Once there was a time when mainframes walked the earth and reigned supreme over all the land. Lowly users were far too unclean and unschooled to commune with these vastly superior beings made of silicon and software, and so there arose among us a programming priesthood who served as intermediaries between human and machine. Like the monks of old, who studiously labored over the production of el...

Automation is “the application of machines to tasks once performed by human beings, or increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible”, Encyclopaedia Britannica [1]. The term automation itself was coined in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company. The idea of automating processes and systems started many years earlier than this as part of the agricultural and industrial revolutions of th...

Introduction It is a great pleasure to be here in Oslo, nearly 30 years after I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I wish to thank the Norwegian Nobel Institute and the U.S. Embassy in Norway for arranging this lecture. Today, I am here to take stock of the contributions of the so-called “Green Revolution,” and explore the role of science and technology in the coming decades to improve the quan...

on an earlier version are acknowledged with gratitude. 1 North (1981, p. 166) comes close to linking the institutional changes of the late eighteenth century with the Industrial 1 Revolution when he maintains that it was explained by " a combination of better-specified and enforced property rights and increasingly efficient and expanding markets. " North and Weingast (1989, p. 831) are more pru...

Prevailing views suggest the Industrial Revolution began in Europe because markets had gradually become more efficient and by the 18 century the scope of economic activity was far larger than in other parts of the world. This paper compares the actual performance of markets in Europe and China, two regions of the world that were relatively advanced in the pre-industrial period, but would start ...

This paper presents an early version of an open extendable research and educational platform to support users in learning and mastering the different types of rare-singing. The platform is interfaced with a portable helmet to synchronously capture multiple signals during singing in a non-laboratory environment. Collected signals reflect articulatory movements and induced vibrations. The platfor...

This paper focuses on lessons that can be learned from looking at the history of traditional architecture. When architects stayed aloof from the common building activities during the Industrial Revolution, a low standard of building resulted, and the needs of the people were made subservient to the needs of industry. Can we apply lessons from traditional architecture to software? This paper ref...

background toluene is a cyclic aromatic hydrocarbon which is widely used as an industrial feedstock and as a solvent. it is one of the major parts of pollution in oil-contaminated environments. objectives the main aim of this study was to isolate and characterize a bacterium with high potential application in toluene bioremediation. materials and methods to isolate a toluene-degrading bacterium...