Best AI for Resume

Best AI for Resume — hands-on reviews, top picks, pricing, pros and cons and a practical how-to guide on Aizhi.

  • Teechart

    Teechart

    TeeChart is a charting library for programmers, developed and managed by Steema Software of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is available as commercial and non-commercial software. TeeChart has been included in most Delphi and C++Builder products since 1997, and TeeChart Standard currently is part of Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart Pro version is a commercial product that offers shareware releases for all of its formats. The TeeChart Charting Library offers charts, maps and gauges in versions for Delphi VCL/FMX, ActiveX, C# for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Full source code has always been available for all versions except the ActiveX version. TeeChart's user interface is translated into 38 languages. == History == The first version of TeeChart was authored in 1995 by David Berneda, co-founder of Steema, using the Borland Delphi Visual Component Library programming environment and TeeChart was first released as a shareware version and made available via Compuserve in the same year. It was written in the first version of Delphi VCL, as a 16-bit Charting Library named TeeChart version 1. The next version of TeeChart was released as a 32-bit library (Delphi 2 supported 32-bit compilation) but was badged as TeeChart VCL v3 to coincide with Borland's naming convention for inclusion on the toolbox palette of Borland Delphi v3 in 1997 and with C++ Builder v3 in 1998. It has been on the Delphi/C++ Builder toolbox palette ever since. The current version is Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart's first ActiveX version named "version 3" too, to match the VCL version's nomenclature, was released in 1998. The version was optimised to work with Microsoft's Visual Studio v97 and v6.0 developer suites that include Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C++ programming languages. Support for new programming environments followed with TeeChart's first native C# version for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET released in 2002 and TeeChart.Lite for .NET, a free charting component, released for Visual Studio.NET in 2003 and supporting too, Mono (programming). Steema Software released the first native TeeChart Java (programming language) version in 2006 and TeeChart's first native PHP version was released in 2009 and published as open-source in June 2010. Mobile versions of TeeChart, for Android (operating system) devices and Windows Phone 7 devices were released during the first half of 2011. In 2012 TeeChart extended functionality to iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry OS devices and a new JavaScript version was released in the same year to support HTML5 Canvas. In 2013 Steema launched TeeChart for .NET Chart for Windows Store applications and included support for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 mobile platform. TeeChart for Xamarin.Forms written with 100% C# code and cross-platform support for .NET desktops, Windows Phone, iOS and Android was released in 2014. Also since 2014 Webforms charts now offers HTML5 interactivity. Steema launched TeeChart for Avalonia (software framework) in 2022 and in 2023 .NET_MAUI support was added to the TeeChart for .NET. == Usage == TeeChart is a general purpose charting component designed for use in differing ambits, offering a wide range of aesthetics to chart data. Generally TeeCharts published in the field, in areas where large amounts of data must be interpreted regularly, remain by designer choice in their simplest form to maximize the "data-ink ratio". Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS Web Services' use for charting "Scientific .. plotting of online data" at The Virtual Observatory Spectrum Services reflects that approach. The SDSS chart authors choose to represent data using TeeChart's standard 2D line display. Speed is also a factor when choosing how to most effectively plot data. Realtime data, at frequencies of up to tens or hundreds of data points or more per second, require the most processor economic approach to charting. Computer processing time dedicated to the plotting of data needs to be as lightweight as possible, freeing-up computer tasks "to achieve real-time data acquisition, display and analysis". A critical and stated aspect of many data visualisation applications is the ability to offer interactivity to the user; NASA's document, the Orbital Debris Engineering Model Model ORDEM 3.0 - User's Guide, 2014, states that "The user may manipulate the graphs to zoom, pan, and copy to the clipboard and export to various file types" and Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture II, Volume 1, Daoliang, Li; Chunjiang, Zhao (2009), also using TeeChart, states "the properties at any point in the chart can be viewed moving the mouse over it". Writing about control education, Juha Lindfors states "The desired charting functionality (such as zooming and scaling) is achieved..". Charting applications have become increasingly 'onlined', made available either to a wider public or to a territorially remote userbase via networked applications. The World Wide Web (the Web) has become "by far, the most popular Internet protocol" to disseminate online applications. Most major IDEs now offer environments for web application developede aimed at browser hosted applications. Charting components, TeeChart among them, have adapted to provide models that work within a browser environment, often using static images and scripted layering techniques such as Ajax (programming) to offer a level of interactivity, improve response times and hide apparent delay from the user. Options to enrich client, browser-side processing flexibility are exploited by TeeChart libraries via modules that offer 'micro-environments' within the browser, such as the long established ActiveX technology, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Java Applets. Serverside environments offer too, a means to interact with browser based script to dynamically respond to charting requests. Joomla and CodeIgniter are host environments for TeeChart PHP and an example of an Embarcadero IntraWeb VCL designed application using TeeChart, is documented here. == Programmer reference == The Code Project includes a demo that uses TeeChart.Lite, called 'Self-Organizing Feature Maps (Kohonen maps)' written by Bashir Magomedovl and SourceForge includes a Database Stress and Monitor that also uses TeeChart.Lite. Books and information sources that include substantial sections about working with the Delphi version of TeeChart include "Mastering Delphi 6" by Marco Cantù, "C++ Builder 5 developer's guide", a video Delphi Tutorial on charting JPEG compression and support forums and reference pages at TeeChart Support Forums. Non-English language document sources include, in Czech "Myslíme v jazyku Delphi 7: knihovna zkušeného programátora" by Marco Cantù, and Chinese, Delphi 6, Delphi, and Delphi 5.

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  • OCR Systems

    OCR Systems

    OCR Systems, Inc., was an American computer hardware manufacturer and software publisher dedicated to optical character recognition technologies. The company's first product, the System 1000 in 1970, was used by numerous large corporations for bill processing and mail sorting. Following a series of pitfalls in the 1970s and early 1980s, founder Theodor Herzl Levine put the company in the hands of Gregory Boleslavsky and Vadim Brikman, the company's vice presidents and recent immigrants from the Soviet Ukraine, who were able to turn OCR System's fortunes around and expand its employee base. The company released the software-based OCR application ReadRight for DOS, later ported to Windows, in the late 1980s. Adobe Inc. bought the company in 1992. == History == OCR Systems was co-founded by Theodor Herzl Levine (c. 1923 – May 30, 2005). Levine served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II in the Solomon Islands, where he helped develop a sonar to find ejected pilots in the ocean. After the war, Levine spent 22 years at the University of Pennsylvania, earning his bachelor's degree in 1951, his master's degree in electrical engineering in 1957, and his doctorate in 1968. Alongside his studies, Levine taught statistics and calculus at Temple University, Rutgers University, La Salle University and Penn State Abington. Sometime in the 1960s, Levine was hired at Philco. He and two of his co-workers decided to form their own company dedicated to optical character recognition, founding OCR Systems in 1969 in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. OCR Systems's first product, the System 1000, was announced in 1970. OCR Systems entered a partnership with 3M to resell the System 1000 throughout the United States in March 1973. This was 3M's entry into the data entry field, managed by the company's Microfilm Products Division and accompanying 3M's suite of data retrieval systems. It soon found use among Texas Instruments, AT&T, Ricoh, Panasonic and Canon for bill processing and mail sorting. Later in the mid-1970s an unspecified Fortune 500 company reneged on a contract to distribute the System 1000; later still a Canadian company distributing the System 1000 in Canada went defunct. Both incidents led OCR Systems to go nearly bankrupt, although it eventually recovered. By the early 1980s, however, the company was almost insolvent. In 1983 Levine had only $8,000 in his savings and became bedridden with an illness. He left the company in the hands of Gregory Boleslavsky and Vadim Brikman, two Soviet Ukraine expats whom Levine had hired earlier in the 1980s. Boleslavsky was hired as a wire wrapper for the System 1000 and as a programmer and beta tester for ReadRight—a software package developed by Levine implementing patents from Nonlinear Technology, another OCR-centric company from Greenbelt, Maryland. Boleslavsky in turn recommended Brikman to Levine. The two soon became vice presidents of the company while Levine was bedridden; in Boleslavsky's case, he worked 14-hour work days for over half a year in pursuit of the title. The two presented OCR Systems' products to the National Computer Conference in Chicago, where they were massively popular. The company soon gained such clients as Allegheny Energy in Pennsylvania and the postal service of Belgium and received an influx of employees—mostly expats from Russia but also Poland and South Korea, as well as American-born workers. To accommodate the company's employee base, which had grown to over 30 in 1988, Levine moved OCR System's headquarters from Bensalem to the Masons Mill Business Park in Bryn Athyn. Chinon Industries of Japan signed an agreement with OCR Systems in 1987 to distribute OCR's ReadRight 1.0 software with Chinon's scanners, starting with their N-205 overhead scanner. In 1988, OCR opened their agreement to distribute ReadRight to other scanner manufacturers, including Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Skyworld, Taxan, Diamond Flower and Abaton. That year, the company posted a revenue of $3 million. OCR Systems extended their agreement with Chinon in 1989 and introduced version 2.0 of ReadRight. OCR Systems faced stiff competition in the software OCR market in the turn of the 1990s. The Toronto-based software firm Delrina signed a letter of intent to purchase the company in November 1991, expecting the deal to close in December and have OCR software available by Christmas. OCR was to receive $3 million worth of Delrina shares in a stock swap, but the deal collapsed in January 1992. Delrine later marketed its own Extended Character Recognition, or XCR, software package to compete with ReadRight. In July 1992, OCR Systems was purchased by Adobe Inc. for an undisclosed sum. == Products == === System 1000 === The System 1000 was based on the 16-bit Varian Data 620/i minicomputer with 4 KB of core memory. The system used the 620/i for controlling the paper feed, interpreting the format of the documents, the optical character recognition process itself, error detection, sequencing and output. The System was initially programmed to recognize 1428 OCR (used by Selectrics); IBM 407 print; and the full character sets of OCR-A, OCR-B and Farrington 7B; as well as optical marks and handwritten numbers. OCR Systems promised added compatibility with more fonts available down the line—per request—in 1970. The number of fonts supported was limited by the amount of core memory, which was expandable in 4 KB increments up to 32 KB. The System 1000 later supported generalized typewriter and photocopier fonts. The rest of the System 1000 comprised the document transport, one or more scanner elements, a CRT display and a Teletype Model 33 or 35. Pages are fed via friction with a rubber belt. Up to three lines could be scanned per document, while the rest of the scanned document could be laid out in any manner granted there was enough space around the fields to be read. The reader initially supported pages as small as 3.25 in by 3.5 in dimension (later supporting 2.6 in by 3.5 in utility cash stubs) all the way to the standard ANSI letter size (8.5 in by 11 in; later 8.5 in by 12 in as used in stock certificates). The initial System 1000 had a maximum throughput of 420 documents per minute per transport (later 500 documents per minute), contingent on document size and content. A feature unique to the System 1000 over other optical character recognition systems of the time was its ability to alert the operator when a field was unreadable or otherwise invalid. This feature, called Document Referral, placed the document in front of the operator and displayed a blank field on the screen of the included CRT monitor for manual re-entry via keyboard. Once input, data could be output to 7- or 9-track tape, paper tape, punched cards and other mass storage media or to System/360 mainframes for further processing. The complete System 1000 could be purchased for US$69,000. Options for renting were $1,800 per month on a three-year lease or $1,600 per month for five years. Computerworld wrote that it was less than half the cost of its competitors while more capable and user-friendly. Competing systems included the Recognition Equipment Retina, the Scan-Optics IC/20 and the Scan-Data 250/350. === ReadRight === ReadRight processes individual letters topographically: it breaks down the scanned letter into parts—strokes, curves, angles, ascenders and descenders—and follows a tree structure of letters broken down into these parts to determine the corresponding character code. ReadRight was entirely software-based, requiring no expansion card to work. Version 2.01, the last version released for DOS, runs in real mode in under 640 KB of RAM. OCR Systems released the Windows-only version 3.0 in 1991 while offering version 2.01 alongside it. The company unveiled a sister product, ReadRight Personal, dedicated to handheld scanners and for Windows only in October 1991. This version adds real-time scanning—each word is updated to the screen while lines are being scanned. ReadRight proper was later made a Windows-only product with version 3.1 in 1992. The inclusion of ReadRight 2.0 with Canon's IX-12F flatbed scanner led PC Magazine to award it an Editor's Choice rating in 1989. Despite this, reviewer Robert Kendall found qualification with ReadRight's ability to parse proportional typefaces such as Helvetica and Times New Roman. Mitt Jones of the same publication found version 2.01 to have improved its ability to read such typefaces and praised its ease of use and low resource intensiveness. Jones disliked the inability to handle uneven page paragraph column widths and graphics, noting that the manual recommended the user block out graphics with a Post-it Note. Version 3.1 for Windows received mixed reviews. Mike Heck of InfoWorld wrote that its "low cost and rich collection of features are hard to ignore" but rated its speed and accuracy average. Barry Simon of PC Magazine called it economical but inaccurate, unable to correct errors it did

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  • AI Copywriting Tools: Free vs Paid (2026)

    AI Copywriting Tools: Free vs Paid (2026)

    Comparing the best AI copywriting tool? An AI copywriting tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI copywriting tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Babel Fish (website)

    Babel Fish (website)

    Yahoo! Babel Fish was a free Web-based machine translation service by Yahoo!. In May 2012 it was replaced by Bing Translator (now Microsoft Translator), to which queries were redirected. Although Yahoo! has transitioned its Babel Fish translation services to Bing Translator, it did not sell its translation application to Microsoft outright. As the oldest free online language translator, the service translated text or Web pages in 36 pairs between 13 languages, including English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The internet service derived its name from the Babel fish, a fictional species in Douglas Adams's book and radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that could instantly translate languages. In turn, the name of the fictional creature refers to the biblical account of the confusion of languages that arose in the city of Babel. == History == On December 9, 1997, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and SYSTRAN S.A. launched AltaVista Translation Service at babelfish.altavista.com, which was developed by a team of researchers at DEC. In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc. In July 2003, Overture, in turn, was taken over by Yahoo!. The web address for Babel Fish remained at babelfish.altavista.com until May 9, 2008, when the address changed to babelfish.yahoo.com. In 2012, the Web address changed again, this time redirecting babelfish.yahoo.com to www.microsofttranslator.com when Microsoft's Bing Translator replaced Yahoo Babel Fish. As of June 2013, babelfish.yahoo.com no longer redirects to the Microsoft Bing Translator. Instead, it refers directly back to the main Yahoo.com page.

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  • Developmental robotics

    Developmental robotics

    Developmental robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a scientific field which aims at studying the developmental mechanisms, architectures and constraints that allow lifelong and open-ended learning of new skills and new knowledge in embodied machines. As in human children, learning is expected to be cumulative and of progressively increasing complexity, and to result from self-exploration of the world in combination with social interaction. The typical methodological approach consists in starting from theories of human and animal development elaborated in fields such as developmental psychology, neuroscience, developmental and evolutionary biology, and linguistics, then to formalize and implement them in robots, sometimes exploring extensions or variants of them. The experimentation of those models in robots allows researchers to confront them with reality, and as a consequence, developmental robotics also provides feedback and novel hypotheses on theories of human and animal development. Developmental robotics is related to but differs from evolutionary robotics (ER). ER uses populations of robots that evolve over time, whereas DevRob is interested in how the organization of a single robot's control system develops through experience, over time. DevRob is also related to work done in the domains of robotics and artificial life. == Background == Can a robot learn like a child? Can it learn a variety of new skills and new knowledge unspecified at design time and in a partially unknown and changing environment? How can it discover its body and its relationships with the physical and social environment? How can its cognitive capacities continuously develop without the intervention of an engineer once it is "out of the factory"? What can it learn through natural social interactions with humans? These are the questions at the center of developmental robotics. Alan Turing, as well as a number of other pioneers of cybernetics, already formulated those questions and the general approach in 1950, but it is only since the end of the 20th century that they began to be investigated systematically. Because the concept of adaptive intelligent machines is central to developmental robotics, it has relationships with fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive robotics or computational neuroscience. Yet, while it may reuse some of the techniques elaborated in these fields, it differs from them from many perspectives. It differs from classical artificial intelligence because it does not assume the capability of advanced symbolic reasoning and focuses on embodied and situated sensorimotor and social skills rather than on abstract symbolic problems. It differs from cognitive robotics because it focuses on the processes that allow the formation of cognitive capabilities rather than these capabilities themselves. It differs from computational neuroscience because it focuses on functional modeling of integrated architectures of development and learning. More generally, developmental robotics is uniquely characterized by the following three features: It targets task-independent architectures and learning mechanisms, i.e. the machine/robot has to be able to learn new tasks that are unknown by the engineer; It emphasizes open-ended development and lifelong learning, i.e. the capacity of an organism to acquire continuously novel skills. This should not be understood as a capacity for learning "anything" or even “everything”, but just that the set of skills that is acquired can be infinitely extended at least in some (not all) directions; The complexity of acquired knowledge and skills shall increase (and the increase be controlled) progressively. Developmental robotics emerged at the crossroads of several research communities including embodied artificial intelligence, enactive and dynamical systems cognitive science, connectionism. Starting from the essential idea that learning and development happen as the self-organized result of the dynamical interactions among brains, bodies and their physical and social environment, and trying to understand how this self-organization can be harnessed to provide task-independent lifelong learning of skills of increasing complexity, developmental robotics strongly interacts with fields such as developmental psychology, developmental and cognitive neuroscience, developmental biology (embryology), evolutionary biology, and cognitive linguistics. As many of the theories coming from these sciences are verbal and/or descriptive, this implies a crucial formalization and computational modeling activity in developmental robotics. These computational models are then not only used as ways to explore how to build more versatile and adaptive machines but also as a way to evaluate their coherence and possibly explore alternative explanations for understanding biological development. == Research directions == === Skill domains === Due to the general approach and methodology, developmental robotics projects typically focus on having robots develop the same types of skills as human infants. A first category that is important being investigated is the acquisition of sensorimotor skills. These include the discovery of one's own body, including its structure and dynamics such as hand-eye coordination, locomotion, and interaction with objects as well as tool use, with a particular focus on the discovery and learning of affordances. A second category of skills targeted by developmental robots are social and linguistic skills: the acquisition of simple social behavioural games such as turn-taking, coordinated interaction, lexicons, syntax and grammar, and the grounding of these linguistic skills into sensorimotor skills (sometimes referred as symbol grounding). In parallel, the acquisition of associated cognitive skills are being investigated such as the emergence of the self/non-self distinction, the development of attentional capabilities, of categorization systems and higher-level representations of affordances or social constructs, of the emergence of values, empathy, or theories of mind. === Mechanisms and constraints === The sensorimotor and social spaces in which humans and robot live are so large and complex that only a small part of potentially learnable skills can actually be explored and learnt within a life-time. Thus, mechanisms and constraints are necessary to guide developmental organisms in their development and control of the growth of complexity. There are several important families of these guiding mechanisms and constraints which are studied in developmental robotics, all inspired by human development: Motivational systems, generating internal reward signals that drive exploration and learning, which can be of two main types: extrinsic motivations push robots/organisms to maintain basic specific internal properties such as food and water level, physical integrity, or light (e.g. in phototropic systems); intrinsic motivations push robot to search for novelty, challenge, compression or learning progress per se, thus generating what is sometimes called curiosity-driven learning and exploration, or alternatively active learning and exploration; Social guidance: as humans learn a lot by interacting with their peers, developmental robotics investigates mechanisms that can allow robots to participate to human-like social interaction. By perceiving and interpreting social cues, this may allow robots both to learn from humans (through diverse means such as imitation, emulation, stimulus enhancement, demonstration, etc. ...) and to trigger natural human pedagogy. Thus, social acceptance of developmental robots is also investigated; Statistical inference biases and cumulative knowledge/skill reuse: biases characterizing both representations/encodings and inference mechanisms can typically allow considerable improvement of the efficiency of learning and are thus studied. Related to this, mechanisms allowing to infer new knowledge and acquire new skills by reusing previously learnt structures is also an essential field of study; The properties of embodiment, including geometry, materials, or innate motor primitives/synergies often encoded as dynamical systems, can considerably simplify the acquisition of sensorimotor or social skills, and is sometimes referred as morphological computation. The interaction of these constraints with other constraints is an important axis of investigation; Maturational constraints: In human infants, both the body and the neural system grow progressively, rather than being full-fledged already at birth. This implies, for example, that new degrees of freedom, as well as increases of the volume and resolution of available sensorimotor signals, may appear as learning and development unfold. Transposing these mechanisms in developmental robots, and understanding how it may hinder or on the contrary ease the acquisition of novel complex skills is a central questi

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  • The Best Free AI Virtual Assistant for Beginners

    The Best Free AI Virtual Assistant for Beginners

    Comparing the best AI virtual assistant? An AI virtual assistant is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it lowers the barrier so anyone can produce professional output. Privacy matters too: check whether your data trains the model and whether a no-log or enterprise tier is available. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI virtual assistant slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Mehryar Mohri

    Mehryar Mohri

    Mehryar Mohri is a professor and theoretical computer scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He is also heading the Machine Learning Theory (ML Theory) team at Google Research. == Career == Prior to joining the Courant Institute, Mohri was a research department head and later technology leader at AT&T Bell Labs, where he was a member of the technical staff for about ten years. Mohri has also taught as an assistant professor at the University of Paris 7 (1992-1993) and Ecole Polytechnique (1992-1994). == Research == Mohri's main area of research is machine learning, in particular learning theory. He is also an expert in automata theory and algorithms. He is the author of several core algorithms that have served as the foundation for the design of many deployed speech recognition and natural language processing systems. == Publications == Mohri is the author of the reference book Foundations of Machine Learning used as a textbook in many graduate-level machine learning courses. Mohri is also a member of the Lothaire group of mathematicians with the pseudonym M. Lothaire and contributed to the book on Applied Combinatorics on Words. He is the author of more than 250 conference and journal publications. == Organizational affiliations == Mohri is currently the President of the Association for Algorithmic Learning Theory (AALT) and the Steering Committee Chair for the ALT conference. He is also Editorial Board member of Machine Learning and TheoretiCS, Action Editor of the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) and a member of the advisory board for the Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics.

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  • Seppo Linnainmaa

    Seppo Linnainmaa

    Seppo Ilmari Linnainmaa (born 28 September 1945) is a Finnish mathematician and computer scientist known for creating the modern version of backpropagation. == Biography == He was born in Pori. He received his MSc in 1970 and introduced a reverse mode of automatic differentiation in his MSc thesis. In 1974 he obtained the first doctorate ever awarded in computer science at the University of Helsinki. In 1976, he became Assistant Professor. From 1984 to 1985 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland, USA. From 1986 to 1989 he was Chairman of the Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society. From 1989 to 2007, he was Research Professor at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. He retired in 2007. == Backpropagation == Explicit, efficient error backpropagation in arbitrary, discrete, possibly sparsely connected, neural networks-like networks was first described in Linnainmaa's 1970 master's thesis, albeit without reference to NNs, when he introduced the reverse mode of automatic differentiation (AD), in order to efficiently compute the derivative of a differentiable composite function that can be represented as a graph, by recursively applying the chain rule to the building blocks of the function. Linnainmaa published it first, following Gerardi Ostrowski who had used it in the context of certain process models in chemical engineering some five years earlier, but didn't publish.

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  • Superquadrics

    Superquadrics

    In mathematics, the superquadrics or super-quadrics (also superquadratics) are a family of geometric shapes defined by formulas that resemble those of ellipsoids and other quadrics, except that the squaring operations are replaced by arbitrary powers. They can be seen as the three-dimensional relatives of the superellipses. The term may refer to the solid object or to its surface, depending on the context. The equations below specify the surface; the solid is specified by replacing the equality signs by less-than-or-equal signs. The superquadrics include many shapes that resemble cubes, octahedra, cylinders, lozenges and spindles, with rounded or sharp corners. Because of their flexibility and relative simplicity, they are popular geometric modeling tools, especially in computer graphics. It becomes an important geometric primitive widely used in computer vision, robotics, and physical simulation. Some authors, such as Alan Barr, define "superquadrics" as including both the superellipsoids and the supertoroids. In modern computer vision literatures, superquadrics and superellipsoids are used interchangeably, since superellipsoids are the most representative and widely utilized shape among all the superquadrics. Comprehensive coverage of geometrical properties of superquadrics and methods of their recovery from range images and point clouds are covered in several computer vision literatures. == Formulas == === Implicit equation === The surface of the basic superquadric is given by | x | r + | y | s + | z | t = 1 {\displaystyle \left|x\right|^{r}+\left|y\right|^{s}+\left|z\right|^{t}=1} where r, s, and t are positive real numbers that determine the main features of the superquadric. Namely: less than 1: a pointy octahedron modified to have concave faces and sharp edges. exactly 1: a regular octahedron. between 1 and 2: an octahedron modified to have convex faces, blunt edges and blunt corners. exactly 2: a sphere greater than 2: a cube modified to have rounded edges and corners. infinite (in the limit): a cube Each exponent can be varied independently to obtain combined shapes. For example, if r=s=2, and t=4, one obtains a solid of revolution which resembles an ellipsoid with round cross-section but flattened ends. This formula is a special case of the superellipsoid's formula if (and only if) r = s. If any exponent is allowed to be negative, the shape extends to infinity. Such shapes are sometimes called super-hyperboloids. The basic shape above spans from -1 to +1 along each coordinate axis. The general superquadric is the result of scaling this basic shape by different amounts A, B, C along each axis. Its general equation is | x A | r + | y B | s + | z C | t = 1. {\displaystyle \left|{\frac {x}{A}}\right|^{r}+\left|{\frac {y}{B}}\right|^{s}+\left|{\frac {z}{C}}\right|^{t}=1.} === Parametric description === Parametric equations in terms of surface parameters u and v (equivalent to longitude and latitude if m equals 2) are x ( u , v ) = A g ( v , 2 r ) g ( u , 2 r ) y ( u , v ) = B g ( v , 2 s ) f ( u , 2 s ) z ( u , v ) = C f ( v , 2 t ) − π 2 ≤ v ≤ π 2 , − π ≤ u < π , {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}x(u,v)&{}=Ag\left(v,{\frac {2}{r}}\right)g\left(u,{\frac {2}{r}}\right)\\y(u,v)&{}=Bg\left(v,{\frac {2}{s}}\right)f\left(u,{\frac {2}{s}}\right)\\z(u,v)&{}=Cf\left(v,{\frac {2}{t}}\right)\\&-{\frac {\pi }{2}}\leq v\leq {\frac {\pi }{2}},\quad -\pi \leq u<\pi ,\end{aligned}}} where the auxiliary functions are f ( ω , m ) = sgn ⁡ ( sin ⁡ ω ) | sin ⁡ ω | m g ( ω , m ) = sgn ⁡ ( cos ⁡ ω ) | cos ⁡ ω | m {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}f(\omega ,m)&{}=\operatorname {sgn}(\sin \omega )\left|\sin \omega \right|^{m}\\g(\omega ,m)&{}=\operatorname {sgn}(\cos \omega )\left|\cos \omega \right|^{m}\end{aligned}}} and the sign function sgn(x) is sgn ⁡ ( x ) = { − 1 , x < 0 0 , x = 0 + 1 , x > 0. {\displaystyle \operatorname {sgn}(x)={\begin{cases}-1,&x<0\\0,&x=0\\+1,&x>0.\end{cases}}} === Spherical product === Barr introduces the spherical product which given two plane curves produces a 3D surface. If f ( μ ) = ( f 1 ( μ ) f 2 ( μ ) ) , g ( ν ) = ( g 1 ( ν ) g 2 ( ν ) ) {\displaystyle f(\mu )={\begin{pmatrix}f_{1}(\mu )\\f_{2}(\mu )\end{pmatrix}},\quad g(\nu )={\begin{pmatrix}g_{1}(\nu )\\g_{2}(\nu )\end{pmatrix}}} are two plane curves then the spherical product is h ( μ , ν ) = f ( μ ) ⊗ g ( ν ) = ( f 1 ( μ ) g 1 ( ν ) f 1 ( μ ) g 2 ( ν ) f 2 ( μ ) ) {\displaystyle h(\mu ,\nu )=f(\mu )\otimes g(\nu )={\begin{pmatrix}f_{1}(\mu )\ g_{1}(\nu )\\f_{1}(\mu )\ g_{2}(\nu )\\f_{2}(\mu )\end{pmatrix}}} This is similar to the typical parametric equation of a sphere: x = x 0 + r sin ⁡ θ cos ⁡ φ y = y 0 + r sin ⁡ θ sin ⁡ φ ( 0 ≤ θ ≤ π , 0 ≤ φ < 2 π ) z = z 0 + r cos ⁡ θ {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}x&=x_{0}+r\sin \theta \;\cos \varphi \\y&=y_{0}+r\sin \theta \;\sin \varphi \qquad (0\leq \theta \leq \pi ,\;0\leq \varphi <2\pi )\\z&=z_{0}+r\cos \theta \end{aligned}}} which give rise to the name spherical product. Barr uses the spherical product to define quadric surfaces, like ellipsoids, and hyperboloids as well as the torus, superellipsoid, superquadric hyperboloids of one and two sheets, and supertoroids. == Plotting code == The following GNU Octave code generates a mesh approximation of a superquadric:

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  • Best AI Code-review Tools in 2026

    Best AI Code-review Tools in 2026

    Looking for the best AI code-review tool? An AI code-review tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI code-review tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • The Best Free AI Chatbot for Beginners

    The Best Free AI Chatbot for Beginners

    Trying to pick the best AI chatbot? An AI chatbot is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it scales effortlessly from a single task to thousands. The best picks balance beginner-friendly simplicity with the depth power users need, and they ship updates often. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI chatbot slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • Emma Brunskill

    Emma Brunskill

    Emma Patricia Brunskill is an American computer scientist. Her research combines machine learning with human–computer interaction by studying the effects of AI systems in human-centered applications including educational software and healthcare, and the theory of reinforcement learning in situations where mistakes impose high risks or costs. She is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford University, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and is an affiliate of the King Center on Global Development. == Education and career == Brunskill grew up in Seattle and Edmonds, Washington, and entered the University of Washington at age 15. She graduated magna cum laude in 2000, with a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and physics. A Rhodes Scholarship took her to Magdalen College, Oxford in England, where she received a master's degree in neuroscience in 2002. After a summer working in Rwanda, she became a graduate student of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she completed her Ph.D. in 2009. Her doctoral dissertation, Compact parametric models for efficient sequential decision making in high-dimensional, uncertain domains, was supervised by Nicholas Roy. After working as an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2011 as an assistant professor of computer science. She moved from CMU to Stanford University in 2017. == Recognition == Brunskill was a 2014 recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a 2015 recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. She was one of two alumni of the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering to be honored in 2020 by the school's Alumni Impact Awards. She was elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in 2025, "for significant contributions to the field of reinforcement learning, and applications for societal benefit, in particular AI for education".

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  • Workplace impact of artificial intelligence

    Workplace impact of artificial intelligence

    The impact of artificial intelligence on workers includes both applications to improve worker safety and health, and potential hazards that must be controlled. One potential application is using AI to eliminate hazards by removing humans from hazardous situations that involve risk of stress, overwork, or musculoskeletal injuries. Predictive analytics may also be used to identify conditions that may lead to hazards such as fatigue, repetitive strain injuries, or toxic substance exposure, leading to earlier interventions. Another is to streamline workplace safety and health workflows through automating repetitive tasks, enhancing safety training programs through virtual reality, or detecting and reporting near misses. When used in the workplace, AI also presents the possibility of new hazards. These may arise from machine learning techniques leading to unpredictable behavior and inscrutability in their decision-making, or from cybersecurity and information privacy issues. Many hazards of AI are psychosocial due to its potential to cause changes in work organization. These include increased monitoring leading to micromanagement, algorithms unintentionally or intentionally mimicking undesirable human biases, and assigning blame for machine errors to the human operator instead. AI may also lead to physical hazards in the form of human–robot collisions, and ergonomic risks of control interfaces and human–machine interactions. Hazard controls include cybersecurity and information privacy measures, communication and transparency with workers about data usage, and limitations on collaborative robots. From a workplace safety and health perspective, only "weak" or "narrow" AI that is tailored to a specific task is relevant, as there are many examples that are currently in use or expected to come into use in the near future. Certain digital technologies are predicted to result in job losses. Starting in the 2020s, the adoption of modern robotics has led to net employment growth. However, many businesses anticipate that automation, or employing robots would result in job losses in the future. This is especially true for companies in Central and Eastern Europe. Other digital technologies, such as platforms or big data, are projected to have a more neutral impact on employment. A large number of tech workers have been laid off starting in 2023; many such job cuts have been attributed to artificial intelligence. == Health and safety applications == In order for any potential AI health and safety application to be adopted, it requires acceptance by both managers and workers. For example, worker acceptance may be diminished by concerns about information privacy, or from a lack of trust and acceptance of the new technology, which may arise from inadequate transparency or training. Alternatively, managers may emphasize increases in economic productivity rather than gains in worker safety and health when implementing AI-based systems. === Eliminating hazardous tasks === AI may increase the scope of work tasks where a worker can be removed from a situation that carries risk. In a sense, while traditional automation can replace the functions of a worker's body with a robot, AI effectively replaces the functions of their brain with a computer. Hazards that can be avoided include stress, overwork, musculoskeletal injuries, and boredom. This can expand the range of affected job sectors into white-collar and service sector jobs such as in medicine, finance, and information technology. === Analytics to reduce risk === Machine learning is used for people analytics to make predictions about worker behavior to assist management decision-making, such as hiring and performance assessment. These could also be used to improve worker health. The analytics may be based on inputs such as online activities, monitoring of communications, location tracking, and voice analysis and body language analysis of filmed interviews. For example, sentiment analysis may be used to spot fatigue to prevent overwork. Decision support systems have a similar ability to be used to, for example, prevent industrial disasters or make disaster response more efficient. For manual material handling workers, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence may be used to reduce musculoskeletal injury. Traditional guidelines are based on statistical averages and are geared towards anthropometrically typical humans. The analysis of large amounts of data from wearable sensors may allow real-time, personalized calculation of ergonomic risk and fatigue management, as well as better analysis of the risk associated with specific job roles. Wearable sensors may also enable earlier intervention against exposure to toxic substances than is possible with area or breathing zone testing on a periodic basis. Furthermore, the large data sets generated could improve workplace health surveillance, risk assessment, and research. === Streamlining safety and health workflows === AI has also been used to attempt to make the workplace safety and health workflow more efficient. One example is coding of workers' compensation claims, which are submitted in a prose narrative form and must manually be assigned standardized codes. AI is being investigated to perform this task faster, more cheaply, and with fewer errors. == Hazards == There are several broad aspects of AI that may give rise to specific hazards. The risks depend on implementation rather than the mere presence of AI. Systems using sub-symbolic AI such as machine learning may behave unpredictably and are more prone to inscrutability in their decision-making. This is especially true if a situation is encountered that was not part of the AI's training dataset, and is exacerbated in environments that are less structured. Undesired behavior may also arise from flaws in the system's perception (arising either from within the software or from sensor degradation), knowledge representation and reasoning, or from software bugs. They may arise from improper training, such as a user applying the same algorithm to two problems that do not have the same requirements. Machine learning applied during the design phase may have different implications than that applied at runtime. Systems using symbolic AI are less prone to unpredictable behavior. The use of AI also increases cybersecurity risks relative to platforms that do not use AI, and information privacy concerns about collected data may pose a hazard to workers. === Psychosocial === Psychosocial hazards are those that arise from the way work is designed, organized, and managed, or its economic and social contexts, rather than arising from a physical substance or object. They cause not only psychiatric and psychological outcomes such as occupational burnout, anxiety disorders, and depression, but they can also cause physical injury or illness such as cardiovascular disease or musculoskeletal injury. Many hazards of AI are psychosocial in nature due to its potential to cause changes in work organization, in terms of increasing complexity and interaction between different organizational factors. However, psychosocial risks are often overlooked by designers of advanced manufacturing systems. Einola and Khoreva explore how different organizational groups perceive and interact with AI technologies. Their research shows that successful AI integration depends on human ownership and contextual understanding. They caution against blind technological optimism and stress the importance of tailoring AI use to specific workplace ecosystems. This perspective reinforces the need for inclusive design and transparent implementation strategies. ==== Changes in work practices ==== Over-reliance on AI tools may lead to deskilling of some professions. When AI becomes a substitute for traditional peer collaboration and mentorship, there is a risk of diminishing opportunities for interpersonal skill development and team-based learning. Increased monitoring may lead to micromanagement and thus to stress and anxiety. A perception of surveillance may also lead to stress. Controls for these include consultation with worker groups, extensive testing, and attention to introduced bias. Wearable sensors, activity trackers, and augmented reality may also lead to stress from micromanagement, both for assembly line workers and gig workers. Gig workers also lack the legal protections and rights of formal workers. Newell & Marabelli argue that AI alters power dynamics and employee autonomy, requiring a more nuanced understanding of its social and organizational implications. There is also the risk of people being forced to work at a robot's pace, or to monitor robot performance at nonstandard hours. A 2025 preprint paper based on users' interactions with the AI chatbot Microsoft Copilot identified forty jobs that the author's claimed had high overlaps with the capabilities of AI. Some media outlets used this paper to report on jobs becoming obsolete. Cri

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  • The Best Free AI Analytics Tool for Beginners

    The Best Free AI Analytics Tool for Beginners

    Trying to pick the best AI analytics tool? An AI analytics tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it scales effortlessly from a single task to thousands. The best picks balance beginner-friendly simplicity with the depth power users need, and they ship updates often. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI analytics tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • Bob Coecke

    Bob Coecke

    Bob Coecke (born 23 July 1968) is a Belgian theoretical physicist and logician. He was Professor of Quantum foundations, Logics, and Structures at Oxford University until 2020. He was Chief Scientist at quantum computing company Quantinuum, until 2025 and founded a startup called Relational Intelligence in 2026. He is also Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He pioneered categorical quantum mechanics (entry 18M40 in Mathematics Subject Classification 2020), Quantum Picturalism, ZX-calculus, DisCoCat model for natural language,, quantum natural language processing (QNLP) and quantum education through the book Quantum in Pictures. He is a founder of the Quantum Physics and Logic community and the Applied Category Theory communities and conference series, and of the journal Compositionality. Coecke is also a composer and musician, who has been called a pioneer of industrial music, and is also one of the pioneers of employing quantum computers in music. == Education and career == Coecke obtained his doctorate in sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1996, and performed postdoctoral work in the Theoretical Physics Group of Imperial College, London in the Category Theory Group of the Mathematics and Statistics Department at McGill University in Montreal, in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics of Cambridge University, and in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He was an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, where he became Lecturer in Quantum Computer Science in 2007, and jointly with Samson Abramsky built and headed the Quantum Group. In July 2011, he was nominated professor of Quantum Foundations, Logics and Structures at Oxford University, with retroactive effect as of October 2010. He was a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford since 2007, where he now is an Emeritus Fellow. In January 2019, Coecke became Senior Scientific Advisor of Cambridge Quantum Computing, and in January 2021 he resigned from his Professorship at Oxford, to become Chief Scientist of Cambridge Quantum Computing. After the merger of Cambridge Quantum Computing with Honeywell Quantum Systems, he stayed on as Chief Scientist of the joint entity Quantinuum until 2025. In January 2023 he also became Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. == Work == Coecke's research focuses on the foundations of physics, more particularly category theory, logic, and diagrammatic reasoning, with application to quantum informatics, quantum gravity, and NLP. He has pioneered categorical quantum mechanics together with Samson Abramsky, and spearheaded the development of a diagrammatic quantum formalism based on Penrose graphical notation, on which he wrote a textbook entitled Picturing Quantum Processes with Aleks Kissinger. With Ross Duncan he pioneered ZX-calculus. He pioneered the DisCoCat model for natural language, with Stephen Clark and Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh. He also pioneered quantum natural language processing (QNLP), with Will Zeng, and colleagues at Cambridge Quantum Computing. == Music == Coecke is also a musician, performing and recording since the eighties. He retrospectively has been named a pioneer of industrial music. His band, Black Tish, "used cutting edge sampling techniques for the time, a host of synth and sound loops and metal-style guitars to create a heavy rock/electronica fusion unlike anything heard before", and "bridge the gap between the pure experimental nature of bands like Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten and the (comparatively) more radio accessible Ministry or Nine Inch Nails". Coecke is also one of the pioneers of employing quantum computers in music. == Selected publications == Textbooks Bob Coecke, Aleks Kissinger:Picturing Quantum Processes. A First Course in Quantum Theory and Diagrammatic Reasoning, Cambridge University Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1316219317 Bob Coecke, Stefano Gogioso:Quantum in Pictures, Quantinuum, 2022, ISBN 978-1-7392147-1-5 Books (as editor) Bob Coecke, David Moore, Alexander Wilce (eds.): Current Research in Operational Quantum Logic: Algebras, Categories, Languages, Fundamental Theories of Physics, Kluwer Academic, 2010, ISBN 978-9048154371 Bob Coecke (ed.): New Structures for Physics, Lecture Notes in Physics 813, Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-3642128202 Articles Bob Coecke: Kindergarten quantum mechanics, arXiv:quant-ph/0510032 Samson Abramsky, Bob Coecke: A categorical semantics of quantum protocols, Proceedings of the 19th Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 2004, pp. 415–425 Bob Coecke, Ross Duncan: Interacting quantum observables, Automata, Languages and Programming, pp. 298–310, 2008 Konstantinos Meichanetzidis, Alexis Toumi, Giovanni de Felice, Bob Coecke: Grammar-Aware Question-Answering on Quantum Computers, arXiv:2012.03756 Bob Coecke: The Mathematics of Text Structure, arXiv:1904.03478 Will Zeng, Bob Coecke: Quantum Algorithms for Compositional Natural Language Processing, arXiv:1608.01406 Bob Coecke, Tobias Fritz, Robert Spekkens: A mathematical theory of resources, arXiv:1409.5531 Bob Coecke: An Alternative Gospel of structure: order, composition, processes, arxiv:1307.4038 Bob Coecke, Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Steven Clark: Mathematical Foundations for a Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning, arXiv:1003.4394 Bob Coecke: Quantum Picturalism, arXiv:0908.1787 Software articles Eduardo Reck Miranda, Richie Yeung, Anna Pearson, Konstantinos Meichanetzidis, Bob Coecke: A quantum natural language processing approach to musical intelligence, arXiv:2111.06741 Dimitri Kartsaklis, Ian Fan, Richie Yeung, Anna Pearson, Robin Lorenz, Alexis Toumi, Giovanni de Felice, Konstantinos Meichanetzidis, Stephen Clark, Bob Coecke: lambeq: An efficient high-level python library for quantum NLP, arXiv:2110.04236 Giovanni de Felice, Alexis Toumi, Bob Coecke: Discopy: monoidal categories in Python, arXiv:2111.06741

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