1 Coming towards the present day, the light sources evolved from incandescent bulbs which had short lifespans to halogen bulbs which lasted longer, but still depended on a tungsten filament. ...the ...latest are the Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs which use much lower power and last much longer without the problem of burning out. The conventional non-contact methods of viewing the fundus include the direct ophthalmoscope, indirect ophthalmoscope (with a 15D, 20D, 28D, 40D, or 2.2 Panretinal lens), and slitlamp biomicroscopy with a non-contact lens (60D, 66D, 78D, or 90D). Besides these, there are the contact fundus lenses and the gonioscopy lenses which allow a virtual, erect retinal view.
Two institutions in the UK, the Science Museum in London and the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, are marking the date with exhibits on her life and work. The exhibition's ...curators recently identified a touching sheet of doodles as a joint attempt-both hands are on the page-to find an algorithm to crack the “Königsberg Bridge problem”. From the private collection of GC Bond/Bodleian Libraries, Oxford Ada, Countess of Lovelace: Computer Pioneer Weston Library, Oxford, UK, until Dec 20, 2015 http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/upcoming-events/2015/oct/lovelace Ada Lovelace Science Museum, London, UK, until March 31, 2016 http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/ada-lovelace Science Museum, London
The design of good notation is a cause that was dear to Charles Babbage’s heart throughout his career. He was convinced of the “immense power of signs” (1864, 364), both to rigorously express complex ...ideas and to facilitate the discovery of new ones. As a young man, he promoted the Leibnizian notation for the calculus in England, and later he developed a Mechanical Notation for designing his computational engines. In addition, he reflected on the principles that underlie the design of good mathematical notations. In this paper, we discuss these reflections, which can be found somewhat scattered in Babbage’s writings, for the first time in a systematic way. Babbage’s desiderata for mathematical notations are presented as ten guidelines pertinent to notational design and its application to both individual symbols and complex expressions. To illustrate the applicability of these guidelines in non-mathematical domains, some aspects of his Mechanical Notation are also discussed.
•First systematic presentation of Babbage’s reflections on how to design good notations.•Ten guidelines for good notations.•Illustration of Babbage’s design principles using examples from mathematics and his Mechanical Notation.
Objective: The objective of the article is to demonstrate how the achievements of Revolution 4.0 enable the modification of consumers’ decision-making process by means of profiling algorithms. We ...indicate their potential impact – for example manifested in micro-targeting, price discrimination, and filter bubbles – and conclude with a description of the radicalization of views. Research Design & Methods: The article represents a theoretical study supported by reference to empirical data, the purpose of which is to determine the scale of the impact of IT sector companies on the economy. Findings: Information Technology tools, available mainly thanks to the achievements of revolution 4.0, allow users to modify the content of information at the level of an individual consumer, thus determining their decision-making process. This may entail a new phenomenon of the individualization of mass consumption. Implications & Recommendations: The benefits of profiling algorithms largely contribute to the improvement of market efficiencies. Nevertheless, the accompanying threats should be clearly articulated and noticed by policymakers. High-tech enterprises, on the other hand, should assume responsibility for the fair and transparent use of profiling algorithms. Consumer awareness of the use of this technology should also be raised. Contribution & Value Added: The article constitutes an original analysis of the approach related to the history of economic theory and the analysis of the most recent events and developments of the current fourth industrial revolution. The text examines and shows a holistic approach to the concept of “rationality” from the beginnings of economics as a science until today, along with factors that influence its perception.
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally change many current practices, from the way we work to how we live, innovate management and work processes. In its scope ...and complexity, this transformation will be a huge step forward focused on: routing decisions in accurate information, fraud detection (transactions, data prediction), diagnosis and recommendation systems, real time data analysis and security forecasts. This coincides with the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution, which allows products, equipment and people to communicate via the Internet or different interfaces - but for this to improve and work, an involvement from the public and private sectors of both civilian and military environments is necessary, in order to make the switch from classical to innovation thinking.
This article examines life assurance and the politics of ‘big data’ in mid-19th-century Britain. The datasets generated by life assurance companies were vast archives of information about human ...longevity. Actuaries distilled these archives into mortality tables – immensely valuable tools for predicting mortality and so pricing risk. The status of the mortality table was ambiguous, being both a public and a private object: often computed from company records they could also be extrapolated from public projects such as the census, or clerical records. Life assurance more generally straddled the line between private enterprise and collective endeavour, though its advocates stressed the public interest in its success. Reforming actuaries such as Thomas Rowe Edmonds wanted the data on which mortality tables were based to be made publicly available, but faced resistance. Such resistance undermined insurers’ claims to be scientific in spirit and hindered Edmonds’s personal quest for a law of mortality. Edmonds pushed instead for an open actuarial science alongside fellow travellers at the Statistical Society of London, which was populated by statisticians such as William Farr (whose subsequent work, it is argued, was influenced by Edmonds) as well as by radical mathematicians such as Charles Babbage. The article explores Babbage’s little-known foray into the world of insurance, both as a budding actuary but also as a fierce critic of the industry. These debates over the construction, ownership, and accessibility of insurance datasets show that concern about the politics of big data did not begin in the 21st century.
Both theorists and activists confront the challenge of representing the often untraceable causalities of climate change and, specifically, of linking action to effect over long periods. ...Nineteenth-century authors and scientists, faced with their own long temporal spans, devised strategies for representing the slow causalities of geological and generational processes, for which empirical evidence was often scarce. For writers like Charles Lyell, Charles Babbage, Samuel Smiles, and George Eliot, slowness served not only as a description but also as a narrative strategy, a means of inviting belief in, and consent to, the act of tracing causes to their distant ends. They use narrative to reimagine the relationship between evidence and causality, with the potential to influence the way we think about climate change debates today.
Steampunk, he argues, gives us a new reading practice, one that isn't constrained by historical period or close reading but instead gives us access to "a startlingly diverse set of narratives about ...the nineteenth century, themselves a consequence of the objects, cultures, signals, and interfaces used to access that history" (5). At other times, this means digital humanities practices that study the nineteenth-century, which might include a digital forum for the Journal of Victorian Culture Online about baking from Victorian recipes or Lego enthusiasts re-making Charles Babbage's difference engine. Chapter Two continues to examine mechanization, first reading Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings (2015) to develop a steampunk understanding of the way that culture impacts technological development. ...the epilogue picks up the thread of temporal frameworks from the beginning of the book, looking to the posthuman Victorian history evidenced in steampunk video games such as Sunless Sea and Bloodborne.
This essay argues E. E. Cummings's "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r" (1935) anticipates the contemporary practice of experimental writing known as codework. Encoding through typographical means the action ...sequence of the grasshopper's leap, Cummings transformed his mechanical typewriter into the equivalent of a hardware device supplied with the necessary software for running the poem as a program. The three permutations of "grasshopper"—"r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r," "PPEGORHRASS," and "gRrEaPsPhOs"—reflect a block cipher method of encryption, each one comprising a subkey governing the operations of its surrounding textual arrangement. Like the punch cards driving Jacquard's loom and Babbage's Analytical Engine, these subkeys weave for us a digital grasshopper.
PDF
