Week of April 15, 2024
(Happy US tax day?!)
This week, What Adam is Reading is a bit light on the reading. The Renal Physicians Association (RPA) annual meeting filled my Wednesday through Sunday with talks and events. I am so grateful to have a strong community of colleagues and am amused that it took a pandemic to make meeting attendance joyous.
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The PMC aggregate forecast is projecting low but rising coronavirus rates in the U.S. in the coming weeks.
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website uses wastewater levels to forecast 4-week predictions of COVID rates.
based upon https://biobot.io/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
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COVID articles
Thanks to a loyal reader, I was alerted to this meta-analysis demonstrating that the coronavirus vaccine reduced the risk of long-term COVID by 40% among the population of Norway. In addition, "vaccination with any of the COVID-19 first vaccine doses was associated with reduced risk of post-acute heart failure after SARS-CoV-2 infection; venous thromboembolism after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and arterial thrombosis after SARS-CoV-2 infection."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(24)00082-1/fulltext
One other thing to note about this paper: the authors used the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) common data model (CDM) to conduct medical research across three European countries (Estonia, Spain, and the U.K.) without directly transferring patient data. This research is an excellent use of standardized medical data.
https://www.ohdsi.org/data-standardization/
Medical Trends and Technology
Eric Topol's interview with Jennifer Doudna covers many of my favorite topics, including the future of gene editing and AI. Doudna received the 2020 Nobel Prize for her work on CRISPR technology. I strongly believe she is the definition of "where the puck is going."
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/jennifer-doudna-the-exciting-future
One of the many takeaways is I need to read this book. As Eric Topol quotes, "The invention of CRISPR and the plague of Covid will hasten our transition to the third great revolution of modern times. These revolutions arose from the discovery, beginning just over a century ago, of the three fundamental kernels of our existence, the atom, the bit, and the gene."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54968118-the-code-breaker
Infographics
United Nations population projections indicate India will have 1.7 billion people by 2075. It is mind-boggling to contemplate how a nation can feed, house, employ, and care for 1.7 billion people.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-populous-countries-projected-populations-2075/
Things I learned this week
Numerous studies have examined innate vs. learned navigation skills, i.e., a sense of direction. Knowable Magazine offered a comprehensive review of the scientific and social psychology data on the variables that make someone more likely to get lost. This article introduced me to the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale, a self-reported tool that quantifies one's ability to navigate (in general, not just Santa Barbara. I think we all know Santa Barbara is labyrinthian, right?).
The technology behind faxing (wired photo transmission) was available as far back as the 1930s. The video on the page explaining analog scanning and transmission of images over telephone lines is fantastic.
Living with A.I.
I have a newfound interest in Tesla's full self-driving technology. The expanded vocabulary I am acquiring is fun—I was not familiar with the phrase "unprotected left turn," nor the ways to describe the least and most aggressive means of making such a turn (like "pulling into the suicide lane"—was I paying attention in Drivers Ed?) Learning driving skills by watching A.I. self-driving feels like learning photo darkroom skills through Photoshop.
https://x.com/chazman/status/1779564974681030872
Despite the hype, Humane's screenless, wearable, LLM-linked AI Pin is getting scathing reviews.
https://futurism.com/humane-ai-pin-dumpster-fire
A.I. art of the week
"A computer attached to a printer that chisels words on stone tablets. The tablets are then catapulted to another computer in the distance."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17GEzdfVAWl_UM2FcwRAwyOPKkjYyFgZw/view?usp=sharing
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Ada
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