EESTEC Magazine Preview 2019-2020

PREVIEW 3D

BIOPRINTING

Blockchain

The advantage of a modern company

To

Gr aphic Design

Research

C o mp u t e r S c i e n c e

The

vs

Search

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3D

BIOPRINTING writer: Ahmet Arda PektaĹ&#x;

3D bioprinting is a computer-aided transfer process for

Secondly, the bioprinted organs and tissues are

simultaneous writing of living cells and biomaterials

expected to be used in organ and tissue transplantation.

with a prescribed layer-by-layer stacking organization

Certain bioprinted tissue types, such as nerve, cardiac,

to fabricate bioengineered constructs for tissue

blood vessel, bone, and skin, have been transplanted

engineering, regenerative medicine, or other biological

into animals to observe their functionality within a host.

studies. 3D bioprinting is similar to conventional 3D

Nevertheless, such studies have not got off the ground

printing however, 3D bioprinters utilize a living cell

in humans since the patient-specific cells are fairly new

suspension, referred to as bioink, instead of a

in bioprinting.

thermoplastic or a resin. There are also different methods used for 3D bioprinting, such as droplet-based bioprinting and laser-based bioprinting too. The use of 3D bioprinting technology exists in various areas like tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, transplantation, pharmaceutical testing, cancer research, and artificial food production.

First of all, bioprinting of organs and tissues is used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. However, bioprinting of functional organs and tissues is a challenging task because it requires the integration

The other area using the bioprinted organs and tissues

of vascular network from arteries and veins down

is pharmaceutical testing over the course of drug

to capillaries, incorporation of various cell types to

discovery, which requires a huge investment of money

reconstitute complex organ biology, limited structural,

and human resources. Yet, testing on 3D bioprinted

mechanical integrity, and long-term functionality.

organ and tissue models makes the process more cost-

Despite these limitations, several tissues that are thin or

effective and ethical option. It also helps to identify the

hollow such as blood vessels and cartilage have been

side effects of drugs and administer the drugs to

successfully bioprinted.

humans with safe dosages.

Also, scientists doing research about cancer benefit from 3D bioprinting during their research. The main difficulty in working on 2D tumor models is that they do not represent a physiologically relevant environment since they lack 3D interactions with neighboring cells and substrates. Hence, 3D bioprinting provides significant advantages to reconstitute cancer microenvironment to accurately locate various cell types and microcapillaries to study cancer pathogenesis and metastasis.

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Lastly, due to the food’s irreplaceable part in human life,

In conclusion, even though there are several arguments

3D bioprinting technology started to be used in the

against it, 3D bioprinting has rapidly gained popularity

food production industry in order to meet the increasing

thanks to making a revolutionary impact on medical

demand for food and to sort out controversies over

sciences since its appearance. Nonetheless, 3D

slaughter animals for their meat,. Moreover, for longer

bioprinting technology is in its infancy because it

crewed space voyages, artificial production food would

has to handle a couple of issues regarding biology,

be necessary. For instance, a 3D bioprinter has been

biotechnology, biomaterials, and medicine. For

used to produce artificial meat on the International

this reason, further research, development, and

Space Station�s board.

advancements are needed in multiple aspects to dynamize this technology. Besides, some promising

Although 3D bioprinting is a beneficial technology in

studies on 4D bioprinting show that

above-mentioned areas, it might lead to some ethical

taking account of the fourth dimension, time, could

concerns. The first concern which may occur is if the

lessen the period of culture time in vitro. Hence, the

patients will receive effective treatment even though

use of 4D bioprinting technology may facilitate the

they cannot afford it. The other possible concern is

fabrication of living tissues and enable mass production

whether this technology should be used for human

for pharmaceutics in the short term.

enhancement. If the technology is used to develop replacement organs and bones, it could also be used to push the limits of human capacities for military purposes.

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Gr aphic Design vs C o mp u t e r S c i e n c e writer: Lazarela Rudić

Since I study graphic engineering and design, it was always interesting to me how graphic design is valuated in computer science.

There are many different opinions about how much graphic design is included in computer science, is it even supposed to be there, is graphic design web design? Do we know which one is better?

Graphic design is a field that involves effectively conveying messages to an audience through the use of words, space, and image. Graphic designers use visual arts, typography, and various page layout techniques to create their products such as logotype, posters, book covers and many various publications. Therefore, computer programs are used. The most common is definitely Adobe Illustrator for vector graphic and Adobe Photoshop for raster. Interesting fact about graphic designers is that most of them are self-studied. There are many online tutorials for using softwares. To learn how to use tools is the easiest part, what comes after is a real issue because the possibilites are unlimited. Use of basic tools can give amazing results.

Imagine what few more additional options can do.

When it comes to Computer Science, we can say that it is a bit wide of a domain. It can be about PC, PC functions, coding, networking; almost everything you can think of related to computers, mostly software. This field of study has a huge interest amongst the young, mostly because it looks like a safe future as it can provide a lot of job opportunities.

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In between Graphic Design and Computer Science, lies Web Design. This fairly new domain can be simply explained as “ a good way of doing both things at once”. If you are familiar with Design, it will be much easier to create good looking and user-friendly websites. On the other hand, when knowing HTML and CSS, which are programming languages mostly used in Web Design, you can write the code for any website and its design. It is very interesting how in Web Design, in most cases, less is more. With pretty simple code you can do wonders in the layout of the website.

Individuals who find themselves torn between pursuing a career in coding and Graphic Design often do so because of their love for computers and the creative processes they involve. Coding is a lot more scientific than Graphic Design. On the other hand, graphic design affords the opportunity to use one’s artistic side and creativity throughout the construction and modification of images, words and shapes.

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Both graphic design and coding are beneficial in today’s modern world. There are advantages of learning and knowing each one. Coding products make everyday life easier. Using various applications for things we are doing on a daily basis gives us information, entertainment and so much different content. When it comes to graphic design studies, they are usually connected with graphic engineering so you are able to learn about the entire printing process, different types of printing, which printing technique is the best for the product and more.

In conclusion, the best thing is to do what brings joy. Graphic Design and Computer Science are connected in so many ways, the one hardly goes without another. Being professional in any of these two fields is a beneficial skill.

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To R e s e a r c h The Search writer: mACIEK ZAWILSKI

Every day we use dozens of apps on our phones.

And every day we visit dozens of websites on our computers. These apps and sites have one thing in common - virtually all of them have a tiny rectangle with an even smaller magnifying glass located somewhere in their interface - the search bar - which acts as a way to communicate with a complex structure called the search engine.

Every day we type down the items we wish to find in an online store, we use Google to gain knowledge about particular topics, we check out our favourite celebrities on Instagram and look up funny cat videos on YouTube. But how does the search engine know how to answer our questions in a satisfying way?

How does Google know that by typing “dancing queen” we most probably meant a fabulous Swedish pop song, and not a literal twisting and twirling monarch? And how does it find so many possible matches so quickly?

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words. However, this way we won’t get far. If the user searches for “duck”, and our document refers to those birds solely in plural form - “ducks” - it won’t get matched. Similarly, if there’s any misspell in the document, all we’re getting is null and void.

That’s why search engine indexing is more difficult - it consists of many processing steps, most notably: - tokenizing - separating strings of text, usually by whitespace, into separate tokens, - stemming - removal of prefixes and suffixes, such as aforementioned “-s” for plural words in English, - filters - one of the examples is removing words that are part of the language, but don’t bear much meaning such as “the”, “with” or “and”. These words are called “stop words”.

After such processes, we are ready to fill up our inverted index.

The cogs and springs

And the score is…

Typically, the search engine is based on an inverted index - a data structure best known to be used in scientific books. Somewhere near the ending cover, one can find a list of specific terms accompanied by a list of pages where that term is mentioned. This way, the reader can easily and quickly search for specific information. The same logic applies here.

Search engines save in their memory tokens - with a list of documents that contain these tokens - often using special databases, such as Elasticsearch or Solr.

But first, what are tokens? On a very basic level, tokens are essentially equal to

Now that we have our data structure, we need to know how to use it. The basis of the scoring system is often a numeric statistic called TF-IDF, which consists of two parts: - term frequency - how frequent the term is, compared to the document size. If a document mentions the searched word many times, while being comparatively small in its volume, there’s a higher chance that it’s a good match.

- inverse document frequency - which measures how frequent the term is in all documents. Its main purpose is to prevent frequently used words from overtaking the scoring

process. For instance, in a database of pets, words such as “animal” don’t help us much in finding the best match.

There are a few ways to create TF-IDF out of the two, but the most popular one is to divide TF by a natural logarithm of IDF. There are however lots of different factors in determining the score of a document, and they depend on our needs. For instance, if TFIDF was the only factor at Google, someone with vile intentions could hide words that have nothing to do with the website’s content somewhere on the page - just to increase their score. Online stores may not have to be wary of such third parties, but maybe they want to increase sales of a specific product by artificially increasing its score? And news sites definitely want to promote the latest articles, even if they don’t match as well.

Document

TF

IDF

TF-IDF

A brown fox jumps over a lazy dog

1/8

3/2

0.308

A brown cat plays with a brown dog

2/8

3/2

0.617

A red fox jumps over a green fence

0/8

3/2

0

But wait, there’s more!

There’s a ton going on for search, and we can find even more exciting topics on the horizon. Semantic search has been increasing in popularity with the introduction of better NLP mechanisms, allowing the search engine to understand the meaning behind searched words and try to answer the question in addition to providing the list of documents.

Personalized search is another example of the growing environment - being able to understand the user and match the results based on their characteristics is extremely valuable, both for companies trying to target their customers with best-suited product, and for the user him- or herself by providing them with more satisfying results.

TF-IDF scoring of a word “brown” between the documents. To simplify the scoring, stop words removal has been omitted. Notice that the third document doesn’t include the searched word and therefore its TF-IDF is equal to 0.

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Blockchain The advant age of a modern company

writer: kOSTAS CHIOTIS

These years, we are at the beginning of the 4th Industrial Revolution that a lot of new technologies are ripened together. Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Virtual & Augmented Reality, Internet of Things and Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies are the main categories of Industry 4.0 and all of them are here to improve people’s lives. For the companies, digital transformation is a need, not an option, because things are changing faster than the three previous industrial revolutions, steam-powered factories, application of science to mass production and manufacturing, and digitization. But the category that gives advantage to a company the most is Blockchain!

First of all, what is Blockchain?

It is a public row of data, impossible to edit and grouped by time. The first-ever application for blockchain was the Bitcoin in 2008 when it began as a solution to a Math’s problem in the Finance field. After Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies like Etherium or Libra that are based on Blockchain technology appeared. Transactions between cryptocurrencies are the main data category that is saved on Blockchain. That doesn’t deny that in the last few years there have been a lot of opportunities

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at different industries like Health, Insurance, Education and others.

What is so different and innovative about this Technology? The answer to that question would be the fact that this is the first time in the history of IT that we can’t edit, move or delete anything or anyone from the public data.

There are two reasons behind this. The first is about the computers where the data is saved. Information, instead of being saved on a local device, is kept on many users’ computers, all over the world.

That characteristic gives Blockchain its security and trust.

The other reason is about the blocks’ structure. Each block N has a group of transactions and a hash* value. As for block N+1, it has the hash of the previous position, block N, as a chain. If a malevolent user tries to edit a block N, a new block N1 would be created and the chain stopped by that new N1 block because block N+1 still has the hash of block N. Finally, how can a company benefit from Blockchain technology? First, it could

send all its databases on the blockchain, thus it would have more security from hackers and spend less on equipment. Second, it could use cryptocurrencies as payment to give customers an extra choice or even create its own. Cryptocurrency is nothing more than coding and cryptography together. It’s the first time in history where we have decentralized money, that doesn’t come from individual groups, banks or states. This is one of the biggest milestones of Blockchain Technology. Third, the company can simply create the blocks just by downloading the specific open-source software, and then, it will be able to change its transaction to be 100% through the Blockchain, if wanted. The blocks are created by a computer, called “miner” that mines them and this specific computer is paid with the cryptocurrency of blockchain.

Last but not least, the smart contracts will be included on the companies’ services. Now a company has the ability to control the transfer of digital currencies or assets, between third parties, by the defined rules and the automatically enforced obligations by the Smart Contracts.

*hash: a value obtained from cryptographic hash functions