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The Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series of Hope College will feature Oni Buchanan and Jon Woodward performing a multi-media sonic work titled "Uncanny Valley" on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at 7 p.m. at the Knickerbocker Theatre in downtown Holland.
The public is welcome. Admission is free.
In this program, featuring a newly-commissioned concert-length piece by composer John Gibson, the piano performance of Oni Buchanan joins and reflects the spoken text of the poem "Uncanny Valley" as performed by its author, poet Jon Woodward. "Uncanny Valley" is a long serial poem in 16 sections, meant to be read out loud, with numerous optional repeats throughout the text. These repetitions act as accumulations of sound, maddening as well as hypnotic. Gibson's piece provides a sonic environment in which the text floats freely, with its pacing determined by the two performers.
In 1970, roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term "uncanny valley" to describe the emotional and empathic chasm between humans and imperfect human simulacra, a gap created by their imperfection. The piano work and poem cooperate in a search for what is most uncanny, and most human, in both language and music.
Oni Buchanan's third poetry book, "Must a Violence," is forthcoming from the Kuhl House Poets Series in September 2012, selected by Mark Levine. Her previous books include "Spring," a Poetry Honors winner of the 2009 Massachusetts Book Awards and selected by Mark Doty for the 2007 National Poetry Series, and "What Animal," selected by Fanny Howe for the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series. Buchanan is also a concert pianist, has released three solo piano CDs, and actively performs across the U.S. and abroad.
Jon Woodward's books are "Uncanny Valley" (forthcoming from Cleveland State University Poetry Center), "Rain" (Wave Books) and "Mister Goodbye Easter Island" (Alice James Books). He works at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Buchanan and Woodward live in Boston, Mass., and are wife and husband.
Additional information is available online at hope.edu/vws.
The Knickerbocker Theatre is located at 86 E. Eighth St.


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subset: commoncrawl


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Baby Girl Crib Bedding Sets at affordable prices
Your little princess deserves the best! Here at aBaby.com we offer the best Baby Girl Crib Bedding Sets! From silks and satins, ruffles and bows to simple cotton Crib Bedding for Girls, you are sure to find the one that suits your fancy. Made from comfy and cozy fabrics, your little girl is sure to be ensconced in the crib bedding set of your dreams!


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Butterworth was born in Paddington, London.[2] Soon after his birth, his family moved to Yorkshire so that his father Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth could take up an appointment as general manager of the North-East Railway Company, based at York. George received his first music lessons from his mother, who was a singer, and he began composing at an early age. As a young boy, he played the organ for services in the chapel of his prep school, Aysgarth School, before gaining a scholarship to Eton College. He showed early musical promise at Eton, a 'Barcarolle" for orchestra being played during his time there (it is long since lost). He then went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he became more focused on music, becoming President of the university musical society. He also made friends with folk song collector Cecil Sharp; the composer and folk song enthusiast Ralph Vaughan Williams; the future Director of the Royal College of Music, Hugh Allen; and a baritone singer and future conductor, Adrian Boult. Butterworth and Vaughan Williams made several trips into the English countryside to collect folk songs (Butterworth collected over 450 himself, many in Sussex in 1907, and sometimes using a phonograph) and the compositions of both were strongly influenced by what they collected. Butterworth was also an expert folk dancer, being particularly keen in the art of morris dancing. In fact, he was employed for a while by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (of which he was a founder member in 1906) as a professional morris dancer, a member of the Demonstration Team.
Upon leaving Oxford, Butterworth began a career in music, writing criticism for The Times, composing, and teaching at Radley College, Oxfordshire. He also briefly studied piano and organ at the Royal College of Music where he worked with Hubert Parry among others, though he stayed less than a year as the academic life was not for him.
Vaughan Williams and Butterworth became close friends. It was Butterworth who suggested to Vaughan Williams that he turn a symphonic poem he was working on into his London Symphony.
Source: Wikipedia


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Join ACG, one of the leading organizations for clinical gastroenterologists.Become a Member
More than 13,750 GI professionals in the U.S. and worldwide call themselves an ACG Member. Join the community of clinical gastroenterologists committed to providing quality in patient care. Members can access a wide variety of resources and benefit from ACG's ongoing educational and legislative initiatives to ensure quality in care.
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Vote "yes" on the $199 million school bond referendum Tuesday, March 22. It will benefit every school in the district and will cost less in immediate tax increases than Band-Aid solutions, like mobile classrooms.
Lancaster County voters have an important decision to make Tuesday, March 22, when they vote on the school bond referendum.
Ward Faulkenberry would be grateful.
The Christmas charity that bears his name blew the top off its $10,000 goal with a last-minute surge of donations, raising $12,660 through Dec. 23 with a week still to go before the drive's year-end close.
There have been 129 donations so far this year, helping nearly 750 Lancaster County residents with boxes of food for a Christmas meal and stockings full of gifts. The recipients were selected through the Department of Social Services, the Lancaster County Council on Aging, other agencies and churches.
It's time for the Indian Land Fall Festival, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and the fifth annual S.C. Championship Chili Cook-off.
Saturday's festival promises to be a lot of fun for everyone from toddlers to teens and older folks, all for a good cause – helping support the Indian Land Rotary Club's local youth projects, including the annual third-grade dictionary project, scholarships, school needs, literacy projects, sports teams and more.
For Lancaster County's 762 graduating seniors, today, May 29, is the day.
Graduates from all four county high schools – Andrew Jackson, Buford, Indian Land and Lancaster, as well as Carolina Christian Academy – will cross stages to receive their diplomas today.
After their respective ceremonies, they'll toss their mortar boards high into the air as they celebrate their graduation with the friends, family, teachers and administrators who helped them along the way.
Everything's set in downtown Lancaster for the kickoff of the city's sixth annual Red Rose Festival tonight. There's just one thing missing – you.
So gather up your family and head down to Lancaster's historic downtown for two days of outdoor concerts, dancing in the streets, arts and crafts, kids activities, a car show, dog show, photo contest, roaming entertainment and more.
A No. 1 ranking is a challenge to attain, and even tougher to keep.
As it turned out, the Lancaster High School Lady Bruins earned their top ranking in early January and kept it the rest of the way for a state crown.
The final record was a brilliant 27-0 mark, capped by the LHS girls' exciting 44-42 win over Lakewood High School of Sumter County.
Lancaster, in its first year of competition in Class AAA, made it most memorable with the school's first state championship in girls basketball since the 1958-59 season.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, when we should all be grateful for all of life's gifts, big and small.
The annual American holiday, held the fourth Thursday of November, commemorates the Pilgrims' celebration of the good harvest of 1621.
Thanksgiving celebrates the simple treasures of good food and fellowship – conjuring up popular images of family seated around a table, complete with a steaming big bird, mounds of dressing and pumpkin pie.
Registered voters will be able to exercise one of the most precious privileges our democracy grants us – the opportunity to determine who will represent us in our government – on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 4.
Voters will help choose our next U.S. senators, U.S. House representatives, S.C. governor and other statewide seats.
Locally, they will help choose school board members, a probate judge, the 6th Circuit solicitor and County Council members. See today's news pages for a list of the races on ballots in Lancaster County.
It's hard to believe summer is nearly over for local schoolchildren. While autumn doesn't officially arrive until next month, on Monday morning, about 12,000 Lancaster County students will say goodbye to the carefree days of summer and return to their classrooms.
This week, school administrators and teachers are making last-minute preparations for the 2014-15 school year. Their planning and preparation welcomed the students back at recent drop-ins and open houses.
Today we don our red, white and blue. We'll wave our flags, fire up the grills, parade down Main streets and country roads to cheering crowds.
We'll shoot fireworks, rally with family and friends and picnic anywhere we can place a blanket. And why not. We're celebrating our 238th birthday.
The United States of America is considered a teenager compared to other countries on Earth.
Copyright © 2019
The Lancaster News is your source for local news, sports, events, and information in Lancaster County and Lancaster, South Carolina, and the surrounding area..


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Joel F. Salatin (born 1957) is an American farmer, lecturer, and author whose books include Folks, This Ain't Normal, You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef.
Salatin raises livestock using holistic methods of animal husbandry, free of potentially harmful chemicals, on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Meat from the farm is sold by direct-marketing to consumers and restaurants.
In high school, Salatin began his own business selling rabbits, eggs, butter and chicken from his family farm at the Staunton Curb Market. He then attended Bob Jones University where he majored in English and was a student leader. He graduated in 1979. Salatin married his childhood sweetheart in 1980 and became a feature writer at the Staunton, Virginia newspaper, The News Leader, where he had worked earlier typing obituaries and police reports.
Tired of "having his stories spiked," he decided to try farming full-time after first getting involved in a walnut-buying station run by two high school boys. Salatin's grandfather had been an avid gardener and beekeeper and a follower of J. I. Rodale, the founder of regenerative organic gardening. Salatin's father worked as an accountant and his mother taught high school physical education. Salatin's parents had bought the land that became Polyface after losing a farm in Venezuela to political turmoil. They had raised cattle using organic methods, but could not make a living at farming alone.
Salatin, a self-described "Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer" produces high-quality "beyond organic" meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture. Jo Robinson, the author of Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs and Dairy Products From Grass-Fed Animals (2004) said of Salatin, "He's not going back to the old model. There's nothing in county extension or old-fashioned ag science that really informs him. He is just looking totally afresh at how to maximize production in an integrated system on a holistic farm. He's just totally innovative."
Salatin considers his farming a ministry, and he condemns the negative impact on his livelihood and lifestyle of what he considers an increasingly regulatory approach taken by the agencies of the United States government toward farming. Salatin now spends a hundred days a year lecturing at colleges and to environmental groups.


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- Parts
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Displacement is optional. The list is not yet complete.
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Product ref.: sy-255.057/20
Manufacturer: P&W accessories
Universal taillight - black round / leds - E4(Attention, the actual product may be different from the photo.)
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Lelu Love is a Porn Star from United States. She was born in South Carolina on August 1, 1987. She is listed on FreeOnes since 2010 and is currently ranked 983th place. She currently has 515 gallery links and 500 videos in her own FreeOnes section.
Our records show that Lelu Love is currently active which means she is still making movies, doing live shows and/or doing photo shoots.
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Lelu Love.com is a solo site that shows genuine flashes of brilliance thanks to a combination of intelligent presentation, imaginative and varied content, and a beautiful central model who is talented as she is good-looking. Backed up by a very large collection of content, extremely regular updates and a very user friendly atmosphere, it is one of the very best solo sites I have seen in 2011 - and perhaps much longer. Visit Lelu Love


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Upcoming talks
Previous talks
2017 May 16, 11:00 am: Van Vu -- Littlewood-Offord-Erdos type inequalities for polynomials of random variables
Van Vu (Yale University)
Littlewood-Offord-Erdos type inequalities for polynomials of random variables
Tuesday, May 16, 2017, 11:00 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, 4507
Abstract: Let Q = a_1 x_1 + … + a_n x_n where a_i are non-zero real numbers, and x_i are +-1 random variables. A classical result of Littlewood-Offord-Erdos showed that Pr (Q=0) is O( n^{-1/2} ). We are going to discuss the general case when Q is a polynomial (in the x_i) with arbitrary degree.
We will present several new results/methods, together with applications from random matrix theory and complexity theory.
Speaker bio: Currently, Van Vu holds the Percey F. Smith chair of mathematics at Yale University, after spending time at IAS, Microsoft Research, UC San Diego and Rutgers. His honors include a Sloan Fellowship (2002), the Polya Prize (2008), and the Fulkerson Prize (2012).
2017 May 15, 3:30 pm: Tim Roughgarden -- How Hard Is Inference for Structured Prediction?
Tim Roughgarden (Stanford University)
How Hard Is Inference for Structured Prediction?
Monday, May 15, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 3800
Abstract: Structured prediction tasks in machine learning involve the simultaneous prediction of multiple labels. This is often done by maximizing a score function on the space of labels, which decomposes as a sum of pairwise elements, each depending on two specific labels. The goal of this work is to develop a theoretical explanation of the empirical effectiveness of heuristic inference algorithms for solving such structured prediction problems. We study the minimum-achievable expected Hamming error in such problems, highlighting the case of 2D grid graphs, which are common in machine vision applications. Our main theorems provide tight upper and lower bounds on this error, as well as a polynomial-time algorithm that achieves the bound.
Speaker bio: Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science and (by courtesy) Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received a BS in Applied Mathematics from Stanford in 1997, and a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell in 2002.His research interests include the many connections between computer science and economics, as well as the design, analysis, applications, and limitations of algorithms. For his research, he has been awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the Kalai Prize in Computer Science and Game Theory, the Shapley Lecturership of the Game Theory Society, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, INFORM's Optimization Prize for Young Researchers, the Mathematical Programming Society's Tucker Prize, and the EATCS-SIGACT Gödel Prize.
2017 May 11, 1:30 pm: Carlee Joe-Wong -- Using Pricing to Manage the Cloud
Carlee Joe-Wong (Carnegie Mellon University)
Using Pricing to Manage the Cloud
Thursday, May 11, 2017, 1:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provides shared computing resources that users can access over the Internet, which has revolutionized the way that computing resources are utilized. Instead of buying and maintaining their own physical servers, users can lease virtualized compute and storage resources from shared cloud servers and pay only for the time that they use the leased resources. Yet as more and more users take advantage of this model, cloud providers face highly dynamic user demands for their resources, making it difficult for them to maintain consistent quality-of-service (QoS). We propose to use price incentives to manage these user demands. We investigate two types of pricing: spot pricing and volume discounts. Spot pricing creates an auction in which users can submit bids for spare cloud resources; however, these resources may be withdrawn at any time if users' bids are too low and/or resources become unavailable due to other users' demands. Volume discount pricing incentivizes users to submit longer-term jobs, which provide more stable resource utilization. We develop new user demand models to characterize behavior under these pricing schemes, and design optimal pricing and resource utilization strategies for both users and cloud providers.
Speaker bio: Carlee Joe-Wong is an assistant professor in the ECE department at Carnegie Mellon University, working at CMU's Silicon Valley Campus. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2016 and is primarily interested in incentives and resource allocation for computer and information networks. In 2013–2014, Carlee was the Director of Advanced Research at DataMi, a startup she co-founded from her data pricing research. She received the INFORMS ISS Design Science Award in 2014 and the Best Paper Award at IEEE INFOCOM 2012, and was a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow (NDSEG) from 2011 to 2013.
2017 May 8, 3:30 pm: Venkatesan Guruswami -- Progress in Error-Correction: A Survey
Venkatesan Guruswami (Carnegie Mellon University)
Progress in Error-Correction: A Survey
Monday, May 8, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: Error-correcting codes play a crucial role in safeguarding data against the adverse effects of noise during communication and storage. They are also powerful tools that in the arsenal of theoretical computer science and combinatorics. The central challenge in coding theory is to construct codes with minimum possible redundancy for different error models and requirements on the decoder, along with efficient algorithms for error-correction using those codes. Much progress has been made toward this quest in the nearly seven decades since the birth of coding theory. Several fundamental problems, however, are still outstanding, and exciting new directions continue to emerge to address current technological demands as well as connections to computational complexity and cryptography.
This talk will survey some of our recent works on error-correction in various models, such as:
- worst-case errors, where we construct list decodable codes with redundancy as small as the target error fraction;
- i.i.d. errors, where we show polar codes enable efficient error-correction even as the redundancy approaches Shannon capacity;
- bit deletions, where we give codes that can correct the largest known fraction of deletions;
- single symbol erasure, a model of renewed importance for tackling node failures in distributed storage, where we give novel repair algorithms for Reed-Solomon codes as well as simple new codes with low-bandwidth repair mechanisms.
Speaker bio: Venkatesan Guruswami (Venkat) is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. He was a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research New England during Spring 2014.
Venkat's research interests span several topics including coding and information theory, complexity of approximate optimization and constraint satisfaction, pseudorandomness, and computational complexity.Venkat currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Computation Theory, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of the ACM, SIAM Journal on Computing, and Research in the Mathematical Sciences. He served as the program committee chair for the 2015 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, and is a Technical Program co-chair of the 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory.He was an invited speaker at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians on the topic of "Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science." Venkat is a recipient of the EATCS Presburger Award, Packard and Sloan Fellowships, the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, and the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award.
2017 April 17, 3:30 pm: Michael Kapralov -- Streaming Lower Bounds for Approximating MAX-CUT
Michael Kapralov (EPFL)
Streaming Lower Bounds for Approximating MAX-CUT
Monday, April 17, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: We consider the problem of estimating the value of MAX-CUT in a graph in the streaming model of computation. We show that there exists a constant $\e_* > 0$ such that any randomized streaming algorithm that computes a $(1+\e_*)$-approximation to MAX-CUT requires $\Omega(n)$ space on an $n$ vertex graph. By contrast, there are algorithms that produce a $(1+\e)$-approximation in space $O(n/\e^2)$ for every $\e > 0$. Our result is the first linear space lower bound for the task of approximating the max cut value and partially answers an open question from the literature~\cite{Ber67}. The prior state of the art ruled out $(2-\epsilon)$-approximation in $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$ space or $(1+\e)$-approximation in $n^{1-O(\e)}$ space, for any $\epsilon > 0$.
Previous lower bounds for the MAX-CUT problem relied, in essence, on a lower bound on the communication complexity of the following task: Several players are each given some edges of a graph and they wish to determine if the union of these edges is $\e$-close to forming a bipartite graph, using one-way communication. The previous works proved a lower bound of $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ for this task when $\e=1/2$, and $n^{1-O(\e)}$ for every $\e>0$, even when one of the players is given a candidate bipartition of the promised to be bipartite with respect to this partition or $\e$-far from bipartite. This added information was essential in enabling the previous analyses but also yields a weak bound since, with this extra information, there is an $n^{1-O(\e)}$communication protocol for this problem. In this work, we give an $\Omega(n)$ lower bound on the communication complexity of the original problem (without the extra information) for $\e=\Omega(1)$ in the three-player setting. Obtaining this $\Omega(n)$ lower bound on the communication complexity is the main technical result in this paper. We achieve it by a delicate choice of distributions on instances as well as a novel use of the convolution theorem from Fourier analysis combined with graph-theoretic considerations to analyze the communication complexity.
Speaker bio: Michael Kapralov is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL. He completed his PhD at Stanford where he was advised by Ashish Goel. After graduating from Stanford, I spent two years as a postdoc at the Theory of Computation Group at MIT CSAIL, and then a year at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Michael is interested in theoretical foundations of big data analysis. Most of his algorithmic work is in sublinear algorithms, where specific directions include streaming, sketching, sparse recovery and Fourier sampling.
2017 Apr. 13, 3:30 pm: Victoria Kostina -- Information-performance tradeoffs in control
Victoria Kostina (Caltech)
Information-performance tradeoffs in control
Thursday, April 13, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: Consider a flying drone controlled from the ground by an observer who communicates with it via wireless. We are interested in how well the drone can be controlled via a channel that accepts r bits/sec. Formally, the controller of a linear stochastic system aims to minimize a quadratic cost function in the state variables and control signal, known as the linear quadratic regulator (LQR). We characterize the optimal tradeoff between the communication rate r bits/sec and the limsup of the expected cost b.
We consider an information-theoretic rate-cost function, which quantifies the minimum mutual information between the channel input and output, given the past, that is compatible with a target LQR cost. We provide a lower bound to the rate-cost function, which applies as long as the system noise has a probability density function, and which holds for a general class of codes that can take full advantage of the memory of the data observed so far and that are not constrained to have any particular structure.
Perhaps surprisingly, the bound can be approached by a simple variable-length lattice quantization scheme, as long as the system noise satisfies a smoothness condition. The quantization scheme only quantizes the innovation, that is, the difference between the controller's belief about the current state and the encoder's state estimate.
Speaker bio: Victoria Kostina joined Caltech as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering in the fall of 2014. Previously, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton with Prof. Sergio Verdu and as a Research Fellow at Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing.
Her research interests lie in information theory, random processes, coding, wireless communications, and control.
2017 Apr. 11, 3:30 pm: Kiril Solovay -- Introduction to sampling-based motion planning
Kiril Solovay (Tel Aviv University)
Introduction to sampling-based motion planning
Tuesday, April 11, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: Motion planning is a fundamental research area in robotics with applications in diverse domains such as graphical animation, surgical planning, computational biology and computer games. The basic problem of motion planning is concerned with finding a collision-free path for a robot in a workspace cluttered with obstacles.
Sampling-based algorithms, which were first described about two decades ago, have revolutionized the field of robotics by providing simple yet effective tools to cope with challenging instances of motion planning involving many degrees of freedom, and complex physical constraints. These algorithms, which trade completeness with applicability in practical settings, aim to capture the structure of the problem by randomly sampling robot configurations and connecting nearby samples.
In this talk I will give a brief introduction to sampling-based motion planning, with an emphasis on their theoretical properties. In particular, I will mention the seminal work of Karaman and Frazzoli (2011), and a recent connection between sampling-based techniques and random geometric graphs.
Speaker bio: Kiril Solovey is a Ph.D. student at the School of Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, under the guidance of Dan Halperin. His research interests include sampling-based techniques for robot motion planning, multi-robot systems, and computational geometry. Kiril is a Clore Scholar and a recipient of the Best Student Paper award at Robotics: Science and Systems 2015.
2017 Mar. 14, 10:30 am: Zeyuan Allen-Zhu -- Towards More Efficient Optimization Algorithms
Zeyuan Allen-Zhu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Towards More Efficient Optimization Algorithms
Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: Many computational tasks can be solved via classical optimization methods such as gradient descent, SGD, LP, or SDP. In this talk, I will argue that this path of algorithm design may be restrictive and less efficient.
I will show instead how to develop novel optimization tools to enrich the dimension of algorithm design. In particular, I will present a "linear-coupling" framework, and apply it to obtain the fastest first-order algorithms for (1) packing LP, (2) stochastic convex optimization, and (3) stochastic non-convex optimization.
Speaker bio: Dr. Allen-Zhu is a postdoc member at IAS, and received his Sc.D. from MIT in 2015. He is a two-time IOI Gold Medalist, USACO World Champion, ACM/ICPC World-Final Gold Medalist, Google Codejam World 2nd-Place Winner, and recipient of a Simons Award and a Microsoft Azure Research Award. He publishes mostly in ICML, NIPS, STOC, and SODA.
2017 Mar. 3, 3:30 pm: Xiaorui Sun -- Algorithm design for massive data
Xiaorui Sun (University of California, Berkeley)
Algorithm design for massive data
Friday, March 3, 2017, 3:30 pm
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: The modern era is undergoing an explosive growth in the amount of available data, and quadratic or even linear-time algorithms can fall short of efficiency. Solving problems in this new scenario has become a major challenge for the computer science community. In this talk, I will highlight how the algorithmic perspective brings novel insights and leads to efficient methods for important problems in the big data environment.
I will first talk about algorithm design in massively parallel computing models. I will describe new algorithmic techniques to solve sequential dynamic programming problems under these models. The new parallel algorithms are near-optimal for a variety of classic dynamic programming problems, including longest increasing subsequence, optimal binary search tree, and weighted interval scheduling.
Second I will talk about algorithms for reconstructing the underlying structure of large data using random samples. I will present a density estimation framework based on piecewise polynomial approximation of probability distributions. The framework yields efficient density estimation algorithms for a wide range of structured distributions with near-optimal data usage.
Speaker bio: Xiaorui Sun is a computer scientist focused on algorithmic foundations of massive data. His research interest lies in massively parallel computing, sublinear algorithms, algorithmic graph theory and machine learning. Xiaorui graduated from Columbia University in 2016, under the supervision of Xi Chen. Currently, He is a Google Research Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley.
2017 Feb. 7, 10:30 am: Andrej Risteski -- New (provable) techniques for learning and inference in probabilistic graphical models
Andrej Risteski (Princeton University)
New (provable) techniques for learning and inference in probabilistic graphical models
Tuesday, February 7, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: A common theme in machine learning is succinct modeling of distributions over large domains. Probabilistic graphical models are one of the most expressive frameworks for doing this.
The two major tasks involving graphical models are learning and inference. Learning is the task of calculating the best fit graphical model from raw data, while inference is the task of answering probabilistic queries for a known graphical model (for example what is the marginal distribution of one of the variables or what is the distribution of a subset of variables, after conditioning on the values of some other subset of variables). Learning can be thought of as finding a graphical model that "explains" the raw data, while the inference queries extract the "knowledge" the graphical model contains.
This talk will concern new provable algorithms for performing both of these tasks. In the context of inference, I will talk about a new understanding of a class of algorithms for calculating partition functions, called variational methods through a combination of convex programming hierarchies — a recent area of interest in the area of combinatorial optimization — and entropy approximations based on low-order moments of a distribution. In the context of learning, I will talk about a new algorithm for learning noisy-or Bayesian networks, which are used for modeling the causal structure of diseases and symptoms. The approach is based on tensor decompositions, but deals with a substantial amount of structured noise which stems from the non-linear nature of the problem.
Speaker bio: I work in the intersection of machine learning and theoretical computer science, with the primary goal of designing provable and practical algorithms for problems arising in machine learning. Broadly, this includes tasks like clustering, maximum likelihood estimation, inference, and learning generative models. All of these tend to be non-convex in nature and intractable in general. However, in practice, a plethora of heuristics like gradient descent, alternating minimization, convex relaxations, and variational methods work reasonably well. In my research, I try to understand what are realistic conditions under which we can give guarantees of the performance of these algorithms, as well as devise new, more efficient methods.
2017 Feb. 6, 10:30 am: Colin Sandon -- Community Detection in the Stochastic Block Model: Acyclic Belief Propagation
Colin Sandon (Princeton University)
Community Detection in the Stochastic Block Model: Acyclic Belief Propagation
Monday, February 6, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1915
Abstract: The stochastic block model is one of the simplest models for a random graph with different types of vertices, known as communities. In this talk I will describe an efficient algorithm that distinguishes between vertices from different communities with nontrivial accuracy whenever the SBM's parameters are above the Kesten-Stigum threshold, proving half of a conjecture by Decelle et al. I will also show that given exponential time it is sometimes possible to distinguish between communities with nontrivial accuracy below the KS threshold.
Speaker bio: Colin Sandon grew up in Vermont. He received his bachelor's degree in math from MIT in 2012 with minors in Physics and Economics. He is a 2010 Putnam Fellow and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He is currently a graduate student studying community detection in the stochastic block model at Princeton, and he expects to receive his PhD in 2017.
2017 Feb. 3, 3:30 pm: James R. Lee -- Conformal growth rates and spectral geometry on unimodular random graphs
James R. Lee (University of Washington)
Conformal growth rates and spectral geometry on unimodular random graphs
Friday, February 3, 2017, 15:30
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Speaker bio: James is a professor in computer science at the University of Washington.
2017 Feb. 3, 10:00 am: Shay Moran -- On statistical learning via the lens of compression
Shay Moran (Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing)
On statistical learning via the lens of compression
Friday, February 3, 2017, 10:00 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: Generalization and simplification are deeply related to each other: simpler explanations often reveal principles that apply more generally, and predictive scientific theories often boil down to a few simple (and deep) laws. This talk is about a manifestation of the "generalization–simplification" link within learning theory.
We will consider the following formal frameworks for `generalization' and `simplification'.(i) Vapnik's general learning setting — a standard statistical framework that formalizes generalization.(ii) Sample compression schemes — a combinatorial framework that formalizes simplification.This framework captures a common property of many learning procedures, like procedures for learning geometric shapes or algebraic structures.
First, we will consider the setting of binary classification. Littlestone and Warmuth showed that in this setting, the ability to simplify implies the ability to generalize, and asked whether the other direction holds. We will give an affirmative answer to this question.
We then extend the equivalence between compression and generalization to multiclass categorization, and to Vapnik's general learning setting.
If time allows, we will demonstrate how this equivalence can be used to translate "statistical statements" (within the generalization setting) to "combinatorial statements" (within the compression setting), and vice versa. This translation reveals properties that may be difficult to find otherwise. For example, we will prove a separation result between agnostic and realizable-case learnability using Ramsey theory.
No knowledge in machine learning will be assumed in the talk.
This talk is based on joint works with Ofir David and Amir Yehudayoff.
Speaker bio: Shay is a research fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. He obtained his PhD from the Technion on July '16, under the supervision of Amir Shpilka and Amir Yehudayoff. After graduating he has spent some time at MSR Hertzeliya, and at University of California San Diego. His research interests lie in the spectrum between combinatorics and theoretical computer science. These include machine learning, communication complexity, discrete geometry, and extremal combinatorics. In his PhD, he studied various aspects of data compression and representation – mostly in the contexts of machine learning and interactive communication complexity. In the past two years, he has mostly focused on theoretical machine learning.
2017 Jan. 30, 10:30 am: Steven Wu -- Protecting People from Algorithms (and Vice Versa)
Steven Wu (University of Pennsylvania)
Protecting People from Algorithms (and Vice Versa)
Monday, January 30, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: Computing technologies today have made it much easier to gather personal data. Algorithms are constantly analyzing such personal information and making consequential decisions on people. The extensive use of algorithms also imposes the risks of algorithms mistreating people such as privacy violation or unfair discrimination. There is also a risk of people mistreating algorithms. For example, in a strategic environment people may have incentives to misreport their data to the algorithms for their own benefits.
In this talk, I will first present an overarching theme in my research—protecting people and algorithms from each other. In particular, my work seeks to (1) protect people from algorithms in developing algorithms with privacy and fairness guarantees and (2) aims to protect algorithms from people in providing algorithms that incentivize people's truthful behavior.
I will then present two results in my work on differential privacy, a rigorous algorithmic notion for data privacy. The first result focuses on a fundamental problem in differential privacy—private query release. I will present a scalable algorithm that can accurately and privately answer a large collection of counting queries for high-dimensional data. In the second result, I will focus on a general framework for solving a family of economic optimization problems in a privacy-preserving manner. I will also demonstrate how differential privacy can be used as a novel tool to incentive truth-telling when the algorithms need to elicit input data from self-interested participants.
Speaker bio: Steven is currently a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is co-advised by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth. His primary research interests are in developing theory and algorithms for privacy-preserving data analysis. He has also been studying machine learning in economic environments, where he designs algorithms that learn from observed economic behavior and create desired incentives for the participants. His more recent research focuses on fairness in machine learning, where the goal is to provide fair decision-making algorithms that learn from personal data.
During the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016, he was a research intern at Microsoft Research in New York City (MSR-NYC), and during the summer of 2016, he was also a research intern at Microsoft Research New England (MSR-NE).
2017 Jan. 27, 10:30 am: Aviad Rubinstein -- Complexity of Simplicity in Mechanism Design
Aviad Rubinstein (UC Berkeley)
Complexity of Simplicity in Mechanism Design
Friday, January 27, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: Classical work in economics imposes two constraints on mechanism design: Individual Rationality ("you are better off participating in the mechanism than staying at home") and Incentive Compatibility ("agents act selfishly"). In recent years it has been shown that even in very simple settings, the mechanism that is optimal (in theory) is extremely complicated. As an important step toward bridging theory and practice, we want to add a third constraint: Simplicity.
Speaker bio: Aviad Rubinstein is a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, advised by Christos Papadimitriou. His research looks, through the "Lens of Computation", at a variety of fundamental problems from evolution, statistics, stopping theory, and game theory. He is supported by a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. His papers were recently awarded the FOCS 2016 Best Paper Award, as well as Best Student Paper Awards at ITCS 2017, FOCS 2016, ITCS 2016, and STOC 2015.
2017 Jan. 23, 10:30 am: Rasmus Kyng -- Regression, Elimination, and Sampling on Graphs
Rasmus Kyng (Yale University)
Regression, Elimination, and Sampling on Graphs
Monday, January 23, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: In this talk, we will survey a range of recent results on graph algorithms and optimization. We start by covering topics in regression and semi-supervised learning on graphs. Here, we will see new theoretical results using both combinatorial algorithms and optimization-based approaches, as well as practical applications of these methods. Next, we'll take a look at some results on linear system solvers: the asymptotically fastest known solver for Laplacian matrices and the simplest known Laplacian solver. The latter is based on a novel notion of approximate Gaussian elimination and entirely avoids the need for graph-based algorithmic constructions. We'll touch briefly on how simpler algorithms also allow us to develop nearly-linear time solvers for block-structured generalizations of Laplacians. Then, we will learn how advances in matrix martingale theory and ideas from approximate Gaussian elimination have led to new results in graph algorithms, including simple and powerful algorithms for semi-streaming graph sparsification and the first algorithm for sampling random spanning trees faster than matrix multiplication in weighted graphs. Finally, we will discuss some future challenges in the fields of algorithms and optimization.
Speaker bio: Rasmus Kyng is a PhD student at Yale University. His advisor is Prof Daniel Spielman. Before attending Yale, he received a BA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge in 2011. His research interests include graph algorithms, optimization, applied and theoretical machine learning, and linear systems.
2017 Jan. 19, 10:30 am: Ilya Razenshteyn -- New Algorithms for High-Dimensional Data
Ilya Razenshteyn (MIT)
New Algorithms for High-Dimensional Data
Thursday, January 19, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: A popular approach in data analysis is to represent a dataset in a high-dimensional feature vector space, and reduce a given task to a geometric computational problem. As it turns out, the running times of most of the classic geometric algorithms suffer from an exponential dependence on the dimension and are typically not applicable to the high-dimensional regime. This necessitates the development of new algorithmic approaches that overcome this "curse of dimensionality". In this talk I will give an overview of my work in this area. In particular:
* I will describe new algorithms for the high-dimensional Nearest Neighbor Search (NNS) problem. Our algorithms improve, for the first time, upon the popular Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH) approach. The main insight behind the new algorithms is the use of hash functions that are *data dependent*, i.e., , that are carefully tailored to a given dataset. In contrast, prior algorithms used generic, data-oblivious hash families.
* Next, I will outline how to make the core component of the above algorithms—the optimal LSH for cosine distance—practical. This yields an implementation of LSH which is competitive with the state of the art heuristics for the NNS problem.
* Finally, I will show how to determine the limits of distance-preserving data sketching, i.e., vector compression methods that approximately preserve the distances between vectors. In particular, I will show the first non-trivial lower bound for the sketching complexity of the well-studied Earth Mover Distance.
The common theme that unifies these and other algorithms for high-dimensional data is the use of "efficient data representations": randomized hashing, sketching, dimensionality reduction, metric embeddings, and others. One goal of the talk is to describe a holistic view of all of these techniques.
Speaker bio: Ilya Razenshteyn is a final year PhD student at MIT CSAIL advised by Piotr Indyk. His interests are revolving around algorithms for massive datasets with geometric structure. He graduated from the mathematics department of Moscow State University back in 2012.
2017 Jan. 17, 10:30 am: Ryan Rogers -- Leveraging Privacy in Data Analysis
Ryan Rogers (University of Pennsylvania)
Leveraging Privacy in Data Analysis
Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: My research focuses on applying differential privacy to problems in economics, statistical hypothesis testing, and adaptive data analysis in machine learning. At a high level, a differential private algorithm limits the sensitivity of the outcome to any individual data entry from an input dataset. We can leverage the stability guarantees of differential privacy to answer new questions in various areas outside theoretical computer science. This requires developing new differentially private algorithms as well as implementing existing techniques in novel ways. The results from my research can be split roughly into two main areas: 1) incorporating privacy as an additional constraint into an otherwise classical problem; 2) using privacy as a tool to solve new problems where privacy may not be a primary concern.
Typically in machine learning an analyst wants to be able to draw valid conclusions from a sample that generalizes to the population it was sampled from. The practice of data analysis has become an intrinsically adaptive process, where a particular dataset may be reused for several, adaptively chosen analyses. Unfortunately, much of the existing theory in statistical inference assumes that each analysis is selected independently of the data. Thus applying the classical theory to this adaptive setting leads to spurious results due to overfitting; in fact, this is suspected to be behind the prevalence of false discovery in empirical science [Simmons et al., 2011, Gelman and Loken, 2014, Wasserstein and Lazar, 2016]. In a surprising result from Dwork et al. 2015, they showed that differential privacy can help preserve statistical validity in adaptive data analysis. Building on this connection, my coauthors and I show that differential privacy can be used to perform statistically valid, adaptive hypothesis tests [Rogers, Roth, Smith, Thakkar 2016]. We then explore natural extensions of differential privacy that are better catered to adaptive data analysis, including allowing the privacy parameters to be chosen as a function of outcomes from previously run analyses [Rogers, Roth, Ullman, Vadhan 2016].
Speaker bio: Ryan Rogers is a Ph.D. candidate in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences department at the University of Pennsylvania where he is advised by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth. He has been a research intern at Microsoft in New York and at Harvard University's Privacy Tools Project. He was president and co-founder of the SIAM student chapter at Penn. Prior to Penn, he graduated with distinction from Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge and earned his bachelors in mathematics and religious studies from Stetson University. Before graduate school, he worked at United Space Alliance as a computer scientist on the Space Station Training Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. In his free time, he enjoys rowing, hiking and mountain biking.
2017 Jan. 9, 10:30 am: Tselil Schramm -- Adventures with sum-of-squares (and randomness)
Tselil Schramm (UC Berkeley)
Adventures with sum-of-squares (and randomness)
Monday, January 9, 2017, 10:30 am
MSR Redmond, Building 99, Room 1927
Abstract: The sum-of-squares hierarchy is a family of semidefinite programs that can capture any combinatorial optimization problem, allowing one to trade runtime for accuracy. The class of problems that sum-of-squares can solve efficiently is still not well-characterized—recently this has been a topic of intensive study in the theoretical computer science community, as the hierarchy has the potential to resolve long-standing open problems in the theory of approximation algorithms. In this talk, I will describe my own efforts towards characterizing the sum-of-squares hierarchy, through the lens of average-case problems. I'll talk about sum-of-squares algorithms for refuting random constraint satisfaction problems, about sum-of-squares lower bounds for planted clique and other average-case problems, and about using sum-of-squares algorithms to obtain fast spectral algorithms.
Speaker bio: Tselil is a fifth year PhD student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, advised by Prasad Raghavendra and Satish Rao, and supported by a National Science Foundation Fellowship and a UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship. Her research interests include spectral algorithms, spectral graph theory, convex programming, and approximation algorithms. Recently, her work has especially focused on understanding the power and limitations of the sum-of-squares semidefinite programming hierarchy.


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A 19-year-old high school student threatened to kill his classmate on Facebook last week and later told authorities he had been planning to do so for a year, Cook County prosecutors said Sunday.
Thomas Braasch, of Worth, told another male classmate on Wednesday on Facebook that he would kill him at school the next day, said Assistant State's Attorney Anthony Gattuso.
The two attend Alan B. Shepard High School in Palos Heights, according to court records.
The message was viewed by other students and a school employee, who alerted administrators. Braasch was immediately escorted by school security to the school office when he arrived to school the next day, Gattuso said. The teen was not carrying a weapon, he added.
Braasch admitted to law enforcement and school officials that he planned on killing the other boy, saying he was going to bring a gun to school and "pop" the classmate, Gattuso said. The teen said he wanted the classmate to stop bothering him and that he knew he'd get into trouble for posting the threat on the popular social media website, prosecutors said.
After his arrest, Braasch was charged with disorderly conduct and a judge set his bail at $150,000 in Cook County bond court Sunday. His next court date is Tuesday. Court records also state Braasch lives in Alsip.


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All of these systems are very easy-to-use from a customer standpoint, they are fast, and they lower the cost of doing business and should therefore lead to lower prices. All of that is good, so these automated systems will proliferate rapidly.
The problem is that these systems will also eliminate jobs in massive numbers. In fact, we are about to see a seismic shift in the American workforce. As a nation, we have no way to understand or handle the level of unemployment that we will see in our economy over the next several decades.
These kiosks and self-service systems are the beginning of the robotic revolution. When most people think about robots, they think about independent, autonomous, talking robots like the ones we see in science fiction films. C-3PO and R2-D2 are powerful robotic images that have been around for decades. Robots like these will come into our lives much more quickly than we imagine -- self-service checkout systems are the first primitive signs of the trend. Here is one view from the future to show you where we are headed:
The next step was autonomous, humanoid robots. The mechanics of walking were not simple, but Honda had proven that those problems could be solved with the creation of its ASIMO robot at the turn of the century. Sony and other manufacturers followed Honda's lead. Over the course of two decades, engineers refined this hardware and the software controlling it to the point where they could create humanoid bodyforms with the grace and precision of a ballerina or the mass and sheer strength of the Incredible Hulk.
Decades of research and development work on autonomous robotic intelligence finally started to pay off. By 2025, the first machines that could see, hear, move and manipulate objects at a level roughly equivalent to human beings were making their way from research labs into the marketplace. These robots could not "think" creatively like human beings, but that did not matter. Massive AI systems evolved rapidly and allowed machines to perform in ways that seemed very human.
Humanoid robots soon cost less than the average car, and prices kept falling. A typical model had two arms, two legs and the normal human-type sensors like vision, hearing and touch. Power came from small, easily recharged fuel cells. The humanoid form was preferred, as opposed to something odd like R2-D2, because a humanoid shape fit easily into an environment designed around the human body. A humanoid robot could ride an escalator, climb stairs, drive a car, and so on without any trouble.
Once the humanoid robot became a commodity item, robots began to move in and replace humans in the workplace in a significant way. The first wave of replacement began around 2030, starting with jobs in the fast food industry. Robots also filled janitorial and housekeeping positions in hotels, motels, malls, airports, amusement parks and so on.
The economics of one of these humanoid robots made the decision to buy them almost automatic. In 2030 you could buy a humanoid robot for about $10,000. That robot could clean bathrooms, take out trash, wipe down tables, mop floors, sweep parking lots, mow grass and so on. One robot replaced three six-hour-a-day employees. The owner fired the three employees and in just four months the owner recovered the cost of the robot. The robot would last for many years and would happily work 24 hours a day. The robot also did a far better job -- for example, the bathrooms were absolutely spotless. It was impossible to pass up a deal like that, so corporations began buying armies of humanoid robots to replace human employees.
The first completely robotic fast food restaurant opened in 2031. It had some rough edges, but by 2035 the rough edges were gone and by 2040 most restaurants were completely robotic. By 2055 the robots were everywhere. The changeover was that fast. It was a startling, amazing transformation and the whole thing happened in only 25 years or so starting in 2030.
In 2055 the nation hit a big milestone -- over half of the American workforce was unemployed, and the number was still rising. Nearly every "normal" job that had been filled by a human being in 2001 was filled by a robot instead. At restaurants, robots did all the cooking, cleaning and order taking. At construction sites, robots did everything -- Robots poured the concrete, laid brick, built the home's frame, put in the windows and doors, sided the house, roofed it, plumbed it, wired it, hung the drywall, painted it, etc. At the airport, robots flew the planes, sold the tickets, moved the luggage, handled security, kept the building clean and managed air traffic control. At the hospital robots cared for the patients, cooked and delivered the food, cleaned everything and handled many of the administrative tasks. At the mall, stores were stocked, cleaned and clerked by robots. At the amusement park, hundreds of robots ran the rides, cleaned the park and sold the concessions. On the roads, robots drove all the cars and trucks. Companies like Fedex, UPS and the post office had huge numbers of robots instead of people sorting packages, driving trucks and making deliveries.
By 2055 robots had taken over the workplace and there was no turning back.
Imagine this. Imagine that you could travel back in time to the year 1900. Imagine that you stand on a soap box on a city street corner in 1900 and you say to the gathering crowd, "By 1955, people will be flying at supersonic speeds in sleek aircraft and traveling coast to coast in just a few hours." In 1900, it would have been insane to suggest that. In 1900, airplanes did not even exist. Orville and Wilbur did not make the first flight until 1903. The Model T Ford did not appear until 1909.
Yet, by 1947, Chuck Yeager flew the X1 at supersonic speeds. In 1954, the B-52 bomber made its maiden flight. It took only 51 years to go from a rickety wooden airplane flying at 10 MPH, to a gigantic aluminum jet-powered Stratofortress carrying 70,000 pounds of bombs halfway around the world at 550 MPH. In 1958, Pan Am started non-stop jet flights between New York and Paris in the Boeing 707. In 1969, Americans set foot on the moon. It is unbelievable what engineers and corporations can accomplish in 50 or 60 short years.
There were millions of people in 1900 who believed that humans would never fly. They were completely wrong. However, I don't think anyone in 1900 could imagine the B-52 happening in 54 years.
Over the next 55 years, the same thing will happen to us with robots. In the process, the entire employment landscape in America will change. Here is why that will happen.
Taking Moore's law literally, you would expect processor power to increase by a factor of 1,000 every 15 or 20 years. Between 1981 and 2001, that was definitely the case. Clock speed improved by a factor of over 300 during that time, and the number of transistors per chip increased by a factor of 1,400. A processor in 2002 is 10,000 times faster than a processor in 1982 was. This trend has been in place for decades, and there is nothing to indicate that it will slow down any time soon. Scientists and engineers always get around the limitations that threaten Moore's law by developing new technologies. [ref]
The same thing happens with RAM chips and hard disk space. A 10 megabyte hard disk cost about $1,000 in 1982. Today you can buy a 250 gigabyte drive that is twice as fast for $350. Today's drive is 25,000 times bigger and costs one-third the price of the 1982 model because of Moore's law. In the same time period -- 1982 to 2002 -- standard RAM (Random Access Memory) available in a home machine has gone from 64 kilobytes to 128 megabytes -- it improved by of factor of 2,000.
What if we simply extrapolate out, taking the idea that every 20 years things improve by a factor of 1,000 or 10,000? What we get is a machine in 2020 that has a processor running at something like 10 trillion operations per second. It has a terabyte of RAM and one or two petabytes of storage space (a petabyte is one quadrillion bytes). A machine with this kind of power is nearly incomprehensible -- there are only two or three machines on the planet with this kind of power today (the monstrous NEC Earth Simulator, with 5,000 separate processor chips working together, is one example). In 2020, every kid will be running their video games on a $500 machine that has that kind of power.
What if we extrapolate another 20 years after that, to 2040? A typical home machine at that point will be 1,000 times faster than the 2020 machine. Human brains are thought to be able to process at a rate of approximately one quadrillion operations per second. A CPU in the 2040 time frame could have the processing power of a human brain, and it will cost $1,000. It will have a petabyte (one quadrillion bytes) of RAM. It will have one exabyte of storage space. An exabyte is 1,000 quadrillion bytes. That's what Moore's law predicts.
Between 1981 and 2002, the processing power, hard disk space and RAM in a typical desktop computer increased dramatically because of Moore's Law. Extrapolating out to the years 2021 and 2041 shows a startling increase in computer power. The point where small, inexpensive computers have power approaching that of the human brain is just a few decades away.
The computer power we will have in a home machine around 2050 will be utterly amazing. A typical home computer will have processing power and memory capacity that exceeds that of a human brain. What we will have in 2100 is anyone's guess. The power of a million human brains on the desktop? It is impossible to imagine, but not unlikely.
We need to start thinking about that future today. People are talking optimistically about fielding a team of humanoid robotic soccer players able to beat the best human players in 2050. Imagine a team of C-3POs running and kicking as well as or better than the best human soccer stars, but never getting tired or injured. Imagine that same sort of robot taking 50% of America's jobs. This Honda ad for ASIMO, and the fact that Honda is running it, are telling:
Honda ad from the back cover of Smithsonian magazine, January 2003
As the ad says, "ASIMO could be quite useful in some very important tasks." One of those very important tasks will be to take your job. [For details on ASIMO and a video, Click Here]
The point is simple. In the 2050 time frame, you can expect to buy a $1,000 home computer that has the computing power and memory of the human brain. Manufacturers will marry that computer with a humanoid robotic chassis like ASIMO, a fuel cell and advanced AI software to create autonomous humanoid robots with startling capabilities. It is not really hard to imagine that we will have robots like C-3PO walking around and filling jobs as early as the 2030 time frame. What's missing from robots right now is brainpower, and by 2030 we will start to have more silicon brainpower than we know what to do with.
The New Employment Landscape
The problem, of course, is that all of these robots will eliminate a huge portion of the jobs currently held by human beings. For example, there are 3.5 million jobs in the fast food industry alone. Many of those will be lost to kiosks. Many more will be lost to robots that can flip burgers and clean bathrooms. Eventually they will all be lost. The only people who will still have jobs in the fast food industry will be the senior management team at corporate headquarters.
The same sort of thing will happen in retail stores, hotels, airports, factories, construction sites, delivery companies and so on. All of these jobs will evaporate at approximately the same time, leaving all of those workers unemployed. The Post Office, FedEx and UPS together employed over a million workers in 2002. Once robots can drive the trucks and deliver the packages at a much lower cost than human workers can, those 1,000,000 or so employees will be out on the street.
If you look at the 2000 census figures, you can see the magnitude of the problem. According to the census, there were 114 million employees working for 7 million companies in 2000. The employees brought home almost $4 trillion in wages that year. Here's the breakdown by industry:
U.S. jobs by industry according to the 2000 Census.
When you look at this chart, it is easy to understand that there will be huge job losses by 2040 or 2050 as robots move into the workplace. For example:
All the people who are holding jobs like those today will be unemployed.
American society has no way to deal with a situation where half of the workers are unemployed. During the Great Depression at its very worst, 25% of the population was unemployed. In the robotic future, where 50 million jobs are lost, there is the potential for 50% unemployment. The conventional wisdom says that the economy will create 50 million new jobs to absorb all the unemployed people, but that raises two important questions:
Labor = Money
Right now, a majority of people in America trade their labor for money, and then they use the money to participate in the economy. Our entire society is built around a simple equation: labor = money. This equation explains why any new labor-saving technology is disruptive -- it threatens a group of people with joblessness and welfare.
Autonomous humanoid robots will take disruption to a whole new level. Once fully-autonomous, general-purpose humanoid robots are as easy to buy as an automobile, most people in the economy will not be able to make the labor = money trade anymore. They will have no way to earn money, and that means they end up homeless and on welfare.
With that many people on welfare, cost control becomes a big issue. We are already seeing the first signs of it today. The January 20, 2003 issue of Time magazine notes the trend:
This article from the NYTimes sums up our current situation with this quote:
With productivity growing at more than 2 percent a year, and the labor force growing about 1 percent a year, she said, the "hurdle rate" of growth for increasing the share of Americans with jobs cannot be less than 3 percent.
When a significant portion of the normal American population is permanently living in government welfare dormitories because of unemployment, what we will have is a third-world nation. These citizens will be imprisoned by unemployment in their own society. If you are an adult in America and you do not have a job, you are flat out of luck. That is how our economy is structured today -- you cannot live your life unless you have a job. Many people -- perhaps a majority of Americans -- will find themselves out of luck in the coming decades.
The arrival of humanoid robots should be a cause for celebration. With the robots doing most of the work, it should be possible for everyone to go on perpetual vacation. Instead, robots will displace millions of employees, leaving them unable to find work and therefore destitute. I believe that it is time to start rethinking our economy and understanding how we will allow people to live their lives in a robotic nation.
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Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The 2011 census recorded more than 603,000 people in the city, making it the eighth largest among Canadian cities. The metropolitan area, with more than 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country and the most populous in Western Canada. With 5,249 people per square kilometre (13,590 per sq mile), the City of Vancouver is the most densely populated Canadian municipality among those with 5,000 residents or more. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada, with 52% for whom English is not their first language.
The original settlement, named Gastown, grew around the Hastings Mill logging sawmill and a nearby tavern, both established in 1867. Enlarging to become the townsite of Granville, with the announcement that the railhead would reach the site it was renamed "Vancouver" and incorporated as a city in 1886. By 1887, the transcontinental railway was extended to the city to take advantage of its large natural seaport, which soon became a vital link in a trade route between the Orient, Eastern Canada, and London. As of 2009, Port Metro Vancouver is the busiest and largest port in Canada, and the most diversified port in North America. While forestry remains its largest industry, Vancouver is well known as an urban centre surrounded by nature, making tourism its second-largest industry. Major film production studios in Vancouver and Burnaby have turned Metro Vancouver into the third-largest film production centre in North America after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the film industry nickname, Hollywood North.
Vancouver has ranked highly in worldwide "liveable city" rankings for more than a decade according to business magazine assessments and it was also acknowledged by Economist Intelligence Unit as the first city to rank among the top-ten of the world's most liveable cities for five straight years. It has hosted many international conferences and events, including the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, Expo 86, and the World Police and Fire Games in 1989 and 2009. The 2010 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics were held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler, a resort community 125 km (78 mi) north of the city.
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text: We're in the planning stages for preparing a room to house a small cluster, consisting of roughly 8 to 10 dual-cpu nodes to begin with. We are planning to use two or three 20A 120V circuits. (Two should be enough, but three will give us room for future expansion.) We are wondering what kind of UPS to get. Is it standard to get one UPS per circuit, or are there affordable UPS units that will manage several circuits? ("Affordable" is a key word.) Most outages are short, so we just need between 30 and 60 minutes of battery backup. Also, I've heard that some UPS's can monitor the room temperature and shut down the machines if it gets too hot. This would be useful. So, any advice about what we should get? I'm also curious about monitoring the UPS's. If there are several of them, does one usually monitor all of them using the head node, or split this task up? Thanks, Dan -- Dan Christensen jdc at uwo.ca


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seeing as we were talking about the Toshiba/Japanese government funded conspiracy to put Midori Takada on everyones youtube reccomendations i thought it would be good to open it out and get some reccomendations for other good percussion based albums outdie of Midori and Mkwaju Ensemble. there's cleve pozar, solo percussion, thats a good un and theres this
where's woebot when you need him? i want 100 percussion albums reccomended of unimpeachable quality


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WASHINGTON (AP) - Looking for positive lessons to draw from the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, President Barack Obama said Friday the nation needs to do some "soul-searching," look for ways to bolster African-American boys and examine state and local laws to see if they encourage confrontations like the one in Florida.
"Where do we take this?" Obama wondered aloud in an impromptu appearance in the White House briefing room. "How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?"
The president said it's time "for all of us to some soul searching," but he also said it's generally not productive when politicians try to orchestrate a conversation.
On the positive side, he said race relations in the United States actually are getting better Looking at his own daughters and their interactions with friends, the president said, "They're better than we are. They're better than we were."
The widely followed case led to discussions about race and U.S. self defense laws. Obama, the first black American elected president, rarely speaks about race. Martin was black.
The president declined to wade into the detail of legal questions about the Florida case, saying, "Once the jury's spoken, that's how our system works."
But he said state and local laws, such as Florida's "stand your ground" statute, need a close look.
Obama said it would be useful "to examine some state and local laws to see if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of confrontation" that led to Martin's death. He questioned whether a law that sends the message that someone who is armed "has the right to use those firearms even if there is a way for them to exit from a situation" really promotes the peace and security that people want.
And he raised the question of whether Martin himself, if he had been armed, "could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk" and shot neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman if he felt threatened when being followed.
Obama's appearance marked his first extended comments on the Martin case since Zimmerman was acquitted last weekend of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in Martin's death last year. Jurors found that Zimmerman was acting in self-defense when he shot the unarmed black teenager. Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Justice Department has an open investigation into the case. The department is looking into whether Zimmerman violated Martin's civil rights.
Obama, who early on had said that if he had a son, the boy would have looked like Martin, on Friday drew an even more personal connection, saying that "Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago."
He said that as people process the Zimmerman verdict, it's important to put the angry reaction of many African-Americans into context. Protests and demonstrations, he said, are understandable, adding that "some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through - as long as it remains nonviolent."
"It's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away," he said.
He said that distrust shadows African-American men, that they sometimes are closely followed when they shop at department stores, that they can draw nervous stares on elevators and hear car locks clicking when they walk down the street - experiences that he personally felt before becoming a well-known figure.
"It's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear," he said.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.


text:
Make Your House Modern!
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Becky |
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I was leafing through a 1958 H&G and this ad cracked me up:
The entire theme of the magazine was all about how to be modern, yet it was still very family-oriented and full of features about picnics. It was so very Mad Men; I can picture the readers just leaving their trash on the ground when they were done picnicking. Obviously the modern part only regarded aethetics, as this girl is still wearing a poodle skirt and Bobby socks. It's an interesting ad; clearly people were desperate to be considered modern, yet are grasping desperately to the past. The very transitional time is clear in the aesthetics down to the smallest detail.
A few other gems from this issue:


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That is a fair point James, the reason I am looking at the 1.8 Flexifuel is because it is what 8/10 Focus estates are on the second hand market in Sweden. The Mondeo sounds like a risky buy unless I can find one with swapped injectors and I have never found a comfortable seating position in a Focus. I guess I'll just need to keep looking for something else. Thanks for the advice though
Ohh that's definitely a cost I want to avoid! Maybe id be better to go for a focus Do you know anything about the 1.8 Flexifuel? I've got the 1.6 duratec in my Fiesta but I think it would be less great in a Focus due to the added weight Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC mobile app
They injectors dont sound like a fun repair! Should they have been changed and is that included the standard service? At the moment i travel about 600-700km a week, but when I move to Sweden uni will be much closer so it will only be local trips on a weekly basis and then a few longer trips to like the Alps, Germany and around Sweden
Hjalle started following Fiesta Iphone Holder, Mondeo Or Focus, Which Is Best Value For Money ?, Buying A Focus Mk2 and and 5 others
I am in the same situation now as hhhugues was 3 years ago. I am moving to Sweden from Australia for 18months and want an estate to throw junk and friends in for the road trips I plan to have. I am looking at either a 04/05 Moneeo 2.0 or 05/06 Focus 1.8 Flexifuel both with 150,000-200,000km on the clock. The mission for the car is to be as trouble free and cheap as possible before I get rid of it. Which would be best on petrol? How did you go with the Mondeo? Is it still the pick or am I better to look at a Focus?
Buying A Focus Mk2
Hjalle posted a topic in Ford Focus ClubHi Guys I currently have an 06 Mk6.5 Fiesta and love it. I am moving to Sweden from Australia in July though and need to buy a new car over there. As much as I love my Fiesta, it is missing some bigger car features like cruise (pretty much the only thing I want) so I thought an upsize would be a good idea. Plus in Sweden I seem to be able to get a newer Focus for less money than a Fiesta - go figure? Anyway is there anything I should look out for when buying a mk2? I am specifically looking at something like a a 1.8 Flexifuel, good engine? I currently have a 1.6 in my Fiesta and it pulls well,can i expect that from a 1.8 flex? Ps. I was recommended to buy an Asian like a Toyota, Honda or Mazda for reliability and minimal rust reasons but they just don't do it for me, am I right in thinking a Focus will be just as reliable but more fun? Cheers for any input
What Is That Noise?
Hjalle posted a topic in Ford Fiesta ClubSo lately I've noticed I have a sort of rubber squeak coming from my engine. I drive a mk6.5 with a 1.6 litre 4 cylinder petrol, that has done 140,000km/ 87,000miles with regular services completed. Im pretty sure at the next service I need a new cam belt according to the handbook. Here is a video (you might need to turn your sound up), sorry it was dark when I got out of the gym but the noise seemed to get strongest when I held my phone by the driver side wheel which is what I did towards the end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXlK38cn-OM&feature=youtu.be Any ideas on how to fix it? Cheers
Comparison Of Old St And New St
Hjalle replied to The Dark Knight's topic in Ford Fiesta ClubGreat comparison Dave! Proved for a much better read than my Commercial Law text book How have you found the quality of the interior of the new ST compared to the old? When I get out of my normal mk6.5 and into my friends normal 7, I just feel that the plastics aren't as nice for some reason. They just feel a bit flimsier. Maybe it is just our shoddy Thai built versions in Australia and we were lucky enough to get German built 6.5's. And as you said the simplicity of the 6.5's interior is nice. Even 7 years down the track I still find it a nice place to be.
Best Trip Computer Range Readout
Hjalle posted a topic in Ford Fiesta ClubSo today I filled my mk6.5 1.6litre Ford Fiesta up to the brim like I normally do. I was pleasantly surprised when my trip computer gave me a range or 595km! That's the best it's ever been. I normally get between 530-560km. I don't know what I've done but it sure out a smile on my face. My question to you is, what is the best readout you have seen in your Fiesta? Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC mobile app
What do you mean, what size should you be looking for? You want an alloys with a PCD of 4x108 so that the studs fit into the alloys. You can easily fit, 15, 16, 17 inch alloys on your Fiesta. The first two with tyres with a 195 and the latter with a 205 tire width. Side walls can always be changed by going for a lower profile tire if they come with the wrong one. If you are buying genuine Fiesta alloys it should just be to bolt them on with a balance and you should be on your way, it gets more complex when you go for after market ones because then you need to look at offset, centre hole size and quality (some aftermarket have been known to snap due to bad quality). What is it you are thinking of getting?
The 45 referring to the side wall of the tyre and has nothing to do with the alloy Buy them and just buy a 205/40/17 tires and you should be fine, thats the size the stock 17' alloy comes with as mat said. I've read that the steering rack limiter is optional but it is like 7 pounds. What are you currently running? Just make sure you check the speedo error difference on a new alloy size website and adjust your speed as such it is recommended not to go above 5% difference in error though
Detango is easy, all you do is buy clear lenses for the car and replace the bulb with one that flashes orange (I'd suggest going for a white bulb that flashes orange instead of the orange ones). Simplest mod but makes a huge difference I would buy alloys before the bumper and spoiler, I think am ST bumper and spoiler with hubs would look a bit funny Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC mobile app
I agree with the posts above about detango and some alloys, personally I think genuine Ford ones always look best. Maybe see if you can get some colour coded front and rear bumpers, I think that will make a big improvement
Ashyjhoney reacted to a post in a topic: Fiesta Zetec -> St Lookalike?
Fiesta Iphone Holder
Hjalle replied to Alan M Smith's topic in Ford Fiesta ClubI've seen one car manufacturer has a piece that fits in the cupholder and it has a rubber slit in the top to slide your phone into Kind of like a coffee cup with a rubber lid with a slit the size of your phone I haven't yet found one and as I forgot the car maker I haven't been able to buy one but I thought it is a good solution instead of the throw my phone on the empty passenger seat I currently go for Sent from my iPhone using Ford OC mobile app
Zetec 17" Alloy Advise
Hjalle replied to xpatx's topic in Ford Fiesta ClubI went from the 195-50-15 to a 195-45-16 in my 1.6 and I haven't had any power problems. I didn't even notice a difference so you should be fine with the 205-40-17, as stated above they are all practically the same diameter. Just remember that there will be a slight change in your speedo error. I think mine decreased by 1km/h so if you accommodate for speedo error when you drive just remember to factor that in. Plus take a photo before you swap the alloys, it means you can have a little comparison photo. Its one of the things I wish I did so I could keep a track of all my little changes


text: On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 04:36:51PM -0800, Greg Lindahl wrote: > On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 04:19:55PM -0800, Jon Forrest wrote: > > > The > > last time I checked, the enterprise drives were ~25% > > more expensive than the consumer drives. This difference > > might have changed since then. > > Last time I checked, it was +$10 on a $300 drive. I bought > the enterprise drives. > > My local system reseller claims there's a substantial difference in > return rate. I'd love to have harder data. I suspect that the difference is in subtle and in the BOM. A ten dollar difference could be as simple as heat sink or capacitor thermal specifications. The heat sink could be invisible -- i.e. more/ thicker copper on the logic board Contract manufacturers may also bring better quality practices to the table. Different internal filters, bearing seal or lubrication specifications may also apply. I doubt that firmware is different. -- Regards, T o m M i t c h e l l


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What we're about
Welcome to our friendly group of hikers and walkers!
This group enjoys keeping fit while having fun walking and hiking in the great outdoors! We explore trails, parks, and beaches on weekends throughout the year. Most events are intended to be easy to moderate in difficulty so that even those who are new to hiking can feel happy participating. However, reasonable physical fitness is necessary due to the nature of the activity, and this group is recommended for those who can walk comfortably for at least 2 hours. We don't go at a fast pace but also don't tend to take a lot of breaks. We are also flexible in changing the course midway in the occasional event that we take an unplanned trail! We are completely non-competitive. Our main purpose is to get exercise in the fresh air while having fun. In addition to walking, we sometimes enjoy other kinds of sports, social, and travel events. We always welcome new friends of all ages and life situations, and all your well behaved children and dogs (when the parks allow, and kept on a leash of no longer than 8 feet). Come on out and walk with us!
Information for new members: In order to join, new members must have a clear face picture in their profiles. For every event, we request members who sign up early to reconfirm their rsvp's before the event. Then on the day, we typically wait 10 minutes past the meeting time for 'yes' rsvp's who have reconfirmed. For example, if the meeting time is 11:00, we may wait until 11:10 for those we believe are coming. At the time of posting an event, a group size appropriate for it is determined, and once all spots are filled members may join the waiting list for a chance of getting a spot. The email requesting both 'yes' and 'waiting list' members to reconfirm is sent out three days before each event. Members must reconfirm or it is assumed they have changed to 'no'. 'Waiting list' members who reconfirm are then given the spots of 'yes' members who cancel or do not reconfirm. At this time, if there are still more 'waiting list' people than available spots, a second group may be formed if a member volunteers to lead it and contacts the Organizer (or Event Host) by email. Members are responsible for their own transportation to and from events. The Organizer generally meets members at the event place. Those looking to carpool may write a comment on the event post. Events may occasionally be canceled due to weather conditions. 50% or greater chance of rain or snow on weather.com cancels. Temperatures below freezing during hiking time may also cancel, depending on the event. Finally, an event may be canceled if there are fewer than five reconfirmed 'yes' rsvp's following the period for reconfirmation. In case of cancelation, every effort is made to notify participants one day in advance. A $2 cash fee is requested from each participant at all events for the service of having reliable and regularly scheduled organized events available, meetup's fees, and other tasks necessary to keep us going smoothly. This group is based courtesy, reliability, and communication. Attendance is taken at all events. It is each member's responsibility to make sure his/her name gets checked on the attendance list. Any 'yes' rsvp who is a 'no show' without notice more than once will be removed from the group. All these procedures are carried out with the intent of keeping our group simple and a lot of fun.
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[Illinois] Nano-EP Seminar Series: Nanogenerators and piezotronics - from basic science to novel applications
Published on
For wurtzite structures that have non-central symmetry, such as ZnO, GaN and InN, a piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) is created in the crystal by applying a strain. Such piezopotential can serve as a "gate" voltage that can effectively tune/control the charge transport across an interface/junction; electronics fabricated based on such a mechanism is coined as piezotronics, with applications in force/pressure triggered/controlled electronic devices, sensors, logic units and memory. By using the piezotronic effect, we show that the optoelectronc devices fabricated using wurtzite materials can have superior performance as solar cell, photon detector and light emitting diode. Piezotronics is likely to serve as a "mechanosensation" for directly interfacing biomechanical action with silicon based technology and active flexible electronics. This lecture will focus on the fundamental science and novel applications of nanogenerators and piezotronics.
From the research group's website:
"Ever since the wide range applications of laptop computers and cell phones, seeking of power sources for driving portable electronics is becoming increasingly important. The current technology mainly relies on rechargeable batteries. But for the near future, micro/nano-systems will be widely used in health monitoring, infrastructure and environmental monitoring, internet of things and defense technologies; the traditional batteries may not meet or may not be the choice as power sources for the following reasons. First, with the increasing shrinkage in size, the size of the total micro/nano-systems could be largely dominated by the size of the battery rather than the devices. Second, the number and density of micro/nano-systems to be used for sensor network could be large, thus, replacing batteries for these mobile devices are becoming challenging and even impractical. Lastly, the power needed to drive a micro/nano-system is rather small, in the range of micro- to milli-Watt range. To meet these technological challenges, Wang proposed the self-powering nanotechnology in 2005, aiming at harvesting energy from the environment to power the micro/nano-systems based sensor network. After 6 years of effort, we have extensively developed the science, engineering and technology related to nanogenerator as a sustainable self-sufficient power source for micro/nano-systems by harvesting energy from our body and living environment. We initiated the research for self-powered system in 2005, which is now a very attractive field of research worldwide. Our research aims at solving the power needs for small electronics, with applications in personal/mobile electronics, medical care/sciences, environmental/infrastructure monitoring and other related fields.
Piezoelectricity, a phenomenon known for centuries, is an effect that is about the production of electrical potential in a substance as the pressure on it changes. The most well-known material that has piezoelectric effect is the perovskite structured Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 (PZT), which has found huge applications in electromechanical sensors, actuators and energy generators. But PZT is an electric insulator and it is less useful for building electronic devices. Wurtzite structures, such as ZnO, GaN, InN and ZnS, also have piezoelectric properties but they are not extensively used as much as PZT in piezoelectric sensors and actuators due to their small piezoelectric coefficients. In fact, due to the polarization of ions in a crystal that has non-central symmetry, a piezoelectric potential (piezopotential) is created in the crystal by applying a stress. For materials such as ZnO, GaN, InN in the wurtzite structure family, the effect of piezopotential to the transport behavior of charge carriers is significant due to their multiple functionalities of piezoelectricity, semiconductor and photon excitation. By utilizing the advantages offered by these properties, a few new fields have been created. Electronics fabricated by using inner-crystal piezopotential as a "gate" voltage to tune/control the charge transport behavior is named piezotronics, which was first coined by Wang in 2006. Devices fabricated using the piezotronic effect are distinctly different from those realized through traditional CMOS technologies in principle, design and applications. Piezotronics will have important applications in human-CMOS interfacing, micro/nano-electromechanical systems, nanorobotics, next generation of sensor and transducers, smart electronics, flexible electronics and many more. "
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Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
William Edward Nixon, Obaid Sarvana, George Michael Daley, NanoBio Node
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign