Because of screen time and lack of hands-on activities medical students don’t have the dexterity to learn their job

Because of screen time and lack of hands-on activities medical students don’t have the dexterity to learn their job

A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that…

Robots are good at writing dry, technical, textbooks

Robots are good at writing dry, technical, textbooks

Academic publisher Springer Nature has unveiled what it claims is the first research book generated using machine learning. The book, titled Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research, isn’t exactly a snappy read. Instead, as the name suggests, it’s a summary of peer-reviewed papers published on the topic in question. It includes quotations, hyperlinks to the…

Replacing the Foreign Language Graduation Requirement with Programming

Replacing the Foreign Language Graduation Requirement with Programming

Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill to allow computer coding courses to fulfill the foreign language graduation requirement for high school. A similar bill passed the Florida State Senate in 2017 (but was ultimately rejected by the full Legislature), and a federal version proposed by Senators Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat…

“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not, and talent cannot thrive in a vacuum”

“Talent is universal, but opportunity is not, and talent cannot thrive in a vacuum”

My answer was always the same: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not, and talent cannot thrive in a vacuum. Finding talent is a numbers game — the more players there are, the more excellent ones will be found. (This same math applies to the gender disparity in chess. There are so few elite female…

New movie “The Public” explores the roles of libraries in society

New movie “The Public” explores the roles of libraries in society

Well first of all, librarians were the first Google. And I think we have to remember that sacred space, where a patron approaches the desk reference librarian and asks a question. Guess what happens there? They get the questions answered and the libraries are where facts live. And while they’re getting that service, they are…