Technology and Agriculture

Technology and Agriculture

Technology has played a big role in developing the agricultural industry. Today it is possible to grow crops in a desert by use of agricultural biotechnology. With this technology, plants have been engineered to survive in drought conditions. 

Karehka Ramey mentioned in his research the use of mobile apps by a farmer to calculate the amount of grass available in the field. This saves the farmer time and money, they will know how much is left and what to feed their animals. Technology has turned farming into a real business, now farmers have electrified every process, a consumer can place an order directly online, and the product will be transported from the farm to the consumer in time when it’s still fresh. This saves the farmer money and it cuts out mediators who tend to buy low from farmers and sell high to end consumers. Every farmer uses this technology in their own way. Some use it to create fertilizers, others use it to market their products, and others use it in production. So as a farmer, you have to specify what you need.

 Below is a summary on the use of Technology in agriculture:

·         Use of machines on farms. Now a farmer can cultivate on more than 2 acres of land with less labor, and can cut costs. In agriculture, time and production are so important; you have to plant in time, harvest in time and deliver to stores in time. Modern agricultural technology allows a small number of people to grow vast quantities of food and fiber in a shortest period of time.

·    Modern transportation and cooling facilities: This helps in making products available on markets in time from the farm. These are used by farmers to deliver tomatoes and other perishable crops to keep them fresh as they transport them to the market. These cooling facilities are installed in food transportation trucks, so crops like tomatoes will stay fresh upon delivery. This is a win-win situation for both the consumers of these agricultural products and the farmers. The consumers’ gets these products while still fresh and the farmer will sell all their products because the demand will be high.

·    Genetically produced plants like potatoes, can resist diseases and pests, which rewards the farmer with good yields. These crops grow very fast.

·     Irrigation of plants. In dry areas like deserts, farmers have embraced technology to irrigate their crops. A good example is in Egypt, where farmers use water pumps to collect water from river Nile to their crops. Most of these farmers grow rice which needs a lot of water, so they manage to grow this rice using irrigation methods enhanced by advanced technology. Advanced water sprinklers are being used to irrigate big farms and this helps the crops get enough water which is essential in their growth. Some farmers mix nutrients in this water, so also improves on the growth of these crops. 

Importance of mental peace

Importance of mental peace

Peace is a civil right of every individual. Stopping violence, saving lives and avoiding any kind of dispute are the key steps to build peaceful community. But the most important thing is one’s inward peace. Inner peace eventually leads to external peace. There cannot be a social conflict unless there is individual disturbance and conflict in one’s own self because society consists of nothing but many people like you, like me, like anybody. If every individual is filled with mental peace, society will have a completely peaceful atmosphere around. By creating peace in your inner world, in your mind, you bring it into your external world, and into other people’s lives. Don’t hold grudges. Learn to forget and forgive.

Mental peace can only be attained when you are happy (or at least accustomed) to your circumstances and surrounding environment. You cannot control the circumstances that you are in presently but you can always improve them for yourself and others around you by working towards a better future.

Jillian Carey, Ph.D, psychologist at EMU Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) researched on mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, suicide and prevention to the 70 attendees. Carey said that college students especially should learn more information about mental health.

“Mental health issues can negatively affect students academically, not everyone has mental health problems but everyone has mental health. Learning how to care for it is a lifelong process,” she said.

According to Carey most common emotional issues are depression, grief, stress and anxiety. She also gave statistics for EMU’S student body. At EMU, 4.8 percent of students had feelings of hopelessness, about 88.4 percent felt overwhelmed and 11 percent of students considered suicide. Symptoms of depression include feeling down, losing interest, problems with appetite and feelings of worthlessness. She suggested that students should get help if they start to feel sad for longer than two weeks. Moreover, she also provided tips on how to deal with anxiety. Getting enough sleep, a good support system and eating a healthy diet can all help with feelings of anxiety. When diagnosing anxiety, she specifically looks for persistent worry and tension, difficulties with concentration and sleep, and discomfort in social situations. If these symptoms are interfering with daily life, class performance and relationships treatment should be sought out.

Stigmas were also addressed. A stigma is when a person won’t discuss their struggle with a disorder out of fear of being stereotyped or judged. Carey encouraged students that they are not alone in their struggle. Most people will experience a mental health concern at some time in their life. Carey stressed how important it is to get support and encouraged students who are dealing with mental health issues to utilize campus resources.

Many research studies have shown that excessive anxiety and stress can contribute to physical problems such as heart disease, ulcers, and colitis. Anxiety and stress can also reduce the strength of the immune system, making people more vulnerable to conditions ranging from the common cold to cancer.

Psychological problems also increase the likelihood that people will make poor choices which can contribute to medical problems. Smoking, excessive alcohol or drug use, poor eating habits, and reckless behavior can all result in severe physical problems and the need for medical services.

Try to do these: -

§  Be confident of your choices.

§  Stop worrying too much and enjoy the journey of life

§  Help others including humans and animals

§  Stop being negative and critical about everything

§  Trying mixing up with your surrounding (try to indulge

in conversation with various people and try to understand

their thinking and way of life).

§  Stop judging people.

§  Indulge yourself in some sport activity

§  Try reading

§  Try to meditate

§  Hang out sometime with old people and children

Modern Technology

Modern Technology

Modern technology is simply an advancement of old technology, the impact of technology in modern life is immeasurable, we use technology in different ways and sometimes the way we implement various technologies ends up harming our lives or the society we live in.

Technology today has made life easier and quicker but dangerous. As we look at technologies, questions are raised. Many people dislike the production of technology. Technology also creates financial problems in families because most technologies are very expensive to buy. People who cannot afford to buy this kind of technology live a stressful life. They have to do everything the old fashioned way, which is time consuming. There are more advantages in technologies than disadvantages.

Modern technology has revolutionized the way people all over the world communicates and interacts. This revolution has led to a system of globalization which has fundamentally changed modern society in both good and bad ways.

The most important technological change over the past 20 years is the advent and popularization of the Internet. The Internet connects billions of people around the globe and allows a type of connectivity in ways which the world has never seen. Companies are able to do business with consumers from other countries instantaneously, friends and families are able to talk to one another and see each other regardless of location, and information sits at the fingertips of every person with a computer, tablet or phone.

Modern technology simplifies life in so many ways and everyone defines technology in their own way. To some people, it means complicated electronic devices. To others, it means the source of the radical changes that are happening in all phases of life. Others define technology as science applied to practical purposes. Some people fear to use technology while others see it as the source of longer and more complete lives.

Apple, Google, Amazon and others are interested in buying Toshiba's memory chip business

    A group of top tech companies like Apple, Google and Amazon are interested in purchasing Toshiba's memory chip business. The company that succeeds in buying the division will be obtaining the second largest provider of memory chips for smartphones and computers behind Samsung. The business accounted for 25% of Toshiba's $50.9 billion USD in revenue during its last fiscal year. The company is still bleeding red ink, and could report a $9 billion loss this year thanks to issues that have nothing to do with the memory chip business. But selling it to the highest bidder could bring in some much needed cash for Toshiba.
    Toshiba has reportedly finished the first round of bidding. One of the companies rumored to be interested is Taiwan's Hon Hai, which bid more than $18 billion for the division according to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. Also known as Foxconn, Hon Hai is the manufacturer that assembles a majority of Apple iPhone units as well as other big name mobile devices. Last year, Hon Hai purchased Japanese display manufacturer Sharp for $3.8 billion.
    Toshiba shareholders on Thursday agreed to allow the company to spin off its NAND flash memory business, paving the way for a sale of the memory chip division. Besides Apple, Google and Amazon, other companies said to be bidding on the Toshiba division include Western Digital Corporation (which already runs a Japanese based chip plant with Toshiba), Micron Technology, and SK Hynix Inc. According to reports in the Japanese media, Google and Amazon are interested in using the memory chips for their cloud services.

The black OnePlus 3T is a very nice black phone

      Last week, OnePlus announced that it would be selling a new color of the 3T smartphone, dubbed midnight black. The new color is now available for purchase and now that I've put my hands on one, I must say it’s a very nice black.

     See, black phones can be boring, or nondescript. But a good black phone can be stunning — Apple’s jet black iPhone 7 and Samsung’s black Note 7 (RIP) are great examples of black phones that are beautiful to look at.
     The midnight black 3T is not like those, as it has a matte finish instead of gloss. To be frank, its finish very similar to the matte black iPhone 7. But that’s not a bad thing, as the matte black iPhone 7 is also a very nice black phone. OnePlus says it tested “more than 30 color iterations” and used “three carefully applied dark coatings 14 microns thick” which “maintains the natural look and feel of metal.” It also added an anti-fingerprint coating, which appears to work rather well. The phone comes in a special black box, to further differentiate it from the other colors, which come in white boxes.

Google Home is getting a bunch of new smart home integrations

    Google Home is becoming a much more capable control center for smart home devices today, with the addition of support from several more products and systems.

    August, Wink, LIFX, TP-Link, Rachio, Vivint, and Best Buy’s Insignia are all announcing integrations with Google Home, allowing owners of their products to issue voice controls through Google’s speaker. TechCrunch reports that First Alert, Frigidaire, Logitech, Geeni, and Anova are also adding integrations.

Here’s what some of them will let you do:

• August will let you lock its smart lock and check whether it’s locked or not 
• Wink will let you control lights and thermostats connected to a Wink Hub 
• LIFX will let you control the color and brightness of its lights 
• TP-Link will let you control its smart lights, outlets, and switches 
• Rachio will let you control its sprinkler system by voice 
• Vivint will let you control products connected to its system by voice

Hackers promised an iCloud apocalypse — but probably can't deliver

        When the Turkish Crime Family first broke into the news last week, they sounded like a crisis in the making. The group claimed to have stolen a massive trove of iCloud credentials — the first over 300 million, then as many as 559 million — and unless they got $75,000 from the company before April 7th, they would start remotely wiping phones. Apple responded with a limited denial, stating that company servers hadn’t been breached, but allowing for the possibility that the credentials had been obtained some other way. As journalists began to confirm smaller sets of profiles released by the group, it gave Apple users plenty of reason to be nervous. Were we headed toward some kind of mass iCloud hack?
        Now, those threats are starting to unravel. Today, ZDNet examined the largest account drop yet — just under 70,000 login / password pairs — and found that 99.9 percent of the pairs matched accounts already included in a database of previous leaks. In short, the Turkish Crime Family was working from recycled public data. At the same time, Motherboard obtained documents showing the group using the data for a quick cash out, asking for $3,000 from the breach notification site Leakbase in exchange for bringing good publicity to the service. 

        The Turkish Crime Family’s trick was making that credential-stuffing attack seem like something larger and more threatening. By claiming hundreds of millions of accounts and threatening attacks on a specific zero-hour, the old credentials suddenly seemed like an imminent threat — worth paying attention to, and maybe even worth paying for. But as more details came out, that case got weaker and weaker. It’s still hard to say for sure what will happen on April 7th — and again, entirely worth resetting your passwords — but the chances of a hacking apocalypse are looking slimmer by the day.

Samsung’s new Bixby assistant on the Galaxy S8

        Samsung’s new virtual assistant, Bixby, is a different sort of thing than what you’re used to. Where Siri, Google, and Alexa are focused on collecting and understanding information out on the internet and then answering your questions about it, Bixby is trying to help you use your own phone. Samsung’s goal is to make it so that if you don’t want to, you don’t have to touch your device at all — “anything you can do with touch, you can do with voice” is the common refrain we’ve heard from them.

        Bixby is built on way more simplistic pitch. It actually consists of three different components that are all interrelated.

BIXBY VOICE: TALK INSTEAD OF TOUCH

        This is the headline feature for Bixby, and we know that it can work in at least the following Samsung apps: phone, messaging, settings, camera, reminder, contacts, and gallery. In those apps, instead of trying to find the thing you want, you can just ask Bixby to do it for you.

BIXBY VISION: AUGMENTED REALITY

        The part of Bixby we did get to test a bit was the Vision aspect. It’s essentially an augmented reality camera that can identify objects in real time and then search for them on various services. You can launch it directly in the camera app or from Bixby Home.

BIXBY HOME: YET ANOTHER PANE OF WIDGETS

        When you swipe over from your home screen or hit the Bixby button, you’ll get taken to Bixby home. It’s a vertically scrolling list of a bunch of information that Bixby can interact with. You’ll find stuff like weather, fitness activity, buttons for controlling your smart home gadgets, and more.

The Oculus Rift turns one 🎂

        The virtual reality system very well may have been the most important consumer gadget to be released last year, and for all the critiques and praise that have pushed it through 2016, it’s clear we’re still looking at a technology that hasn’t scratched its fullest potential.

        For better or worse, Facebook’s Oculus has been the poster boy for VR and will likely continue to be. The Kickstarter-backed company sent ripples through tech communities in 2014 when it was announced that Facebook would be acquiring it for $2 billion. It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing since then, the company has filled Facebook’s year with a disproportionate amount of bad press that will undoubtedly provide a nice background to whatever David Fincher film eventually chronicles the rise of Oculus VR.

        For Facebook, creating industry-standard hardware may be the easiest challenge they have. The real task is getting a world of users to let go of their skepticism and give VR a shot. Oculus may have had a rougher start with the first iteration of the Rift than many would have hoped, but Facebook is still showing a surprisingly level-headed vision for a technology that’s final form still dwells beyond the horizon.