11 July 2020

Fans and analysts spend the entire offseason speculating where the top free agents could go, but sometimes an under-the-radar pickup can end up making a world of difference. As positional competitions begin to heat up at Spring Training camps this month, MLB.com's beat writers were asked to identify one potentially overlooked acquisition for each of the 30 clubs. Here's who they came up with.

The 30 prospects below all are getting very long looks this spring with an eye toward breaking camp with the parent club. Even if they start the year in the Minors, they all should get the chance to contribute at some point in the very near future.

Phillies manager Gabe Kapler believes the two most important spots in a lineup are the Nos. 2 and 4 holes. Rhys Hoskins and Carlos Santana hit there most of last season. But with J.T. Realmuto, Andrew McCutchen and Jean Segura joining the Phillies in the offseason, Kapler has more options.

Fans and analysts spend the entire offseason speculating where the top free agents could go, but sometimes an under-the-radar pickup can end up making a world of difference. As positional competitions begin to heat up at Spring Training camps this month, MLB.com's beat writers were asked to identify one potentially overlooked acquisition for each of the 30 clubs. Here's who they came up with.

The 30 prospects below all are getting very long looks this spring with an eye toward breaking camp with the parent club. Even if they start the year in the Minors, they all should get the chance to contribute at some point in the very near future.

Who gains from artificial intelligence? 27 February 2023 — 5:30PM TO 6:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 6 February 2023 Chatham House and Online

What implications will AI have on fundamental rights and how can societies benefit from this technology revolution?

In recent months, the latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have attracted much media attention. These technologies hold a wealth of potential for a wide range of applications, for example, the recent release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a text generation model, has shed light on the opportunities these applications hold including to advance scientific research and discovery, enhance search engines and improve key commercial applications.

Yet, instead of generating an evidence-based public debate, this increased interest has also led to discussions on AI technologies which are often alarmist in nature, and in a lot of cases, misleading. They carry the risk of shifting public and policymakers’ attention away from critical societal and legal risks as well as concrete solutions.

This discussion, held in partnership with Microsoft and Sidley Austin LLP, provides an expert-led overview of where the technology stands in 2023. Panellists also reflect on the implications of implementing AI on fundamental rights, the enforcement of current and upcoming legislation and multi-stakeholder pathways to address relevant issues in the AI space.

More specifically, the panel explores:

• What is the current state of the art in the AI field?
• What are the opportunities and challenges presented by generative AI and other innovations?
• What are some of the key, and potentially most disruptive, AI applications to monitor in the near- and mid-term? 
• Which applications would benefit from greater public policy/governance discussions?
• How can current and future policy frameworks ensure the protection of fundamental rights in this new era of AI?
• What is the role of multi-stakeholder collaboration?
• What are the pathways to achieving inclusive and responsible governance of AI?

• How can countries around the world work together to develop frameworks for responsible AI that upholds democratic values and advance AI collaboration across borders?

As with all member events, questions from the audience drive the conversation.

Read the transcript.

Methods to shorten [¹⁸F]FDG Patlak PET imaging procedures ranging from 65–90 to 20–30 min after injection, using a population-averaged input function (PIF) scaled to patient-specific image-derived input function (IDIF) values, were recently evaluated. The aim of the present study was to explore the feasibility of ultrashort 10-min [¹⁸F]FDG Patlak imaging at 55–65 min after injection using a PIF combined with direct Patlak reconstructions to provide reliable quantitative accuracy of lung tumor uptake, compared with a full-duration 65-min acquisition using an IDIF. Methods: Patients underwent a 65-min dynamic PET acquisition on a long-axial-field-of-view (LAFOV) Biograph Vision Quadra PET/CT scanner. Subsequently, direct Patlak reconstructions and image-based (with reconstructed dynamic images) Patlak analyses were performed using both the IDIF (time to relative kinetic equilibrium between blood and tissue concentration (t*) = 30 min) and a scaled PIF at 30–60 min after injection. Next, direct Patlak reconstructions were performed on the system console using only the last 10 min of the acquisition, that is, from 55 to 65 min after injection, and a scaled PIF using maximum crystal ring difference settings of both 85 and 322. Tumor lesion and healthy-tissue uptake was quantified and compared between the differently obtained parametric images to assess quantitative accuracy. Results: Good agreement was obtained between direct- and image-based Patlak analyses using the IDIF (t* = 30 min) and scaled PIF at 30–60 min after injection, performed using the different approaches, with no more than 8.8% deviation in tumor influx rate value (K_i) (mean difference ranging from –0.0022 to 0.0018 mL/[min x g]). When direct Patlak reconstruction was performed on the system console, excellent agreement was found between the use of a scaled PIF at 30–60 min after injection versus 55–65 min after injection, with 2.4% deviation in tumor K_i (median difference, –0.0018 mL/[min x g]; range, –0.0047 to 0.0036 mL/[min x g]). For different maximum crystal ring difference settings using the scan time interval of 55–65 min after injection, only a 0.5% difference (median difference, 0.0000 mL/[min x g]; range, –0.0004 to 0.0013 mL/[min x g]) in tumor K_i was found. Conclusion: Ultrashort whole-body [¹⁸F]FDG Patlak imaging is feasible on an LAFOV Biograph Vision Quadra PET/CT system without loss of quantitative accuracy to assess lung tumor uptake compared with a full-duration 65-min acquisition. The ultrashort 10-min direct Patlak reconstruction with PIF allows for its implementation in clinical practice.

Understanding which patients with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–negative or –low metastatic breast cancer (MBC) benefit from HER2-targeted strategies is urgently needed. We assessed the whole-body heterogeneity of HER2 expression on ⁸⁹Zr-trastuzumab PET (HER2 PET) and the diagnostic performance of HER2 PET in a large series of patients, including HER2-negative and -low MBC. Methods: In the IMPACT-MBC study, patients with newly diagnosed and nonrapidly progressive MBC of all subtypes were included. Metastasis HER2 status was determined by immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization.⁸⁹Zr-trastuzumab uptake was quantified as SUV_max and SUV_mean. HER2 immunohistochemistry was related to the quantitative ⁸⁹Zr-trastuzumab uptake of all metastases and corresponding biopsied metastasis, uptake heterogeneity, and qualitative scan evaluation. A prediction algorithm for HER2 immunohistochemistry positivity based on uptake was developed. Results: In 200 patients, ⁸⁹Zr-trastuzumab uptake was quantified in 5,163 metastases, including 186 biopsied metastases. With increasing HER2 immunohistochemistry status, uptake was higher (geometric mean SUV_max of 7.0, 7.6, 7.3, and 17.4 for a HER2 immunohistochemistry score of 0, 1, 2, or 3+, respectively; P < 0.001). High uptake exceeding 14.6 (90th percentile) was observed in one third of patients with a HER2-negative or -low metastasis biopsy. The algorithm performed best when lesion site and size were incorporated (area under the curve, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.79–0.93). Conclusion: HER2 PET had good diagnostic performance in MBC, showing considerable whole-body HER2 heterogeneity and uptake above background in HER2-negative and -low MBC. This provides novel insights into HER2-negative and -low MBC compared with standard HER2 immunohistochemistry on a single biopsy.

Actor/TV personality Whoopi Goldberg turns 69 and singer Julia Michaels turns 30, among the famous birthdays for Nov. 13.

TED Fellow and composer Sahba Aminikia brings the healing power of dance, storytelling, music and performance to some of the most dangerous places on Earth. By celebrating children and their communities with beauty and joy, he shows how to cultivate hope, connection and love — even in conflict zones. "The ultimate power is in unity," Aminikia says.

Facing big transportation costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some school districts will pay parents or caregivers to get their kids to school, or charge them for the bus ride.

Facing big transportation costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some school districts will pay parents or caregivers to get their kids to school, or charge them for the bus ride.

A program in Howard County, Md., is built on the insight that children can have strong emotions around academics, and those emotions can sabotage learning.

The state's elected superintendent and the governor-appointed state board have been in a legal dispute since 2016 over who should oversee the many tasks of the education department.

Watch a discussion between three educators who ran for their state legislatures about their experiences on the campaign trail.

"Teaching is a political act," argues teacher-turned-politician John Waldron. And it's going to take more organizing to rescue public education.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

A school cook in Nebraska was canned after he mixed kangaroo meat into chili made for students.

School administrators in some states are caught up in tensions about who gets the final say about when they can reopen their buildings and what precautions they should take to protect their communities.

Bethany Hill, the principal at Central Elementary School in Cabot, Ark., shuns a formal office in favor of roving around classrooms, hallways, the playground, and the cafeteria, where she can be as close as possible to teachers and students all day.

School administrators in some states are caught up in tensions about who gets the final say about when they can reopen their buildings and what precautions they should take to protect their communities.

The rocky shift to remote learning has exacerbated inequities for the nation's 5 million English-learners. An army of multilingual liaisons work round the clock to plug widening gaps.

With a need for youth in the system and for an urgent NHL course correction simultaneously, Pittsburgh will be a team to watch in the trade market

Washington sent a 2025 fifth-round pick and a 2027 third-round pick to Pittsburgh on Tuesday for Eller.

Here's a look at the College Football Playoff bracket and playoff picture after the latest committee rankings were released.

A Smithsonian curator reflects back on the artistic legend, a "Renaissance man" with 28 Grammys to his name, who died Sunday at 91 years old

FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO) will continue to work closely on nutrition, food safety and antimicrobial resistance issues, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva and WHO Director Margaret [...]

Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer from Burkina Faso, has become a pioneer in the fight against desertification – succeeding where many international agencies have failed

Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Ronald Drever | Smithsonian Magazine’s 2016 American Ingenuity Award Winners for Physical Sciences In February, physicists announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves—a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted back in 1915. The faint reverberation, from two merging black holes 1.3 billion light-years ago, registered in the two giant detectors that make up the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. It took decades for LIGO’s founders—Weiss, of MIT, and Thorne and Drever, of Cal Tech—to amass the necessary funding and brainpower. Barish, a particle physicist at CalTech, became LIGO’s director and expanded its work to include more than 1,000 researchers worldwide. Their revolutionary achievement opens the way for a new understanding of the universe, perhaps even a glimpse of the Big Bang. Read more about their work: http://smithmag.co/FZBFeP | #IngenuityAwards And more about the American Ingenuity Awards: http://smithmag.co/77xPqy

On April 2, 1931, 17-year-old Jackie Mitchell struck out the New York Yankees slugger.

In 1913, British Royalty would come in direct contact with a changing social order, thanks to a suffragette named Emily Davison. Her death at Epsom Falls would send shockwaves through the nation.

The so-called good-luck flag, which hung on an American veteran's wall for many years, returned home last month after nearly eight decades

Two members of Just Stop Oil staged the original demonstration in late 2022. Group members say the harsh penalties will not deter their efforts

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth cloned illegally imported genetic material from the Marco Polo argali to create hybrid sheep that would draw higher prices from hunting preserves

John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton shared the award for their work on artificial neural networks and machine learning

The grassroots organization, Nihon Hidankyo, was lauded for "demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again"

Found in a cremation cemetery in Belgium, the skeleton includes bones dating to the Neolithic period and a Roman-era skull, according to a new study

On this day in 1912, a team found the remains of Robert Falcon Scott and the crew of the "Terra Nova" expedition. A would-be rescuer said he was forever haunted by the "horrible nightmare"

A new study has shattered historians' long-held assumptions about some of the people who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 C.E.

Michelle Frankfurter tells the stories of these young migrants and also those of the thousands who jump aboard “the death train”

Renaissance paintings, medieval archives, cloistered orchards—how one Italian scientist is uncovering secrets that could help combat a growing agricultural crisis

CBC Newfoundland and Labrador would love to hear your suggestions of folks and organizations who are there when you need them — and all the other times, too.