It’s official. We now live in the future. Why? Because we have self-driving cars. We even have a few flying cars, that long-fantasised-about sci-fi staple. Pretty soon autonomous vehicles will be mainstream, and the industry will need armies of young boffins to design and engineer them. So it’s about time there were courses that introduced smart young people to the autonomous vehicle industry and prepared them for careers in it.
High spec, hardware-intensive PCs like gaming PCs can cost thousands if you buy them ready-built. But the skills needed to put one together are not as impenetrable as some may think. You don’t need a degree in computer science, and you shouldn’t even need a soldering iron.
A recent survey showed that 21% of job applicants’ resumes in the USA stated fraudulent degrees. So a fifth of job applicants say they have a degree when they in fact haven’t. How can this be happening in 2017?
Have you ever used Google’s photo search feature? Type in ‘cat’ and it will pretty reliably bring up any cats in your photo collection. It’s not perfect – it mistakes Land Rovers for cats some of the time – but it’s getting better all the time. And that is the point of machine learning. Among much else, machine learning, a subset of which is called deep learning, now powers Google photo search, speech recognition on Android, and video recommendations on YouTube.
The term ‘mechatronics’ was coined in 1971 by a Japanese engineer working for the Yaskawa Electric Corporation. As the word suggests, it originally combined mechanical engineering and electronics. But it has grown to encompass other disciplines such as control engineering, computer engineering, telecommunications and systems engineering.
GCSE/IGCSE maths is such a fundamental qualification in the UK that it is required for the vast majority of jobs. It demonstrates a sufficient level of numeracy, reasoning and problem-solving to be able to tackle everyday problems and forms the basis for further study should the learner decide to pursue it. GCSE/IGCSE exams can be taken at any age, though they are typically taken at 16, the compulsory earliest school-leaving age.
In 2014 The University of California, Irvine staged an eight-week MOOC on the sociological, scientific and ethical questions posed by the zombie apocalypse portrayed in AMC’s The Walking Dead. With the mega-popular TV series as its starting point, the course explored key science and survival themes ranging from understanding social identities to modeling the spread of disease.
The well-known manufacturing principle of just-in-time aims to ensure that the right part arrives on the assembly line in the right place and the exact moment it is needed, thus reducing inventory overheads and making for a lean and efficient process. The same principle is being applied to learning for today’s busy professionals, by using algorithms to deliver just the learning content they need – and nothing else – at the time they need it.
According to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being named the Great Green Arkleseizure. But that theory was only accepted by the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief. Here on Earth, we have our own theories on how the universe began, and thankfully they are a lot less icky and a lot more peer-reviewed.
After regional conflicts, when one side has won, both have given up and gone home, or when there’s nobody left to fight, there is work to do. Post-conflict reconstruction does what it can to clean up the mess, and business has a key role in it. Many conflicts are started by demagogues stirring up anger over real or perceived economic inequalities, which often still persist after the fighting has ended. The task of business in reconstruction is to restore production and distribution systems to energize the economy, create jobs and growth, and positively influence local perceptions.
Gardeners everywhere know the benefits of getting outside, getting their hands into the earth and, when the right time comes, enjoying the fruits of their labours. Working with the seasons rather than against them has a calming and grounding effect that can reduce worrying about life stresses by keeping in touch with nature. People who regularly work their gardens often have an aura of contentment about them that non-gardeners envy.
