Interesting
Reads – 2018-12-06
Contents
Articles
- What younger people can learn from older people about using technology
- Bayes’s theorem: how an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to reason better
- Competing in a world of sectors without borders
- Inside the mind of the CEO: Keeping Cool under Pressure
- An Introduction to Dew Computing: Definition, Concept and Implications
- Cheat Sheets for AI, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Deep Learning & Big Data
- Benefits & Risks of Biotechnology
- The Moral Machine experiment
- COP24: 12 years from disaster – editors’ guide to what our academic experts say is needed to fight climate change
- 10 data analytics success stories: An inside look
Events /
Announcements
- CSI, IEEE CS, IEEE PCS & HCC: Presentation on Digital Marketing and Website Design using WordPress on 10th Dec 2018
- Digital Disruption and Transformation Summit 2018 on 13th Dec 2018
- ACM India Chennai Professional Chapter's Expert Lecture on "Bias in the Web” on 12th Dec 2018
- Smart India Hackathon 2019
- ARPIT: Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching: Online professional development of in-service teachers’ of higher education, using MOOCs
Feedback
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will be pleased to have your feedback on the “Interesting Reads” posts being
sent once in five days.
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share the links of any interesting things you come across so that we can
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Also,
pl. share the email ids of your colleagues, friends, peers and contacts, if you
want them to be included in the google group to get regular posts.
Pl.
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With
regards
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Mohan
========================================================
Articles
What
younger people can learn from older people about using technology
Older
people are often portrayed in the media as being technically challenged. Jokes
are often shared on social media about older people taking photos on their
phones with their thumb covering the lens, or accidentally installing viruses
on computers.
Some
of these damaging stereotypes impact upon how ordinary Australians interact
with older age cohorts. A study published by the Australian Human Rights
commission found 20% of Australians avoid conversations about technology with
older people as they feel explanations will take a long time and a lot of
effort.
But
older people can and do use technology – and younger generations could learn a
thing or two from them about how to have a healthier relationship with digital
technologies like social media.
Related:
How older Australians use social media. 2018 YellowSocial Media Report
Related:
Fact or fiction? Stereotypes of older Australians. A study report
Related:
Connecting online can help prevent social isolation in older people
Bayes’s theorem: how
an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to reason better
The pioneering work of an 18th-century English priest
named Reverend Thomas Bayes, in statistics uncovered an immensely powerful
mental tool that, if properly used, can drastically improve the way we reason
about the world.
Competing
in a world of sectors without borders
Digitization
is causing a radical reordering of traditional industry boundaries. What will
it take to play offense and defense in tomorrow’s ecosystems?
Inside
the mind of the CEO: Keeping Cool under Pressure
For
Greg Lehmkuhl, president and CEO of Lineage Logistics, temperature-controlled
supply chains for perishables are one of the world’s next great platforms.
Refrigerated
transportation and storage is one of those specialized industrial sectors in
which new approaches to strategy and operational excellence can make a huge
difference. It’s also an enabler of civilization that nobody notices much –
unless they have to live without it. Over the last 20 years, the
temperature-controlled logistics sector, as it’s officially called, has quietly
but dramatically changed, thanks to three simultaneous global trends. The first
is the broadening of nutritional awareness, as people around the world become
more accustomed to eating fresh meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and
other perishables every day. The second has to do with lengthening food
transportation distance. More and more consumers eat food that was sourced
thousands of miles away. The third is the changing natural environment. Climate
change and pollution, as they affect local agricultural and water supplies, are
making society more reliant on diverse sources of fresh food and drink.
The
technological infrastructure that makes these changes possible is the
temperature-controlled supply chain, which dates back about 150 years, to
horse-drawn “iceman” carriages. Today’s systems use digitized controls that
customize cold temperatures in warehouses and trucks for a wide variety of
fresh and frozen foods. Most of this sector has, until recently, been run by
small family businesses, but an ongoing wave of consolidation has changed that.
Full
Interview : (under the column: Inside the Mind of the CEO)
An
Introduction to Dew Computing: Definition, Concept and Implications
Since
the end of the 1990s, the world has witnessed a tremendous growth in the area
of information and communication technology (ICT), starting with grid
computing, cloud computing (CC), and fog computing to recently introduced edge
computing. Although, these technologies are still in very good shape, they do
heavily rely on connectivity, i.e., Internet. To address this challenge, this
paper proposes a novel dew-cloud architecture that brings the power of CC
together with the dew computing (DC). Originally, the dew-cloud architecture is
an extension of the existing client-server architecture, where two servers are
placed at both ends of the communication link. With the help of a dew server, a
user has more control and flexibility to access his/her personal data in the
absence of an Internet connection. Primarily, the data are stored at the dew
server as a local copy upon which instantiation of the Internet is synchronized
with the master copy at the cloud side. Users can browse, read, write, or
append data on the local dew site, which is a local Web form of an actual
website. With the incorporation of the dew domain naming system and dew domain
name redirection, mapping between different local dew sites has become
possible. Novel services, such as infrastructure-as-a-dew, software-as-a-dew
service, and software-as-a-dew product, are, hereby, introduced along with the
DC. This paper presents the following as key contributions: 1) a precise and
concrete definition of DC; 2) detailed and comprehensive discussions of its
concept and working principle; 3) application potentials; and 4) technical
challenges. The motto of this paper is to conceptualize the fact of empowerment
of the ICT-user base with almost an Internet-free surfing experience in coming
days.
Related:
Cloud Computing Takes a Back Seat to ... Edge Computing. Or Is It Fog?
Cheat Sheets for AI, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Deep
Learning & Big Data
The Most Complete List of Best AI Cheat Sheets
Over the past few months, I have been collecting AI
cheat sheets. From time to time I share them with friends and colleagues and
recently I have been getting asked a lot, so I decided to organize and share
the entire collection. To make things more interesting and give context, I
added descriptions and/or excerpts for each major topic.
This is the most complete list and the Big-O is at
the very end, enjoy…
Benefits & Risks of Biotechnology
How are scientists putting nature’s machinery to use
for the good of humanity, and how could things go wrong?
Biotechnology is nearly as old as humanity itself.
The food you eat and the pets you love? You can thank our distant ancestors for
kickstarting the agricultural revolution, using artificial selection for crops,
livestock, and other domesticated animals. When Edward Jenner invented vaccines
and when Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotics, they were harnessing the power
of biotechnology. And, of course, modern civilization would hardly be
imaginable without the fermentation processes that gave us beer, wine, and
cheese!
When he coined the term in 1919, the agriculturalist
Karl Ereky described ‘biotechnology’ as “all lines of work by which products
are produced from raw materials with the aid of living things.” In modern
biotechnology, researchers modify DNA and proteins to shape the capabilities of
living cells, plants, and animals into something useful for humans. Biotechnologists
do this by sequencing, or reading, the DNA found in nature, and then
manipulating it in a test tube – or, more recently, inside of living cells.
In fact, the most exciting biotechnology advances of
recent times are occurring at the microscopic level (and smaller!) within the
membranes of cells. After decades of basic research into decoding the chemical
and genetic makeup of cells, biologists in the mid-20th century launched what
would become a multi-decade flurry of research and breakthroughs. Their work
has brought us the powerful cellular tools at biotechnologists’ disposal today.
In the coming decades, scientists will use the tools of biotechnology to
manipulate cells with increasing control, from precision editing of DNA to
synthesizing entire genomes from their basic chemical building blocks. These
cells could go on to become bomb-sniffing plants, miracle cancer drugs, or
‘de-extincted’ wooly mammoths. And biotechnology may be a crucial ally in the
fight against climate change.
But rewriting the blueprints of life carries an
enormous risk. To begin with, the same technology being used to extend our
lives could instead be used to end them. While researchers might see the
engineering of a supercharged flu virus as a perfectly reasonable way to better
understand and thus fight the flu, the public might see the drawbacks as
equally obvious: the virus could escape, or someone could weaponize the
research. And the advanced genetic tools that some are considering for mosquito
control could have unforeseen effects, possibly leading to environmental
damage. The most sophisticated biotechnology may be no match for Murphy’s Law.
While the risks of biotechnology have been fretted
over for decades, the increasing pace of progress – from low cost DNA sequencing
to rapid gene synthesis to precision genome editing – suggests biotechnology is
entering a new realm of maturity regarding both beneficial applications and
more worrisome risks. Adding to concerns, DIY scientists are increasingly
taking biotech tools outside of the lab. For now, many of the benefits of
biotechnology are concrete while many of the risks remain hypotheticals, but it
is better to be proactive and cognizant of the risks than to wait for something
to go wrong first and then attempt to address the damage.
The
Moral Machine experiment
With
the rapid development of artificial intelligence have come concerns about how
machines will make moral decisions, and the major challenge of quantifying
societal expectations about the ethical principles that should guide machine
behaviour. To address this challenge, we deployed the Moral Machine, an online
experimental platform designed to explore the moral dilemmas faced by
autonomous vehicles. This platform gathered 40 million decisions in ten
languages from millions of people in 233 countries and territories. Here we
describe the results of this experiment. First, we summarize global moral
preferences. Second, we document individual variations in preferences, based on
respondents’ demographics. Third, we report cross-cultural ethical variation,
and uncover three major clusters of countries. Fourth, we show that these
differences correlate with modern institutions and deep cultural traits. We
discuss how these preferences can contribute to developing global, socially
acceptable principles for machine ethics. All data used in this article are
publicly available.
COP24:
12 years from disaster – editors’ guide to what our academic experts say is
needed to fight climate change
World leaders are gathering in Katowice, Poland, to negotiate the world’s response to climate change. The 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) will last from December 3-14 and its primary aim is to reach agreement on how the Paris Agreement of 2015 will be implemented. In a year which saw record weather extremes and an extraordinary announcement from the UN that we have only 12 years to limit catastrophe, the need for meaningful progress has never been greater.
To explain how the COP works and what it means for
the fight against climate change, we asked our academic experts to share their
views.
10 data analytics success stories: An inside look
If data is the new oil, then knowing how to refine
it into actionable intelligence is the key to unleashing its potential. To this
end, CIOs are playing with predictive analytics, crafting machine learning
algorithms and battle-testing analytics solutions in pursuit of businesses
efficiencies and new ways to serve customers.
Worldwide revenues for big data and business
analytics software will top $166 billion this year, an increase of 11.7 percent
over 2017, according to market researcher IDC. Moreover, the war for talent who
can work with emerging analytics technologies is at a fever pitch.
Some CIOs who have found ways to boost top- and
bottom-line growth crunching through data recently shared lessons learned and
advice for peers undertaking similar efforts.
Here’s how leading CIOs are successfully tapping
data analytics and machine learning to achieve business goals.
Events /
Announcements
CSI, IEEE CS,
IEEE PCS & HCC: Presentation on Digital Marketing and Website Design using
WordPress on 10th Dec 2018
CSI,
IEEE CS, IEEE PCS & HCC invites you all for a presentation on Digital
Marketing and Website Design using WordPress on Monday, 10th Dec 2018 at 6.00
p.m. at the Seminar Hall, CSI Education Directorate, Taramani, Chennai – 600113
The
pdf invite is at
The
pgm is free but pre-registration at
https://goo.gl/forms/EsWmLjYGfM5MYJB32
is a must to facilitate logistics
Digital
Disruption and Transformation Summit 2018 on 13th Dec 2018
FICCI TNSC with support from Government
of Tamil Nadu is organizing its 3rd Edition of Digital Disruption and
Transformation Conference (also known at DT3),
the 3rd annual flagship event of FICCI under the theme of “Digital
Rumpus – Perish or Prosper” on 13th December 2018 at Hotel ITC Grand Chola,
Chennai.
CSI & IEEE members are eligible for
10% discount in the registration fee. The discount code to be applied at the
time of registration is CSIDT3, IEEEDT3 respectively.
Early Bird Deep Discounts are available
for registrations done till 30th November 2018.
For details pl. visit http://ficci-tnsc.com/it-ddts-2018/ or contact: Mr R Sudharsan at sudharsan.ramu@ficci.com, 044-42849614-15
ACM India
Chennai Professional Chapter's Expert Lecture on "Bias in the Web” on 12th
Dec 2018
ACM
India Chennai Professional Chapter's Expert Lecture on "Bias in the Web"
by ACM Distinguished Speaker, Dr.
Ricardo Baeza-Yates , CTO of NTENT (a Semantic Search Technology Company) at Aryabhatta
Hall, Department of CSE, IIT Madras on 12th December 2:30 p.m.
Registration
is FREE. However, if you intend to attend the talk, please register to
facilitate logistics.
Smart India
Hackathon 2019
Smart India Hackathon 2019 is a
nationwide initiative to provide students a platform to solve some of pressing
problems we face in our daily lives, and thus inculcate a culture of product
innovation and a mindset of problem solving.
SIH2019 is an initiative by Ministry
of HRD, AICTE, Persistent Systems, i4c and Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini and involves 1 Lakh+ technical students, 3000+
technical institutions, 200+ organizations from across India and touted to be
the world’s biggest Software and Hardware hackathon.
ARPIT: Annual Refresher Programme in Teaching: Online
professional development of in-service teachers’ of higher education, using
MOOCs
ARPIT, launched by MHRD is 40 hour
programme with 20 hours of video content offered in a highly flexible format
which can be done at one’s own pace and time.
The programme has built-in assessment exercises and activities as part
of the academic progression in the course.
At the end of the course, there is a provision for terminal assessment
which can be either online or written examination.
It has been decided by the UGC that
successful completion of the courses offered under the ARPIT programme
with 40 hour of
instruction material with a
proctored examination will be treated as
equivalent to one Refresher Course for the purposes of Career Advancement.
To enrol visit: https://swayam.gov.in/search?CategoryList=Annual%20Refresher%20Programme%20in%20Teaching%20(ARPIT)
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Feedback
We
will be pleased to have your feedback on the “Interesting Reads” posts being
sent once in five days.
Pl.
share the links of any interesting things you come across so that we can
include them in these email posts.
Also,
pl. share the email ids of your colleagues, friends, peers and contacts, if you
want them to be included in the google group to get regular posts.
Pl.
send all your communications to hrmohan.ieee@gmail.com
With
regards
HR
Mohan
