Monday, May 31, 2021

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dWeb News


Starting tomorrow, the Medcap Forum brings together a hundred companies with over 150 investors

Posted: 31 May 2021 03:41 AM PDT

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Arteche receives favourable report from BME Growth

Posted: 31 May 2021 03:41 AM PDT

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Funding channelled via the stock market grew 6-fold to April, BME highlights during the opening of the MedCap Forum

Posted: 31 May 2021 03:41 AM PDT

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Open edX & Learning Platforms | May – June 2021: Coursera, MasterClass.com, Outlier, Thinkific, Moodle…

Posted: 31 May 2021 03:41 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

[ Newsletter format  |  Click here to subscribe ]

MAY – JUNE 2021 – NEWSLETTER #37  |  Breaking news at IBL News  |  Noticias en EspaƱol

 

edX 

• "The New Normal Will Be Blended Education," Says Agarwal at the Annual Open edX Conference

• A Course from Penn on edX About the Potential to Fight Diseases with mRNA Vaccines

• The Linux Foundation and CNCF Issue a Free Kubernetes on Edge Training on edX.org

• UNESCO Releases Its Learning, Open edX-Based Platform

 

Coursera

• SUNY's Class on Solar Energy and Panel Installations Gets Over 50,000 Enrollments

• Coursera's Stock Price Drops Despite Analysts' Endorsement

• Coursera Partners with Microsoft to Launch a Certificate on Azure

• Coursera Announces Five New Degrees While the Stock Drops Below the Debut Day

 

Learning Platform Raising Funds

• Engageli.com Nabs Another $33 Million While Announcing the Launch of the Platform

• MasterClass.com Continues Its Funding Spree Raising Another $225 Million

• Outlier.org Raises Another $30 Million for Expanding Its Catalog of College-Level Courses

• Thinkific Goes Public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Raises $129 Million

• Blackboard's Former CEO Attracts More Millions for Its Zoom-Based Startup

• The French OpenClasrooms.com Raises $80 Million for Its International Expansion

 

Initiatives

• The Moodle Platform Company Buys Three Partners and Creates Moodle US

• Thinkific.com Creates an App Store for the Integration of External Tools

 

2021 Events | All of the Key Conferences Listed!

• Education Calendar  –  MAYJUNEJULY-DECEMBER  |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain

 

This newsletter is created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specializing in AI-driven learning platforms and communities. We also a course production studio. Read the latest IBL Newsletter   |  Archive of Open edX NewslettersCoursera's CEO Says that Its Valuation Won't Drop After the Pandemic Winds Down

• Coursera Rallies 36% on Its Debut, Giving the Company a Whopping Valuation of $5.8 Billion

• Coursera.org Aims for a Valuation of Over $4 Billion on its IPO

 

Initiatives

• Instructure Launches a Tool that Assesses Students' Learning Loss During the Pandemic

• Udacity Launches its School of Cybersecurity to Address Market's Demand

 

Learning Platforms

• Degreed Reaches a Valuation of $1.4 Billion After Raising $153 Million

• The OpenSAP Micro-Learning Free Platform Reaches Five Million Enrollments

 

2021 Events | All of the Key Conferences Listed!

• Education Calendar  –  APRILMAYJUNEJULY-DECEMBER  |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain

 

This newsletter is created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specializing in AI–driven learning platforms and communities. We also a course production studio. Read the latest IBL Newsletter   |  Archive of Open edX Newsletters

More News at https://dWeb.News

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Funding channelled via the stock market grew 6-fold to April, BME highlights during the opening of the MedCap Forum

Posted: 31 May 2021 12:43 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

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How Outdated Hiring Practices Can Derail Your Recruitment Efforts

Posted: 30 May 2021 10:41 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Sanjoe Jose dWeb.News Tech News

Too often, recruitment departments are sidelined as simply a call center or cost function of a business, with the sole purpose of getting people to attend interviews and accept offers. This attitude and practice couldn't be further from the truth, as quality hiring provides the foundations for cohesive and successful teams. Many companies stick to old hiring processes, which often prevent their recruiters from getting their hands on top talent.

Outdated Hiring Practices Can Derail Your Recruitment Efforts

This year, an astonishing 82% of US employers are planning to hire new people. Yet, recruiters still face an uphill struggle to find the right fit: 61% of recruiters say that their biggest challenge is finding qualified experienced hires. It's time for businesses holding onto outdated hiring practices to scrap them completely—and start seeing recruitment as the strategic function it is.

Though, of course, getting rid of outdated practices means replacing them with new ones. There are four core areas where hiring needs innovative, new solutions: talent discovery, candidate experience, data and reporting, and talent decision making.

Let's dive into which age-old practices should be resigned to the history books, and how companies can leverage technology to strategically drive their hiring efforts.

The Right Tools to Power Top Talent Discovery

Many recruiters are still manually searching for quality candidates on job boards, but it's difficult for them to be an expert in all the job roles they are expected to fill.

A lack of understanding of the position on the recruiter's part leads to missing out on good candidates.

For example, if potential candidates don't use the exact keywords that the recruiter is searching for, they might slip through the cracks.

Here's where technology can help. AI-powered resume screening tools can parse through resumes, use past data on successful hires, identify the top applicants, and put them through to the next stage of the hiring process.

Getting to the next stage boosts the potential for recruiters to find the best candidates, as they are no longer relying on their own intuition—they have the historical data of hundreds if not thousands of applicants to rely on.

How to reduce the chance of bias

One crucial thing to note here is that to minimize the chance of bias, it's important to keep track of any tendencies that might emerge as a result of skewed data and adjust the algorithm accordingly. We all remember Amazon's sexist recruitment tool and how that turned out.

Candidate Experience: From Disjointed to Seamless

Candidate experience has never been more critical than in the virtual realm. And with 80% of respondents to our Remote Hiring Trends 2021 survey saying their interviewing and hiring process is now fully remote, this means stepping away from disjointed technology experiences and building a seamless funnel for candidates.

The truth may be harsh, but it's important to hear: Organizations that are still using multiple recruitment management systems and interviewing tools neglect their candidate experience.

In dealing with all of these different platforms at different stages of the hiring funnel, candidates often get confused and disillusioned with the sheer number of platforms they're grappling with.

The applicant might interact with the applicant tracking system to submit the application, complete an assessment on a separate tool, take the video interview on Zoom or Google Meet, and manage communications via email.

Now the recruiter's multiple tools

Meanwhile, on the other side, the recruiter is also forced to deal with multiple tools and switch between platforms to gather information, inevitably impacting efficiency in the process. Having this data strewn across different platforms makes it more difficult to locate, and can result in recruiters missing it completely.

The answer here is simple: Organizations that invest in an all-in-one platform that takes care of everything.

An all-in-one platform is going to save you a ton of money in the end. You want your platform tool to take you from screening to interviewing. You will set yourself and your company apart from your peers when it comes to candidate experience while making life significantly easier for hiring teams too.

These tools can automate the process from one stage to the next.

For example, they can automatically schedule an interview for someone who passed the skills assessment or automatically sends an offer email to someone who was successful in their final interview.

Not to mention, adopting a single tool allows companies to curate the online environment to match their own branding, which is crucial for consistency and professionalism in the candidate's eyes.

Organizations that adopt whitelabel recruitment platforms can create a more accurate image of their company in the absence of a physical workplace to visit.

Data is King — for Recruiters Too

The reality is the majority of recruiters do not have access to comprehensive data insights to drive decision-making. And that needs to change.

Recruitment often gets short-changed when it comes to investing in data and reporting technologies.

There has historically been a lack of emphasis on leveraging data insights within the function to drive strategic decisions, unlike other departments like Sales or Marketing, which are equipped with such technological capabilities as standard.

However, data and reporting are crucial for successful hiring, and the often sidelined business function of recruitment shouldn't be left out of the data revolution.

Actionable insights can drive recruitment decisions.

Consider the time an average candidate spends in the hiring funnel. Look at the rate of high-quality candidates from various sources and all the data about the candidate. Each step in the information process takes time. Look at your application form conversion rates — and each candidate experience scores.

Armed with these insights, recruiters will be able to determine the success of their hiring efforts.

You'll want to ensure they are reaching diverse groups, evaluate their candidate experience, and more. Especially given the importance of diversity and inclusion (one of Monster's key hiring trends for 2021), companies must leverage data insights to support these efforts.

Remove the Bias in Talent Decision Making

Humans are inherently subjective beings—and the same goes for recruiters, no matter how fair they determine themselves to be. This, in turn, means that decisions made in large part based on interviews are ultimately subjective.

There are several different unconscious biases that the interviewer could exhibit in that process. Unconscious biases can include:

affinity bias (when you prefer people who share qualities with you or someone you like).
attribution bias (our flawed ability to assess the reasons for certain behaviors)
conformity bias (allowing your views to be swayed by others).

Unknowingly, recruiters often take a pass on qualified applicants and take on unfit ones, all because of their internal biases.

What's more, much of the data on candidate interview performance is not captured and used holistically and assessed objectively to make decisions. Rather it exists in bits and pieces across platforms and documents, further convoluting the process.

Behavioral insights

AI-powered interview platforms can provide objective behavioral insights to recruiters during video interviews and fairly assess candidates' soft skills and learnability.

These tools augment the human decision-making power as they highlight areas where the interviewer's judgment may be biased.

Advanced AI platforms can evaluate interviewer performance, providing data on time spent on each interview topic, the time the interviewer spent talking vs. the candidate, or whether or not inappropriate questions were asked.

All of this enables the interviewer to identify gaps in their approach and drive their performance.

Conclusion

It's time for recruitment departments to leave age-old practices at the door and embrace technology to advance strategic hiring. With the growth of virtual hiring and remote work showing no sign of abating, what better time to start than now?

The post How Outdated Hiring Practices Can Derail Your Recruitment Efforts appeared first on ReadWrite.

Too often, recruitment departments are sidelined as simply a call center or cost function of a business, with the sole purpose of getting people to attend interviews and accept offers. This attitude and practice couldn't be further from the truth, as quality hiring provides the foundations for cohesive and successful teams. Many companies stick to
The post How Outdated Hiring Practices Can Derail Your Recruitment Efforts appeared first on ReadWrite.Entrepreneurs, Grow, Startups, business innovation, Hiring Process, hiring trends, Recruitment, tech talent gap
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The post How Outdated Hiring Practices Can Derail Your Recruitment Efforts appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Al Zahra Hospital Dubai Pioneers CMR’s Surgical Versius Robotic System for the 1st Time in the MENA Region

Posted: 30 May 2021 03:40 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

• Al Zahra Hospital Dubai is the first hospital in the UAE to introduce The CMR Versius Robotic Surgical System
• The Versius Robotic Surgical System is specifically designed to elevate surgical solutions for patients & surgeons alike

Dubai, United Arab Emirates May 30, 2021 (Issuewire.com) – “Robotic surgical solutions” is a recent medical innovation that has become popular over the last decade. Robot-assisted surgical procedures have quickly expanded due to the increasing opportunities for minimally invasive surgery across surgical domains. As the market is diversifying, novel surgical modalities with new technologies are providing hospitals with elevated effectiveness and efficiency in patient outcomes, surgical precision, time efficiency, and decreased medical costs. Aligned with International forward thinking medical providers, Al Zahra Hospital Dubai, is aiming to transform surgical care in the whole MENA region by introducing the CMR’s next-generation Versius Robotic Surgical System.

Cambridge-based medical device company CMR Surgical also known as Europe’s MedTech powerhouse has debuted their Versius Robotic Solution as an advanced version of conventional Robotic Systems, with their medical technologies being widely used across Germany, France, and Australia. Versius was designed with ergonomics in mind to help reduce stress and fatigue for surgeons while enhancing patient outcomes and improving recovery times. Laparoscopic procedures are associated with a wide range of patient benefits; however, many are highly complex and when performed manually, without the assistance of robotics possibly compromising quality and clinical outcomes. In addition, Versius has instinctive instruments, vision controls, and an open console design allowing surgeons to sit upright or stand, keeping them comfortable for longer each day, with all the benefits of Robotics, unlike other robotic solutions.

“As a forward-thinking healthcare provider and the first private hospital in the UAE, Al Zahra Hospital did not set out to replicate just another Robotic Program. We set out to transform surgeries for millions of people by adopting the latest new generation of Surgical Robotic Systems. Our promise to patients and doctors alike is to continuously strive for medical innovation with higher surgical and medical outcomes. We are proud to pioneer this technology in the region I would like to thank his Royal Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Minister of Defense, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, for his vision and continuous support of the medical sector turning Dubai into a regional healthcare hub built on encouraging the spirit of innovation and quality in every aspect of the industry. ” – Sheikh Dr. Faisal Al Qassimi, Chairman of Al Zahra Hospital Dubai.

It has been globally claimed that conventional Laparoscopic surgery can be challenging, both physically and mentally. For every 4 surgeons, 3 have claimed that they experience back pain which has an effect on the quality and clinical outcomes. This is a valuable differentiating factor for Versius Robotic Solutions.

“We at Robotic Surgical Systems in association with CMR Surgical and our Partners Al Zahra Hospital Dubai share a common belief of value-based medicine that enables hospitals to provide their patients with more accessible less invasive treatment. For the providers, we are offering unique and flexible robotic designs, particularly user friendly and highly adaptable to the different procedure while offering surgeons comfort, precision and confidence”-  David Mezher, General Manager at Robotics Surgical Systems.

The United Arab Emirates has been a leader in the early adoption of cutting-edge MedTech innovation with a strong focus on digitalization and Artificial intelligence. With strong international and government funding in the sector, the use of AI in healthcare has been reported to add a $22 billion slice to the UAE economy by 2035.

 

 

Boiler Plate – Al Zahra Hospital Dubai:

Al Zahra Hospital Dubai – is a leading healthcare provider in the UAE and a milestone in the country’s healthcare sector, with the brand breaking ground in 1975, as the first private healthcare provider. The hospital is located in Dubai, on Sheikh Zayed Road, Al Barsha, catering to local and international patients through over 250 Doctors and more than 40 medical specialties. Accredited by the Joint Commission International, the hospital holds various distinguished centers of excellence, including a JCI accredited Breast Cancer Center, a JCI accredited Heart Attack Center, an accredited Rotator Cuff, and ACL Center.

Dedicated to delivering world class healthcare, the hospital is a leader in implementing technological advancements and medical practices, housing the region’s first advanced 3Teasla MRI & the first private Hyperbaric Oxygenation Chamber. In 2016, Al Zahra Hospital Dubai was the first hospital to introduce water birthing to Dubai. In 2021 AL Zahra Hospital Dubai was the first Hospital in the Mena region to introduce the Versius Robotic Surgical Solutions.

Some of the most sought-after services at Al Zahra Hospital Dubai include- Cardiology, Oncology, Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, Spine Surgery, Joint Replacement, Interventional Medicine, Maternity, Pediatrics, General Surgery, Internal Medicine & more.

Boiler Plate – CMR Surgical:

CMR Surgical is a British medical device company, founded with a vision to transform surgery by developing a next generation robotic system which would be both versatile and affordable and bring the benefits of minimal access surgery to millions of people each year who do not currently receive it. CMR has successfully developed an innovative technology in robotics surgery and owns the intellectual property, including patents, design, trademark and know-how called the Versius Surgical System (“Licensed Technology”); Versius Robotic System is supposed to complement and extend what surgeons can do, helping to improve outcomes for patients. Compared to manual laparoscopy, the unique modular fully articulated wrists, direct hand to instrument mapping, and integrated stable 3D HD visualization on Versius Robot provides incredible precision, control, dexterity and superb depth perception. This gives the surgeons the means to perform surgical steps with greater accuracy and ease.

 

Media Contact

Al Zahra Hospital Dubai

rania.akkela@azhd.ae

Rania Akkela

Dubai

http://www.azhd.ae

Source :Al Zahra Hospital Dubai

This article was originally published by IssueWire. Read the original article here.

Health, Technology
• Al Zahra Hospital Dubai is the first hospital in the UAE to introduce The CMR Versius Robotic Surgical System
• The Versius Robotic Surgical System is specifically designed to elevate surgical solutions for patients & surgeons alikeDubai, United Arab Emirates May 30, 2021 (Issuewire.com) – “Robotic surgical solutions” is a recent medical innovation that has become popular over the last decade. Robot-assisted surgical procedures have quickly expanded due to the increasing opportunities for minimally invasive surgery across surgical domains. As the market is diversifying, novel surgical modalities with new technologies are providing hospitals with elevated effectiveness and efficiency in patient outcomes, surgical precision, time efficiency, and decreased medical costs. Aligned with International forward thinking medical providers, Al Zahra Hospital Dubai, is aiming to transform surgical care in the whole MENA region by introducing the CMR’s next-generation Versius Robotic Surgical System.
Cambridge-based medical device company CMR Surgical also known as Europe’s MedTech powerhouse has debuted their Versius Robotic Solution as an advanced version of conventional Robotic Systems, with their medical technologies being widely used across Germany, France, and Australia. Versius was designed with ergonomics in mind to help reduce stress and fatigue for surgeons while enhancing patient outcomes and improving recovery times. Laparoscopic procedures are associated with a wide range of patient benefits; however, many are highly complex and when performed manually, without the assistance of robotics possibly compromising quality and clinical outcomes. In addition, Versius has instinctive instruments, vision controls, and an open console design allowing surgeons to sit upright or stand, keeping them comfortable for longer each day, with all the benefits of Robotics, unlike other robotic solutions.
“As a forward-thinking healthcare provider and the first private hospital in the UAE, Al Zahra Hospital did not set out to replicate just another Robotic Program. We set out to transform surgeries for millions of people by adopting the latest new generation of Surgical Robotic Systems. Our promise to patients and doctors alike is to continuously strive for medical innovation with higher surgical and medical outcomes. We are proud to pioneer this technology in the region I would like to thank his Royal Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Minister of Defense, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, for his vision and continuous support of the medical sector turning Dubai into a regional healthcare hub built on encouraging the spirit of innovation and quality in every aspect of the industry. ” – Sheikh Dr. Faisal Al Qassimi, Chairman of Al Zahra Hospital Dubai.
It has been globally claimed that conventional Laparoscopic surgery can be challenging, both physically and mentally. For every 4 surgeons, 3 have claimed that they experience back pain which has an effect on the quality and clinical outcomes. This is a valuable differentiating factor for Versius Robotic Solutions.
“We at Robotic Surgical Systems in association with CMR Surgical and our Partners Al Zahra Hospital Dubai share a common belief of value-based medicine that enables hospitals to provide their patients with more accessible less invasive treatment. For the providers, we are offering unique and flexible robotic designs, particularly user friendly and highly adaptable to the different procedure while offering surgeons comfort, precision and confidence”-  David Mezher, General Manager at Robotics Surgical Systems.
The United Arab Emirates has been a leader in the early adoption of cutting-edge MedTech innovation with a strong focus on digitalization and Artificial intelligence. With strong international and government funding in the sector, the use of AI in healthcare has been reported to add a $22 billion slice to the UAE economy by 2035.
 
 
Boiler Plate – Al Zahra Hospital Dubai:
Al Zahra Hospital Dubai – is a leading healthcare provider in the UAE and a milestone in the country’s healthcare sector, with the brand breaking ground in 1975, as the first private healthcare provider. The hospital is located in Dubai, on Sheikh Zayed Road, Al Barsha, catering to local and international patients through over 250 Doctors and more than 40 medical specialties. Accredited by the Joint Commission International, the hospital holds various distinguished centers of excellence, including a JCI accredited Breast Cancer Center, a JCI accredited Heart Attack Center, an accredited Rotator Cuff, and ACL Center.
Dedicated to delivering world class healthcare, the hospital is a leader in implementing technological advancements and medical practices, housing the region’s first advanced 3Teasla MRI & the first private Hyperbaric Oxygenation Chamber. In 2016, Al Zahra Hospital Dubai was the first hospital to introduce water birthing to Dubai. In 2021 AL Zahra Hospital Dubai was the first Hospital in the Mena region to introduce the Versius Robotic Surgical Solutions.
Some of the most sought-after services at Al Zahra Hospital Dubai include- Cardiology, Oncology, Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, Spine Surgery, Joint Replacement, Interventional Medicine, Maternity, Pediatrics, General Surgery, Internal Medicine & more.
Boiler Plate – CMR Surgical:
CMR Surgical is a British medical device company, founded with a vision to transform surgery by developing a next generation robotic system which would be both versatile and affordable and bring the benefits of minimal access surgery to millions of people each year who do not currently receive it. CMR has successfully developed an innovative technology in robotics surgery and owns the intellectual property, including patents, design, trademark and know-how called the Versius Surgical System (“Licensed Technology”); Versius Robotic System is supposed to complement and extend what surgeons can do, helping to improve outcomes for patients. Compared to manual laparoscopy, the unique modular fully articulated wrists, direct hand to instrument mapping, and integrated stable 3D HD visualization on Versius Robot provides incredible precision, control, dexterity and superb depth perception. This gives the surgeons the means to perform surgical steps with greater accuracy and ease.
 Media ContactAl Zahra Hospital Dubairania.akkela@azhd.aeRania Akkela Dubaihttp://www.azhd.ae Source :Al Zahra Hospital Dubai
This article was originally published by IssueWire. Read the original article here.

The post Al Zahra Hospital Dubai Pioneers CMR’s Surgical Versius Robotic System for the 1st Time in the MENA Region appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

5 Reasons Why It’s a Bad Idea to Have Your Company’s Software Developed By an In-house Team By Peter Navarro

Posted: 30 May 2021 01:46 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from jaydiaz2013 dWeb.News Tech News

In this article, we'll understand why assembling an in-house team to develop your software can be a real trap for the business growth.

Nowadays, everyone recognizes the importance of having an intelligent software that can optimize resources and is specifically focused to its target audience. Thinking of obtaining better results and establishing a more effective management of the business, many companies usually use customized software.

But a mistake is often repeated by managers when it comes to developing a new software. Many prefer to set up an internal team within their own staff, rather than hiring a company specialized in market software. Find out below five reasons why, in the long run, this decision can put a business at risk.

1. The software will be yours forever; employees won't

At first, building an in-house team to develop your company software may seem like a more attractive option. As a manager, there will initially be an impression of greater control and even personalization, as if that particular software was being tailored to your needs. But this is unlikely to be true.

In practice, relying solely on an in-house team can turn out to be a shot in the foot. Currently, programmers are professionals who perform very specific functions and, therefore, have ample options in the market, being able to choose where they will work and even how much they will earn. It must be kept in mind that, if your employees receive an offer that cannot be rejected or leave the company for some reason, the software that they created for months or years will continue to exist in your company. The developers, however, will no longer be there to operationalize the system.

2. Don't throw your investment away

This leads us to another critical question: would there be viable alternatives in the market to repair this loss? Probably not, because as a rule it would be the case to hire developers who would start a patchwork because they were unaware of the existing technology, or would start over from scratch with new techniques and ideas in mind. Two alternatives that effectively mean lost time, efficiency and money.

It is worth remembering that, on average, to obtain satisfactory performance with a new software, an internal team needs one to two years in the development phase. And for the results to start to appear, it is essential that tests are done, the other departments of the company are trained and the software is assimilated by the entire organization. Is it worth taking the risk of wasting so much time investing in development, instead of simply customizing a market software with the support of an outside company?

3. Minimize surprise risks

Another important point is to consider your company's experience in developing software. Hiring dedicated developers on your own and guiding them in creating the ideal platform for their specific purpose can be a frustrating and tiring process. Both for managers, who would have to find the right professionals for such particular roles, and for new hires, who would need to get used to the culture of the new organization quickly. Would your company be prepared to absorb such challenging demands?

4. Prevent competition from stealing your gold

As good as the plan to hire a team of software developers works in the short term, there will always be a risk that your resources will leave the company and take with you the knowledge about the technology they have developed. And the greater this knowledge, the greater the damage to your business. Have you ever imagined seeing these professionals being hired by the competition?

By "stealing" your treasure, your rivals in the marketplace would benefit from all the time you spent developing your platform. After all, for them, the acquisition of the trained team members would represent a much shorter investment cycle in the implementation of a system. In return, your company would be at a great competitive disadvantage, without the brains behind the technology that you have financed for a long time. A real nightmare for any manager.

5. Don't have to worry about updates

We all know that regular updates are necessary for a software to remain efficient and functional. Although there are several types of software for the most varied businesses, they all need frequent maintenance, technical support and bug fixes to be successful.

The external contracting of a development company would also bring many facilities in this regard. In addition to scheduling the proper tests before release and periodically checking the quality of the product for serving the market and always keeping an eye on the latest technical news, your partners would have all the updates ready for deployment whenever needed. By delegating this type of service to a third-party supplier, you also favor the ultimate goal of any software, that is, to meet project requirements with a great user experience.

Conclusion

When weighing all the options, it is easy to see that the best solution is to always hire a company specialized in software development. With the existing offers on the market today, where there are suppliers with expertise in numerous sectors, it is possible to find the ideal partner for your industry. Thus, as a senior executive, you avoid the dispersion of your efforts, ensure that your budget is respected and still make sure that your deadlines are met.

via Technology & Innovation Articles on Business 2 Community https://bit.ly/3c6is5T

In this article, we'll understand why assembling an in-house team to develop your software can be a real trap for the business growth. Nowadays, everyone recognizes the importance of having an intelligent software that can optimize resources and is specifically focused to its target audience. Thinking of obtaining better results and establishing a more effectiveideas, innovation, management, technology, Technology & Innovation Articles on Business 2 Community

The post 5 Reasons Why It's a Bad Idea to Have Your Company's Software Developed By an In-house Team By Peter Navarro appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Here are the upgrades Nintendo’s Switch Pro might have over the original

Posted: 30 May 2021 12:42 PM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Chris Smith dWeb.News Tech News

The PS5 and Xbox Series X were some of the most talked-about gadgets in tech last year, but the four-year-old Nintendo Switch is still the console to beat. Sony and Microsoft launched their high-end gaming rigs in late 2020, and they've been out of stock since initial preorders. Meanwhile, Nintendo kept selling millions of Switches, as everyone stuck at home was desperate for anything to entertain themselves. The Switch continued to outsell its rivals well into 2020, despite not being a real match for either of the new devices.

Nintendo has been rumored to launch a "Switch Pro" version of the Switch, and the company kept denying those rumors in past years. But an increasing number of reports indicate that the upgraded Switch model might be heading to stores this fall, with a reveal coming as soon as mid-June. A brand new leak lists several purported Switch Pro upgrades, indicating the various ways in which the new console will outperform the original.

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The PS5 and Xbox Series X were some of the most talked-about gadgets in tech last year, but the four-year-old Nintendo Switch is still the console to beat. Sony and Microsoft launched their high-end gaming rigs in late 2020, and they've been out of stock since initial preorders. Meanwhile, Nintendo kept selling millions of Switches, …Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch Pro
Tech News at http://dWeb.News

The post Here are the upgrades Nintendo's Switch Pro might have over the original appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Tools You Need for Online Security By Diane H. Wong

Posted: 30 May 2021 11:43 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from jaydiaz2013 dWeb.News Tech News

79% of Americans today use the internet for research, shopping, communicating, and business transactions. Internet users are growing rapidly, adding more than 2 million users per month. As the internet becomes popular, more and more intruders and hackers are making millions in getting into the computers to get personal information for their personal use.

Computer protection today is critical as protecting identity and investment. You use a WiFi card, but without protection, you are virtually exposing your assets and identity to the online world.

The following are an effective tool in computer and identity protection:

1. Virus Protection – Virus slows down computer by duplicating itself on systems, networks, and drives without user intervention. They are usually attached to disks and files often disguise as images or games. The most common virus is called Trojan Horse. It is designed to appear as a useful or desirable program in order to penetrate and destroy the computer's operating system, software, and even the hard disk.

Virus protection is a software service designed to keep computers safe from virus outbreaks. It usually includes a comprehensive and automatic scanning feature that actively wipes out malicious applications.

2. Spyware Protection – Spyware is considered more destructive than viruses. It is used by hackers to steal identity or personal information to acquire unauthorized access. It has the capability to record passwords, history, and keystrokes using what is known as a tracking cookie. Spyware also slows down the computer and causes frequent disconnection. It is usually associated with adware, an application that interrupts that online activity through pop up usually advertising products and services.

Spyware protection is software that scans and eliminates adware and spyware. Like virus protection, it includes a comprehensive and automatic scanning feature to keep the hard drive and all the files safe. Users can also protect the computer from spyware and adware by not downloading e-mail attachments from unknown sender or software programs when surfing the net.

3. Firewall – Like spyware and virus protection, a firewall aims to keep your computer safe from hackers by preventing these people from accessing your PC from the internet or from your home network. The firewall may be a software program, hardware, or part of your computer's operating system. There are 3 different kinds of firewall, these are following:

– Software firewall – this kind of firewall is being offered primarily by vendors. This software is available in retail stores and can be downloaded from the vendor's website.

– Operating system firewall – this is included when you buy your operating system.

– Gateway-based firewall – is designed for broadband subscribers using a home network.

4. Phishing Protection – Defined as social engineering through email and sometimes Instant messages (IM). Social engineers used well-known personalities or establishments (ex. Financial institution) to lure internet users to give out their password and billing information. Anti-phishing software empowers internet users to successfully identify scam email and IM by displaying the real domain of the website while acting as a toolbar.

Aside from installing computer protection, a person can also protect the computer and his identity by following these tips:

1. Choose passwords that are hard to guess, preferably a combination of letters and numbers. Avoid using names, birthdays, school, or workplace.

2. If the computer is infected with a virus, unplug the phone line or broadband connection immediately and get help from your ISP or computer technician.

3. Do not open unsolicited email messages. Do not download attachments and be cautious when clicking on hyperlinks.

via Technology & Innovation Articles on Business 2 Community https://bit.ly/3fENg01

79% of Americans today use the internet for research, shopping, communicating, and business transactions. Internet users are growing rapidly, adding more than 2 million users per month. As the internet becomes popular, more and more intruders and hackers are making millions in getting into the computers to get personal information for their personal use. Computerideas, innovation, management, technology, Technology & Innovation Articles on Business 2 Community

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Saturday, May 29, 2021

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FedUp PAC: Albuquerque’s Crime Spike Contrasts Sharply with Democrat Stansbury’s “Defund the Police” Campaign in 1st District Special Election

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:55 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

MANASSAS, Va., May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Since the Defund the Police Movement started, Albuquerque has seen violent crime spike by 15.5%, property damages rise 13.3%, and 35 residents have been murdered in the city thus far in 2021—nearly double what it was at this time in 2020….

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FDA In Brief: FDA Releases Investigation Report Following 2020 Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Red Onions

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

Today, the FDA released a 2020 Salmonella Outbreak Report that includes an overview of our traceback, on-site investigation, and various factors that potentially contributed to the contamination of red onions with Salmonella.

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: May 14, 2021

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: May 14, 2021

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FDA In Brief: FDA Provides Guidance on Master Protocols for Evaluating Prevention, Treatment Options for COVID-19

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

The FDA issued a final guidance that describes the agency's current recommendations to sponsors of master protocols evaluating drugs for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.

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FDA In Brief: Science Forum Highlights Regulatory Science Advancements in Protecting and Promoting Public Health

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

The Science Forum is a unique opportunity for stakeholders to engage with and learn directly from FDA experts about a variety of cutting-edge research topics.

The post FDA In Brief: Science Forum Highlights Regulatory Science Advancements in Protecting and Promoting Public Health appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: May 18, 2021

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: May 18, 2021

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FDA In Brief: FDA Advises Against Use of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Test Results to Evaluate Immunity or Protection From COVID-19, Including After Vaccination

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

FDA issued a safety communication to advise against using SARS-CoV-2 antibody test results to evaluate immunity after COVID-19 vaccination.

The post FDA In Brief: FDA Advises Against Use of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Test Results to Evaluate Immunity or Protection From COVID-19, Including After Vaccination appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

FDA In Brief: FDA Issues Draft Guidance on Early Clinical Studies for Certain Medical Devices to Improve Glycemic Control for Type 2 Diabetes

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

FDA issued a draft guidance with recommendations for feasibility and early feasibility clinical studies for devices intended to improve glycemic control in patients with Type 2 diabetes.

The post FDA In Brief: FDA Issues Draft Guidance on Early Clinical Studies for Certain Medical Devices to Improve Glycemic Control for Type 2 Diabetes appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

FDA In Brief: FDA Authorizes Longer Time for Refrigerator Storage of Thawed Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Prior to Dilution, Making Vaccine More Widely Available

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

FDA authorized undiluted, thawed Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine vials to be stored in the refrigerator at 2°C to 8°C (35°F to 46°F) for up to 1 month.

The post FDA In Brief: FDA Authorizes Longer Time for Refrigerator Storage of Thawed Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Prior to Dilution, Making Vaccine More Widely Available appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

FDA In Brief: FDA Alerts Patients and Health Care Providers About Possible Problems with Mammograms Performed at Capitol Radiology LLC

Posted: 29 May 2021 02:49 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

FDA issues safety communication at Capitol Radiology LLC, also known as Laurel Radiology Services, in Laurel, Maryland.

The post FDA In Brief: FDA Alerts Patients and Health Care Providers About Possible Problems with Mammograms Performed at Capitol Radiology LLC appeared first on dWeb.News Tech News from Daniel Webster dWeb Internet Cowboy

Thursday, May 27, 2021

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AI is learning how to create itself

Posted: 27 May 2021 02:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Will Douglas Heaven dWeb.News Tech News

A little stick figure with a wedge-shaped head shuffles across the screen. It moves in a half crouch, dragging one knee along the ground. It's walking! Er, sort of. 

Yet Rui Wang is delighted. "Every day I walk into my office and open my computer, and I don't know what to expect," he says. 

An artificial-intelligence researcher at Uber, Wang likes to leave the Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer, a piece of software he helped develop, running on his laptop overnight. POET is a kind of training dojo for virtual bots. So far, they aren't learning to do much at all. These AI agents are not playing Go, spotting signs of cancer, or folding proteins—they're trying to navigate a crude cartoon landscape of fences and ravines without falling over.

But it's not what the bots are learning that's exciting—it's how they're learning. POET generates the obstacle courses, assesses the bots' abilities, and assigns their next challenge, all without human involvement. Step by faltering step, the bots improve via trial and error. "At some point it might jump over a cliff like a kung fu master," says Wang. 

It may seem basic at the moment, but for Wang and a handful of other researchers, POET hints at a revolutionary new way to create supersmart machines: by getting AI to make itself. 

Wang's former colleague Jeff Clune is among the biggest boosters of this idea. Clune has been working on it for years, first at the University of Wyoming and then at Uber AI Labs, where he worked with Wang and others. Now dividing his time between the University of British Columbia and OpenAI, he has the backing of one of the world's top artificial-intelligence labs.

Clune calls the attempt to build truly intelligent AI the most ambitious scientific quest in human history. Today, seven decades after serious efforts to make AI began, we're still a long way from creating machines that are anywhere near as smart as humans, let alone smarter. Clune thinks POET might point to a shortcut. 

"We need to take the shackles off and get out of our own way," he says. 

If Clune is right, using AI to make AI could be an important step on the road that one day leads to artificial general intelligence (AGI)—machines that can outthink humans. In the nearer term, the technique might also help us discover different kinds of intelligence: non-human smarts that can find solutions in unexpected ways and perhaps complement our own intelligence rather than replace it.

Mimicking Darwin

I first spoke to Clune about the idea early last year, just a few weeks after his move to OpenAI. He was happy to discuss past work but remained tight-lipped on what he was doing with his new team. Instead of taking the call inside, he preferred to walk up and down the streets outside the offices as we talked.

All Clune would say was that OpenAI was a good fit. "My idea is very much in line with many of the things that they believe," he says. "It was kind of a marriage made in heaven. They liked the vision and wanted me to come here and pursue it." A few months after Clune joined, OpenAI hired most of his old Uber team as well.

Clune's ambitious vision is grounded by more than OpenAI's investment. The history of AI is filled with examples in which human-designed solutions gave way to machine-learned ones. Take computer vision: a decade ago, the big breakthrough in image recognition came when existing hand-crafted systems were replaced by ones that taught themselves from scratch. It's the same for many AI successes. 

One of the fascinating things about AI, and machine learning in particular, is its ability to find solutions that humans haven't found—to surprise us. An oft-cited example is AlphaGo (and its successor AlphaZero), which beat the best humanity has to offer at the ancient, beguiling game of Go by employing seemingly alien strategies. After hundreds of years of study by human masters, AI found solutions no one had ever thought of. 

Clune is now working with a team at OpenAI that developed bots that learned to play hide and seek in a virtual environment in 2018. These AIs started off with simple goals and simple tools to achieve them: one pair had to find the other, which could hide behind movable obstacles. Yet when these bots were let loose to learn, they soon found ways to take advantage of their environment in ways the researchers had not foreseen. They exploited glitches in the simulated physics of their virtual world to jump over and even pass through walls.

Those kinds of unexpected emergent behaviors offer tantalizing hints that AI might arrive at technical solutions humans would not think of by themselves, inventing new and more efficient types of algorithms or neural networks—or even ditching neural networks, a cornerstone of modern AI, entirely.

Clune likes to remind people that intelligence has already emerged from simple beginnings. "What's interesting about this approach is that we know it can work," he says. "The very simple algorithm of Darwinian evolution produced your brain, and your brain is the most intelligent learning algorithm in the universe that we know so far." His point is that if intelligence as we know it resulted from the mindless mutation of genes over countless generations, why not seek to replicate the intelligence-producing process—which is arguably simpler—rather than intelligence itself? 

But there's another crucial observation here. Intelligence was never an endpoint for evolution, something to aim for. Instead, it emerged in many different forms from countless tiny solutions to challenges that allowed living things to survive and take on future challenges. Intelligence is the current high point in an ongoing and open-ended process. In this sense, evolution is quite different from algorithms the way people typically think of them—as means to an end. 

It's this open-endedness, glimpsed in the apparently aimless sequence of challenges generated by POET, that Clune and others believe could lead to new kinds of AI. For decades AI researchers have tried to build algorithms to mimic human intelligence, but the real breakthrough may come from building algorithms that try to mimic the open-ended problem solving of evolution—and sitting back to watch what emerges. 

Researchers are already using machine learning on itself, training it to find solutions to some of the field's hardest problems, such as how to make machines that can learn more than one task at a time or cope with situations they have not encountered before. Some now think that taking this approach and running with it might be the best path to artificial general intelligence. "We could start an algorithm that initially does not have much intelligence inside it, and watch it bootstrap itself all the way up potentially to AGI," Clune says.

The truth is that for now, AGI remains a fantasy. But that's largely because nobody knows how to make it. Advances in AI are piecemeal and carried out by humans, with progress typically involving tweaks to existing techniques or algorithms, yielding incremental leaps in performance or accuracy. Clune characterizes these efforts as attempts to discover the building blocks for artificial intelligence without knowing what you're looking for or how many blocks you'll need. And that's just the start. "At some point, we have to take on the Herculean task of putting them all together," he says.

Asking AI to find and assemble those building blocks for us is a paradigm shift. It's saying we want to create an intelligent machine, but we don't care what it might look like—just give us whatever works. 

Even if AGI is never achieved, the self-teaching approach may still change what sorts of AI are created. The world needs more than a very good Go player, says Clune. For him, creating a supersmart machine means building a system that invents its own challenges, solves them, and then invents new ones. POET is a tiny glimpse of this in action. Clune imagines a machine that teaches a bot to walk, then to play hopscotch, then maybe to play Go. "Then maybe it learns math puzzles and starts inventing its own challenges," he says. "The system continuously innovates, and the sky's the limit in terms of where it might go."

It's wild speculation, perhaps, but one hope is that machines like this might be able to evade our conceptual dead ends, helping us unpick vastly complex crises such as climate change or global health. 

But first we have to make one. 

How to create a brain

There are many different ways to wire up an artificial brain.

Neural networks are made from multiple layers of artificial neurons encoded in software. Each neuron can be connected to others in the layers above. The way a neural network is wired makes a big difference, and new architectures often lead to new breakthroughs. 

The neural networks coded by human scientists are often the result of trial and error. There is little theory to what does and doesn't work, and no guarantee that the best designs have been found. That's why automating the hunt for better neural-network designs has been one of the hottest topics in AI since at least the 1980s. The most common way to automate the process is to let an AI generate many possible network designs, and let the network automatically try each of them and choose the best ones. This is commonly known as neuro-evolution or neural architecture search (NAS).

In the last few years, these machine designs have started to outstrip human ones. In 2018, Esteban Real and his colleagues at Google used NAS to generate a neural network that beat the best human-designed networks at the time. That was an eye-opener.

The 2018 system is part of an ongoing Google project called AutoML, which has also used NAS to produce EfficientNets, a family of deep-learning models that are more efficient than human-designed ones, achieving high levels of accuracy on image-recognition tasks with smaller, faster models.

Three years on, Real is pushing the boundaries of what can be generated from scratch. The earlier systems just rearranged tried and tested neural-network pieces, such as existing types of layers or components. "We could expect a good answer," he says.

Last year Real and his team took the training wheels off. The new system, called AutoML Zero, tries to build an AI from the ground up using nothing but the most basic mathematical concepts that govern machine learning.

Amazingly, not only did AutoML Zero spontaneously build a neural network, but it came up with the most common mathematical technique that human designers use for the task. "I was quite surprised," says Real. "It's a very simple algorithm—it takes like six lines of code—but it wrote the exact six lines."

AutoML Zero is not yet generating architectures that rival the performance of human-designed systems—or indeed doing much that a human designer would not have done. But Real believes it could one day.

Time to train a new kind of teacher

First you make a brain; then you have to teach it. But machine brains don't learn the way ours do. Our brains are fantastic at adapting to new environments and new tasks. Today's AIs can solve challenges under certain conditions but fail when those conditions change even a little. This inflexibility is hampering the quest to create more generalizable AI that can be useful across a wide range of scenarios, which would be a big step toward making them truly intelligent.

For Jane Wang, a researcher at DeepMind in London, the best way to make AI more flexible is to get it to learn that trait itself. In other words, she wants to build an AI that not only learns specific tasks but learns to learn those tasks in ways that can be adapted to fresh situations. 

Researchers have been trying to make AI more adaptable for years. Wang thinks that getting AI to work through this problem for itself avoids some of the trial and error of a hand-designed approach: "We can't possibly expect to stumble upon the right answer right away." In the process, she hopes, we will also learn more about how brains work. "There's still so much we don't understand about the way that humans and animals learn," she says.

There are two main approaches to generating learning algorithms automatically, but both take an existing neural network and use AI to improve it.

The first approach, invented separately by Wang and her colleagues at DeepMind and by a team at OpenAI at around the same time, uses an idea called recurrent neural networks. This type of network can be trained in such a way that the activations of their neurons—roughly akin to the firing of neurons in biological brains—encode any type of algorithm. DeepMind and OpenAI took advantage of this to train a recurrent neural network to generate reinforcement-learning algorithms, which tell an AI how to behave to achieve given goals. 

The upshot is that the DeepMind and OpenAI systems do not learn an algorithm that solve a specific challenge, such as recognizing images, but learn a learning algorithm that can be applied to multiple tasks and adapt as it goes. It's like the old adage about teaching someone to fish: whereas a hand-designed algorithm can learn a particular task, these AIs are being made to learn how to learn by themselves. And some of them are performing better than human-designed ones.

The second approach comes from Chelsea Finn at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues. Called model-agnostic meta-learning, or MAML, it trains a model using two machine-learning processes, one nested inside the other. 

Roughly, here's how it works. The inner process in MAML is trained on data and then tested—as usual. But then the outer model takes the performance of the inner model—how well it identifies images, say—and uses it to learn how to adjust that model's learning algorithm to boost performance. It's as if you had an educational scientist watching over a bunch of teachers, each offering different learning techniques. The scientist checks which techniques help the students get the best scores and tweaks them accordingly. 

Through these approaches, researchers are building AI that is more robust, more generalized, and able to learn faster with less data. For example, Finn wants a robot that has learned to walk on flat ground to be able to transition, with minimal extra training, to walking on a slope or on grass or while carrying a load. 

Last year, Clune and his colleagues extended Finn's technique to design an algorithm that learns using fewer neurons so that it does not overwrite everything it has learned previously, a big unsolved problem in machine learning known as catastrophic forgetting. A trained model that uses fewer neurons, known as a "sparse" model, will have more unused neurons left over to dedicate to new tasks when retrained, which means that fewer of the "used" neurons will get overwritten. Clune found that setting his AI the challenge of learning more than one task led it to come up with its own version of a sparse model that outperformed human-designed ones. 

If we're going all in on letting AI create and teach itself, then AIs should generate their own training environments, too—the schools and textbooks, as well as the lesson plans.

And the past year has seen a raft of projects in which AI has been trained on automatically generated data. Face-recognition systems are being trained with AI-generated faces, for example. AIs are also learning how to train each other. In one recent example, two robot arms worked together, with one arm learning to set tougher and tougher block-stacking challenges that trained the other to grip and grasp objects.

In fact, Clune wonders if human intuition about what kind of data an AI needs in order to learn may be off. For example, he and his colleagues have developed what he calls generative teaching networks, which learn what data they should generate to get the best results when training a model. In one experiment, he used one of these networks to adapt a data set of handwritten numbers that's often used to train image-recognition algorithms. What it came up with looked very different from the original human-curated data set: hundreds of not-quite digits, such as the top half of the numeral seven or what looked like two digits merged together. Some AI-generated examples were hard to decipher at all. Despite this, the AI-generated data still did a great job at training the handwriting recognition system to identify actual digits. 

Don't try to succeed

AI-generated data is still just a part of the puzzle. The long-term vision is to take all these techniques—and others not yet invented—and hand them over to an AI trainer that controls how artificial brains are wired, how they are trained, and what they are trained on. Even Clune is not clear on what such a future system would look like. Sometimes he talks about a kind of hyper-realistic simulated sandbox, where AIs can cut their teeth and skin their virtual knees. Something that complex is still years away. The closest thing yet is POET, the system created with Uber's Rui Wang.

POET was motivated by a paradox, says Wang. If you try to solve a problem you'll fail; if you don't try to solve it you're more likely to succeed. This is one of the insights Clune takes from his analogy with evolution—amazing results that emerge from an apparently random process often cannot be re-created by taking deliberate steps toward the same end. There's no doubt that butterflies exist, but rewind to their single-celled precursors and try to create them from scratch by choosing each step from bacterium to bug, and you'd likely fail.

POET starts its two-legged agent off in a simple environment, such as a flat path without obstacles. At first the agent doesn't know what to do with its legs and cannot walk. But through trial and error, the reinforcement-learning algorithm controlling it learns how to move along flat ground. POET then generates a new random environment that's different, but not necessarily harder to move in. The agent tries walking there. If there are obstacles in this new environment, the agent learns how to get over or across those. Every time an agent succeeds or gets stuck, it is moved to a new environment. Over time, the agents learn a range of walking and jumping actions that let them navigate harder and harder obstacle courses.

The team found that random switching of environments was essential.

For example, agents sometimes learned to walk on flat ground with a weird, half-kneeling shuffle, because that was good enough. "They never learn to stand up because they never need to," says Wang. But after they had been forced to learn alternative strategies on obstacle-strewn ground, they could return to the early stage with a better way of walking—using both legs instead of dragging one behind, say—and then take that improved version of itself forward to harder challenges.

POET trains its bots in a way that no human would—it takes erratic, unintuitive paths to success. At each stage, the bots try to figure out a solution to whatever challenge they are presented with. By coping with a random selection of obstacles thrown their way, they get better overall. But there is no end point to this process, no ultimate test to pass or high score to beat. 

Clune, Wang, and a number of their colleagues believe this is a profound insight. They are now exploring what it might mean for the development of supersmart machines. Could trying not to chart a specific path actually be a key breakthrough on the way to artificial general intelligence? 

POET is already inspiring other researchers, such as Michael Dennis and Natasha Jaques at the University of California, Berkeley. They've developed a system called PAIRED that uses AI to generate a series of mazes to train another AI to navigate them.

Rui Wang thinks human-designed challenges are going to be a bottleneck and that real progress in AI will require AI-generated challenges. "No matter how good algorithms are today, they are always tested on some hand-designed benchmark," he says. "It's very hard to imagine artificial general intelligence coming from this, because it is bound by fixed goals."

A new kind of intelligence

The rapid development of AI that can train itself also raises questions about how well we can control its growth. The idea of AI that builds better AI is a crucial part of the myth-making behind the "Singularity," the imagined point in the future when AIs start to improve at an exponential rate and move beyond our control. Eventually, certain doomsayers warn, AI might decide it doesn't need humans at all.

That's not what any of these researchers have in mind: their work is very much focused on making today's AI better. Machines that run amok remain a far-off anti-fantasy. 

Even so, DeepMind's Jane Wang has reservations. A big part of the attraction of using AI to make AI is that it can come up with designs and techniques that people hadn't thought of. Yet Wang notes that not all surprises are good surprises: "Open-endedness is, by definition, something that's unexpected." If the whole idea is to get AI to do something you didn't anticipate, it becomes harder to control. "That's both exciting and scary," she says. 

Clune also stresses the importance of thinking about the ethics of the new technology from the start. There is a good chance that AI-designed neural networks and algorithms will be even harder to understand than today's already opaque black-box systems. Are AIs generated by algorithms harder to audit for bias? Is it harder to guarantee that they will not behave in undesirable ways?

Clune hopes such questions will be asked and answered as more people realize the potential of self-generating AIs. "Most people in the machine-learning community don't ever really talk about our overall path to extremely powerful AI," he says—instead, they tend to focus on small, incremental improvements. Clune wants to start a conversation about the field's biggest ambitions again.

His own ambitions tie back into his early interests in human intelligence and how it evolved. His grand vision is to set things up so that machines might one day see their own intelligence—or intelligences—emerge and improve through countless generations of trial and error, guided by algorithms with no ultimate blueprint in mind. 

If AI starts to generate intelligence by itself, there's no guarantee that it will be human-like. Rather than humans teaching machines to think like humans, machines might teach humans new ways of thinking.

"There's probably a vast number of different ways to be very intelligent," says Clune. "One of the things that excite me about AI is that we might come to understand intelligence more generally, by seeing what variation is possible.

"I think that's fascinating. I mean, it's almost like inventing interstellar travel and being able to go visit alien cultures. There would be no greater moment in the history of humankind than encountering an alien race and learning about its culture, its science, everything. Interstellar travel is exceedingly difficult, but we have the ability to potentially create alien intelligences digitally."

A little stick figure with a wedge-shaped head shuffles across the screen. It moves in a half crouch, dragging one knee along the ground. It's walking! Er, sort of.  Yet Rui Wang is delighted. "Every day I walk into my office and open my computer, and I don't know what to expect," he says.  An artificial-intelligence researcher…Artificial intelligence, Machine learning
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Enough to Wreck Their Rest: $10,322 for a Sleep Study

Posted: 27 May 2021 02:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Michelle Andrews dWeb.News Tech News

JosĆ© Mendoza's snoring was bad — but the silence when he stopped breathing was even worse for his wife, Nancy. The sudden quiet would wake her and she waited anxiously for him to take another breath. If too many seconds ticked by, she pushed him hard so that he moved and started breathing again. This happened several times a week.


This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free.

Diagnosed with severe sleep apnea 15 years ago, Mendoza was prescribed a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device to help him breathe easier. But the machine was noisy and uncomfortable. After a month, he stopped using it.

Late in 2019, Mendoza, 61, went to an emergency department near the family's Miami home with an excruciating headache. He thought it was related to his high blood pressure, a condition sometimes linked to obstructive sleep apnea. But after a battery of tests, clinicians concluded his obstructive sleep apnea itself was likely causing his headache and cardiac problems. He needed a new CPAP machine, they said.

But first, he had an at-home sleep test. Mendoza's pulmonologist said it was not detailed enough and ordered a visit to an overnight sleep lab to get extensive data.

Mendoza arrived at the sleep center about 8 p.m. one night in early February and was shown into a spacious room with a sofa, a TV and a bed. After he got into his pajamas, a technician attached electrodes to his head and chest to track his brain, heart, lung and muscle activity while he slept. The technician fitted him with a CPAP with two small cannulas for his nose. Despite the unfamiliar setting and awkward equipment, Mendoza slept that night.

After the study, Mendoza started using the same, more comfortable CPAP model he'd used during the study.

"Now I'm not snoring. I feel more energetic. I'm not as tired as I was before," he said.

The new CPAP was helping both Mendozas get a better night's sleep — until the bill came.

The Patient: JosƩ Mendoza, 61, has a Humana HMO plan through the construction company where he works as a truck driver. It has a $5,000 deductible and an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,500 for covered care by in-network providers. Once his deductible is satisfied, he owes 50% in coinsurance for other billed charges. (Nancy Mendoza, who works as a social worker, and their two teenage children are covered under her employer plan.)

Medical Service: An overnight sleep study at a hospital sleep center to determine the type of mask and the proper levels of airflow and oxygen needed in Mendoza's CPAP to treat his severe obstructive sleep apnea.

Total Bill: $10,322, including a $9,853 outpatient charge for the sleep study and a $469 charge for the sleep specialist who interpreted the results. Humana's negotiated rate for the total was $5,419. Mendoza owed the bulk of that: $5,157, including $262 in coinsurance and $4,895 to satisfy his deductible. Humana paid $262.

Service Provider: University of Miami Health System's sleep medicine facility at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami.

What Gives: Sleep studies are somewhat controversial and have been flagged in the past as being overused. Not everyone who snores needs this evaluation. But with Mendoza's pauses in breathing and hypertension, he likely did.

According to Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a think tank that analyzes low-value health care, sleep studies fall into a gray zone.

"They are incredibly useful and necessary in certain clinical circumstances," he said. "But it's known to be one that can be overused."

But how much should it cost to be monitored at home or in a hospital sleep lab? That's the question. The Office of Inspector General at the federal Department of Health and Human Services has identified billing problems for the type of sleep study Mendoza had that led to Medicare overpayments.

The University of Miami Health System's total charge was high by nearly every measure, but so was the allowed amount that Humana agreed to pay the health system for the study. And because Mendoza's skimpy health plan has a deductible of $5,000, he's on the hook for paying almost all of that hefty bill.

Mendoza's Humana plan agreed to pay the hospital $5,419 for the sleep study he had. That's nearly six times what Medicare would pay for the same service nationally — $920 — according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Private insurers typically pay higher rates than Medicare for care, but that multiple is "much higher than what other insurers would pay," said Jordan Weintraub, vice president of claims at WellRithms, a company that analyzes medical bills for self-funded companies and other clients.

Consider the total facility charge of $9,853. The average charge in the United States for a sleep study of the same type is just over half that amount at $5,384, according to Fair Health, a national independent nonprofit that tracks insurance charges.

Charges in the Miami area are on the high end of the national range. The average billed charges for similar hospital sleep studies in Miami range from $2,646 to $19,334, Weintraub said. So Mendoza's bill is not as high as the highest in the area, and is just under the average in Miami.

"Billed charges are just completely fictitious," said Weintraub. "There's really no grounds for charging it other than that they can."

More telling than what other Miami hospitals are charging for sleep studies is what the University of Miami Health System reports it actually costs the hospital to do the procedure. And that figure was just $1,154 on average in 2019, according to WellRithms' analysis of publicly available cost report data filed with CMS. That year, the hospital's average charge for the type of sleep study Mendoza had was $7,886, according to WellRithms.

Mendoza doesn't pay premiums for his health plan, but his "free" coverage has a cost. The $5,000 deductible and high coinsurance leaves him woefully exposed financially if he needs medical care, as the family discovered. Nancy Mendoza's plan has a lower deductible of $1,350, but her employer charges extra to cover spouses who have coverage available to them at their own jobs.

Obstructive sleep apnea is often undiagnosed, sleep medicine experts agree, and sleep studies can result in a diagnosis that leads to necessary treatment to help prevent serious problems like heart attacks and diabetes.

"From that perspective, sleep testing is actually underprescribed," said Dr. Douglas Kirsch, medical director of sleep medicine at Atrium Health in Charlotte, North Carolina, who is past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group.

After strong growth by independent and hospital-affiliated lab-based sleep centers over several years, there's been a shift toward home-based sleep tests recently, said Charlie Whelan, vice president of consulting for health care at Frost & Sullivan, a research and consulting firm.

"The entire sleep medicine field is deeply worried about a future where more testing is done at home since it means less money to be made for in-center test providers," Whelan said.

Resolution: When the bill arrived, Nancy Mendoza thought it must be a mistake. JosƩ's home sleep test hadn't cost them a penny, and no one had mentioned their financial responsibility for the overnight test in the lab.

She called the billing office and asked for an itemized bill. There were no complications, no anesthesia, not even a doctor present. Why was it so expensive? But what they received wasn't any more enlightening than the summary bill.

She got a clear impression that if they didn't pay they'd be sent to collections. To avoid ruining their credit, they agreed to a two-year payment plan and got their first installment bill, for $214.87, in April. Nancy thinks the overall charge is too high: "It's not fair [for] people who are in the low end of the middle class."

Lisa Worley, associate vice president for media relations at the University of Miami Health System, said in a statement that Mendoza "does not qualify for financial assistance because he has health insurance."

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But the health system's posted financial assistance policy clearly states that financial assistance is available to "underinsured individuals with a balance remaining after third party liability of $1000 or more, whose family income for the preceding 12 months is equal to or less than 300%" of the federal poverty guidelines.

Under a less detailed version of the hospital policy included in one of their bills, the Mendozas meet the income threshold for "assistance provided on a sliding scale."

In her statement, Worley referred to Mendoza's sleep test as an "elective service." The health system website says it "provides financial assistance for emergency and other medically necessary (non-elective) care."

Mendoza's sleep study was medically necessary. The emergency department staff evaluated him and determined he needed a new CPAP to deal with serious medical problems caused by his obstructive sleep apnea. His pulmonologist concurred, as did his insurer, which preauthorized the sleep study.

In a statement, Humana wrote: "With sleep studies, there can be a wide range of costs, depending on the complexity of the case and the setting."

The insurer refused to comment on Mendoza's case specifically, even though the Mendozas had given permission to discuss it.

The Takeaway: The Mendozas followed the rules: They used an in-network provider and got prior authorization from their insurance company for the test.

Unfortunately, they are caught between two financial traps of the U.S. health care system: high-deductible health plans, which are increasingly common, and sky-high billing.

With a high-deductible plan, it's crucial to try to learn what you'll owe before receiving nonemergency medical care. Ask for an estimate in writing; if you can't get one, try to shop for a different provider who will give you an estimate.

Be aware that insurance plans that have zero or low premium costs may not be your best option for coverage.

Once you are stuck with a high bill that hits a high deductible, remember you can still negotiate with the hospital. Find out what a more reasonable charge would be and ask for your bill to be adjusted. Also inquire about payment assistance from the hospital — most hospitals must offer this option by law (though they often do not make it easy to apply for it).

If a doctor suggests a sleep study, ask if you can do one at home, and whether it's really needed. And remember: Not every snore is sleep apnea.

Dan Weissmann, host of An Arm and a Leg podcast, contributed to the audio version of this story.

Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KHN and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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The University of Miami Health System charges a truck driver six times what Medicare would pay for an overnight test.
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Confronting Our ‘Frailties’: California’s Assembly Leader Reflects on a Year of Covid

Posted: 27 May 2021 02:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from Samantha Young dWeb.News Tech News

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When his 20-month-old daughter developed a rash earlier this month, Anthony Rendon did what many other parents do when their child is sick: The speaker of the California Assembly took Vienna to her pediatrician — but he did so via video from the comfort and safety of his home.


This story also ran on Chico Enterprise-Record. It can be republished for free.

Many Californians have relied on telehealth to connect with their health care providers during the covid-19 pandemic, but the option isn't available to everyone. That imbalance is just one of the "frailties" in America's health system that Rendon says lawmakers must address.

"So many folks, when they lose their job, they're in trouble," he said.

A Democrat from Los Angeles County and grandson of Mexican immigrants, Rendon led a nonprofit organization dedicated to early childhood education before his election to the Assembly in 2012. Although he hasn't authored any sweeping bills on health care, as leader of the Assembly since 2016 he has influenced which measures get a vote — and which don't.

For instance, though he says he's a single-payer advocate, he angered many progressives four years ago when he blocked a bill that would have provided government-funded health care to all Californians. Rendon described the measure, approved by the state Senate, as "woefully incomplete." While that decision drew the ire of the powerful California Nurses Association union — its leader tweeted an illustration of California's iconic grizzly bear logo with a knife in its back inscribed with Rendon's name — some Capitol insiders say Rendon made the strategic decision to take the hit for his members on a politically charged issue that didn't have the votes to pass.

"It's never leadership acting alone," said David Panush, a health care policy consultant who worked in state government for 35 years. "They do it on behalf of their caucuses."

Rendon won his post as California's 70th Assembly speaker in part by pledging to allow his colleagues to set their own agendas in their policy committees. Under his leadership, the legislature has approved measures to expand Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants ages 19 to 26, protect patients from some surprise medical bills, ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, and require drug companies to report and explain drug price increases. But lawmakers rejected bills that would have taxed sugary drinks and given the state attorney general more authority over hospital consolidations.

After missing nine weeks of work last year when covid shuttered the Capitol, lawmakers returned to plastic barriers on their desks, mask requirements and other safety measures.

In December, Rendon's colleagues elected him to a third term as speaker. He talked with KHN's Samantha Young about his leadership role during the pandemic and his legislative priorities for the rest of this year.

Q: What did you learn leading this legislative body through a pandemic as a lawmaker, a husband and a dad?

First of all, we're all very fragile and we're all very resilient. It doesn't take much for our various systems to be upset and to change course. At the same time, we adjust, whether it's as a society, as a state, as an institution. In the Assembly, for example, we've almost learned how to do our business in a completely different manner, in the same way that Californians up and down the state have learned to navigate their lives in a different way.

Q: How have you juggled home and work life?

On the one hand, weekends are great. A lot of district events don't happen, my wife can work on her dissertation full time, and I get to take care of the baby from sunup until around dinnertime. Having worked in early childhood education for 20 years, I realize how important the first couple years are. I've spent way more time with her than I thought I would. At the same time, there's been challenges finding safe child care.

Q: What weaknesses did the pandemic expose in the health care system, and what can the legislature do about it?

Telehealth is great and can be very helpful but has its limitations. The pandemic really exposed the need for effective broadband throughout the state and broadband equity as well. We used to regard lack of broadband access as a rural issue.

Once we sent schoolkids home, we realized there were more pervasive broadband problems. So, there's absolutely a need to do something big around broadband this year, and that's because of education and also because of health care.

Q: You say you're a single-payer advocate, but under your leadership, California's coverage gains have been piecemeal. Why not just go for it and pass single-payer for everyone?

Mostly because of the challenges. First of all, we would need a federal waiver. The Biden administration has already hinted that they won't do so. The president has said time and time again that he wants Obamacare to be expanded.

And there's the huge price tag. There are very, very serious constitutional problems relating to the development and implementation of single-payer.

Q: So, who should get coverage next?

Senior undocumented immigrants are the next big group left. It's a population that obviously has tremendous challenges with respect to access and language. They tend to have a lot of preexisting conditions, a lot of other health challenges as well. So, it's important that we make sure that we cover those folks.

Q: Is there anything you would have done differently, looking back on the past year?

I wish we could have come up with some of the ideas for social distancing and bringing the legislature back more quickly. I think there was a sense early on in March and April [of last year] that the pandemic would run its course more quickly than it did. I remember people saying, "We'll be back in two weeks, we'll be back by midsummer, the pandemic will be gone." So, in terms of developing a lot of those plans, they came to us a little later than I wish they had.

Q: How do you think vaccine distribution is going now that supply is exceeding demand?

I received a phone call from a neighboring district, the president of a community college, who called me up saying, "We have all these vaccines and people have stopped showing up."

We've reached this sort of plateau that's disappointing. We haven't reached this plateau because 90% of people have been vaccinated. It links directly to public health, education and information campaigns. We have to talk about the safety of the vaccine and have validators also talk about the need to get to herd immunity.

Q: Along those lines, local public health departments feel that they have been underfunded for years and that they haven't had the money to do the job in this pandemic. Do you support their request for additional state funding?

We need to make sure that they're adequately funded. There was a problem with respect to the pandemic. We honestly weren't ready for it. As far as these health efforts are concerned, they have to happen at the local level.

The conversation has to go hand in hand with accountability measures and accountability metrics. We're not going to give folks a blank check. We know that there are vast differences in practices that a lot of the public health agencies throughout the state want to pursue, and we want to make sure that best practices are really implemented.

Q: How do you negotiate with influential industries, such as hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and big labor, to get meaningful legislation passed that goes against their interests?

When people boil it down to a simple question of who gives the most money, that's overly simplistic. Look at the incredible amount of work we've done here in California with respect to oil. The enviros do not give as much money to politicians as the oil companies do.

But with respect to having these conversations, we take all of their input, and then the decisions, for me, are informed by what's best for the state.

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon says covid exposed long-standing health care inequities that must be addressed. He told KHN he wants to get more people insured, boost broadband access so more patients can use telehealth and increase funding to local health departments.
California, Insurance, Public Health, California Legislature, Children’s Health, Disparities, Health IT, Vaccines
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Aircraft Lavatory System Market Revenue to Cross USD 390 Mn by 2027: Global Market Insights Inc.

Posted: 27 May 2021 02:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

The aircraft lavatory system market for regional jets segment is poised to expand at more than 7% through 2027, led by increased regional air traffic


Aircraft Lavatory System Market Growth Predicted at 7.1% Through 2027: GMI

Major aircraft lavatory system market players include Jamco, B/E Aerospace CC, Diehl Aerosystems, Yokohama Aerospace, Circor Aerospace and Defence, Asia Spirit, The Nordam Group, Sanitrade, HIFraser PTY Limited and Aeroaid.

SELBYVILLE, Del. – May 27, 2021 – (Newswire.com)

According to the latest report “Aircraft Lavatory System Market by Aircraft (Commercial [Narrow Body, Wide Body], Regional Aircraft, Business Jets), End-user (Aircraft OEM, Aircraft MRO), Toilet Technology (Vacuum Technology, Recirculating Toilet Systems), Regional Outlook, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast 2027” by Global Market Insights Inc., the market valuation of aircraft lavatory systems will cross $390 million by 2027. Availability of low-cost travel options along with emergence in new markets will prosper strong product demand for affordable aircraft.

Expansion of regional air connectivity and the emergence of new air routes will propel the aircraft lavatory system market growth. For instance, in February 2019, Japan Airlines launched new flights between Tokyo Haneda (HND) and Manila utilizing Boeing 737-800 to further expand its regional air connectivity. Moreover, rising disposable income along with the introduction of new business and regional aircraft will lead to higher deliveries of private jets, thereby driving growth for aircraft lavatory systems during the forecast period.

Request sample of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/3044.

The regional jets segment in the aircraft lavatory system market is estimated to register a growth rate of around 7% by 2027, owing to the increased regional air traffic. The establishment of new domestic routes and old aircraft replacements will be major drivers for the market expansion of regional jets. For instance, in June 2018, Delta Air Lines from Atlanta declared its plan to buy 20 CRJ900 regional jets from Bombardier Inc. for the replacement of its older jets. The new jets will help the company to attract passengers with featured atmospheric cabins including larger lavatory, increased baggage capacity and improved aesthetics, thereby stimulating the industry revenue.

OEMs segment will hold 70% of the aircraft lavatory system market share by 2027. Multi-year contracts or partnerships with the system manufacturers and suppliers for the stable supply of products will fuel product demand across OEM end-users. Additionally, the incorporation of several collaborative research & development procedures with the manufacturers for the customized lavatory system solutions to improve overall passenger experience and hygiene during travel will positively influence product penetration in the market. Further, increasing production of aircraft across the globe attributed to the growing demand of airliners and backlog order completion will induce significant growth potential in the industry over the forecast timeframe.

North American aircraft lavatory system market is predicted to expand at a CAGR of over 7% through 2027. Increasing aircraft production and delivery in conjunction with rising economic conditions across the region will positively enhance air travel, which will thereby impel lavatory systems to demand across the industry over the forecast timeframe. For instance, in March 2021, United Airlines Holdings Inc. announced the buying of 25 new Boeing 737 MAX jets to bump up its position in replacement of the older fleet for a travel rebound. In addition, growing disposable incomes and regional air connectivity will also provide potential air travel opportunities for the middle-class population. Further, the presence of several manufacturers and airline operators across the region will catalyze regional growth over the coming years.

Request customization of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/roc/3044.

Key players functioning in the aircraft lavatory system market are Jamco, B/E Aerospace CC, Diehl Aerosystems, Yokohama Aerospace, Circor Aerospace and Defence, Asia Spirit, The Nordam Group, Sanitrade, HIFraser PTY Limited, and Aeroaid, with many others. Key strategies implemented by major manufacturers to strengthen their competitive edge in the market include product innovation, technological advancement, mergers & acquisitions and joint ventures.

Table of Contents (ToC) of the report:

Chapter 3   Aircraft Lavatory System Market Insights

3.1    Industry segmentation

3.2    Industry ecosystem analysis

3.2.1    Raw material analysis

3.2.2    Value addition at each stage

3.2.3    Distributor channel analysis

3.2.4    COVID-19 impact on distribution channel

3.2.5    Vendor matrix

3.2.5.1    List of key raw material suppliers

3.2.5.2    List of key product manufacturers/suppliers

3.3    Industry megatrends

3.4    Innovation & sustainability

3.4.1    Patent landscape

3.4.2    Technology landscape

3.4.3    Future trends

3.5    Impact of COVID-19 on aircraft industry

3.6    Industry impact forces

3.6.1    Growth drivers

3.6.2    Industry pitfalls & challenges

3.7    Regulatory landscape

3.8    Growth potential analysis

3.9    Competitive landscape, 2020

3.9.1    Company market share analysis, 2020

3.9.2    Brand analysis

3.9.3    Key stakeholders

3.9.4    Strategy dashboard

3.10    Porter’s analysis

3.11    Regional price trends (including COVID-19 impact)

3.11.1    Cost structure analysis

3.11.2    Price by aircraft

3.12    PESTEL analysis

Browse Complete Table of Contents (ToC) @ https://www.gminsights.com/toc/detail/aircraft-lavatory-systems-market

About Global Market Insights Inc.

Global Market Insights Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider offering syndicated and custom research reports, along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision-making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

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Aircraft Lavatory System Market Revenue to Cross USD 390 Mn by 2027: Global Market Insights Inc.

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Avamere at Mountain Ridge Director Joins UALA Board

Posted: 27 May 2021 02:39 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News


Avamere at Mountain Ridge Director Joins UALA Board

Avamere at Mountain Ridge, an assisted-living and memory-care community in South Ogden, Utah, is pleased to announce their Executive Director, Johnny DelVecchio, has been appointed to the Utah Assisted Living Association (UALA) Board.

SOUTH OGDEN, Utah – May 27, 2021 – (Newswire.com)

Avamere at Mountain Ridge, an assisted-living and memory-care community in South Ogden, Utah, is pleased to announce their Executive Director, Johnny DelVecchio, has been appointed to the Utah Assisted Living Association (UALA) Board. 

UALA’s mission statement and vision are to promote the concept of assisted living throughout the state of Utah, to increase knowledge and improve skills of members, and to assist regulatory bodies in defining standards as they apply to the management of senior housing. Thus, it’s an important role for DelVecchio — to have a voice and be a liaison between the state of Utah and assisted-living communities, including Avamere at Mountain Ridge.

This is DelVecchio’s first time serving on the UALA board. Membership is based on nominations from peers in the assisted-living and healthcare industry. The UALA board reviews the nominations and makes recommendations for the best person to fill the open seats. 

DelVecchio was honored to be nominated by his peers and appointed to the board. He notes, “I feel honored to be nominated for this position and look forward to networking with other assisted-living communities. Here at Avamere at Mountain Ridge, we strive to be an integral part of the industry and the team to serve residents. I look forward to having a voice in matters relating to our seniors and help to make their lives better.” 

Everything Avamere at Mountain Ridge does centers around their residents — from activities to amenities to the care they provide. It’s all a part of their mission to enhance the life of every person they serve. Get to know about this vibrant community on Facebook

About the Avamere Family of Companies 

Founded in 1995 and based in Wilsonville, Oregon, the Avamere Family of Companies provides assisted living, independent living, memory care, rehabilitation, home care, transitional care, and more. Today, Avamere’s diverse companies operate in 300 locations across 20 states with over 8,000 employees. Avamere is proud to be considered one of Oregon’s most admired companies as they continue to serve their valued patients and residents. For more information, please visit avamere.com.

Avamere Family of Companies 

25115 SW Parkway Ave, Suite B 

Wilsonville, OR 97070 

For press inquiries, please email press@avamere.com.

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Avamere at Mountain Ridge Director Joins UALA Board

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‘Know My Worth’ by Real OG Ice Man Indulges in A Fresh Hip Hop Arrangement

Posted: 27 May 2021 01:40 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

Los Angeles rapper Real OG Ice Man changes the rap scene forever with his notable potential as the artist performs unafraid in 'Know My Worth' to cement his position.

Los Angeles, California May 26, 2021 (Issuewire.com) – In a world that is quickly moving towards comfort and luxury, not everyone is gifted with the same elements. Some people struggle from the beginning only to come out as the diamond from a coal mine. One such blessed talent is Real OG Ice Man. The Los Angeles rapper Real OG Ice Man has paved his path towards success and is marching towards it with utmost dedication. He grew differently and has hustled to get his music out in the world. His music is raw, straightforward, and paints a vivid picture of the artist’s most outstanding musical qualities.

On his latest soundtrack Know My Worth, the artist has aimed to share his life experiences with utmost honesty and has let his inner wordsmith do the magic. The verses are appropriate and hit hard for their relatability. The only thing that kept the artist going amidst all the turbulence is his sheer passion for the craft. The song focuses on his lyrical ability as he raps consistently to share the instances. The rich impactful verses rely on faint beats to create an impact. The artist’s journey is motivating and his powerful vocals grasp the attention at once. A strong way to draw in the listener’s attention, the rapper refuses to disappoint at any hook and unapologetically speaks his truth.

Hailing from Los Angeles, Real OG Ice Man believes his music would be a source of inspiration for many others striving to make it big. His lyrical punctuality and exquisite taste in hip-hop have already started creating ripples in the hip-hop landscape. The genre of hip-hop is saturated with repetitive styles and sounds, and the rapper has emerged to introduce fresh new vibes for the audience to engage. Built under the label Cold World Productions, the song ‘Know My Worth’ magnifies his amazing skill set and is sure to open up varied opportunities for him in the coming days. Hear him on SoundCloud and YouTube and follow him on Instagram for more updates.

Listen to the song ‘Know My Worth’, just visit the given below link: 

https://soundcloud.com/real-og-ice-man-vevo/ice-man-know-my-worth

Media Contact

Music Promotion Club

info@musicpromotion.club

https://musicpromotion.club

Source :Real OG Ice Man

This article was originally published by IssueWire. Read the original article here.

Entertainment, Music
Los Angeles rapper Real OG Ice Man changes the rap scene forever with his notable potential as the artist performs unafraid in 'Know My Worth' to cement his position.Los Angeles, California May 26, 2021 (Issuewire.com) – In a world that is quickly moving towards comfort and luxury, not everyone is gifted with the same elements. Some people struggle from the beginning only to come out as the diamond from a coal mine. One such blessed talent is Real OG Ice Man. The Los Angeles rapper Real OG Ice Man has paved his path towards success and is marching towards it with utmost dedication. He grew differently and has hustled to get his music out in the world. His music is raw, straightforward, and paints a vivid picture of the artist’s most outstanding musical qualities.
On his latest soundtrack ‘Know My Worth’, the artist has aimed to share his life experiences with utmost honesty and has let his inner wordsmith do the magic. The verses are appropriate and hit hard for their relatability. The only thing that kept the artist going amidst all the turbulence is his sheer passion for the craft. The song focuses on his lyrical ability as he raps consistently to share the instances. The rich impactful verses rely on faint beats to create an impact. The artist’s journey is motivating and his powerful vocals grasp the attention at once. A strong way to draw in the listener’s attention, the rapper refuses to disappoint at any hook and unapologetically speaks his truth.
Hailing from Los Angeles, Real OG Ice Man believes his music would be a source of inspiration for many others striving to make it big. His lyrical punctuality and exquisite taste in hip-hop have already started creating ripples in the hip-hop landscape. The genre of hip-hop is saturated with repetitive styles and sounds, and the rapper has emerged to introduce fresh new vibes for the audience to engage. Built under the label Cold World Productions, the song ‘Know My Worth’ magnifies his amazing skill set and is sure to open up varied opportunities for him in the coming days. Hear him on SoundCloud and YouTube and follow him on Instagram for more updates.
Listen to the song ‘Know My Worth’, just visit the given below link: 
https://soundcloud.com/real-og-ice-man-vevo/ice-man-know-my-worthMedia ContactMusic Promotion Clubinfo@musicpromotion.clubhttps://musicpromotion.club Source :Real OG Ice Man
This article was originally published by IssueWire. Read the original article here.

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Industrial Air Compressor Market to Hit $17.8 Bn by 2027: Global Market Insights, Inc.

Posted: 27 May 2021 01:40 AM PDT

dWeb.News Article from dWeb.News Tech News

Some of the major industrial air compressor market participants are Doosan Portable Power, Rolair Systems, Atlas Copco, Gardner Denver, Sullair, Bauer Compressors, Kaeser Kompressoren, Ingersoll-Rand, Ciasons Industrial, Aerzener Maschinenfabrik, Elgi Compressors, Hitachi, Heyner, Sullivan-Palatek, Emerson Climate Technologies, Frank Technologies, Mat Holdings, and Quincy Compressor


Industrial Air Compressor Market demand to hit $17.8 bn by 2027

Industrial Air Compressor Market size is forecast to exceed USD 17.8 billion by 2027, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights Inc.

SELBYVILLE, Del. – May 27, 2021 – (Newswire.com)

Global Market Insights Inc. has recently added a new report on the industrial air compressor market which estimates the market valuation for industrial air compressor will cross US$17.8 billion by 2027. The rising demand for vehicles, growing oil exploration & mining activities, and development in the power & energy generation sector will boost the industry demand.

Industrial air compressors are significantly utilized in most of the heavyweight applications to power pneumatic tools & equipment for delivering compressed air and for cleaning purposes. They are incorporated in almost all manufacturing activities around the globe. The global air compressor market will be driven by the rising production of automobiles and electronics in Asia Pacific. The industry growth will also be augmented by developments in the U.S. oil & gas sector.

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The rapid industrial development in emerging countries of Asia Pacific and Latin America will also boost the product demand during the forecast timeframe. The increasing construction and infrastructure development activities in China, Brazil, India, and other developing countries will further contribute toward industrial compressor market growth within the future.

The government agencies of various countries have formulated regulations regarding the level of noise emitted from air compressors. This can be a limiting factor in industrial air compressor market growth by 2027.

The portable compressor will account for over 20% of the overall industry by 2027. Increasing product demand on account of its high operational efficiency will complement growth. The 16-75kW industrial air compressor segment held a market share of over 25% in 2020 and will grow at a CAGR over 6% by 2027.

Based on application, the industrial compressor market is segregated into food & beverage, oil & gas, semiconductor & electronics, manufacturing, pharma, mining & energy, municipal & construction, agriculture, and a few other applications. The pharma application segment is expected to grow with a CAGR over 5.5%.

The players competing in the industrial air compressor market include Doosan Portable Power, Rolair Systems, Atlas Copco, Gardner Denver, Sullair, Bauer Compressors, Kaeser Kompressoren, Ingersoll-Rand, Ciasons Industrial, Aerzener Maschinenfabrik, Elgi Compressors, Hitachi, Heyner, Sullivan-Palatek, Emerson Climate Technologies, Frank Technologies, Mat Holdings, and Quincy Compressor.

Some of the major findings in the industrial air compressor market report include:

The stationary industrial air compressor demand will be augmented by rapid industrial development in the Asia Pacific region owing to the extensive usage of compressed air in almost all manufacturing activities.
 
Centrifugal compressors tend to be more expensive than other types because of their larger size and capacity.
 
Oil-filled compressors are able to provide high-capacity compressed air and are widely used for heavy-duty applications due to their durability & design.
 
The industrial air compressors have wide applications in the food & beverage production areas, as the products are generally used to cut, sort, and shape the food products.
 
The extensive automotive production in Europe, mostly in Germany, will drive the industrial compressor demand for manufacturing applications.

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Partial chapters of report table of contents (TOC):

Chapter 3   Industrial Air Compressor Industry Insights

3.1    Industry segmentation

3.2    Industry landscape, 2017 – 2027

3.2.1    Covid-19 impact on industry landscape

3.3    Industry ecosystem analysis

3.3.1    Vendor matrix

3.3.1.1    List of key raw material/component manufacturer/suppliers

3.3.1.2    List of key product manufacturer/suppliers

3.3.1.3    List of key service providers

3.3.2    Distributor channel analysis

3.3.3    Value chain disruption analysis (COVID-19 impact)

3.3.4    Profit margin analysis

3.3.5    Value addition at each stage

3.4    Industry impact forces

3.4.1    Growth drivers

3.4.1.1    Rapid industrial growth in Asia Pacific

3.4.1.2    Technological developments in the field of air compressors

3.4.1.3    Mature manufacturing industry in the U.S.

3.4.2    Industry pitfalls & challenges

3.4.2.1    Strict regulations regarding the air compressor usage

3.4.2.2    Popularity of air compressor rental services

3.4.2.3    Strict emission norms in the U.S.

3.5    Growth potential analysis

3.6    Innovation & sustainability

3.6.1    Patent analysis

3.6.2    Technology landscape

3.6.3    Production process

3.6.4    Comparison of different equipment

3.6.5    Future trends

3.7    Regulatory trends

3.7.1    U.S.

3.7.2    Europe

3.7.3    China

3.8    Porter’s analysis

3.8.1    Global

3.8.2    Supplier power

3.8.3    Buyer power

3.8.4    Threat of new entrants

3.8.5    Industry rivalry

3.8.6    Threat of substitutes

3.9    Competitive landscape

3.9.1    Company market share analysis, 2020

3.9.1.1    Global

3.9.1.2    North America

3.9.2    Strategy dashboard

3.10    PESTEL analysis

3.11    Regional price trends

3.12    Cost structure analysis

3.12.1    R & D cost

3.12.2    Manufacturing & equipment cost

3.12.3    Raw material cost

3.12.4    Distribution cost

3.12.5    Operating cost

3.12.6    Miscellaneous cost

3.12.7    Price by lubrication

3.12.8    COVID-19 effect on pricing

3.13    COVID-19 impact on industrial air compressor demand, by application

3.13.1    Food & beverages

3.13.2    Oil and gas

3.13.3    Energy & mining

3.13.4    Semiconductor & electronics

3.13.5    Manufacturing

3.13.6    Construction & municipal

3.13.7    Pharmaceutical industry

3.13.8    Agriculture/farming

3.13.9    Others

About Global Market Insights

Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider offering syndicated and custom research reports, along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.

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