Phillips County students learn to code

Do you like raspberry pie? I do. Today we’ll learn about a different kind of raspberry pie – the kind spelled P-I, as in the mathematical symbol. In this case, Raspberry Pi is the name of a type of computer used by students who are learning to do computer coding. This high-tech project is an initiative of an innovative economic development director in rural Kansas.

Nick Poels is executive director of economic development in Phillips County. He works to build partnerships in various ways to benefit the county as a whole. Phillips County includes the rural communities of computer science vs computer engineering, Logan, Agra, Kirwin, Long Island, Prairie View, Glade, population 86, and Speed, population 35 people. Now, that’s rural.

Nick uses various programs to benefit the county, such as rural opportunity zones, Network Kansas, a commercial revitalization program, and more. In 2018, Nick was in a site council meeting with the Phillipsburg school district when there was discussion about the need to integrate more computer science into education. Forward-looking educators recognized the need for students to have high-tech skills for future careers.

Thanks to Nex-Tech, the local rural telephone company, the community has access to high capacity fiber-optic cable. “Phillipsburg had the benefit of fiber-to-the-premise infrastructure before it reached places like Topeka and Olathe,” Nick said He recognized an opportunity to use this capacity and to help students learn high-tech skills. He proposed to his county economic development board that Phillips County Economic Development would partner with the school in a student initiative on computer coding. With the board’s support, PCED bought equipment and online curricula for this project.

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING DEVELOPING PROTOTYPE FOR REUSABLE SURGICAL MASK

Mercer’s School of Engineering is developing a prototype for a reusable surgical mask to distribute to local healthcare providers. The University has plans for an initial run of 15 by the end of the week with materials on hand to make as many as 150.

The masks, made of a durable polypropylene-like material, are intended to be sanitized and reused with the exception of a small high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter that is clipped in place at the front of the mask and must be replaced.

The project was initiated by Macon dentist Dr. Amber Lawson, a 2002 graduate of Mercer’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She contacted University officials earlier this week about producing a 3D-printed mask that she learned about while serving on the Georgia Dental Association’s COVID-19 Task Force. Cumming orthodontist Dr. Mark Causey shared with Dr. Lawson and other task force members a design for a mask that could be sealed using dental materials, providing an option for healthcare providers in areas with shortages of N95 masks.

“We’re in unprecedented times,” said Dr. Lawson. “We’re all trying to help each other, and our healthcare providers are on the front lines. We have to work together to do anything we can to try to give them confidence that they are protected so they can continue to look out for their patients and our communities.”

Seeking someone in Macon to test the materials and produce the masks for local providers, Dr. Lawson was put in contact with Dr. Joanna Thomas, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Dr. Anthony Choi, professor of electrical and computer engineering, at Mercer.

“It’s a trying time and challenging for a lot of people, especially our medical professionals,” said Dr. Thomas. “When the opportunity presented itself to try to help in just a small way, is computer science engineering for it and see what we can come up with.”

Volta Networks joins TIP's Disaggregated Open Routers initiative

BOSTON – Volta Networks today announced its support for the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP) Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR) initiative, which is being led by TIP’s Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) Project Group. Volta will also join the DOR project team, which is driving research into new network architectures and services using how to become a computer engineer
 open routing among the global service provider and vendor community.

“We know that working together and leveraging a diverse range of approaches from across the industry will lead to the greatest success, and we have already seen substantial progress on many of our initiatives. On behalf of TIP, we are excited to have Volta Networks join us on these efforts,” said David Hutton, Chief Engineer at the Telecom Infra Project.

TIP was launched in 2016 to bring together a community of organizations dedicated to building a better infrastructure for global telecom networks. The TIP community has developed a robust portfolio of telecom infrastructure solutions, starting with early ideation carried through to deployments. TIP members collaborate to develop solutions across all areas of the technology stack, including access, transport, core and services, with solutions for service providers in a variety of environments, from urban to rural.

The OOPT project group is conducting an initiative focused on developing Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR), led by KDDI and Vodafone. Several OOPT technology providers are also supporting this initiative.

Private cloud reimagined as equal partner in multi-cloud world

Cloud-first has become the guiding principle for application modernization and migration. Cloud-native is the mantra for application development. And hot technologies like containers, microservices and serverless computing are all associated with the public cloud. So, where does that leave the private cloud?

Private cloud – typically an on-premises data center that enterprises are attempting to retrofit with computer engineering jobs, automation, self-service, capacity planning, and other features that come built into the public cloud – has definitely taken a back seat. For a time, many enterprises seemed to be migrating as many apps as possible to the public cloud and relegating the private cloud to hosting an ever-shrinking collection of legacy, highly customized, out-of-support, end-of-life apps. But as we enter the second decade of the cloud revolution, a new vision has emerged in which private clouds become an equal partner in an integrated, multi-cloud world of private, public, and edge clouds. Gartner is calling this the distributed cloud, and Michael Warrilow, research vice president for infrastructure software, predicts that "it has a great potential for success."

Warrilow in 2018 framed the issue facing traditional private clouds, which didn't have the infrastructure to match hyperscale public cloud. "Infrastructure and Operations leaders must resist the temptation to mimic a style of computing that they are ill-equipped to replicate," he wrote in a research report.

Why hardware still matters in the era of cloud computing

The University of California at San Diego has adopted a cloud-first strategy that involves retiring three mainframes, shifting as many computing workloads as possible to the cloud and abandoning on-premises software in favor of software-as-a-service wherever possible.

“I long ago realized that the CIO should be more of a supply chain leader than someone who keeps track of hardware specs,” said Vince Kellen, UCSD’s chief information officer. “For most of our business problems, hardware doesn’t matter.”

A growing number of information technology managers feels the same way. For more than 60 years, both the potential and limitations of computing have been defined by processors, memory, storage and other components fashioned from metal and silicon. The central role of the what jobs can you get with a computer science degree has long been to protect and optimize those precious assets, using armies of systems administrators and people with screwdrivers who keep the data center lights on.

About 20 years ago, virtualization began the process of abstracting away the nuts and bolts of hardware, making infrastructure a single amorphous entity managed by software. Cloud computing has furthered the process over the last decade, making hardware an abstract resource that, for customers, is increasingly someone else’s problem to manage.

But in a surprising twist, the cloud is actually unleashing a flood of new hardware innovation — starting with the foundational silicon chip on which all computers and the cloud itself are built.

“This is really a golden era of semiconductors,” Victor Peng, president and chief executive at programmable logic circuit and software veteran Xilinx Inc., said at a recent event called “The Renaissance of Silicon” presented by the Silicon Valley thought leadership forum Churchill Club. Added Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of chipmaker Micron Technology Inc., “There has never been a more exciting time in the past 40 years.”

Information Technology Support Specialist

The IT Support Specialist II provides support and instruction for the use of the intranet and technology resources and works collaboratively with the IT staff to ensure the optimal functioning of the College’s IT services. This position also acts as the focal point for managing end-user devices (laptops and PCs) and has primary responsibility for updating and maintaining how much do computer engineers make Asset.

Goddard College is committed to creating a college representative of a diverse global community and capable of creating change. To that end, we are actively seeking applications from qualified candidates from groups currently underrepresented in our institution for this position. This institution is an equal opportunity provider, and employer.

Surge in Telecommunication Traffic Due to Online Classes, Work at Home

Telecoms in Croatia are registering a rise in traffic this week due to online classes starting, more people working at home, more calls being made, and an increase in using various services and applications, however, network capacities are large enough at the moment to handle increased traffic.

Three biggest telecom companies in Croatia have informed Hina that everything is controllable despite this surge.

The HT telecom emphasizes that at this moment the company is focused on making sure that users are connected, pointing out that their communications infrastructure has a remarkable capacity and a high quality, and that it is reliable and stable.

“We have ensured contacts with other telecoms and we are following the ongoing developments in telecommunications operators in other European countries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic so that we could recognize the risks on time and take every possible action to remove them. The HT telecom has recently completed the project of upgrading the mobile network, which has increased users’ speed and improved the quality of mobile services,” the HT stated.

However, considering the fact that this is an extraordinary situation in which networks are under extreme strain, they call for the users to use their services responsibly so that the telecommunications system can remain stable and available to all. On that note, they propose using landlines and fixed internet access when possible, so that the mobile network would not be computer science vs computer engineering.