Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: education

Balancing Risk and Cutting Edge Medical Innovation — Dr. Paul Offit, MD, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD, (https://www.paul-offit.com/) is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of virology and immunology, Co-Inventor of a landmark vaccine for the prevention of Rotavirus gastroenteritis, and holds multiple titles including — Director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia (CHOP), Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics, Perelmann School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and Adjunct Associate Professor, The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.

Dr. Offit was a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research, a member of the Institute of Medicine, and co-editor of the foremost vaccine text, Vaccines.

Dr. Offit is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics from the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, and the Sabin Vaccine Institute Gold Medal.

Dr. Offit has published more than 150 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of a landmark rotavirus vaccine recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC.

For this achievement, Dr. Offit received the Luigi Mastroianni and William Osler Awards from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the Charles Mérieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, and was honored by Bill and Melinda Gates during the launch of their Foundation’s Living Proof Project for global health. In addition, he has received numerous other awards and honors for his groundbreaking work.

Dr. Offit is also an author of many books including, but not limited to: Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases, Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far, The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis, Breaking the Antibiotic Habit, Do You Believe in Magic, and his most recent, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation.

Read more | >

Collaboration, transparency & urgency for rare disease research — mike graglia, managing director & co-founder, syngap research fund — SRF.

Mike Graglia is the Managing Director & Co-Founder of the SynGAP Research Fund (SRF — https://www.syngapresearchfund.org/), an organization that he set up in 2018 with his wife Ashley, after their son was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease caused by an insufficiency in SynGAP protein, which causes the life-changing diagnoses of Epilepsy, Autism, sleep disorder and intellectual disability.

The mission of SRF is to improve the quality of life of SynGAP1 patients through the research and development of treatments, therapies and support systems.

Previously, Mike worked at the Emerson Collective, New America Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BCG, the World Bank/IFC and the US Peace Corps/Namibia. During his time in Africa he created a small charity to fund girls’ education.

Mike graduated from Gonzaga University with a BS in mathematics. He then attended the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Columbia Business School.

Read more | >

The joys of riding in a car.

When I was a youngster, my grandparents delighted in taking me for a trek in their car, especially on the weekends. They would come to visit during the summers. A car ride included rolling down the windows of the vehicle and we would all relish the rushing cool breeze on those hot and muggy summer days as we drove leisurely along.

Since I wasn’t old enough to drive, they instead did all the driving activity. I did though have a hand in where we went. Let’s go to the store, I would clamor. Let’s drive past the school ground and wave at anyone there. Let’s go driving around the local park and see all the trees and the ducks in the pond.

Read more | >

1:42 Are we on the wrong train to AGI?
4:20 Marvin Minsky and AI generalization problem.
11:57 Defining intelligence in AI
17:17 Is AI masquerading as a trendy statistical analysis tool?
23:35 AI systems lack our most basic intuitions.
27:38 The public not wanting to face Reality.
29:36 Equipping AI with Kant’s categories of the mind (Time, Space, Causality)
33:40 Neural nets VS traditional tools.
34:50 Causality in AI
37:14 Lack of interdisciplinary learning.
45:54 How can we achieve human level of understanding in AI?
49:21 More limitations.
59:35 Motivation in inanimate systems.
1:01:31 Lack of body and transcendent consciousness.
1:05:55 What interdisciplinary learning would you encourage?
1:06:49 Book recommendations.

Gary Marcus is CEO and Founder of Robust AI, well-known machine learning scientist and entrepreneur, author, and Professor Emeritus at New York State University.

Dr. Marcus attended Hampshire College, where he designed his own major, cognitive science, working on human reasoning. He continued on to graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his advisor was the experimental psychologist Steven Pinker. He received his Ph.D. in 1993.

His books include The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and Guitar Zero, which appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. He edited The Norton Psychology Reader, and was co-editor with Jeremy Freeman of The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World’s Leading Neuroscientist, which included Nobel Laureates May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser. Together with Ernie Davis, he authored Rebooting AI and is well known to deconstruct myths of the AI community.

In 2,014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company. It was acquired by Uber in 2016. In 2,019 he founded Robust AI and acts currently as Robust AI’s CEO.

Links:
http://rebooting.ai.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.

Read more | >

Demand for highly desirable digital skills is hitting new heights. A recent Learning and Work Institute report noted that one in four (27%) employers now need the majority of their workers to have in-depth specialist knowledge in one or more technology areas. And 60% of those surveyed expect their reliance on advanced digital skills to increase over the next five years.

The skills gap is particularly prevalent in the security tech sector. A global study from the Center for Cyber Safety and Education predicted a terrifying shortage of 1.8 million security workers by 2022. This is made worse by the number of young people taking IT-related GCSEs in the UK, falling by 40% since 2015 (according to Learning and Work Institute data).

This scarcity of qualified professionals has inflated salaries, making it hard for firms that cannot afford to offer large paychecks and grand benefit packages to secure top talent.

Read more | >

Many people reject scientific expertise and prefer ideology to facts. Lee McIntyre argues that anyone can and should fight back against science deniers.
Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/2jTiXCLzMv4
Lee’s book “How to Talk to a Science Denier” is out now: https://geni.us/leemcintyre.

“Climate change is a hoax—and so is coronavirus.” “Vaccines are bad for you.” Many people may believe such statements, but how can scientists and informed citizens convince these ‘science deniers’ that their beliefs are mistaken?

Join Lee McIntyre as he draws on his own experience, including a visit to a Flat Earth convention as well as academic research, to explain the common themes of science denialism.

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He has taught philosophy at Colgate University (where he won the Fraternity and Sorority Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching Philosophy), Boston University, Tufts Experimental College, Simmons College, and Harvard Extension School (where he received the Dean’s Letter of Commendation for Distinguished Teaching). Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has also served as a policy advisor to the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and as Associate Editor in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

This talk was recorded on 24 August 2021.

–
A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
Abdelkhalek Ayad, Martin Paull, Anthony Powers, Ben Wynne-Simmons, Ivo Danihelka, Hamza, Paulina Barren, Metzger, Kevin Winoto, Jonathan Killin, János Fekete, Mehdi Razavi, Mark Barden, Taylor Hornby, Rasiel Suarez, Stephan Giersche, William ‘Billy’ Robillard, Scott Edwardsen, Jeffrey Schweitzer, Gou Ranon, Christina Baum, Frances Dunne, jonas.app, Tim Karr, Adam Leos, Michelle J. Zamarron, Andrew Downing, Fairleigh McGill, Alan Latteri, David Crowner, Matt Townsend, Anonymous, Robert Reinecke, Paul Brown, Lasse T. Stendan, David Schick, Joe Godenzi, Dave Ostler, Osian Gwyn Williams, David Lindo, Roger Baker, Greg Nagel, and Rebecca Pan.
–

Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe.
The Ri is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution.
and Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science.
and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution.
and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/
Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy.
Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter.

Read more | >

Creating Smart Home Ecosystems — Enabling Health & Well-Being In Every Home — Viren Shah, VP & Chief Digital Officer, GE Appliances, Haier

Mr. Viren Shah is Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, at GE Appliances (GEA — https://www.geappliances.com/), the American home appliance manufacturer, now a majority owned subsidiary of the Chinese multinational home appliances company, Haier (https://www.haierappliances.com/).

Mr. Shah has been with GEA since October 2,018 in which time he was appointed to lead the business through a digital transformation with a focus on data/intelligence at the center of gravity.

Prior to becoming part of the Haier company, Mr. Shah was the CIO at Masco Cabinetry, and CIO Council Leader for their parent company, Masco Corporation, the international conglomerate manufacturer of products for the home improvement and new home construction markets.

Mr. Shah has more than 20 years of global experience in creating business value using technology with a strong focus on customers for Fortune 10 organizations, such as his decade at the Walmart organization. He has contributed as a senior leader towards the success of startups, turnarounds and global mergers and acquisitions.

Mr. Shah implemented “Think Global and Act Local” methodologies, utilizing operational and cultural experience in areas of IT strategy, omnichannel, business development and governance in more than 20 countries across the Americas, Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Mr. Shah holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bombay University, a master of business administration degree in international marketing/short-term finance from the New York Institute of Technology, and an executive education certificate in digital marketing strategies for digital economy from the Wharton School.

Read more | >

SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission to orbit was a success. Here’s what comes next.

Last week, SpaceflightNow reported that NASA’s upcoming crewed mission to the International Space Station would use a new Crew Dragon capsule. The mission, set for October 30 will feature a capsule named Endurance by the four-person crew. The news means that the crew won’t have to wait for SpaceX to refurbish one of its other two capsules.

That means the crew will take off less than two months after the Inspiration4 mission, the first all-civilian mission to orbit. On September 30 NASA announced that Crew-3 would launch no earlier than 2:43 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, October 30. It will be SpaceX’s fourth crewed mission for NASA and its fifth crewed mission overall.

The plans show SpaceX is not planning to stand still. The Inspiration4 mission brought newfound attention to the company, thanks in part to a five-part Netflix documentary.

Read more | >

“Move fast and break things” doesn’t exactly translate into Mandarin.
Sign-up for Acorns! 👉 https://acorns.com/ee?s2=SV3 (upon registration, Acorns will deposit $5 in your account to help you get started with investing!)

Silicon Valley: History’s Greatest ‘Ponzi Scheme’ (Mini-Documentary) by Jake Tran.
➡️ https://youtu.be/zU5JsP6pUpc.

How to Invest In Chinese Stock Markets (And Why You Absolutely Should Not!)
➡️ https://youtu.be/Qsrt6Hultj8

Enjoyed the video? Comment below! 💬
⭑ Subscribe to Economics Explained 👉 https://bit.ly/sub2ee.
⭑ Enjoyed? Hit the like button! 👍

Q&A Streams on EEII (2nd channel) → https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOTgNyfQG4vVP5sCXrJaS4g.

✉️ Business Enquiries → [email protected].

Read more | >