Tuesday (24 June) or Thursday (26 June) presentation

Dear Students,
Please decide on the day when you can deliver your presentation.
It should be from  the area of your studies and should be 10-13 minutes long.

Week 9: 3D Printing hope for a better life or a disaster?

We are seeing an explosion of development of the three-dimensional printing. Three-dimensional printing has existed for 30 years, the market leaders are: 

SHAPEWAYS,

http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/2404-10-Extrordinary-Things-You-Wont-Believe-Are-3D-Printed.html 

Stratasys

http://www.stratasys.com/

New technology takes off in a three-dimensional printing: 

Printing organs for transplants http://www.organovo.com/ 

Printing clothes, food. 

Printing houses. 

Printing electronics.

I remember when people from 70-80ties were dreaming of traveling at speeds faster than sound. That time there were CONCORDE supersonic aircraft which was flying from London to New York in 2 and a half hours.

Trials were conducted suborbital flights 2 hours flight from London to Sydney, Australia. There were plans to build a permanent base on the moon. Planned flight to Mars. How do these dreams ended we all know.

Flight from London to Sydney, Australia continues today 36H stunning journey of change in Hong Kong. Is the situation of 70-80ties going to reapet? Will the dream of 3D printing come true? 

 Are we going to print at home - clothes, food, electronics and other everyday  usage stuff?

Currently operating three-dimensional printers start at $ 40 000. Cheap 3D printers do not work very well. The printer’s owner needs to handle a lot of knowledge in the creation of three-dimensional objects and hundreds of hours of optimization.

REP-RAP Printers rig cost after $ 2,000. Truth is howerever you will not able to use them in effective way.

The leader of the cheap printer is https://www.makerbot.com/. 

This printing technology to print FDM liquid plastic. 

Printing material is PLA “Polylactic Acid, is a biodegradable plastic” and ABS “acrylonitrile butadiene styrene LEGO"

Commercial Printing 3D is just beginning as before personal computers.

At the moment you can see lot of advantages: 

Production of personalized goods tailored to your personal tastes. 

Furniture, clothing, electronics houses, etc. 

No waste in production. 

Instant production, lack of transport of the produced things. 

Energy efficient, fully automated process.

There are however disadvantages and risks:

The most serious drawback is the possibility of producing a complete printer by another the same printer. Amplification is a feature of the living structure and it is not a virtual computer virus but reality.

No need for a factory to produce anything. 

Unnecessary transportation.

Printing organs from their own stem cells eliminates all sectors of the pharmaceutical companies. 

Printing any chemical and biological agents. Threat of biological and chemical terrorism.

The biggest threat is the lack of motivation to make money, everything practically could be available almost immediately.

Do you think that 3D printing will be available in every home in the future?

Do you think that the three-dimensional printing is a threat or an opportunity for modern civilization?

Week 9: The social network of loneliness

Nowadays, technology allows for instantaneous exchange of information all over the world. Popular examples are mobile phones, instant chat messengers, e-mails and social networking services (like Facebook). We can communicate in real time with practically any other person that has access to them from anywhere in the world. Despite of how simple and efficient such a way of communication can be, it hinders the natural forms of contact. This leads to worsening of interpersonal skills that we need to possess in order to properly coexist and cooperate. Another major drawback is the fact that humans are social animals and we need the physical and direct (real) contact with other representatives of our species else we feel lonely and depressed. 

However without a doubt social networking services play a major factor of how we are perceived by other people. They are often used as a self-promotion tool, which anyone can access despite of our offline status.  

I think that the real problem lies in people’s false perception of being connected to others, the illusion that we are not alone, although the bitter truth usually is quiet opposite. I was born in the 90s and when most of the social networks emerged I was already in my early adulthood, so I had at least a taste of the period before everyone went online. I feel sorry for the 2000s generation who had no chance to experience that.

Here is a video on the topic. It went viral a couple of weeks ago so chances are you have already seen it:

And here is another interesting video covering the same topic:

Lastly in this article you can view the opinion on the subject of MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle, PhD.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/06/social-networking.aspx

And as always here are some questions that I would like you to answer:

1. Do you have a profile on any of the social networking services? If yes then how many of your connections are people you regularly talk to or meet with in real life? (rough estimate)
2. Does this matter affect you in any way? Do you feel lonely?
3. How often do you use any of the mentioned devices/services in order to communicate with others? Could you live without them?

Week 9: Electrical Signals Change Monkey's Choices

I would like to present you one article which is strictly connected with my research as I am dealing with deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease. In this particular case subjects are stimulated in order to recover from motoric problems but lately more and more articles are published regarding behavior or/and emotional manipulation of brain using minor currents. Example for this could be following article:

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/electrical-signals-change-monkeys-choices

Please read the article and answer below questions (or just give your thoughts on the topic :) ):

1. Do you think behavior manipulation is ethical ?
2. Can you think of any positive appliance of such techniques ?
3. Would you apply such technique to yourself if it would for example help you get rid of some trouble some habit of yours ? (eg. smoking, drinking or polygamy :))

Week 9: What is the subject of science research in the field of Informatics?

The question seems provocative, taking into account the fact that is directed at researchers in this the field of science. But I sincerely hope that this is exactly the right place where I can get, not only answers, but also valuable suggestions and inspirations.

By nearly twenty years I'm intrigued by the question of: What is the "Informations". Of course, I'm interested in the scientific sense, as for physicists may be is interesting: What is the „Energy”. Unfortunately, despite so many years, I found only many partial answers, but even all together they are not satisfactory. Worse, I feel that increasingly difficult I grasp the essence of the "Informations".

Somewhere in the early nineties I read famous book "The thing about essence computing – Algorithmics” written by David Harel. Then briefly I had a fine fettle that I know what I do. Unfortunately, very soon, doubts have arisen such as:

- Maybe not "Algorithmics" but is data structures are the essence of "Informations".

- Natural Human language and derivative languages (for example programming languages) are the true essence.

- It is difficult to talk about the essence of computer science without considering all of its major operating functions: processing, memorizing, control process, communication process.

Since then the concept of "Informations" is explored, quite a good article on the current knowledge can be found here: Semantic Conceptions of Information  (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/). The article is quite extensive, so I will not write more on the topic so we move to the questions. I do not expect that everyone answers to all these questions. Let everyone will choose the ones that suit him.

1.  Is the classic the "Information Theory" (Claude E. Shannon) sufficient to describe the concept of "Informations"? What is the value in this context the "Qualitative Information Theory" (Marian Mazur)?

2. Range the Informatics as science covers only information that occurs in artificial systems (computers)?

3. Is the scope of Informatics is any information that may appear in the universe? Are states and processes that occur within us (in the human mind and the human brain) in scope this science?

4. If human language is instrument for each of thought process, about most a complex structure (the context grammar) and has the greatest power of expression. It is human language the ultimate goal of computer science and the essence of "Informations”?

5. What are relationships between concepts "Informations", "Languages" and the concept of "Truth" (of course the term "Truth" is understood scientifically, as in mathematical logic)?

6. If "Word" is synonymous with "Informations" whether all the answers these questions and the accompanying article are stuck in this brief content:

“ 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. … ”

Week 8 that should be in Week 7 (late) – Playing with statistics to prove any theory…

First I would like to apologize my fellow students, I’ve mixed up my calendar and I’ve thought that my article should be posted another week…

Since just few days ago we had elections to EU parliament, I thought to write few words about lying using numbers. ;) I’m sure everyone came across some bizarre “proof” that was based on completely irrelevant data.

Sometimes you can look at a plot, and after a while you realize that what you see is different than what you initially thought…. Look at “Gun deaths in Florida” – what can you see?

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/04/15/thats-a-terrible-chart/

Sometimes the numbers and plots are just fine, but somehow we are trying to connect data that have no connection whatsoever. Checkout this website: http://www.tylervigen.com/
Here you have couple of charts that I find most surprising.


1. Number people who drowned while in a swimming-pool
correlates with
Power generated by nuclear power plants (US)
Correlation: 0.901
      

2. US spending on science, space, and technology
correlates with
Suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation

Correlation: 0.992

3. Divorce rate in Maine
correlates with
Per capita consumption of margarine (US)

Correlation: 0.993

That’s quite amazing how unusual correlations can be found, but what conclusion can we make out of it?

There’s a great article by Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics at Columbia University –
“Lying with statistics”.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/bag-of-tricks/chap10.pdf
There's a citation of an newspaper article that shows studies conducted on children from different countries on how good their reading skills are. The point of prof. Gelman is that it's very hard to compare language skills of people reading in different languages!


Just like comparing someones' manual abilities...

Comparing ability of totally different animals makes completely no sense.

1.      What is wrong with those correlation charts? Data used here are true. ;)
2.      Try to find and give us an example of unlogical/strange conclusion made on basis of wrongly interpreted data.
3.      What's your opinion on making IQ tests? Can someones intelligence be measured by solving few tasks? I believe that those tests show ability to "solve tests" and are not showing someones creativity.

Week 8 B - The next steps in human evolution

We've all been taught that modern humans have evolved during the many years that life originated on earth. Be it from the first bacteria to the first complex organisms like fish, land mammals and apes which haven't really been proven yet but highly suggested. Let the previous species aside since I wouldn't want to focus on this, I am highly interested in finding out what is the next step on our evolution tree. Will it occur naturally or will it be artificial (designed and controlled by us)?

One of the courses that humanity could take to enhance our abilities is genetic modification. A procedure which is already in use (there are some law restrictions though). This would allow for gaining resistance to external factors like immunity to diseases, incombustible skin or even make the need for breathing air obsolete. This might sound science fiction to us but we could achieve the same effect if we had told about our current achievements to our ancestors :) . There are ethical problems though that currently cripple any advance in that field also a risk of unintentionally causing irreversible harm like the incidents of genetically modified crops growing out of control and replacing natural ones.

Another course would be the idea of creating something entirely new that would act similarly to us and by that I mean a thinking and intelligent machine. Sometimes its better to build something from its foundations rather than modifying an entity with a faulty design. We already have some progress in that field, there are plans to create a team of robots that would win a match of soccer versus a team consisting of real people by 2050. The main problem here is whether machines could ever gain self-consciousness and act on their free will (perhaps filtered by a set of rules). Another possibility is simply merging our bodies (or recreating them) with synthetic organs and body parts. There already exist artificial mechanical arms and hearts but the most complex organ of our body which is the true obstucle here is our brain. So far scientists were able to recreate or emulate insect brains, nowadays they struggle to achieve a cat's one. But will the person that has an artificial brain still feel human? :)

Additionally to your opinions on the subject I would like you to answer the following questions:
1. What in your opinion is the next evolutionary step of humanity? Is there any at all?
2. Do you believe that in the future parents will be able to decide about their children characteristics?
3. Do you think we will ever create a machine that could function just like a human being? Would it have consciousness?
4. When do we reach technological singularity? This century? This millennium? Later? Never?
5. Do you think machines could entirely replace us some day? What would happen to us? Could we peacefully coexist?