humans

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

AI, TECHNOLOGY

Explainable Artificial Intelligence Can Help Humans Innovate – Here’s How

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has created computers that can drive cars, synthesize chemical compounds, fold proteins and detect high-energy particles at a superhuman level. Understanding how artificial intelligence algorithms solve problems like the Rubik’s Cube makes AI more useful. Roland Frisch via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA However, these AI algorithms cannot explain the thought processes behind their decisions. A computer that masters protein folding and also tells researchers more about the rules of biology is much more useful than a computer that folds proteins without explanation. Therefore, AI researchers like me are now turning our efforts toward developing AI algorithms that can explain themselves in a manner that humans can understand. If we can do this, I belie...

The ethical case for allowing medical trials that deliberately infect humans with COVID-19

17Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

The ethical case for allowing medical trials that deliberately infect humans with COVID-19

Despite the urgent need to beat COVID-19, health officials may be delaying the development of an effective vaccine. Authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere are yet to authorize an ethically charged research procedure called “human challenge trials.” Challenge trials entail deliberately infecting volunteers with the disease – which explains the official reticence – but they could substantially expedite the development of a vaccine. The debate over human challenge trials has been raging for months among health professionals and academics. But only now – some eight months into the pandemic – are authorities in the U.S. beginning to consider them in a bid to speed up the vaccine-development process. Sitting and waiting A vaccine has to go through multiple stages before it can be rolled out. Af...

From marmots to mole-rats to marmosets – studying many genes in many animals is key to understanding how humans can live longer

1Jul

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE

From marmots to mole-rats to marmosets – studying many genes in many animals is key to understanding how humans can live longer

Much of longevity and aging research focuses on studying extremely long-lived species, including bats, naked mole-rats and bowhead whales, to find genetic changes that contribute to long life. However, such work has yielded highly species-specific genetic changes that are not generalizable to other species, including humans. As a graduate student, I have studied growing evidence, including recent work from my advisers’ labs (Maria Chikina and Nathan Clark), that supports the hypothesis that lifespan is a complex and highly context-dependent trait that calls for a shift in how biologists think about aging. Old age: The human problem Aging is the process by which the likelihood of death increases the longer an organism is alive. In mammals, aging is hallmarked by several molecular changes, ...

Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview – Coronavirus responses highlight how

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, SOCIETY

Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview – Coronavirus responses highlight how

Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the country’s ineffective pandemic response on an American “anti-science bias.” He called this bias “inconceivable,” because “science is truth.” Fauci compared those discounting the importance of masks and social distancing to “anti-vaxxers” in their “amazing” refusal to listen to science. It is Fauci’s profession of amazement that amazes me. As well-versed as he is in the science of the coronavirus, he’s overlooking the well-established science of “anti-science bias,” or science denial. Americans increasingly exist in highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own information universes. Within segments of t...