How to create do-files and log-files in Stata by edniel maratas
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Monday, July 22, 2019
The Future and Now of Soft Robotics
Think of a robot. If it wasn’t C-3PO that sprang to mind, it was probably the popular image of a metal humanoid, or perhaps an industrial robot arm used in manufacturing. Well, soft robotics is much more flexible. Soft robots are built using elastomeric – soft rubber – materials, plastics, and fabrics. They are simply a bit more huggable.
That does make them a bit less hard-wearing and durable, but more adaptable, sensitive, and less expensive to build. And they are strong too, as MIT and Harvard’s Wyss Institute showed with an artificial muscle system capable of lifting 1,000 times its own weight. “It’s like giving these robots superpowers,” said Daniela Rus, MIT’s professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
Researchers created soft robotic grips and lifters with muscles based on origami folds. Encased in a flexible skin with air or fluid and powered using pressure, they were able to make simple robots with programmable multi-directional motion. All this within 10 minutes using materials that cost less than $1!
Another advantage for soft robots lies in their suitability for human interaction. Scientists at Harvard’s Biodesign Lab are using soft wearable exosuits to help people with injuries or neurological conditions – such as stroke – to walk independently again. These lightweight textile suits are fitted with sensors that provide feedback on an individual’s gait. Analysis help adapt the wearable robot to each person’s particular walking style. Plus, the softer textiles are less rigid and feel just like wearing trousers.
Breakthroughs in areas, such as self-healing materials, would improve exosuit durability and make quick repair possible too. Engineers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium have shown just how it could be achieved with a material that repairs itselfwhen heat is applied in just 20 to 40 minutes.
In a world where the overall trend in industrialized countries is towards ageing populations, the evolution of soft robotic helpers could be pivotal in providing low cost geriatric healthcare at home. Think biocompatible and biodegradable materials, areas where soft robotics can improve healthcare. If robots can work inside the body or even dissolve once they have achieved their purpose, it could revolutionize surgery and other clinical procedures.
In 2017, Ellen Roche pioneered a silicone-based cardiac sleeve in a project between Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital. The robotic sleeve safely interacts with soft tissue, helps the heartbeat, and reduces the risk of clotting and the need for blood-thinning medication. It cleverly mimics the outer layer of the heart, powered by soft pneumatic actuators.
Just as illuminating in its simplicity was a school project from Philadelphia. Students at the Haverford School created biodegradable, edible robots that move when pumped with air. This shows how robots, like Harvard’s heart pump, could be built from materials that degrade safely once they have fulfilled their function inside the body.
But when it comes to wild inspiration for soft robots, there’s nothing quite like nature. Plant and animal evolution has a lot to teach us about form, function, and biomimicry.
Researchers, again from Harvard, created a soft robot snake that uses the Japanese art of paper cutting – kirigani – to program its behavior. It’s thought that the snake can move in novel ways and explore environments other robots find it difficult to move through. One suggested application is in laparoscopic surgery.
Adding to the menagerie are a leech-like robot that can climb walls, a robotic limb that can change shape between a turtle’s flipper for moving through water, and a tortoise’s leg for walking on land. This ability of soft robots to flex into different shapes is enabled by often simple architectures. Hexagonal-shaped bee honeycomb is the basis for the HPN Manipulator – an easily 3D printed material that moves by compressing air and has a relatively large load-bearing capacity.
Putting this strong yet soft principle into the service of manufacturing is making a world of difference in industrial manufacturing. The company Soft Robotics modeled its gripping technology on octopus tentacles to create a hand capable of picking and packing the most fragile or squashable items, including foods.
The RoCycle material-detecting robot has a Teflon hand with tactile sensors that can sort items into plastic, paper or metal. This trend will eventually lead to more imaginative designs for robots – or cobots – that work collaboratively with people.
In dirty and dangerous environments like space or underwater, both NASA and the US Navy are investigating the use of robots built entirely from air-filled fabrics. These lightweight and robust systems are attractive because they can safely bang into people and things. This is culminating in a world’s first inflatable astronaut – King Louie from Pneubotics – who is controlled using a VR headset.
Other concepts include morphing materials that change shape. NASA is looking into flexible robots that move, join together, create shapes, and add protection to surfaces.
Meanwhile Yale University’s Faboratory, run by Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio (originator of the turtle-tortoise inspired robot) thinks unpredictable environments could be tackled using elastic ‘skins’ that wrap around materials to create robotic devices – evolving constantly in form and function by reacting to data gathered from the environment. This soft robotic skin could even wrap around everyday objects such as soft toys to animate them or be attached to a shirt to make it into a wearable device.
But if soft robotics ever provided a warm and fuzzy feeling, it is with Carnegie Mellon University’s knitted robots. These fabric automatons – morphing lampshades, soft toys – are made with actuators embedded using knitting machines.
And that could change our perception of robots forever. From the cold, hard logic of a metal robot, to the eminently huggable comfort of an old soft toy or woolly sweater.
source:
https://www.discovery.com/technology/soft-robotics
Bitcoin Updates
Bitcoin Rushes Past $10,000 as US Lawmaker Says Bitcoin ”Can’t Be Killed”
The price of Bitcoin has now once again crossed the psychologically important $10,000 line. This comes after Bitcoin recently fell below it. However, some suspect that Bitcoin’s recent rise is linked to positive comments by a US Representative.
Bitcoin has risen above the $10,000 line
Bitcoin has had a hectic week. First and foremost, both United States President Donald Trump and United States Treasure Secretary Steven Mnuchin launched attacks against the currency. Following this, Washington D.C. became temporarily preoccupied with cryptocurrency – as Facebook’s crypto Libra made rounds in the US Congress.
Furthermore, the premier cryptocurrency fell below $10,000 earlier this week. Some attribute this correction to mounting regulatory uncertainty regarding Bitcoin and other cryptos. Now, Bitcoin has once again rushed past the $10,000 line, trading at $10,543 at the time of writing.
Although Libra appears to be prompting lawmakers to push ahead with creating crypto regulations, not all crypto supporters are a fan of this.
For example, Blockstream’s Chief Strategy Officer, Samson Mow, has said that Facebook should have gone a different route. Specifically, Mow notes that Facebook could instead introduce a Bitcoin service – instead of creating Libra, a separate cryptocurrency. Mow puts it like this:
“Once Libra is compliant with every jurisdiction, it will just be a more complex PayPal governed by an association. Should’ve just used Bitcoin.”
Lawmaker says that there is “no capacity to kill Bitcoin”
Others are more bullish on Bitcoin’s long-term prospects, however. The US Representative Patrick McHenry recently spoke on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” segment. In it, he floated the notion that Bitcoin cannot, at this time, be killed.Specifically, this came in response to a question regarding whether McHenry believes that politicians will allow cryptocurrencies to grow in adoption and popularity. Nonetheless, McHenry responded by implying no government could “kill” Bitcoin as this point.
“I think there’s no capacity to kill Bitcoin. Even the Chinese, with their firewall and their extreme intervention in their society could not kill Bitcoin.”
Furthermore, McHenry went on to illustrate how more recent startups are now trying to mimic Bitcoin’s success. However, McHenry also indicated that replicating the success of this premier cryptocurrency’s open-access and decentralized network is harder than it looks.
He further drove this point home with another comment, stating that “the essence of Bitcoin is what Libra and Facebook, and corporates are trying to mimic”. That a lawmaker admits that Bitcoin is now essentially impossible to kill is a notable step towards broader regulatory acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
Source: TOSHI TIMES
BY RASMUS PIHL
Monday, July 15, 2019
How to Make MONEY on FACEBOOK?
4 WAYS ON How to Make Money Using Facebook
Most people use Facebook to share photos and stay in touch with friends, but did you know that you can use it to earn money as well? There are lots of ways to earn money on Facebook, from using link-type advertising programs to creating a fan page and then selling the posts. You can even use Facebook to advertise and sell your products. If you are interested in making money using Facebook, then check out this How!
1. Make great posts. The foundation of any successful plan to make money with social media is good content and lots of it. On Facebook, that means a stream of interesting links, images, and updates every day.
Search for a niche and fill it with quality content. It doesn't have to be a niche nobody else is filling, but it should be specific enough that it's clear to the casual observer. For example, maybe you'll post content for cat lovers, mothers, or people with a certain political affiliation. If you plan to market a product with your account, be sure to link the product to your posts in some way.
Consider opening up another Facebook account and keeping it separate from your personal account. Use this account for your posts, and link them on your personal Facebook account to let people know about them. Depending on the approaches you use, you might even consider using multiple extra accounts. NOTE: Facebook will not allow multiple accounts using the same email and/or phone number. You may even get a request to verify a new Facebook account through a code texted to your phone.
Give it time. Let your account build up interest over time by continuing to provide fresh and relevant content every day.
2. Make a commitment to earn. The only way to reliably make money using Facebook is through persistent work. Like any job, setting a schedule and sticking to it is the key.
Organize. Whatever strategy you plan to pursue, you'll probably have to take care of several things every day to make it work for you. Plan out the order and times you'll do them in advance.
Saturate your market. Making money with Facebook is more of a numbers game than anything else. Since marketing on Facebook costs nothing except time, you can market as much as you want – even to a point that would be prohibitively expensive any other way – and let the percentages and statistics work their magic one penny at a time.
Add aggressively. One of the best ways to increase the number of people looking at your page is to simply add people as friends as often as you can. Most won't accept, but some will.
3. Add accounts. Make a Facebook account for each affiliate program or group of programs you sign up for. This allows people to follow your pages based on the things they're interested in, rather than having to sign up for one page full of all different kinds of ads.
As mentioned previously, you can use your primary account to repost things from the other accounts periodically, exposing those pages to the audience you've built.
4. Promote your programs. Make posts for each of them daily, and maintain your accounts fastidiously. With luck and a good central account with a lot of followers, your affiliate accounts will begin to get followers as well. Whenever anyone clicks your posts and buys something from one of your affiliates, you earn money.
Python New and In Demand Programming Language
Python Programming Language
Python is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, Python's design philosophy emphasizes code readability with its notable use of significant whitespace. Its language constructs and object-oriented approach aim to help programmers write clear, logical code for small and large-scale projects.
Python is dynamically typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. Python is often described as a "batteries included" language due to its comprehensive standard library.
Python was conceived in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC language. Python 2.0, released 2000, introduced features like list comprehensions and a garbage collection system capable of collecting reference cycles. Python 3.0, released 2008, was a major revision of the language that is not completely backward-compatible, and much Python 2 code does not run unmodified on Python 3. Due to concern about the amount of code written for Python 2, support for Python 2.7 (the last release in the 2.x series) was extended to 2020. Language developer Guido van Rossum shouldered sole responsibility for the project until July 2018 but now shares his leadership as a member of a five-person steering council.
Python interpreters are available for many operating systems. A global community of programmers develops and maintains CPython, an open source reference implementation. A non-profit organization, the Python Software Foundation, manages and directs resources for Python and CPython development.
History
Python was conceived in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor to the ABC language (itself inspired by SETL), capable of exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. Its implementation began in December 1989. Van Rossum continued as Python's lead developer until July 12, 2018, when he announced his "permanent vacation" from his responsibilities as Python's Benevolent Dictator For Life, a title the Python community bestowed upon him to reflect his long-term commitment as the project's chief decision-maker. In January, 2019, active Python core developers elected Brett Cannon, Nick Coghlan, Barry Warsaw, Carol Willing and Van Rossum to a five-member "Steering Council" to lead the project.
Python 2.0 was released on 16 October 2000 with many major new features, including a cycle-detecting garbage collector and support for Unicode.
Python 3.0 was released on 3 December 2008. It was a major revision of the language that is not completely backward-compatible.Many of its major features were backported to Python 2.6.x and 2.7.x version series. Releases of Python 3 include the 2to3 utility, which automates (at least partially) the translation of Python 2 code to Python 3.
Python 2.7's end-of-life date was initially set at 2015 then postponed to 2020 out of concern that a large body of existing code could not easily be forward-ported to Python 3. In January 2017, Google announced work on a Python 2.7 to Go transcompiler to improve performance under concurrent workloads.
Development Environment
Most Python implementations (including CPython) include a read–eval–print loop (REPL), permitting them to function as a command line interpreter for which the user enters statements sequentially and receives results immediately.
Other shells, including IDLE and IPython, add further abilities such as auto-completion, session state retention and syntax highlighting.
As well as standard desktop integrated development environments, there are Web browser-based IDEs; SageMath (intended for developing science and math-related Python programs); PythonAnywhere, a browser-based IDE and hosting environment; and Canopy IDE, a commercial Python IDE emphasizing scientific computing.
Libraries in Python
Python's large standard library, commonly cited as one of its greatest strengths,provides tools suited to many tasks. For Internet-facing applications, many standard formats and protocols such as MIME and HTTP are supported. It includes modules for creating graphical user interfaces, connecting to relational databases, generating pseudorandom numbers, arithmetic with arbitrary precision decimals, manipulating regular expressions, and unit testing.
Some parts of the standard library are covered by specifications (for example, the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) implementation wsgiref follows PEP 333, but most modules are not. They are specified by their code, internal documentation, and test suites (if supplied). However, because most of the standard library is cross-platform Python code, only a few modules need altering or rewriting for variant implementations.
As of March 2018, the Python Package Index (PyPI), the official repository for third-party Python software, contains over 130,000 packages with a wide range of functionality, including:
Graphical user interfaces
Web frameworks
Multimedia
Databases
Networking
Test frameworks
Automation
Web scraping
Documentation
System administration
Scientific computing
Text processing
Image processing
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Cargo ship owned by JPMorgan Chase seized
Cargo ship owned by JPMorgan Chase seized by US with 20 tons of cocaine
New York (CNN Business)US authorities in Philadelphia seized a cargo vessel in June with nearly 20 tons of cocaine on board. The ship, as it turns out, is owned by a fund run by banking giant JPMorgan Chase.
A source close to the situation said on Wednesday that the ship, the MSC Gayane, is part of a transportation strategy fund run for the bank's asset management unit.
That means JPMorgan Chase (JPM) does not have any operational control of the vessel, a Liberian-flagged ship that is run by the Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Company. The bank had no comment.
Law enforcement agents boarded the MSC Gayane on June 17 and found the cocaine, which is said to have a street value of about $1.3 billio
More of the Stories click on the link Below:
business/jpmorgan-msc-gayane-cocaine-seizure
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
She Was A Jobless, Penniless, Single Mother With Depression
Must Watch this Video
My Social Blogsite
She Was A Jobless, Penniless, Single Mother With DepressionAny rejection is just redirection.
Posted by Neil Maratas on Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Saturn's Rings Shine Extra Bright This July: How to Catch Them
Saturn's Rings Shine Extra Bright This July: How to Catch Them
July will be a great month to view the rings of Saturn. You can see them in any telescope that magnifies to at least 20 power, but the larger the aperture and the sharper the image, the more detail you can make out.
Tonight (July 9), Saturn is at opposition, when it lies on the opposite side of the sky from the sun. This is also when the planet's apparent size is greatest and it puts on an all-night performance with the greatest gleam, shining at magnitude +0.1. Compared to the 21 brightest stars, Saturn would rank seventh, just a shade dimmer than similarly hued Capella in Auriga, the charioteer, and a trifle brighter than blue-white Rigel in Orion, the hunter.
Saturn will rise above the east-southeast horizon as the sun sets in the west-northwest. At around 1 a.m. local daylight time, the ringed planet will appear due south, about one-third of the way up from the horizon to the point directly overhead. And by the break of dawn, Saturn will be dropping down toward setting, low in the west-southwest.Visit here for more info..
https://www.space.com
Faucethub.com
