Zhang Benzi, Asian Diaspora: Poetry in North America

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Digitisation and technological challenges of the banking industry

Ο έντονος ανταγωνισμός και η ψηφιακή επανάσταση επιβάλλει στις τράπεζες το ριζικό μετασχηματισμό τους, που θα απαιτήσει υψηλό επενδυτικό κόστος. Οι τράπεζες ταυτόχρονα θα πρέπει να συνεχίσουν την απομόχλευσή τους από μη παραγωγικά στοιχεία ενεργητικού και τη μείωση του λειτουργικού τους κόστους. Επίσης, πρέπει να γίνουν πιο ευέλικτες και παραγωγικές, εκμεταλλευόμενες τις ευκαιρίες της νέας ψηφιακής οικονομίας και βελτιώνοντας ανάλογα την προσφορά των υπηρεσιών τους. Στο παρόν άρθρο αναλύονται οι προκλήσεις που αντιμετωπίζουν οι τράπεζες σε σχέση με την εξέλιξη της τεχνολογίας, την ψηφιοποίηση των τραπεζικών υπηρεσιών και τις σύγχρονες τεχνολογίες του blockchain και των big data.The strong competition and digital revolution impose to the banks their profound transformation demanding a high cost on investments. The banking system should continue, at the same time, its efforts to disengage from non-productive assets as well as to reduce the running costs. Moreover, banks should consider becoming more flexible and productive, by taking advantage of the opportunities of the new digital economy and by ameliorating accordingly the offered services. The current paper discusses and analyses the challenges for the banks, regarding the technological evolution, the digitization of banking services and the technologies of blockchain and big data

An Agenda-Setting Report: Biome Monitoring For Human Health

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing frequency with which zoonotic diseases of pandemic potential have emerged in recent decades, it is vital to seek new methods of preventing disease outbreaks before they occur. Novel information age technologies have the potential to change the game for infectious disease outbreak monitoring. This paper addresses the overall opportunity that exists for biome surveillance as a means for health monitoring, particularly the way that the domains of technological and biological sciences can unite to prevent the next pandemic before it gets a chance to take hold. This report outlines the numerous methods that exist to connect biological health to human health with technology as an intermediary. There are technologies that can monitor at either the individual level or on the scale of entire habitats, either remotely or on-site, and through either invasive measurements or non-invasive sensing. The key opportunities in this space and important next steps are as follows. First, it is vital to integrate predictive capabilities into existing disease mapping and tracking tools. Second, it is necessary to explicitly outline biological health indicators for inclusion in technological processes. Third, we must strengthen methods to quantitatively assess biodiversity loss. Fourth, we should improve indices for species occurrence, leaf area, taxonomic diversity, vegetation height, and above-ground biomass. Fifth, there is a need to refine spatially-explicit and temporally-effective ecosystem health assessments. Last, but certainly not least, it is of the utmost importance to enhance and develop more precise viral sequencing capabilities. If all of these goals are achieved, we will be in a much better position to prevent and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks and to protect the health of human populations around the world

Some Inequalities for the Dispersion of a Random Variable whose PDF is Defined on a Finite Interval

Some inequalities for the dispersion of a random variable whose pdf is defined on a finite interval and applications are given

Real-time Three-dimensional Photoacoustic Imaging

Photoacoustic imaging is a modality that combines the benefits of two prominent imaging techniques; the strong contrast inherent to optical imaging techniques with the enhanced penetration depth and resolution of ultrasound imaging. PA waves are generated by illuminating a light-absorbing object with a short laser pulse. The deposited energy causes a pressure change in the object and, consequently, an outwardly propagating acoustic wave. Images are produced by using characteristic optical information contained within the waves. We have developed a 3D PA imaging system by using a staring, sparse array approach to produce real-time PA images. The technique employs the use of a limited number of transducers and by solving a linear system model, 3D PA images are rendered. In this thesis, the development of an omni-directional PA source is introduced as a method to characterize the shift-variant system response. From this foundation, a technique is presented to generate an experimental estimate of the imaging operator for a PA system. This allows further characterization of the object space by two techniques; the crosstalk matrix and singular value decomposition. Finally, the results of the singular value decomposition analysis coupled with the linear system model approach to image reconstruction, 3D PA images are produced at a frame rate of 0.7 Hz. This approach to 3D PA imaging has provided the foundation for 3D PA images to be produced at frame rates limited only by the laser repetition rate, as straightforward system improvements could see the imaging process reduced to tens of milliseconds