tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41888232227630714362024-03-14T04:23:25.596-07:00The Mostly Color ChannelMusings — mostly about color art, science, and technologyNathan Moroneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09545954704890276824noreply@blogger.comBlogger698125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-89019031651652378182023-01-11T19:26:00.000-08:002023-01-11T19:26:08.745-08:00Better article PDF<p>When you publish an article, you want it to be discoverable by other researchers. This requires that it be indexed. Indexing systems need metadata, which they usually extract from the PDF files in digital libraries or other document repositories.</p><p>Ideally, a manuscript submission system collects the necessary metadata from the corresponding author when the final manuscript is submitted. Since author names are not unique, a good system will require each author to log into the system using their <a href="https://orcid.org">ORCID</a> credentials, which also ensures that all coauthors know they are such.</p><p>Some metadata is not known by the submitter, for example, the <a href="https://www.doi.org">DOI</a>, volume and issue number, page, and publication date. Such metadata is added by the managing editor. In some journals, the managing editor creates all metadata, but it is safer when the publication system generates algorithmically the metadata from that provided by the corresponding author.</p><p>Some publishers omit the verified ORCID collection from the authors. In that case, you should put each author's identifier in the author declaration. When you create your manuscript using LaTeX, you can use the package <i>orcidlink</i>. In the preamble add</p><p><i>\usepackage{orcidlink}</i></p><p>and in the author declaration add your ORCID</p><p><i>\author{John Doe\,\orcidlink{nnnn-nnnn-nnnn-nnnn}}</i></p><p>Some publishers just publish in their digital libraries the final PDF they receive. If you just submit the default format file you generated, it will not have any metadata and your article will not be discoverable. It is safer, to submit the article in the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000125.shtml">PDF/A</a> archival format and with your metadata included as <a href="https://www.adobe.com/products/xmp.html">XMP</a> so it can be extracted by the web crawlers of the indexing organizations.</p><p>You could accomplish this using the full version of Acrobat, but as I wrote above, manual operations are not recommended and you should let the LaTeX typesetter do it. Fortunately, River Valley Technologies has contributed a package called <i>pdfx</i> to automate this step. You already have this package with the standard LaTeX installation.</p><p>After importing this package, you also import <i>hyperref</i>. Then you write an <i>xmpdata</i> file declaring the metadata. You can find all the information in the exhaustive <a href="https://ctan.org/pkg/pdfx?lang=en">help file</a>. The import order is important, for example in the preamble you could declare</p><p><i>\usepackage[a-1b]{pdfx}</i></p><p><i>\usepackage{hyperref}</i></p><p>If you are an editor and maintain a template for your journal, you can also embed the xmpdata file at the top of the preamble. The help file explains how to do that.</p><p>You can check the PDF format and the metadata with the free <a href="https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pdf-reader.html">Acrobat Reader</a>. I have generated the following two documents using the method described above:</p><p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JhMYSwzTsjPPHTX8nCfDXoJhIiZGkjm_/view?usp=share_link">article</a></p><p><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UMKxs8tf7w3fo5_ZIbvMuqWxvE2zkPSS/view?usp=share_link">slides</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiLKv8cEQ0f6m67rpD92vmx_yvn_WWhcqAS_DshXIsnAijMCVJJixSDhQ2HEc9bsFlIjzmfO_0hWJvLE2Ebo7IeBW3MuNoVOPAbYbCvFfQQ51WQ_4UnenMTpi3jpt0cFbbI88v6Ta0GZivArneP52KF7-i9pxmQwS9bmJBkfntcIPFlttB8uBxmDMTCA/s233/ePub2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="233" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiLKv8cEQ0f6m67rpD92vmx_yvn_WWhcqAS_DshXIsnAijMCVJJixSDhQ2HEc9bsFlIjzmfO_0hWJvLE2Ebo7IeBW3MuNoVOPAbYbCvFfQQ51WQ_4UnenMTpi3jpt0cFbbI88v6Ta0GZivArneP52KF7-i9pxmQwS9bmJBkfntcIPFlttB8uBxmDMTCA/s1600/ePub2.gif" width="233" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-85236409871046145862021-06-21T19:03:00.000-07:002021-06-21T19:03:30.676-07:00Industrial Research<p>Previous related posts: <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2018/10/career-networking.html">Career Networking</a>, <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2021/06/scholarly-publications.html">Scholarly Publications</a>.</p><p>With the industrial revolution, large companies introduced central research laboratories to accelerate the invention of new products. After the Sputnik crisis, in the USA these laboratories became very prestigious, under the influence of people like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider">Joseph Licklider</a>. The labs flourished, receiving government jobs paid under the cost-plus model, where the paid price was the cost of producing the technology plus a margin for the company's profit.</p><p>After receiving their Ph.D., young researchers would join learned societies in their field and attend their annual meetings to stay current in the field and to network. They would join a prestigious central lab with the plan to work there until retirement. With the pressure for excellence, there were always personal frictions, but they were offset by the companionship and respect researchers had for each other.</p><p>In research, the hierarchies are relatively flat. The organizations were very flexible, and researchers moved around in the lab and formed robust networks. They would attend the annual meetings of their societies and present their progress: their network was not only dense but also vast. By subscribing to the same journals, there was a shared knowledge of the state of the art.</p><p>At the end of the Cold War, the central labs rapidly disappeared. The government no longer had the need to outbrain the Russians, companies put more emphasis on quarterly results instead of long term success, therefore executives had less understanding for research. The universities adapted and started programs to teach students to become entrepreneurs. All this contributed to the central labs to disappear in a very short time.</p><p>At first, one would think that industrial research has completely disappeared. However, this is not the case, and today there are more researchers than during the Cold War. But the research infrastructure has radically changed. For example, professors no longer spend occasional time in industrial central labs as visiting scientists, but have more secure part-time positions in large companies, with job titles like <i>Fellow.</i></p><p>Typically, a larger technology company has a VP of research with numerous researchers. The latter no longer sit in a central location but are dispersed throughout the engineering divisions. On one side, this allows them to glean important hard problems with which the engineers are grappling and get inspired for new technologies. On the other side, when engineers get stuck with a problem for which there is no clear solution on Stack Overflow, they can informally ask the local researcher for a lead.</p><p>The researchers are not embedded in the development organizations. They report to a remote manager, and they have long term goals instead of the daily Jira tasks. They do not have short term deadlines, but at the end of the day they cannot turn off their brains until the next morning. Today's researchers are much more lonely than the researchers in the central labs of yore.</p><p>Today's researchers are less dependent on learned societies and tend to network using LinkedIn. The annual meetings have disappeared and have been replaced by topical meetings. Instead of a steady shower of scientific articles in journals, researchers today do searches on Google Scholar for the knowledge they need at the moment. One of the corollaries is that today papers should no longer have memorable titles, but the titles have to have the important terms at the beginning, so they show up at the top in searches.</p><p>This requires learned societies to adapt. Researchers are isolated and change employers more often. Flexible regular meetups are maybe more important than rigid conferences. When in the past societies could solicit sponsorships from central labs, today the researchers are decentralized and there is no longer a budged item for sponsorships. Despite this, anecdotally there is more money for essential expenses and while in the past page charges were a barrier, today they are no longer important and researchers publish in journals with high impact factor, regardless of cost.</p><p>There is another important factor in the lives of researchers. Since they are now dispersed, it is more difficult to advance in the career. The Anglo-Saxon countries always had the concept of mentorship instead of the more formal master-apprentice system of other western countries. Other cultures are now copying the mentorship system to help researchers to succeed in life. This is a new role to which learned societies have to pay attention.</p><p>As I mentioned, researchers do searches for related art on the web instead of staying current by subscribing to journals. Search engines are based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram"><i>n</i>-grams</a> and do not know the history of science. Therefore, it is easy to get the related art in the introduction wrong, and especially the references are often wrong. For example, the CIELAB color model operator was not introduced at the INTERACT-2010 conference, but much earlier and no later than 1976.</p><p>Thus, editors and reviewers have a much harder job verifying the introduction and the references of a manuscript. This and the current career path of researchers (see post on <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2018/10/career-networking.html">Career Networking</a>) prompted, for example, the SPIE about 15 years ago to limit the terms of the editors in their journals. Learned societies must give high consideration to mentorship for their journals and conferences. Conference chairs and editors must have a good number of young researchers who work closely with the old hands to learn the ropes. Fortunately this is easy because, as noted earlier, today's researchers are lonely and long for mentors.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtp6T_KtgGdm15v-zMn5E1oH2_bcn3QU4DirI75Dc4TM9koAONnLVxAtJk0y3AfhyOPZ7B1ttR2L3iRbx5rNuhfNEW5WIdB0bpMAO2YEu0JWW30BQPsTann1mjKcp-tSOw3UTXmKDgxRs/s480/reasearch_r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="480" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVtp6T_KtgGdm15v-zMn5E1oH2_bcn3QU4DirI75Dc4TM9koAONnLVxAtJk0y3AfhyOPZ7B1ttR2L3iRbx5rNuhfNEW5WIdB0bpMAO2YEu0JWW30BQPsTann1mjKcp-tSOw3UTXmKDgxRs/w400-h334/reasearch_r.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-9238911238722242902021-06-20T16:47:00.002-07:002021-06-21T18:39:29.777-07:00Scholarly Publications<p>The evolution of approaches to employment was discussed <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2018/10/career-networking.html">here</a>.</p><p>Fifty years ago, a professor in the mathematics department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) was expected to publish a substantial paper every two years, at least one every 4 years. The paper was top quality and presented a true advance in the field. Once a year, the professor would also present at a conference. When the professor had come up with a lecture presenting a new field or a novel approach to an existing field, their Ph.D. students would sit in the front row of the auditorium and take extensive notes, which would be the basis for a new book.</p><p>Students were not expected to write papers. They would write reports and give seminar presentations to get the required credits.</p><p>The experimental physics departments was quite different: the American publish-or-perish way of life had taken over. By twenty years ago, also the mathematicians were living by the publish-or-perish paradigm. However, something else changed: the students would submit their reports to scholarly journals.</p><p>The flood of submissions required the editorial boards to change their criteria for reviewing manuscripts. Moreover, with the introduction thirty years ago of the World Wide Web by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, a huge number of publications became easily available, making the editor's job of separating the wheat from the chaff more urgent, otherwise researchers just waste their time reading useless articles.</p><p>Certain measures were easy to implement, like eliminating unintelligible manuscripts, plagiarisms, and nothing-wrong-papers (papers well written but not advancing the field). More editorial work was required for papers where the authors did some valid research, but did not understand it well themselves—in principle, author's supervisor would be responsible, but for the past twenty years they have been increasingly remiss of this duty. The other editorial task is to identify salame papers and reject them; salame papers refers to when the result of a project is sliced up and submitted as a series of papers. While this is OK for conference papers, it is not for journal papers.</p><p>A form of plagiarism was also to submit a paper to multiple journals using variations of the author's names. This was solved by requiring a persistent digital identifier (<a href="https://orcid.org">ORCID iD</a>) and using a Digital Object Identifier (<a href="https://www.doi.org">DOI</a>) for every reference.</p><p>When fifty years ago papers were well written, today they tend to be sloppy. When an editor accepts a manuscript for publication, the authors tend to ignore the orthography and grammar errors pointed out by the reviewers, even when good authoring tools are available. This sloppiness increases the publication cost because a copy editor has to rework the manuscript. When a sweatshop is used, producing a 12-page article typically costs about $1,500 while using professional copy editors doubles or triples the cost. Societies usually slightly increase the publishing fee to allow for discounts for members and to subsidize financially challenged authors.</p><p>Fifty years ago, a scholarly journal covered its production costs by charging a small page charge and with subscriptions by institutional libraries. With the flood of articles in the past twenty years, the number of journals has increased and with the higher required production costs, libraries have an issue affording journals. In the long term, scholarly journals are only viable with the open access approach, where the authors pay the full publication costs.</p><p>For a large institution, the publication costs are significant especially when the copy editing cost go up with the increasing sloppiness. This leads to a hybrid solution where institutions pay a fixed yearly price and get a certain number of submissions and downloads.</p><p>Usually institutions are not too sensitive to the publication costs, as long as the journal has a good impact factor. A journal builds its impact factor not with the work of the copy editors, but with the work of the editors. For scholarly journals, these are usually researchers who volunteer their work. The question is how does one find a good team of editors-in-chief and associate editors? For this we have to look at how research evolved in the last decades.</p><p>Before, let me point out that editors have to ensure that relevant references to articles in their own journal should not be omitted and the journal must be indexed. Last but not least, the most important words of the articles should be at the beginning of the title, otherwise citing authors will miss it in a Google Scholar search.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDTekADZQBeX5KPDlugM05ZtI8wx2aUFB3rzRw4a_grNXG00eJxdZ6aCfizdq6tJSuIYzKWmjMDoXXDcC0gooEBoDlcJo_YheVjxOmQEjVFiA_NnrySApB4-_YEotIP7urgbN183EyiXu2/s233/ePub2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDTekADZQBeX5KPDlugM05ZtI8wx2aUFB3rzRw4a_grNXG00eJxdZ6aCfizdq6tJSuIYzKWmjMDoXXDcC0gooEBoDlcJo_YheVjxOmQEjVFiA_NnrySApB4-_YEotIP7urgbN183EyiXu2/s0/ePub2.gif" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-81404588431097573412019-06-02T16:30:00.001-07:002021-06-21T18:39:48.849-07:00Efficiency<p>One of the main avenues to increase the quality of life and the welfare of society is to become more efficient. Concerning one of our most labor-saving devices, the computer, in the last decade, we have not done so well. While previously it had liberated us from typewriters and slide rulers, recently it has been distracting us with social media and CPU power has barely improved, although computers have become pocketable and are now ubiquitous.</p><p>However, it is still worthwhile to periodically update a workstation, for example by using a more powerful graphics card with a better GPGPU. Another worthwhile upgrade is to replace hard disk drives (HDD) with solid state drives (SSD). These have become very economical and reliable. From a hardware point of view, the easiest upgrade is to replace the internal 3.5" SATA disks with 2.5" SATA SSDs: it just takes a couple of minutes.</p><p>Open the workstation, slide out the drive tray (left), remove the disk, screw in a 2.5" to 3.5" SATA adapter (right), screw the SSD (middle) into the adapter, then slide the tray back in the workstation and close the lid.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCwH_CzHcjIPDgUZCKt5yB3oBprCPsux8cxh0LdpMveqONuZUuyxU_UbBOZlYgXJmJ4TnKNZpbPcL9laEWoMb4LEl3pXNgE4O4P91fxE3sOvCnxB_8h4Vk0j1kRg2pFCemSrwzjon4yTt/s1600/DSC5363.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtCwH_CzHcjIPDgUZCKt5yB3oBprCPsux8cxh0LdpMveqONuZUuyxU_UbBOZlYgXJmJ4TnKNZpbPcL9laEWoMb4LEl3pXNgE4O4P91fxE3sOvCnxB_8h4Vk0j1kRg2pFCemSrwzjon4yTt/s400/DSC5363.JPG" alt="replacing a hard disk drive with a solid state drive" width="400" height="266" border="0" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1065" /></a></div><p>The software side is a little more complicated and takes hours (but you do not have to watch it). Modern operating systems have a special partition on the system disk called GUID for the firmware. On some operating systems this partition contains the drivers, including the file system code. On my older workstation, the firmware is in a PROM, but the GUID partition is still required because the EFI system partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates. See <a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2018/10/31/which-efi-firmware-should-your-mac-be-using-version-3/">this article</a> for the macOS.</p><p>The safest update procedure for the software is to format the new drive and then do a fresh install of the operating system. This will start with a firmware update (press the power button until the power light flashes and you hear a long beep). In my case, the firmware was updated from version MP51.0087.B00 to version MP51.0089.B00. If you do not update your boot ROM, from time to time you will get DiskManagement error -69546 from macOS.</p><p>With the new firmware, reboot the workstation and install the operating system. In the end, do a full system migration from your backup disk. Your system is now much faster, especially when you boot it up. While I was at it, I also replaced my backup disk with a very inexpensive but high-quality consumer-grade SSD shown below.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYV8VM0QevNeMxa3ypd9bCToHsrHKCKC3wI7KsZnz0wFukO1PsOZ7HqiCxDPNSq_nYy3OJCCZg5QJTwVZ05mvr0Si8ZiB3Blbt2NoR4IfNCMCdw5rddR5nQL2JyRWkLbRiUJZYg2Z1aK_P/s1600/DSC5369.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYV8VM0QevNeMxa3ypd9bCToHsrHKCKC3wI7KsZnz0wFukO1PsOZ7HqiCxDPNSq_nYy3OJCCZg5QJTwVZ05mvr0Si8ZiB3Blbt2NoR4IfNCMCdw5rddR5nQL2JyRWkLbRiUJZYg2Z1aK_P/s400/DSC5369.JPG" alt="an inexpensive consumer grade SSD can be used for backup" width="400" height="266" border="0" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1065" /></a></div><p>No other changes were required and the workstation has now become much more efficient.</p><p>One aspect that has become very inefficient in the last years is buying parts. We used to be able to go to the neighborhood store and find everything, but nowadays these stores are in bad shape and it has become difficult to find items due to online stores. In the case of the SSDs, it was not an issue because instead of picking them up in the store in 20 minutes I got them in a couple of days from the manufacturer.</p><p>However, for the 2.5" to 3.5" SATA adapter, I was less lucky. The electronic store had over a dozen different adapters, but there was no way to find out which one was for my workstation. I figured that if I order online I will get it in a couple of days from a warehouse in the Central Valley or in Utah, but I was in for a surprise. It came from overseas and unfortunately for the shipping company Palo Alto is near New York and the adapter went on a long random walk across the continent. I feel really bad for my huge carbon footprint to ship this small $16 part.</p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="2"> <tr>
<th width="43%" scope="col">date / time</th>
<th width="57%" scope="col">activity</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Wednesday, April 24, 2019 11:42 AM</td>
<td>Received electronic information</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Friday, April 26, 2019 10:57 PM</td>
<td>Shipment information sent To FedEx</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Saturday, April 27, 2019 10:49 AM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Operations Center] waiting for transshipment</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:47 AM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Transit Center] left scanning</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, April 28, 2019 4:58 AM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Transit Center] left scanning - loaded car</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, April 28, 2019 7:06 AM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Pudong International Airport] Arrival at the airport - exi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, April 28, 2019 8:06 AM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Pudong International Airport] Customs Release - Export</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, April 28, 2019 12:17 PM</td>
<td>[China-Shanghai Pudong International Airport] parcels from developing countries</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Monday, April 29, 2019 10:03 AM</td>
<td>[United States - Kennedy Airport] arriving at the airport - import</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Thursday, May 2, 2019 11:41 AM</td>
<td>[United States - Kennedy Airport] Customs Release - Import</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Friday, May 3, 2019 7:47 PM</td>
<td>[FEDEX SMARTPOST BREINIGSVILLE, PA]Arrived at FedEx location</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Saturday, May 4, 2019 5:50 AM</td>
<td>[FEDEX SMARTPOST BREINIGSVILLE, PA]Departed FedEx location</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Saturday, May 4, 2019 10:34 PM</td>
<td>[JEWETT, IL]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, May 5, 2019 10:41 AM</td>
<td>[QUAPAW, OK]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sunday, May 5, 2019 9:44 PM</td>
<td>[SAN JON, NM]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Monday, May 6, 2019 8:54 AM</td>
<td>[TOPOCK, AZ]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tuesday, May 7, 2019 2:04 AM</td>
<td>[WALNUT, CA]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tuesday, May 7, 2019 2:11 PM</td>
<td>[BAKERSFIELD, CA]In transit</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Wednesday, May 8, 2019 9:53 PM</td>
<td>[FEDEX SMARTPOST SACRAMENTO, CA]Arrived at FedEx location</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Thursday, May 9, 2019 12:27 AM</td>
<td>[FEDEX SMARTPOST SACRAMENTO, CA]Departed FedEx location</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Thursday, May 9, 2019 2:42 AM</td>
<td>Shipment information sent To US Postal Service</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Saturday, May 11, 2019</td>
<td>Delivered</td>
</tr>
</table>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-57336366036486432812018-10-22T19:20:00.001-07:002021-06-21T18:38:47.913-07:00Career Networking<p>In the US, the multigenerational workforce is divided into five age groups, which have quite different approaches to employment.</p><p>The traditionalists (or silent generation, born 1925–1945), have these stereotypical characteristics: striving for financial security; "waste not, want not"; nobility of sacrifice for the common good; focus on quality and simplicity; loyal to employers and expect loyalty in return; believe promotions, raises and recognition should come from job tenure; work ethic focused on timeliness and productivity; conformity and following authority.</p><p>The baby boomers (born 1946–1964), have these stereotypical characteristics: the importance of hard-work (instilled by parents); loyalty to an employer would lead to reward and seniority; willingness to take on additional responsibilities; conscientious and dependable; service-oriented; ambitious; dutiful.</p><p>The generation X (born 1965–1981) have these stereotypical characteristics: the importance of education; shaping one's own career path; work-life balance and autonomy; innovation and entrepreneurialism; comfortable with challenging conventional wisdom; outcome-oriented; collaborative decision making.</p><p>The millennials (or gen Y, born 1982–1997) have these stereotypical characteristics: need intellectual challenge; entrepreneurial; value continuous learning opportunities; achievement / results-oriented; innovative and open to new ideas; collaborative decision makers; like praise and recognition; value teamwork and equality; value independence / autonomy; seek meaningful work; value work-life balance and flexibility; value fun at work; technology-driven</p><p>The centennials (or iGen or gen Z, born 1998 and later) are just entering the workforce and the stereotypes have not yet been formed.</p><p>The traditionalists rely on local organizations like the Rotary or the golf club for networking, but also professional societies and conference attendance. The baby boomers participate actively in international societies and conferences, building a global network. The generation X still participates in conferences but is less active in professional societies and the organization of conferences. The millennials are on social media and use search engines to find information and attend local meet-ups for networking.</p><p>While in the past peoples managed contacts using a Rolodex, membership directories, etc., today colleagues are constantly on the move and everybody has to maintain their personal contact information on a professional network like <a href="https://www.xing.com/app/startpage">Xing</a> or <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>, through which they connect to their professional contacts.</p><p>Professional network sites make money by selling your information to business intelligence and salespeople as well as recruiters looking for employees. The service is free for you, but you have to maintain your own information.</p><p>The sites are continuously improved, so you have to keep monitoring your profile for changes in the way your information is organized to be more valuable to paying customers. For example, the skills section is sorted by the number of endorsements you receive for each skill, which is not what you want. Edit this section by clicking on the pencil on the top right, then unpin the top three skills, reorder the skills by dragging the horizontal lines on the right, and pin your top three skills.</p><p>When LinkedIn bought SlideShare, your presentations appeared in the media section. However, the original site was abandoned and your media is in cold storage. To get acceptable access times, you have to upload your PDFs again directly into LinkedIn. Furthermore, videos are no longer supported, so you have to upload them to YouTube and then make them available in your LinkedIn profile as linked media.</p><p>If you apply to a job on a professional social network by clicking on the "apply" button, the probability that you will have that job in your profile is very low. Instead, you have to click on your best connection working there because jobs go mostly through internal referral.</p><p>Of course, you have to have a contact working there. The quality of the contact is important because this person has to be your advocate. You can easily increase your network by turning on Bluetooth in your mobile LinkedIn app and invite all people in your vicinity, but they will not be your advocates. Your network has to be dense.</p><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimT8ask39QC9j-SCXAHLciJFwii3MaUSQB5dloyst3YXp8NOHPKfjyYfzdFdXjIuQUGIBYiHUke2iSIdXhT3m6DQClBz7SvkwxK3RAz4BIqQ64pc11f6Ex5Dl4EaW98HaXRKIJKbEwbayv/s1600/linkedinNetworkCrop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimT8ask39QC9j-SCXAHLciJFwii3MaUSQB5dloyst3YXp8NOHPKfjyYfzdFdXjIuQUGIBYiHUke2iSIdXhT3m6DQClBz7SvkwxK3RAz4BIqQ64pc11f6Ex5Dl4EaW98HaXRKIJKbEwbayv/s400/linkedinNetworkCrop.png" alt="LinkedIn connection map" width="400" height="397" border="0" data-original-width="1149" data-original-height="1140" /></a></div></p><p>The best way to create a dense network is to organize conferences because people will remember well your skills and leadership qualities. The second best is presenting at conferences and the easiest is to present at meet-ups. Even easier is to write a blog, but you should post at least once a week and advertise each post on LinkedIn and Twitter.</p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-25452630538477681552018-07-12T21:48:00.000-07:002018-07-12T21:48:45.437-07:00Zuckerberg did not get it<p>Formal written question to our Newell Road neighbor, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Edgewood Drive:</p><p><strong>Describe how your business philosophy distinguishes the harm to individuals from the harm to society.</strong></p><p>The officially recorded answer for posterity:</p><blockquote> <p><em>We recognize that we have made mistakes, and we are committed to learning from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward. As our CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said, when you are building something unprecedented like Facebook, there are going to be mistakes. What people should hold us accountable for is learning from the mistakes and continually doing better—and, at the end of the day, making sure that we’re building things that people like and that make their lives better.</em></p> <p><em> Particularly in the past few months, we’ve realized that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility to our community. Part of that effort is continuing our ongoing efforts to identify ways that we can improve our privacy practices. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So, we’re taking additional steps to put people more in control of their privacy. For instance, we redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to bottom to make things easier to find. We also created a new Privacy Shortcuts in a menu where users can control their data in just a few taps, with clearer explanations of how our controls work. The experience is now clearer, more visual, and easy-to-find. Furthermore, we also updated our terms of service that include our commitments to everyone using Facebook. We explain the services we offer in language that’s easier to read. We’ve also updated our Data Policy to better spell out what data we collect and how we use it in Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other products.</em></p></blockquote><p>Obviously, he did not get it. A net worth of $77.6 billion does not make you smart. Rejoice, there is hope for you.</p><div align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpuuTNqndD0_cvwqWO6jfwruzXeOfAdkj2IxjmRRHg7GoHxIe4Rz6czgowFwaJoBocsSeLFn6yHMD_1Ko-KXzpZec6Xk9AG7MdFrzU1ITqcxFPo11lLlJR_1F5xY3bVaH92t-C67v_Wzm/s1600/zuck.png" imageanchor="1" ><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpuuTNqndD0_cvwqWO6jfwruzXeOfAdkj2IxjmRRHg7GoHxIe4Rz6czgowFwaJoBocsSeLFn6yHMD_1Ko-KXzpZec6Xk9AG7MdFrzU1ITqcxFPo11lLlJR_1F5xY3bVaH92t-C67v_Wzm/s320/zuck.png" alt="neighbors" width="125" height="320" border="0" data-original-width="496" data-original-height="1266" /></a><br />
</div><p>洋、お誕生日おめでとうございます。</p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-68135425736923815652018-07-04T16:37:00.000-07:002018-07-04T16:37:40.477-07:00New Swiss State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation<p>Today, the Swiss Federal Council appointed Martina Hirayama as the new State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation at the request of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research EAER.</p><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWggd-FjQ-j0HW9iQ2DyzUH0b_6rAHIhI_3JmBoTSk9ojyL__2-I8u3x5GIBOEpryOnw-4Pne3MQqv4RgUFTABT9w6lUwC7pPl7CjisbVMNSgQfYGRuD7gE-k445BRfWPcnJbh5Pc_XOcT/s1600/hirayama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWggd-FjQ-j0HW9iQ2DyzUH0b_6rAHIhI_3JmBoTSk9ojyL__2-I8u3x5GIBOEpryOnw-4Pne3MQqv4RgUFTABT9w6lUwC7pPl7CjisbVMNSgQfYGRuD7gE-k445BRfWPcnJbh5Pc_XOcT/s400/hirayama.jpg" alt="Martina Hirayama" width="400" height="267" border="0" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1068" /></a></div></p><p>Martina Hirayama has been president of the Institute Council of METAS, the Federal Institute of Metrology, since 2012. She has also been vice president of the board of Innosuisse, Switzerland’s Innovation Promotion Agency (up to the end of 2017 the Commission for Technology and Innovation) since 2011 and a member of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Foundation Council since 2016. Since 2011 Ms Hirayama has been dean of the ZHAW School of Engineering and is a member of the ZHAW’s Executive Board. Since 2014 she has also been Head of International Affairs.</p><p>Martina Hirayama studied chemistry at the University of Fribourg, at the ETH Zurich and at Imperial College London, obtaining a doctorate in technical sciences from the ETH. She later took a postgraduate degree in economics at the same institution. Following her doctorate she was group leader at the Institute of Polymers at the ETH Zurich, from 1995. During this time, Ms Hirayama co-founded a start-up in new coating technologies, and was CEO of the company until 2008. In 2003 she began lecturing in industrial chemistry at Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur ZHW, where she developed and headed the field of polymer materials and obtained her professorship. From 2007 to 2010 she developed the Institute of Materials and Process Engineering. Ms Hirayama is a citizen of both Switzerland and Germany.</p><p>With such wide-ranging experience in research, teaching, entrepreneurship, management and administration, Ms Hirayama is very well equipped to head the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI. She has impressive expertise at the interface between science and business. The Federal Council has chosen a person with huge initiative and creativity, with a broad network in the field of education, research and innovation as well as politics, public administration and the private sector.</p><p>Ms Hirayama perfectly meets the exacting requirements of this position of State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation. The important task of equipping Switzerland’s excellent ERI system for the digital future falls to the state secretariat she will now head. The Confederation, cantons, professional organisations and other players must work together to continue to strengthen both vocational and professional education and training and academic education, and to maintain Switzerland’s position as a world leader in research and innovation.</p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-43481300832460066472018-06-30T17:51:00.000-07:002018-06-30T18:19:11.564-07:00Creative Professions<p>The Silicon Valley has seen radical changes in how people work. By people, I mean mostly the creative professionals who conceive the products that made the valley famous. Today, these professionals are not as creative as in the past. We are transitioning to the gig economy, where professionals do not have a fixed job but use the internet to find small assignments. The pay is very low, there are no benefits, and the money is all made by the service website owners: all work is purely transaction oriented and in the case of software, when an app breaks, it is simply abandoned.</p><p>There are conventional jobs with an employment contract and benefits, but the setting is more that of factory workers doing piecework controlled by the company's GitHub site. The companies do not invest in their workers, which do not learn new technologies and hop to a new employer every couple of years.</p><p>The gig economy is different from consulting. Consultants earn approximately twice the salary of a regular employee and make a considerable investment to deepen their expertise.</p><p>In the past, an employee was a resource groomed by companies. The new trend is the reason the most creative products now come from outside the Silicon Valley. The new centers for innovation include (from west to east) London, Lausanne, Zurich, Berlin Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Seul, Tokyo, …</p><p>Before the transition to piecework, a paradigm popular in the Silicon Valley was that of the <em>field dependence of cognitive styles</em>, going back to Herman Witkin in 1962. This paradigm was used to give employees work in which they could excel, form powerful synergistic teams, and also to design user interfaces.</p><p>People with a <em>field dependent</em> cognitive style, are driven by an inner motor (god). They think in a global context and tend to think in parallel, making associations. Field-dependent employees often work well in teams, as they tend to be better at interpersonal relationships. When designing user interfaces, approaches that connect different parts of a topic are useful for field-dependent learners. For example, users can discuss what they know about a topic, predict content, or look at and read related material.</p><p>People driven by a <em>field-independent</em> cognitive style are driven by an outer motor, for example, the product's user. They are analytical, detail oriented, and tend to think sequentially, drawing inferences. Field-independent workers tend to rely less on managers or colleagues for support. In user interfaces, approaches such as extensive reading and writing, which users can carry out alone, are useful.</p><p>Research labs looked for employees that have both a field dependent and a field-independent cognitive style. Such people can envision new theories and can also reduce them to practice by implementing them. Such an activity is called <em>speculative design</em>.</p><p>This paradigm can be extended to the pieceworker of today, who is driven by greed (self). It is also useful to extend the idea to other activities, as shown in this diagram:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RxgwnyxMErr_KwwuarFy_wE0H92XZh4qoWncn-JThfS-k-_pbqAk1IJtb-YGIfXDGVlqIcPQLKz6EGtlXhSBb7aXJRtPvuiKVNzBGyn5q9cOkHoYfjcSfTgWQWdgbNh6kdbU5pPaqbM3/s1600/creativeProfessions.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RxgwnyxMErr_KwwuarFy_wE0H92XZh4qoWncn-JThfS-k-_pbqAk1IJtb-YGIfXDGVlqIcPQLKz6EGtlXhSBb7aXJRtPvuiKVNzBGyn5q9cOkHoYfjcSfTgWQWdgbNh6kdbU5pPaqbM3/s1600/creativeProfessions.gif" alt="creative professions and speculative design" border="0" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="360" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-49656246139200521892018-04-27T19:11:00.001-07:002018-04-27T19:11:25.769-07:00Data Analysis Careers<p>On 25 April 2018, the European Commission increased its investment in AI research to €1.5 billion for the period 2018-2020 under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. This investment is expected to trigger an additional €2.5 billion of funding from existing public-private partnerships, for example on big data and robotics. It will support the development of AI in key sectors, from transport to health; it will connect and strengthen AI research centers across Europe, and encourage testing and experimentation. The Commission will also support the development of an "AI-on-demand platform" that will provide access to relevant AI resources in the EU for all users.</p><p>Additionally, the European Fund for Strategic Investments will be mobilized to provide companies and start-ups with additional support to invest in AI. With the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the aim is to mobilize more than €500 million in total investments by 2020 across a range of key sectors.</p><p>With the dawn of artificial intelligence, many jobs will be created, but others will disappear and most will be transformed. This is why the Commission is encouraging Member States to modernize their education and training systems and support labour market transitions, building on the European Pillar of Social Rights.</p><p>The <em>annus mirabilis</em> of deep learning was 2012 when Google was able to coax millions of users into crowdsourcing labeled images. They also had tens of thousands of servers that were not very busy at night. Most of all, however, Google has an incredible PR department that was able to create a meme.</p><ol> <li>Software defined storage (SDS) on commodity hardware made it very inexpensive to store large amounts of data. When the cloud is used for storage, there are no capital expenditures.</li>
<li>Ordinary citizens became willing to contribute vast amounts of data in barter for free search, email, and SNS services. They were also willing to label their data for free, creating substantial ground truth corpora that can be used as training sets.</li>
<li>High-frequency trading created a market for GPGPU hardware, resulting in much lower prices. Also, new workstation architectures made it possible to break the impasse caused by the end of Moore's law.</li>
<li>ML packages on CRAN made it easy to experiment with R. Torch and Weka made it easy to write applications capable of processing very large datasets.</li>
</ol><p>Many companies are setting up analytics departments and are trying to hire specialists in this field. However, there is great confusion on what the new careers are and how they are different. Often, even the companies posting the job openings do not understand the differences.</p><p>Recently, in the Sunnyvale City Hall, two representatives from LinkedIn and a representative each from UCSC Silicon Valley Extension and California Science and Technology University, participated in a panel organized by NOVA, dispelling the confusion.</p><p>Essentially there are three professions: data analyst, data engineer, and data scientist:</p><ul> <li><strong>Data analysts</strong> tends to be more entry level and do not necessarily need programming or domain knowledge: they visualize data, organize information and summarize data, often using SQL. Essentially, they deal with data "as is."</li>
<li><strong>Data engineers</strong> do what is called data preparation, data wrangling, or data munging. They pull data from multiple, distributed (and often unstructured) data sources and get it ready for data scientists to interpret. They need a computer science background and should be skilled with programming, Hadoop, MapReduce, MySQL, and Spark.</li>
<li><strong>Data scientists</strong> turn the munged data into actionable insights, after they have made sure the data is analytically rigorous and repeatable. They usually have a Ph.D. The ability to communicate is vital! They must have a core understanding of the business, be able to show why the data matters and how it can advance business goals and communicate this to business partners. They need to convince decision makers, usually at the executive level.</li>
</ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS23AxLy8dB-_5tCq8TXlKi4AtjHUywDJMWzoCrEaat4NSRN2ypwxy0-CugewFLAeFQ5onXgCktp3-jz5xKZz2Q3hSKGyY-senLWTIfxLm94Z_5w7asquCVR3VmRzBkjO0iouYdSWV5s-2/s1600/analyticsCareers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS23AxLy8dB-_5tCq8TXlKi4AtjHUywDJMWzoCrEaat4NSRN2ypwxy0-CugewFLAeFQ5onXgCktp3-jz5xKZz2Q3hSKGyY-senLWTIfxLm94Z_5w7asquCVR3VmRzBkjO0iouYdSWV5s-2/s400/analyticsCareers.png" alt="data analysis careers" width="400" height="370" border="0" data-original-width="656" data-original-height="606" /></a></div><div align="center"></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-72338621083046417502018-03-26T16:41:00.001-07:002018-03-26T16:41:42.591-07:00Stanford Workshop on Medical VR and AR<p>5 April 2018, there will be a public workshop on medical head-mounted displays in Stanford. The workshop is designed to support collaborations between the engineers who are developing VR and AR technologies and the surgeons and clinicians who are using these technologies to treat their patients. </p><p>The workshop features talks by researchers who are developing VR and AR technologies to advance healthcare and panel discussions with Stanford physicians who are using VR and AR applications for surgical planning and navigation and for alleviating pain and anxiety in their patients. </p><p>There will be an interactive demo session featuring research projects, clinical applications, and startup ventures. </p><p>Seating is limited, so if you wish to attend, we recommend that you register now at the website <a href="https://scien.stanford.edu/index.php/medicalvrar">https://scien.stanford.edu/index.php/medicalvrar</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_WU6NVs6QggifINDmoxdrBsd4of4DYAaLxcxzd_CPg7inOuSacI_D_ophVgbV2cJMq4IdNZS1O9eLnWKnzokphb2nUyK7usTj_bfUaRiRlisFC2qYBB03GK2d3q32oCMTMQGTUt2crXAH/s1600/workshopMedicalVRAR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_WU6NVs6QggifINDmoxdrBsd4of4DYAaLxcxzd_CPg7inOuSacI_D_ophVgbV2cJMq4IdNZS1O9eLnWKnzokphb2nUyK7usTj_bfUaRiRlisFC2qYBB03GK2d3q32oCMTMQGTUt2crXAH/s400/workshopMedicalVRAR.jpg" alt="Stanford Workshop on Medical VR and AR" width="400" height="167" border="0" data-original-width="700" data-original-height="292" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-15858830808132314012018-02-12T15:23:00.000-08:002018-02-12T15:23:02.791-08:00Claudio Oleari<p>On 23 January 2018, Claudio Oleari passed away at the age of 73 in Reggio Emilia. He was the last and ultimate authority on the OSA-UCS color space and perceptually uniform color.</p><p>He was an eminent physics scholar and an associate professor at the University of Parma, at the Department of Physics and Earth Sciences. He devoted his life to the activities of teaching with the same passion and interest that he dedicated to research in the context of color, applying physics to perception and establishing its role in colorimetry. In 1995 he started the Gruppo in Colorimetria e Reflectoscopia, which later became the Associazione Italiana Colore.</p><p>His availability for colleagues and students and his ability to listen and advise are proverbial: his kindness will always be remembered by everyone who has known him. These qualities are exemplified by the message on his <a href="http://scienzetecnologiebeniculturali.unipr.it/cgi-bin/campusnet/docenti.pl/Show?_id=olearic">profile</a> at the University of Parma “You are welcome any day and at any time, even without an appointment. It is useful to verify by telephone my presence in the office. To book a meeting and ask questions, sent an email to claudio.oleari@fis.unipr.it.”</p><p>He initiated, within the Italiana Association, many valuable informational activities and forged many connections which persist as a rich bibliography, always having in mind the need to invest in research and training both in Italy and abroad.” He initiated, within the Italiana Association, many valuable informational activities and forged many connections which remain as a rich bibliography, always having in mind the need to invest in research and training both in Italy and abroad.</p><p>His death leaves a void difficult to fill, and the world of color loses an intellectual and an attentive and informed scholar.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeK7TSjp18Mn8K6Xhmnom0QTLl_1cynkIBIQRMdNQs74EEztFGeLSdyItN_Ugf_D-_2Ld61caZm0t9m3OuQWUgHyfU55Y_WM7AX4bgKF0KGFgJIwnpuSvti8Yyp89vCcm0udhzNPQ-r0r/s1600/oleari.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAeK7TSjp18Mn8K6Xhmnom0QTLl_1cynkIBIQRMdNQs74EEztFGeLSdyItN_Ugf_D-_2Ld61caZm0t9m3OuQWUgHyfU55Y_WM7AX4bgKF0KGFgJIwnpuSvti8Yyp89vCcm0udhzNPQ-r0r/s400/oleari.jpg" alt="Claudio Oleari" width="265" height="400" border="0" data-original-width="1061" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-30038608376709804292018-01-25T12:21:00.000-08:002018-01-25T12:21:36.513-08:00Perceptual Similarity Sorting Experiment
If you have an extra ~5 minutes please try out our <a href="http://168.61.15.87/sorting_welcome.html">online perceptual similarity sorting experiment</a>.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEoGGeWLstaPrAa83ui1bt2ff-x-Zmh3trL4auEuIG9Q6OFXqUcCP42R8BVENWgdcz_66tsYKJeBULceSxncbFo4rzEs8FwKX1nStiaV5XJQpL82Y6rQVQXiEfAuzl6WtegrqhlS-B0IQ/s1600/1801_example_sort2.gif" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEoGGeWLstaPrAa83ui1bt2ff-x-Zmh3trL4auEuIG9Q6OFXqUcCP42R8BVENWgdcz_66tsYKJeBULceSxncbFo4rzEs8FwKX1nStiaV5XJQpL82Y6rQVQXiEfAuzl6WtegrqhlS-B0IQ/s400/1801_example_sort2.gif" width="400" height="206" data-original-width="994" data-original-height="512" /></a>
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This is follow-up to the work that Michael Ludwig (one of our <a href="https://newsblog.ext.hp.com/t5/HP-newsroom-blog/Summer-2017-interns-at-HP-Labs-Michael-Ludwig/ba-p/995">summer interns from last summer</a>) conducted and is continuing to work on as part of his PhD research.
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For more details, please see this <a href="https://github.com/NMoroney/SimilaritySorting">about page</a> for the experiment. Thank you.
<p>
Nathan Moroneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09545954704890276824noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-79249030555230545212018-01-12T18:17:00.000-08:002018-01-16T16:54:18.889-08:00Annotating detected outliers<p>The so-called <a href="https://github.com/twitter/AnomalyDetection">Twitter Anomaly Detection</a> function for R is excellent but also very minimalistic. The input is a two-column data frame where the first column consists of the timestamps and the second column contains the observations. In addition to a plot, the output is a data frame comprising timestamps, values, and optionally, expected values.</p><p>In practice, we usually have some semantic information that we would also like to include in the output, so we do not have to refer back to the original data. Fortunately, there is a quick-and-dirty way to add a description to the outlier data frame.</p><p>We start with the annotated data frame containing at least columns with the timestamps, the observations, and factors providing contextual or semantic information on each observation. We then create a simple data frame with just the first two columns, which we pass to the outlier detection function.</p><p>We can write a trivial function that for each outlier finds the row index in the simple data frame and looks up the semantic information in the annotated data frame:</p><pre>AddDescription <- <strong>function</strong>(series1, series2, outliers) {
quantity <- lengths(outliers$anoms[1])
<strong>if</strong> (quantity < 1) <strong>return</strong> (<strong>NULL</strong>)
else {
result <- <strong>NULL</strong>
for (i in 1:quantity) {
rowIndex <- which(series1$timestamp == outliers$anoms$timestamp[i])
newRow <- data.frame(outliers$anoms$timestamp[i],
outliers$anoms$anoms[i],
as.character(series2$note[rowIndex]))
result <- rbind(result, newRow)
}
colnames (result) <- c("timestamp", "outlier_value", "description")
<strong> return</strong> (result)
}
}</pre><p>This function is just an elementary example. It is easy to add to each outlier more detailed information you can compile from the full data frame.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJN6YqoT6_ROukXQExbz__5MNx1kVIaGaMsaGZdjCtR_HYkaEfhgbA5sYWFj8hr67AAG_7s6mMAWEBRU2nNdyBFalPRoECxoBeqfL4U-1kszb3qP678GZsIqVgo0YHj11K8nA9EDkj9Neu/s1600/outliers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJN6YqoT6_ROukXQExbz__5MNx1kVIaGaMsaGZdjCtR_HYkaEfhgbA5sYWFj8hr67AAG_7s6mMAWEBRU2nNdyBFalPRoECxoBeqfL4U-1kszb3qP678GZsIqVgo0YHj11K8nA9EDkj9Neu/s400/outliers.png" alt="Time series with outliers at green markers" width="400" height="182" border="0" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="436" /></a></div></p><table border="0" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="1"><caption> outliers with descriptions </caption>
<tr> <th scope="col"> </th> <th scope="col"><tt>timestamp</tt></th> <th scope="col"><tt>outlier_value</tt></th> <th scope="col"><tt>description</tt></th> </tr>
<tr> <td><tt>1</tt></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>2017-01-17 06:53:00</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>209</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>gear display flashing</tt></div></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><tt>2</tt></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>2017-09-19 09:10:00</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>206</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>gear shift failure</tt></div></td> </tr>
<tr> <td><tt>3</tt></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>2017-11-17 07:26:00</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>211</tt></div></td> <td><div align="center"><tt>check engine lamp on</tt></div></td> </tr>
</table><p>Dates are a sore point of analytics: they alway get you. When no time zone is specified, i.e., tz = "", R assumes the local time zone. In the data frame returned by Twitter's <code>AnomalyDetectionTs</code> functions, the time column has UTC as the time zone. Therefore, the following statement is useful after the call to <code>AnomalyDetectionTs</code>:</p><pre>anomalies$anoms$timestamp <- as.POSIXct(anomalies$anoms$timestamp, tz = "")</pre>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-81936601831138893652017-12-18T12:12:00.000-08:002017-12-18T12:12:39.050-08:00Lakota Waldorf School Fighting Poverty on an Indian Reservation<p>If you are still looking to give a Christmas or year's end <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org/how-you-can-help/">gift that can make a big impact</a>, consider a school in one of the poorest counties in the USA. It is the <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a> in Kyle, SouthDakota, the only Waldorf School on an Indian Reservation.</p><p>Swiss native Isabel Stadnick is one of the founders and current administrator, and her husband Robert Stadnick is a tribal member. In 1992, they traveled to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetheanum">Goetheanum</a> with two additional Lakota tribal members, when Dr. Heinz Zimmermann—the head of the Waldorf movement—encouraged the founders to incorporate the Lakota language and culture.</p><p>The <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a>'s mission is to empower the children and initiate their educational process with creativity, positivity, community and Lakota culture. The <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a> is a small school, surrounded by never-ending prairie, in the midst of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This reservation is one of the poorest counties in the United States, with an unemployment rate of 75% to 80%. Many of the local people suffer from severe alcohol and drug abuse, and much of the reservation is considered a food desert.</p><p>Because of these circumstances, the <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a> is an incredible support system for the 24 children who attend the school. They provide the children with wholesome meals and send them home on Friday afternoon with a weekend pack filled with healthy snacks since many of the families do not have the resources for a nutritious meal.</p><p>Each morning, the children are greeted with the wonderful smell of a healthy breakfast of oatmeal, scrambled eggs from their chicken or rice pudding with honey and raisins. Lunch consists of only organic food, vegetables from their garden and bison meat from a local store. All meals are cooked at the school.</p><p>The sixteen kindergartners and eight first and second graders that make up the <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School,</a> begin their day with the morning verse in the Lakota language, Lakota songs, music, and stories. The curriculum includes language, arts, math, science, and social studies as well as handwork, flute music, painting, drawing and modeling classes and storytelling throughout the day.</p><p>Currently, the entire school consists of one small building which houses the kindergarten, kitchen, and office. There is a separate small building for the first and second grade. To continue supporting students and their families, they are planning to add grades 3, 4 and 5 and up to 8th grade in the coming years. Plans are also underway to build an urgently needed additional building, housing a bigger kitchen, three or four additional classrooms and a healthy café shop. The new building would be built with only straw bales and solar and wind energy. Jeff Dickinson, well known as a Waldorf and a clean energy architect, is involved in the addition of the school.</p><p>Not only is Waldorf education important for these children, but the support they receive is crucial to their overall well-being. The families cannot afford to pay tuition. Therefore, the school is 100% donation-funded. The <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a>, the administration, current and future students and families would appreciate any <a href="https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E340784&id=1">donation</a>, small or large, to sustain Waldorf education on the Pine Ridge Reservation.</p><p>People who volunteered and spent a week working with the students, who are growing up in severe poverty and some in traumatic circumstances, can personally attest to the positive impact the school has on each of their lives. The sincere hope is that the <a href="http://lakotawaldorfschool.org">Lakota Waldorf School</a> will continue to thrive and educate young ones for years to come.</p><p>Please visit the website <a href="http://www.lakotawaldorfschool.org">www.lakotawaldorfschool.org</a> and consider making a <a href="https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=E340784&id=1">donation</a> to ensure the survival of this extraordinary school.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zPtCFHLOptFNdrgoO9UllmkUYFdXmdGGT_iJmkZsgFRFu15mHRBJYDN-b__jjGGtE8zoC3-lnKNZbDtzj1teOJIG3PbEgKevkt39GFMrbNnKfgrEk2Z6T4jmEqgnq6bxzcN2QfbJ4p4r/s1600/LakotaWaldorfSchool-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0zPtCFHLOptFNdrgoO9UllmkUYFdXmdGGT_iJmkZsgFRFu15mHRBJYDN-b__jjGGtE8zoC3-lnKNZbDtzj1teOJIG3PbEgKevkt39GFMrbNnKfgrEk2Z6T4jmEqgnq6bxzcN2QfbJ4p4r/s400/LakotaWaldorfSchool-logo.jpg" alt="Lakota Waldorf School" width="400" height="182" border="0" data-original-width="1320" data-original-height="600" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-8417960578391252632017-12-04T14:37:00.000-08:002017-12-04T14:37:45.092-08:003D printing of bacteria into functional complex materials<p>A team from the ETH in Zurich and the University College in Dublin has been able to demonstrate a 3D printing approach to create bacteria-derived functional materials by combining the natural diverse metabolism of bacteria with the shape design freedom of additive manufacturing.</p><p>They have developed a biocompatible hydrogel with optimized rheological properties that allows for the immobilization of bacteria into 3D-printed architectures at a high accuracy. They have demonstrated two applications: degrading environmental toxins, and making cellulose, which can be used as scaffolds for skin replacements and coatings for biomedical devices that help protect patients against organ rejection.</p><p>Immobilization of <em>Pseudomonas putida</em>, a known phenol degrader, when printed allows to degrade phenol into biomass, showing the potential of the 3D bacteria printing platform for biotechnological applications. Immobilization of <em>Acetobacter xylinum</em> in a predesigned 3D matrix enables the in situ formation of bacterial cellulose scaffolds on nonplanar surfaces, relevant for personalized biomedical applications.</p><p><a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/12/eaao6804">Science Advances 01 Dec 2017: Vol. 3, no. 12, eaao6804 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao6804</a></p><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHeUVRlrN3A67L_oNLFHiqp3axj-5aTQyIIANz1mgrFxusCr9gaA9TEDELneOVxQzhmOOC7VwrhL1d3L1NQAha6xmlYohsF20dlZctBYFLnZI5qX6V81layxITKkXPdfg5zkRTSpVs24bb/s1600/flink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHeUVRlrN3A67L_oNLFHiqp3axj-5aTQyIIANz1mgrFxusCr9gaA9TEDELneOVxQzhmOOC7VwrhL1d3L1NQAha6xmlYohsF20dlZctBYFLnZI5qX6V81layxITKkXPdfg5zkRTSpVs24bb/s400/flink.jpg" alt="Schematics of the 3D bacteria-printing platform for the creation of functional living materials" width="400" height="213" border="0" data-original-width="1050" data-original-height="558" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-30467385191184793312017-11-29T15:43:00.000-08:002017-11-29T15:43:01.325-08:00National debt in percent of GDP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX_JtXTyK5G2alswAFCWq51RSwEdIGCH1js8Na7DLehy50U2Z0r51EqprvGBP5M-dU1cCmsB7Bt3Zg0LgFOoAmilkpxrUWuChaKTmBaslAjd_HPgUyQLnUpPdbr_H7H_kS5K6edNaMNBWp/s1600/nationalDebt2016.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX_JtXTyK5G2alswAFCWq51RSwEdIGCH1js8Na7DLehy50U2Z0r51EqprvGBP5M-dU1cCmsB7Bt3Zg0LgFOoAmilkpxrUWuChaKTmBaslAjd_HPgUyQLnUpPdbr_H7H_kS5K6edNaMNBWp/s640/nationalDebt2016.png" width="533" height="640" data-original-width="636" data-original-height="764" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-57023472311092730442017-11-14T16:00:00.000-08:002017-11-14T16:00:10.176-08:00AAAS Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility<p>Scientific freedom and scientific responsibility are essential to the advancement of human knowledge for the benefit of all. Scientific freedom is the freedom to engage in scientific inquiry, pursue and apply knowledge, and communicate openly. This freedom is inextricably linked to and must be exercised in accordance with scientific responsibility. Scientific responsibility is the duty to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, in a spirit of stewardship for the environment, and with respect for human rights.</p><p>For more information: <a href="https://www.aaas.org/page/aaas-statement-scientific-freedom-responsibility">https://www.aaas.org/page/aaas-statement-scientific-freedom-responsibility</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RxzXCxzw7dpVKEPMquqnqAj1FH3Q7Ag6eQgjkiX1cDnTRPvQcBOXxNMPgXoDqS9yltWrhc5ILRgOchResCqfSbG6upYA7Gizg6OwwqrfPYEtWTdJUqJ0k4aXERMkylu9oX3usbmHQecj/s1600/research.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RxzXCxzw7dpVKEPMquqnqAj1FH3Q7Ag6eQgjkiX1cDnTRPvQcBOXxNMPgXoDqS9yltWrhc5ILRgOchResCqfSbG6upYA7Gizg6OwwqrfPYEtWTdJUqJ0k4aXERMkylu9oX3usbmHQecj/s400/research.jpg" alt="Camille Flammarion: "Urbi et Orbi”, in L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire, 1888" width="400" height="334" border="0" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="401" /></a></div><p><a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2009/05/where-sky-and-earth-touch.html">Where the sky and the Earth touch</a></p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-4003819043655712802017-11-09T13:40:00.000-08:002017-11-09T13:40:37.935-08:00Panasonic buying deep learning startup<p>Arimo was born Adatao in 2013 and <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Deals/Panasonic-buying-Silicon-Valley-AI-startup">is being acquired by Panasonic</a>. It calls its product <em>Behavioral AI</em> and targets it to machine learning for Industry 4.0.</p><p>It started with two tools. <em>pAnalytics</em> is a Spark environment providing an API where developers can work with the data and expose it to the end users with charts and graphs. <em>pInsights</em> is the end user layer, which takes natural language queries. This tool learns from the end user's interactions and can suggest possible queries.</p><p>This approach is used to learn from the past behavior of equipment to identify complex anomalies that are hard to predict with traditional statistical modeling. The same deep learning algorithms can also be used to predict retail shopper's behavior to offer them incentives and optimize store inventories. A related solution area is financial services, where the technology can find signals and anomalies in large-scale transactional data to detect fraud, model risk, and predict investor or consumer behavior.</p><p>Panasonic first aims to apply the technology to data on business refrigerators for supermarkets and convenience stores. It envisions a service reducing energy consumption for a store chain overall by setting optimal operating patterns for individual stores, based on past data on refrigerators' internal temperature and energy use. Panasonic can then expand the application to industrial air conditioners.</p><p>In the future, Panasonic plans services to manage the physical health of the elderly based on data from appliances and a range of sensors. Since Panasonic has few data analysis experts, Arimo will be a training ground for its employees.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARZIE6zMQhiWhC-2DL4O4kiDv9fD-jmWt65p-VgnU_Yb54lBRDTQeiHKxOqt0NFefnK2udZpiKf_j7lTnTwQ_wg40VqHSfjcyxHwBxYOoQR2MUPoPlR8arm3dOnx3c4Ftzn74yUwJHCF6/s1600/2010_05_16-13_29_09.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjARZIE6zMQhiWhC-2DL4O4kiDv9fD-jmWt65p-VgnU_Yb54lBRDTQeiHKxOqt0NFefnK2udZpiKf_j7lTnTwQ_wg40VqHSfjcyxHwBxYOoQR2MUPoPlR8arm3dOnx3c4Ftzn74yUwJHCF6/s400/2010_05_16-13_29_09.JPG" alt="Kansai" width="400" height="266" border="0" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="319" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-88088923090808271932017-11-03T14:47:00.000-07:002017-11-03T15:29:58.248-07:003d face recognition<p>This morning, #45 announced a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/11/02/statement-president-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act">massive tax relief for the American people</a>. Also as of this morning, the new <a href="https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/">iPhone X</a> is available for purchase in Apple stores.</p><p>If you are investing your massive tax relief in an <a href="https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/">iPhone X</a>, do not just look at the gorgeous OLED screen, but also at the 3d face recognition sensor, because you have been reading about the underlying physics on this blog.</p><p>It has been over a dozen years since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_J._Gunther">Neil J. Gunther</a> of <a href="http://www.perfdynamics.com">Performance Dynamics</a>, annoyed by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshar_experiment">Harvard professor</a>'s claim of having disproved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarity_(physics)">Bohr's complementarity principle</a>, proposed to follow the idea of VLSI design rules to formulate <a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2005/HPL-2005-129.html">practical design rules for quantum communications and quantum imaging devices</a>.</p><p>We performed interference experiments in Neil's kitchen using a green laser and a paper clip to form an image. Sergio Magistri noticed that doing physics is good, but creating an artifact that we could sell would be better. He hooked us up with <a href="https://people.epfl.ch/edoardo.charbon">Edoardo Charbon</a>, who had invented a CMOS <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-photon_avalanche_diode">SPAD</a> array.</p><p>After lengthy discussions, Edoardo—who in the meantime had become a professor at <a href="http://aqua.epfl.ch">EPFL</a>—was willing to reduce our ideas to practice. We received a 500,000 franc grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation to buy the lab equipment and a matching grant from the European Union to hire <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YAqv7_0AAAAJ&hl=en">Dmitri Boiko</a> as a postdoc.</p><p>To form the image, we used the metal plate creating the nozzles in an ink jet cartridge to obtain an array of pinholes.</p><p>We performed <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.795166">experiments supporting the concept of a g<sup>2</sup>-camera</a>, summarized on this <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2008/09/experiments-supporting-concept-of-g2.html">blog</a>. The statistical post-analysis was so challenging that Neil had to implement it in the fast processor of an oscilloscope. We wrote two papers with the early details:</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/11/1/013001">A quantum imager for intensity correlated photons</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.17.015087">On the application of a monolithic array for detecting intensity-correlated photons emitted by different source types</a></li>
</ul><p>The blog posts <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2007/06/hot-body-excited-particles-and-north.html">hot body, excited particles, and the north sky</a> and <a href="http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2007/06/chaotic-light-sources.html">chaotic light sources</a> are the basis for telling apart the sources for the photons reaching the SPAD array.</p><p>It is amazing that today the computations can be done on a small, inexpensive smartphone. However, it took 13 years and hundreds if not thousands of people to get to today's device, a simpler version of which, by the way, is also used in Bosch measures.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoVY6Pm2XS7PpYtc3S3yRldbwmltjs5MTjZrXjVRhG6rW2VUxrffe-qWMXvH40NHM1Yyhqhrk52h81_clDwEs7Og0RuSTHBwGrGtyrjDRxT822VqObRFXH5EeNI4xemGg9DbQlAhwzssx/s1600/incoherentSrc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoVY6Pm2XS7PpYtc3S3yRldbwmltjs5MTjZrXjVRhG6rW2VUxrffe-qWMXvH40NHM1Yyhqhrk52h81_clDwEs7Og0RuSTHBwGrGtyrjDRxT822VqObRFXH5EeNI4xemGg9DbQlAhwzssx/s400/incoherentSrc.jpg" width="400" height="184" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="221" /></a></div><p>石の上にも三年</p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-77268631922150856832017-10-05T16:12:00.000-07:002017-10-05T16:12:56.040-07:00Computational Near-Eye Displays with Focus Cues<p><a href="https://scien.stanford.edu">SCIEN</a> has resumed at Stanford with the talk <em>Computational Near-Eye Displays with Focus Cues</em> by <a href="http://www.computationalimaging.org">Gordon Wetzstein</a>. This presentation is an overview of research at Stanford.</p><p>Inflection points in near-eye displays:</p><ul> <li>1838 Stereoscopes by Wheatstone, Brewster, …</li>
<li>1968 Ivan Sutherland</li>
<li>1995 Nintendo Virtual Boy</li>
<li>2012–2017 VR explosion</li>
</ul><p>Currently, the big enablers are the smartphone components.</p><p>The main purpose of the lenses in near-eye displays is to set the virtual image further away because we cannot focus too close.</p><p>Stereoptics is binocular; the mechanism of vergence is cued by binocular disparity. Focus cues are monocular; the mechanism of accommodation is cued by retinal blur.</p><p>The big problem is the vergence-accommodation conflict..</p><p>Gaze-contingent focus. For non-presbyopes, the adaptive focus is like the real world, but it requires eye tracking. Presbyopes need a fixed focal plane with correction.</p><p>Light field displays are not yet well-developed. The idea is to project multiple different perspectives into different parts of the pupil. Example: tensor displays. Light field displays are limited by diffraction.</p><p>The next step is multifocal lenses: point spread function engineering.</p><p>The challenges for AR are</p><ol> <li> Design thin beam combiners using waveguides</li>
<li> Eye box vs. field of view trade-off</li>
<li> Eye tracking</li>
<li> Chromatic aberrations</li>
<li> Occlusions; difficulty: need to block real light</li>
</ol><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAOAr92KU6kH28Z69loC6JyLP-4UhBoMfkqdySYdD2YewskW20x4d__Bz4chFukGB3L-rVJIdiyk-7-hZ5I6PdokoTQLv6GZXtaf6m9kSVAewazO8E6sF5NLcsVLPgEXgH5vN0Hyj7QwU/s1600/gaze_contingent_moving.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAOAr92KU6kH28Z69loC6JyLP-4UhBoMfkqdySYdD2YewskW20x4d__Bz4chFukGB3L-rVJIdiyk-7-hZ5I6PdokoTQLv6GZXtaf6m9kSVAewazO8E6sF5NLcsVLPgEXgH5vN0Hyj7QwU/s400/gaze_contingent_moving.gif" alt="Only a few mm of physical display displacement results in a large change of the perceived virtual image" width="400" height="225" border="0" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="540" /></a></div></p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-13017070122079962462017-09-11T15:29:00.000-07:002017-09-11T15:29:09.153-07:00Retinotopy<p>The latest issue of Science magazine has an article explaining how the retinotopic map is built during the development of the eye. The authors show that glial cells that ensheath axons relay cues from photoreceptors to induce the differentiation of the photoreceptor target field—the so-called lamina neurons. Thus, glia can play an instructive role in differentiation, helping to direct the spatiotemporal patterning of neurogenesis.</p><p>Science 01 Sep 2017: Vol. 357, Issue 6354, pp. 886–891, <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6354/886">DOI: 10.1126/science.aan3174</a></p><p>Another recent article demonstrated that there is no retinotopic map further up in the visual system where object recognition takes place.</p><p>Science 18 Aug 2017: Vol. 357, Issue 6352, pp. 687-692, <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6352/687">DOI: 10.1126/science.aan4800</a></p><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclKO1achFB9W86f3BV25oY5fejaDjUqV4mQXcLhFfq3pN3O5bWIdOSwcI_YEOlYShTw2LHTVVg6NPO4eDVtwaj7WdxHcpJF6vfe3nrGCMCs0UCgzlcwJjbrBpS_YBcqcXDoBnklcazF4G/s1600/neuronalDevelopment.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclKO1achFB9W86f3BV25oY5fejaDjUqV4mQXcLhFfq3pN3O5bWIdOSwcI_YEOlYShTw2LHTVVg6NPO4eDVtwaj7WdxHcpJF6vfe3nrGCMCs0UCgzlcwJjbrBpS_YBcqcXDoBnklcazF4G/s400/neuronalDevelopment.png" alt="Glia relay differentiation cues to coordinate neuronal development in Drosophila" width="400" height="265" border="0" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="848" /></a></div></p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-57963523271552700212017-08-21T14:44:00.000-07:002017-08-21T14:44:28.111-07:00biology of colorThe 4 August issue of Science (Vol. 357, Issue 6350, eaan0221) has a valuable article on <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6350/eaan0221">the biology of color</a> describing the current state of the art in this interdisciplinary field of animal coloration. This article is important because in the past 20 years there has been significant progress in this field.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHAX_2Axt4rOuFcFy1UBrQQjoncVD1E-CeOHhynlbHxMsGEREUHmZeBKCNfiMMYEtgnRely8BJGTjnUOFTK9O_7Y9F7u6vqadUrsLYT91N3ap8qWgjsFvF2aAzga1bJ_Sm6JHSa0jYmmF-/s1600/mantisShrimpR8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHAX_2Axt4rOuFcFy1UBrQQjoncVD1E-CeOHhynlbHxMsGEREUHmZeBKCNfiMMYEtgnRely8BJGTjnUOFTK9O_7Y9F7u6vqadUrsLYT91N3ap8qWgjsFvF2aAzga1bJ_Sm6JHSa0jYmmF-/s400/mantisShrimpR8.jpg" alt="mantis shrimp" width="400" height="321" border="0" data-original-width="484" data-original-height="388" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-71289351640608309042017-08-17T10:47:00.000-07:002017-08-17T10:47:39.745-07:00Critical thinking in a changing world<p>Monday evening, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gioiadeucher/?ppe=1">Gioia Deucher</a>, the new CEO of <a href="http://www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org">swissnex San Francisco</a> on Pier 17, hosted a double event on critical thinking. The first event was only for ETH alumni and consisted of networking followed by a speech by ETH President <a href="https://www.ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/organisation/executive-board/president/contact.html">Lino Guzzella</a> and a general discussion. Prof. Guzzella noted that in recent years, students have changed and despite social media have become much nerdier and socially isolated. Consequently, the ETH has to change how it teaches.</p><p>As a professor of mechanical engineering, Guzzella does not expect any new breakthroughs in the physics for building mechanical equipment. What is more important for a mechanical engineer is to understand the context requiring a new machine and grasp the problem holistically and proposing a new approach.</p><p>The human genetic code has not changed over the ages and is still the same as for hunter gatherers. Critical thinking is essential, but it is hard to criticize oneself: we are dependent on a group that mutually criticizes and debates.</p><p>This autumn, the ETH is introducing significant changes. In teaching, the emphasis will be more on understanding and solving problems than on learning. Students will have the option for project-oriented study and more personal coaching with group study. In the study directions, the ETH is starting a new department of medicine, which will allow a proper medical study. Initially, the new department will only go until the bachelor level, after which students can transfer directly to a Swiss university with a medicine program or change to a more traditional ETH department like bioinformatics. As we live longer and longer, significant medical progress is necessary to maintain life quality into the old age.</p><p>When a question came about ETH's plans for massive open online courses (MOOC), Prof. Guzzella stated that they go counter the new direction to foster critical thinking and team work: students need physical proximity and a shared experience to become extraordinary people.</p><p>The public second event, which had unexpectedly high attendance, started with lightning talks and a panel discussion, followed by a discussion with the audience and finally a standing dinner with animated discussions and networking.</p><p>The speakers were <a href="https://www.ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/organisation/executive-board/president/contact.html">Lino Guzzella</a>, President of ETH Zurich and Professor for thermotronics; <a href="http://www.turing.ethz.ch/people/directory-board/prof--dr--gerd-folkers.html">Gerd Folkers</a>, Chair Science Studies and Critical Thinking Initiative at ETH and former Head of the Collegium Helveticum, a joint think-tank of ETH and University of Zurich; <a href="https://dlcl.stanford.edu/people/hans-ulrich-gumbrecht">Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht</a>, Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature and of French & Italian at Stanford; <a href="http://www.fullpower.com/home/philippe_kahn">Philippe Kahn</a>, the CEO of Fullpower, the creative team behind the Sleeptracker IoT Smartbed technology platform and the MotionX Wearable Technology platform. The moderator was <a href="http://www.driversofchange.com/about/team/chris-luebkeman/">Chris Luebkeman</a>, Arup Fellow and Global Director of Arup Foresight.</p><p>There was a consensus that to contribute to the wellness and progress of society, and it is indispensable to excel in critical thinking and bring about paradigm shifts. There is no point for a bright mind to just do repetitive intellectual tasks like at the Academy of Projectors. Critical thinking requires a fertile environment, therefore creating groups and projects is more important than promoting individual excellence.</p><p>Publications are a very bad metric. A paper needs the unpaid work of three reviewers and is expensive regarding social costs, yet 52% of publications are never cited and consequently have no value because they do not contribute to society.</p><p>Excellence in research requires freedom and money. Professors should not be told which research to conduct and should not waste time chasing grants. Science is for the good of society and society should fund research and tuition at universities (I never had to pay a penny of tuition for my diploma in mathematics and my doctorate in informatics). Critical thinking is what prevents the Lagado of Gulliver's third voyage: a habitat for scientists critically thinking in a changing world instead of an Academy of Projectors.</p><p>When Stanford wanted to introduce the option for STEM students to major or minor in literature, Prof. Gumbrecht was the strongest opponent. However, after the first year, he now realized that his best students had all come from STEM and he has become a strong advocate for the program.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr1c3BZQfn4Or0MpRRoXOv0IhopxyfDSsaPkkgGephWNKPXkV_upwhFOwHBR5gHEr2gfzMljY6w3CSAyvqTiQoJ5f1V1i_E9vKQaGKmB3qboexo14GfmTSMMVwnBJWkIvidWNbA0HYFBUK/s1600/lagadoBW.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr1c3BZQfn4Or0MpRRoXOv0IhopxyfDSsaPkkgGephWNKPXkV_upwhFOwHBR5gHEr2gfzMljY6w3CSAyvqTiQoJ5f1V1i_E9vKQaGKmB3qboexo14GfmTSMMVwnBJWkIvidWNbA0HYFBUK/s400/lagadoBW.png" alt="speculative learning machine at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado" width="400" height="368" border="0" data-original-width="1567" data-original-height="1442" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-42487885807698077472017-07-06T13:25:00.000-07:002017-07-06T13:25:36.699-07:00Well-being in the San Francisco Bay Area<p>At the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, Martin Seligman and more than 20 psychologists, physicians, and computer scientists in the World Well-Being Project used machine learning and natural language processing to sift through Twitter. They have been able to rank each of the 3235 U.S. counties according to well-being, depression, trust, and five personality traits.</p><p>For the Bay Area, the rankings are:</p><table border="0" cellspacing="3" cellpadding="2"> <tr>
<th scope="col"><div align="right">Rank</div></th>
<th scope="col"><div align="center">County</div></th>
<th scope="col">Percentile</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">8</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Marin</div></td>
<td>99.8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">17</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Sonoma</div></td>
<td>99.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">26</div></td>
<td><div align="center">San Francisco</div></td>
<td>99.2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">36</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Napa</div></td>
<td>98.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">37</div></td>
<td><div align="center">San Mateo</div></td>
<td>98.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">61</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Santa Clara</div></td>
<td>98.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">120</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Santa Cruz</div></td>
<td>96.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">341</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Alameda</div></td>
<td>89.5</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">455</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Sacramento</div></td>
<td>86.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">505</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Contra Costa</div></td>
<td>84.4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><div align="right">1429</div></td>
<td><div align="center">Solano</div></td>
<td>55.9</td>
</tr>
</table><p>If you live in the U.S., you can check your county in their <a href="http://map.wwbp.org">online map</a>. For example, Kings County in New York ranks 448, while the District of Columbia ranks 49.</p><p>How is your well-being?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigR_Scd6f_9WDMFxE9UH55t6DWuMUSU5N30DtWhjKVrObWux_r10cuz3MYzSdzjXfS8ccewph0zOFi7macGetws7Ei3zGO54LKlnTua0RkZ9F8blM2WOkyfvpCxExt4gnOyQz0ItIOFh12/s1600/wellbeing.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigR_Scd6f_9WDMFxE9UH55t6DWuMUSU5N30DtWhjKVrObWux_r10cuz3MYzSdzjXfS8ccewph0zOFi7macGetws7Ei3zGO54LKlnTua0RkZ9F8blM2WOkyfvpCxExt4gnOyQz0ItIOFh12/s400/wellbeing.png" alt="well-being ranks of Bay Area counties" width="400" height="286" border="0" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1142" /></a></div>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188823222763071436.post-48747865911099479142017-07-04T14:59:00.000-07:002017-07-04T14:59:20.009-07:00Imaging and Astronomy<p>At the 2018 IS&T <a href="http://www.imaging.org/site/IST/IST/Conferences/EI/Symposium_Overview.aspx">International Symposium on Electronic Imaging</a> (EI 2018), taking place 28 January – 1 February 2018 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport, Burlingame, California, Prof. Daniele Marini is organizing a <a href="http://www.imaging.org/site/IST/IST/Conferences/EI/EI_2018/Special_Events.aspx">joint session</a> on imaging and astronomy.</p><p>This new session brings together amateur and professional astronomers, vision scientists, color scientists, astrophysicists, data visualization specialists and all others with interest in astronomy and photography. Astronomers and others interested are invited to submit papers considering different aspects of digital imaging that are relevant for astronomical imaging, image processing, and data visualization, e.g., including color reproduction, display, quality, and noise.</p><p>We anticipate that the astronomical imaging community will have an exceptional opportunity to connect with digital imaging professionals and exchange experiences. If your work in the field of photography of astronomic subjects, We would be delighted to have you as a speaker discussing your work. <a href="http://www.imaging.org/site/IST/IST/Conferences/EI/EI_2018/For_Authors.aspx">Please use this link for your submission</a>.</p><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkjLxhgCvpwMECn6LDlZKpHzdJKLxd0vwGwVkZoC8NHCcsFotcz-IwmYtY9EK2CLd3_QMqKKcHPJ2erUX20KnhwCfq9bigyFuaNR3l5Y6Sl9fjXNsYkTmnKZHfjZHy1A6pTDn_9_0Y376/s1600/HPIM3766s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkjLxhgCvpwMECn6LDlZKpHzdJKLxd0vwGwVkZoC8NHCcsFotcz-IwmYtY9EK2CLd3_QMqKKcHPJ2erUX20KnhwCfq9bigyFuaNR3l5Y6Sl9fjXNsYkTmnKZHfjZHy1A6pTDn_9_0Y376/s640/HPIM3766s.jpg" alt="Rob Buckley, Shoji Tominaga, and Daniele Marini" width="640" height="482" border="0" data-original-width="525" data-original-height="395" /></a></div></p><p>Daniele Marini (right) receives the IS&T Fellow award with Shoji Tominaga (center) and Rob Buckley (left).</p>Giordano Berettahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07676490672431958222noreply@blogger.com0