Knowledge Science

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Why Venezuela's Currency Crisis Is A Case Study For Bitcoin

Tue, 2017-02-07 16:42 — Kathy Gilbeaux

People stand in line to withdraw cash from an automated teller machine (ATM) outside a bank in Caracas, Venezuela, on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016. (Wil Riera/Bloomberg)

forbes.com - by Kevin Rands - February 3, 2017

As the value of hard currency changes drastically—and often—developing or recession-hit countries are finding Bitcoin as an innovative solution.

Just look at Venezuela, the country with the highest inflation rate in the world. The socialist nation has experienced a swift fall in oil prices, throwing the entire economy into turmoil. Experts say that Venezuelan inflation could go as high as 1,600%, leaving many people without basic necessities. . . .

. . . With the Venezuelan bolivar essentially worthless and supplies rapidly running out, Bitcoin is rising as an answer.

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Blockchain: the answer to life, the universe and everything?

Thu, 2016-07-07 21:38 — Maeryn Obley

Image: The blockchain was developed as a means of creating digital property without the need for a central authority keeping track of who owns what. Photograph: Jacob Carter/Rex/Shutterstock

theguardian.com - July 7th 2016 - Alex Hern

Have you heard the good news? The blockchain is here – and it’s going to save everything.

If you aren’t tied to the tech community, you might not have picked up on this salvation rhetoric.

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CLICK HERE - PlaNet - Photo Geolocation with Convolutional Neural Networks

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Google Unveils Neural Network with “Superhuman” Ability to Determine the Location of Almost Any Image

Mon, 2016-02-29 20:37 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Guessing the location of a randomly chosen Street View image is hard, even for well-traveled humans. But Google’s latest artificial-intelligence machine manages it with relative ease.

CLICK HERE - GeoGuessr

technologyreview.com - by Emerging Technology from the arXiv - February 24, 2016

Here’s a tricky task. Pick a photograph from the Web at random. Now try to work out where it was taken using only the image itself. . . .

. . . Tobias Weyand, a computer vision specialist at Google, and a couple of pals . . . have trained a deep-learning machine to work out the location of almost any photo using only the pixels it contains.

Their new machine significantly outperforms humans and can even use a clever trick to determine the location of indoor images and pictures of specific things such as pets, food, and so on that have no location cues.

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Why Tech Is Accelerating

Wed, 2016-01-13 09:33 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Graphic from Singularity is Near, demonstrating "Law of Accelerating Returns" in the field of computation

huffingtonpost.com - by Peter Diamandis - January 10, 2016

No doubt you've heard of Moore's Law.

What you might not realize is that Moore's Law only refers to the exponential price-performance improvements of integrated circuits (over the last 50 years).

Did you know that exponential growth has been going on for a much longer period? Or that such growth is occurring in other fields outside of computing, such as communication and genomics?

(ALSO SEE SAME ARTICLE HERE)

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CLICK HERE - WHO - Developing Global Norms for Sharing Data and Results during Public Health Emergencies

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How Research Data Sharing Can Save Lives

Mon, 2015-09-21 23:14 — Kathy Gilbeaux

blogs.bmj.com - by Trish Groves / The BMJ - September 8, 2015

The whole debate on sharing clinical study data has focused on transparency, reproducibility, and completing the evidence base for treatments. Yet public health emergencies such as the Ebola and MERS outbreaks provide a vitally important reason for sharing study data, usually before publication or even before submission to a journal, and ideally in a public repository.

CLICK HERE - Wikipedia - Ingelfinger rule

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http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN0NC19W20150421?sp=true

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Scientists to share real-time genetic data on deadly MERS, Ebola

Tue, 2015-04-21 11:39 — mike kraft

REUTERS by Kate Kelland April 21, 2015

LONDON, April 21 - Genetic sequence data on two of the deadliest yet most poorly understood viruses are to be made available to researchers worldwide in real time as scientists seek to speed up understanding of Ebola and MERS infections.

The project, led by British scientists with West African and Saudi Arabian collaboration, hopes to encourage laboratories around the world to use the live data -- updated as new cases emerge -- to find new ways to diagnose and treat the killer diseases, and ideally, ultimately, prevent them.

"The collective expertise of the world's infectious disease experts is more powerful than any single lab, and the best way of tapping into this...is to make data freely available as soon as possible," said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity which is funding the work.

The gene sequences, already available for MERS cases and soon to come in the case of Ebola, will be posted on the website virological.org for anyone to see, access and use.

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CLICK HERE - Link Removal for the Control of Stochastically Evolving Epidemics Over Networks: A Comparison of Approaches

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Link Removal for the Control of Stochastically Evolving Epidemics Over Networks: A Comparison of Approaches

Tue, 2015-02-24 21:00 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by George Hurlburt

sciencedirect.com - Elsevier - February 16, 2015 - doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.02.005

Highlights

• Disease control efforts are often constrained by limited resources.
• Limited resources can be used more effectively by leveraging network information.
• We compare four link removal algorithms to prevent disease spread under a budget.
• Optimal quarantining performs best for large budgets and structured networks.
• Knowing where an outbreak begins is most valuable at moderate budget levels.

Abstract

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http://www.nature.com/news/positive-results-spur-race-for-ebola-vaccine-1.16468

Positive results spur race for Ebola vaccine

Tue, 2014-12-02 19:52 — mike kraft

With trials under way, scientists are working out how to give vaccines in affected regions

NATURE By Ewan Callaway Dec. 2, 2014

Safety trials of Ebola vaccines are starting to return results: at least one is known to be safe and to summon an immune response against the virus.

The challenge now is to use the results to guide the larger studies that will reveal whether the vaccines work.

“The immune responses are there,” says infectious-disease researcher Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford, UK. “The tough call is whether they’re enough to protect humans against Ebola.”

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