Ergonomics

ERGONOMICS:

                                           

Since human being feel tired after very short interval so it was necessary to make computer reliable to use for long time and this field helps a lot to solve that problem.

Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

    Ergonomics is the field which makes various machines and devices easy to use and this field is very useful in the designing of computer because now a days computer is most useful device. The ergonomists makes the use of computer easier and reliable and convenient.

E-commerce

Importance and History of E-Commerce

By definition, e-commerce means the buying or selling of goods and services over the Internet. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 66 percent of the adults online have purchased something over the Internet, whether it's books, shoes or a Caribbean cruise.

But if you extend e-commerce's definition to include researching products and services online without buying anything, or bidding on an online auction but not winning, then the number of adults who participate in e-commerce jumps to 93 percent. That's just about all of us.

Even with a slumping global economy, online retail sales continue to rise. According to recent forecasts by Forrester Research, online retail sales will increase 17 percent in 2008 to reach an annual total of $204 billion, with the biggest sellers being clothing, computers and cars.

E-commerce's history is short but fascinating. Over the course of a few decades, networking and computing technology have improved at exponential rates. Powerful personal computers linked to global information networks have powered a whole new world of intellectual, social and financial interactions. And this is only the beginning.

How E-commerce Started

As far back as the 1960s, businesses were using primitive computer networks to conduct electronic transactions . Using something called Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), a company's computer system could share business documents -- invoices, order forms, shipping confirmation -- with another company's computer. In the beginning, each company had its own standards for formatting these documents. But in 1979, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) came up with something called ASC X12, a universal standard for sharing business documents over electronic networks.

Prior to that, in the late 1960s, the military developed ARPAnet to ensure that crucial communications were circulated in the event of a nuclear attack. The original ARPAnet connected four large U.S. research universities and relied on huge, unwieldy computers. In 1971, researchers developed the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) for dialing into the ARPAnet from an individual computer terminal . But the greatest networking evolution came in 1982, when ARPAnet switched over to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the same packet-switched technology that powers the modern Internet.

By the early 1980s, individual computer users -- still mostly at major research universities -- were sending e-mails, participating in listservs and newsgroups, and sharing documents over networks like BITNET and USENET.

CompuServe was one of the first popular networking services for home PC users, providing tools like e-mail, message boards and chat rooms. In the mid-1980s, Compuserve added a service called the Electronic Mall, where users could purchase items directly from 110 online merchants . While the Electronic Mall wasn't a huge success, it was one of the first examples of e-commerce as we know it today.

In 1990, a researcher named Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN, from its French name) proposed a hypertext-based web of information that a user could navigate using a simple interface called a browser. He called it the "WorldWideWeb". And in 1991, the National Science Foundation lifted a ban on commercial businesses operating over the Internet, paving the way for Web-based e-commerce.

In 1993, Marc Andreesen at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) introduced the first widely distributed Web browser called Mosaic. Netscape 1.0's release in 1994 included an important security protocol called Secure Socket Layer (SSL) that encrypted messages on both the sending and receiving side of an online transaction. SSL ensured that personal information like names, addresses and credit card numbers could be encrypted as they passed over the Internet.

In 1994 and 1995, the first third-party services for processing online credit card sales began to appear. First Virtual and CyberCash were two of the most popular. Also in 1995, a company called Verisign began developing digital IDs, or certificates, that verified the identity of online businesses. Soon, Verisign switched its focus to certifying that a Web site's e-commerce servers were properly encrypted and secure.

Now let's take a closer look at the two companies that transformed e-commerce in the mid-1990s: Amazon and eBay.

Most power ful Supercomputers.

Most powerful Supercomputer:

Tianhe-2:

For the third consecutive time, Tianhe-2, a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, has retained its position as the world’s No. 1 system with a performance of 33.86 Pflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the Linpack benchmark.

  It was developed by a team of 1,300 scientists and engineers.

 The development of Tianhe-2 was sponsored by the 863 High Technology Program, initiated by the Chinese government, the government of Guangdong province, and the government of Guangzhou city. It was built by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in collaboration with the Chinese IT firm Inspur. Inspur manufactured the printed circuit boardsand helped with the installation and testing of the system software.

 FLOPS (for FLoating-point Operations Per Second)

According to NUDT, Tianhe-2 will be used for simulation, analysis, and government security applications.

With 16,000 computer nodes, each comprising two Intel Ivy Bridge Xeon processors and three Xeon Phi coprocessor chips, it represents the world's largest installation of Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi chips, counting a total of 3,120,000 cores.Each of the 16,000 nodes possess 88 gigabytes of memory (64 used by the Ivy Bridge processors, and 8 gigabytes for each of the Xeon Phi processors). The total CPU plus coprocessor memory is 1,375 TiB (approximately 1.34 PiB).

During the testing phase, Tianhe-2 was laid out in a non-optimal confined space. When assembled at its final location, the system will have a theoretical peak performance of 54.9 petaflops. At peak power consumption, the system itself would draw 17.6 megawatts of power. Including external cooling, the system would draw an aggregate of 24 megawatts. The computer complex would occupy 720 square meters of space.

The front-end system consists of 4096 Galaxy FT-1500 CPUs, a SPARC derivative designed and built by NUDT. Each FT-1500 has 16 cores and a 1.8 GHz clock frequency. The chip has a performance of 144 gigaflops and runs on 65 watts. The interconnect, called the TH Express-2, designed by NUDT, utilizes a fat tree topology with 13 switches each of 576 ports.

Tianhe-2 runs on Kylin Linux, a version of the operating system developed by NUDT. Resource management is based on Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM).

Fiber optics

Fiber Optics:

Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. First developed in the 1970s, fiber-optic communication systems have revolutionized the telecommunications industry and have played a major role in the advent of theInformation age. Because of its advantages over electrical transmission, optical fibers have largely replaced copper wire communications in core networks in the develope world. Optical fiber is used by many telecommunications companies to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication, and cable television signals. Researchers at Bell Labs have reached internet speeds of over 100 petabits per second using fiber-optic communication.

The process of communicating using fiber-optics involves the following basic steps: Creating the optical signal involving the use of a transmitter, relaying the signal along the fiber, ensuring that the signal does not become too distorted or weak, receiving the optical signal, and converting it into an electrical signal.

Role of Computers In education

Role of Computers is Education:

Computers have changed the way we work, be it any profession. Therefore, it is only natural that the role of computers in education has been given a lot of importance in recent years. Computers play a vital role in every field. They aid industrial processes, they find application in medicine; they are the reason why software industries developed and flourished and they play an important role in education. This is also why the education system has made computer education a part of school curriculum. Considering the use of computer technology is almost every sphere of life, it is important for everyone to have at least the basic knowledge of using computers. Let's look at what role computer technology plays in the education sector.Computer teaching plays a key role in the modern education system. Students find it easier to refer to the Internet than searching for information in fat books. The process of learning has gone beyond learning from prescribed textbooks. Internet is a much larger and easier-to-access storehouse of information. When it comes to storing retrieved information, it is easier done on computers than maintaining hand-written notes.

Computers are a brilliant aid in teaching.

Online education has revolutionized the education industry. Computer technology has made the dream of distance learning, a reality. Education is no longer limited to classrooms. It has reached far and wide, thanks to computers. Physically distant locations have come closer due to Internet accessibility. So, even if students and teachers are not in the same premises, they can very well communicate with one another. There are many online educational courses, whereby students are not required to attend classes or be physically present for lectures. They can learn from the comfort of their homes and adjust timings as per their convenience.

Computers have given impetus to distance education.

Computers facilitate effective presentation of information. Presentation software like PowerPoint and animation software like Flash among others can be of great help to teachers while delivering lectures. Computers facilitate audio-visual representation of information, thus making the process of learning interactive and interesting. Computer-aided teaching adds a fun element to education. Teachers hardly use chalk and board today. They bring presentations on a flash drive, plug it in to a computer in the classroom, and the teaching begins. There's color, there's sound, there's movement - the same old information comes forth in a different way and learning becomes fun. The otherwise not-so-interesting lessons become interesting due to audio-visual effects. Due to the visual aid, difficult subjects can be explained in better ways. Things become easier to follow, thanks to the use of computers in education.

Computer software help better presentation of information.

Internet can play an important role in education. As it is an enormous information base, it can be harnessed for retrieval of information on a variety of subjects. The Internet can be used to refer to information on different subjects. Both teachers and students benefit from the Internet. Teachers can refer to it for additional information and references on the topics to be taught. Students can refer to web sources for additional information on subjects of their interest. The Internet helps teachers set test papers, frame questions for home assignments and decide project topics. And not just academics, teachers can use web sources for ideas on sports competitions, extracurricular activities, picnics, parties and more.

Computers enable access to the Internet which has information on literally everything.

Computers enable storage of data in the electronic format, thereby saving paper. Memory capacities of computer storage devices are in gigabytes. This enables them to store huge chunks of data. Moreover, these deveices are compact. They occupy very less space, yet store large amounts of data. Both teachers and students benefit from the use of computer technology. Presentations, notes and test papers can be stored and transferred easily over computer storage devices. Similarly, students can submit homework and assignments as soft copies. The process becomes paperless, thus saving paper. Plus, the electronic format makes data storage more durable. Electronically erasable memory devices can be used repeatedly. They offer robust storage of data and reliable data retrieval.

Computer hard drives and storage devices are an excellent way to store data.

This was about the role of computers in education. But we know, it's not just the education sector which computers have impacted. They are of great use in every field. Today, a life without computers is unimaginable. This undelines the importance of computer education. Knowledge of computers can propel one's career in the right direction. Computers are a part of almost every industry today. They are no longer limited any specific field. They are used in networking, for information access and data storage and also in the processing and presentation of information. Computers should be introduced early in education. I don't think I am making an overstatement in saying that computer education is as fundamental as learning English. Yes, it is.