Latest news with #StanfordUniversity
CNBC
an hour ago
- Business
- CNBC
OpenAI announces new 'study mode' product for students
OpenAI on Tuesday announced a new product within ChatGPT called "study mode," which aims to help students work through problems step-by-step before they arrive at an answer. As artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT have rocketed into the mainstream, educators quickly discovered that students can use the tools to cheat and avoid engaging in critical thinking. OpenAI said it built study mode as "a first step in a longer journey to improve learning in ChatGPT." "When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance," Leah Belsky, vice president of education at OpenAI, said during a briefing. "But when it's just used as an answer machine, it can hinder learning." One in 3 college-age people are already using ChatGPT, according to OpenAI, so the company designed study mode with this demographic in mind. Students who use the product will be met with guiding questions instead of direct answers while they work through homework problems, test prep and new subject material, the company said. OpenAI released a prerecorded demo that showed how a student could use study mode for help with a homework problem. After the student submits the question, ChatGPT has them work through two different steps and submit a summary of the answer in their own words. OpenAI said it built study mode in collaboration with teachers, scientists, education experts and students who participate in its ChatGPT Lab, which is where cohorts of college students share how they are using OpenAI's tools. The company's study mode announcement comes just days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that AI could dramatically change the future of education. Altman, who dropped out of Stanford University, said his young child will "probably not" go to college. "I already think college is maybe not working great for most people," Altman said during an interview on the podcast, "This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von." "I think, fast forward 18 years, it's going to look like a very, very different thing." Even so, OpenAI has still been working closely with academic institutions. The company released ChatGPT Edu last year, which is a version of the chatbot that's built specifically for universities. OpenAI said study mode is coming to ChatGPT Edu in the next few weeks, but it's available to Free, Plus, Pro and Team users starting on Tuesday.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
I graduated from Stanford a few months ago but can't land a job. I'm working 3 part-time gigs and struggling with shame.
Last December, I graduated from Stanford University with my bachelor's and master's in English. Now, over 100 job applications later, I'm working three part-time jobs, living in one of the most expensive areas in the US, and constantly doubting where I should go and what I should do. Three months before graduation, I started the grueling application process. I applied for project management, marketing, UX, and writing roles. I even applied to entry-level roles and postitons in Big Tech. I personalized nearly all my résumés, wrote cover letters (mostly) without ChatGPT, conducted company research, and prepared hours for the few I got. But nothing worked, and I'm still trying to figure out my next steps as a recent graduate. I've struggled to find a job that will sponsor my work visa One complicating factor in the job search has been my international status. I'm in the US on a student visa extension — known as Optional Practical Training — which means I could legally work in the US for one year without needing work visa sponsorship. However, I would need to find a job within 60 days after my OPT starts. Two months postgrad, I was starting to panic. The 60-day unemployment on my OPT was ticking, and I was scared that I'd be sent home. One day, complaining about all this to a friend and asking how their job was going, they showed me their company, an AI startup's, website. I took a good look and said, "I could write copy better than this." And that was my pitch to the CEO. A week and two rounds of interviews later, I was hired as their first marketing intern. The three months at my first job passed like a blur. I was thrown into the world of tech, AI, B2B, CRM, and other increasingly frustrating acronyms. It was difficult, confusing. Throughout my internship, I still applied for other roles. Despite my manager's many verbal promises, I knew the startup wouldn't be able to hire me full-time. I was proven right. That meant back to the job search, back to the ticking clock After I left that internship, I gathered myself up, gave myself one day to cry, and started the cycle all over again. I subscribed to at least a dozen job boards, followed Gen Z career influencers on LinkedIn, and reached out to senior tech writers for advice and consolation, repeating their words in my mind: "The economy is bad. This is not your fault." One piece of advice from a career blog stuck with me: to create, write, and document in public. So, I started a TikTok account. I branded myself a "non-techie in tech." I shared my job search journey publicly. I also started posting on LinkedIn, where one post about my difficulty with the job search received a little virality. Now, my three part-time jobs are barely enough to keep me afloat, even though they allow me to maintain my legal status in the US, for now. I capitalized on my admission to Stanford, helping students with their college essays as a freelancer. I use my English degree to be an essay editor for an EdTech company. I also help out an AI startup as a copywriter. The job search is taking its toll on me Throughout these six months, through various phases of unemployment and semi-employment, I've experienced a range of emotions: sudden bursts of motivation and drive, excitement about a position, but always ending with disheartenment after each job rejection, each "Thank you for your time." The hardest part of all this is telling my family, who worry constantly and ask what I would do next. I try my best to keep up a front, telling them the little successes, but they never know the true extent of my tiredness, of this quiet shame. What had these past eight years in the US been all for? I've asked myself again and again. What use are these degrees if I couldn't even get a full-time position that doesn't involve me being in debt? I joke about unemployment on Twitter, on TikTok, and commiserate with my fellow Stanford grads in similar predicaments. But as my outrageously high rent eats into my savings, as my health insurance expired, I grow more anxious and depressed with every passing day. I've stopped applying for jobs for a month now. I feel like I should start again, as I only had six months left before I would need a company to sponsor my work visa, but I just can't bring myself to it. Amid the stress of money and immigration, I had forgotten why I had spent four years working toward two, seemingly useless, English degrees: and that was to read critically, to write with care, and above all, to create, to tell stories, to find community. I'm trying to practice that love for stories again, even during these times.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I'm hoping to be the world's youngest dirty old man': the wit of Tom Lehrer, by those who knew him
A reputation for wit is often a burden – people expect bon mots to drop constantly from your lips – but no one ever wore their reputation for wit more lightly than the great American singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer, who has died aged 97. Lehrer admirers all over the world know his witticisms from his concert recordings. 'If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile,' he said. A doctor became a specialist, 'specialising in diseases of the rich'. And Lehrer reflected on protest singers: 'It takes a certain amount of courage to get in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.' But Lehrer turned his back on fame and fortune in 1960, and after 1972 he spent most of his time teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His students and close friends say he was wonderfully funny, scattering witticisms like confetti. Most of them are lost, but I've retrieved a few unknown Lehrer anecdotes. In 1943, aged 15, Lehrer applied to go to Harvard, and was accepted because he was a mathematics prodigy. His application took the form of a poem, that finished: But although I detest Learning poems and the rest Of the things one must know to have 'culture', While each of my teachers Makes speeches like preachers And preys on my faults like a vulture I will leave movie thrillers And watch caterpillars Get born and pupated and larva'ed And I'll work like a slave And always behave And maybe I'll get into Harvard … During his study there, the art historian Paul Turner (now of Stanford University) remembers a group sitting on the bank of the Charles River singing songs about their home towns, such as Chicago. Turner complained there was no song about his home town of Schenectady. Lehrer replied that there was, and sang: 'The toe bone Schenectady the foot bone, the foot bone Schenectady the ankle bone…' In 1970, a British graduate student at Harvard asked for an interview. Lehrer was inclined to refuse, but agreed because it was the young man's ticket to a job in journalism in London. He told him he was now 'on that vague borderline between adolescence and senility. I'm hoping to hang on to go from the world's oldest adolescent to the world's youngest dirty old man.' The interview did its job. The student got his job in journalism and is now the celebrated historian and member of the House of Lords Peter Hennessy. For 30 years beginning in 1972, Lehrer's working life was teaching two courses at Santa Cruz. One was a mathematics course for students whose main subject was something else – he called it 'Maths for Tenors'. The other was a course on The American Musical. It was work he loved, and his students loved him. But he was a private man, he disliked fame, and he did his best to live as though it had not happened to him. He was indifferent to money – he had enough for his needs, and no interest in acquiring more – so he put a legal instrument on his website allowing anyone to do anything they liked with his work, without paying him royalties. This is in amazing contrast with most high-profile performers, who have international legal teams to guard their intellectual property. In 2008 he was visited in Santa Cruz by Norwegian journalist Erik Meyn, who had set up a Tom Lehrer channel on YouTube without asking permission, and felt guilty about it. Lehrer explained that he didn't mind, and even insisted on paying for their lunch: 'It's the least I can do, and that's why I'm doing it.' Lehrer's copyright decision gave rise to two shows which make their cheerful way round London's theatres and occasionally further afield. One is Stefan Bednarczyk's one-man show The Elements of Tom Lehrer. The other is my play, Tom Lehrer Is Teaching Math and Doesn't Want to Talk to You, with Shahaf Ifhar as Lehrer, which includes many of his greatest songs but also tries to get to the truth about this extraordinary and enigmatic man. I think it succeeds as far as anyone has ever succeeded, which is not very far.
National Geographic
7 hours ago
- Health
- National Geographic
What lymphatic drainage massage actually does for your body
'Lymphfluencers' claim this type of massage can filter out toxins, help you lose weight, and boost your immune system. Here's what science says. Lymphatic drainage massages have become a popular treatment for those looking to slim their face, but experts say the real benefits of lymphatic treatments are often misunderstood. Photograph By Michelle Aleksa/Shutterstock From dry brushes to targeted massages, lymphatic drainage is prolific across social media. A single influencer's video can accumulate over a million views with promises that massage techniques will eliminate waste or boost weight loss. But lymphatic medicine is nothing new: Hippocrates observed and described lymph nodes in the fourth century B.C. The first known use of the term 'lymphatics' was in the 1600s in Denmark and Sweden, and medical scholars began to map out the lymphatic system soon after. One of the first modern lymphatic drainage treatments was created in the 1930s by Danish doctor Emil Vodder and his wife Estrid. They observed that massaging certain spots on the surface of the body could make the lymph nodes more responsive and work more efficiently to reduce swelling. The method was introduced in North America in the 1970s, explains Manhattan based lymphatic therapist Lizabeth Gottsegen. But despite its popularity among massage therapists, lymphatic medicine was understudied as other fields of medicine advanced, according to Stanley Rockson, lymphatic and medical researcher at Stanford University and co-founder of the Lymphatic and Education Research Network. His 2004 study found that on average, North American medical students studying medicine at this time received about 30 minutes of education on lymphatics throughout the four-year curriculum. But that indifference has since changed dramatically, both in and out of medical settings, and massage is frequently used to help ease symptoms associated with cancer treatments and genetic disorders. 'In the last decade, the science around lymphatics has really exploded,' says Rockson. He credits that to better imaging technology, advances in surgical techniques, and new discoveries about lymphatics at the molecular level. Internet attention has also exploded in the last several years: Google searches of 'lymphatic drainage' in the U.S. jumped between 2020 and 2025, dramatically spiking after 2023. The Instagram hashtag #lymphaticdrainage currently has over one million posts and spun off a category of influencers Gottsegen calls 'lymphfluencers.' Like many wellness videos on social media, they promise aesthetic changes to sculpt, slim, and smooth nearly every part of the body, but experts say lymphatic drainage will do little to substantially change a healthy body. This 1813 illustration shows a man's lymphatic system. While the lymphatic system is not a new discovery, modern imaging technology has led to an explosion in scientists' understanding of this bodily function. Print By Kirkwood & Sons, via Wellcome Collection What is the lymphatic system anyway? The lymphatic system is an interconnected network of blood vessels and organs that maintains the body's balance of lymph, a fluid mix of white blood cells, water, proteins, and cellular waste. The tiny vessels that make up the lymphatic system send all this lymph to pass through lymph nodes: kidney bean-shaped organs clustered throughout the body. There, they filter waste and deploy immune cells to attack infections or cancerous cells. Radiation treatment or surgery can damage lymph nodes, causing lymph accumulation in the body's tissues and resulting in swollen limbs. About one in 100,000 people are genetically predisposed to this lymph accumulation, a condition known as lymphedema. Lymphatic drainage treatments like massage boost the lymphatic system's ability to move lymph from tissues back into circulation throughout the body, according to Rockson. If the lymphatic system loses some of the nodes powering this movement—for example if a breast cancer patient has had part of their armpit lymph node removed—the system might be unable to pump out extra fluids from that nearby arm, resulting in arm swelling. Gottsegen often works with cancer patients, providing massage treatment that helps move stagnant lymph toward working lymph nodes. Lymphatic drainage massage is different from common spa treatments like deep tissue massage, because the lymphatic system lies right below the skin, says Gottsegen, so the therapist gently stretches the skin directionally and rhythmically to stimulate lymph fluid movement. (Interested in wellness? Learn more about the real science behind popular trends.) Gottsegen describes stimulating areas of the body as opening extra roads to redirect traffic, moving the lymph fluid to other nodes to be processed. Lymph goes mainstream The social media posts now popularizing lymphatic drainage target a larger audience than those with lymph node disorders, often while espousing the benefits of a particular product. Gua sha, which uses a smooth stone to scrape the skin and promote circulation, originated as a centuries-old Chinese skincare tradition and has now been taken up by trendy skincare brands. Gua sha stone face rollers, like jade rollers, are a type of lymphatic drainage for the face, massaging the face and neck to reduce swelling and promote immune defense. Dry brushes for skin are also sold as a way of stimulating lymphatic circulation in the legs. But are any of these necessary? Those suffering from lymphedema swelling are the only ones who really need lymphatic drainage, says Erich Brenner, anatomist at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. For those without this condition, your lymph nodes should be functioning just fine, says Brenner. Having lymphatic drainage if you don't suffer from lymphedema isn't harmful, adds Rockson, but it won't necessarily have the long-term detoxifying effects that some influencers promise. 'All you're doing with lymphatic drainage is stimulating that system to be more active,' says Rockson. 'If the system is already working at the appropriate capacity… then lymphatic massage isn't really going to visibly do anything.' And whatever effect the massage has will be temporary: whether you're healthy or sick, any response to lymphatic massage is going to last four to six hours at most, says Rockson. (How this one minute exercise could transform your health.) As far as influencers' claims that lymphatic drainage can help you lose weight, Rockson says it has nothing to do with weight loss. Cellulite is fluid retention within fat, so lymphatic drainage can temporarily smooth out cellulite, but it won't affect body weight as measured on a scale. The claims that lymphatic massage can get rid of toxins are unfounded as well, adds Rockson. 'There's a notion that somehow because the lymphatic system is a drainage system, that it is responsible for getting rid of toxins,' he explains. 'That's not really true. It really is a fluid movement system.' When operating properly this fluid movement system flushes out cellular waste, which contains normal byproducts of the body's constant regeneration, rather than harmful toxins. If you plan to get a lymphatic drainage massage, Brenner recommends ensuring the massage provider is qualified and adequately trained. Gottsegen also mentions none of the tools sold for lymph drainage, like gua sha rollers and dry brushes, are necessary for moving lymph through the body. 'I'd be wary of any devices, and I'd be much more inclined to learn about the lymphatic system yourself,' Gottsegen says. 'You don't need anything; you just need your own hands.' For those who want to ensure their lymphatic system is healthy, Rockson says to adopt the same lifestyle doctors recommend for living wealthy: eating a healthy diet with lots of whole foods and staying active.
News18
9 hours ago
- Health
- News18
How Many Lives Did Covid-19 Vaccines Save? New Global Study Reveals The Numbers
Last Updated: According to the research, 82% of the lives saved involved individuals who had received the vaccine before being infected by the coronavirus A new international study has revealed that Covid-19 vaccines saved more than 25 lakh lives between 2020 and 2024, highlighting the profound global impact of mass immunisation efforts during the pandemic. The study, published in the JAMA Health Forum, was jointly conducted by researchers from Universita Cattolica in Italy and Stanford University in the US. It estimates that around 25.33 lakh lives were spared due to vaccination, with one death averted for every 5,400 doses administered. Covid-19 first emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and swept across the globe within months, triggering unprecedented health, economic, and social crises. In response, scientists raced to develop vaccines, and by the end of 2020, several versions were rolled out worldwide. Billions received two primary doses, with many also taking booster shots. While questions were occasionally raised about the vaccine's long-term effects, particularly concerning heart-related issues, health experts repeatedly dismissed such claims, maintaining that the benefits far outweighed any rare side effects. The new study offers quantitative backing to those assertions. Elderly Benefited Most The researchers found the vaccine's impact was most significant among those aged 60 and above. In this age group, the vaccine prevented 90% of potential deaths. Of the estimated 1.48 crore life-years saved globally, 76% were among the elderly. Moreover, 82% of the lives saved involved individuals who had received the vaccine before being infected by the virus. The protection was particularly evident during the Omicron wave, a highly infectious phase of the pandemic that alone accounted for 57% of the prevented deaths. Limited Impact on Children and Youth In contrast, the benefit of vaccination among children and young adults was marginal, largely due to their lower baseline risk of death from Covid-19. For individuals aged 0 to 19, the number of lives saved was just 0.01%, while life-years saved stood at 0.1%. For those aged 20 to 29, deaths prevented amounted to 0.07%, with 0.3% life-years gained. Global Data, Comprehensive Scope The study was led by Professor Stefania Boccia from Universita Cattolica, in collaboration with Dr Angelo Maria Pezzullo and Dr Antonio Christiano, both affiliated with Stanford University under a European research initiative. Their analysis drew on global data concerning Covid-19 infections, mortality, and vaccine distribution. Using statistical modelling, the team estimated how many more people might have died in a scenario without vaccines. What sets this study apart is its scale and scope. It is the first global research effort covering the full timeline of the pandemic – from the early days in 2020 through to 2024. It not only compares outcomes among vaccinated and unvaccinated populations but also measures the difference in impact across different virus variants, especially before and after Omicron emerged. Beyond deaths prevented, the research also sheds light on the concept of 'life-years saved", a measure that considers not just whether a life was saved, but how many more years that person might live. This adds further depth to understanding the vaccine's role in mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic's toll. view comments First Published: July 29, 2025, 15:03 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
