Over 300 Million Indians May Have COVID-19

About one in four of India’s 1.35 billion people may have been infected with the coronavirus, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a source with direct knowledge of a government serological survey, suggesting the country’s real caseload was many times higher than reported. From the report: India has confirmed 10.8 million COVID-19 infections, the most anywhere outside the United States. But the survey,…

How will the U.S. space program fare under Joe Biden?

Joe Biden is the United States presidential election winner, but his plans for NASA remain unclear. And while citizens digest the election results, the space industry is left wondering what comes next. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/how-will-the-u-s-space-program-fare-under-joe-biden…

The Race for a Super-Antibody Against the Coronavirus

A network of scientists is chasing the pandemic’s holy grail: an antibody that protects against not just the virus, but also related pathogens that may threaten humans. From a report: Dozens of companies and academic groups are racing to develop antibody therapies. Already Regeneron and the drug company Eli Lilly have requested emergency use authorizations for their products from the Food…

We Learn Faster When We Aren’t Told What Choices to Make

Michele Solis, writing for Scientific American: In a perfect world, we would learn from success and failure alike. Both hold instructive lessons and provide needed reality checks that may safeguard our decisions from bad information or biased advice. But, alas, our brain doesn’t work this way. Unlike an impartial outcome-weighing machine an engineer might design, it learns more from some experiences…

Statisticians Warn That AI Is Still Not Ready To Diagnose COVID-19

Discover magazine reports:
For years, many artificial intelligence enthusiasts and researchers have promised that machine learning will change modern medicine. Thousands of algorithms have been developed to diagnose conditions like cancer, heart disease and psychiatric disorders. Now, algorithms are being trained to detect COVID-19 by recognizing patterns in CT scans and X-ray images of the lungs. Many of these models aim to…

What’s new on Coursera for Business – April 2020

By Adam Lewis, Skills Transformation Consultant As we continue to adapt to the new norm, here are 114 new courses and projects to pick out what’s important to you.  You can try out Yale’s latest insights on why your Facebook friend is wrong about the stats they’re sharing. Or find your purpose with Michigan’s course […]
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Latest online courses in data science, tech, and health in 2020

With new courses launching every week, there’s always something to explore. These new courses cover everything from using TensorFlow to deploy machine learning models to the tools public health experts use to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. What will you learn next?  Data Science TensorFlow: Data and Deployment Specialization by deeplearning.ai  Industries all around […]
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India Could be Next Virus Hotspot With an ‘Avalanche’ of Cases

India could become the next global hotspot for virus cases, with experts warning containment measures that proved successful elsewhere in Asia may not work in the world’s second-most populous country. From a report: The South Asian nation, which has so far reported 137 infections and three deaths, is trying to contain the virus by closing its borders, testing incoming travelers and…

Major US Companies Breached, Robbed, and Spied on by Chinese Hackers

Rob Barry and Dustin Volz, reporting for Wall Street Journal: The hackers seemed to be everywhere. In one of the largest-ever corporate espionage efforts, cyberattackers alleged to be working for China’s intelligence services stole volumes of intellectual property, security clearance details and other records from scores of companies over the past several years. They got access to systems with prospecting secrets…

EPA To Limit Science Used To Write Public Health Rules

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking. A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency…