Interesting Reads – 2019-07-15
Read the Current Interesting Reads Post at
Current
IR Quiz at https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/07/ir-quiz-2019-07-15.html
Archives
of Interesting Reads Posts at
https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/01/interesting-reads-archives-2019-2018.html
https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/01/interesting-reads-archives-2019-2018.html
Articles
- Time is running out for sand
- Ban the lecture
- 50 years since the Apollo Moon landing
- The Race For The Electric Car
- Top 10 recruitment trends to implement in 2019 and beyond
- Bill Gates says a devastating 'quirk of nature' could kill 30 million people in a year. Researchers are fighting that threat by studying bird butts.
- Human-Robot Interaction
- You can rewild your garden into a miniature rainforest
- Dark Web: A cheat sheet for business professionals
- The South Asian monsoon, past, present and future
- Videos: LogicLounge : Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms
- Amazon sells a $19,000 do-it-yourself tiny-home kit that only takes 2 days to build - here's what it looks like inside
- Can Khan Academy Scale to Educate Anyone, Anywhere?
- How this STARTUP plan can help Nirmala Sitharaman Budget for 100 unicorns by 2024
- 10 TED Talks on AI and machine learning
Events /
Announcements
- Mini Tutorial on “Demystifying Internet of Things (IoT)” on 20th Jul 2019
- UX meetup with a presentation on Academic UX on 27th Jul 2019 at IIT Madras
- Summer school on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at IIT Tirupati from 22nd to 26th July 2019
- EURAXESS Science Slam India 2019 - Invite your researchers in India to win a trip to Europe & more!
- Transforming Healthcare With IT: THCIT-2019 at Hyderabad in Sep 2019
- HCL Tech Bee: Preparing students for entry level IT jobs
- TIC 2019: Tamil Internet Conference. 20-22 Sep 2019 at Chennai
- CSI’s 53rd Annual Convention – 27-29 Sep 2019 at Udaipur
- IEEE INDICON-2019 at Marwadi University, Rajkot, Gujarat during 13-15 Dec 2019
IR-Quiz
Participate
in the IR Quiz – 2019-07-15 and win Rs. 250/- worth Amazon Gift Voucher from Dynamic Group. Visit https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/07/ir-quiz-2019-07-15.html
Access Links
Read
the current Interesting Reads Post at https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/07/interesting-reads-2019-07-15.html
Current
IR Quiz at https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/07/ir-quiz-2019-07-15.html
Archives
of Interesting Reads Posts at
https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/01/interesting-reads-archives-2019-2018.html
https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/01/interesting-reads-archives-2019-2018.html
Feedback
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will be pleased to have your feedback on the “Interesting Reads” posts being
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Mohan
========================================================
Articles
Time
is running out for sand
What
links the building you live in, the glass you drink from and the computer you
work on? Sand. It is a key ingredient of modern life and yet, astonishingly,
no-one knows how much sand there is or how much is being mined.
Sand
and gravel make up the most extracted group of materials, even exceeding fossil
fuels1. Urbanization and global population growth are fuelling an explosion in
demand, especially in China, India and Africa2. Roughly 32 billion to 50
billion tonnes are used globally each year, mainly for making concrete, glass
and electronics3. This exceeds the pace of natural renewal4 such that by
mid-century, demand might outstrip supply2 (see ‘Global scarcity’). A lack of
knowledge and oversight is allowing this unsustainable exploitation.
Sand
and gravel are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. Monitor and
manage this resource globally, urge Mette Bendixen and colleagues in this post.
Ban
the lecture
The
leaders of a new UK engineering university hope to “disrupt pedagogy” when its
first students arrive in September 2021, offering students 3-hour learning
modules over four 10-week terms with a heavy focus on partnering with industry.
Judy
Raper, founding Dean of PLuS Engineering, which is developing the new
institution, described the endeavour as an “experiment to be tried” when she
addressed THE’s Young Universities Summit last week, asking: Do you have to do
recent research to be a highly-ranked university? And if we make an impact on
the future workforce and industry and society, can we become a highly-ranked
university?
PLuS
Engineering is a spin-off of PLuS Alliance, a collaboration between King’s
College London, Arizona State University and UNSW Sydney. The alliance aims to
solve global challenges around health, social justice, sustainability,
technology and innovation.
50
years since the Apollo Moon landing
On
20 July 1969, NASA’s Apollo programme landed a person on the Moon. On the 50th
anniversary of that historic achievement, Nature examines the legacy of the
Apollo missions and looks ahead to the next era of lunar exploration and
science.
Related Story: Moon
on the mind: two millennia of lunar literature
Related Story:
Apollo in 50 Numbers
The Race For The Electric Car
Electric vehicle sales are growing quickly, yet they
still only account for a small fraction of the cars on the road. But that could
soon change. We look at the global EV landscape, barriers to adoption, and the
brands to watch.
Top 10
recruitment trends to implement in 2019 and beyond
Many
companies are struggling to fill job openings due to declining unemployment
rates. These recruiting trends can help organizations look more attractive to
potential candidates.
Bill
Gates says a devastating 'quirk of nature' could kill 30 million people in a
year. Researchers are fighting that threat by studying bird butts.
Migrating
shorebirds stop each spring in New Jersey to feast on horseshoe-crab eggs. The
birds have lots of flu strains in their guts. Researchers swab the birds' butts
(the technical term is "cloacas") and pick up their droppings in
search of clues about potential future pandemics. A pandemic flu that hops from
birds to humans could quickly circulate around the world, killing hundreds of
millions of people before scientists develop a vaccine.
Human-Robot
Interaction
This
chapter introduces and critically reflects upon some key challenges and open
issues in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. The chapter emphasizes that
in order to tackle these challenges, both the user-centred and the
robotics-centred aspects of HRI need to be addressed. The synthetic nature of
HRI is highlighted and discussed in the context of methodological issues.
Different experimental paradigms in HRI are described and compared.
Furthermore, I will argue that due to the artificiality of robots, we need to
be careful in making assumptions about the 'naturalness' of HRI and question
the widespread assumption that humanoid robots should be the ultimate goal in
designing successful HRI. In addition to building robots for the purpose of
providing services for and on-behalf of people, a different direction in HRI is
introduced, namely to use robots as social mediators between people. Examples
of HRI research illustrate these ideas.
You
can rewild your garden into a miniature rainforest
Many
scientists believe that halting global warming at 1.5°C will require us to
invent Negative Emission Technologies – machines that can suck climate warming
gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air.
But such technology already exists and has done for over two billion years.
From the trees outside your window to the microscopic algae in the ocean,
nature is working hard to absorb the atmospheric carbon that is heating our
world.
Related
Story: Trees are a city’s air conditioners, so why are we pulling them out?
Related
Story: Smart urban design could save lives in future heatwaves
Dark
Web: A cheat sheet for business professionals
Hacking
is a fact of life for businesses and consumers alike. Often, leaked data
surfaces and is sold to miscreants—hackers, shady government organizations, and
other bad actors—on the Dark Web. The Dark Web—or dark net, backweb,
onionweb—is frequently misunderstood. The network is used by legitimate actors
like law enforcement organizations, cryptologists, and journalists as often as
by malefactors and criminals. TechRepublic's cheat sheet is a routinely updated
"living" precis about how the Dark Web works, the content that
populates the encrypted internet, and the encryption tools needed to safely
navigate the network.
The South Asian monsoon, past, present and future
With rheumy eyes and a face wizened by the sun,
Narayanappa looks down to the ground and then, slowly, up to the skies. After
weeks of harsh heat his land, one and a half hectares (four acres) of peanuts,
chillies and mulberry bushes, has turned to dust. At the beginning of June, a
dozen families local to Kuppam, a village in the Chittoor district of the
south-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh, came together, as they do every year, to
sacrifice a goat as a divine downpayment on a good monsoon. By mid-June the
monsoon rains should be quenching the parched ground. Yet there is no sign of
the livid clouds running up from the south-eastern horizon which serve as its
evening harbingers, rising and roiling, filling the sky with their rumbling and
the night with veiled lightning. The sky is as blank as the ground is dry.
Narayanappa has his sacks of nuts ready to sow. But time is running out.
In his office at the India Meteorological Department
in New Delhi, Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, the department’s boss, looks at portents
which are dry in a different way—figures and lines on paper and screens. Where
once the oncoming monsoon was spotted through telescopes on the veranda of the
observatory built by the Maharajah of Travancore on a hill above
Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum) in Kerala, now the signs of its coming
are looked for through tracked radar and satellites. But they are still of
intense interest to the country’s rulers, and its people. The monsoon’s arrival
in Thiruvananthapuram at the beginning of June marks the official beginning of
India’s rainy season. The rains’ subsequent movement is tracked on a daily
basis by national television stations, rather like the advance of the spring
cherry blossom in Japan but with far greater human consequence.
Full
Post (A simple registration is
required to read the full article)
Videos: LogicLounge : Vienna Center for Logic and Algorithms
The LogicLounge is a meeting place for friends of
logic from science and the public. Created during the Vienna Summer of Logic
2014, the largest conference in the history of logic research, LogicLounge
features discussions on the “science of reasoning” in the areas of logic, philosophy,
mathematics, computer science and artificial intelligence.
Its seven successful instances during the conference
(see here) inspired the LogicLounge initiators, Helmut Veith (TU Wien) and
Oliver Lehmann (IST Austria), to continue the one-hour discussions with eminent
scientists – offering insights into the millennium old discipline of logic,
celebrating the antique concept of the philosophical symposium (from Greek συμπίνειν sympinein, “to drink together”).
Amazon sells a $19,000 do-it-yourself tiny-home kit that only takes
2 days to build - here's what it looks like inside
Amazon prides itself on being the go-to, easy-to-use
online marketplace for everything you need - and that apparently includes tiny
houses.
Tiny homes have become increasingly popular in the
last few years, whether that's because of rising costs of living or because
they encourage minimalist living. Tiny homes make it possible to own your own
property, even if that house only measures between 100- and 400-square-feet.
But while constructing a functional housing unit may
seem like a daunting task, Amazon has stepped in to make a hot millennial trend
available to the masses by making these tiny homes easy to buy and simple to
build. There are more than two dozen options on Amazon for DIY tiny home kits,
ranging from 113-foot cabins at $5,350, to loft-bedroom houses at $20,000.
Surprisingly, some of the Amazon listings say these
tiny homes can be built in as little as two days with two people.
To get an idea of how buying a tiny house on Amazon
works, take a look at this "getaway cabin" being sold on Amazon for
nearly $19,000:
Can Khan Academy Scale
to Educate Anyone, Anywhere?
Khan Academy is an online global education nonprofit
launched by Sal Khan with the audacious mission to “provide a free world-class
education for anyone, anywhere.” Professor Bill Sahlman discusses his case
study of the company.
How this STARTUP plan can help Nirmala Sitharaman Budget for 100 unicorns
by 2024
At a time when growth is slowing down and economists are clamouring for a Budget stimulus, a comprehensive package for the startup economy can reap numerous benefits for India – increased innovation, more jobs, and other multiplier advantages. This STARTUP plan is sure to help her navigate the way to a 100 unicorns by 2024.
Related
Story: Goal is to establish 50,000 startups by 2024: President of India
10 TED Talks on AI and machine learning
Artificial intelligence as a topic has long been a
mix of both fascination and fantasy, the realm of both computer science and
Hollywood movies. As AI and related sub-disciplines such as machine learning
become a reality in our everyday lives, that fascination grows.
Now, though, we’re increasingly focused on how AI
will actually impact us, from its applications in enterprise IT to much broader
effects on jobs and the global economy, healthcare, government, and more.
A recent string of TED Talks speak to this shift
from the speculative to the practical: How will humans and omnipresent AI actually
coexist? What benefits will AI bring, now and later? How will AI revamp
industries?
We’ve collected 10 recent TED Talks that explore
these and similar issues in thought-provoking fashion. (OK, it’s really 9
serious TED Talks, plus a fun imagining of one future AI scenario.) This isn’t
the stuff of movies and Netflix shows, but the real AI issues of our present
and future.
Events /
Announcements
Mini Tutorial on
“Demystifying Internet of Things (IoT)” on 20th Jul 2019
This half-a-day mini
tutorial jointly organized by IEEE Computer Society, Madras Chapter, ACM Chennai Professional Chapter, Computer
Society of India, Chennai Chapter in association with Meenakshi Sundararajan
Engineering College will provide an overview of IoT through the following
sessions and make one familiarize with the fast growing technology framework. .
IoT: An Introduction;
Scope of IoT in Current and Future Applications; IoT Architecture and
Implementation; IoT Protocols & Standards; IoT for Consumer, Industry
Applications; IoT Business Case Studies & Use cases; IoT Tools and Support;
and Demo of IoT kit
A participation
certificate will be presented to those who qualify in the test to be
administered at the end of the tutorial.
To facilitate
personal interaction, the number of participants will be limited and the
registration will be first come first served basis. For additional details and
queries, pl. contact: Dr Rajesh Kumar, Solution Architect, Eishaa Networks,
E-Mail: drrajesh@eishaa.com
Time, date & venue: 9.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on
Saturday, 20th Jul 2019 at the Seminar Hall, Meenakshi Sundararajan
Engineering College, Kodambakkam, Chennai- 600024
Event details and registration at: https://in.explara.com/e/demystifying-internet-of-things
UX meetup with a
presentation on Academic UX on 27th Jul 2019 at IIT Madras
The formal PDF
invite is at
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g4drFHzwAV5wHC66RrNSNhHXpw_sA4KZ
To facilitate logistics, please pre-register at http://bit.ly/30jfLFK
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g4drFHzwAV5wHC66RrNSNhHXpw_sA4KZ
To facilitate logistics, please pre-register at http://bit.ly/30jfLFK
Summer school on
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at IIT Tirupati from 22nd to 26th
July 2019
There is a dramatic rise in the use
of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL)
in the last few years in private and public sectors including government,
healthcare, e-commerce, robotics, manufacturing and financial services.
Companies such as Google, Amazon, DeepMind and a number of startups have
cutting edge projects in these areas to empower their traditional businesses
with artificial intelligence. Most of the jobs are turning into data science
streams and there is an expectation from the industry for the engineering
students emerging out of institutes to be acquainted with necessary skills in
AI/ML/DL methodologies and tools. This workshop is to onboard
students/faculty/practitioners onto the topics through both theory and hands-on
sessions involving the following three unique features
(i) Detailed theory sessions on
critical algorithmic aspects,
(ii) Hands-on sessions giving
immediate feel for theoretical concepts discussed, and
(iii) Practical flavor of industry
grade production systems using AI.
EURAXESS Science Slam India 2019 - Invite your researchers in India to
win a trip to Europe & more!
Here
is officially an opportunity to offer your contacts in India the chance to
communicate their research work and win a trip to Europe via Pune and
Trivandrum! Submission is open from July 5th to September 8th.
The
competition is open to all career levels researchers starting with MA/M.Sc.
candidates from universities, research institutes, private sector or related
careers, in all fields of research including Social Sciences and Humanities,
Life Sciences and Engineering. People of any nationality and age (18+) who are
based in India can participate.
The
1st prize this year will be the EURAXESS Science Slammer title and a free round
trip to Europe to visit a research institute of the winner's choice in the
European Union in 2020.
Transforming
Healthcare With IT: THCIT-2019 at Hyderabad in Sep 2019
Transforming
Healthcare with IT is the annual national conference and the largest healthcare
conference and trade show in India organized by Apollo Telemedicine Networking
Foundation.
The
9th edition of “Transforming Healthcare with IT” is scheduled to be held on
13-14 September’ 2019 at The HICC, Hyderabad, India
HCL Tech Bee:
Preparing students for entry level IT jobs
India’s
homegrown IT giant HCL Technologies is aiming to create the right opportunities
for young and less educated students to train and be job-ready for a future in
the India’s IT sector. HCL Technologies has rolled out work-integrated early
career program called ‘Tech Bee’ to help high school graduates to work in IT
and even these students stand to gain from HCL’s rich history in the IT sector.
To
be eligible, a candidate should have scored a minimum percentage of 60% marks
across boards (CBSE/ ICSE/ NIOS Boards/ Uttar Pradesh/ Punjab/ Rajasthan/
Uttarakhand/ Haryana/ Maharashtra/ Tamil Nadu/ Andhra Pradesh/ Karnataka/
Madhya Pradesh state boards)
The
entrance tests are being conducted every weekend across locations at HCL
offices. The admission process will continue till end of July 2019.
TIC 2019: Tamil
Internet Conference. 20-22 Sep 2019 at
Chennai
The
18th Edition of Tamil Internet Conference (TIC 2019), is jointly organized by
International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT) and Anna
University, Chennai, India from
September 20-22, 2019 . TIC 2019 invites the submission of technical
papers from researchers who are involved in different aspects of Tamil
Computing and Information Technology to send their research work for
presentation in one of the technical sessions of the main track of the
conference which will be held in Anna University Chennai, India during the
above period.
TIC
2019 welcomes double-blind anonymous submissions on significant, original, and
previously unpublished research on all the aspects of Tamil computing. Kindly
go through the attached brochure to know the scope of the conference.
More
details at https://tamilinternetconference.org/tic2019
CSI’s 53rd
Annual Convention – 27-29 Sep 2019 at Udaipur
CSI’s
53rd Annual Convention is scheduled on 27-29, September 2019 at Hotel Inder
Residency, Udaipur. There are four relevant tracks that will definitely help us
to top up our knowledge and set new standards are big Data Analytics and Data
Mining, Cyber Security and Smart
Computing, IOT and Engineering and E-governance and Digital Initiatives. Authors
may send their original papers for the review before 31st July 2019 to enjoy
early bird offer via Easy chair link given in www.csi-2018.org. The accepted
reviewed papers will be published by CRC press (Taylor and Francis Group). Also, the same will be sent to SCOPUS, Web of
Science and Google Scholar for further indexing.
For
more details pl. visit http://www.csi-2018.org/
IEEE INDICON-2019 at Marwadi University, Rajkot, Gujarat during 13-15
Dec 2019
IEEE INDICON 2019 – the flagship conference
of the IEEE India Council – will be held at Marwadi University, Rajkot, Gujarat
from December 13 to 15, 2019 with the theme “Applying Artificial Intelligence
in Engineering for prosperity and betterment of humanity”.
The Call for Papers is now available
on the IEEE INDICON 2019 website; http://indicon2019.in/
IR-Quiz
Participate
in the IR Quiz – 2019-07-15 and win Rs. 250/- worth Amazon Gift Voucher from Dynamic Group. Visit https://infoforuse.blogspot.com/2019/07/ir-quiz-2019-07-15.html
The
lucky winner of IR Quiz – 2019-07-08 is Mr. Murugan Kuppuswamy from
Chennai. He will get a Amazon gift
voucher for Rs. 250/- from Dynamic
Group
Archives
of Interesting Reads
To
access the past posts of Interesting Reads, pl. visit
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
