Robert David Hart’s Qartz article, Who’s to blame when a machine botches your surgery? has some of my thoughts on AI and medicine.
I’m busy revising my paper on AI and medicine (co-authored with Ian Kerr and Joëlle Pineau) and plan to post a new version in early October.
Scientists Determine Tingling Sensation Of ASMR Caused By Mass Brain Cell Die-Off.
Didn’t really believe it, but it made me look at the URL when it came up on my news feed. Yes, it’s the Onion.
“Race-Baiting Strip Club Shooter Regrets Acting as His Own Attorney” — Actual Miami news.
This video making the rounds, of Danish pol Dan Jørgensen devastating a Fox airhead, is pretty good:
Alas it likely will never pierce the epistemic bubble of most of the viewers of the original dystopian fantasy.
Study: Eating Beef Jerky Might Be Linked to Manic Episodes in Some People.
Not from the Onion, but I had to check.
a strange pattern began popping up among people diagnosed with mania, a state of hyper excitement, arousal, and delusion frequently followed by periods of severe depression in people who have bipolar disorder. Compared to the control group, people with a manic episode reported eating more cured meats such as beef jerky. Overall, they found that people with a recent history of eating cured meat were three times more likely to be hospitalized for mania, even after adjusting for factors like age or socioeconomic status. The same pattern couldn’t be seen with any other type of food eaten.
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As for how jerky could be triggering mania, Yolken suspects it involves the microbial environment, or microbiome, of the gut. In a healthy person, the gut and brain regularly “talk” to one another through hormonal and nerve signals to keep the body regulated, the so-called gut-brain axis. In recent years, researchers have started to find that our gut microbiota is integral to keeping those airwaves clear. But if the gut microbiome is imbalanced (through changes in diet or antibiotics, for instance), that might set off a chain of events that wreaks havoc on both the brain and gut, often through chronic inflammation. This inflammation then might make people more susceptible to developing mental illness, or worsening its symptoms.
And indeed, when Yolken’s team looked at the guts of nitrate-fed rats, they found clear changes in the gut microbiome, in the form of an increase of certain kinds of bacteria, compared to normal rats. Those particular bacteria have previously been associated with behavior and cognition changes in animals. There was also evidence of minute molecular changes in the brain associated with mania in these rats, though Yolken cautioned that the results can’t prove that the gut changes led to the brain changes. They also can’t prove that nitrates are responsible for any similar changes in people.
Jerky is not my thing, but I wonder if the effect extends to cured meats like salami?
And of course the obvious question: Does Trump eat jerky?
Ford’s “Driverless” Food-Delivery Vehicles in Miami Aren’t Actually Driverless (New Times)
“Research vehicles for our business pilots are designed to appear as self-driving, however, they are manually driven by an experienced driver,” Ford wrote this week in a post on Medium. “The focus of our research is on the first and last mile of the delivery experience.”
Actually not odd or surprising — this is how testing of would-be autonomous works nationally, for safety and liability reasons.
Jotwell Blenderlaw