Week 6 [30.05-05.06.2016] The Hyperloop project

Hello everyone, today I would like to share with you some news about the Hyperloop project. The project involves the creation of a new means of transportation which could compete with the ones that are already available (i.e. cars, trains, ships, planes). Hyperloop was envisioned by the popular entrepreneur Elon Musk back in 2012 as a 5th type of transportation. The idea is that a tube is built between distant locations and a capsule with aerodynamic capabilities is inserted inside to travel through it. A curved tube could create enormous forces that could be intolerable by passengers that is why the route should be as straight as possible. The capsule has to be capable of travel without any kind of wheels which would create friction and slow it down. In fact it is designed to levitate over a magnetically induced surface at speeds exceeding 1220 km/h. This is also how magnetic trains work (maglev) however the main difference here is that engineers are trying to reduce the friction formed by air, hence the tube. Another interesting fact is that Elon Musk made the idea "open" and therefore encouraged many teams around the world to cooperate and work upon it. Currently tests are being performed to check the feasibility of the proposed technologies that involve the project.

For further information you can watch this video:

The article published by SpaceX can be found here: http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf

To encourage discussion I propose the following questions:
1. Have you heard about Hyperloop before or any other projects envisioned by Elon Musk? Which one is your favourite, and why?
2. Is it worth to invest into this technology or shall engineers turn their focus into alternatives (if so, then which)?
3. How do you feel about the decision that Elon made to open the project and involve other companies in its development? What are the benefits and drawbacks of this initiative?

Week 6 [30.05-05.06.2016] Fashion: Georg Simmel

I would like to introduce an article about fashion and simulation.
It shows interesting aspects of fashion and the influence that fashion has on social phenomena. We do not say only about the clothes.

Link to article: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/3/2/forum/2.html

Questions:
1. Are economists should consider factor of fashion, while create forecasts?
2. Are fashion has a big impact on the economy?
3. Do you ever interested in any aspect of fashion? What kind?

Week 6 [30.05-05.06.2016] The Big Impact of Small Groups on College Drinking

Hi. Today I would like to switch from IT to a bit different topic. 

We all have been students and probably most of us have had a chance to experience the so called „students' life". The article I would like to present applies to social aspects of drinking culture among students. Some of you may already know the contents, as this paper comes from JASSS.

 


The Big Impact of Small Groups on College Drinking

To help you with discussion I will start with questions:

1. Have you been involved in students' life during your "academic years"?

2. Have you ever experienced heavy episodic or "binge" drinking mentioned in article?

3. What do you think in general about drinking culture among students?

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] Specialised hardware for machine learning - Academia vs private companies

I’m not sure if you follow tech conferences, but earlier this week Google held its annual Google I/O event. This is a conference targeting developers focused on Google ecosystem, during which there’s usually a lot of interesting announcements concerning Google’s plans and research. I feel that last year conference was much more exciting (“Now on tap”, Machine learning based search in pictures application and so on), still I found one pretty interesting news from the field of AI and Machine Learning.

I’m sure that you heard that earlier this year Google open-sourced their Tensor Flow engine for Machine Learning applications. So in this article [1] Google unveils a custom made ASIC chip called Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). TPU is tailored to Machine Learning computations. Google is not (yet?) giving away the exact numbers but they are stating that TPU is an order of magnitude better optimised in terms of performance per watt.

So Google is obviously spearheading the Machine Learning and AI research in general.

1. Do you feel that they have any reasonable competition right now?
2. Are you excited about their research? I’m personally a bit anxious that most of their activities is done behind closed doors and is motivated by future revenues.
3. Does research on Machine Learning and AI conducted in Academia stand any chance with almost limitless resources of a private company like Google?

[1] -  https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/05/Google-supercharges-machine-learning-tasks-with-custom-chip.html

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] - Augmented reality in logistic

Today I would like to present you an article, or should I say a report, made for DHL. This international company is experimenting with AR in their business.
http://www.dhl.com/content/dam/downloads/g0/about_us/logistics_insights/csi_augmented_reality_report_290414.pdf

It is just a matter of time when augmented reality will come to our everyday life. This is not about "if", it is about "when". Currently the most important branches for this technology is related with industry and logistic because we are able to test functionalities in this sector with out wondering about how the smart glasses will look on us.

1. What do you think about AR ?
2. Do you think it will be something more common than VR ?
3. How do you see usage of AR in sectors related with industry and/or logistic ?
4. Do you think it will be something usefull in everyday life or just another fancy gadget ?

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] Addressing cloud computing security issues

Addressing cloud computing security issues

Cloud computing is one of the hottest technical topics today, with broad-ranging effects across IT, Information Architecture, Bussiness, Software Engineering and Data Storage. That is one of many reason why I shared with you that topic. I’m interested in relationship cloud computing to security issues and any of security aspects cloud services. I’m thinking that cloud computing has got potential and it will be still upgrading in the future.

1.       What do we need to know about security in cloud?

2.       What can be outsourced to the cloud?

3.       What do we need to do get ready for the cloud?

4.       Is there anything a cloud provider can’t provide?

5.       What is your expectations from Cloud Computing?

Article:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X10002554

For everyone who would like to improve his/her knowledge about IaaS:

http://cloudcomputing.ieee.org/images/files/publications/articles/TheStateofPublicInfrastructureasaServiceCloudSecurity.pdf

I wish you good reading.

Week 5 [16-22.05.2016] - Starve cancer to death

Hello,

Today I want to present a lengthy article from NYT on basically going back to the roots of cancer research:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-an-old-idea-revived-starve-cancer-to-death.html

Although it is not my area, the article is linked to at least two older posts and we may continue discussion.

The questions that pop-up in mind after reading this article:

1. In your opinion which cancer therapy seems more promising: the one targeting cancer cells metabolism or the genetic immunotherapy?
2. According to the article what might be the role of high-sugar diet in relation to cancer?
3. Do you think that metformin (the drug known to have remarkable effect on inhibiting cancer growth) should be prescribed as the way to prevent cancer?

Regards,
Paweł.