AI Chat Unblocked For School

AI Chat Unblocked For School — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Virtual intelligence

    Virtual intelligence

    Virtual intelligence (VI) is the term given to artificial intelligence that exists within a virtual world. Many virtual worlds have options for persistent avatars that provide information, training, role-playing, and social interactions. The immersion in virtual worlds provides a platform for VI beyond the traditional paradigm of past user interfaces (UIs). What Alan Turing established as a benchmark for telling the difference between human and computerized intelligence was devoid of visual influences. With today's VI bots, virtual intelligence has evolved past the constraints of past testing into a new level of the machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. The immersive features of these environments provide nonverbal elements that affect the realism provided by virtually intelligent agents. Virtual intelligence is the intersection of these two technologies: Virtual environments: Immersive 3D spaces provide for collaboration, simulations, and role-playing interactions for training. Many of these virtual environments are currently being used for government and academic projects, including Second Life, VastPark, Olive, OpenSim, Outerra, Oracle's Open Wonderland, Duke University's Open Cobalt, and many others. Some of the commercial virtual worlds are also taking this technology into new directions, including the high-definition virtual world Blue Mars. Artificial intelligence (AI): AI is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. VI is a type of AI that operates within virtual environments to simulate human-like interactions and responses. == Applications == Cutlass Bomb Disposal Robot: Northrop Grumman developed a virtual training opportunity because of the prohibitive real-world cost and dangers associated with bomb disposal. By replicating a complicated system without having to learn advanced code, the virtual robot has no risk of damage, trainee safety hazards, or accessibility constraints. MyCyberTwin: NASA is among the companies that have used the MyCyberTwin AI technologies. They used it for the Phoenix rover in the virtual world Second Life. Their MyCyberTwin used a programmed profile to relay information about what the Phoenix rover was doing and its purpose. Second China: The University of Florida developed the "Second China" project as an immersive training experience for learning how to interact with the culture and language in a foreign country. Students are immersed in an environment that provides role-playing challenges coupled with language and cultural sensitivities magnified during country-level diplomatic missions or during times of potential conflict or regional destabilization. The virtual training provides participants with opportunities to access information, take part in guided learning scenarios, communicate, collaborate, and role-play. While China was the country for the prototype, this model can be modified for use with any culture to help better understand social and cultural interactions and see how other people think and what their actions imply. Duke School of Nursing Training Simulation: Extreme Reality developed virtual training to test critical thinking with a nurse performing trained procedures to identify critical data to make decisions and performing the correct steps for intervention. Bots are programmed to respond to the nurse's actions as the patient with their conditions improving if the nurse performs the correct actions.

    Read more →
  • New media

    New media

    New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users, as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms. The phrase "new media" refers to computational media that share material online and through computers. New media inspire new ways of thinking about older media. Media do not replace one another in a clear, linear succession, instead evolving in a more complicated network of interconnected feedback loops . What is different about new media is how they specifically refashion traditional media and how older media refashion themselves to meet the challenges of new media. Unless they contain technologies that enable digital generative or interactive processes, broadcast television programs, non-interactive news websites, feature films, magazines, and books are not considered to be new media. The term "new media" stands in contrast to old media, which dominated the media landscape as a form of mass media for many years. == History == In the 1950s, connections between computing and radical art began to grow stronger. It was not until the 1980s that Alan Kay and his co-workers at Xerox PARC began to give the computability of a personal computer to the individual, rather than have a big organization be in charge of this. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, we seem to witness a different kind of parallel relationship between social changes and computer design. Although causally unrelated, conceptually, it makes sense that the Cold War and the design of the Web took place at exactly the same time. Writers and philosophers such as Marshall McLuhan were instrumental in the development of media theory during this period which is now famous declaration in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, that "the medium is the message" drew attention to the too often ignored influence media and technology themselves, rather than their "content," have on humans' experience of the world and on society broadly. Until the 1980s, media relied primarily upon print and analog broadcast models such as television and radio. The last twenty-five years have seen the rapid transformation into media which are predicated upon the use of digital technologies such as the Internet and video games. However, these examples are only a small representation of new media. The use of digital computers has transformed the remaining 'old' media, as suggested by the advent of digital television and online publications. Even traditional media forms such as the printing press have been transformed through the application of technologies by using of image manipulation software like Adobe Photoshop and desktop publishing tools. Andrew L. Shapiro argues that the "emergence of new, digital technologies signals a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources". W. Russell Neuman suggests that whilst the "new media" have technical capabilities to pull in one direction, economic and social forces pull back in the opposite direction. According to Neuman, "We are witnessing the evolution of a universal interconnected network of audio, video, and electronic text communications that will blur the distinction between interpersonal and mass communication; and between public and private communication". Neuman argues that new media will: Alter the meaning of geographic distance. Allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication. Provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication. Provide opportunities for interactive communication. Allow forms of communication that were previously separate to overlap and interconnect. Consequently, it has been the contention of scholars such as Douglas Kellner and James Bohman that new media and particularly the Internet will provide the potential for a democratic postmodern public sphere, in which citizens can participate in well informed, non-hierarchical debate pertaining to their social structures. Contradicting these positive appraisals of the potential social impacts of new media are scholars such as Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney who have suggested that the transition to new media has seen a handful of powerful transnational telecommunications corporations who achieve a level of global influence which was hitherto unimaginable. Scholars have highlighted both the positive and negative potential and actual implications of new media technologies, suggesting that some of the early work in new media studies was guilty of technologicaldeterminism – whereby the effects of media were determined by the technologies themselves, rather than by tracing the complex social networks that governed the development, funding, implementation, and future evolution of any technology. Based on the argument that people have a limited amount of time to spend on the consumption of different media, displacement theory argue that the viewership or readership of one particular outlet leads to the reduction in the amount of time spent by the individual on another. The introduction of new media, such as the internet, therefore reduces the amount of time individuals would spend on existing "old" media, which could ultimately lead to the end of such traditional media. == Definition == Although, there are several ways that new media may be described, Lev Manovich, in an introduction to The New Media Reader, defines new media by using eight propositions: New media versus cyberculture – Cyberculture is the various social phenomena that are associated with the Internet and network communications (blogs, online multi-player gaming), whereas new media is concerned more with cultural objects and paradigms (digital to analog television, smartphones). New media as computer technology used as a distribution platform – New media are the cultural objects which use digital computer technology for distribution and exhibition. e.g. (at least for now) Internet, Web sites, computer multimedia, Blu-ray disks etc. The problem with this is that the definition must be revised every few years. The term "new media" will not be "new" anymore, as most forms of culture will be distributed through computers. New media as digital data controlled by software – The language of new media is based on the assumption that, in fact, all cultural objects that rely on digital representation and computer-based delivery do share a number of common qualities. New media is reduced to digital data that can be manipulated by software as any other data. Now media operations can create several versions of the same object. An example is an image stored as matrix data which can be manipulated and altered according to the additional algorithms implemented, such as color inversion, gray-scaling, sharpening, rasterizing, etc. New media as the mix between existing cultural conventions and the conventions of software – New media today can be understood as the mix between older cultural conventions for data representation, access, and manipulation and newer conventions of data representation, access, and manipulation. The "old" data are representations of visual reality and human experience, and the "new" data is numerical data. The computer is kept out of the key "creative" decisions, and is delegated to the position of a technician. e.g. In film, software is used in some areas of production, in others are created using computer animation. New media as the aesthetics that accompanies the early stage of every new modern media and communication technology – While ideological tropes indeed seem to be reappearing rather regularly, many aesthetic strategies may reappear two or three times ... In order for this approach to be truly useful it would be insufficient to simply name the strategies and tropes and to record the moments of their appearance; instead, we would have to develop a much more comprehensive analysis which would correlate the history of technology with social, political, and economical histories or the modern period. New media as faster execution of algorithms previously executed manually or through other technologies – Computers are a huge speed-up of what were previously manual techniques. e.g. calculators. Dramatically speeding up the execution makes possible previously non-existent representational technique. This also makes possible of many new forms of media art such as interactive multimedia and video games. On one level, a modern digital computer is just a faster calculator, we should not ignore its other identity: that of a cybernetic control device. New media as the encoding of modernist avant-garde; new media as metamedia – Manovi

    Read more →
  • International Teletraffic Congress

    International Teletraffic Congress

    The International Teletraffic Congress (ITC) is the first international conference in networking science and practice. It was created in 1955 by Arne Jensen to initially cater to the emerging need to understand and model traffic in telephone networks using stochastic methodologies, and to bring together researchers with these considerations as a common theme. Up through World War II, teletraffic research was done mainly by engineers and mathematicians working in telephone companies. Most of their work was published in local or company journals. In 1955, however, the field acquired a formal, international, institutional structure, with the organization of the first International Teletraffic Congress (ITC). Over the years, it has broaden its scope to address a wide spectrum ranging from the mathematical theory of traffic processes, stochastic system modelling and analysis, traffic and performance measurements, network management, traffic engineering to network capacity planning and cost optimization, including network economics and reliability for various types of networks. ITC served as a forum for all theoretical fundamentals and engineering practices for large-scale deployment and operation of telecommunications networks. Since its inception, ITC witnessed the evolution of communications and networking: the influence of computer science on telecommunication, the advent of the Internet and the massive deployment of mobile communications and optics, the appearance of peer-to-peer networking and social networks, the ever increasing speed and flexibility of new communication technologies, networks, user devices, and applications, and the ever changing operation challenges arising from this development. ITC documented this evolution with contemporary measurement studies, performance analyses of new technologies, recommendations for provisioning and configuration, and greatly contributed to the methodological toolbox of network scientists. Today, with its conferences, specialist seminars, regional seminars, training courses and publications, the ITC aims at a worldwide forum for all questions related to network and service performance, management, and assessment, both present and futuristic. The notion of traffic is broadly used to encompass data traffic from the MAC layer all the way to application traffic in the application layer. The scope of ITC is thus ranging all issues embedding operations, design, planning, economics and performance analysis of current and emerging communication networks and services, to be addressed by applying a variety of tools from different fields, such as Stochastic Processes, Information theory, Control theory, Signal and Processing, Game theory and optimization techniques, Statistical methodologies and Artificial Intelligence techniques. The target audience of such issues is experts from research organizations, universities, equipment vendors and suppliers, network operators, service providers, system integrators and international technical organizations, guaranteeing a well-balanced contribution from theory, application, and practice. The general goal remains to bring researchers and practitioners together toward operational understanding of all types of current and future networks. The ITC is ruled by the International Advisory Council (IAC) which gathers a number of technical experts, from universities and the research arms of key corporations in the industry, from countries having a strong tradition in teletraffic development. The IAC responsibilities are to disseminate information on teletraffic which is of interest for the whole community and: to select the locations of Plenary Congresses and to ensure their high-level technical programme to support Specialist Seminars on specific topics of current interest to promote Regional Seminars for the dissemination of teletraffic concepts in developing countries to facilitate the liaison activity with the ITU through participation in the standardization process and in the Development Programme The technical program and the organization of each ITC event remains within the responsibilities of the hosting country, but with significant IAC support to guarantee that the event is consistent with the quality standards established during the previous congresses. The ITC Plenary Congresses were scheduled tri-annually from 1955 until 1995 when the interval became bi-annual to account for the ever-accelerating development of network technologies, products and services and the associated dramatic increases in network demands. Similarly, to better cover the impact of dramatic changes undergoing in the field of computer and communication systems, networks and usage, it has been decided to hold the Plenary Congress on an annual basis from 2009. == Content == Teletraffic science is the traditional term for all theoretical fundamentals and engineering practices to describe data flows in telecommunication networks, the performance of the usage of network resources, procedures for sizing of resources and engineering the networks for given traffic load and quality of service requirements. For more than 50 years of the 20th century, traffic or teletraffic has been identified primarily with telephone networks. With the huge development of computers, stored program control of network nodes and computer communication, the traditional teletraffic science field naturally extended to computer networks, mobile and wireless/optical networks, and for a wide spectrum of new applications. The convergence between the voice network, the Internet, the television and mobility raised new questions that request new models and tools to be developed. In addition, the development of community networks, home networking, multiple access networking technologies, and the advent of pervasive and ambient communications dictates new challenges to be addressed. Today, ITC addresses the emerging paradigms such as an increasing diversity of distributed applications and services over various media like mobile/optical networks, enabling new markets and economy. ITC has steered the evolutions in communications since its creation in 1955 and remains at the forefront of innovation regarding modeling and performance. The scientific roots of communications traffic are based on the theory of probability and stochastic processes, modelling and performance evaluation. Modelling is the key for the mathematical description and quantitative performance analysis. Traffic flows are described by stochastic processes with complex dependencies which have to be validated by traffic measurements. Modelling also includes operational properties of resource control reflected by service strategies such as queueing disciplines, admission control, and routing. The results of such performance analyses are used for resource dimensioning (sizing), resource management, and network optimization while providing targeted Quality of Service. Teletraffic science is closely related to methods of operation research (queueing theory, optimization, forecasting) and computational sciences (simulation technology distributed systems). In this context, ITC represents a wide community of researchers and practitioners and is regularly organizing events like Congresses, Specialist Seminars and Workshops in order to discuss the latest changes in the modelling, design and performance of communication systems, networks and services. === The evolution of technologies of the 20th century === ITC has been witnessing the change of communication and networking technologies which are reflected in the proceedings and programs of the congresses. The specialist seminars and the motto of the congresses thereby reflect the hot topics of that time and the evolution. Selected topics of the 70's, 80's and 90's were 1998: Traffic Issues related to Multimedia and Nomadic Communications 1995: Traffic Modeling and Measurement in Broadband and Mobile Communications 1990: Broadband Technologies: Architectures, Applications, Control and Performance 1986: ISDN Traffic Issues 1984: Fundamentals of Teletraffic Theory 1977: Modeling of SPC Exchanges and Data Networks === Recent topics in the 21st century === With the rise of the Internet, new networking paradigms and technologies but also new challenges emerged: 2020: Teletraffic in the era of beyond-5G and AI 2019: Networked Systems and Services 2018: Teletraffic in the Smart World 2017: Ubiquitous, software-based, and sustainable networks and services 2016: Digital Connected World 2015: Traffic, Performance and Big Data 2014: Towards a Sustainable World 2013: Energy Efficient and Green Networking 2010: Multimedia Applications - Traffic, Performance and QoE 2009: Network Virtualization - Concepts and Performance 2008: Future Internet Design and Experimental Facilities 2008: Quality of Experience 2002: Internet Traffic Engineering and Traffic Management == Arne Jensen Lifetime Achievement Awards == The Arne Jensen Lifetime A

    Read more →
  • Extremely online

    Extremely online

    An extremely online (often capitalized), terminally online, or chronically online person is someone who is closely engaged with Internet culture. People said to be extremely online often believe that online posts are very important. Events and phenomena can themselves be extremely online; while often used as a descriptive term, the phenomenon of extreme online usage has been described as "both a reformation of the delivery of ideas – shared through words and videos and memes and GIFs and copypasta – and the ideas themselves". Here, "online" is used to describe "a way of doing things, not [simply] the place they are done". == Criteria == While the term was in use as early as 2014, it gained popularity over the latter half of the 2010s in conjunction with the increasing prevalence and notability of Internet phenomena in all areas of life. Extremely online people, according to The Daily Dot, are interested in topics "no normal, healthy person could possibly care about", and have been analogized to "pop culture fandoms, just without the pop". Extremely online phenomena such as fan culture and reaction GIFs have been described as "swallowing democracy" by journalists such as Amanda Hess in The New York Times, who claimed that a "great convergence between politics and culture, values and aesthetics, citizenship and commercialism" had become "a dominant mode of experiencing politics". Vulture – formerly the pop culture section of New York magazine, now a stand-alone website – has a section for articles tagged "extremely online". == Historical background == In the 2010s, many categories and labels came into wide use from media outlets to describe Internet-mediated cultural trends, such as the alt-right, the dirtbag left, and doomerism. These ideological categories are often defined by their close association with online discourse. For example, the term "alt-right" was added to the Associated Press' stylebook in 2016 to describe the "digital presence" of far-right ideologies, the dirtbag left refers to a group of "underemployed and overly online millennials" who "have no time for the pieties of traditional political discourse", and the doomer's "blackpilled despair" is combined with spending "too much time on message boards in high school" to produce an eclectic "anti-socialism". Extreme onlineness transcends ideological boundaries. For example, right-wing figures like Alex Jones and Laura Loomer have been described as "extremely online", but so have those on the left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fans of the Chapo Trap House podcast. Extremely online phenomena can range from acts of offline violence (such as the 2019 Christchurch shootings) to "[going] on NPR to explain the anti-capitalist irony inherent in kids eating Tide Pods". United States President Donald Trump's posts on social media have been frequently cited as extremely online, during both his presidency and his 2020 presidential campaign; Vox claimed his approach to re-election veered into being "Too Online", and Reason questioned whether the final presidential debate was "incomprehensible to normies". While individual people are often given the description, being extremely online has also been posited as an overall cultural phenomenon, applying to trends like lifestyle movements suffixed with "-wave" and "-core" based heavily on Internet media, as well as an increasing expectation for digital social researchers to have an "online presence" to advance in their careers. == Participants and media coverage == One example of a phenomenon considered to be extremely online is the "wife guy" (a guy who posts about his wife); despite being a "stupid online thing" which spent several years as a piece of Internet slang, in 2019 it became the subject of five articles in leading U.S. media outlets. Like many extremely online phrases and phenomena, the "wife guy" has been attributed in part to the in-character Twitter account dril. The account frequently parodies how people behave on the Internet, and has been widely cited as influential on online culture. In one tweet, his character refuses to stop using the Internet, even when someone shouts outside his house that he should log off. Many of dril's other coinages have become ubiquitous parts of Internet slang. Throughout the 2010s, posters such as dril inspired commonly used terms like "corncobbing" (referring to someone losing an argument and failing to admit it); while originally a piece of obscure Internet slang used on sites like Twitter, use of the term (and controversy over its misinterpretation) became a subject of reporting from traditional publications, with some noting that keeping up with the rapid turnover of inside jokes, memes, and quotes online required daily attention to avoid embarrassment. Twitch has been described as "talk radio for the extremely online". Another example of an event cited as extremely online is No Nut November. Increasingly, researchers are expected to have more of an online presence, to advance in their careers, as networking and portfolios continue to transition to the digital world. In November 2020, an article in The Washington Post criticized the filter bubble theory of online discourse on the basis that it "overgeneralized" based on a "small subset of extremely online people". The 2021 storming of the United States Capitol was described as extremely online, with "pro-Trump internet personalities", such as Baked Alaska, and fans livestreaming and taking selfies. People who have been described as extremely online include Chrissy Teigen, Jon Ossoff, and Andrew Yang. In contrast, Joe Biden has been cited as the antithesis of extremely online—The New York Times wrote in 2019 that he had "zero meme energy".

    Read more →
  • Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan

    Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan

    The project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan (abbr. TWKM) promotes research on the writing and language of pre-Hispanic Maya culture. It is housed in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bonn and was established with funding from the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. The project has a projected run-time of fifteen years and is directed by Nikolai Grube from the Department of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn. The goal of the project is to conduct computer-based studies of all extant Maya hieroglyphic texts from an epigraphic and cultural-historical standpoint, and to produce and publish a database and a comprehensive dictionary of the Classic Mayan language. == Subject of the Project == The text database, as well as the dictionary that will be compiled by the conclusion of the project, will be assembled based on all known texts from the pre-Hispanic Maya culture. These texts were produced and used between approximately the third century B.C. through A.D. 1500, in a region that today includes parts of the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The thousands of hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments, ceramics, or daily objects that have survived into the present offer insight into the language's vocabulary and structure. The project's database and dictionary will digitally represent original spellings using the logo-syllabic Maya hieroglyphs, as well as their transcription and transliteration in the Roman alphabet. The data will be additionally annotated with various epigraphic analyses, translations, and further object-specific information. == Project Partners == TWKM will employ digital technologies in order to compile and make available the data and metadata, as well as to publish the project's research results. The project thereby methodologically positions itself in the field of the digital humanities. The project will be conducted in cooperation with the project partners (below), the research association for the eHumanities TextGrid, as well as the University and Regional Library of Bonn (ULB). The working environment that is currently under construction, in which the data and metadata will be compiled and annotated, will be realized in theTextGrid Laboratory, a software of the virtual research environment. A further component of this software, the TextGrid Repository, will make the data that are authorized for publication freely available online and ensure their long-term storage. The tools for data compilation and annotation attained from the modularly constructed and extended TextGrid lab thereby provide all the necessary materials for facilitating the research team's the typical epigraphic workflow. The workflow usually begins by documenting the texts and the objects on which they are preserved, and by compiling descriptive data. It then continues with the various levels of epigraphic and linguistic analysis, and concludes in the best case scenario with a translation of the analyzed inscription and a corresponding publication. In cooperation with the ULB, selected data will additionally be made available. The project's Virtual Inscription Archive will present online, in the Digital Collections of the ULB, hieroglyphic inscriptions selected from the published data in the repository, including an image of and brief information about the texts and the objects on which they are written, epigraphic analysis, and translation. == Project Goal == One of the project's goals is to produce a dictionary of Classic Mayan, in both digital and print form, towards the end of the project run-time. Additionally, a database with a corpus of inscriptions, including their translations and epigraphic analyses, will be made freely available online. The database furthermore will provide an ontology-like link of the contextual object data with the inscriptions and with each other, thereby allowing a cultural-historical arrangement of all contents within the periods of pre-Hispanic Maya culture. The contents of the database are additionally linked to citations of relevant literature. As a result, the database will also make freely available to both the scientific community and other interested parties a bibliography representing the research history and a base of knowledge concerning ancient Maya culture and script. In addition, the Classic Maya script, in its temporally defined stages of language development, will be gathered into and documented in a comprehensive language corpus with the aid of the information gathered by the project. In collaboration with all project participants, the corpus data can be used, together with the aid of various comparable analyses and also computational linguistic methods, such as inference-based methods, to confirm readings of some hieroglyphs that are currently only partially confirmed, and to eventually completely decipher the Classic Maya script.

    Read more →
  • Digital media service

    Digital media service

    A digital media service (DMS) is an online service provider that sells access to digital library of content such as films, software, games, images, literature, etc. While no transfer of property is made, a nearly perfect duplicate of the data (song movie, etc.) is made on a customer's computer. Content is either primarily hosted on a dedicated server, which is owned by the service provider, or it is hosted primarily on the hard drives of its customers using a P2P protocol with, perhaps, a dedicated server to supplement. == History == One example of the older business model is the iTunes Store, which still markets and prices data as individual retail products. There are no examples of the latter business model in operation yet, but one is currently in development by Global Gaming Factory X and expected to begin operation some time after they acquire The Pirate Bay domain on August 27, 2009. A key difference between the two models is that the model which relies on its customer base for offering their bandwidth for other customers to access customer hosted data can operate at significantly lower costs than a company that seeks to limit data access to a per-download fee in order to supplement the cost of using its own hosting and bandwidth. The P2P model holds the potential for companies to offer unlimited access to the largest data library in the history of the internet to its customers for a reasonably low membership rate that is relevant to the cost of operation. While the market is virtually untouched, the P2P supplemented model will need entrepreneurs who are able to overcome a series of challenges in order to compete with the older business model as well as that which is offered for free (and often against the wishes of copyright holders) by hundreds of P2P communities on the internet. These challenges include, but are not limited to: Offering better data quality, speed, convenience and ease of use, protocol, sense of security, indexing and search organization, site up time, data library size, customer support, advertising, artist/copyright holder incentives and compensation, incentives and compensation for customers hosting data and providing bandwidth, guaranteed seeding (available access to indexed data at all times), than competitors.

    Read more →
  • Control communications

    Control communications

    In telecommunications, control communications is the branch of technology devoted to the design, development, and application of communications facilities used specifically for control purposes, such as for controlling (a) industrial processes, (b) movement of resources, (c) electric power generation, distribution, and utilization, (d) communications networks, and (e) transportation systems.

    Read more →
  • Information Age

    Information Age

    The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology. The onset of the Information Age has been linked to the development of the transistor in 1947. Advances in computer miniaturization, internet communication, and semiconductor technology enabled the rapid expansion of digital systems and global information networks. The Information Age transformed industries such as education, healthcare, finance, entertainment, and communication through digital infrastructure and connected technologies. The rise of smartphones and cloud-based services further accelerated global internet accessibility and digital interaction. == Digital applications and mobile technology == The expansion of Android and iOS ecosystems during the 21st century contributed to the widespread use of utility applications and mobile productivity tools. Applications related to calculations, scheduling, digital organization, and educational support became increasingly common on smartphones and tablets. Mobile utility software demonstrates how modern digital platforms support accessibility and everyday online services. Independent developers have contributed to this technological ecosystem through lightweight applications focused on mobile usability and internet-based functionality. == Influence on modern society == The Information Age has reshaped the way individuals communicate, consume information, and interact with digital services. Social media platforms, artificial intelligence systems, cloud storage, and mobile computing continue to influence modern economies and online communities worldwide. Emerging technologies such as the Internet of things, machine learning, and advanced automation are often associated with the transition toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution. == History == The digital revolution converted technology from analog format to digital format. By doing this, it became possible to make copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware was able to amplify the digital signal and pass it on with no loss of information in the signal. Of equal importance to the revolution was the ability to easily move the digital information between media and to access or distribute it remotely. One turning point of the revolution was the change from analog to digitally recorded music. During the 1980s, the digital format of optical compact discs gradually replaced analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes, as the popular medium of choice. === Previous inventions === Humans have manufactured tools for counting and calculating since ancient times, such as the abacus, astrolabe, equatorium, and mechanical timekeeping devices. More complicated devices started appearing in the 1600s, including the slide rule and mechanical calculators. By the early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution had produced mass-market calculators like the arithmometer and the enabling technology of the punch card. Charles Babbage proposed a mechanical general-purpose computer called the Analytical Engine, but it was never successfully built, and was largely forgotten by the 20th century, and unknown to most of the inventors of modern computers. The Second Industrial Revolution, in the last quarter of the 19th century, developed useful electrical circuits and the telegraph. In the 1880s, Herman Hollerith developed electromechanical tabulating and calculating devices using punch cards and unit record equipment, which became widespread in business and government. Meanwhile, various analog computer systems used electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic systems to model problems and calculate answers. These included an 1872 tide-predicting machine, differential analysers, perpetual calendar machines, the Deltar for water management in the Netherlands, network analyzers for electrical systems, and various machines for aiming military guns and bombs. The construction of problem-specific analog computers continued in the late 1940s and beyond, with FERMIAC for neutron transport, Project Cyclone for various military applications, and the Phillips Machine for economic modeling. Building on the complexity of the Z1 and Z2, German inventor Konrad Zuse used electromechanical systems to complete in 1941 the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Also, during World War II, Allied engineers constructed electromechanical bombes to break the German Enigma machine encoding. The base-10 electromechanical Harvard Mark I was completed in 1944, and was to some degree improved with inspiration from Charles Babbage's designs. === 1947–1969: Origins === In 1947, the first working transistor, the germanium-based point-contact transistor, was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs. This led the way to more advanced digital computers. From the late 1940s, universities, the military, and businesses developed computer systems to digitally replicate and automate previously manually performed mathematical calculations, with the LEO being the first commercially available general-purpose computer. Digital communication became economical for widespread adoption after the invention of the personal computer in the 1970s. Claude Shannon, a Bell Labs mathematician, is generally credited with laying the foundations of digitalization in his pioneering 1948 article, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. In 1948, Bardeen and Brattain patented an insulated-gate transistor (IGFET) with an inversion layer. Their concept forms the basis of CMOS and DRAM technology today. In 1957, at Bell Labs, Frosch and Derick were able to manufacture planar silicon dioxide transistors, later a team at Bell Labs demonstrated a working MOSFET. The first integrated circuit milestone was achieved by Jack Kilby in 1958. Other important technological developments included the invention of the monolithic integrated circuit chip by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, made possible by the planar process developed by Jean Hoerni. In 1963, complementary MOS (CMOS) was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor. The self-aligned gate transistor, which further facilitated mass production, was invented in 1966 by Robert Bower at Hughes Aircraft and independently by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein, and John Sarace at Bell Labs. In 1962, AT&T deployed the T-carrier for long-haul pulse-code modulation (PCM) digital voice transmission. The T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals, each encoded in 64 kbit/s streams, leaving 8 kbit/s of framing information, which facilitated the synchronization and demultiplexing at the receiver. Over the subsequent decades, the digitisation of voice became the norm for all but the last mile (where analogue continued to be the norm right into the late 1990s). Following the development of MOS integrated circuit chips in the early 1960s, MOS chips reached higher transistor density and lower manufacturing costs than bipolar integrated circuits by 1964. MOS chips further increased in complexity at a rate predicted by Moore's law, leading to large-scale integration (LSI) with hundreds of transistors on a single MOS chip by the late 1960s. The application of MOS LSI chips to computing was the basis for the first microprocessors, as engineers began recognizing that a complete computer processor could be contained on a single MOS LSI chip. In 1968, Fairchild engineer Federico Faggin improved MOS technology with his development of the silicon-gate MOS chip, which he later used to develop the Intel 4004, the first single-chip microprocessor. It was released by Intel in 1971 and laid the foundations for the microcomputer revolution that began in the 1970s. MOS technology also led to the development of semiconductor image sensors suitable for digital cameras. The first such image sensor was the charge-coupled device, developed by Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs in 1969, based on MOS capacitor technology. === 1969–1989: Invention of the internet, rise of home computers === The public was first introduced to the concepts that led to the Internet when a message was sent over the ARPANET in 1969. Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. The Whole Earth movement of the 1960s advocated the use of new technology. In the 1970s, the home computer was introduced, time-sharing computers, the video game console, the first coin-op vide

    Read more →
  • Unfold (app)

    Unfold (app)

    Unfold is a mobile application that allows users to create social media content using a variety of templates and other tools. It was founded in 2018 by Alfonso Cobo and Andy McCune. It enables users to add photos, video, and text with a variety of tools. In 2019, Unfold was acquired by Squarespace. == History == In January 2017, Alfonso Cobo was studying at Parsons School of Design when he realized there was no software or app that could create a portfolio of his work on an iPad. Cobo created an app called Portfolio, a basic version of a portfolio layout app, and the first one to exist for iPad. He launched it in 2017. After launching the first version of Portfolio, Cobo realized the more popular market and use case was on mobile. Around that time, Instagram was launching Stories. As a result, Cobo pivoted the app away from portfolios and instead focused on an app to showcase one's stories. Cobo later contacted Andy McCune, founder of social media account Earth, to collaborate with Unfold. Unfold also partnered with various companies to create custom templates. These include Equinox, Tommy Hilfiger, NARS, Billboard Music Awards, and Product Red. Unfold also launched a collection of Product Red templates to help eliminate HIV/AIDS in several African countries. In 2019, Squarespace acquired Unfold. The Unfold app has been downloaded over 60 million times and has been used to create over 1 billion Instagram stories. == Features == With Unfold, users can utilize hundreds of templates to make social content for social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. The free app offers users basic templates and standard fonts, filters, and stickers, and there are also premium templates available for a monthly subscription. With Unfold+ and Unfold Pro (previously Unfold for Brands), users can access premium templates and tools, as well as upload custom brand assets and fonts. In 2020, Unfold launched Bio Sites, which allows users to link to multiple sites and platforms.

    Read more →
  • Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt

    Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt

    The Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (HGBLuVA) ("Higher Federal Institution for Graphic Education and Research"), now commonly known as "die Graphische", founded in 1888 in Vienna, is a vocational college for professions in visual communication and media technology in Austria. == History == === Opening === Originally set up as a photographic research institute by the President of the Photographic Society, the graphic teaching and research institute (GLV) was created through the incorporation of the photographic school (a department for photographic reproduction processes connected to the Salzburg State Building School) and the Hörwarter general drawing school in Vienna. Since its foundation, it has made an important contribution to the establishment and development of the graphic professions. According to a resolution of March 14, 1887, the City Council of Vienna made three floors of the municipal building in Vienna VII, Westbahnstraße 25, available to the former Schottenfelder Realschule for the establishment of a teaching and research institute for photography and reproduction processes. The k. k. Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Photographie und Reproductionsverfahren, founded and directed (1888–1923) by Josef Maria Eder, previously of the Technologische Gewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Technology), for which he established a Section for Photography and Reproduction Techniques, and the Vienna State Trade School where, recently qualified as a university lecturer, he began teaching chemistry and physics in 1881. It opened on March 1, 1888 with 108 students. In the next school year the number of students rose to 174. In 1890, Eder placed a Wothly solar camera (an early means of enlarging negatives) on the roof. In the context of the history of vocational schools and the applied arts, pioneering educational reforms in Austria from the 1870s created institutions like it outside the format of the classical university, it being a special variation on the “state trade school” (“Staats-Gewerbeschule”). Eder based his institution on earlier foreign models such as the Conservatoire des arts et métiers in Paris (founded 1794), that housed a museum of history and technology and hosted with evening lectures and demonstrations, with lectures in photography commencing in 1891. From 1897 onwards the name Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt came into being . In 1906, Emperor Franz Joseph granted the school the designation “Imperial and Royal” in the title, and the Republic of Austria confirmed this distinction when the school's Federal Chancellery approved the use of the national coat of arms. === The beginnings === The GLV was instituted on August 27, 1887 "by the highest resolution to approve the activation of this teaching and research institute in Vienna on March 1, 1888". The aim of the institute was the “training of specialist photographers, retouchers, collotype printers, photolithographers, etc., the instruction of artists, scholars and technicians who want to learn photography as an auxiliary science, furthermore the testing of equipment, chemicals and the implementation of independent scientific investigations in the areas of Photochemistry and Related Subjects”. The school consisted of two departments; the Institute for Photography and Reproduction Processes and the Research Institute, and in 1891 the Board of Book Printers and Type Founders pointed out the urgent need to add a department for book printers to the school. In 1897 an additional section for the book and illustration trade was opened, the school called "KK Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt" was then divided into four sections: Section I: Institute for Photography and Reproduction (corresponds to the former Institute for Photography and Reproduction Processes) Section II: College for the book and illustration trade Section III: Research institute for photochemistry and graphic printing processes (corresponds to the original research institute) Section IV: Collections: graphic collection, library and equipment collection The first original lithographs by famous artists such as Luigi Kasimir and Tina Blau are thanks to the special course for lithography and lithography introduced in 1905 and 'algraphy' - a planographic printing process from an aluminum plate instead of the stone used in lithography - was first taught in Austria in 1896 at the GLV. The specialty course for lithography and lithography existed until 1913/14, after which a specialist course for xylography (wood engraving and woodcuts) was offered. In 1908 the graphic arts department was set up on the top floor of the neighbouring house at Westbahnstraße 27 connected by a spiral staircase still in existence in the courtyard at the current location on Leyserstraße. === Women in the graphic teaching and research institute === From 1908 women were also officially admitted. For the period from 1888 to 1918/19, a total of 718 female students at the Graphische are recorded in the largely preserved class lists. Due to changes and new requirements in the job description, the proportion of women continued to grow, so that in some classes it exceeded two thirds. === The Graphics Department === In 1916, the school statute was changed: all-day lessons with photography internship in the 1st and 2nd years as well as training for disabled people were introduced and a drawing school was added. After the First World War, the school was renamed several times: In 1919 the name was "Deutsch-Österreichische Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt"; changed in 1920 to "Staatliche Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt" and in 1923 to "Graphic Education and Research Institute". === The school in the time of National Socialism === The "annexation of Austria by Germany" resulted in organisational restructuring: semesters were introduced and the GLV was made a subordinate level of a university of the graphic arts administered in Leipzig. In 1939 the school became a state graphic teaching and research institute . Up to this point, two thirds of all Austrian postage stamps had been designed and engraved in the Graphische. === Post-war period === In 1945 the period of study at the technical school was extended to four years. In 1948, “manual graphics” became “commercial graphics” followed by an honours year. In 1959, a department A was developed: a three-class specialist department for photography with a master class, and a department B: a specialist department for commercial graphics with four classes and an honours year. Through further school reforms, the university entrance qualification was acquired with the completion of the now five-year course and honours qualification. In 1967, due to a lack of space, the Westbahnstrasse was moved to the new Carl Appel building in Leyserstrasse. === The new building, 1963 === On May 22, 1963, the foundation stone of the new campus was laid in the 14th district in the Breitenseer Strasse, Leyserstrasse and Spallartgasse area (Kommandogebäude Theodor Körner). In 1967 the move to the new building began and in 1968 the official opening coincided with the 80th anniversary of the school. In 1963/64 the first year of the five-year high school for reprography and printing technology began. There was also a four-year technical school. With the advent of personal computers and their use in the graphics industry, change comes first in typesetting and later in image processing, and in 1984 the advent of desktop publishing brought a revolution that permanently challenged the distinction between photographer, typesetter, layout artist and printer. In 1988, the Graphische celebrated its 100th anniversary. The rapid development of technology shaped school events in the 1980s, as did the rapid advance of offset printing - albeit at the expense of Letterpress printing. In reproduction technology, scanner technology for the production of colour separations displaced reprography. === Renovation, 2006 === Due to renovation work on the building in Leyserstraße, the management and the photography, multimedia and graphics departments moved to an alternative location in Vienna's first district at Schellinggasse 13. After the work was completed, the school was relocated in February 2008. == Notable teachers and students ==

    Read more →
  • HTTP compression

    HTTP compression

    HTTP compression is a capability that can be built into web servers and web clients to improve transfer speed and bandwidth utilization. HTTP data is compressed before it is sent from the server: compliant browsers will announce what methods are supported to the server before downloading the correct format; browsers that do not support compliant compression method will download uncompressed data. The most common compression schemes include gzip and Brotli; a full list of available schemes is maintained by the IANA. There are two different ways compression can be done in HTTP. At a lower level, a Transfer-Encoding header field may indicate the payload of an HTTP message is compressed. At a higher level, a Content-Encoding header field may indicate that a resource being transferred, cached, or otherwise referenced is compressed. Compression using Content-Encoding is more widely supported than Transfer-Encoding, and some browsers do not advertise support for Transfer-Encoding compression to avoid triggering bugs in servers. == Compression scheme negotiation == The negotiation is done in two steps, described in RFC 2616 and RFC 9110: 1. The web client advertises which compression schemes it supports by including a list of tokens in the HTTP request. For Content-Encoding, the list is in a field called Accept-Encoding; for Transfer-Encoding, the field is called TE. 2. If the server supports one or more compression schemes, the outgoing data may be compressed by one or more methods supported by both parties. If this is the case, the server will add a Content-Encoding or Transfer-Encoding field in the HTTP response with the used schemes, separated by commas. The web server is by no means obligated to use any compression method – this depends on the internal settings of the web server and also may depend on the internal architecture of the website in question. == Content-Encoding tokens == The official list of tokens available to servers and client is maintained by IANA, and it includes: br – Brotli, a compression algorithm specifically designed for HTTP content encoding, defined in RFC 7932 and implemented in all modern major browsers. compress – UNIX "compress" program method (historic; deprecated in most applications and replaced by gzip or deflate) deflate – compression based on the deflate algorithm (described in RFC 1951), a combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding, wrapped inside the zlib data format (RFC 1950); exi – W3C Efficient XML Interchange gzip – GNU zip format (described in RFC 1952). Uses the deflate algorithm for compression, but the data format and the checksum algorithm differ from the "deflate" content-encoding. This method is the most broadly supported as of March 2011. identity – No transformation is used. This is the default value for content coding. pack200-gzip – Network Transfer Format for Java Archives zstd – Zstandard compression, defined in RFC 8478 In addition to these, a number of unofficial or non-standardized tokens are used in the wild by either servers or clients: bzip2 – compression based on the free bzip2 format, supported by lighttpd lzip – compression based on the free lzip format, supported by wget and Links lzma – compression based on (raw) LZMA is available in Opera 20, and in elinks via a compile-time option peerdist – Microsoft Peer Content Caching and Retrieval rsync – delta encoding in HTTP, implemented by a pair of rproxy proxies. xpress – Microsoft compression protocol used by Windows 8 and later for Windows Store application updates. LZ77-based compression optionally using a Huffman encoding. xz – LZMA2-based content compression, supported by a non-official Firefox patch; and fully implemented in mget since 2013-12-31. == Servers that support HTTP compression == SAP NetWeaver Microsoft IIS: built-in or using third-party module Apache HTTP Server, via mod_deflate (despite its name, only supporting gzip), and mod_brotli Hiawatha HTTP server: serves pre-compressed files Cherokee HTTP server, On the fly gzip and deflate compressions Oracle iPlanet Web Server Zeus Web Server lighttpd nginx – built-in Applications based on Tornado, if "compress_response" is set to True in the application settings (for versions prior to 4.0, set "gzip" to True) Jetty Server – built-into default static content serving and available via servlet filter configurations GeoServer Apache Tomcat IBM Websphere AOLserver Ruby Rack, via the Rack::Deflater middleware HAProxy Varnish – built-in. Works also with ESI Armeria – Serving pre-compressed files NaviServer – built-in, dynamic and static compression Caddy – built-in via encode Many content delivery networks also implement HTTP compression to improve speedy delivery of resources to end users. The compression in HTTP can also be achieved by using the functionality of server-side scripting languages like PHP, or programming languages like Java. Various online tools exist to verify a working implementation of HTTP compression. These online tools usually request multiple variants of a URL, each with different request headers (with varying Accept-Encoding content). HTTP compression is considered to be implemented correctly when the server returns a document in a compressed format. By comparing the sizes of the returned documents, the effective compression ratio can be calculated (even between different compression algorithms). == Problems preventing the use of HTTP compression == A 2009 article by Google engineers Arvind Jain and Jason Glasgow states that more than 99 person-years are wasted daily due to increase in page load time when users do not receive compressed content. This occurs when anti-virus software interferes with connections to force them to be uncompressed, where proxies are used (with overcautious web browsers), where servers are misconfigured, and where browser bugs stop compression being used. Internet Explorer 6, which drops to HTTP 1.0 (without features like compression or pipelining) when behind a proxy – a common configuration in corporate environments – was the mainstream browser most prone to failing back to uncompressed HTTP. Another problem found while deploying HTTP compression on large scale is due to the deflate encoding definition: while HTTP 1.1 defines the deflate encoding as data compressed with deflate (RFC 1951) inside a zlib formatted stream (RFC 1950), Microsoft server and client products historically implemented it as a "raw" deflated stream, making its deployment unreliable. For this reason, some software, including the Apache HTTP Server, only implements gzip encoding. == Security implications == Compression allows a form of chosen plaintext attack to be performed: if an attacker can inject any chosen content into the page, they can know whether the page contains their given content by observing the size increase of the encrypted stream. If the increase is smaller than expected for random injections, it means that the compressor has found a repeat in the text, i.e. the injected content overlaps the secret information. This is the idea behind CRIME. In 2012, a general attack against the use of data compression, called CRIME, was announced. While the CRIME attack could work effectively against a large number of protocols, including but not limited to TLS, and application-layer protocols such as SPDY or HTTP, only exploits against TLS and SPDY were demonstrated and largely mitigated in browsers and servers. The CRIME exploit against HTTP compression has not been mitigated at all, even though the authors of CRIME have warned that this vulnerability might be even more widespread than SPDY and TLS compression combined. In 2013, a new instance of the CRIME attack against HTTP compression, dubbed BREACH, was published. A BREACH attack can extract login tokens, email addresses or other sensitive information from TLS encrypted web traffic in as little as 30 seconds (depending on the number of bytes to be extracted), provided the attacker tricks the victim into visiting a malicious web link. All versions of TLS and SSL are at risk from BREACH regardless of the encryption algorithm or cipher used. Unlike previous instances of CRIME, which can be successfully defended against by turning off TLS compression or SPDY header compression, BREACH exploits HTTP compression which cannot realistically be turned off, as virtually all web servers rely upon it to improve data transmission speeds for users. As of 2016, the TIME attack and the HEIST attack are now public knowledge.

    Read more →
  • Access-independent services

    Access-independent services

    Access-independent service (AIS) is a service concept in which a service does not depend on guaranteed access network cooperation for service delivery. Telecommunications industry analyst Dean Bubley first used the term in a report on Telco-OTT in February 2012. Traditionally, most telecom company or internet service provider services are access-dependent, because they rely heavily on guaranteed access cooperation on the network the service is delivered over. For instance, traditional IP-based TV service (IPTV) delivered by a telecom company is generally a managed service. This means that IPTV service assumes the IPTV service provider has control over the access network that the IPTV service is delivered over, and network quality of service (QoS) guarantees are available for IPTV service delivery. As a result, the reach of a telecom company's IPTV service is generally restricted by the reach of the telecom company's access network. In contrast, services offered by non-traditional video content delivery service providers such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video are considered access-independent services. Netflix's video content streaming service, for example, dynamically adapts to network conditions in real-time to strive for the best overall quality of experience (QoE) and does not assume guaranteed cooperation from the underlying IP network, such as QoS. As a result, without considering content rights and different countries' government restrictions, the reach of Netflix's video content streaming service is, in theory, the reach of the Internet. Skype is another example of AIS, because Skype offers an IP-based telephony service over the Internet without depending on IP network cooperation guarantees other than basic IP network connectivity. In the context of telecom service delivery, the concept of access independent services is also commonly described by the term "over-the-top" (OTT) services. OTT service providers such as but not limited to Facebook, WeChat, and Netflix generally do not own or directly manage any wide-area access network to begin with, so they design their services for overall quality of experience, with no assumptions on guaranteed access network cooperation.

    Read more →
  • Data Science and Predictive Analytics

    Data Science and Predictive Analytics

    The first edition of the textbook Data Science and Predictive Analytics: Biomedical and Health Applications using R, authored by Ivo D. Dinov, was published in August 2018 by Springer. The second edition of the book was printed in 2023. This textbook covers some of the core mathematical foundations, computational techniques, and artificial intelligence approaches used in data science research and applications. By using the statistical computing platform R and a broad range of biomedical case-studies, the 23 chapters of the book first edition provide explicit examples of importing, exporting, processing, modeling, visualizing, and interpreting large, multivariate, incomplete, heterogeneous, longitudinal, and incomplete datasets (big data). == Structure == === First edition table of contents === The first edition of the Data Science and Predictive Analytics (DSPA) textbook is divided into the following 23 chapters, each progressively building on the previous content. === Second edition table of contents === The significantly reorganized revised edition of the book (2023) expands and modernizes the presented mathematical principles, computational methods, data science techniques, model-based machine learning and model-free artificial intelligence algorithms. The 14 chapters of the new edition start with an introduction and progressively build foundational skills to naturally reach biomedical applications of deep learning. Introduction Basic Visualization and Exploratory Data Analytics Linear Algebra, Matrix Computing, and Regression Modeling Linear and Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction Supervised Classification Black Box Machine Learning Methods Qualitative Learning Methods—Text Mining, Natural Language Processing, and Apriori Association Rules Learning Unsupervised Clustering Model Performance Assessment, Validation, and Improvement Specialized Machine Learning Topics Variable Importance and Feature Selection Big Longitudinal Data Analysis Function Optimization Deep Learning, Neural Networks == Reception == The materials in the Data Science and Predictive Analytics (DSPA) textbook have been peer-reviewed in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, International Statistical Institute’s ISI Review Journal, and the Journal of the American Library Association. Many scholarly publications reference the DSPA textbook. As of January 17, 2021, the electronic version of the book first edition (ISBN 978-3-319-72347-1) is freely available on SpringerLink and has been downloaded over 6 million times. The textbook is globally available in print (hardcover and softcover) and electronic formats (PDF and EPub) in many college and university libraries and has been used for data science, computational statistics, and analytics classes at various institutions.

    Read more →
  • Ajax (programming)

    Ajax (programming)

    The Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, usually referred to as Ajax (or AJAX, ) is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML. Ajax is not a technology, but rather a programming pattern. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up and style information. The webpage can be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display (and allow the user to interact with) the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object is used to execute Ajax on webpages, allowing websites to load content onto the screen without refreshing the page. == History == In the early-to-mid 1990s, most Websites were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required a complete new page to be loaded from the server. This process was inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser reloaded a page because of a partial change, all the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor in performance. The foundations of AJAX originate back in 1996 with the introduction of JavaScript 1. Developers quickly discovered that any HTML element which accepted a "src" attribute could be used to fetch remote data. By changing the src of a hidden frame, a developer could fetch remote data, process or display it without a page refresh. The remote data could be a string, JavaScript code, XML or a partial HTML page generated on the server. The same could be done with and tags, but many developers were alarmed at the concept of an executable GIF and preferred to use the hidden