Materials
Health Catalyst Launches Open Source Machine Learning: healthcare.ai
Health Catalyst has used healthcare.ai to build predictive models that drive its clients' outcomes improvement efforts and span across the company's product lines. Models include but are not limited to a predictive model for central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI), readmission models for COPD and other chronic conditions, schedule optimization, and financial predictions such as patient propensity to pay. "Machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to transform healthcare. We are seeing amazing results and yet we are barely getting started. We are applying it to the reduction of patient harm events, care management, hospital acquired infections, revenue cycle management, patient risk stratification, and more," said Dale Sanders, Executive Vice President of Health Catalyst.
Can artificial intelligence make supply chains sustainable?
Last week's World Economic Forum in snowy Davos, Switzerland, brought a blizzard of proclamations about the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence, along with an avalanche of debate over its job-killing potential. The good news for us humans is that the current generation of AI technologies being used to automate data collection and processing -- such as machine-learning software that amasses more expertise as it analyzes data or neural networks modeled after the human brain -- are more likely to augment the human workforce rather than replace it. Indeed, almost two-thirds of the business executives responding to a survey released last week by IT consulting firm Infosys (PDF) said they believed AI would "bring out the best in their organization's people." The rise of AI, the Infosys poll respondents suggest, will place a premium on skills such as creativity and logical reasoning. Noted IBM chairwoman and CEO Ginni Rometty, in remarks Wednesday at Davos, said: "History has taught us many things. When you [have] powerful technologies, you have a responsibility that they're introduced in the right way." "This pivotal investment will empower our team to accelerate R&D and enhance our proprietary technology with the latest innovations in machine learning and natural language processing while broadening our expertise in CSR analysis to foster environmental, social and ethical performance at a global scale," said EcoVadis co-CEO Frederic Trinel, in a statement.
Dynamic Mortality Risk Predictions in Pediatric Critical Care Using Recurrent Neural Networks
Aczon, M, Ledbetter, D, Ho, L, Gunny, A, Flynn, A, Williams, J, Wetzel, R
Viewing the trajectory of a patient as a dynamical system, a recurrent neural network was developed to learn the course of patient encounters in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of a major tertiary care center. Data extracted from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) of about 12000 patients who were admitted to the PICU over a period of more than 10 years were leveraged. The RNN model ingests a sequence of measurements which include physiologic observations, laboratory results, administered drugs and interventions, and generates temporally dynamic predictions for in-ICU mortality at user-specified times. The RNN's ICU mortality predictions offer significant improvements over those from two clinically-used scores and static machine learning algorithms.
Artificial Intelligence: BASF partner with Nuritas on 'next gen' functional peptides
The first step of the partnership will see Nuritas, a biotech and R&D start-up that uses artificial intelligence and new technologies for the discovery of novel food and health ingredients, grant an exclusive royalty-based license to BASF to commercialise one of its existing peptides. A second part of the deal will focus on the discovery of new functional peptides, based on health areas that are strategically important to BASF, using Nuritas' technological expertise and AI platform. According to BASF, peptide networks of focus in the collaboration will be natural, food-derived, patented and of significant benefit to health – including peptides that bring about anti-inflammatory responses. "Cooperating with an innovative and agile start-up like Nuritas enables us to further expand our already broad portfolio of health solutions," commented Saori Dubourg, head of BASF's Nutrition & Health Business. Nuritas' unique platform combines DNA analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict, unlock, and validate peptides from natural sources.
Obituary: Christopher Longuet-Higgins
Born in the vicarage in Lenham, Kent, he was the second of the parish priest's three children. He joined The Pilgrim's school, Winchester, in 1932 and became a senior chorister at the cathedral. Three years later, he won the top entrance scholarship to Winchester College, where his precocious talents in mathematics and music flourished. In 1941, he won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, to read chemistry, but at the end of his first year also took part one of the music tripos, and was appointed Balliol organ scholar. In his second year, Christopher performed what Dr John Jones has described as "probably the greatest intellectual feat by a Balliol undergraduate ever": he proposed, with convincing arguments, the correct structure of the chemical compound diborane (B2H6) - a compound that defied contemporary chemical valency principles.
Augmented reality: A catalyst for the coming cognitive revolution
In the last 20 years, business executives have used these all-too-familiar terms to describe their world. The near-constant interruptions from ringing telephones, buzzing pagers, the web, and an unceasing stream of email messages were thought to be overwhelming people with information, forcing them to switch attention from one task to the next, again and again. People were becoming multitaskers who couldn't concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. Today, the impact of the information barrage has been termed cognitive overload--the information itself doesn't cause problems, but having to think about it does.1,2 In almost all situations, the amount of information that comes at people exceeds their cognitive capacity to handle it, and their performance could be adversely affected if they miss important details or have difficulty understanding the information.
A Universal Variance Reduction-Based Catalyst for Nonconvex Low-Rank Matrix Recovery
Wang, Lingxiao, Zhang, Xiao, Gu, Quanquan
We propose a generic framework based on a new stochastic variance-reduced gradient descent algorithm for accelerating nonconvex low-rank matrix recovery. Starting from an appropriate initial estimator, our proposed algorithm performs projected gradient descent based on a novel semi-stochastic gradient specifically designed for low-rank matrix recovery. Based upon the mild restricted strong convexity and smoothness conditions, we derive a projected notion of the restricted Lipschitz continuous gradient property, and prove that our algorithm enjoys linear convergence rate to the unknown low-rank matrix with an improved computational complexity. Moreover, our algorithm can be employed to both noiseless and noisy observations, where the optimal sample complexity and the minimax optimal statistical rate can be attained respectively. We further illustrate the superiority of our generic framework through several specific examples, both theoretically and experimentally.
Farm Robot Learns What Weeds Look Like, Smashes Them
Bonirob is more than 90 percent effective in destroying weeds in carrot cultivation trials. While the world's first fully-robotic farm will operate indoors, traditional outdoor farms aren't immune to the coming robotic revolution. Bonirob, developed by Bosch's Deepfield Robotics, is billed to eliminate some of the most tedious tasks in modern farming, plant breeding, and weeding. The autonomous robot is built to be a mobile plant lab, able to decide which strains of plant are most apt to survive insects and viruses and how much fertilizer they would need, and then smash any weeds with a ramming rod. Bonirob employs a type of machine learning (a stab at artificial intelligence) called decision tree learning. Researchers show Bonirob lots of pictures of healthy leaves that are tagged to be good, and pictures of weeds that are tagged to be bad, and the machine makes a series of choices based on observed in new data to judge whether a plant in the field is good or bad.
Headlines for the Next 50 Years : Plastics Technology
As micro-molding gives way to "nano-molding," processors will need creative answers to the problems of handling flyspeck-sized parts. Farms may replace oil wells as the source of new plastics. Biopolymers made from cornstarch or other renewable feedstocks will supple-ment petrochemical-derived polymers in a wide range of applications. What if you could change the color of every part right at the machine? Instant color changes may be part of the coming era of "mass customization." New methods of polymer production will allow custom materials to be "programmed" for individual applications. Say Hello to Nano Molding The new frontier of injection molding is "shrinking," says Carl Schiffer, managing partner at Dr. Boy GmbH in Germany. Miniaturization in electronic and medical parts will help push today's micro-molding toward "nano"-size parts. Machinery will need to evolve to meet the "nano" challenge. Shot sizes must become smaller, and screw diameters are already shrinking from the standard lower limit of 14 mm.
Automation: Leading the way
Automated control technology has already been applied to drilling operations, allowing an operator to set up and operate the equipment remotely. This removes the operator from potentially dangerous zones on the drill rig, open cut or underground mine and increases overall efficiency of the mining operation. Driverless haulage trucks are being developed for open pit mines. Artificial intelligence – incorporating GPS systems, wireless communication and object avoidance sensors enable these trucks to either drive themselves or be driven by an operator at a computer panel away from the mine site. Computer systems that provide information about the velocity and position of the vehicle can prevent accidents and increase the lifetime of the machine.