Epidemic disease can spread during mass gatherings. We assessed the impact on the local-area trajectory of the COVID-19 epidemic of a type of mass gathering about which comprehensive data were available. Here, we examined five types of political events in 2020 and 2021: the US primary elections; the US Senate special election in Georgia; the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia; Donald Trump's political rallies; and the Black Lives Matter protests. Our study period encompassed over 700 such mass gatherings during multiple phases of the pandemic. We used data from the 48 contiguous states, representing 3,119 counties, and we implemented a novel extension of a recently developed non-parametric, generalized difference-in-difference estimator with a (high-quality) matching procedure for panel data to estimate the average effect of the gatherings on local mortality and other outcomes. There were no statistically significant increases in cases, deaths, or a measure of epidemic transmissibility (Rt) in a 40-day period following large-scale political activities. We estimated small and statistically insignificant effects, corresponding to an average difference of -0.0567 death
Model Medicine is the science of understanding, diagnosing, treating, and preventing disorders in AI models, grounded in the principle that AI models -- like biological organisms -- have internal structures, dynamic processes, heritable traits, observable symptoms, classifiable conditions, and treatable states. This paper introduces Model Medicine as a research program, bridging the gap between current AI interpretability research (anatomical observation) and the systematic clinical practice that complex AI systems increasingly require. We present five contributions: (1) a discipline taxonomy organizing 15 subdisciplines across four divisions -- Basic Model Sciences, Clinical Model Sciences, Model Public Health, and Model Architectural Medicine; (2) the Four Shell Model (v3.3), a behavioral genetics framework empirically grounded in 720 agents and 24,923 decisions from the Agora-12 program, explaining how model behavior emerges from Core--Shell interaction; (3) Neural MRI (Model Resonance Imaging), a working open-source diagnostic tool mapping five medical neuroimaging modalities to AI interpretability techniques, validated through four clinical cases demonstrating imaging, compari
The mass table in the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum (DRHBc) with the PC-PK1 density functional has been established for even-$Z$ nuclei with $8\le Z\le120$, extended from the previous work for even-even nuclei [Zhang $\it{et.~al.}$ (DRHBc Mass Table Collaboration), At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 144, 101488 (2022)]. The calculated binding energies, two-nucleon and one-neutron separation energies, root-mean-square (rms) radii of neutron, proton, matter, and charge distributions, quadrupole deformations, and neutron and proton Fermi surfaces are tabulated and compared with available experimental data. A total of 4829 even-$Z$ nuclei are predicted to be bound, with an rms deviation of 1.477 MeV from the 1244 mass data. Good agreement with the available experimental odd-even mass differences, $α$ decay energies, and charge radii is also achieved. The description accuracy for nuclear masses and nucleon separation energies as well as the prediction for drip lines is compared with the results obtained from other relativistic and nonrelativistic density functional. The comparison shows that the DRHBc theory with PC-PK1 provides an excellent microscopic descriptio
With the increasing interest in deploying Artificial Intelligence in medicine, we previously introduced HAIM (Holistic AI in Medicine), a framework that fuses multimodal data to solve downstream clinical tasks. However, HAIM uses data in a task-agnostic manner and lacks explainability. To address these limitations, we introduce xHAIM (Explainable HAIM), a novel framework leveraging Generative AI to enhance both prediction and explainability through four structured steps: (1) automatically identifying task-relevant patient data across modalities, (2) generating comprehensive patient summaries, (3) using these summaries for improved predictive modeling, and (4) providing clinical explanations by linking predictions to patient-specific medical knowledge. Evaluated on the HAIM-MIMIC-MM dataset, xHAIM improves average AUC from 79.9% to 90.3% across chest pathology and operative tasks. Importantly, xHAIM transforms AI from a black-box predictor into an explainable decision support system, enabling clinicians to interactively trace predictions back to relevant patient data, bridging AI advancements with clinical utility.
What does Artificial Intelligence (AI) have to contribute to health care? And what should we be looking out for if we are worried about its risks? In this paper we offer a survey, and initial evaluation, of hopes and fears about the applications of artificial intelligence in medicine. AI clearly has enormous potential as a research tool, in genomics and public health especially, as well as a diagnostic aid. It's also highly likely to impact on the organisational and business practices of healthcare systems in ways that are perhaps under-appreciated. Enthusiasts for AI have held out the prospect that it will free physicians up to spend more time attending to what really matters to them and their patients. We will argue that this claim depends upon implausible assumptions about the institutional and economic imperatives operating in contemporary healthcare settings. We will also highlight important concerns about privacy, surveillance, and bias in big data, as well as the risks of over trust in machines, the challenges of transparency, the deskilling of healthcare practitioners, the way AI reframes healthcare, and the implications of AI for the distribution of power in healthcare ins
The success of precision medicine requires computational models that can effectively process and interpret diverse physiological signals across heterogeneous patient populations. While foundation models have demonstrated remarkable transfer capabilities across various domains, their effectiveness in handling individual-specific physiological signals - crucial for precision medicine - remains largely unexplored. This work introduces a systematic pipeline for rapidly and efficiently evaluating foundation models' transfer capabilities in medical contexts. Our pipeline employs a three-stage approach. First, it leverages physiological simulation software to generate diverse, clinically relevant scenarios, particularly focusing on data-scarce medical conditions. This simulation-based approach enables both targeted capability assessment and subsequent model fine-tuning. Second, the pipeline projects these simulated signals through the foundation model to obtain embeddings, which are then evaluated using linear methods. This evaluation quantifies the model's ability to capture three critical aspects: physiological feature independence, temporal dynamics preservation, and medical scenario d
In this article, we investigate the convergence behavior of two classes of gathering protocols with fixed circulant topologies using tools from dynamical systems. Given a fixed number of mobile entities moving in the Euclidean plane, we model a gathering protocol as a system of (linear) ordinary differential equations whose equilibria are exactly all possible gathering points. Then, for a circulant topology we derive a decomposition of the state space into stable invariant subspaces with different convergence rates by utilizing tools from dynamical systems theory. It turns out, that this decomposition is identical for every linear circulant gathering protocol, whereas only the convergence rates depend on the weights in interaction graph itself. In the second part, we consider a normalized nonlinear version of the equation of motion that is obtained by scaling the speed of each entity. Again, we find a similar decomposition of the state space that is based on our findings in the linear case. Finally, we also consider visibility preservation properties of the two classes of system.
The last few years have seen rapid progress in transitioning quantum computing from lab to industry. In healthcare and life sciences, more than 40 proof-of-concept experiments and studies have been conducted; an increasing number of these are even run on real quantum hardware. Major investments have been made with hundreds of millions of dollars already allocated towards quantum applications and hardware in medicine. In addition to pharmaceutical and life sciences uses, clinical and medical applications are now increasingly coming into the picture. This chapter focuses on three key use case areas associated with (precision) medicine, including genomics and clinical research, diagnostics, and treatments and interventions. Examples of organizations and the use cases they have been researching are given; ideas how the development of practical quantum computing applications can be further accelerated are described.
Recent studies indicate that Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 with Vision (GPT-4V) outperforms human physicians in medical challenge tasks. However, these evaluations primarily focused on the accuracy of multi-choice questions alone. Our study extends the current scope by conducting a comprehensive analysis of GPT-4V's rationales of image comprehension, recall of medical knowledge, and step-by-step multimodal reasoning when solving New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Image Challenges - an imaging quiz designed to test the knowledge and diagnostic capabilities of medical professionals. Evaluation results confirmed that GPT-4V performs comparatively to human physicians regarding multi-choice accuracy (81.6% vs. 77.8%). GPT-4V also performs well in cases where physicians incorrectly answer, with over 78% accuracy. However, we discovered that GPT-4V frequently presents flawed rationales in cases where it makes the correct final choices (35.5%), most prominent in image comprehension (27.2%). Regardless of GPT-4V's high accuracy in multi-choice questions, our findings emphasize the necessity for further in-depth evaluations of its rationales before integrating such multimodal AI m
Precision mass spectrometry of neutron-rich nuclei is of great relevance for astrophysics. Masses of exotic nuclides impose constraints on models for the nuclear interaction and thus affect the description of the equation of state of nuclear matter, which can be extended to describe neutron-star matter. With knowledge of the masses of nuclides near shell closures, one can also derive the neutron-star crustal composition. The Penning-trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at CERN-ISOLDE has recently achieved a breakthrough measuring the mass of 82Zn, which allowed constraining neutron-star crust composition to deeper layers (Wolf et al., PRL 110, 2013). We perform a more detailed study on the sequence of nuclei in the outer crust of neutron stars with input from different nuclear models to illustrate the sensitivity to masses and the robustness of neutron-star models. The dominant role of the N=50 and N=82 closed neutron shells for the crustal composition is confirmed.
This study examines the clinical decision-making processes in Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) by reinterpreting pattern identification (PI) through the lens of dimensionality reduction. Focusing on the Eight Principle Pattern Identification (EPPI) system and utilizing empirical data from the Shang-Han-Lun, we explore the necessity and significance of prioritizing the Exterior-Interior pattern in diagnosis and treatment selection. We test three hypotheses: whether the Ext-Int pattern contains the most information about patient symptoms, represents the most abstract and generalizable symptom information, and facilitates the selection of appropriate herbal prescriptions. Employing quantitative measures such as the abstraction index, cross-conditional generalization performance, and decision tree regression, our results demonstrate that the Exterior-Interior pattern represents the most abstract and generalizable symptom information, contributing to the efficient mapping between symptom and herbal prescription spaces. This research provides an objective framework for understanding the cognitive processes underlying TEAM, bridging traditional medical practices with modern computat
In its broadest definition, systems biology is the application of a `systems' way of thinking about and doing cell biology. By implication, this also invites us to consider a systems approach in the context of medicine and the treatment of disease. In particular, the idea that systems biology can form the basis of a personalised, predictive medicine will require that much closer attention is paid to the analytic properties of the feedback loops which will be set up by a personalised approach to healthcare. To emphasize the role that feedback theory will play in understanding personalised medicine, we use the term feedback medicine to describe the issues outlined.In these notes we consider feedback and control systems concepts applied to two important themes in medical systems biology - personalised medicine and combinatorial intervention. In particular, we formulate a feedback control interpretation for the administration of medicine, and relate them to various forms of medical treatment.
The majority of the transiting planets discovered by the Kepler mission (called super-Earths here, includes the so-called 'sub-Neptunes') orbit close to their stars. As such, photoevaporation of their hydrogen envelopes etch sharp features in an otherwise bland space spanned by planet radius and orbital period. This, in turn, can be exploited to reveal the mass of these planets, in addition to techniques such as radial velocity and transit-timing-variation. Here, using updated radii for Kepler planet hosts from Gaia DR2, I show that the photoevaporation features shift systematically to larger radius for planets around more massive stars (ranging from M-dwarfs to F-dwarfs), corresponding to a nearly linear scaling between planet mass and its host mass. By modelling planet evolution under photo-evaporation, one further deduces that the masses of super-Earths peak narrowly around $8 M_\oplus (M_*/M_\odot)$. Moreover, the composition of their cores is likely terrestrial, and they were initially coated with H/He envelopes a couple percent in mass. Interestingly, the masses of these planets do not appear to depend on the metallicity values of their host stars, while they may depend on th
The problem of gathering multiple mobile robots to a single location, is one of the fundamental problems in distributed coordination between autonomous robots. The problem has been studied and solved even for robots that are anonymous, disoriented, memoryless and operate in the semi-synchronous (ATOM) model. However all known solutions require the robots to be faulty-free except for the results of [Agmon and Peleg 2006] who solve the gathering problem in presence of one crash fault. This leaves open the question of whether gathering of correct robots can be achieved in the presence of multiple crash failures. We resolve the question in this paper and show how to solve gathering, when any number of robots may crash at any time during the algorithm, assuming strong multiplicity detection and chirality. In contrast it is known that for the more stronger byzantine faults, it is impossible to gather even in a 3-robot system if one robot is faulty. Our algorithm solves the gathering of correct robots in the semi-synchronous model where an adversary may stop any robot before reaching its desired destination. Further the algorithm is self-stabilizing as it achieves gathering starting from
Medicine, including fields in healthcare and life sciences, has seen a flurry of quantum-related activities and experiments in the last few years (although biology and quantum theory have arguably been entangled ever since Schrödinger's cat). The initial focus was on biochemical and computational biology problems; recently, however, clinical and medical quantum solutions have drawn increasing interest. The rapid emergence of quantum computing in health and medicine necessitates a mapping of the landscape. In this review, clinical and medical proof-of-concept quantum computing applications are outlined and put into perspective. These consist of over 40 experimental and theoretical studies. The use case areas span genomics, clinical research and discovery, diagnostics, and treatments and interventions. Quantum machine learning (QML) in particular has rapidly evolved and shown to be competitive with classical benchmarks in recent medical research. Near-term QML algorithms have been trained with diverse clinical and real-world data sets. This includes studies in generating new molecular entities as drug candidates, diagnosing based on medical image classification, predicting patient pe
Machine Learning may push research in precision medicine to unprecedented heights. To succeed, machine learning needs a large amount of data, often including personal data. Therefore, machine learning applied to precision medicine is on a cliff edge: if it does not learn to fly, it will deeply fall down. In this paper, we present Active Informed Consent (AIC) as a novel hybrid legal-technological tool to foster the gathering of a large amount of data for machine learning. We carefully analyzed the compliance of this technological tool to the legal intricacies protecting the privacy of European Citizens.
We consider the gathering problem for asynchronous and oblivious robots that cannot communicate explicitly with each other, but are endowed with visibility sensors that allow them to see the positions of the other robots. Most of the investigations on the gathering problem on the discrete universe are done on ring shaped networks due to the number of symmetric configuration. We extend in this paper the study of the gathering problem on torus shaped networks assuming robots endowed with local weak multiplicity detection. That is, robots cannot make the difference between nodes occupied by only one robot from those occupied by more than one robots unless it is their current node. As a consequence, solutions based on creating a single multiplicity node as a landmark for the gathering cannot be used. We present in this paper a deterministic algorithm that solves the gathering problem starting from any rigid configuration on an asymmetric unoriented torus shaped network.
3D data from high-resolution volumetric imaging is a central resource for diagnosis and treatment in modern medicine. While the fast development of AI enhances imaging and analysis, commonly used visualization methods lag far behind. Recent research used extended reality (XR) for perceiving 3D images with visual depth perception and touch but used restrictive haptic devices. While unrestricted touch benefits volumetric data examination, implementing natural haptic interaction with XR is challenging. The research question is whether a multisensory XR application with intuitive haptic interaction adds value and should be pursued. In a study, 24 experts for biomedical images in research and medicine explored 3D medical shapes with 3 applications: a multisensory virtual reality (VR) prototype using haptic gloves, a simple VR prototype using controllers, and a standard PC application. Results of standardized questionnaires showed no significant differences between all application types regarding usability and no significant difference between both VR applications regarding presence. Participants agreed to statements that VR visualizations provide better depth information, using the hand
The global existence of classical solutions to reaction-diffusion systems in arbitrary space dimensions is studied. The nonlinearities are assumed to be quasi-positive, to have (slightly super-) quadratic growth, and to possess a mass control, which includes the important cases as mass conservation and mass dissipation. Under these assumptions, the local classical solution is shown to be global and, in case of mass conservation or mass dissipation, to have $L^{\infty}$-norm growing at most polynomially in time. Applications include skew-symmetric Lotka-Volterra systems and quadratic reversible chemical reactions.
Time-to-event prediction, e.g. cancer survival analysis or hospital length of stay, is a highly prominent machine learning task in medical and healthcare applications. However, only a few interpretable machine learning methods comply with its challenges. To facilitate a comprehensive explanatory analysis of survival models, we formally introduce time-dependent feature effects and global feature importance explanations. We show how post-hoc interpretation methods allow for finding biases in AI systems predicting length of stay using a novel multi-modal dataset created from 1235 X-ray images with textual radiology reports annotated by human experts. Moreover, we evaluate cancer survival models beyond predictive performance to include the importance of multi-omics feature groups based on a large-scale benchmark comprising 11 datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Model developers can use the proposed methods to debug and improve machine learning algorithms, while physicians can discover disease biomarkers and assess their significance. We hope the contributed open data and code resources facilitate future work in the emerging research direction of explainable survival analysis.