Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for February 15, 2020

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Authored by @remlaps

AI can predict which patients will benefit from anti-depression treatments; Controversial Satoshi claimaint, Craig S. Wright, claims licensing violation for the Bitcoin ledger; US DoJ arrests coin-mixing technologist for money laundering; Big news in the Steem ecosystem, TRON acquired Steemit; and a Steem photo-essay with photos of rare minerals for an upcoming gem show in Japan


Fresh and Informative Content Daily: Welcome to my little corner of the blockchain

Straight from my RSS feed
Whatever gets my attention

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak*, StemGeeks.

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pixabay license: source.

  1. AI May Alter How Doctors Treat Depression - According to a new paper in Nature, researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center and Stanford University began a study in 2011 and worked with 300 participants in order to produce their key takeaway, "a computer that can accurately predict whether an antidepressant will work based on a patient's brain activity." The brain activity is measured using "brain imaging and various DNA, blood, and other tests", but according to the team, the electroencephalogram (EEG) will be the most common because it is inexpensive and usually provides sufficient information for a prediction. In addition to predicting which patients will benefit from using a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) - which is the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressants - the study also determined that patients who are unlikely benefit from SSRI use are also more likely to benefit from other treatments such as psycotherapy or brain stimulation. This capability may eventually enable practitioners to reduce the trial and error methods that are involved in depression diagnosis and treatment in order to get effective results more quickly. The two schools have filed for a patent on the algorithm that's described in Nature, and the conclusion of the article includes this optimistic commentary:
    "It can be devastating for a patient when an antidepressant doesn't work... Our research is showing that they no longer have to endure the painful process of trial and error."


    Here is a video:

    The video is from June/2018, so it apparently took almost 2 years to get the results published.


  2. Forking and Passing Off… - Interesting post by Craig S. Wright, the highly controversial claimant to being creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. This is one of those highly polarized debates that annoys me, where - in my opinion - many people on both sides of the debate are far too confident of their positions. Regardless, though, the argument here is interesting. At first it seemed absurd, but after reflection it has an air of plausibility. Wright is saying that BTC and BCH violated the usage terms for the Bitcoin ledger when they introduced Segwit. He argues that the code, itself, is open source, but the ledger (database) falls under legal guidelines for public databases. As such, he argues that they breached the implied licensing agreement for the database when they deviated from the protocol in the whitepaper. I'm no lawyer, so I have no opinion on the claim, except that it may not be as ridiculous as it seems at first glance. Even if that argument has merit, I suppose that Wright would also have to show damages and standing, so I guess that any sort of legal action still has a hard row to hoe. Based on recent price action, it seems that the markets are unpersuaded.

  3. US DOJ Calls Bitcoin Mixing ‘a Crime’ in Arrest of Software Developer - Larry Harmon, CEO of Coin Ninja, was arrested earlier in the week and charged with money laundering on the order of $300 million in partnership with the DarkNet market, AlphaBay. In addition to being CEO of Coin Ninja, he also created the BTC mixer, Helix, which mixes transactions in order to make them harder to trace. Another article I read on this topic claimed that Harmon's interest in creating Helix was for user privacy for marginalized groups, not for money laundering. The family says that Harmon was never involved with AlphaBay, and they have launched a GoFundMe campaign for his defense fund, because Harmon's assets have been frozen.

  4. Steemit to Shift Its Proprietary Blockchain and Token to Tron Network - Violating my "no steem" guideline again for this one. It's big news with, as-of Friday afternoon, a lot of unanswered questions. Justin Sun and the TRON Foundation have announced the acquisition of Steemit, Inc, a migration to the TRON blockchain, and also a token swap of Steem tokens for a TRON-based new-Steem token. Left to the imagination is what this means for other platforms like Steemmonsters, SteemPeak, steem-engine, and others, including even Steemit's own projects like Communities and SMTs. According to the article, Steem's active community is expected to bring traction to the TRON blockchain, which is currently #13 in market cap on the coingecko.com web site.

  5. Steem @rt395: Picked Up Some New, Rare Minerals Today For Nagoya Show 3/1 - This post contains photos of some rare minerals that will be on display by the author for a gem show in Nagoya, Japan, on March 1. Photos include Painite, Ferroaxinite, Lazulite, Spessartine garnet, Quartz, and Augite. Click through to see them. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @rt395.)


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About this series


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4 comments
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Thank you for including me in your post @remlaps-lite . While not my best post, I can guarantee you will not see most of those minerals in any other post on Steemit. Hope to encourage others to explore the world of gem and minerals!

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It's about time doctors were availed better methods of diagnosing and prescribing psychoactive meds. Trial and error is simply using a club to bang people on the head in different spots and see if any of them work. It all too often results in distinct harm, and given that it's an attempt to treat depression, that can be existential to patients.

Thanks!

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Agreed. I thought this news was very promising. I hope it pans out in future trials and/or real world use.

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