In the previous post I mentioned a research project that I was about to conclude, centered on the detection of anomalies in multidimensional data. Here I would like to give some more detail of that research, as the article I wrote on the subject is now publically accessible in the Cornell preprint arXiv (and is being sent to a refereed journal).

The modern research university was designed to produce new knowledge and to pass that knowledge on to students. North American universities over the last 100 years have been exceptionally good at that task.

But this is not all that universities can do or should do. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it even easier to reduce teaching to knowledge dissemination and to obscure other, equally important, forms of education that help students be better citizens, thinkers, writers and collaborators.

Over 26 percent of the western US  is in exceptional drought while  72 percent is in severe drought. That has not stopped the federal government from dumping so much water into rivers it creates hazardous conditions for people in them.

In 2016, after over a half century of fighting, the communist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gave up. The revolutionaries had hidden in the Andes-Amazon region and the occupied rainforest remained under-developed for obvious violent reasons: if you want to have a successful takeover, you can't make people happier, you have to make them miserable and hope they blame the government. 

It didn't work, and instead simply created multi-generational terrorism. The only winner during the attempted overthrow was, strangely, the environment, according to a new paper.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and AVITA Medical have halted recruitment for the ongoing pediatric burn study of RECELL spray-on skin for the best possible reason; it has been shown to work.

This expanded use just received FDA approval for pediatric burn patients as well as extensive burns covering more than 50 percent of a body’s total surface area.

The most common treatment for burns is skin grafting – a painful treatment that can be disfiguring, and sometimes results in additional complications as a child grows. Large burn injuries often do not have enough viable skin available for conventional skin grafting. 

One of the things that scientists rely on to accurately predict climate change is the amount of carbon sequestered underground. Carbon dioxide in the air leads to increased global warming, exacerbating climate change. When plants have a lot of access to carbon dioxide, they photosynthesize more. Scientists have assumed for a long time that this led to a high concentration of carbon sequestered under the ground. As plants took in this carbon dioxide, they transformed it into compounds and organic structures such as roots and leaves, which would add to the amount of carbon stored underground.

Two recent articles showed showed changes in the focus and funding of clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease therapies.

And they suggested the change might be evidenced by today, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seemed ready to approve aducanumab (Biogen) as the first new drug therapy to Alzheimer's patients in nearly 20 years.

Namely the emergence of taxpayer-funded government and nonprofit organizations as the primary drivers of research. 

Usually, when we talk about our research we discuss things we have recently published, highlighting the importance or novelty of their contribution to the advancement of human understanding or knowledge of the specific field of Science we work on. 


So it is only normal for me to try and go against that particular cliché here, and talk about things I will publish in the future. Admittedly, it is a bit of a mine field (it is never easy to be an anticonformist), but I will try to avoid stepping on the most obvious triggers (violations of confidentiality, scooping risks, impossible promises).




1. A new tool for anomaly detection

Old age is the biggest risk factor for most diseases, but if you have solid nutrition your health is likely to be better throughout all periods of life. Including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the USDA dietary guidelines produced every five years won't tell you how to optimize nutrition for where you are at in life. They are one size fits all for broad swaths of age and gender, and that needs to change

The dietary guidelines were created to make sure consumers are kept in touch with the latest science and that taxpayer-funded programs like school lunches are properly feeding developing brains.

Advocates for proposed crab gear legislation in California, AB 534, often cite misleading information in support of policies that would destroy California’s iconic and sustainable trap fisheries, while doing noth