News of the week selected by Impactscool – July 13th
13 July 2020 | Written by La redazione
Perhaps the younger ones do not remember it, but there was a time when the standard for recording data was magnetic tape cassettes. Despite being an outdated technology, it nevertheless has its own use niche. People or companies that need to store huge amounts of data cheaply often turn to cassettes with magnetic tapes, much less expensive than the hard drives that are commonly used. Fuji has recently developed the basis for creating a cassette capable of storing up to 400 TB. Accessing the data stored in these devices will not be fast but certainly for data to be stored in massive quantities it is a more than sensible approach. Are we facing a return of the tapes?
The pink snow on the Italian glaciers
In different areas of the Alps, especially on the Presena glacier, there is something special: pink snow. The phenomenon is due to the presence of a particular seaweed, called Ancylonema nordenskioeldii common in many arctic areas. Their presence in Italian glaciers is nothing new but what is out of the ordinary is the quantity. Algae of this type are increasingly present due to global warming which brings more snow to melt and provide the precious water in which these tiny algae live. The problem is that the Ancylonema darkens the snow and therefore absorb more heat from the Sun, accelerating the melting of the ice and providing even more water to the algae that continue to multiply, accelerating the melting of the glaciers.
Atlante i4.0: the map of Italian innovation
The map showing the almost 600 Italian structures offering services and technologies for innovation and digitalization of businesses is online. Born from the collaboration between Unioncamere and the Ministry of Economic Development, the portal aims to help entrepreneurs find their way among the main existing structures that support technology transfer 4.0 processes. But not only. To facilitate the meeting between supply and demand of highly specialized figures in advanced technologies, the Digital Atlas also presents the mapping of all 104 Higher Technical Institutes (ITS) present in Italy. More than 50% of the structures surveyed are located in the North, followed by the South (28%) and the Center (21%). Almost one in three establishments provide support services for 3D printing, the so-called additive manufacturing. But there is no lack of centers able to support companies in data management: 68 structures deal with Cloud, 68 with big data and analytics. However, there is still ample room for improvement to support companies in “frontier” technologies: only 9 structures provide assistance on Blockchain and 16 on artificial intelligence.
Tuna Scope: artificial intelligence that selects tuna
Selecting the right tuna steak to turn into tasty sushi is not easy, many restaurateurs in Japan know it well when they buy fish at the specialized market in the morning. The most prized and appreciated catch is certainly tuna, but selecting the right slice is not easy. For this reason, the Tuna Scope app was born: through an artificial intelligence trained with thousands of photos of slices, the system is able to evaluate and classify tuna according to different parameters that can help restaurateurs to choose the best piece . Compared to the ability of human experts, the app is able to choose the best slice in 4 out of 5 cases. Not everyone is happy with this innovation, however, some experts in the art of preparing sushi refuse to use the app to choose the best catch.
