Witnessing Eliud Kipchoge's humble home life in rural Kenya sheds light on some of the secrets behind his remarkable athletic success.
from BBC News - Africa https://ift.tt/2VrQKsi
via
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Optimizing complex decision-making
When he began his engineering program at École Polytechnique in his hometown of Paris, Jean Pauphilet did not aspire to the academy.
“I used to associate academia with fundamental research, which I don’t enjoy much,” he says. “But slowly, I discovered another type of research, where people use rigorous scientific principles for applied and impactful projects.”
A fascination with projects that have direct applications to organizational problems led Pauphilet to the field of operations research and analytics — and to a PhD at the Operations Research Center (ORC), a joint program between the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Operations research models decision-making processes as mathematical optimization problems, such as planning for energy production given unpredictable fluctuations in demand. It’s a complex subject that Pauphilet finds exhilarating. “Operations in practice are very messy, but I think that’s what makes them exciting. You’re never short on problems to solve,” he says.
Working in the lab of Professor Dimitris Bertsimas, and in collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Pauphilet focuses on solving challenges in the health care field. For example, how can hospitals best make bed assignments and staffing decisions? These types of logistical decisions are “a pain point for everyone,” he notes.
“You really feel that you’re making peoples’ lives easier because when you’re talking about it to doctors and nurses, you realize that they don’t like to do it, they’re not trained at it, and it’s keeping them from actually doing their job. So, for me it was clear that it had a positive impact on their workload.” More recently, he has been involved in a group effort led by his advisor to develop analytics tools to inform policymakers and health care managers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Becoming an expert
As the son of two doctors, Pauphilet is already comfortable working within the medical field. He also feels well-prepared by his training in France, which allows students to choose their majors late and emphasizes a background in math. “Operations research requires versatility,” he explains. “Methodologically, it can involve anything ranging from probability theory to optimization algorithms and machine learning. So, having a strong and wide math background definitely helps.”
This mentality has allowed him to grow into an expert in his field at MIT. “I’m less scared of research now,” he explains, “You might not find what you were expecting, but you always find something that is relevant to someone. So [research] is uncertain, but not risky. You can always get back on your feet in some way.” It’s a mentality that’s given him the confidence to find, solve, and address operations problems in novel ways in collaboration with companies and hospitals.
Pauphilet, who will join London Business School as an assistant professor in the fall, has found himself thinking about the different pedagogical philosophies in the U.S. and France. At MIT, he completed the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program to become more familiar with aspects of teaching not typically experienced as a teaching assistant, such as designing a course, writing lectures, and creating assignments.
“Coming from France and teaching in the U.S., I think it’s especially interesting to learn from other peoples’ experience and to compare what their first experience of learning was at their universities in their countries. Also [it’s challenging] to define what is the best method of teaching that you can think of that acknowledges the differences between the students and the way they learn, and to try to take that into account in your own teaching style.”
Culture and community
In his free time, before the Covid-19 emergency, Pauphilet often took advantage of cultural and intellectual offerings in Cambridge and Boston. He frequented the Boston Symphony Orchestra (which offered $25 tickets for people under 40) and enjoys hearing unfamiliar composers and music, especially contemporary music with surprising new elements.
Pauphilet is an avid chef who relishes the challenge of cooking large pieces of meat, such as whole turkeys or lamb shoulders, for friends. Beyond the food, he enjoys the long conversations that these meals facilitate and that people can’t necessarily experience in a restaurant. (As an aside he notes, “I think the service in a restaurant here is much more efficient than in Europe!”).
Pauphilet has also been the president of MIT’s French Club, which organizes a variety of events for around 100 French-speaking graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduates. Though his undergraduate institution is well-represented at MIT, Pauphilet feels strongly about creating a network for those Francophones who may not have his luck, so they can feel as at home as he does.
Now at the end of his PhD, Pauphilet has the chance to reflect on his experiences over the past three and a half years. In particular, he has found a deep sense of community in his cohort, lab, and community here. He attributes some of that to his graduate program’s structure — which begins with two required classes that everyone in the cohort takes together — but that’s just one aspect of the investment in building community Pauphilet has felt at MIT.
“It’s a great environment. Honestly, I find that everyone is very mindful of students. I have a great relationship with my advisor that is not only based on research, and I think that’s very important,” he says.
Overall, Pauphilet attributes his significant personal and professional growth in grad school to learning in MIT’s collaborative and open environment. And, he notes, being at the Institute has affected him in another important way.
“I’m a bit nerdier than I used to be!”
from MIT News https://ift.tt/2Koj9JJ
via
McDonald’s Giving $250K to Black Communities Hit by Coronavirus, Free Meals to Healthcare Workers
McDonald’s USA is joining BET and the United Way by making a significant donation toward efforts that will directly support black communities hit hardest by COVID-19. A company spokesperson is announcing the donation during today’s BET “Saving OurSelves” Telethon.
In addition, McDonald’s is honoring the selfless service of healthcare workers and first responders—police officers, firefighters, and paramedics—by giving them free meals.
“McDonald’s has supported our communities through highs and lows, and remains committed to aiding in COVID-19 relief as we get through this pandemic together,” Vicki Chancellor, an Atlanta-based McDonald’s owner/operator and chair of the Operator’s National Advertising Fund, told Black Enterprise in an emailed statement.
“Inspired by the heroes working tirelessly to keep our communities healthy during this time, McDonald’s Corporation and franchisees are expressing appreciation by offering a free ‘Thank You Meal’ to all healthcare workers and first responders,” Chancellor continued. “Additionally, we’re honored to join BET and United Way by donating $250,000.”
Each Thank You Meal will be available via drive thru or carry out during breakfast, lunch, or dinner at participating McDonald’s restaurants nationwide from April 22nd through May 5th. It will be served in a McDonald’s Happy Meal box, along with a note of appreciation, “in the hopes of bringing a smile along with delicious food,” a press release notes.
The Thank You Meal will feature a choice of sandwiches, drinks, and a side of french fries or a hash brown. Healthcare workers and first responders simply have to show a work badge.
“Our restaurants have always been a place for the community to come together and share everyday feel-good moments with family, friends, and neighbors,” said Chancellor in a press statement.
“And, now during times like this, it’s more important than ever for our restaurants to continue to serve and help the communities that have supported us for so long.”
McDonald’s has contributed to the relief effort in a number of other ways, including donating $3.1 million in food to support local communities, donating 1 million N95 masks to Chicago and the state of Illinois, and donating $1 million to the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund to ensure nonprofits in its home state have the supplies they need during this time.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2VvB6fS
via
Nigerian woman, 68, gives birth to twins
A Nigerian woman has stunned the world and the medical community this week by giving birth to twins – a boy, and a girl – at the age of 68.
According to CNN, last Tuesday, after three previous IVF attempts, Margaret Adenuga and her husband Noah Adenuga, 77 have finally been able to start a family. The couple, who were married in 1974, have desired to have a child of their own for decades and say they never gave up.
READ MORE: theGrio launches Facebook Watch series covering plight of Black-owned businesses during COVID-19
“I am a dreamer, and I was convinced this particular dream of ours will come to pass,” Adenuga, a retired stock auditor told CNN.
The children were delivered via caesarian section at 37 weeks at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) but the facility chose to delay making the news public to give the first-time mother time to recuperate.
“As an elderly woman and a first-time mother, it was a high-risk pregnancy and also because she was going to have twins but we were able to manage her pregnancy to term,” explained Dr. Adeyemi Okunowo, who prior to delivering the babies assembled a specialist team at the hospital to monitor the pregnancy.
Last year, a 73-year-old woman in India was able to safely deliver twin girls after she conceived through IVF. But Okunowo warned that even though older women can conceive later in life through IVF, doctors must still be candid with their patients about the medical risks associated with making the choice to have a child when older.
“There are age-related medical complications that come with being pregnant at that age such as the baby being born preterm. She’s lucky but many may succumb to other complications during or after having a baby,” he said.
The post Nigerian woman, 68, gives birth to twins appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3bvZNhH
via
World Health Org confirms COVID-19 came from animals and not lab
Despite rumors swirling all over the internet, the World Health Organization has found evidence that indicates coronavirus was not produced in a laboratory but instead originated in China late last year.
“It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib explained Tuesday during a news briefing in Geneva.
READ MORE: Coronavirus may spread on shoes, study says
These findings come on the heels of President Donald Trump confirming last week that his administration had launched an investigation to look into whether the virus was engineered in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, from which it first emerged.
Right-wing bloggers and conservative media pundits have been vocal about making allegations that coronavirus escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Some speculated that the virus was linked to a Chinese biowarfare program while others opined that it came from a bat that accidentally escaped the research facility because of poor safety protocols.
READ MORE: theGrio launches Facebook Watch series covering plight of Black-owned businesses during COVID-19
Both theories stem from the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s history of studying coronaviruses in bats along with the facility’s proximity to where the infections were first diagnosed.
Despite these initial findings, Chaib concedes that there remain unanswered questions about exactly how the disease jumped the species barrier to humans, with the current best guess being that it was via an intermediate animal host. She also said the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, “most probably has its ecological reservoir in bats.”
The post World Health Org confirms COVID-19 came from animals and not lab appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3eI6LSx
via
Jim Collins receives funding to harness AI for drug discovery
Housed at TED and supported by leading social impact advisor The Bridgespan Group, The Audacious Project is a collaborative funding initiative that’s catalyzing social impact on a grand scale by convening funders and social entrepreneurs, with the goal of supporting bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges.
Among this year’s carefully selected change-makers is Jim Collins and a team at MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (J-Clinic), including co-principal investigator Regina Barzilay. The funding provided through The Audacious Project will support the response to the antibiotic resistance crisis through the development of new classes of antibiotics to protect patients against some of the world’s deadliest bacterial pathogens.
“The work of Jim Collins and his colleagues is more relevant now than ever before,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “We are grateful for the commitment from The Audacious Project and its contributors, to both support and foster the research around AI and drug discovery, and to join our efforts in the School of Engineering to realize the potential global impact of this incredible work.”
Collins’ and Barzilay’s Antibiotics-AI Project seeks to produce the first new classes of antibiotics society has seen in three decades, by calling in an interdisciplinary team of world-class bioengineers, microbiologists, computer scientists, and chemists.
Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the Department of Biological Engineering, faculty co-lead of J-Clinic, faculty lead of the MIT-Takeda Program, and a member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology faculty. He is also a core founding faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and an Institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Barzilay is the Delta Electronics Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, faculty co-lead of J-Clinic, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT.
Earlier this year, Collins and Barzilay along with Tommi Jaakkola, Thomas Siebel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and postdoc Jonathan Stokes were part of a research team that successfully used a deep-learning model to identify a new antibiotic. Over the next seven years, The Audacious Project’s commitment will support Collins and Barzilay as they continue to use the same process to rapidly explore over a billion molecules to identify and design novel antibiotics.
from MIT News https://ift.tt/2VsycbC
via
Stacey Abrams Blasts Georgia Governor as ‘Dangerously Incompetent’ for Lifting Coronavirus Lockdowns
Stacey Abrams deemed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp as “dangerously incompetent” after he announced that Georgia’s economy would begin to reopen this Friday.
The governor announced Monday a new order to lift coronavirus restrictions that will allow hair salons, bowling alleys, gyms, and tattoo parlors in the Peach State to open for business starting April 24, reports The Associated Press. By next week, restaurants can begin to resume some in-house dining services and movie theaters will be allowed to start showing films. Under the order, all open businesses will be required to have employees wear masks and gloves, test the temperature of workers, and enforce social distancing between customers.
In response, Abrams blasted Gov. Kemp’s decision in a tweet that highlights that Georgia has nearly 19,000 confirmed cases and 733 related deaths.
Georgia: 14th highest infection/7th lowest testing rate; less econ resilient & 1000s of low-wage workers already forced to risk their lives to make a living. Weakened healthcare w/closed rural hospitals, no Medicaid expansion & a doctor shortage. Reopen? Dangerously incompetent. https://t.co/FFfk9EoN3l
— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) April 20, 2020
On Tuesday, the former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate went on to criticize her former opponent as “deeply problematic” during an interview on CBS This Morning.
“There’s no legitimate reason for reopening the state except for politics, and I think it’s deeply disingenuous he would pretend otherwise,” Abrams told CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King.
Abrams argued that the high number of infections and slow testing rates is a signal that the lockdown needs to be kept in place. She also claimed the state’s health infrastructure could not handle another influx of COVID-19 cases.
“We’re not ready to return to normal,” she said. “We have people who are the most vulnerable and the least resilient being put on the front lines, contracting a disease that they cannot get treatment for.”
She continued, “We have swaths of Georgia where we have no hospitals, no doctors and no relief,” she said. “And the governor’s refusal to expand Medicaid means we haven’t gotten the new infusions of cash to prepare us for the pandemic.”
Abrams also noted that low-wage workers would be at an increased risk of infection once the lockdown is restricted, stating they “will be compelled to go back to work in order to keep their jobs.”
Abrams, who is reportedly being considered as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, also announced Tuesday that she is backing the “Project 100” campaign, which aims to give $1,000 to low-income families during the pandemic.
“The most economically vulnerable are struggling to survive, unable to afford groceries or medicines for their children, let alone cover utilities, car payments, and rent,” Abrams said.
“Project 100” is an effort organized by nonprofit GiveDirectly, software company Propel, and education advocacy group Stand for Children. Its goal is to send 100,000 families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits direct cash payments within the next 100 days. The group says it has already raised $55 million as of Tuesday.
In addition to Abrams, the campaign is also backed by Andrew Yang, Ariana Grande, Rihanna, Halsey, and Stephen Colbert.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/3azV1i0
via
Florida Father Surprises His Four Kids With ATM Business
Generational wealth has been critical to the conversation in building black wealth. Due to economic and historic racial disparities, passing down tangible economic investments like real estate or businesses are far and few in between. For one entrepreneur, the importance of passing something down to his children was imperative and he was able to do so with their own ATM business.
William Moxey had wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was 12 years old and now the father of four is passing down his business sense down to his four children. Moxey went on social media to announce that he surprised his kids with an ATM Business called QuickBuxNow with the hopes of teaching them important lessons on how to run a business as well as money management.
“I started off by doing what every other little kid was doing, selling CDs, and that gradually grew into selling T-shirts, sneakers, and stuff like that, but I was kind of born into the whole entrepreneur-type lifestyle because I was raised by a single mother — she’s been an entrepreneur since I was born,” Moxey told Atlanta Black Star. The father of four credits his own mother for being a good example of a business owner, watching her run three hair salons in the home state of Florida and helping him develop his own business savvy. She’s owned her own salon since I was born, and kind of watching her it kind of grew me into wanting my own.”
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2yxakdO
via
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)