TECH PRIOR

Trust is a foundational element of business. Yet maintaining it—particularly throughout a global economy that is becoming increasingly digital— is expensive, time-consuming, and, in many cases, inefficient. Some organizations are exploring how blockchain, the backbone behind bitcoin, might provide a viable alternative to the current procedural, organizational, and technological infrastructure required to create institutionalized trust. Though these exploratory efforts are still nascent, the payoff could be profound. Like the Internet reinvented communication, blockchain may similarly disrupt transactions, contracts, and trust—the underpinnings of business, government, and society. Discussions of blockchain often begin with bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that gained notoriety as much for its novelty as for the volatility of its valuation. In a fog of media reports driven by bitcoin’s associations with dubious use cases,1 the far-reaching potential of blockchain—the technology underpinning bitcoin—remained largely obscured. Yet, that is changing. Organizations throughout the public and private sectors have begun exploring ways that blockchain might profoundly transform some of their most basic operations, from the way they execute contracts and carry out transactions to the ways they engage customers and more. What is blockchain? Simply put, it is a distributed ledger that provides a way for information to be recorded and shared by a community. In this community, each member maintains his or her own copy of the information and all members must validate any updates collectively. The information could represent transactions, contracts, assets, identities, or practically anything else that can be described in digital form. Entries are permanent, transparent, and searchable, which makes it possible for community members to view transaction histories in their entirety. Each update is a new “block” added to the end of the “chain.” A protocol manages how new edits or entries are initiated, validated, recorded, and distributed. With blockchain, cryptology replaces third-party intermediaries as the keeper of trust, with all blockchain participants running complex algorithms to certify the integrity of the whole. It seems ironic that as digital transforms the world, one of its more promising building blocks is a throwback to our decidedly analog past. Blockchain is the tech-charged equivalent of the public ledgers that were once used in towns to record everything of importance: the buying and selling of goods; the transfer of property deeds; births, marriages, anddeaths; loans; election results; legal rulings; and anything else of note. Instead of a bearded master wielding a long-stemmed stylus to record minuscule entries into an oversized book, blockchain uses advanced cryptography and distributed programming to achieve similar results: a secure, transparent, immutable repository of truth, one designed to be highly resistant to outages, manipulation, and unnecessary complexity.

Plastics are divided into thermoplastics and thermoset plastics. The former can be heated and shaped many times, and are ubiquitous in the modern world, comprising everything from children’s toys to lavatory seats. Because they can be melted down and reshaped, thermoplastics are generally recyclable. Thermoset plastics however can only be heated and shaped once, after which molecular changes mean that they are “cured”, retaining their shape and strength even when subject to intense heat and pressure. Due to this durability, thermoset plastics are a vital part of our modern world, and are used in everything from mobile phones and circuit boards to the aerospace industry. But the same characteristics that have made them essential in modern manufacturing also make them impossible to recycle. As a result, most thermoset polymers end up as landfill. Given the ultimate objective of sustainability, there has long been a pressing need for recyclability in thermoset plastics. In 2014 critical advances were made in this area, with the publication of a landmark paper in the journal Science announcing the discovery of new classes of thermosetting polymers that are recyclable. Called poly(hexahydrotriazine) s, or PHTs, these can be dissolved in strong acid, breaking apart the polymer chains into component monomers that can then be reassembled into new products. Like traditional unrecyclable thermosets, these new structures are rigid, resistant to heat and tough, with the same potential applications as their unrecyclable forerunners. Although no recycling is 100% efficient, this innovation – if widely deployed – should speed up the move towards a circular economy with a big reduction in landfill waste from plastics. We expect recyclable thermoset polymers to replace unrecyclable thermosets within five years, and to be ubiquitous in newly manufactured goods by 2025.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is about to become a digital spokesperson for companies. Moving beyond a back-end tool for the enterprise, AI is taking on more sophisticated roles within technology interfaces. From autonomous driving vehicles that use computer vision, to live translations made possible by artificial neural networks, AI is making every interface both simple and smart – and setting a high bar for how future interactions will work. It will act as the face of a company’s digital brand and a key differentiator – and become a core competency demanding of C-level investment and strategy. Imagine having a conversation with a friend and asking them a question, only to have them stare at you silently for three seconds before answering. Would the conversation feel natural? Or would you feel awkward, like you’d done something wrong? Most importantly, would you do it again? Today, more than three million people happily chat with Amazon Echo’s conversationbased assistant, Alexa.1 But when the Echo was under development less than five years ago, voice recognition technology suffered an average delay in response time of almost three seconds. Amazon’s team set a goal of two seconds for Echo, and was eventually able to bring it down to below 1.5 seconds before launch – a critical factor in the success of a device that has no screen or other interface to fall back on. Either people can talk to Alexa as they would a person, or the device is a failure.2 Alexa’s success shines as just one example of AI playing an ever more capable role across user interfaces (UI). As AI matures, many of the problems that hindered adoption in the past are disappearing. It’s now consistently being used to add frictionless intelligence to people’s interactions with technology, creating opportunities to make any interface both simple and smart – driving wider, faster adoption of technology, and providing better outcomes for people. According to our global Accenture Technology Vision 2017 Survey of more than 5,400 IT and business executives, 79% agree that AI will help accelerate technology adoption throughout their organizations. In short, AI is poised to enable companies to improve the experience and outcome for every critical customer interaction. AI already plays a variety of roles throughout the user experience (UX). At the simplest level, it curates content for people, like the mobile app Spotify suggesting new music based on previous listening choices. In a more significant role, AI applies machine learning to guide actions toward the best outcome. Farmers are improving yields by implementing AI-enabled crop management systems: Blue River Technology’s tools combine computer vision and machine learning with their robotic systems to apply plant-by-plant fertilizer wherever needed. Using advanced algorithms means ‘LettuceBot’ not only takes care of pesky weeds among the lettuce crop, but also addresses growing conditions that are less than optimal – like identifying sprouts that are too close to each other, and removing the one least likely to thrive.3 And at the height of sophistication, AI orchestrates. It collaborates across experiences and channels, often behind the scenes, to accomplish tasks. AI not only curates and acts based on its experiences but also learns from interactions to help suggest and complete new tasks.

IT may soon become a self-managing service provider without technical limitations of capacity, performance, and scale. By adopting a “build once, deploy anywhere” approach, retooled IT workforces—working with new architectures built upon virtualized assets, containers, and advanced management and monitoring tools—could seamlessly move workloads among traditional on-premises stacks, private cloud platforms, and public cloud services. Autonomic platforms build upon and bring together two important trends in IT: softwaredefined everything’s1 climb up the tech stack, and the overhaul of IT operating and delivery models under the DevOps2 movement. With more and more of IT becoming expressible as code—from underlying infrastructure to IT department tasks—organizations now have a chance to apply new architecture patterns and disciplines. In doing so, they can remove dependencies between business outcomes and underlying solutions, while also redeploying IT talent from rote low-value work to the higher-order capabilities needed to deliver right-speed IT.3 To truly harness autonomic platforms’ potential, one must first explore its foundational elements.

Virtualization up

The kernel of software-defined everything (SDE) has been a rallying cry in IT for decades. The idea is straightforward: Hardware assets like servers, network switches, storage arrays, and desktop facilities are expensive, difficult to manage, and often woefully suboptimized. Often procured and configured for singlepurpose usages, they are sized to withstand the most extreme estimates of potential load. Moreover, they are typically surrounded by duplicate environments (most of them idle) that were created to support new development and ongoing change. In the mainframe days, such inefficiencies were mitigated somewhat by logical partitions—a segment of a computer’s hardware resources that can be virtualized and managed independently as a separate machine. Over the years, this led to virtualization, or the creation of software-based, logical abstractions of underlying physical environments in which IT assets can be shared. Notably, virtualization shortened the time required to provision environments; rather than waiting months while new servers were ordered, racked, and configured, organizations could set up a virtual environment in a matter of hours. Though virtualization started at the server level, it has since expanded up, down,and across the technology stack. It is now also widely adopted for network, storage, and even data center facilities. Virtualization alone now accounts for more than 50 percent of all server workloads, and is projected to account for 86 percent of workloads by the end of 2016.

With black system aquatherm provides a universal applicable surface heating and cooling system for applications below the ceiling, at the wall an on the fl oor. The many different fi elds of application can be inspected in the newly built “aquatherm black system showroom” as of now. All applications are real in function. In the rooms the pleasant climate is noticeable by radiation, either for the fi eld of “heating” or “cooling”. Room 1 shows the application of aquatherm black system in the world of metal panel ceilings for offi ce and industrial area. Different formats, colors, perforations and ceiling sails are presented. Room 2 demonstrates a single-color metal panel ceiling. Here the aquatherm black system is integrated as a square and rectangular panel with different lighting. Even the application in curves is impressively presented. An infrared camera visualizes the function of the heating and cooling panels for the visitors. Room 3 offers a total of 21 applications of the aquatherm black system in interior construction. Among other things, the following applications are presented: • Static wooden sub-structure with planking by dry construction components • Use in pitched roof area and jamb wall • Wall and ceiling heating plastered in mineral plaster or organic clay plaster • Heating of shower inside walls • Mirror heating • Special top structures of the fl oor, such as beamed ceilings

n absolute thriller was witnessed in Rajkot, as the game between the hosts and Mumbai Indians ended in a super over. An absolute thriller was witnessed in Rajkot, as the game between the hosts and Mumbai Indians ended in a super over.

What seemed to be a straightforward victory for the Mumbai Indians, turned into a nightmare, as a lower order collapse and some exceptional fielding saw the game being tied.

However, Jasprit Bumrah held his nerves in the super over, needing to defend 12 and did a fabulous job indeed.

Batting first on what seemed to be a reasonable deck, Gujarat could only manage 153-9 in 20 overs, as a dominant bowling performance from Mumbai strangled them down. Barring a gutsy 48 from young Ishan Kishan, there wasn’t anything much to write about for the hosts.

The star of the game though was Jasprit Bumrah with his mind-boggling display in the super over. Fans on Twitter were running out of breath during the super over and below are some of the tweets.

https://twitter.com/mipaltan/status/858388628547878912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsportzwiki.com%2Fcricket%2Fipl-2017-twitter-reacts-game-ends-super%2F

https://twitter.com/cricketaakash/status/858388334581862400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsportzwiki.com%2Fcricket%2Fipl-2017-twitter-reacts-game-ends-super%2F

https://twitter.com/MClarke23/status/858389656974626817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsportzwiki.com%2Fcricket%2Fipl-2017-twitter-reacts-game-ends-super%2F

Image : IPLT20