Tootfinder

Filling of incomplete sinograms from sparse PET detector configurations using a residual U-Net
Klara Leffler, Luigi Tommaso Luppino, Samuel Kuttner, Karin S\"oderkvist, Jan Axelsson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.19600

Filling of incomplete sinograms from sparse PET detector configurations using a residual U-Net
Long axial field-of-view PET scanners offer increased field-of-view and sensitivity compared to traditional PET scanners. However, a significant cost is associated with the densely packed photodetectors required for the extended-coverage systems, limiting clinical utilisation. To mitigate the cost limitations, alternative sparse system configurations have been proposed, allowing an extended field-of-view PET design with detector costs similar to a standard PET system, albeit at the expense of i…

Application of Whisper in Clinical Practice: the Post-Stroke Speech Assessment during a Naming Task
Milena Davudova, Ziyuan Cai, Valentina Giunchiglia, Dragos C. Gruia, Giulia Sanguedolce, Adam Hampshire, Fatemeh Geranmayeh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17326

Application of Whisper in Clinical Practice: the Post-Stroke Speech Assessment during a Naming Task
Detailed assessment of language impairment following stroke remains a cognitively complex and clinician-intensive task, limiting timely and scalable diagnosis. Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) foundation models offer a promising pathway to augment human evaluation through intelligent systems, but their effectiveness in the context of speech and language impairment remains uncertain. In this study, we evaluate whether Whisper, a state-of-the-art ASR foundation model, can be applied to transcri…

Overly academic/distanced ethical discussions
Had a weird interaction with @/brainwane@social.coop just now. I misinterpreted one of their posts quoting someone else and I think the combination of that plus an interaction pattern where I'd assume their stance on something and respond critically to that ended up with me getting blocked. I don't have hard feelings exactly, and this post is only partly about this particular person, but I noticed something interesting by the end of the conversation that had been bothering me. They repeatedly criticized me for assuming what their position was, but never actually stated their position. They didn't say: "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, it's actually Y." They just said "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, please don't assume my position!" I get that it's annoying to have people respond to a straw man version of your argument, but when I in response asked some direct questions about what their position was, they gave some non-answers and then blocked me. It's entirely possible it's a coincidence, and they just happened to run out of patience on that iteration, but it makes me take their critique of my interactions a bit less seriously. I suspect that they just didn't want to hear what I was saying, while at the same time they wanted to feel as if they were someone who values public critique and open discussion of tricky issues (if anyone reading this post also followed our interaction and has a different opinion of my behavior, I'd be glad to hear it; it's possible In effectively being an asshole here and it would be useful to hear that if so).
In any case, the fact that at the end of the entire discussion, I'm realizing I still don't actually know their position on whether they think the AI use case in question is worthwhile feels odd. They praised the system on several occasions, albeit noting some drawbacks while doing so. They said that the system was possibly changing their anti-AI stance, but then got mad at me for assuming this meant that they thought this use-case was justified. Maybe they just haven't made up their mind yet but didn't want to say that?
Interestingly, in one of their own blog posts that got linked in the discussion, they discuss a different AI system, and despite listing a bunch of concrete harms, conclude that it's okay to use it. That's fine; I don't think *every* use of AI is wrong on balance, but what bothered me was that their post dismissed a number of real ethical issues by saying essentially "I haven't seen calls for a boycott over this issue, so it's not a reason to stop use." That's an extremely socially conformist version of ethics that doesn't sit well with me. The discussion also ended up linking this post: https://chelseatroy.com/2024/08/28/does-ai-benefit-the-world/ which bothered me in a related way. In it, Troy describes classroom teaching techniques for introducing and helping students explore the ethics of AI, and they seem mostly great. They avoid prescribing any particular correct stance, which is important when teaching given the power relationship, and they help students understand the limitations of their perspectives regarding global impacts, which is great. But the overall conclusion of the post is that "nobody is qualified to really judge global impacts, so we should focus on ways to improve outcomes instead of trying to judge them." This bothers me because we actually do have a responsibility to make decisive ethical judgments despite limitations of our perspectives. If we never commit to any ethical judgment against a technology because we think our perspective is too limited to know the true impacts (which I'll concede it invariably is) then we'll have to accept every technology without objection, limiting ourselves to trying to improve their impacts without opposing them. Given who currently controls most of the resources that go into exploration for new technologies, this stance is too permissive. Perhaps if our objection to a technology was absolute and instantly effective, I'd buy the argument that objecting without a deep global view of the long-term risks is dangerous. As things stand, I think that objecting to the development/use of certain technologies in certain contexts is necessary, and although there's a lot of uncertainly, I expect strongly enough that the overall outcomes of objection will be positive that I think it's a good thing to do.
The deeper point here I guess is that this kind of "things are too complicated, let's have a nuanced discussion where we don't come to any conclusions because we see a lot of unknowns along with definite harms" really bothers me.

Yeah, this is not surprising…
“Airlines and Trump Administration Backpedal on Protections for Travelers With Wheelchairs”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/travel/wheelchair-flights-delta-united-american.html
Archive: …

Airlines Challenge Protections For Travelers With Wheelchairs
A landmark rule to expand the rights of disabled air travelers has been hamstrung by a lawsuit from major airlines and delayed enforcement by the Transportation Department.

RETAIL: Towards Real-world Travel Planning for Large Language Models
Bin Deng, Yizhe Feng, Zeming Liu, Qing Wei, Xiangrong Zhu, Shuai Chen, Yuanfang Guo, Yunhong Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15335

RETAIL: Towards Real-world Travel Planning for Large Language Models
Although large language models have enhanced automated travel planning abilities, current systems remain misaligned with real-world scenarios. First, they assume users provide explicit queries, while in reality requirements are often implicit. Second, existing solutions ignore diverse environmental factors and user preferences, limiting the feasibility of plans. Third, systems can only generate plans with basic POI arrangements, failing to provide all-in-one plans with rich details. To mitigate…

London #FT reports on investors that lost billions on #PumpAndDump stock scheme that inflated values of little known traded entities of small US-listed #ChineseStocks that plunged in value shortly after being heavily

From Flat to Feeling: A Feasibility and Impact Study on Dynamic Facial Emotions in AI-Generated Avatars
Pegah Salehi, Sajad Amouei Sheshkal, Vajira Thambawita, P{\aa}l Halvorsen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13477

From Flat to Feeling: A Feasibility and Impact Study on Dynamic Facial Emotions in AI-Generated Avatars
Dynamic facial emotion is essential for believable AI-generated avatars; however, most systems remain visually inert, limiting their utility in high-stakes simulations such as virtual training for investigative interviews with abused children. We introduce and evaluate a real-time architecture fusing Unreal Engine 5 MetaHuman rendering with NVIDIA Omniverse Audio2Face to translate vocal prosody into high-fidelity facial expressions on photorealistic child avatars. We implemented a distributed t…

For years, every road trip we took began with the same song. It's been a while since we've listened to it right out of the gates, but the feeling's still there.
The Clash, "London Calling" (1979)
https://youtu.be/LC2WpBcdM_A

The #WhiteCollar disruption is real as 5000 employees get discarded for #ArtificialIntelligence agents taking over once high flying prestigious consulting jobs.
World's top tier business #consulting firm…