Todd Mostak, a former researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is using GPUs to develop an analytic database and visualization platform called MapD, which is the fastest of its kind in the world, according to Mostak.
MapD is essentially a form of a commonly used database-management system that’s modified to run on GPUs instead of the central processing units (CPUs) that power most traditional database-management systems. By doing so, MapD can process billions of data points in milliseconds, making it 100 times faster than traditional systems. Moreover, MapD visualizes all processed data points nearly instantaneously — such as, say, plotting tweets on a world map — and parameters can be modified on the fly to adjust the visualized display.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new computational model of a neural circuit in the brain, which could shed light on the biological role of inhibitory neurons — neurons that keep other neurons from firing.
The model describes a neural circuit consisting of an array of input neurons and an equivalent number of output neurons. The circuit performs what neuroscientists call a “winner-take-all” operation, in which signals from multiple input neurons induce a signal in just one output neuron.
The transition from print to electronic publishing allows us to reconsider many of the norms that have evolved within traditional (print) publishing models. Electronic publishing has created new challenges, but it has also generated opportunities to improve both the publication process and the resulting papers.
Awards will be made from the fund to support a global cross-section of research aimed at applying the humanities, social sciences and other disciplines to the development of AI for the public interest. The MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society will serve as the initiative’s founding academic institutions.
MIT recently announced that the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC) system, housed in Holyoke, Massachusetts, has been ranked the most powerful supercomputer in New England. We caught up with ISTC for Big Data Principal Investigator and Lincoln Laboratory fellow Dr. Jeremy Kepner, who heads the LLSC, to learn more about the supercomputer, how it’s helping ISTC research, and his work for the ISTC.
GRE scores and undergraduate GPA don’t predict students’ future graduate school productivity, but reference letters from previous research advisers may provide clues about whether they are going to publish well, according to two papers published today in PLOS ONE. These results add to the ongoing discussion about how graduate admissions decisions should be made, particularly in light of previous findings that the GRE is biased against students from underrepresented groups. The new studies emphasize that admissions committees should review applicants holistically and rely less on GRE scores in making decisions—a point that many acknowledge, but which requires significant time and energy to do well.
The National Cancer Institute launched an effort Wednesday to speed up clinical trials by getting researchers quicker access to the drugs they want to test.
The NCI initiative creates a virtual “formulary” — a kind of clearinghouse — that initially will include 15 different medications donated by six manufacturers. The formulary will allow the institute to act as an intermediary between the drug companies and scientists at 69 NCI-designated cancer centers and to streamline the process by which researchers get the therapies.
Emily Fox, Amazon Professor of Machine Learning, has been selected to receive a 2017 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government upon scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers.
We would like to welcome Chris Lattner, who will join Tesla as our Vice President of Autopilot Software. Chris’s reputation for engineering excellence is well known. He comes to Tesla after 11 years at Apple where he was primarily responsible for creating Swift, the programming language for building apps on Apple platforms.
New York City-based biotech company Celmatix is unveiling its first genetic test, “Fertilome,” which provides insights into how a woman’s DNA might impact her reproductive health.
Company Data Science News
Andrew Ng says “Data is the defensible barrier, not algorithms,” in a NYTimes article that also quotes Fei-Fei Li (Stanford & Google) and Diane Greene, (SVP for Google Cloud) on the power of the private data that constitutes 70 percent of the market. Those data are poorly regulated thus far.
Technology will continue to play a vital role in promoting global prosperity. New advances are poised to increase economic productivity, provide radical healthcare solutions and combat climate change, among other benefits.
But the pace of innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT) and biotechnology is also creating new risks — ones that will be amplified in a world where geopolitical tensions, nationalism and social instability are on the rise. Businesses need to consider the threats stemming from technological change through the lens of the shifting global risks landscape.
Looking ahead, neither start-ups nor traditional financial institutions will be able to single-handedly provide the array of specialized products and services needed to address the increasingly fragmented financial lives of 21st century individuals and businesses. At PayPal, we believe what will ultimately define our future success as an industry is not how well each company performs individually. Rather, in order to effectively navigate an increasingly complex financial system and meet changing customer expectations, companies today must build upon and extend their own unique areas of expertise by pursuing opportunities to partner.
The case for collaboration
PayPal has made a strategic decision to operate as a bridge between fintech disruption and traditional financial institutions; to focus on collaboration and partnership in a time of massive change in the industry. We have embraced partnerships as a core business strategy, concentrating on a new model that seeks to extend the value of our services to more customers, sustain our growth and stay ahead of fast-paced economic, policy and consumer trends.
New York, NY Wednesday, February 15, at Google NYC. The Women Startup Challenge will feature 10 of the best early-stage women-led startups from across the U.S. and Canada. Watch these trailblazers pitch their innovative tech companies. [Sold out, waiting list available]
New York, NY Join the Society of Quantitative Analysts for Fuzzy Day 2017 to explore what “data science”, “artificial intelligence”, “machine learning”, “big data” and “” really mean for investment managers. [$$$]
The Universe integration with Grand Theft Auto V, built and maintained by Craig Quiter’s DeepDrive project, is now open-source. To use it, you’ll just need a purchased copy of GTA V, and then your Universe agent will be able to start driving a car around the streets of a high-fidelity virtual world.
GTA V in Universe gives AI agents access to a rich, 3D world. This video shows the frames fed to the agent (artificially slowed to 8FPS, top left), diagnostics from the agent and environment (bottom left), and a human-friendly free camera view (right). The integration modifies the behavior of people within GTA V to be non-violent.
“The PyMC dev team pushed the first release of PyMC3, the culmination of over 5 years of collaborative work. We are very pleased to be able to provide a stable version of the package to the Python scientific computing community.”
I think I first came across swirl in mid-2014, while working through the early stages of the Data Science Specialization on Coursera, put together by Johns Hopkins University professors Roger Peng, Brian Caffo and Jeff Leek.
The courses in this specialization make extensive use of swirl to introduce and explore various topics in the form of interactive programming assignments in R (e.g. R programming). This is probably largely due to the fact that these three professors were involved in the early development of swirl with it’s creator Nick Carchedi who is a graduate of Johns Hopkins Biostatistics.
If you have a MongoDB installation, now would be the time to verify that it is secure. Since just before Christmas, over 28,000 public MongoDB installs have been hacked. The attackers are holding the hacked data ransom, demanding companies pay using Bitcoins to get their data back. From the looks of it, at least 20 companies have given in and paid the ransom so far. This post explains the hack, how to protect yourself, and what we can learn from it.