Recommended for You

We use recommender system all the time. A website will recommend something to you based on what you’ve watched, listened to, bought or who you’ve friended on Facebook. These systems attempt to predict your preferences based on past interactions.

The systems range from simple statistical approaches like Amazon’s people who bought X also bought Y links, to complex Artificial Intelligence-based approaches that drive feed ranking on sites like Facebook.

Julian McAuley, UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering, explores the modeling techniques behind personalized recommendation technology on the web and the different systems that we encounter.

He reminds us that we often find these recommendations a bit “creepy,” but that actually the recommender system has no human intelligence; it’s really a simple statistical process. They focus on short-term predictions but could they be adapted to make long-term predictions or estimate more subjective qualities? Would that be bad?

Watch How Do Websites Personalize Recommendations for Me? – Exploring Ethics

Women in Politics: Looking Toward 2020 and Beyond

Women played a huge role in the 2018 midterms. Women voters flipped districts across the country, and female candidates won a record number of congressional seats. So, what does it mean for American politics as a whole moving forward? Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Goldman School of Public Policy professor Sarah Anzia sat down with graduate student Charlotte Hill to examine what happened in 2018, and what might happen in 2020.

The conversation begins with an analysis of what led to the unprecedented wins of 2018. Both Anzia and Granholm point out there was a massive increase in women running as Democrats, but the number of Republican female candidates remained about the same as years past. Granholm argues the increase is evidence women are more motivated than ever before to get involved in politics, from the Women’s March to the voting booth. She suggests the lopsided nature of that motivation is in no small part a reaction to President Trump.

The other major change the panel noticed was women changing the way they campaigned. From ads that show candidates breastfeeding, to addressing sexual assault, professor Anzia says, “women were running as women.” While it may seem like a strange observation, Granholm agrees, saying she was advised not to show her children, and was coached on keeping her voice low when she was running. Granholm calls the new acceptance of women being their authentic selves a gift. She points to millennial representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as examples of women who have cast off restraints historically placed on women in office.

As of now, there are four women officially running for president in 2020. Granholm believes a woman will certainly be on the presidential ticket. But, will we finally see a woman in the White House? Will 2020 be another historic year for women? Only time will tell, but Anzia and Granholm have some predictions.

Watch Women in Politics with Jennifer Granholm, Sarah Anzia, and Charlotte Hill

Food Industry Manipulation

Do you want to find out how various food and beverage manufacturers have manipulated science and public health policy over the last 50 years? Now you can with the new searchable archive of food industry documents at the UCSF Industry Documents Library. The Food Industry Documents Archive https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/ is a brand-new collection of over 30,000 documents related to the food industry and its impact on public health.

This new archive builds on the long history at UCSF of caring for those suffering from obesity and helps researchers get at the root causes that contribute to the disease. This archive comes at an important time as researchers and policy experts take great strides to address problems of industry influence on our health, food and human rights. Data is powerful in creating change and now documents that the industry wanted secret are safe and available.

Existing archives of Chemical, Drug, and Tobacco Industry collections at UCSF have saved millions of lives. The future research with the Food Industry Documents Archive materials will have a dramatic impact on human health and policy changes.

Find out more about these documents that highlight marketing, research, and policy strategies used by food companies and trade groups, and reveal the communications and connections between industry, academic, and regulatory organizations.

These two programs feature speeches and presentations from the unveiling of the archive.

Watch UCSF’s New Food Industry Documents Archive, Part 1
Watch UCSF’s New Food Industry Documents Archive, Part 2

Evolving Medical Training

Dr. Rebecca Berman was recently recruited to UCSF to direct the internal medicine residency program, generally considered to be one of the nation’s finest. Dr. Berman comes to UCSF from Harvard, where she directed the primary care residency program at Brigham & Womens Hospital.

She sits down with Dr. Bob Wachter, Chair, Department of Medicine, UCSF, to discuss her upbringing, her surprising undergraduate pursuits and her longstanding commitment to social justice and health equity. She discusses her approach to mentoring and career development, and her view of how medical training needs to evolve to meet the needs of trainees and patients. She also talks about how her work-life balance and describes being a doctor as a great Mom job.

Watch Dr. Rebecca Berman – A Life in Medicine: People Shaping Healthcare Today

U.S. and Chinese Grand Strategy

As the former Pacific Fleet Commander for the US Navy, Admiral Scott Swift has spent many years evaluating the United States’ strategy with China. In his view, the US has more in common with China than we have in competition, and competition is not always a bad thing. What does concern him is the erosion of the rules-based global order. Swift defines this global order as a set of rules established at multiple international conferences following WWII, and the institutions created to defend and update those rules, such as international courts.

Swift points to the Scarborough Shoal Standoff as an example of China defying the rules-based global order. In 2012, China and the Philippines got into a dispute over the rights to the Scarborough Shoal, a chain of reefs in the South China Sea. The dispute landed in an international court, which sided with the Philippines. However, China refused to recognize the court’s authority. Swift says China’s defiance sets a dangerous precedent.

As China continues to take its place on the global stage, Swift says one key to maintaining the global order is for the Unites States to develop a grand strategy. He says the key is starting with a broad vision of ourselves and our place in the world. Swift suggests taking inspiration from documents like the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and using language as broad as “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” From there, we can develop regional strategies, and ultimately policy to implement those strategies. But, Swift says before we do that, we have to fix the way we currently do things.

Watch U.S. and Chinese Grand Strategy and the Remaking of the Rules-Based Global Order – Herb York Memorial Lecture