Performance of ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 on the United States Medical Licensing Examination With and Without Distractions

As Large Language Models (LLMs) are predictive models building their response based on the words in the prompts, there is a risk that small talk and irrelevant information may alter the response and the suggestion given. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of medical data mixed with small talk on the accuracy of medical advice provided by ChatGPT. USMLE step 3 questions were used as a model for relevant medical data. We use both multiple choice and open ended questions. We gathered small talk sentences from human participants using the Mechanical Turk platform. Both sets of USLME questions were arranged in a pattern where each sentence from the original questions was followed by a small talk sentence. ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 were asked to answer both sets of questions with and without the small talk sentences. A board-certified physician analyzed the answers by ChatGPT and compared them to the formal correct answer. The analysis results demonstrate that the ability of ChatGPT-3.5 to answer correctly was impaired when small talk was added to medical data for multiple-choice questions (72.1\% vs. 68.9\%) and open questions (61.5\% vs. 44.3\%; p=0.01), respectively. In contrast, small talk phrases did not impair ChatGPT-4 ability in both types of questions (83.6\% and 66.2\%, respectively). According to these results, ChatGPT-4 seems more accurate than the earlier 3.5 version, and it appears that small talk does not impair its capability to provide medical recommendations. Our results are an important first step in understanding the potential and limitations of utilizing ChatGPT and other LLMs for physician-patient interactions, which include casual conversations.Comment: We release a dataset along with this pape

Identification and characterization of Ovine Herpesvirus 2 microRNAs

Ovine herpesvirus 2 (OvHV-2) is the causative agent of sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) in susceptible ruminants. Through an unknown mechanism, presence of the virus leads to proliferation of NK-like T cells that are not targetrestricted by the MHC class molecules. These host cells cause the symptoms found in MCF; fever, swollen lymph nodes, and necrotic lesions of the nasal, conjunctival, and oral mucosa, which usually leads to death of the host. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are ~22 nt RNA molecules expressed by eukaryotes and viruses that regulate genes post-transcriptionally. Viral miRNAs have been found to regulate cellular genes to control the cell cycle and have a role in pathogenesis. It was hypothesised that OvHV-2 expresses miRNAs and these play a role in MCF pathogenesis. The aim of this project was to determine if OvHV-2 encodes miRNAs. Bioinformatic analysis was conducted on deep sequencing data from RNA of OvHV-2- immortalised T cells. Candidate miRNAs were selected if they adhered to miRNA secondary structure. 46 candidate miRNAs were found, with three clusters on the minus strand; one at the 5’ end and the other two in a 9.3 kb region that contains no predicted open reading frames. The 8 most abundant candidates were successfully validated by northern hybridisation for small RNAs. The majority of the predicted targets for the 8 validated OvHV-2 miRNAs were from the OvHV-2 genome. This study adds OvHV-2 to the list of herpesviruses that encode miRNAs and provides another tool for studying the pathogenesis of MCF

Un pasaje autobiográfico en prosa rimada en la obra La forma del mundo de Isaac ibn LaṬif

This article analyzes the autobiographic passage in rhymed prose that constitutes the fifth chapter of the work The Form of the World, by 13th-century Jewish thinker Isaac ibn Laṭif (ca. 1210-ca. 1280). In this passage, expressed in the first person, the author describes his personal quest for enlightenment among traditional rabbinic scholars, those whom we would call today “kabbalists” (i.e., “those who have entered the garden of the pomegranates”), and philosophers. Finally, the author presents his own enlightenment as a quasiprophetic experience prompted by a personal exegetical engagement with the biblical text.Este artículo analiza el pasaje autobiográfico en prosa rimada que constituye el capítulo quinto de la obra La forma del mundo, por el pensador judío del siglo XIII Isaac ibn Laṭif (ca. 1210-ca. 1280). En este pasaje, formulado en primera persona, el autor describe su búsqueda personal de iluminación entre expertos rabínicos tradicionales, aquellos que hoy día llamaríamos «cabalistas» (i.e., «los que han entrado en el jardín de las granadas»), y filósofos. Por último, el autor presenta su propia iluminación espiritual como una experiencia casi profética, resultado de su esfuerzo personal de exégesis sobre el texto bíblico

Theology disrupted : doing theology with children in African contexts

The thrust of this article is an attempt to respond to the question whether we can read and interpret the bible in Africa from the child theology vantage point. The author’s answer is in the affirmative in two ways: Firstly, it is that the majority of children in Africa are facing abuses of unprecedented proportions. Historically and traditionally, African scholars always read and interpreted the bible with African lenses. The African bible critic and exegete should be part of the church, the body of Christ which ought to be a lotus of healing. Theologising in the context of the crisis of the ‘child’ in Africa is fairly a new development and needs to be aggressively pursued. The second aspect of this author’s response is that when Christianity entered the Graeco-Roman as well the Jewish milieu, it used the family symbolism such as father, brothers, love, house of God, children of God, and so on. The New Testament authors therefore used family as reality and metaphor to proclaim the gospel. The African theologian, critic and exegete, is therefore in this article challenged to make a significant contribution using the African context in that, ‘… the African concept of child, family and community appears to be closer to ecclesiology than the Western concepts’.This article emanates from a consultation on ‘Child Theology’ in August 2015, co-hosted by the Centre of Contextual Ministry, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria.http://www.hts.org.zaam2017Centre for Contextual Ministr

The Jewish people in the first century : V.2: Historical geography, political history, social, cultural ...

Philadelphiax, 1282 p.; 24 cm

The Jewish people in the first century : V.1: historical geography, political history, social, cultural and rel

Assen560 p.; 24 c

There Are Great Possibilities for Reducing the Cost of Repair of Agricultural Machines

The effectiveness of repair work may be greatly increased through restoration of details and units of the machines. This will reduce the cost of repair and will reduce the need for spare parts which are frequently in short supply. Poor supply of spare parts is the basic cause of low quality of repairs, of nonfulfillment of the plans by volume of work and of prolonging repairs. Frequently it lowers the coefficient of changeability (a ratio of the changed details of a machine to the total number of details), results in making spare parts from various unsuited materials by hand, etc.