Engineers have used breakthrough technology to create advances in medicine. For example, they have found ways to eliminate sickle cell anemia. The technology they used is called CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats which uses uses a defense mechanism employed by a certain bacteria to eliminate parts of the gene and cut them out like with a pair of molecular scissors. This could potentially revolutionized the field of genetics. This is very amazing as I know a lot of people who have sickle cell anemia.Sickle cell anemia is a group of disorders that cause red blood cells to become a certain shape and break down.Also, if you have it there is a problem with your Hemoglobin. According to the article, a lot of universities and top companies are doing a lot of research on CRISPR. Researchers at the UC Berkeley and the University of Vienna were the first to find ways to use and guide those molecular scissors to targeted certain locations on the gene. It’s shocking how many top universities are interested in this topic, as Harvard has researchers for CRISPR. CRISPR is also related to genetic engineering. It is predicted that it will change medical diagnoses. While reading the article I found that there is competition between these top universities.

This article makes me wonder how this could reshape the fight against certain diseases.Finding a way to eliminate a certain disease is necessary.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-29/berkeley-fights-harvard-mit-over-profits-from-gene-editing-tech

Amazon will offer a new service. The company announced that it will offer a service where it delivers packages to your parked car. This service will be available to prime members. According to the company, this service will make it easier and safer for customers to receive packages. Customers have been reporting theft of packages. Amazon claims this service will help with the issue.I really don’t know what I think of this new service. If I owned a car I’m not sure if I would like someone in my car. But with this new service, I think this will open up more issues. What if delivery men try and steal things from the customers car? Also how would these delivery people even get access to the customers car.

While reading the article, the issue of user Data was referenced. Multiple legal experts take issue with the fact that Amazon will have all of this data. Personally I know for a fact Amazon has a lot of data on its users. This was also an issue with tech giant Facebook;people are very concerned about privacy. I trust Amazon with my data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/04/24/amazon-will-now-deliver-to-your-car-but-you-might-pay-for-it-in-privacy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.faa42f98d31a

There is a robotic fish that spies on real fish. The robotic fish was built by a talented team of scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.It was designed to swim naturally with of other normal fish. One thing to point out is that they also made it to spy on fish. It will use cameras to capture the behavior of fish such as sharks. Shocking, I find that this is very strange. But to be fair, this could be a useful tool especially to study how sharks behavior because they are dangerous creatures.

According to the article that makeup of the robot is quite fascinating. It is made of soft silicone rubber, flexible plastic and 3D-printed pieces. In addition to that, It uses a specially made sound-based communication system developed by the scientist to receive movement instructions. After reading that it amazed me of how much thought was put into this project.

According to the article “The quiet motor-powered tail lets it mimic the quick-changing swimming patterns and movements of real fish. In addition, it touts sensors to help it avoid hitting or damaging marine environments like delicate reefs.” Basically the tail will be a vital part of the fish blending in with real fish.

One scientist who worked on the project said that the hardest part of the project was making sure the fish would be able to move smoothly up and down the water.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/21/technology/mit-fish-robot/index.html

There is a African Drone startup that is helping farmers by providing air surveillance hoping to reduce costs and optimize crop yields. This alone stands out to me ver much because I am aware that a lot of Africa is rural areas so that would mean people depend on agriculture. I believe this is an extremely important and necessary tool. This company, founded by James Paterson is looking to use artificial intelligence. It looks like a lot of companies are using artificial intelligence. According to the article, Paterson grew up in a farm near Cape Town. Someone experiencing how difficult it is to do something and that they are doing something about it makes me very amazed. Basically the way they are doing this is by using computers to intercept pictures from satellites. Then the drones and mobile phones and provide predictive will use information on crop health. The information captured from the drones will let people see where pests and other problems. After reading this article, I believe that this idea will become very successful.

One interesting thing to note that is the young company caught Google’s attention. They participated the company’s Launchpad Accelerator program.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/15/technology/aerobotics-farm-app-drones/index.html

Ramar Parham

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder,CEO, and Chairman of Facebook which he founded in 2004 in his dorm room.Recently, Zuckerberg was questioned by U.S. Congress for allowing Cambridge Analytica which is a British political consulting firm that uses data who worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to improperly access data on 87 million people.This was quite shocking to me because number one I really don’t have an exact understanding of how Facebook uses Data or why a company would need users data. This makes me concerned because I have an account and I don’t want my information to be sold to random people. Also mentioned in the article is that an individual can check to see if they have been affected. I believe that users should have a right to see if they have been affected. Another thing I wanted to mention was that apparently apps that you use, such as Apple Music or Airbnb are linked to your account. That was shocking to me. Deleting your Facebook account can not necessarily remove all data that has been shared. I personally know that third party users can still have access to your data. Once something is posted on the internet, it’s there forever.

Knowing that this issue has a political aspect to it is interesting. Facebook being accused of election meddling is dangerous. I do not belive companies such as that should participate in that politics.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/11/technology/facebook-questions-data-privacy/index.html

Growing up people are usually never taught about financial literacy. Credit Score and how to build credit is a topic that people don’t understand. I can attest to that because I was never taught any of this in school.

Sheena Allen a 29-year-old app developer who created an app called CapWay. CapWay is an online banking and financial literacy tool that helps people understand financial skills. With this app a user can link bank accounts to the app or get a pre-paid card from CapWay. It will make custom recommendations in view of a person’s ways of managing money, for example, guiding them toward a state-run program that can enable leaseholders to end up mortgage holders or disclosing to them how to maintain a strategic distance from overdraft charges.

I think this app is one of the best ideas I have ever read about. Being that the creator of this app is African-American, this will target a demographic in the black community. Black people especially need to be informed about financial literacy and how to increase wealth.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/29/technology/capway-sheena-allen/index.html

The self driving truck industry is become a huge deal.It is growing rapidly as major companies such as Uber are releasing these trucks. Waymo which is a autonomous car development company that has ties to google. Googles engineers have been developing and testing the self driving cars in Arizona and California. One thing that was interesting in the article was that the self driving trucks use similar technology that self driving cars use. I read that Uber was doing something similar and they have tested self driving trunks. I wonder if this new industry will cause truck drivers to lose their jobs.

Also in the article i learned while reading that there is a shortage of workers in the truck driving industry. So maybe self driving trucks could help the industry.

I know from having a lot of truck drivers in my family that the average truck driver is relatively old. Also sometimes drivers fall asleep while driving and that can cause accidents. I believe that there are pros and cons to the self driving truck industry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/03/09/waymos-self-driving-trucks-will-arrive-on-georgia-roads-next-week/?utm_term=.0ef099db7a57

A self driving car created by Tesla crashed in California killing its driver. Tesla said it was operating on autopilot. Tesla is a company that focuses on cars, especially electric cars. In recent years, they have been creating self driving cars similar to other cars. The accident took place on highway 101 in Mountain View. According to Tesla, the driver was a apple software engineer Wei Huang. One thing that was noted was that the driver “had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision”. I was never really a big fan of self driving cars because I knew that there could be several mistakes within the technology. I truly belive that humans should just continue to operate their own vehicles. In addition to that, “The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider … but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.” This makes it seem like the driver was at 100 percent fault.

In the article the concrete highway divider was previously damaged increasing its impact on the car according to Tesla.The way I am interpreting this is that Tesla is blaming everything else for this accident.

After reading many stories of self driving cars malfunctioning, this makes it scary to operate one or use one. I personally will never use one.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/31/tesla-car-crash-autopilot-mountain-view

Ramar Parham

Artificial Intelligence has had advances in many industries over the last couple years especially the financial industry. For instance, individuals can use voice recognition to check a bank account. AI will continue to make advances in the financial industry. Many say its disrupts certain industries but from a technological standpoint it betters industries.

It was quite interesting to read that Banks have tried their hand at AI. The banks that were successful focused on experience.  User Experience is very crucial with anything. If users cannot use a certain product the people will not like it. Knowing what consumers demand is key to success.

Another thing that was vital from the article was how humans interact with technology that with voice. A good example of this is how we interact with Siri, whenever we need to find out an address or a definition. Companies should focus on this aspect because humans like interacting with intelligence with voice.

There are so many benefits to Artificial Intelligence. Many people believe that AI is stealing peoples jobs but it is advancing industries

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2018/02/26/clinc-artificial-intelligence/#3582e5a3481f

Ramar Parham