Interesting Reads – 2018-07-16
The 13 Types of Data
Data
is a thorny subject. For a start, we’re not sure how we are supposed to refer
to it, that is - data is the plural of datum. Strictly speaking we should talk
about data that ‘are’ not ‘is’ available to support a theory etc. The Guardian
newspaper discussed the debate and appeared to suggest that (split infinitives
and nuances of idiomatic Latin notwithstanding) our day-to-day usage of the
term is allowed to remained conveniently grammatically incorrect.
“For
what it's worth, I can confidently say that this will probably be the only time
I ever write the word ‘datum’ in a [blog] post. Data as a plural term may be
the proper usage, but language evolves and we want to write in terms that
everyone understands - and that don't seem ridiculous,” wrote Simon Rogers, in
2012, before moving to his position as data editor at Google.
So
of the many different instances of individual datum (sorry, data) that exist,
can we group them into distinct types, categories, varieties and
classifications? In this world of so-called digital transformation and cloud
computing that drives our always-on über-connected lifestyles, surely it would
be useful to understand the what, when, where and why of data on our journey to
then starting to appreciate the how factor.
Agile Manifesto
The
Agile Manifesto is a proclamation that articulates four key values and 12
principles that its authors believe software developers should use to guide
their work.
The
document, formally called the "Manifesto for Agile Software
Development," was produced by 17 developers during an outing on Feb.
11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in Utah.
The
developers, who called themselves the Agile Alliance, were seeking an overhaul
of the software development processes that they saw as cumbersome, unresponsive
and too focused on documentation requirements.
According
to agilemanisfesto.org, the online home of the proclamation, the developers'
stated goal was not anti-methodology, but rather "to restore credibility
to the word methodology."
It
further states: "We want to restore a balance. We embrace modeling, but
not in order to file some diagram in a dusty corporate repository. We embrace
documentation, but not hundreds of pages of never-maintained and rarely-used
tomes. We plan, but recognize the limits of planning in a turbulent environment."
Robot cities: three urban
prototypes for future living
Before
I started working on real-world robots, I wrote about their fictional and
historical ancestors. This isn’t so far removed from what I do now. In
factories, labs, and of course science fiction, imaginary robots keep fuelling
our imagination about artificial humans and autonomous machines.
Real-world
robots remain surprisingly dysfunctional, although they are steadily
infiltrating urban areas across the globe. This fourth industrial revolution
driven by robots is shaping urban spaces and urban life in response to
opportunities and challenges in economic, social, political and healthcare
domains. Our cities are becoming too big for humans to manage.
Good city governance enables and maintains
smooth flow of things, data, and people. These include public services,
traffic, and delivery services. Long queues in hospitals and banks imply poor
management. Traffic congestion demonstrates that roads and traffic systems are
inadequate. Goods that we increasingly order online don’t arrive fast enough.
And the wi-fi often fails our 24/7 digital needs. In sum, urban life,
characterised by environmental pollution, speedy life, traffic congestion,
connectivity and increased consumption, needs robotic solutions – or so we are
lead to believe.
Chaos Engineering: Building
Confidence in System Behaviour through Experiments
With
so many interacting components, the number of things that can go wrong in a
distributed system is enormous. You’ll never be able to prevent all possible
failure modes, but you can identify many of the weaknesses in your system
before they’re triggered by these events. This report introduces you to Chaos
Engineering, a method of experimenting on infrastructure that lets you expose
weaknesses before they become a real problem.
Members of the Netflix team that developed Chaos Engineering explain how to apply these principles to your own system. By introducing controlled experiments, you’ll learn how emergent behaviour from component interactions can cause your system to drift into an unsafe, chaotic state.
- Hypothesize about steady state by collecting data on the health of the system
- Vary real-world events by turning off a server to simulate regional failures
- Run your experiments as close to the production environment as possible
- Ramp up your experiment by automating it to run continuously
- Minimize the effects of your experiments to keep from blowing everything up
- Learn the process for designing chaos engineering experiments
- Use the Chaos Maturity Model to map the state of your chaos program, including realistic goals
Get the book (Registration is required)
The Digital Workplace in 2030:
Preparing now for the digital worlds of work to come
The
practice of looking into the future and forming well-considered ideas about
what we might find there requires both rigor and creativity.
As
we consider the evolution of the digital workplace, it can help to take a step
back and consider what changes will occur and the forces that will influence
them. This sets the tone for an exploration of the future of work that is first
and foremost about human flourishing and how we inhabit the digital worlds of
work.
This
report offers recommendations and thinking points for digital workplace leaders
asking what they should do now to prepare for the workplace of the coming
decades.
Inside
this report:
- What will the world be like in 2030?
- Describing the dimensions of the digital workplace in 2030
- What organizations need to think and do now
Get
the report (Registration with work email is required)
Built By IIT B’s Team Shunya,
This Awesome House Can Generate Energy for Future!
Team
Shunya’s – Project Solarise unites traditional architecture with contemporary
interior designs, modern lifestyle and futuristic amenities in a single house. Solar
Decathlon is an international exhibition in which teams from various countries
around the world compete to build a fully functional solar-powered house,
applying cutting-edge technologies and innovations in a month-long competition.
The
teams have to make a live model of the house on the site within 15-20 days. The
US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon also designated as ‘The Olympics of
Solar Powered Houses’ challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate
solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.
Team
SHUNYA from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, is the only team from India
to have been selected in Solar Decathlon 2018, which will be held in Dezhou,
China.
SHUNYA
stands for ‘Sustainable Habitat for an Urbanising Nation by its Young
Aspirants’. Team SHUNYA is motivated to contribute to the goal of creating a
sustainable future by providing a solution to India’s growing energy and
housing problems.
NPTEL July to December 2018
semester course booklet
The
National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) was initiated by
seven Indian Institutes of Technology (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur,
Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee) along with the Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore in 2003. Five core disciplines were identied, namely, civil
engineering, computer science and engineering, electrical engineering,
electronics and communication engineering and mechanical engineering and 270
courses in web/video format were developed in this phase. The main goal of
NPTEL Phase II (2009-14) was to build on the engineering and core science
courses launched previously in NPTEL Phase I. An additional 600 web and video
courses were created in all major branches of engineering, physical sciences at
the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and management courses at the
postgraduate level. Several improvements such as indexing of all video and web
courses and keyword search were implemented.
NPTEL
Online Certification: The objective of enabling students obtains certificates
for courses is to make students employable in the industry or pursue a suitable
higher education programme. Through an online portal, 4, 8, or 12 week online
courses, typically on topics relevant to students in all years of higher
education along with basic core courses in sciences and humanities with
exposure to relevant tools and technologies are being offered. The enrolment to
and learning from these courses involves no cost. Following these online
courses, an in-person, proctored certification exam is conducted across 100+
cities within India and a certificate is provided through the participating
institutions and industry, when applicable.
In
the Jul-Dec semester, 270 courses are available across various disciplines.
More at https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in
You
can download the 322 pages course booklet from
http://nptel.ac.in/media/pdf/nptel_2018_booklet.pdf
10 Awesome New Ideas by IRCTC
Making Train Travel Better for Passengers!
IRCTC
implemented a number of initiatives in 2018, in an attempt to make train travel
smooth, fun and secure for passengers. This year has been a year of innovation
and change for the Indian Railways. Trying to obliterate the conception that
most people have, the national carrier has aimed to be cleaner, greener and
above all, passenger-centric. The Railways and IRCTC, have always prided on
passenger facilities and have tried to implement measures pan-India.
The
Railways has always acted on your feedback and has depended on it to better the
services you can avail. 2018 saw the Railways make forays into technology and
using it to their advantage. This year, the Railways has, as always, tried
pushing the envelope. Here are ten ways the Railways tried to make 2018 better
for its passengers.
NavIC, India’s Very Own Desi
GPS Coming Soon: 10 Awesome Things to Know!
GPS
or Global Positioning System is a US-based technology consisting of 31
satellites that provide geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver
anywhere on or near our planet. The global navigation satellite system was
created by the US government and is maintained by it. Additionally, the
government also makes it freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.
Well,
India’s own GPS is all set to be launched and will place it in the club of
select countries which have their own indigenous navigation systems. The GPS
has been named NavIC—Navigation with Indian Constellation.
The
confirmation for the development work was granted by IT minister Ravi Shankar
Prasad, signalling that the rollout of NavIC will take place soon.
Here
are ten things regarding the NavIC that you should know about:
Indian Scientists Use Leaves
To Extract Gold From E-Waste!
Ever
since humanity discovered the metal gold, it has almost permanently nestled everywhere
around us. In our modern times, gold is not only used to make jewellery but due
to its various unique properties, is used in making electronic components,
medicines and even as an ingredient in cooking.
Interestingly,
one of the most common uses of gold today is in smartphones, laptops and
digital cameras. Due to gold’s better conductivity and general resistance to
oxidation and corrosion in varying environments, gold is used in circuit boards
and numerous electronic connectors.
All
this gold lasts nearly forever, but not the electronics it is buried in.
According to CEA’s CE Product Life Cycle study, appliances like smartphones
have an average lifespan of only five years – with the number dropping each
year.
No
wonder in 2016, the executive summary of e-waste noted a massive 44.7 million
tons of e-waste in just one year.
To
put that in perspective, a printed circuit board (PCBs) (used in cellular
phones and personal computers) contains about 280 g/ton-waste of gold. With
about 44.7 million tonnes of waste, it means that there are about 12,000 tonnes
of gold in that waste, which is about 10,00,000 standard gold bars lying in
trash heaps!
In
fact, Japan is even looking to recycle old technology, including smartphones,
to create Olympic medals for Tokyo 2020 Games.
But
the problem lies in how the gold is extracted. Methods such as precipitation,
ion exchange, solvent extraction, and flotation for gold recovery are
available. But these methods have major disadvantages like the use of toxic
chemicals, high reagent requirements and the generation of toxic secondary
wastes that require proper disposal.
Hence
a better alternative for the extraction of gold is the need of the hour. And
this alternative is what researchers from across India have developed using
plant leaves.
Carbon Zero Challenge 2019
Carbon
Zero Challenge (CZeroC) aims to trigger novel ideas towards developing carbon
neutral systems to serve major sectors which are plagued by energy and
environmental challenges. The thematic areas are; Agriculture, Industries,
Transportation Systems, Urban Areas & Cities, and Water &Waste Management.
The grand challenge posed to the competing teams was to develop a grid free
/alternative system which is economically viable, socially acceptable,
environment friendly and easily replicable in multiple areas. The challenge is
to understand the energy needs of these sectors and develop a sustainable green
energy alternative by combination of one or more renewable energy sources.
CZeroC
2019 offers Funding support, Entrepreneurship Training, Incubation Support
& Mentorship, to best ideas.
Registrations for CZeroC 2019 are now open and will close on 22nd
Jul 2018. Visit the http://czeroc.iitm.ac.in
to know more.
Call For Papers: 13th
Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
Development Institute of India (EDII), has been organizing Ahmedabad organizes
‘Biennial Conference on Entrepreneurship’ since 1994. The Biennial Conferences
continue to provide a forum for researchers, educationist and practitioners to
share their research findings and experience in the field of entrepreneurship
development. Deliberations on issues that are of contemporary relevance and
interest have opened up new avenues to spearhead entrepreneurship at a much
wider scale. The Conferences has organized under the aegis of the Centre for
Research in Entrepreneurship Education and Development(CREED) set up by EDII.
Conf.
Dates: February 20-22, 2019 (Wednesday to Friday)
Conf.
Venue: Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Bhat, Gandhinaga,
Gujarat
Deadline
for Abstract (about 200 words) -- October
26, 2018 & Full Paper (about 4000 words) -- November 30, 2018.
Contact:
Mr. Ganapathi Batthini, Conference Coordinator, Emai;: ganapathi@ediindia.org
Mobile:
09327 045345. Website: http://conference.ediindia.org/
Call For Papers: International
Conference on “Blooming Trends in Tech Challenges and Opportunities”
Conf.
Dates: 27th – 29th September, 2018
Conf.
Venue: National College, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu
Submit
the soft copy of the abstract (not exceeding 250 words in Times New Roman, Font
size 12) be email to nacoiconference@nct.ac.in
The abstract should contain title of the paper, author(s) name, full address
for corresponding including contact number and e-mail id
Contacts:
Dr. P.S.S Akilashri, The Coordinator , BTTCAO-2K18, Phone: 9942380091,
7010094491, Website: http://www.nct.ac.in/dep-cs-conference.html
Call For Registration: ACM
India Chennai Professional Chapter Expert Talk
Speaker:
Prof. Raj Reddy (1994 Turing Award Winner) Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Topic:
Whither AI? -- Cognition Amplifiers and Guardian Angels in your Future
Date,
Time & Venue: 20th July 2018 at 10.30 a.m. at SSN College of Engineering
More
details and pre-registration at http://www.ssn.edu.in/?page_id=15598
Archives of Interesting Reads
at
http://infoforuse.blogspot.in/2018/05/interesting-reads-archives.html
http://infoforuse.blogspot.in/2018/05/interesting-reads-archives.html
Feedback
We
will be pleased to have your feedback on the “Interesting Reads” 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.
You
may pl. send your communications to hrmohan.ieee@gmail.com
With
regards
HR
Mohan