There are more neurons firing up and the connections are getting stronger! This week has been tremendous in the stuff I’m learning.
I watched a recording of a webinar on machine learning by IFML. In it I learned about the issues that make it hard for a machine to understand human language. Machine translation (MT) had an interesting history of development and is currently using Neural MT (NMT). This is a process that uses deep neural networks on bitexts to translate human language. Examples of the results of NMT are Google Translate and Skype Translate. Yay! Google Translate is my favorite way to communicate with my ELA students who are new to English. I know it can make mistakes, so I have students or my translator check it for me. (It is still my go to since I don’t always have a translator in the classroom.) NLP (natural language process) is very popular in MT. We watched a video of a robot learning a new word then carrying out the command once it understood. Sooo Cool!!
We had a presentation from Barua Souptik on how technology can be useful in helping individuals remove problems associated with self-management in controlling Diabetes. His model called M³ consists of 3 areas – Measure, Model, Modify – under consideration. Their research monitors glucose, food, exercise, causes of glucose spikes, and designing methods to modify eating behaviors. Their goal is to design a wearable device that is easily accessible and affordable to under-served neighborhoods which have a dis-proportionally high diabetic population.
Another presentation was given by Jessica Ramella Romain at FIU. Due to the prevalence of diabetes which is a factor for cardiovascular disease in under-served neighborhoods her group wants to develop wearable devices using photoplethysmography sensors. The devices will measure such things as heart rate, heart rhythms, etc. She demonstrated the computer-generated model they created which uses a model of the radial artery in the wrist that measures the pressure wave caused by a person’s pulse. That was Very Cool!
Whew! A lot of learning, but so Much Fun!