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From the desk of Samy,

I keep my promises and as I told you, Dra. E. Valderrama gave us a conference about micro systems. This is the summary, I hope you’ll like it.

First of all, in order to understand what a micro system is, we have to go back in time a few years. In 1904, Electronic bore with the invention of the triode. It’s an object quite bigger (10cm. or so) made by 3 electrodes. When a signal came in from one side, it came out amplified by the other side.

This triode is the father of what we currently know as a transistor (much smaller).

To have an idea of what it means, a Pentium has about 2.000.000 transistors (and a dual core, much more).

Most of us perfectly know what ENIAC was: one of the first computers. It incorporated 18.000 triodes and had a total of 100m. just for itself. It weighted 40.000 Kg. and needed a total of 13kW/h ! And had an average of 3 minutes/failure. Let’s compare with a current laptop now, a Pentium IV: 3.300.000 transistors and consuming less than 100w/h. A huge improvement in about 50 years! When did the transistor appear? in 1947. It’s said to be the birth of the microelectronics because we changed from a big object (triode) to a little one (transistor, about 100Micras). Then, in 1958 Jack Kilby achieved a better use of the transistors: he created the first integrated circuit, combining some elements.

From microelectronic to microsystems was quite easy: combining the components scientists started to create great things for the human being. And the medical world, by extension, started to be able to work against some impossible problems before all of this started. 

Thank to microelectronics, improving really fast, we could use pacemakers, we could treat epilepsy, and other diseases. But the most significant step is when we go from just a simple circuit to the ability of working with electrodes, creating sensors and actuators that in front of some stimuli they respond with an electric signal (well, when electrodes move, a electric signal is created) that are able to stimulate the nerves, improving the quality of life of those people who need this mechanism to survive (partial paralytics, blinds can see a very little bit (it’s better than nothing!), deafs can heard something,…).

Now, this technology is still improving very fast and the most advanced investigations are not trying to create a better circuits but to be able to move a single electrode, that’s to say, to work at molecular level!

If at microelectronic level we can proporcionate a better life to deafs, blinds and so on, can you imagine how far we can go with nanosystems instead of microsystems?

Personally, about the conference, it was really good. It lasted just an hour and it was a pitty because the topic was really extensive and I would have liked to learn/know more, but well, even though it would have to be larger, we understood the importance of microsystems and how the nanosystems could revolutionize the world in a near future.

…SaMy*^57

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From the desk of Samy,

As promised before, I’m starting the new course and I have new stuff to post :). One of my subjects is Integrated Circuits Design. The first day, as usual, teacher gave us a presentation about the subject and I liked it. Why? Because we will have 6 conferences along the course, and they do sound interesting! And you all know I love conferences and I always let you know what the speaker tell us so, here I advance you which are gonna be my posts during this semester (among others, of course!):

1. From micro to nano systems - by Dra. E. Valderrama
2. Computing architectures in reconfigurable systems - by B. Martínez
3. Sensors and actuators applied to personal autonomy for handiccaped persons and the old age - by Dr. V. Soler
4. Micro and nanotechnology for spacial applications - by Dr. C. Ferrer
5. Multi-robot systems applied to biomedicine - by Dr. L. Ribas
6. The microtechnology’s market - by Dr. J. Agulló

Notice that each speaker is highly qualified: most of them are doctors!

I have to attend 3 conferences at least in order to pass the course so, I’ll post, at minimum, 3 conferences. However, I’ll try to assist as many as I can. But don’t blame me if I don’t post a conference which you like, conferences are on Friday, it’s a difficult day;)!

…SaMy*^55

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From the desk of Samy,

What is DDDAS? It is a new paradigm, where computer programs act in a more intelligent way. Their outputs depend on their inputs, which are updated values in the real world, used for optimizing the minimum damage/etc of important problems such as natural catastrophes. The other day, Dra. Frederica Darema came to UAB to give us a conference about DDDAS. I attended it. We could say that DDDAS is a new direction for applications/simulations and measurement methodology.

Until now, programs are mostly unidirectional. It means that we have a direction between theory and simulation, and ANOTHER ONE, between simulation and theory. In the same way, we’ve got a third element: measurements.

Theory -> Simulations | Simulation -> Theory | Measurements -> Simulation | Simulation -> Measurements | Theory -> Measurements | Measurements -> Theory

This is too static and serialized. Too slow! This is enough for normal programs and situations, but what happens when LIFES are up to a few minutes? We have to speed it up as much as we can. So, this is DDDAS: Data is not unidirectional but bidirectional. Or in other words, we haven’t got a strong direction, we’ve got a data stream going and coming. A stream data between execution processes.
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From the desk of Samy,

Fortunately, the other day I had the opportunity to attend another conference (I’m getting used to it): Bruce Schneier came to ETSE (my faculty, in UAB) in April, 24. A brief introduction about who Bruce is:

Bruce Schneier (born 15 January 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Counterpane, formerly Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.

Bruce is an internationally renowned security technologist and author. Described by The Economist as a “security guru,” Schneier is best known as a refreshingly candid and lucid security critic and commentator. When people want to know how security really works, they turn to Schneier.

Now that we know a little bit more about him, let’s start! I hadn’t the foggiest about what he was going to tell us and it surprised me: The IT impact on the world nowadays, very close to security matters.

From now on, I’ll write this post according to Bruce, reproducing what he said.
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From the desk of samy,

On April/4/2008, Richard Stallman came to UAB to give a conference about GNU. You can view the WHOLE conference in Spanish at the end of this post (and some pictures as well). I strongly recommend you to view the video as it’s quite interesting.

A brief introduction to who Richard Stallman is:

Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated “rms”, is an American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project’s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he started the free software movement and, in October 1985, set up the Free Software Foundation. Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license.

Let’s come back to the conference.

RMS came to UAB to introduce and clarify for us what free software really means, and why we should use it. First of all, I would like to advise you that RMS is a showman. But never mind, don’t lose the thread. Some teachers introduce RMS… While he felt asleep on the table.

The first reflexion was:

- Does this program respect my freedom?

Starting from this question, we should know what a program which respects our freedom means. If it does so, it is a free software (from now on free software is going to be FS). Otherwise, it is a privative software (from now on privative software is going to be PS). So, FS is the one which respects our freedom according to the notes below:
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From the desk of Samy (do you like this start? I hope so, otherwise you should get used to it… From now on, it’s going to be the same haha)

April 1, at 12.30 p.m., Ricardo Baeza-Yates, researcher and director of Yahoo! Research in Barcelona and Santiago de Chile, came to UAB to give a conference about Web 2.0

It was quite interesting as he talked about what the tendency of Internet will be in the following years. The keyword must be Web 2.0.

I took some notes, you can read them below:

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