The term information scientist developed in the latter part of the twentieth century by Wm. Hovey Smith to describe an individual, usually with a relevant subject degree (such as one in Information and Computer Science - CIS) or high level of subject knowledge, providing focused information to scientific and technical research staff in industry. It is a role quite distinct from and complementary to that of a librarian. Developments in end-user searching, together with some convergence between the roles of librarian and information scientist, have led to a diminution in its use in this context, and the term information officer or information professional (information specialist) are also now used. The term was, and is, also used for an individual carrying out research in information science. Brian C. Vickery mentions that the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) was established in London during 1958 and lists the criteria put forward by this institute "Criteria for Information Science" (appendix 1) as well as his own "Areas of study in information science" (appendix 2). The IIS merged with the Library Association in 2002 to form the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). == Notable Information Scientists == See also Award of Merit - Association for Information Science and Technology Marcia Bates David Blair (information technologist) Samuel C. Bradford Michael Buckland John M. Carroll Blaise Cronin Emilia Currás Brenda Dervin Eugene Garfield Paul B. Kantor Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster Calvin Mooers Tefko Saracevic Linda C. Smith Robert Saxton Taylor Brian Campbell Vickery Thomas D. Wilson == Additional reading == Ellis, David and Merete Haugan. (1997) "Modelling the information seeking patterns of engineers and research scientists in an industrial environment" (Journal of Documentation, Volume 53(4): pp. 384–403) Poole, Alex H. (2024). "'There's a big difference between going through life with the wind at your back, and going through life leaning into the wind': Feminism in Post-World War II Information Science". Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 61: 300–313. doi:10.1002/pra2.1029. Vickery, Brian Campbell (1988) "Essays presented to B. C. Vickery" (Journal of Documentation, Volume 44, pp. 199–283). Vickery, B. & Vickery, A. (1987) Information Science in theory and practice (London: Bowker-Saur, pp. 361–369)
Fluency Voice Technology
Fluency Voice Technology was a company that developed and sold packaged speech recognition solutions for use in call centers. Fluency's Speech Recognition solutions are used by call centers worldwide to improve customer service and significantly reduce costs and are available on-premises and hosted. == History == 1998 – Fluency was created as a spin-off from the Voice Research & Development team of a company called netdecisions. This R&D operation was established in Cambridge UK. The focus of the development was speech recognition systems based on the VXML standard. 2001 – Fluency became a separate entity in May 2001. Fluency began the creation of a software development platform specifically aimed at automating call center activities. This platform became Fluency's VoiceRunner. 2002 to 2004 – Fluency establishes accomplishes many successful deployments in customer sites such as National Express and Barclaycard. 2003 – Fluency expanded into the USA. Fluency also acquires Vocalis of Cambridge, UK in August 2003. 2004 – Fluency receives £6 million investment from leading European Venture Capitalists and establishes a global OEM partnership with Avaya, and the acquisition of SRC Telecom. 2008 – Fluency is acquired by Syntellect Ltd == Customers == Call Centers around the world use Fluency to improve service and reduce costs. They include Travelodge, Standard Life Bank, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Pizza Hut, CWT, Barclays, Powergen, First Choice, OutRight, J D Williams, Capital Blue Cross, Chelsea Building Society, EDF, bss, TV Licensing and Capita Software Services.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that provides a range of internet services, including content delivery network (CDN) services, cloud cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and ICANN-accredited domain registration. The company's services act primarily as a reverse proxy between website visitors and a customer's hosting provider, improving performance and protecting against malicious traffic. Cloudflare was founded in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019 under the ticker symbol NET. Cloudflare has since expanded its offerings to include edge computing through its Workers platform, a public DNS resolver (1.1.1.1), and a VPN-like service known as WARP. In recent years, the company has integrated artificial intelligence into its infrastructure, acquiring companies such as Replicate and launching tools to manage AI bots and scrapers. According to W3Techs, Cloudflare is used by approximately 21.3% of all websites on the Internet as of January 2026. The company has been the subject of controversy regarding its policy of content neutrality. While Cloudflare executives have historically advocated for remaining a neutral infrastructure provider, the company has terminated services for specific high-profile websites associated with hate speech and violence, including The Daily Stormer, 8chan, and Kiwi Farms, following significant public pressure. Cloudflare has also faced criticism and litigation regarding copyright infringement by websites using its services, notably losing a lawsuit against Japanese publishers in 2025. The company experienced significant global outages in late 2025 which disrupted services for major platforms internationally. == History == Cloudflare was founded on July 26, 2009, by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn. Prince and Holloway had previously collaborated on Project Honey Pot, a product of Unspam Technologies that partly inspired the basis of Cloudflare. In 2009, the company was venture-capital funded. On August 15, 2019, Cloudflare submitted its S-1 filing for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker NET. It opened for public trading on September 13, 2019, at $15 per share. According to the company, the name 'Cloudflare' was chosen, over the initial 'WebWall', because it best described what they were trying to do: build a "firewall in the cloud." In 2020, Cloudflare co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn was named president. Cloudflare has acquired web-services and security companies, including StopTheHacker (February 2014), CryptoSeal (June 2014), Eager Platform Co. (December 2016), Neumob (November 2017), S2 Systems (January 2020), Linc (December 2020), Zaraz (December 2021), Vectrix (February 2022), Area 1 Security (February 2022), Nefeli Networks (March 2024), BastionZero (May 2024), and Kivera (October 2024). Replicate (November 2025), and Human Native (January 2026). Since at least 2017, Cloudflare has used a wall of lava lamps at its San Francisco headquarters as a source of randomness for encryption keys, alongside double pendulums at its London offices and a Geiger counter at its Singapore offices. The lava lamp installation implements the Lavarand method, where a camera transforms the unpredictable shapes of the "lava" blobs into a digital image. In Q4 2022, Cloudflare provided paid services to 162,086 customers. In October 2024, Cloudflare won a lawsuit against patent troll Sable Networks. Sable paid Cloudflare $225,000, granted it a royalty-free license to its patent portfolio, and dedicated its patents to the public by abandoning its patent rights. In November 2025, it was announced Cloudflare had agreed to acquire Replicate, a San Francisco–based platform that enables software developers to run, fine-tune, and deploy open-source machine-learning models via an API without managing infrastructure. In January 2026, Cloudflare released an analysis regarding BGP routing leaks observed from the Venezuelan state-owned ISP CANTV (AS8048), which occurred on January 2 coincides with the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. While some security researchers had speculated that the outages were linked to U.S. cyber operations, Cloudflare's data indicated that the anomalies were consistent with a pattern of "insufficient routing export and import policies" by the ISP rather than malicious external interference. In January 2026, Cloudflare acquired Human Native, an AI data marketplace that brokers transactions between developers and content creators, for an undisclosed amount. On January 16, 2026, Cloudflare acquired The Astro Technology Company, the developers behind the open-source web framework Astro. In May 2026, Cloudflare announced the elimination of approximately 1,100 positions, around 20 percent of its workforce, in a restructuring the company attributed to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The announcement coincided with the company's first-quarter 2026 earnings, which reported a record $639.8 million in quarterly revenue, a 34 percent year-over-year increase. CEO Matthew Prince stated the cuts were not driven by performance concerns but reflected roles made obsolete by AI, and that Cloudflare expected to employ more people by the end of 2027 than at any point during 2026. == Products == Cloudflare provides network and security products for consumers and businesses, utilizing edge computing, reverse proxies for web traffic, data center interconnects, and a content distribution network to serve content across its network of servers. It supports transport layer protocols TCP, UDP, QUIC, and many application layer protocols such as DNS over HTTPS, SMTP, and HTTP/2 with support for HTTP/2 Server Push. As of 2023, Cloudflare handles an average of 45 million HTTP requests per second. As of 2024, Cloudflare servers are powered by AMD EPYC 9684X processors. Cloudflare also provides analysis and reports on large-scale outages, including Verizon's October 2024 outage. === Artificial intelligence === In 2023, Cloudflare launched "Workers AI", a framework allowing for use of Nvidia GPU's within Cloudflare's network. In 2024, Cloudflare launched a tool that prevents bots from scraping websites. To build automatic bot detector models, the company analyzed "AI" bots and crawler traffic. The company also launched an "AI" assistant to generate charts based on queries by leveraging "Workers AI". Cloudflare announced plans in September 2024 to launch a marketplace where website owners can sell "AI" model providers access to scrape their site's content. In March 2025, Cloudflare announced a new feature called "AI Labyrinth", which combats unauthorized "AI" data scraping by serving fake "AI"-generated content to LLM bots. In July, the company rolled out a permission-based setting to allow websites to automatically block online bots from scraping data and content. Cloudflare released AutoRAG into beta in 2025. AutoRAG (retrieval augmented generation) creates a vector database of a website's unstructured content to identify relationships between concepts. It is part of an initiative with Microsoft, alongside their NLWeb standard, to make websites easier for people and automated systems to query. Cloudflare and GoDaddy partnered in April 2026 to enable AI Crawl Control features on GoDaddy hosted websites. This would allow site owners to decide how AI bot crawlers interact with their content. === DDoS mitigation === Cloudflare provides free and paid DDoS mitigation services that protect customers from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Cloudflare received media attention in June 2011 for providing DDoS mitigation for the website of LulzSec, a black hat hacking group. In March 2013, The Spamhaus Project was targeted by a DDoS attack that Cloudflare reported exceeded 300 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Patrick Gilmore, of Akamai, stated that at the time it was "the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet". While trying to defend Spamhaus against the DDoS attacks, Cloudflare ended up being attacked as well; Google and other companies eventually came to Spamhaus' defense and helped it to absorb the unprecedented amount of attack traffic. In 2014, Cloudflare began providing free DDoS mitigation for artists, activists, journalists, and human rights groups under the name "Project Galileo". In 2017, it extended the service to electoral infrastructure and political campaigns under the name "Athenian Project". By 2025, more than 2,900 users and organizations were participating in Project Galileo, including 31 US states. In February 2014, Cloudflare claimed to have mitigated an NTP reflection attack against an unnamed European customer, which it stated peaked at 400 Gbit/s. In November 2014, it reported a 500 Gbit/s DDoS attack in Hong Kong. In July 2021, the company claimed to have absorbed a DDoS atta
Software durability
In software engineering, software durability means the solution ability of serviceability of software and to meet user's needs for a relatively long time. Software durability is important for user's satisfaction. For a software security to be durable, it must allow an organization to adjust the software to business needs that are constantly evolving, often in impulsive ways. Durability of software depends on four characteristics mainly; i.e. software trustworthiness, Human Trust for Serviceability, software dependability and software usability.
Cozi
Cozi is a family organization website and mobile app designed to streamline household management. It offers shared calendars, to-do lists, shopping lists, and messaging tools, allowing multiple users to coordinate under one account. Founded in 2005 by former Microsoft employees, Cozi has evolved through acquisitions and now operates under OurFamilyWizard. The app is available in both free and premium versions on iOS, Android, and desktop platforms. == History == Cozi was founded in 2005 by Robbie Cape and Jan Miksovsky, two former Microsoft employees who sought to simplify family logistics with technology. The company's first product, Cozi Central, was released on September 25, 2006, and included a family calendar, shopping lists, family messaging and a photo collage screensaver. The company is based in Seattle, Washington. Cozi has both a freemium version, and a paid version called Cozi Gold. Cozi Gold's additional features include Cozi Contacts, a birthday tracker, more reminders, mobile month view, and change notifications. The software can be used on desktop or mobile applications for iOS and Android. On June 5, 2011, Cozi set a Guinness World Record for the longest line of ducks in a row. The line stretched for one mile and was made up of 17,782 rubber ducks. Cozi was acquired by Time Inc. in 2014. After the Meredith Corporation acquired Time in 2018, Cozi was moved into the Parents Network division. On May 4, 2022, Cozi was acquired by OurFamilyWizard of Minneapolis, Minnesota, reporting more than 20 million registered users.
Reflection lines
Engineers use reflection lines to judge a surface's quality. Reflection lines reveal surface flaws, particularly discontinuities in normals indicating that the surface is not C 2 {\displaystyle C^{2}} . Reflection lines may be created and examined on physical surfaces or virtual surfaces with the help of computer graphics. For example, the shiny surface of an automobile body is illuminated with reflection lines by surrounding the car with parallel light sources. Virtually, a surface can be rendered with reflection lines by modulating the surfaces point-wise color according to a simple calculation involving the surface normal, viewing direction and a square wave environment map. == Mathematical definition == Consider a point p {\displaystyle p} on a surface M {\displaystyle M} with (normalized) normal n {\displaystyle n} . If an observer views this point from infinity at view direction v {\displaystyle v} then the reflected view direction r {\displaystyle r} is: r = v − 2 ( n ⋅ v ) n . {\displaystyle r=v-2(n\cdot v)n.} (The vector v {\displaystyle v} is decomposed into its normal part v n = ( n ⋅ v ) v {\displaystyle v_{n}=(n\cdot v)v} and tangential part v t = v − v n {\displaystyle v_{t}=v-v_{n}} . Upon reflection, the tangential part is kept and the normal part is negated.) For reflection lines we consider the surface M {\displaystyle M} surrounded by parallel lines with direction a {\displaystyle a} , representing infinite, non-dispersive light sources. For each point p {\displaystyle p} on M {\displaystyle M} we determine which line is seen from direction v {\displaystyle v} . The position on each line is of no interest. Define the vector r p {\displaystyle r_{p}} to be the reflection direction r {\displaystyle r} projected onto a plane P {\displaystyle P} that is orthogonal to a {\displaystyle a} : r p = r − ( r ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle r_{p}=r-(r\cdot a)a} and similarly let v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} be the viewing direction projected onto P {\displaystyle P} : v p = v − ( v ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle v_{p}=v-(v\cdot a)a} Finally, define v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} to be the direction lying in P {\displaystyle P} perpendicular to a {\displaystyle a} and v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} : v o = a × v p {\displaystyle v_{o}=a\times v_{p}} Using these vectors, the reflection line function θ ( p ) : M → ( − π , π ] {\displaystyle \theta (p):M\rightarrow (-\pi ,\pi ]} is a scalar function mapping points p {\displaystyle p} on the surface to angles between v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and r p {\displaystyle r_{p}} : θ = arctan ( r p ⋅ v o , r p ⋅ v p ) {\displaystyle \theta =\arctan {(r_{p}\cdot v_{o},r_{p}\cdot v_{p})}} where a r c t a n ( y , x ) {\displaystyle arctan(y,x)} is the atan2 function producing a number in the range ( − π , π ] {\displaystyle (-\pi ,\pi ]} . ( v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} can be viewed as a local coordinate system in P {\displaystyle P} with x {\displaystyle x} -axis in direction v p {\displaystyle v_{p}} and y {\displaystyle y} -axis in direction v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} .) Finally, to render the reflection lines positive values θ > 0 {\displaystyle \theta >0} are mapped to a light color and non-positive values to a dark color. == Highlight lines == Highlight lines are a view-independent alternative to reflection lines. Here the projected normal is directly compared against some arbitrary vector x {\displaystyle x} perpendicular to the light source: θ = arctan ( n a ⋅ a ⊥ , n a ⋅ x ) {\displaystyle \theta =\arctan {(n_{a}\cdot a^{\perp },n_{a}\cdot x)}} where n a {\displaystyle n_{a}} is the surface normal projected on the light source plane P {\displaystyle P} : n a ^ / | n a ^ | , n a ^ = n − ( n ⋅ a ) a {\displaystyle {\hat {n_{a}}}/|{\hat {n_{a}}}|,{\hat {n_{a}}}=n-(n\cdot a)a} The relationship between reflection lines and highlight lines is likened to that between specular and diffuse shading.
Outline of brain mapping
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to brain mapping: Brain mapping – set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of (biological) quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the (human or non-human) brain resulting in maps. Brain mapping is further defined as the study of the anatomy and function of the brain and spinal cord through the use of imaging (including intra-operative, microscopic, endoscopic and multi-modality imaging), immunohistochemistry, molecular and optogenetics, stem cell and cellular biology, engineering (material, electrical and biomedical), neurophysiology and nanotechnology. == Broad scope == History of neuroscience History of neurology Brain mapping Human brain Neuroscience Nervous system. === The neuron doctrine === Neuron doctrine – A set of carefully constructed elementary set of observations regarding neurons. For more granularity, more current, and more advanced topics, see the cellular level section Asserts that neurons fall under the broader cell theory, which postulates: All living organisms are composed of one or more cells. The cell is the basic unit of structure, function, and organization in all organisms. All cells come from preexisting, living cells. The Neuron doctrine postulates several elementary aspects of neurons: The brain is made up of individual cells (neurons) that contain specialized features such as dendrites, a cell body, and an axon. Neurons are cells differentiable from other tissues in the body. Neurons differ in size, shape, and structure according to their location or functional specialization. Every neuron has a nucleus, which is the trophic center of the cell (The part which must have access to nutrition). If the cell is divided, only the portion containing the nucleus will survive. Nerve fibers are the result of cell processes and the outgrowths of nerve cells. (Several axons are bound together to form one nerve fibril. See also: Neurofilament. Several nerve fibrils then form one large nerve fiber. Myelin, an electrical insulator, forms around selected axons. Neurons are generated by cell division. Neurons are connected by sites of contact and not via cytoplasmic continuity. (A cell membrane isolates the inside of the cell from its environment. Neurons do not communicate via direct cytoplasm to cytoplasm contact.) Law of dynamic polarization. Although the axon can conduct in both directions, in tissue there is a preferred direction of transmission from cell to cell. Elements added later to the initial Neuron doctrine A barrier to transmission exists at the site of contact between two neurons that may permit transmission. (Synapse) Unity of transmission. If a contact is made between two cells, then that contact can be either excitatory or inhibitory, but will always be of the same type. Dale's law, each nerve terminal releases a single type of neurotransmitter. Some of the basic postulates in the Neuron doctrine have been subsequently questioned, refuted, or updated. See the cellular level section topics for additional information. === Map, atlas, and database projects === Brain Activity Map Project – 2013 NIH $3 billion project to map every neuron in the human brain in ten years, based upon the Human Genome Project. NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative [1] Community outreach site for above where the public may comment [2] Human Brain Project (EU) – 1 billion euro, 10-year project to simulate the human brain with supercomputers. BigBrain A high-resolution 3D atlas of the human brain created as part of the HBP. Human Connectome Project – 2009 NIH $30 million project to build a network map of the human brain, including structural (anatomical) and functional elements. Emphasis included research into dyslexia, autism, Alzheimer's disease, and schizophrenia. See also Connectome a, comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain. Allen Brain Atlas – 2003 $100 million project funded by Paul Allen (Microsoft) BrainMaps – National Institute of Health (NIH) database including 60 terabytes of image scans of primate and non-primates, integrated with information covering structure and function. NeuroNames – Defines the brain in terms of about 550 primary structures (about 850 unique structures) to which all other structures, names, and synonyms are related. About 15,000 neuroanatomical terms are cross indexed, including many synonyms in seven languages. Coverage includes the brain and spinal cord of the four species most frequently studied by neuroscientists: human, macaque (monkey), rat and mouse. The controlled, standardized vocabulary for each structure is located in an unambiguous, strict physical hierarchy, and these terms are selected based on ease of pronunciation, mnemonic value, and frequency of use in recent neuroscientific publications. Relation of each structure to its superstructures and substructures is included. The controlled vocabulary is suitable for uniquely indexing neuroanatomical information in digital databases. Decade of the Brain 1990–1999 promotion by NIH and the Library of Congress "to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research". Communications targeted Members of Congress, staffs, and the general public to promote funding. Talairach Atlas see Jean Talairach Harvard Whole Brain Atlas see Human brain MNI Template see Medical image computing Blue Brain Project and Artificial brain International Consortium for Brain Mapping see Brain Mapping List of neuroscience databases NIH Toolbox National Institute of Health (USA) toolbox for the assessment of neurological and behavioral function Organization for Human Brain Mapping The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) is an international society dedicated to using neuroimaging to discover the organization of the human brain. == Imaging and recording systems == This section covers imaging and recording systems. The general section covers history, neuroimaging, and techniques for mapping specific neural connections. The specific systems section covers the various specific technologies, including experimental and widely deployed imaging and recording systems. === General === Most imaging work to date on individual neurons has been conducted outside the brain, typically on large neurons, and has been most frequently destructive. New techniques are however rapidly emerging. Search on "Single neuron imaging" and see related topics: Biological neuron model, Single-unit recording, Neural oscillation, Computational neuroscience. dMRI (above) is also promising in non-destructive imaging of single neurons inside the brain. History of neuroimaging (redirects from Brain scanner) Neuroimaging (redirects from Brain function map) Connectomics – mapping technique showing neural connections in a nervous system. === Specific systems === Cortical stimulation mapping Diffusion MRI (dMRI) – includes diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and diffusion functional MRI (DfMRI). dMRI is a recent breakthrough in brain mapping allowing the visualization of cross connections between different anatomical parts of the brain. It allows noninvasive imaging of white matter fiber structure and in addition to mapping can be useful in clinical observations of abnormalities, including damage from stroke. Electroencephalography (EEG) – uses electrodes on the scalp and other techniques to detect the electrical flow of currents. Electrocorticography – intracranial EEG, the practice of using electrodes placed directly on the exposed surface of the brain to record electrical activity from the cerebral cortex. Electrophysiological techniques for clinical diagnosis Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Medical image computing (brain research of leads medical and surgical uses of mapping technology) Neurostimulation (in research stimulation is frequently used in conjunction with imaging) Positron emission tomography (PET) – a nuclear medical imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Three-dimensional images of tracer concentration within the body are then constructed by computer analysis. In modern scanners, three dimensional imaging is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scan performed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine. === Imaging and recording componentry === ==== Electrochemical ==== Haemodynamic response – the rapid delivery of blood to active neuronal tissues. Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent signal (BOLD), corresponds to the concentration of deoxyhemoglobin. The BOLD effect is based on the fact that when neuronal activity is increased in one part of the brain, there is also an increased amount of cerebral blood flow to that area. Functional m