national level, hospitalizations are starting to fall, though some states (mainly in the Northeast) still see rising rates. Wastewater RNA concentrations predicted this trend. The Inside Medicine aggregate COVID dashboard offers more granular data.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects only CDC-gathered hospital data. Hospitalization data are a (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
The Inside Medicine COVID dashboard
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COVID articles
The CDC is no longer issuing COVID-19 vaccination cards.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203924997/covid-19-vaccination-cards-cdc
The FDA approved the latest version of the spike protein-based Novavax vaccine last week. Because Novavax does not use mRNA (like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines), there have been numerous articles about its efficacy and value. As an aside, I intend to get the XBB version of the vaccine as soon as I can find it in my area. Science offered an excellent summary of this discussion.
https://www.science.org/content/article/should-you-pick-novavax-s-covid-19-shot-over-mrna-options
and
https://x.com/Friesein/status/1710724196920127508?s=20
and
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-ba286-variant-and-the-new-booster
Lastly, I found some thoughtful comments on the changing sensitivity and specificity of the COVID home antigen tests shared by Dr. Jake Scott, an Infectious Disease specialist from Stanford. In a recent study, individuals with COVID symptoms who were PCR+ didn't reliably test positive by home antigen test until the 3rd, 4th, or even 5th day of symptoms.
https://twitter.com/jakescottmd/status/1710683270072139918
and
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciad582/7285011?login=false
Medical Trends and Technology
Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease and vaccine expert from Baylor College of Medicine, is a focal point for individuals in the anti-vaccine crowd. He has a new book on the rise of anti-science. The Houston Chronicle interviewed him about his experiences becoming a public figure over the last few years and navigating a world increasingly hostile to critical thinking and understanding the nuances of data.
Dr. Hotez's interview on the Yoga with Jake podcast from July also covers this material.
Gallaudet University, the college for deaf students, has worked with AT&T Wireless to install augmented reality displays in football helmets. This technology overcomes the limits of Gallaudet's deaf division III football players, who have been disadvantaged compared to fully hearing players on opposing teams.
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/07/1204358263/deaf-football-team-5g-connected-helmet-gallaudet
and
See a video about the technology here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z0n28R484g
Infographics: Apple-palooza.
Orchard Hill Cidery's blog offers an infographic of tart-to-sweet apples. I love the simplicity. However, I don't know if plotting taste on a single axis captures all the nuance. I think of apples on a 3-axis texture - taste - freshness/ripeness scale.
Things I learned this week
Several years ago, I was on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center with astronaut Jon McBride. He taught us about the mechanical gyroscopic navigation equipment on the Space Shuttle (there is no GPS in space!). I found a fantastic tutorial on a similar topic - how fighter jets in the 1950s and '60s used a variety of mechano-electrical sensors and gyroscopes to perform complex math for flight calculations. Even if you don't love the math details, it is hard not to appreciate the engineering.
https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1710687712183816685
and, for reference,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_McBride
I never considered how famous statues get cleaned, but a recent A.P. article on tending to Michelangelo's The David made me curious. There is a long history of news stories about the people responsible for brushing, scrubbing, and vacuuming famous Italian art.
https://twitter.com/ap/status/1710687678725816353
and
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/world/europe/italy-michelangelo-david.html
and
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/famous-david-scrubbed-clean/
Living with A.I.
The Financial Times visual storytelling team offered a fantastic article + graphics on how large language models (LLMS) and transformers (the T in ChatGPT) work.
https://ig.ft.com/generative-ai/
One more video worth watching - A CBS interview with Geoffery Hinton - recently retired "Godfather of A.I." discusses his long career in neural networks, along with his observations, fears, and wonderment at the evolving technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpoRO378qRY
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an editorial on how artificial intelligence will impact radiology. It is a well-balanced piece discussing the trade-offs and opportunities physicians and healthcare will face with this new technology.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2810594
A.I. art of the week
My vision of the typical college applicant:
A photo of Michelangelo's The David riding a unicycle, juggling apples, and typing on a computer
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
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