Week 4 [28.11-4.12.2016] - Towards a smart grid Communication

Week 4 [28.11-4.12.2016] - Towards a smart grid Communication

The Smart Grid, generally referred to as the next-generation power system, is considered as a revolutionary and evolutionary regime of existing power grids. More importantly, with the integration of advanced computing and communication technologies, the Smart Grid is expected to greatly enhance efficiency and reliability of future power systems with renewable energy resources, as well as distributed intelligence and demand response. 

Our current electric grid was built in the 1890s and improved upon as technology advanced through each decade. Today, it consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1 million megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines. Although the electric grid is considered an engineering marvel, we are stretching its patchwork nature to its capacity. To move forward, people need a new kind of electric grid, one that is built from the bottom up to handle the groundswell of digital and computerized equipment and technology dependent on it—and one that can automate and manage the increasing complexity and needs of electricity in the 21st Century.

The digital technology that allows for two-way communication between the utility and its customers, and the sensing along the transmission lines is what makes the grid smart. Like the Internet, the Smart Grid will consist of controls, computers, automation, and new technologies and equipment working together, but in this case, these technologies will work with the electrical grid to respond digitally to our quickly changing electric demand.

Please read this article: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByyCCouqCCbSTGQ0M2pBWl8xTHM 

and try to answer the following questions:

1. Do you like such kind of technology? Do you think it is needed or rather useless?

2. Do you plan to use smart grid technology in your house if it is accessible? Will you use it if you for example have to pay some extra money?

3. Which other areas do you like to control in your house via network? 

Week 4 [28.11-4.12.2016] - Quantum teleportation

Hello everyone,

I would like to present you an article about teleportation:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/big-step-quantum-teleportation-won-t-bring-us-any-closer-star-trek-here-s-why

One of the most important discovery of 2015 year was quantum teleportation. For the first time a team of physicists have successfully teleported a quantum state of a photon to a crystal over many kilometres away through a fiber optic cable. Currently it is the basis for theoretical quantum computing and quantum communication, though it will take a very long time before these results will have real-world implications. However this innovation is being already tested in networking.

Questions are:

1. Would quantum teleportation be a breakthrough in computer science?
2. Where can be used quantum teleportation? How can it improve our daily life?
3. What do you think about human teleportation - would it be possible in the future?

Week 4 [28.11-4.12.2016] SmartMirror: An Embedded Non-contact System for Health Monitoring at Home

Hi,
I would like to present you an article about smart home system. In this particular case, authors have presented their approach to monitoring our health by using the smart mirror. Even though, they are trying to monitor our key physiological markers. We can argue about their choice, maybe these markers are too basic, maybe they are not so important for our life. However, I consider their approach as a start for something bigger. Let's consider a situation, when you are waking up, looking in the mirror and know that there is something wrong with your body.
Maybe, this is just another "smart" device we can brag we have, but we are not using it like we should. Most of the time we know that we are not feeling well, without looking at these markers and so on. Maybe, it can save someone's life. Who knows?

Take a look at the article and try to answer questions below.

• Have you ever thought about making your home smart?
• Do you think smart health monitoring is a future?
• Do you have any kind of smart health monitoring devices?

Week 3 [21-27.11.2016] - A Comparative Analysis of the Universal Elements of Music and the Fetal Environment

I would like to apologize for late article publishing. Currently time in my environment rush very quickly. I would like to ask for prolong comments deadline for those who don't have enough time in weekend to answer my questions.

In this article we would like focus on a sound we hear from the very beginning. This is one of the first perception experience we feel in our life. Sound is started to be heard by fetus in the first month from the insemination. The study about sound and rhythm connected with hear pulse of the fetus it was simply the meter of time to appear. David Teie try to answer this question about this scientific problem in article:

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01158.

Please read above article and answer questions:

1. Does this mentioned subject interest you?
2. Is there are any connection between Limbic System Development and sound acquired from fetus and birth environment?
3. Another research issue is to study connection between cultural similarities of sound inheritance. How do you explain similarities about music instruments that was introduced in different parts of the world? Are you familiar with music language?

Week 3 [21-27.11.2016] - Possible decline in the acceleration of technological innovation

Hello, recently while browsing YouTube, I came across a video presentation on the subject of a possible decline in the acceleration of technological innovation. You can watch it below:

This article, although quiet old, does state that the rate of inovation peaked in the year 1873 and ever since then it is rapidly declining. It is calculated that we are at around 90% of the economic limit of technology and by 2038 we will reach 95%. Every major breakthrough will be more costly because of the complexity that is involved. Another article tries to measure the unit costs of many technologies by formulating Moore's law. This allows to estimate the probability that a given technology outperforms another at a given point in the future. However there are some flaws with Moore's law. The main observation that it described (doubling of number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit every 18 months) starts to not be entirely true in the recent years.

Please answer the following questions:
1. Do you think that further innovations will be much tougher and take longer to achieve?
2. Do you know of any other phenomena that could be described by Moore's law?
3. What future innovations are you most excited about and when do you predict they will occur?

Week 3 [21-27.11.2016] - Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images

Hello,
This week I would like to present the article Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images.
This study includes automated inference on criminality based solely on still face images. Via supervised machine learning, authors build four classifiers (logistic regression, KNN, SVM, CNN) using facial images of 1856 real persons controlled for race, gender, age and facial expressions, nearly half of whom were convicted criminals, for discriminating between criminals and non-criminals. All four classifiers produced evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic. The variation among criminal faces is significantly greater than that of the non-criminal faces which means criminal and non-criminal face images populate two quite distinctive manifolds.

I would like to encourage you to share your thoughts about the problem of privacy, facial recognition and any facial analysis which produce such far-reaching conclusions? Instead of sharing photos via facebook and the other services are we going to protect our images and try to reserve strictly the rights to our images?

Week 3 [21.11-27.11.2016] A Tour Through the Visualization Zoo

Hello,

I would like to present a topic of data visualization which I hope may be used in many of your research areas. Not only researchers have to deal with it. With a rapidly growing amount of data also companies became interested in data visualization. It should explain in a legible way what our data is about and help us to find required knowledge about some events. Due to a variety of data, this is not an easy task. Our data may contain time series, maps, networks or hierarchies. Each of these needs a different approach in visualization. An article presents some visualization techniques of various data. 

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/6/92482-a-tour-through-the-visualization-zoo/fulltext

Additionally, you can watch short video, which presents some more interesting examples of data visualization in high dimensional space i.e. words represented by points with 200 dimensions

https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/visualizing-high-dimensional-space

1. Have you ever tried to visualize high dimensional space? What was that? If not do you know any area where good data visualization is crucial?

2.  Do you know any state-of-the-art examples of data visualization techniques? Which one do you like most? Do you use or know some interesting visualization tools?

3. What is the aim of data visualization? Do you think that people gain more knowledge from pretty data visualization than scientific computations?

Week 2 [14.11-20.11.2016] DNA computing

Hello,

I would like to present you the topic of DNA computing. The idea of using DNA for computational processes was already suggested by Richard Feynman in 1961. Since then it became a broad research domain. Article's autors describe their solution which selects and displays in the seven-segmented display the result of computation of two input variables.

Additional materials about DNA computers and above project you can find on MIT and ScienceNordic portals.

What do you think about DNA computing idea? May it be a real competition to silicone technology?
Do you see any threats in it (or maybe on the contrary, it can benefit a lot)?
Do you know any other technologies and ideas that can be a replacement for silicon?

Links:
http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10089
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534721/what-can-dna-based-computers-do/
http://sciencenordic.com/scientists-build-most-advanced-dna-computer-date

Week 2 [14.11-20.11.2016] older drivers.

In many situations, driving is essential for senior citizens to maintain their independent lifestyle. A systematic literature review was conducted that summarized the age-related physical, visual and cognitive functional declines and their associated risk to driving. Based on these findings, we explored whether the skills required in playing Xbox Kinect video games were correlated with measures of driving performance among older drivers. Fifty-two participants, 65 years of age or older (Mean = 72; SD = 3.84; range 65 – 85 years; 29 males) who have access to a car and drive frequently were invited to play Just dance, Table Tennis (ping pong), Bowling, and Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training Exercises on an Xbox Kinect 360. Participants also completed a 25-minute on-road driving task along a predetermined route to assess and identify critical driving errors using a similar instrument as that used by a driving license tester. Bivariate correlation examined the relationship between game scores and these objective driving skills. There was a significant correlation between the Xbox Kinect video games and on-road driving scores (r = 0.861, p <0.001), indicating that ‘good gamers are good drivers’. This was correlation was significant for the males (r = 0.864, p <0.001) as well as for the females (r = 0.878, p <0.001). We suggest that performance on Xbox games may be a suitable, cost-effective and less-risky indicator of on-road driving skills for older drivers, particularly in jurisdictions in which mandatory testing of older citizens has been introduced or is being considered as a requirement in the driver licensing process.

LINK : http://journal.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/1110/704

1. Do you know of other research methods from the world of entertainment? What kind?
2. What is better? Autonomous cars for older people or systems to help older drivers?

Week 2 [14.11-20.11.2016] Cloud computing

Good evening everyone,

Reading answers for Week1 I’ve noticed that some topics were too refined so it was difficult to have an opinion on. Having that in mind I propose to discuss something that we all know a lot of.

Please have a look on “Cloud computing – a risk or an opportunity for business”.

In this article I raised the issue of the impact of cloud computing services on the economic efficiency of companies. I primarily concentrated on the benefits which companies accrue, in particular, the flexible use of resources of cloud computing without the necessity to make additional investments  in their IT infrastructure. I also put attention on  the question of the risks associated with the use of cloud computing. This concerns mainly the loss of data, which may result in adverse economic effects for a company. However, I estimated that the benefits of the use of Cloud computing services outweigh the risks.

Please asked the following questions:

1. Do you know of any others benefits which companies accrue using cloud?
2. Do I correctly choice concerns related to cloud computing usage?
3. Do you think that the benefits of the use of Cloud computing services outweigh the risks ?

Week 1 [07.11-13.11.2016] Leading Academic Transformation

Hello everyone,

For the survival in a rapidly changing reality around us is following the pace of these changes. This challenge has interdisciplinary dimension, good examples of areas that do not escape to changes in the science and education. It is very important that the implementation of innovative solutions for teaching is not indifferent to our adaptation abilities to today's world. Nowadays, we have unlimited access to knowledge, therefore, the mere possession of knowledge begins to play a smaller role, important becomes ability to apply it.

Read a short article and answer in the questions:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of learning academic transformation?
2. What is your opinion about the Polish academic learning / teaching?
3. What changes would you propose in Polish academic learning / teaching?

Week 1 [07.11-13.11.2016] Your smartphone is a civil rights issue

Watch the presentation Your smartphone is a civil rights issue
at https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_soghoian_your_smartphone_is_a_civil_rights_issue
and comment on/discuss it.

Week 1 [7.11.2016 - 13.11.2016] Google's A.I. Learns How to Encrypt Itself

Hello everybody,

I would like to present something interesting, it is not connected with my research area but in my opinion may be quite interesting.
The article will be about how Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm and no one knows how it works.

After reading this articles, answer the following questions:
1. Can  AI  learn how to encrypt itself?
2. Do you think it's good that Google scientists don't know how this algorithm works?
3. What do you think about the current research in the AI field. Do you agree with Stephen Hawking that artificial intelligence could end mankind?


Main article:
http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/10/google-ai-neural-network-cryptography/

Additional info:
https://www.inverse.com/article/22928-google-ai-created-own-encryption

Link to the research paper:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.06918v1.pdf

Week 1 [7.11.2016 - 13.11.2016] PROM and Documents flow analysis

Hello,
I am glad because I can start our new semester discussions.


I would like to present you an article that shows process mining usage in real-world company case. Company had a problem with documents flow. Process mining methods were used to solve this problem. Given that this is existing company we have confirmed the process mining methods can be used in real business processes analysis.


https://fedcsis.org/proceedings/2016/pliks/456.pdf


Questions are:

- Do companies compare process model with its execution in production environment?

- How can we use experts knowledge in process analysis software?
This question regards to papers conclusion. It highlights expert knowledge usage. How to "translate" human know-how to process flow validator?

- Do you know any methods for process tracking / analysis / optimization?