Data Science newsletter – February 22, 2021

Newsletter features journalism, research papers and tools/software for February 22, 2021

 

Wearable technology: covid-19 and the rise of remote clinical monitoring

British Medical Journal, Jo Best


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In the age of covid-19, digital devices worn by patients are increasingly being piloted to monitor those who might need hospital admission or who have recently been discharged.

In a scheme in north west London, “wearables” collected the vital signs of people quarantining before or after travelling abroad and healthcare staff who couldn’t isolate at home. Round-the-clock data were monitored by a trained team. If the team spotted signs of deterioration, people could be transferred to hospital when necessary. Reducing direct contact between people in quarantine and health workers could reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and reduce the use of personal protective equipment.

In Northampton, wearables have been used to track patients with chronic illness or who are recovering from covid-19, with clinicians reviewing vital signs data regularly in virtual ward rounds and through remote consultations. By enabling clinicians to monitor patients from afar, it is hoped that fewer vulnerable patients will need to be admitted, freeing up beds and staff time.

In the context of covid-19 and more broadly, using wearables to monitor patients before or after admission “can give a level of reassurance when people are being treated remotely that they’re not in danger,” says Pritesh Mistry, digital fellow at the think tank the King’s Fund.


Tweet of the Week

Twitter, Sarita Schoenebeck


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Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism

Substack, Common Sense with Bari Weiss


from

Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school.

She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.

In October 2020, after Shaw felt that she had exhausted all her internal options, she posted a video on YouTube, blowing the whistle on, what she says, is an atmosphere of racial discrimination at the school.


Yale announces Wu Tsai Institute for interdisciplinary neurocognition research

Yale University, Yale Daily News student newspaper, Rose Horowitch & Beatriz Horta


from

In his opening remarks during the webinar, [Scott] Strobel mentioned the University Science Strategy Committee, which he chaired. The committee identified neuroscience research and integrative data science as two of the University’s priorities in the sciences. The institute, which will be located at 100 College St., bridges both areas.

He emphasized the importance of the institute in providing expanded opportunities for existing faculty as well as opening up the possibility of hiring new professors in related departments.

Additionally, the funding for the institute will allow Yale to create an internal grant mechanism for “high-risk, high-reward ideas” ideas, launch a postdoctoral fellowship program and start a paid internship program for undergraduates.


Husker Team Leading $6M Project to Study Waterways’ Changing Ecology

KNEB


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To equip researchers and policymakers to study, predict and manage how the ever-changing balance of elements is affecting ecosystems at the regional and national levels, University of Nebraska–Lincoln aquatic ecologist Jessica Corman will use a four-year, $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research program to lead a four-institution team in building a first-of-its-kind database that includes information from streams, lakes and other inland water systems across the nation.

Once built, the database will unlock major potential in ecological stoichiometry, a framework that may hold the key to understanding large-scale environmental patterns triggered by a mismatch between the elements available in the environment and those needed by organisms.

“What’s exciting and new about this project is that we’re compiling a set of existing datasets that are located in different places or collected by different institutions and putting them together to ask broader-scale questions about ecology and evolution,” said Corman, assistant professor of natural resources. “This is the first time this type of work is being done on a regional or national scale.”


The 27-Year-Old Who Became a Covid-19 Data Superstar

Bloomberg Businessweek, Ashlee Vance


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In the contest over who could make the most accurate coronavirus forecast, it was global institutions vs. a guy living with his parents in Santa Clara.


Google Howard West program faced disorganization, culture clashes

CNBC, Jennifer Elias


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First announced in 2017, Google’s Howard West program was envisioned as a way to train more Black college students for the rigors of a career in tech by immersing them in computer science classes held on Google’s campus in Mountain View, California.

Students and faculty say the program had value, but described disorganization, shifting priorities, and culture clashes and microagressions from Google employees toward Black students on campus.


Zip code map reveals that most of the city’s COVID-19 cases are near Cal or in West Berkeley

Berkeleyside, Supriya Yelimeli


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The current darkest area on the map is zip code 94720, which includes the majority of the Cal campus bounded by Oxford Street on the west and Grizzly Peak Boulevard in the east. This area has had 173 COVID-19 total cases, among a population of about 1,466 residents.

But Cal has reported 987 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, which may be accounted for in neighboring zip codes, 94704 and 94705, which contain multiple “on-campus” student dorms and the Southside neighborhood where students live. These zip codes have 820 and 290 total cases, with a combined population of over 43,000 residents.


NYU Reports Uptick in Positive COVID-19 Cases On Campus

NYU Local, Morgan Pryor


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NYU’s COVID Prevention and Response Team (CPRT) reported an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases last week, according to a university-wide email sent on Friday.

This trend comes after some improvement was observed over the past two weeks, with January’s high positivity rate declining, according to the CPRT. The two likely causes of the recent increase in positive cases, as stated in the email, are an increase in students socializing and eating together in small groups, and students not following basic public health protocols, such as by holding gatherings.


Google fires another AI ethics leader

Axios, Ina Fried


from

Margaret Mitchell, the co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, says that the company has fired her following an investigation into her use of corporate email.

Why it matters: Google was already under fire for its ouster of Timnit Gebru, the other co-lead of the team. Mitchell has been locked out of the corporate email since last month after what a source says was her effort to search corporate correspondence for evidence to back up Gebru’s claim of discrimination and harassment.


Digital technology and the planet – a report from the Royal Society

AIhub


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In December 2020, the Royal Society published a report on Digital Technology and the Planet: Harnessing computing to achieve net zero. In his foreword, Professor Andy Hopper, Vice President of the Royal Society and Professor of Computer Technology, University of Cambridge writes: “Nearly a third of the 50% carbon emissions reductions the UK needs to make by 2030 could be achieved through existing digital technology.”

The report identified four key areas to help secure a digital-led transition to a low carbon future. Within those four areas were a total of eleven recommendations:

1. Building a trusted data infrastructure for net zero


Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Decoding Regulatory Instructions in DNA

Stowers Institute for Medical Research, News & Media


from

One of the big unsolved problems in biology is the genome’s second code—its regulatory code. DNA bases (commonly represented by letters A, C, G, and T) encode not only the instructions for how to build proteins, but also when and where to make these proteins in an organism. The regulatory code is read by proteins called transcription factors that bind to short stretches of DNA called motifs. However, how particular combinations and arrangements of motifs specify regulatory activity is an extremely complex problem that has been hard to pin down.

Now, an interdisciplinary team of biologists and computational researchers led by Stowers Investigator Julia Zeitlinger, PhD, and Anshul Kundaje, PhD, from Stanford University, have designed a neural network—named BPNet for Base Pair Network—that can be interpreted to reveal regulatory code by predicting transcription factor binding from DNA sequences with unprecedented accuracy. The key was to perform transcription factor-DNA binding experiments and computational modeling at the highest possible resolution, down to the level of individual DNA bases. This increased resolution allowed them to develop new interpretation tools to extract the key elemental sequence patterns such as transcription factor binding motifs and the combinatorial rules by which motifs function together as a regulatory code.


UHN launches study to explore how Apple Watch can help with early identification of worsening heart failure

Newswise, University Health Network (Toronto)


from

As part of the University Health Network, renowned cardiologist Dr. Heather Ross has launched a new clinical study, in collaboration with Apple to test if remote monitoring with Apple Watch can help with early identification of worsening heart failure.

In this study, data collected using an Apple Watch will be compared to data routinely collected from the rigorous physical tests that patients normally undergo, to see if Apple Watch health sensors and features, including the Blood Oxygen app and mobility metrics, can provide early warning for worsening heart failure.


Google to establish Minnesota office as projects with Mayo Clinic expand and mature

Healthcare IT News, Mike Miliard


from

The Rochester facility, which won’t open until staff COVID-19 safety comes more into focus, will enable the two organizations to build on their “shared cultures of collaboration” said Mayo CIO Cris Ross.


T-Mobile, Georgia Tech, and Curiosity Lab Team Up to Fuel 5G Innovation in Drones, Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, and More

Georgia Institute of Technology, News Center


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The new 5G The new 5G incubator is located in the city of Peachtree Corners’ 500-acre smart city technology park, a living lab powered by T-Mobile 5G where more than 8,000 people live or work. The facility features a 25,000 square foot Innovation Center and 3-mile autonomous vehicle test track. T-Mobile has deployed its Extended Range 5G and Ultra Capacity 5G network across the park enabling developers to build solutions in a real-world environment. Here developers will build and test new 5G use cases such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, industrial drone applications, mixed reality training and entertainment, remote medical care, personal health and fitness wearables, and more.


Researchers design more secure mobile contact tracing

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame News


from

For public health officials, contact tracing remains critical to managing the spread of the coronavirus — particularly as it appears that variants of the virus could be more transmissible.

The need for widespread contact tracing at the start of the pandemic led tech giants Apple and Google to announce a plan to turn iOS and Android phones into mobile “beacons” that alert users who opt in of potential exposure to COVID-19. Health officials in some states have used the technology in their pandemic response efforts, as have other countries around the world, but researchers at the University of Notre Dame say contact tracing apps created by third-party developers could leave users vulnerable to a host of privacy and security issues.

“The purpose of contact tracing apps is to inform users of a potential of infection, to let them know if they’ve come in contact with someone who could have exposed them to COVID-19, but these apps release more information than is necessary — potentially, tracking data of COVID-19 patients — which could put the privacy of those patients at risk,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and affiliate member of the Wireless Institute at Notre Dame. “Your security is only as good as your weakest link, so the question is, can we trust the people who are creating these apps to do it right?”


Events



Blocksburg Summit 2021

Twitter, Virginia Tech Computer Science


from

Online April 13. “Learn about how blockchain is being applied to solve problems, enhance privacy, and deliver value beyond cryptocurrencies.” [save the date]


Women in Data Science (WiDS) Announces WiDS Workshops Initiative

Women in Data Science


from

Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide today announced an initiative to inspire, educate, and upskill data scientists and aspiring data scientists worldwide, led by outstanding female instructors. The gender gap remains wide, as women represent just 15-22% of data science professionals. WiDS Workshops aim to educate everyone, regardless of gender, while inspiring women and girls with role model instructors.

“WiDS Workshops bring instructors from multiple backgrounds together to provide mini-courses on the latest areas of interest in data science, machine learning, and AI,” said Margot Gerritsen, Stanford Professor, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of WiDS. “This is a wonderful extension of our existing WiDS worldwide initiatives.”

SPONSORED CONTENT

Assets  




The eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program is now accepting applications for student fellows and project leads for the 2021 summer session. Fellows will work with academic researchers, data scientists and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects that will leverage data science approaches to address societal challenges in areas such as public policy, environmental impacts and more. Student applications due 2/15 – learn more and apply here. DSSG is also soliciting project proposals from academic researchers, public agencies, nonprofit entities and industry who are looking for an opportunity to work closely with data science professionals and students on focused, collaborative projects to make better use of their data. Proposal submissions are due 2/22.

 


Tools & Resources



When Should You Use AI to Solve Problems?

Harvard Business Review, Bob Suh


from

… Let’s look at what makes AI superior to humans at solving certain types of problems and how that can inform executives’ approach to the technology. In recent years, AI has trounced the world champions in poker, chess, Jeopardy, and Go. If people are surprised by these victories, they are underestimating how much rote memorization and mathematical logic are needed to win those games. And in the case of poker and chess, they are overestimating the role insight into human behavior plays.

Tuomas Sandholm, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon, created the Libratus AI, which beat the world’s top poker players. He described his algorithms as mostly probabilistic prediction machines and recognized that studying the behaviors of the AI’s opponents — their feints and “tells” and so on — was not needed to win. By applying game theory and machine learning, Libratus crushed opponents simply by playing the odds. Even in championship poker, understanding the laws of probability is far more important than reading an opponent’s behaviors.


Designing for Voice User Interfaces — Principles and Best Practices

Snappymob blog, Zoe Chin


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How are voice-first interfaces designed differently from screen-first interfaces? We explore the ins-and-outs of UX in voice design.

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