Geo-arbitrage

Have you heard of geo-arbitrage? What do you think of this idea? Have you thought of working for a Polish company/university living, for example, somewhere in Asia?

Do we live in so much globalised world?

Read /watch the presentation and comment on it please.

http://onlineclasspjwstk-malgorzataswierk.blogspot.com/2012/11/geoarbitrage.html

Read also the comments presented in the forum discussion

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/world-affairs/45571-impact-geo-arbitrage.html

IBM simulates 530 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses on supercomputer

IBM Research – Almaden presented at Supercomputing 2012 last week the next milestone toward fulfilling the ultimate vision of the DARPA’s cognitive computing program, called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE), according to Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha, Manager, Cognitive Computing, IBM Research – Almaden.


Announced in 2008, DARPA’s SyNAPSE program calls for developing electronic neuromorphic (brain-simulation) machine technology that scales to biological levels, using a cognitive computing architecture with 10¹⁰ neurons (10 billion) and 10¹⁴ synapses (100 trillion, based on estimates of the number of synapses in the human brain) to develop electronic neuromorphic machine technology that scales to biological levels.”

A network of neurosynaptic cores derived from long-distance wiring in the monkey brain: Neuro-synaptic cores are locally clustered into brain-inspired regions, and each core is represented as an individual point along the ring. Arcs are drawn from a source core to a destination core with an edge color defined by the color assigned to the source core. (Credit: IBM)

Simulating 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses on most powerful supercomputer

IBM says it has now accomplished this milestone with its new “TrueNorth” system running on the world’s second-fastest operating supercomputer, the Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LBNL) Blue Gene/Q Sequoia, using 96 racks (1,572,864 processor cores, 1.5 PB memory, 98,304 MPI processes, and 6,291,456 threads).

IBM and LBNL achieved an unprecedented scale of 2.084 billion neurosynaptic cores* containing 53×10¹⁰  (530 billion) neurons and 1.37×10¹⁴ (100 trillion) synapses running only 1542 times slower than real time.
“We have not built a biologically realistic simulation of the complete human brain,” explains an abstract of the Supercomputing 2012 (SC12) paper (open-access PDF), selected from the 100 SC12 papers as one of the six finalists for the Best Paper Award. “Computation (‘neurons’), memory (‘synapses’), and communication (‘axons,’ ‘dendrites’) are mathematically abstracted away from biological detail toward engineering goals of maximizing function (utility, applications) and minimizing cost (power, area, delay) and design complexity of hardware implementation.”

Two billion neurosynaptic cores

“Previously, we have demonstrated a neurosynaptic core* and some of its applications,” continues the abstract. “We have also compiled the largest long-distance wiring diagram of the monkey brain. Now, imagine a network with over 2 billion of these neurosynaptic cores that are divided into 77 brain-inspired regions with probabilistic intra-region (“gray matter”) connectivity and monkey-brain-inspired inter-region (“white matter”) connectivity.

“This fulfills a core vision of the DARPA SyNAPSE project to bring together nanotechnology, neuroscience, and supercomputing to lay the foundation of a novel cognitive computing architecture that complements today’s von Neumann machines.”

To support TrueNorth, IBM has developed Compass, a multi-threaded, massively parallel functional simulator and a parallel compiler that maps a network of long-distance pathways in the macaque monkey brain to TrueNorth.

* The IBM-Cornell neurosynaptic core is a key building block of a modular neuromorphic architecture, according to Modha. The core incorporates central elements from neuroscience, including 256 leaky integrate-and-fire neurons, 1024 axons, and 256×1024 synapses using an SRAM crossbar memory. It fits in a 4.2mm square area, using a 45nm SOI process.


http://p9.hostingprod.com/@modha.org/blog/2012/06/building_block_of_a_programmab.html 

 Questions:

1-     How many years will take to create a robot to simulated the human brain, like Human android ?

2-     Do you think it’s possible to create a human simulation ?

3-     Could you describe the possible consequences of human brain simulation ?

4-     Do you think a technology like that can improve human civilization ?

 

XXI century education

As I am  a lecturer, as well as some of you, I have been wondering for some time what makes students learn? Are these new technologies that help them acquire new skills and knowledge or maybe some other factors like more experiential learning instead of learning by heart, so popular in Polish schools.

 This week I would like you to read the article: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf .
 It is not new, but still a prominent one. Moreover, watch the TEDTalk presentation:

Additionally, you can read some chapters of the book Educating the Net Generation:
 http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub7101.pdf .
Discuss the ideas presented in the articles and the presentation.Write about your experiences.

3D Printing technology - s4419

I would like to present articles about the " 3D Printing " technology.

3D printing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital model.
It can be used for prototyping , parts development , and is even versatile enough to print medical prostheses and implants .
3D printing is a rapidly growing area , and the popularity of 3D printers grows each day.

Please look at the following articles and write what you think about it.
http://www.explainingthefuture.com/3dprinting.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/16/get-ready-for-3d-printing
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-21/the-era-of-retail-3d-printing-begins
http://weburbanist.com/2010/11/03/12-incredible-objects-being-made-with-3d-printers-today/


Questions:
1. What do you think about this technology. Does it make sense ? Do you think that it will replace the traditional production?
2. What do you think about the self-replicating manufacturing machine? Like RepRap:
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
3. Do you think it is possible to create a"self-replicating" machine?
4. If everyone had a possibility to "print" anything would you call it piracy?

Self-Presentations

Hello, my name is Michał. 

I have received M.Sc. degree in computer science at PJIIT. Currently I work as a researcher, lecturer and database administrator/developer at PJIIT.  My PhD topic focuses around social-IT and it’s based mainly on Wikipedia and social connections between groups of users.

I like reading fantasy books, photography and traveling.

Michał Jankowski-Lorek / Fooky

My name is Waldek.
I work in IT for >10 years.
I am responsible for the work of a small IT department. This includes some strategy, management and permanent learning.
I try to put as much as possible of simplicity and quality info things I do. I enjoy when people put heavy thinking in the first place and then heavy working, not the opposite :).
Waldemar Kabała

Hi, my name is Slawek. I graduated from the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow. This year I am starting a Ph.D. at the Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology.
I'm mainly interested in nanotechnology, cryptography and e-business. I pay a lot of attention to the IT systems' security issues, and therefore I have participated in a number of projects in the field of security.
In my free time I run, play volleyball and solve puzzles.

Slavek H

Hi all, My name is Michael, I'm 25. Last summer I completed master's degree in PJWSTK in Warsaw and as You can see I started PhD in PJWSTK ;) My scientific areas of interest are database systems, warehouses, Business Intelligence software and other related to this.:) I am currently working with the BI tools like QlikView and I increase my interest in this area. Privately, I am a happy newlywed and I have a wonderful wife ;) I like to travel, I now plan to visit Barcelona and Madrid.
Michael  s4419

Hi, my name is Artur. I have recieved my MsC on Warsaw University one year ago, just before signing to PhD. Which in fact was quite spontaneous decision. My scientific areas of interest are mainly robotics and databases but actually I ended up with more interdisciplinary PhD - medicine, and Parkinson disease treatment, which actually I find very rewarding. As for professional interest i don't have them much (that's main reason which i started PhD :)) but right now I am doing some stuff in financial analysis and some web programming. Beside science and work I devote my life to sport, right now on top are windsurfing and kendo, but i'm doing much more on regular basis.

Artur Szymański

Hello, My name is Kinga. I decided to go PhD and this is my first year J Mainly I am interested in IT project management and I would like to develop myself in that direction, but I’ve got many different intrests/hobby as well e.g cooking, photography or travelling.

 Misiak Kinga

My name is Grzesiek and today is my name-day so I think it’s the best time for introduction myself.I graduated from Technical University of Wroclaw 14 years ago. I work as computer programmer and additionally lead programmers team. I like to learn so much that I decided for completing PhD.  Additionally PhD is my middle age crisis challenge.  Scientifically I think on changes in workflow processes.

Excuse me for my English – my primary school taught me Russian instead of English.

Grzegorz Gruza

Hi guys, my name is Grzesiek and I graduated from Information Technology at the Military University of Technology about two years ago (specializing in IT Management Systems). I then did a post-diploma course at the Warsaw School of Economics on Business Analysis and decided to continue my education at the Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology. As for my professional interests I'm mainly focused on business and system analysis and project management topics.

I also had a chance to work in a student organisation called AIESEC during the time of my studies so I did a little traveling all over Europe (both for the conferences and to visit my friends from other committees). In my free time I enjoy reading fantasy, playing guitar (acoustic and electric), snowboarding, cycling and cooking when the inspiration hits me (although that doesn't happen very often lately). 

I’m looking forward to working with you guys and hope to get a chance to meet you in person soon.  Grzegorz Kędzierski

Hey there, my name is Piotrek and I'm fascinated by the almost every aspect of the Internet (since I was twelve). During this time I created a few startups, taught at the Jagiellonian University and delivered innovative solutions for disabled people. Now I'm mainly engaged in the future of online marketing and business usability. Still don't know if present Internet is more a sociological, business or technology phenomenon - so I'm trying to develop myself in every field: from technical skills (Ruby<3), via graphic design, project management and functional tests to business models and traffic analysis. The rest of the computer science is forced to me ;].

Hi, my name is Wiktor, this year I'm starting my PhD studies, although I've been working on my PhD topic for some time now. What I'm developing is an extension of a database system which includes mechanisms for transaction processing. Probably not the most thrilling subject in the world but it falls within the areas of interest of our faculty. Apart from that I am teaching classes and contributing to ongoing projects. That's about it, now let's learn some English! Wiktor s2483

Hi guys, I'm Jacek. I've completed my master course some time ago and I didn't even imagine that I may put my feet on the grounds of this noble school anymore. However it happened... In the meantime I've spent some time abroad mastering the art of blogging. Thus my PhD topic focuses around social-IT and micro-blogging phenomena. I have just finished gathering the data related to 6-months wide interactions between Polish community of Tweeter users and now I am in the phase of designing the tool to simulate information cascades based on snapshots of real relations between people. If you would like to join my research, participate in excavation of the data I have already gathered or simply ask questions related to what I do, please feel free to contact me anytime. Cheers, WiT | http://blog.tokyobynight.pl/  WiT

 My name is Paulina. I have received M.Sc. degree in computer science three years ago. My main areas of interest are system/network programming and mobile devices. Currently I work as a researcher and lecturer at PJIIT. Unfortunately I don't have much free time, but when I do, I like reading books, cycling, taking long walks with my dog and...learning scandinavian languages ;) . I have already mastered the basics of Swedish. Apart from IT I'm also very interested in biology-related topics. Hope to find a way to combine the last two hobbies with my professional activities some day... hälsningar :)  tiia

List of Moderators

Choose  the week when you want to present an article/a film and moderate it.

1. 19-25.11 s4419
2. 26-02.12 Kinga
3. 03-09.12 Wiktor
4. 10-16.12 Grzegorz K., Piotrek
5. 17-23.12 Paulina
6. 03-06.01.13 Radosław I., Slawomir H., Michał Jankowski-L.
7. 07-13.01 Krzysztof L., Grzegorz G.
8. 14-20.01 Artur Sz., WiT, Waldemar K.