Computer Science Registers the Lowest Number of Graduates Compared to Other STEM courses

As much as computer science is a course that is on the rise, it has been found that when it is compared to other STEM courses, the number of students taking bachelor’s degree in the course is lower than the others. It has been revealed that the course in the US produces the least number of graduates than the rest. Over time, researchers have been on the case to find out why it is so. The research that has been conducted has revealed some very important reasons why students are not yet into this life-changing course, Computer Science.

One of the main reasons as to why most students are not yet in Computer Science yet it is such a revolutionary course is tagged on lack of exposure. Most students have not been exposed to this course early enough. Some of them have gone through the primary and even to high school and to college but have never met even the phrase of computer science. It, therefore, becomes real trouble for such a student to enrol for the course. The research revealed that the ninth graders who had been exposed to the course early enough were really enthusiastic to do the course in the institutions of higher learning.

Secondly, another reason is that most students who show interest to do the course do not receive enough support to go ahead. Most students who have received support from mentors and coaches have grown more passionate and enthusiastic to study the course.

Lastly, another reason was found to be a real challenge is the social factors. In today’s society, most students are busy with their hobbies such that they cannot concentrate on one thing. They can’t imagine themselves just concentrating on the screen of a computer all their time now that The course is really demanding.

Reference

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-12-15-3-reasons-students-aren-t-into-computer-science-yet

Checkers AI Game by the Computer science and software engineering club

Computer science and software engineering club is a club that comprises players from these two fields. The club’s recent meeting featured a talk about AI and neural networks, a talk that was led by one of the club members by the name Colin Wilson. Wilson is a Computer Science major who happened to learn about the club when he read on a poster unexpectedly. He knew that was the place he belonged. Being passionate about computer science from when he was young, he has engaged in a lot of research in neural networks. This club would be the best place for him to further his passion.

His talk expounded the club’s major project that is ongoing. The club is developing a very new game on AI which is known as the “checkers AI Game”. According to the club’s founder, Josh Joseph, at the moment they are still are the planning stage of their game which they believe will be a very big revolutionary computer game. At this stage, they are still planning though they hope to start coding which each other in the club as they continue developing it.

Joseph is also a computer science major from Howell and has also been a recent guest speaker at the A2 Entrepreneur’s club. He said his major motivation has been to challenge himself by going out to go teach others some of the programming skills that have never been taught in the courses that they undertake. He says that the club is set to show the world how work can be done when people work together as a team in solving problems.

People are encouraged to drop by and experience the change that is being created by this people. Those who drop by are bound to learn new ideas and skills about computer science and software engineering skills.

Reference

https://www.washtewvoice.com/2018/12/17/computer-science-and-software-engineering-club/

Scientists combine satellite data, machine learning to map poverty

Locating poor people for relief assistance has been a challenge for many years with the availability of accurate and reliable information on the location of impoverished zones lacking.

Stanford researchers propose an accurate way to identify poverty in areas using machine learning. In this case, the researchers built on earlier machine learning methods to find impoverished areas across five African countries.

The researchers sought to understand whether high-resolution satellite imagery — an unconventional but readily available data source — could inform estimates of where impoverished people live. The difficulty was that while standard machine learning approaches work best when they can access vast amounts of data, in this case there was little data on poverty to start with.

Because areas that are brighter at night are usually more developed, the solution involved combining high-resolution daytime imagery with images of Earth at night. The researchers used the “nightlight” data to identify features in the higher-resolution daytime imagery that are correlated with economic development.

“Without being told what to look for, our machine learning algorithm learned to pick out of the imagery many things that are easily recognizable to humans — things like roads, urban areas and farmland,” says Jean. The researchers then used these features from the daytime imagery to predict village-level wealth, as measured in the available survey data.

This method did a surprisingly outperformed the previous approaches in predicting the distribution of poverty. These improved poverty maps come as relief to aid organizations in effective finds distribution and enactment of relief policies.

The power of machine learning impacts on people’s lives positively. When scaled appropriately, this technique it could be used to map poverty around the world in a very low-cost way.

Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160818150007.htm

 

Raising Cryptography’s Standards

Most modern cryptographic schemes depend on computational complexity. They can be hacked, it may take long time, even with smart computational resources.

There is an interesting facet of security known as information-theoretic security which means that even an adversary with unbounded computational power could extract no useful information from an encrypted message. Cryptographic schemes that promise information-theoretical security have been devised, but they’re far too complicated to be practical.

Researchers at MIT and Maynooth University have shown that existing, practical cryptographic schemes come with their own information-theoretic guarantees: Some of the data they encode can’t be extracted, even by a computationally unbounded adversary.

The researchers show how to calculate the minimum-security guarantees for any given encryption scheme, which could enable information managers to make more informed decisions about how to protect data.

The researchers’ mathematical framework also applies to the problem of data privacy, or how much information can be gleaned from aggregated — and “anonymised” — data about Internet users’ online histories. If, for instance, Netflix releases data about users’ movie preferences, is it also inadvertently releasing data about their political preferences? This technique could help data managers either modify aggregated data or structure its presentation in a way that minimizes the risk of breach of confidentiality.

To understand how the technique works, take for example an encryption scheme with only three possible inputs/ciphertext “A,” “B,” and “C”. It produces only three possible outputs, and for each ciphertext, there is some probability that it encodes each of the three plaintexts, so the probabilities corresponding to an encoded Social Security number would describe a point in a multi-dimensional space. Generally, Schemes that yield closely clustered points are good and vice versa.

Reference; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141031120905.htm

 

New Developments as Researchers Develop 3D Printed Objects That Track and Store Their Way of Usage.

Computer science engineers at the University of Washington have developed 3D printed assistive technological devices that can track and store information about how they are used without relying on battery and electricity. This technology can be applied in the medical world on prosthetics and the smart pill bottles that will help patients to remember taking their medicines on the daily basis.

The engineers have developed this technology to ensure that without any batteries or electronics, the devices can track and store information of how they are used by relaying signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.

During a presentation of the paper for a study conducted, Jennifer Mankoff, a co-author of the paper said that the already existing technology was useful but it had a problem if one was interested to know how the devices were being used. This was the main reason as to why they had to conduct a study that would lead to solving this problem. It, therefore, led to the development of assistive technology.

Initially, the kind of device that was developed after the study was done would connect to Wi-Fi without electronics. The plastic device could detect if the detergent or the fluid was running low and could order some more online. However, there was more need to develop the 3D to be smarter by being able to store the information on their own so that even when they are used in the absence of Wi-Fi connection, the information would be stored and reflected in the cloud once the connection is done.

In this development, the pill bottles have been mounted with gears which have their teeth sequenced in a particular way to be able to encode the message. They also are served with antennas which are identical, one at the top and another one at the bottom through which the engineers can be able to detect and monitor motion.

The technology can be applied to monitoring how e-NABLE arms are used. They can also be used with the insulin pen and many other ways. It is, therefore, a very useful technology that will help a big deal in the medical world.

Reference

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181010093601.htm

Amazon offers Computer Science Scholarships for Kids and Funds Coding Camps

Most of the high paying jobs 20 years ago have gradually been phased by other jobs requiring a different kind of skillsets. Likewise, currently, high paying jobs will be phased out in the near future by technology-oriented jobs.

As such, the need for graduates with STEM skills is paramount. In fact, The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that by 2020 more than 1.4 million computer-science-related jobs will be available. However, only a mere 400,000 graduates will be available to take up the positions.

To this end, Amazon launched an initiative to raise awareness for the need of learning computer science. The initiative is dubbed Amazon Future Engineer. The initiative seeks to inspire, educate and train kids and young adults from low-income communities to pursue computer science-oriented careers.

The company hopes to inspire more than 10 million kids per year. It seeks to accomplish this through online classes and coding camps among others. So how will Amazon carry out the initiative?

The following are the stages involved:

1. Kindergarten through 8th grade

Amazon, together with Code.org and Coding with Kids will fund free online lessons and coding camps. Registration is ongoing.

2. High school

Amazon will fund low-income Title I and rural schools to offer AP Computer Science and Intro to Computer Science courses. The application is ongoing.

3. College

The company will offer $10,000 per year for four years scholarships for students from underserved communities pursuing an undergraduate degree in computer science. The application is open for students who have completed an AP Computer Science course.

4. Work

Students who received the Amazon scholarship are eligible for a paid software development internship in Amazon. They will be involved in the creation of new features and services for better customer service. The internships will commence in 2020.

Source: https://www.channele2e.com/business/talent/amazon-funds-coding-camps-computer-science-scholarships-for-kids/

 

The Construction of a New Computer Science College Receives A Gift Funding.

Stephen Schwarzman, an investment banker has awarded the Cambridge’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a $350 million gift to assist change the education structure of computer science. According to the announcement made by the University officials on the 15th of October, the money will be used to finance a new construction in which the computing college will be situated. This will also help ease the current shortage of faculty members by employing 50 new members.

Currently, only 10% of the 1000 teaching staff in the university teach computer science, despite the fact that 40% of the undergraduates currently in the school are majoring in computer science or an extension of the same. This has left the department with a heavy but imbalanced load.

Computing is currently in a department in the school of engineering, the largest school of all the five MIT schools. This is not an interesting state according to Michael Stonebraker, a computing faculty member, but rather urges MIT to have an independent school of computing. Stonebraker claims that many departments have been teaching computing in an unmethodical manner which is inefficient and fragmented making the quality of instruction undermined.

The creation of this new college will be a solution to the underlying problems in computing studies. Of the new faculty positions, half of them will be distributed across the campus while the other half will be retained in the new college. A new dean will also be hired for the new college.

Though the construction has not yet started, the new college is going to be opened next fall.

 

References

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/mit-use-350-million-gift-bolster-computer-sciences

 

 

 

Study Computer Science In Impactful Universities.

Changing trends and advancement in technology are sweeping across every area of our lives, from communication to politics to entertainment, cybersecurity, to business and so much more. The backbone of all these technological advancements in computer science, which is basically everywhere and in everything.

For the tech lovers, this is definitely the best area of study one can choose, whether their interest is gaming design or in ethical hacking and data protection.

However, while venturing in such a field one thing is for sure, that technology is dynamic and susceptible to change every now and then. To be on the safe side, it is, therefore, important for those in pursuit of computer science to have a deep understanding of the fundamentals, as well as know how to deal with its evolution, in order to keep at per with the advancing technological world. This will help a candidate be at a better position when it comes to job opportunities.

Very few schools offer practical skills and industrial experience necessary for this highly dynamic industry. Here is a list of a few reputable Universities with reliable industrial links:

1. Auckland ICT Graduate School.

This New Zealand university works in collaboration with the industry of ICT, thus arming the students with functional industrial skills.

2. Curtin University.

Other than this Australian university being ranked as one of the best universities in the world, Curtis Institute for Computation is known for its impartation in information technology skills and knowledge.

Monash University in Malaysia and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University are other institutions famous for offering experiential learning opportunities in computer science, preparing the students for the industry.

 

References

https://www.studyinternational.com/news/cracking-the-code-to-success-computer-science-schools-with-world-class-industry-links/

Introducing a Competition for Ethics in Computer Science, with up to $3.5 Million to be won

Computer scientists create tremendously powerful codes that can be used by users to disrupt what we read online, spending habits, financial habits and a host of numerous activities. Therefore it’s no brainer that such coding calls for great responsibility.

In the wake of people using coding to perform heinous acts, such as disrupting democracy, promoting radicalization and spread of fake news, influential persons in the computer science industry have come up with a competition that encourages ethics and accountability.

Dubbed the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, it is funded by Craig Newmark, Schmidt Futures, Mozilla and Omidyar Network. A panel of judges will award the winners with up to $3.5 million in prizes. The challenge was initially incubated by Omidyar Network.

The competition comes at a time when we are experiencing codes that are written at the expense of the populace. Most lead to biasness, data breaches and distribution of products that don’t meet the safety standards.

Paula Goldman, head of Omidyar Network’s new Tech and Society Solutions Lab said that they experienced a big gap between ethics and the way computer scientists were trained. He said that their main focus was to make new graduates understand that ethics is a part of their career, not someone else’s responsibility.

The stakeholders hope that the competition’s coursework will be integrated across different colleges and universities. The coursework predominantly integrates ethics with computer science.

The competition is set to award up to$3.5 million in prizes between December 2018 and July 2020. The prizes will go to the most promising proposals. Thankfully, the competition is open to students, professors, and teaching assistants.

Sources:

1. https://medium.com/read-write-participate/announcing-a-competition-for-ethics-in-computer-science-with-up-to-3-5-million-in-prizes-59d7dc30238a
2. https://qz.com/work/1418852/craig-newmark-is-funding-a-computer-science-ethics-competition/

 

 

Sweet Briar Partnering with Google on Computer Science

Sweet Briar a private college in Virginia is collaborating with Google to offer computer science and data science courses. It is among the eight colleges that are set to offer the pilot courses. Google hopes to facilitate access to computer and data science education through the courses.

The courses are Foundation of Python Programming and How to Think Like a Data Scientist. The former commenced this fall while the later will be launched in the spring. It termed them as Applied Computing 101 and 102. The learning materials are provided by the Google Engineering Education team while the teaching is conducted by the SBC faculty.

The program takes a hands-on, project-based approach to lure students who would otherwise not take up a career in technology. It primarily teaches the foundations of data science and computer science. G

The courses use techniques and tools employed in Google and in the wider tech industry whilst at the same time teaching critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and collaboration among other skills. This is in a bid to enable them to apply the skills in real-life scenarios.

Raina Robeva, a SBC math professor said that courses have no prerequisites and are open to all students. He said that thirteen students were taking the course this fall.

Google said through a blog post that, the program was prompted by the lack of enough workforce to meet the ever-growing demand in the industry. It is available at Holy Names University, SBC, Adrian College, and Bay Path University among others.

Robeva hopes that there will be more collaboration between Google and SBC in the future.

Sources:

1. https://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/sweet-briar-collaborating-with-google-on-computer-science/article_967ef8d2-7e4c-57d2-90ea-a4be70f3aee3.html
2. https://www.cbs19news.com/content/news/Sweet-Briar-working-with-Google-on-computer-science-courses-498047311.html