Data Science for Science

Artificial Intelligence is now helping to predict the eventual onset of Alzheimer's disease in healthy people. The research conducted by IBM Research and Pfizer uses short standardised speech tests with better results than current methods.  Alzheimer's is a disease of the brain. Those afflicted by it, typically people over 60 years of age, slowly lose their ability to think, ability to recall from memory and eventually the ability to carry out simple tasks. Prediction of the onset of the disease can lead to the development of a simple, straightforward and accessible metric to help clinicians assess the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in an individual, leading to earlier intervention. There is no effective cure or prevention of this disease but the best way to delay onset and slow progression is to intervene early which may be possible one day.  AI techniques were used to train models using short language samples from the Framingham Heart Study . Sample were selected based on age-g...

Archaeologists, most exemplified in popular culture by the character of Indiana Jones, are more often seen as people who do a lot of manual field work: exploring hitherto unknown areas of land to find objects or patterns that would give some clues to the ancient past. They are now catching up with the rest of the sciences in utilising the amazing technology of AI. Uncovering long-abandoned ancient settlements in Madagascar, detecting nearly indiscernible bumps of earthen mounds left behind by prehistoric North American cultures, mapping Bronze Age river systems in the Indus Valley, and many more such activities are seeing the involvement of AI. Such activities called Landscape Archaeology are examples of areas where AI is helping scientists hunt for new archaeological digs as well as understand ancient cultures at large scale and great pace. So what data is used by AI to help with Landscape Archaeology? The near-ubiquitous availability of satellite data and other kinds of aerial ima...