A website that attempts to share knowledge about non-profits specializing in emerging technologies by finding and drawing attention to the best information in each field
Finally, this UK-based Non-Profit Community specializes in using Data Science in Medicine and so it comes under both our Data Science and Health and Fitness headings. Interesting recent discussions include how removing 238 Genes might increase your lifespan!
This Data analysis group applies rigorous data analysis techniques to Human Rights violations around the world.
They are involved in analyzing problems in countries as varied as the US, Syria, Chad and Guatemala and are dedicated to making these statistics as accurate as possible so that policy makers around the world have a reliable basis to take action. Their website is here: Human Rights Data Analysis Group.
We want to see enlightened societies around the world, where everyone has access to key information and the ability to use it to understand and shape their lives; where powerful institutions are comprehensible and accountable; and where vital research information that can help us tackle challenges such as poverty and climate change is available to all.
They believe that an enlightened public is a powerful public and have chapters and local groups all around the world. Please Like them on their Facebook page!
Every year, first weekend of October, we Canadians get together, we wear the white and pink and occupy almost every major city's core downtown of the whole country. We may run, or we walk, along the busiest street.We hold the signs; we cheer and we smile all the way for 5 kilometers. This is the "Run For The Cure", a yearly fundraising event for Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF). Together we raised millions to support our researchers to develop the new technologies to fight the cancer.
1 in 4 (26%) cancers diagnosed in women in Canada are breast cancer
1 in 9 Canadian women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime
1 in 30 women in Canada will die from breast cancer
But we never give up the hope. We raised $21.5 million in 2015. This money was used to fund the research programs in the breast cancer surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and HR-2 therapy. With the help from everyone of us, we bring the average 5-year survival rate to 88%, and we know we can make it even better. Thanks to the ones who join us. You can see the proud of us with my video ad.
Together we run; Together we engage; Together we develop the technology to save the life!.
Not being able to do the work required can be frustrating - especially if it's because you simply do not have the required knowledge. Knowledge hoarding is having information but refusing to share it. The combination of these two can have a detrimental effect on an organisation. It creates distrust and kills any efforts at collaboration.
You can encourage knowledge sharing in your organisation using these approaches.
Introduce a mentoring program - each employee needs a mentor to guide them and help them succeed in the organisation.
When looking for information, look at departments instead of just individuals. After all, two heads are better than one.
Build trust relationships with your fellow workers. If you trust someone you are more willing to share information with them.
Reward employees for sharing valuable information - allow nomination.
Introduce collaboration tools into the organisation - the right tools can make the difference, including blogs and wikis.
Kindly find my very first podcast for the Health & Fitness page. This podcast follows my previous post about cancer awareness. Feel free to leave comments below and to provide any feedback and knowledge.
This short blog post is dedicated
for the non-profit organization charity: water. This organization
strives to bring clean water to everyone since members believe that everyone deserves
it. Charity: water is focused on collecting funds in order to implement clean
water projects which they prove through geo-tagged photos once completed.
I invite you to take some time to
go through the short set of photos that I referred to below in order to get
idea of the valuable help that these projects offer to those people that do not
have access to clean water. Please support this non-profit organization either
through following them on their social media channels or by giving a donation.
Unfortunately one of the most deadly
diseases today is cancer. Everyone knows or has a relative that was diagnosed
with cancer. Cancer as such is an abnormal growth of cells within the body.
There exist different types of cancer such as breast, skin, lung, colon,
prostate and lymphoma. When a person is diagnosed with cancer, treatment
usually involves chemotherapy, radiation/or surgery. More information on cancer
can be found at WebMD.
Another treatment that is gaining
momentum in being officially recognized by the Food And Drug Administration –
FDA is the engineered T-cells. According to tcells.org
T-cells are a type of white blood cell that circulate around our bodies,
scanning for cellular abnormalities and infections. Through advancements in
technology engineers found a way of re-configuring these T-cells to see
cancerous cells as a threat and attack them to destroy them. One successful and
interesting example can be found at www.technologyreview.com
where a boy named Milton Wright was successfully treated by T-cells
re-engineering for the third cancer that he experienced.
Figure 1: A bioreactor bag holds a
leukemia patient’s T cells. The cells have been genetically modified to fight
cancer. A new receptor has been added.(https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538441/biotechs-coming-cancer-cure/)
Research, tools, and resources
required for finding a sound cure for cancer cost a lot of money. Taking the
T-cells re-engineering treatment as an example, preparing a dose of T cells can
range from $50,000 to $75,000. One very good Non-profit organization that is
helping raise such funds is the ‘Stand
Up To Cancer’. This initiative raises funds to create a collaborative
environment for researches so that a cure can be found quicker to save millions
of lives. One can find a lot of information on their website and social media
channels such as Facebook and Twitter. One can also easily donate money
through the site where millions of people would eventually benefit through the
research and treatments developed.
Pattern recognition is one of the lesser know areas of Big Data Analysis. A recent competition in Kaggle: NOAA Right Whale Recognition was to help identify Northern Right Whales from photographs. There are thought to be only about 500 Northern Right Whales (or North Atlantic Right Whale) left in the world and tracking them is difficult, expensive, time consuming and needs expert Marine Biologists. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) challenged Kaggle analysts to improve the pattern algorithms that are currently used in their software. This involves being able to identify individual Whales from aerial photographs (see below).
First place in the competition was won by a company called Deepsense.IO and you can read more about the winning entry and their approach here.
My Data Science related Non-profit of the this week is a non-profit organisation called Bayes Impact - related to the statistical inference methods named after Thomas Bayes. For more information on Bayesian Analysis, see The International Society for Bayesian Analysis
Bayes Impact is an NGO set up with the goal of using data science to to improve the lives of millions at a scale that is possible only through algorithms.
One interesting project that caught my eye on their site was some work they did with Zidisha, a microfinance organisation, that makes small business loans to people in developing countries who often lack bank accounts and, even if they could get loans, would be charged very high rates of interest by traditional lenders.
Bayes Impact worked with Zidisha to develop a model that could predict whether a borrower was a good risk based on borrow application history and behaviour. As Zidisha is not a traditional loan company, but one that specializes in poorer borrowers, it has to find a balance between giving out as many loans as it can, but also reducing fraud.
As part of Knowledge Shared; Knowledge Doubled, we will be bring you a series of Podcasts on different subjects. This is the first podcast in the Data Science series, and it's on the subject of DataKind non profit organisation that specializes in doing projects for charities and other institutions.
A Canadian company claimed following words on their website: "D-Wave Systems builds the world's first and only commercial quantum computers. The scientists, engineers and executives here are among the many people who have contributed to this historic achievement" (D-Wave, n.d.). In 2011, D-Wave systems developed their first computing device based on the superconductivity theory. Since that first device released, the D-Wave Systems have made two improvement models on the original one. The first improvement model is the D-Wave-2 released in 2013, and the second improvement model is the D-Wave-2X released in 2015. The D-Wave Systems are confident of these systems are Quantum Computers, because they think their system's principle is based on Quantum theory. The D-Wave Systems have made a series of the educational videos about their systems, let's watch one of these videos embedded at bottom of this post and check out how they explain their systems work internally.
There are many arguments and questions to D-Wave systems with the academic field. The researchers
at IBM and the University of California are questioning these D-Wave computing devices are manufactured on quantum mechanics (PCWorld, n.d.). In Quantum Mechanics theory, the Quantum is recognized as the subatomic level individual particles, but the moving behaver of these particles are showing as a kind of wave. It is no evidence the D-Wave system based on this kind of particles. But the D-Wave argument "a successful theory needs to explain all the existing experimental results, not just a narrowly selected subset of them". We have to admit these D-Wave systems are not working on same principle as current widely used digital computers.
In academic field, most scientists think if a device is called Quantum Computer, which should be manufactured on the Quantum Mechanics theory, which should utilize following two or three basic Quantum characteristics in the computation operations: (1) Qubit: which is the subatomic level particle(s) used to express a Quantum bit ; (2) Superposition: which should be used to store or present the value of a qubit; (3) Entanglement: which should be used to read or transmit the value of a qubit. From such a angle to observe, the Quantum Computer does not exist yet (IQC, n.d.).
If the Quantum Computer does not exist yet, then what we should call the D-Wave system, because these systems are indeed developed on the concept of qubit and superposition. It looks the key difference is the physic size of the qubit. The qubit in an ideal Quantum Computer is operated on the subatomic level particles (which is real Quantum), but the qubit in the D-Wave system is operated on a tiny piece of superconductor (which is simulated Quantum). The D-Wave system utilize the circle electric current in a tiny piece of superconductor to simulate the Quantum rotation, which makes the superconductivity in a tiny material showing the Quantum characteristics, so that the work principle of these D-Wave devices meet some of the principle of a Quantum Computer.
Based on above analysis, we may find the D-Wave system might not be the ideal Quantum Computer which most scientists are searching for, but they are indeed the best simulation devices which made some very good practice with Quantum Computer theory.
(Note: This article is written for a student assignment, many statements are just author's personal opinion, so it is not a proper resource for any academic reference.)
Reference
CanadianContent. (n.d.). Quantum Computers. [Cool article]. [Online]. Available at: http://forums.canadiancontent.net/computers-internet/128801-quantum-computers-cool-article.html [Accessed: 27 January 2016].
Dwave. (n.d.). Quantum Computing | D-Wave Systems. [Online]. Available at: http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum-computing [Accessed: 27 January 2016].
IQC. (n.d.). Quantum computing 101 | Institute for Quantum Computing. [Online]. Available at: https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/quantum-computing-101#What-is-quantum-computing [Accessed: 27 January 2016].
PCWorld. (n.d.). IBM questions the performance of D-Wave’s quantum computer | PCWorld. [Online]. Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2094380/ibm-questions-the-performance-of-dwaves-quantum-computer.html [Accessed: 27 January 2016].
Back, Neck and Shoulder Pains .. am I getting too old?
Do you get that uncomfortable pain in either your back, shoulders, neck ... or a combination of each? Do you spend a lot of time in front of a computer or laptop, or looking down at your smartphone screen? I think that most of us do and if not already we are all heading in the direction of experiencing the above symptoms. But where does the pain come from?
When you realize what is causing all of this you will immediately understand what we are all doing wrong. I would say that posture is the most important thing to keep in mind when using such devices. My advice is to as much as possible try to think of holding something with the top of your heads in order to keep your spine straight.
Also we should try to force breaks during which we can do some neck, hands and hip rotations and stretching. Just make sure that the latter are self-explanatory and that they won't raise any suspicious looks from any nearby colleagues!
I am not a teacher. I am not formally paid to teach children or adolescence in a specific subject. I am not a lecturer, nor do I offer training courses for corporate business. I am an individual who has been working for almost 30 years and has a lot of knowledge based on experience on offer. I love to share my knowledge.
It does not give me a sense of superiority to offer people the knowledge of my experience - I learned what I know through knocks in my own life. My scars are mine to share and I share them freely. I do not seek reward for sharing my experiences and knowledge - my reward is seeing this person understand; witnessing that "Ah ha" moment.
Poem: Sharing Is Caring (Grantham, 2013)
To show you care for someone is to lend a helping hand
A need to be concerned for every woman, child and man
Share whatever you can to help someone in need
Then you will be happier and a better person indeed
When you share with others you unselfishly give of yourself
Then love is given freely instead of sitting on a shelf
Hands that are always clenched nothing can ever get out
Ones that are open and gives is what love is all about
Sharing is caring when given from the heart with pleasure
The good returns are many and the rewards are without measure
Goods given freely brings a smile to the needy person
Holding back when you can give will only continue to worsen
References Cited
Grantham, P. (2013). Sharing Is Caring Poem by Patricia Grantham - Poem Hunter. [online] PoemHunter.com. Available at: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sharing-is-caring-3/ [Accessed 6 Feb. 2016]. Myers, G. (2011). A Time To Share Knowledge. [online] KMbeing. Available at: http://kmbeing.com/2011/12/29/a-time-to-share-knowledge/ [Accessed 6 Feb. 2016].
A great site for learning about data science is Kaggle. Kaggle acts as a meeting point between data scientists and uses competitions supplied by 3rd parties such as companies, public bodies and so on. Some competitions have prizes, some are serious and some are just for fun. It's a great way of trying some data science coding techniques while having fun and doing good at the same time. Current competitions include: classifying photos for Yelp, finding network disruptions for Telstra in Australia and discovering what is going on in Hilary Clinton's emails!
