Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
Digital Twin
Digital Twin: Above is an image from the digital twin (DT) of BMW’s factory in Regensburg, Bavaria, created in NVIDIA’s Omniverse. There are two versions of a BMW factory in the medieval town of Regensburg, Germany. One is a physical plant that cranks out thousands of cars a year. The other is a virtual 3-D replica, accessed by screen or VR headset, in which every surface and every bit of machinery looks exactly the same as in real life. Soon, whatever is happening in the physical factory will be reflected inside the virtual one in real time: frames being dipped in paint; doors being sealed onto hinges; avatars of workers carrying machinery to its next destination. The latter factory is an example of a “digital twin”: an exact digital re-creation of an object or environment. The concept might at first seem like sci-fi babble or even a frivolous experiment: Why […]
Smartphone Overuse
Smartphone Overuse: _ Average person spends 3 to 4 hours on their smartphone each day. ______ ______ Section-1 Prologue: If there’s anything that most deserves the claim to be a man’s best friend in the modern age, it has got to be the smartphone. The use of smartphones is now a necessity, not a choice. The technological innovation of smartphones and various software has made our lives more convenient. While the bounties of technological innovation have offered limitless opportunities to make life comfortable, their perils cannot be ignored. Worldwide, there are over 6 billion people that have smartphone data plans and it is projected that this will grow to over 7.5 billion by 2026. According to a recent study, almost half of the American population showed hyper-reliance on smartphones, and more than 90% of young people aged 19–29 reported daily use of smartphones. Smartphone devices have the same capabilities […]
Monkeypox (Tinypox)
Monkeypox (Tinypox): _ _ Section-1 Prologue: On May 7, 2022 the world was alerted to a confirmed case of monkeypox in the United Kingdom. Cases have since cropped up across the globe, from Germany and Spain, to the U.S. and Canada. The global monkeypox outbreak, the largest in history, is highly unusual because the virus is circulating widely in countries where it is not normally found. Historically, monkeypox has circulated in remote parts of West and Central Africa. In that context, people normally caught the virus from animals. There was little spread between people. Monkeypox is now spreading widely between people, mostly through close contact during sex among gay and bisexual men. _ Monkeypox is an illness caused by monkeypox virus, which belongs to the Orthopoxvirus genus of the Poxviridae family; other members of Orthopoxvirus genus include variola virus (which causes smallpox), vaccinia virus (used in smallpox vaccines), cowpox virus, […]
Robot
Robot: _ Pepper (above), a humanoid robot developed by SoftBank Robotics, was launched in 2014 and can read human emotions. Over 2,000 companies around the world have adopted Pepper as an assistant to welcome, inform and guide visitors in an innovative way. ____ Section-1 Prologue: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a robot? For many people it is a machine that imitates a human—like the androids in Star Wars, Terminator and Star Trek: The Next Generation. However much these robots capture our imagination, such robots still only inhabit Science Fiction. Science-fiction films and novels usually portray robots as one of two things: destroyers of the human race or friendly helpers. People still haven’t been able to give a robot enough ‘common sense’ to reliably interact with a dynamic world and the independent intelligent machines seen in science fiction are still a […]
MONEY
Money: _ ____ Section-1 Prologue: Somebody once asked the late bank robber named Willie Sutton why he robbed banks. He answered: “That’s where the money is.” Money is something we encounter in every facet of our daily lives. The first thing that springs to mind for most of us when we hear the word “money” is coins and banknotes. We talk about “making money” when we refer to our income. We say that we are “spending money” when we go shopping. For major purchases we sometimes have to “borrow money” by taking out a loan, either from someone we know or from a bank. It is no accident that the term “money” gets used in so many different ways: it is a reflection of the myriad functions that money performs in our economic lives. _ Money is one of the fundamental inventions of mankind. Economists say that the invention of […]
