Rachel Thomas reflects on her decade of blogging, sharing insights on challenging conventional wisdom in tech, education, and health. She discusses her journey from a mathematician to a recognized writer, highlighting key posts th...
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Rachel Thomas is an AI researcher and educator with interests in data ethics and mathematical biology.
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The article discusses the long-term health impacts of common viruses, revealing that they can increase the risk of serious conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and cancer. It emphasizes the need for new antiviral t...
Rachel Thomas, PhD, discusses the potential of AI in medicine, racial and gender bias in medicine, harms of AI in society, and the promise of participatory, patient-led approaches. She also talks about her background in mathematic...
Deep learning is highly rewarded, but deep fact checking is ignored. A study on enzyme function prediction using deep learning revealed that the model made hundreds of erroneous predictions. This highlights the limitations of AI i...
The text discusses the limitations of DNA sequencing and the rise of new approaches to address these limitations. It highlights the challenges of DNA sequencing in understanding cell functions and spatial information, and the brea...
The text discusses the impact of missing medical data on AI and the political nature of data. It highlights the contradiction between Trump's freeze on health data communication and the promise to invest in AI for healthcare. It a...
The text discusses the use of machine learning in computational pathology, focusing on the development of CPath foundation models. It highlights the challenges, successes, and future opportunities in this field, including the need...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - AI and Immunology
2024-11-19 •
Rachel Thomas, PhD, discusses the application of AI to immunology, highlighting the importance of studying the human immune system in the context of increasing pandemics, climate change, and antibiotic resistance. She shares her w...
The text discusses 5 devious tricks pathogens use to overcome human immune defenses, including commandeering the cell's machinery, blocking signals from T cells, making a home in B cells, thriving in acid, and cutting the brake li...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - In defense of screen time
2024-10-28 •
The author defends the use of screen-based tools for children's learning and creativity, highlighting her daughter's diverse interests and activities. She argues against the negative media narrative around screen time and advocate...
The text discusses the gaps and risks of AI in the life sciences, including missing data, biases and errors in datasets, neglecting mechanistic understanding, difficulty of cross-disciplinary work, the double-edged sword of compet...
The text discusses the comparison of the immune system to a muscle and whether it is accurate. It explores the impact of various pathogens on the immune system, the Hygiene Hypothesis, and the 'Old Friends' mechanism. It also delv...
The post discusses the use of AI to predict T cell binding, which is crucial in immunology and medicine. It explores the importance of T cells in autoimmune diseases and cancer, and the potential of neural networks, particularly A...
The text is an introduction to neural networks, explaining what they are and how they are used in AI. It also discusses popular architectures and how to choose a neural network for a specific problem. The post is part of a series ...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - Decoding T cells with AI
2024-07-08 •
The text discusses the intersection of AI and immunology, focusing on the basics of T cells and protein folding. It explores the potential of using AI to predict T cell binding and the implications for medical breakthroughs and ca...
The text discusses the microbiomes of wildfires, nanoplastics, and roller derby, highlighting the impact of microbes on various habitats, including wildfire smoke, ocean plastics, and human gut. It also explores the complexity of ...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - Surprises of the Microbiome
2024-04-24 •
The text discusses the significance of microbiomes in humans, plants, and the environment, and how they influence health, disease, and the spread of disease. It also covers the impact of friendly bacteria on the immune system, the...
The urgent threat of bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics is being addressed using AI to search for new antibiotics. The problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is growing, with significant impact on healthcare costs and...
The text discusses the potential impact of AI on medicine, highlighting the limitations and ethical concerns. It emphasizes the need to consider patient perspectives and the potential for AI to exacerbate inequality. The author al...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - How Immune Cells Communicate
2024-02-05 •
The post discusses the importance of understanding the immune system and the role of immune cell-cytokine networks in responding to threats. It highlights the significance of interdisciplinary work and the ongoing research in this...
Rachel Thomas, PhD, discusses the intersection of immunology and AI, focusing on the communication and coordination of immune cells through cytokines. She highlights the complexity of the immune system and the potential for AI to ...
0Rachel Thomas, PhD - 4 Things I Learned About Bugs
2024-01-08 •
Rachel Thomas, PhD, shares 4 fascinating facts about insects that she learned during her microbiology courses. She discusses the use of insects for making medications and vaccines, the problems insects face with viral, bacterial, ...
The text discusses the ethical challenges of automation, centralization, and scale in AI, particularly in the wake of the release of new large language models. It emphasizes the insufficiency of explainability and fairness alone, ...
The text discusses the connection between viruses and autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, highlighting the impact of viral infections on triggering conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and neurodegenerat...