ERCIM News No. 112 Special Theme "Quantum Computation and Information"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 112 has just been published at https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

The Special Theme "Quantum Computing" was coordinated by the guest editors:

Jop Briët (CWI) and Simon Perdrix (CNRS, LORIA)


This issue is also available for download in pdf and ePUB

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News. Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Next issue:
No. 113, January 2018
    - Special Theme: "Smart Farming" 
    - Section Research and Society: "Research Evaluation"


My source: Peter Kunz  peter.kunz AT ercim.eu

Scratching the surface: Optimization algorithms

... In healthcare ..? 

Well - yes,

we've definitely scratched the surface,

but not a sufficient number of surfaces,

and not necessarily the right ones 

in the right order...

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My source:

An overview of #GradientDescent optimization #algorithms | @DataScienceCtrl https://t.co/bHrOnW03tk #AI #DataScience #DeepLearning #NeuralNetworks #abdsc pic.twitter.com/qKOMwNrF4l

— Duane Baker (@DBaker007) January 7, 2018

Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge

The news below (which I have edited slightly) is from a longer message by Willard McCarty and alerted me to a new journal, the strapline speaks volumes here -

Reflections on Disciplinary Knowledge

It is not open access but the contents are listed:

Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2017 11:08:41 +0000

From: Willard McCarty willard.mccarty AT mccarty.org.uk
Subject: Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration

In the leading article of the first issue of Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge

(http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/know/current), Simon Goldhill surveys major problems requiring an interdisciplinary approach then observes that:

When expertise is so hard to attain and fields are developing so rapidly, there are inevitably only a few people who are in themselves genuinely interdisciplinary in the sense of having mastered two or more disciplines in a creatively combinatory fashion. Rather, what most of the major problems I have mentioned do need is collaborative responses. The question of interdisciplinarity, thus, is most insistently a question of how to collaborate.

... Willard also draws attention to the editor's introduction to the first issue.

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 31, No. 493.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist

Book: Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

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	Touch
Untouchable?	Ants Among Elephants

Hodges' model DoB = early 1980s. So it's obsolescent?

No Way!

The model is more relevant than ever...

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The 'discerning' customer

P PR PRI PRIN PRODUCE - PRODUCT chuck, drop, dump, bin. throw, fling, tip DISPOSABLE - DURABLE [left] 20% ink? How many ink cartridges do you need? How many blades...? ---------------------------- engineering

The discerning market?

"In passing the "Hamon Law," as it's known, in 2014, France became the first country in the world to open the door to sanctions for the widespread manufacturing practice of "planned obsolescence" - creating products pre-designed for failure at some point so that consumers will be enticed to replace them. Specifically, the legislation outlaws "the use of techniques whereby the person responsible for placing a product on the market deliberately aims to reduce its lifetime in order to increase the replacement rate." David Schrieberg

Forbes.com David Schrieberg - Landmark French Lawsuit Attacks Epson, HP, Canon And Brother For 'Planned Obsolescence'

Halte à l’Obsolescence Programmée (HOP)

My source: Sage, A. French have last word on printers, The Times, September 20, 2017, p.40-41.

Modelling Scale: Self, Families, Communities, Organisations - a Planet's Health...

Dear HIFA colleagues,

I would like to wish you all a happy new year and to share with you a powerful quote on the front cover of the current print issue of The Lancet:

"Achieving planetary health will require a renaissance in how we define our place in the world. A new narrative will reject the one streaming into our homes — that happiness comes from relentlessly acquiring more things — and embrace what we know: that what truly makes us happy is time spent with those we love, connection to place and community, feeling connected to something greater than ourselves, taking care of each other."

The quote is from a lecture by Samuel Myers, Planetary Health Alliance at Harvard University, USA. The citation is below and the full text is freely available here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32846-5/fulltext

CITATION: Planetary health: protecting human health on a rapidly changing planet

Dr Samuel S Myers

Volume 390, No. 10114, p2860–2868, 23 December 2017

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32846-5

Best wishes, Neil

Let's build a future where people are no longer dying for lack of healthcare information - Join HIFA: www.hifa.org

<->

My additions:

I am always fascinated by the need for such expansive perspectives, the need to simultaneously factor in scale; how for example, do we warn future generations of environmental hazards?

Such questions are also crucial to "how we define our place in the world"?

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	The Far Future - BBC Radio 4 The Long Now
	Political planning NHS workforce planning NHS preparedness for (a?) the (this?) Winter

Source: HIFA Dr Neil Pakenham-Walsh with thanks.

Film: Sanctuary

Book: Sound - A Story of Hearing Lost and Found

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Sound	"Sight gives you the world, ...
... but hearing gives you other people."

Source: Holgate, A. The Sunday Times, Culture, Books, 28 May 2017. p.36.