Tag: data

Researcher to measure middle schoolers’ data science knowledge in context of social issues

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Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens

Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, assistant professor in Clemson’s education and human development department.
Image Credit: College of Education

A Clemson University faculty member will use an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to examine middle school students’ data science knowledge and practices through the lens of social issues and gauge students’ sense of empowerment to positively change communities through data science.

Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens, assistant professor of learning sciences in the Clemson University College of Education, said it is a common misconception that data is neutral or free from the influence of social issues or that data has no effect on social issues. She said it is often the case that technology informed by data science, such as search engines or facial recognition software, has been shown to either reinforce discrimination or mischaracterize minority groups.

Because humans design these forms of technology and many more make decisions based on them,

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Facebook appoints public policy director for data, emerging tech in India

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Ever since the Cambridge Analytic scandal broke out in the media in 2018, Facebook has been under constant scrutiny over the user privacy policy. And this also helped shed light on how the user profiles are being created virtually and push targeted ads to the people; thus, generating revenue for the social media platforms.

Over time, several governments across the world including India have drafted to protect user privacy and enforce them on digital media controlled by tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and others.

Now, Facebook has appointed Sunil Abraham as the company’s regional Public Policy, Director for Data and Emerging Tech in India. Abraham will be coordinating with the Indian government in terms of data privacy, consumer protection, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) led innovation for new products and services. 

“Sunil’s experience in the field of technology policy and his vast research on data reforms are an ideal

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Scientists return from Arctic with wealth of climate data

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BERLIN (AP) — An icebreaker carrying scientists on a year-long international effort to study the high Arctic has returned to its home port in Germany carrying a wealth of data that will help researchers better predict climate change in the decades to come.

The RV Polarstern arrived Monday in the North Sea port of Bremerhaven, from where she set off more than a year ago prepared for bitter cold and polar bear encounters — but not for the pandemic lockdowns that almost scuttled the mission half-way through.

“We basically achieved everything we set out to do,” the expedition’s leader, Markus Rex, told The Associated Press by satellite phone as it left the polar circle last week. “We conducted measurements for a whole year with just a short break.”

The ship had to break away from its position in the far north for three weeks in May to pick up supplies

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FB appoints Sunil Abraham as public policy director for data, emerging tech

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Facebook on Monday announced the appointment of Sunil Abraham as the director-public policy for data and emerging tech. He will lead the company’s stance on tech policy issues in India.

Reporting to Ankhi Das, public policy director, Facebook-India, South & Central Asia, Abraham will be responsible for building partnerships and engagements with key stakeholders in public policy area of data privacy, consumer protection, and AI-led innovation for new products and services.

He joins Facebook from ArtEZ University for the Arts in the Netherlands where he spent a year as endowed professor.

On the appointment, Facebook’s Das said, “Sunil’s experience in the field of technology policy and his vast research on data reforms are an ideal fit for Facebook. With his expertise and experience, he will help us in our mission to build transparency, accountability and empowered communities.”

Abraham has almost a quarter century of experience in Indian and global civil

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What Is A Data Processing Unit (DPU) And Why Is NVIDIA Betting On It?

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At the GPU Technology Conference 2020, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, unveiled a new family of processors branded as the BlueField-2 Data Processing Unit (DPU). The DPU is accessible to the developers via the software platform, the DOCA SDK. The DPU and DOCA SDK are comparable to NVIDIA’s powerful combination of GPU hardware and CUDA software.  

Having dominated the AI accelerator market, NVIDIA is now aiming to expand it to the data center infrastructure acceleration and optimization. 

Why is Jensen Huang bullish about the DPU market and how it matters to the enterprise data center? Here is an attempt to explain the evolution of DPU in simple terms.

The Aggregation and Disaggregation of Enterprise Infrastructure

During the 90s, the combination of Intel x86 CPU and OS software offered unmatched power to enterprises. The rise of client/server computing, followed by n-tier computing, paved the way for distributed computing.

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Twilio is buying customer data startup Segment for between $3B and $4B

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Sources have told TechCrunch that Twilio intends to acquire customer data startup Segment for between $3 and $4 billion. Forbes broke the story on Friday night, reporting a price tag of $3.2 billion.

We have heard from a couple of industry sources that the deal is in the works and could be announced as early as Monday.

Twilio and Segment are both API companies. That means they create an easy way for developers to tap into a specific type of functionality without writing a lot of code. As I wrote in a 2017 article on Segment, it provides a set of APIs to pull together customer data from a variety of sources:

Segment has made a name for itself by providing a set of APIs that enable it to gather data about a customer from a variety of sources like your CRM tool, customer service application and website and pull

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Twilio to buy cloud customer data startup Segment for $3.2 billion: Forbes

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FILE PHOTO: A banner for communications software provider Twilio Inc., hangs on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to celebrate the company’s IPO in New York City, U.S., June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

(Reuters) – Cloud communications platform provider Twilio Inc TWLO.N plans to buy customer data infrastructure company Segment for $3.2 billion, Forbes reported on Friday.

The deal, which had not been finalized as of Friday afternoon, was expected to be at least partially based on Twilio stock, the report added, citing two sources it did not name.

San Francisco-based Segment has recently been open to acquisition offers, according to the report.

Twilio declined to comment to Reuters. Segment was not immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.

Segment raised $175 million in a Series D funding round in April 2019. The startup said in September that it worked with more than 20,000 businesses including

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Data tool helps users manage water resources, protect infrastructure — ScienceDaily

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River systems are essential resources for everything from drinking water supply to power generation — but these systems are also hydrologically complex, and it is not always clear how water flow data from various monitoring points relates to any specific piece of infrastructure. Researchers from Cornell University and North Carolina State University have now developed a tool that draws from multiple databases to give water resource managers and infrastructure users the information they need to make informed decisions about water use on river networks.

“A streamgage tells you what the water level is at a specific point in the river — but that’s not really enough information,” says Sankar Arumugam, co-author of a paper on the work and a professor of civil engineering at NC State. “If you are an infrastructure operator, what you really need to know is how long it will take for that water-level information to be

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$45.5 billion cloud communications company Twilio is reportedly getting ready to acquire data startup Segment for $3.2 billion

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a man sitting on a leather couch: Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio, launched his business during the recession. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

© (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio, launched his business during the recession. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
  • Cloud communications company Twilio is set to acquire data startup Segment for $3.2 billion, sources tell Forbes, though a deal is not yet final.
  • Twilio has emerged as a winner in the pandemic economy, with its stock price just about tripling since the beginning of the year. The company now commands a market cap of over $45 billion.
  • Segment was last valued at $1.5 billion in an April 2019 funding round, and counts Accel, Y Combinator, and Alphabet’s GV (formerly Google Ventures) among its investors.
  • Segment laid off 10% of its staff in May, in anticipation of a tougher IT spending environment amid the pandemic. However, the company indicated in September that it now has over 20,000 customers — up from 19,000
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3 Steps To Meeting Your Data Residency Requirements

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Organizations around the world must keep data in a particular location for legal, regulatory, contractual or policy requirements. Data residency requirements are paramount to staying compliant and AWS provides edge infrastructure and services that move data processing and analysis as close to the end-point as necessary. Whatever your data residency need, it’s covered by AWS at the Edge, including a hybrid solution, AWS Outposts. 

Read on to discover: 

  • What drives the need for data residency 
  • How to define your data residency requirements and meet security demands 
  • How AWS Outposts can meet your data residency challenges 

Three main data residency drivers

Regulatory requirements: Some businesses and public sector bodies must store or process data in a particular geographical location, to comply with legislative or regulatory demands. 

Contractual requirements: Organizations may have contractual agreements with their customers that require data to be stored or processed in

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