Part MMDXV
Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4
Chapter 5: PERCEPTION of TECHNOLOGICAL and APPLIED
INFORMATICS
Chapter 5: PERCEPTION of INFORMATICS
TECHNOLOGICAL and APPLIED
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 2/1
CONTENTS
Deep thoughts
Relations between science and technology
Basics of technological informatics.
Case studies
Main Grand challenges of technological informatics
Case studies
Relations between scientific and technological
informatics.
Other big challenges of technological informatics
Basics of applied informatics.
Case studies
Challenges of applied informatics.
Appendix - Human Genome Project
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 3/1
DEEP THOUGHTS
The forces unleashed by the scientific revolution of the
seventeenth century and the industrial revolution of the
nineteen century helped to create the modern world.
D. E. Stokes, 1997
It is obvious that most of the basic secrets of nature
have been unravelled by men who were moved simply
by intellectual curiosity, who wanted to discover new
knowledge for its own sake.
The application of the new knowledge usually comes
later, often a good deal later; it is also achieved by
other men, with different gifts and interests.
Murray Committee Report, 1957
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 4/1
VANNEVAR BUSH’s VIEW
In late 1944 president of USA, F. D. Roosevelt, asked Vannevar Bush, director of wartime
Office of Scientific Research and Development to look into the role of science in peace
time.
Bush’s committee created a report ”Science, the Endless Frontiers” that influenced the
development of science, world-wide for the next 50 years. Some of the ideas of Bush:
Basic research is to be performed without thought of
practical ends.
Basic research is to contribute to general knowledge
and an understanding of nature and its laws.
Basic research is the peacemaker of technological
progress.
After 50 years it has turned out that a fresh view on the relation between science and
technology is needed.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 5/1
DIFFERENT VIEWS and OBSERVATIONS - I.
Relations between science and technology keeps being
explored since ”second industrial revolution” and new
views have emerged:
It started to be clear only after the ”second” industrial
revolution in the late nineteenth century that
technological progress may much depend on advances
in science.
That was due to the fact that the technical progress in
chemical dyes and electrical power as well as in public
health depended on advances in chemistry, physics and
biology.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 6/1
DIFFERENT VIEWS and OBSERVATIONS - II.
Rapid development of technology in second half of 20th
century made quite clear two points:
1 Many advances in science were initiated by advances
in technology (microscope, telescope, computer).
2 Many big advances in technology have not been
initiated by advances in pure science, but due to
small advances in technology or due to huge
demands of society/market.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 7/1
SCIENCE versus TECHNOLOGY
The origin of science is usually traced back to Greek
times (600-300) BC. The modern concept of
technology came into common use only in the
ninetheen century.
Relation between basic science and technology assumed
its modern form during ”second industrial revolution”.
Basic position is that
Basic science concentrates on understanding
Applied science and technology concentrates on use
Since that time
Technology becomes increasingly science based.
The choice of problems and conduct of research are increasingly inspired by societal
needs.
Informatization of all sciences and technologies blurs up
differences between science and technology.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 8/1
THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES
Basic task of modern universities.
To disseminate knowledge
Basic task of research universities (20th century)
1. To produce knowledge
2. To disseminate knowledge
Current tasks of top universities (21th century)
1. To produce knowledge
2. To disseminate knowledge
3. To put knowledge into a use
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 9/1
NEW PERCEPTION of INFORMATICS - SUMMARY from
CHAPTER 4
NEW PERCEPTION of INFORMATICS
- SUMMARY from CHAPTER 4
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 10/1
NEW PERCEPTION of INFORMATICS
Informatics has four very closely related components:
scientific,
engineering,
methodological,
applied.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 11/1
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATICS - briefly
The main scientific goal of Informatics is to study
laws, limitations, paradigms and phenomena of the
information worlds.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 12/1
INFORMATICS as a FUNDAMENTAL SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE I
As a scientific discipline of a very broad scope and deep
nature, Informatics has many goals. Its main task is to
discover, explore and exploit in depth, the laws,
limitations, paradigms, concepts, models, theories,
phenomena, structures and processes of both natural and
virtual information processing worlds.
To achieve its tasks, scientific Informatics concentrates on
developing new, information processing based,
understanding of the universe, evolution, nature, life (both
natural and artificial), brain and mind processes,
intelligence, creativity, information storing, processing and
transmission systems and tools, complexity, security, and
other basic phenomena of information processing worlds.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 13/1
INFORMATICS as a FUNDAMENTAL SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE II
In order to meet its goals, the scientific Informatics
develops close relations with other sciences and technology
fields - currently especially with Physics, Biology and
Chemistry, on one hand, and with electronics, optics,
nano- and bio-technologies on the other hand.
The basis of the relationship between Informatics and the
natural sciences rests first of all on the fact that
information carriers are always elements of the physical,
biological or chemical worlds, and consequently
information processing is governed and constrained by
their laws and limitations. Of importance is also that
information processes are an inherent part of the basic
aspects of the nature and life.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 14/1
INFORMATICS as a FUNDAMENTAL SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE III
Informatics as a science includes numerous theories needed
for its development to depth and in broadness. Some
theories are abstract, others quite specific, and some
theories are oriented on making better use of the outcomes
of the scientific Informatics to create a scientific basis of
technological informatics and informatics-driven
methodology.
To meet its scientific goals, Informatics has to develop a
whole variety of subareas. Some are deeply abstract and
appear to be, at the first sight, quite remote from the
main tasks and interest of the current engineering or
applied Informatics, yet they serve to develop deep insights
into the key problems and powerful conceptual tools.prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 15/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE
INFORMATICS as a TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 16/1
MAIN DRIVING FORCES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS - I.
Military interests (design and testing arms, modelling
and simulation of combats strategies, unmanned
planes, intelligent weapons, fighting robots, surveillance
techniques, ......)
Modeling and simulation of complex and huge universe,
nature, life and society real and virtual processes.
Top science and technology projects (space travels,
cosmology, high energy physics, cells and molecular
research, brain and genome sequencing research,...)
Medicine and health care (models of human bodies,
design of nanobots, to fight diseases and death, to
make hume life much longer, active and healthy, to
develop drugs.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 17/1
MAIN DRIVING FORCES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS -
II.
Top science and technology projects (space travels,
modeling huge nature ohenomena, brain and genome
sequencing research,...)
Needs to build computer with information processing
power larger than that of humans brains.
Needs to improve and overcome human intelligence,
creativity, sensing,...
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 18/1
MAIN DRIVING FORCES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS-
III.
Attempts to design global computer and
communication networks.
Attempts to learn from nature how to do information
processing.
Attempts to make new generations of WWW.
Attempts to keep validity of Moore law in general, and
to develop exascale and more powerfull computing in
particular.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 19/1
INFORMATICS as a TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE - short
description - I
As a technology disciplines, Informatics concentrates on
the design, analysis, validation and verification of the
natural and men-made devices used for acquiring, mining,
storing, structring, processing, transmition and
vizualization data, information and knowledge.
Informatics as a technology discipline concentrates,
currently, mainly on the development of
elements/components, hardware and software
architectures and systems for storage, computations,
communications, networks, visualisation, robotics and wide
range of services.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 20/1
INFORMATICS as a TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE - short
description - II
Informatics as a technology discipline concentrates also on
theories and methods of information processing and
communication systems specification, correct and efficient
design, implementation, analysis, verification, evolution,
evaluation, maintenance and utilisation.
Concentration is mainly on the development of the
underlying theories, methods and tools that are either
quite universal or at least relevant to many applications.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 21/1
INFORMATICS as a TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE - short description - III
Scalability, availability, reconfigurability, persistence,
sustainability, performance, reliability, safety and privacy,
as well as assimilation of new supporting technologies, are
some of the key issues.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 22/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - I.
As a technology discipline, Informatics concentrates:
On the specification, design, analysis, validation,
verification and maintenance of natural and especially
human-made (hardware) devices and (software)
systems used for acquiring, mining, retrieving, storing,
processing, imaging and transmitting data, information
and knowledge.
On the development of tools and methodologies (for
example specification and programming languages,
methodologies and systems) to make an efficient use of
such devices and systems.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 23/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - II.
Technological informatics concentrates much also on the
design of more and more intelligent information processing
systems and robots that could either simulate or even
outperform living beings and especially humans in various
body or mind activities.
Information digitalization and (structured and concise)
representation; abstraction representation and structuring;
designs specification, developments, analysis, validation,
verification, maintenance, and so on are some of the main
tools of technological informatics.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 24/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - III.
Informatics as a technology discipline concentrates,
currently, mainly on:
The development of elements/components, hardware
and software architectures and design methodologies as
well as systems for storage, computations, imaging,
reasoning, (human-machines and machines-machines)
communications, networks, internet and web systems
and services;
Social networks and their services, visualisation, images
representation, creation as well as manipulation of
computer graphics and animation systems, as well as
wide range of other services.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 25/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - IV.
Transistors, VLSI technology, design platforms, chips,
CPU, memories (RAM, special memories, memory discs,
. . .), peripherals, graphic and other cards, drivers and
microprocessors are some of main hardware elements.
Pipelining, multicore memories, parallelism, concurrency
and networking are some of main information processing
modes. Interface cards, switches, repeaters, bridges and
routers are some of main networks components.
Operating systems, database systems and compilers are
some of the major general software systems. Programs,
protocols, syntax, semantics, types, objects, agents, clients
are some of the key software concepts.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 26/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - V.
Design techniques (from requirements specification) and
their (mechanized) support, documentation, architecture,
verification, maintenance, portability, reliability,
robustness, security, machine independence, reusability are
some of the main issues concerning software systems.
Informatics as an engineering discipline concentrates also
on theories and methods of information processing and
communication systems specification, correct and efficient
design, implementation, analysis, verification, evolution,
evaluation, maintenance and utilisation.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 27/1
INFORMATICS as TECHNOLOGY IN MORE DETAILS - VI.
Scalability, availability, adaptability, persistence,
sustainability, performance evaluation, reliability,
virtualization, safety and privacy, as well as assimilation of
new supporting technologies and a symbiosis of
information processing devices and humans, are some of
the key issues.
Miniaturization, low-power consumption, design platforms,
significant increase in performance and reliability, and
bio-inspired devices are some of other current concerns.
Information processing on atom and molecular levels as
well as petabytes and exaflops computing are some of the
main current goals.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 28/1
INFORMATICS AS a LEADING TECHNOLOGY DISCIPLINE
Without much exaggeration we can say that we are
facing economy in which computing is central to
innovations in nearly every sector.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that
every significant technological innovation of the 21st
century will require to use some, more or less
sophisticated, informatics concepts, methods and
technology.
In the past, but far, far less, such a leading role had
steam engine technology and later electricity based
technology and their corresponding scientific bases.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 29/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS
GRAND CHALLENGES
TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 30/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS I. -
briefly
To achieve sufficient security and reliability of huge information processing systems
and networks.
To develop methodology for ddesign of powerful superintelligent systems.
Verifiable designs of huge, distributed and reliable information processing systems.
Integration of heterogeneous ICT technologies.
Steady minimization of size and energy consumption and maximization of
information processing systems performances - to give long life to Moore law.
Design of a global computer (network) - cloud computing
Design of micro- and nano-scale (nano)robots.
Bio- , cells-, molecule- and brain-inspired computers
Systems (robots) beating (very much) human intelligence and actions capabilities in
important aspects
Design of virtual reality worlds
Global warning systems against natural disasters and terrorists attacks
Information systems to make medicine knowledge global and treatment personalised.
Design of advanced human-computer interfaces.
Insights, methods and tools for management, analysis, processing and visualisation
of huge (up to petabytes and exaflops) data sets and data streams (up to trillions of
records).
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 31/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS II. -
briefly
To design cyberarmies and cyberwarfare to protect
countries information processing spaces (espacially the
overall power, water, fuel, communication and
transposition systems) against cyberattacks and
cyberespionage.
To develop simulators of human bodies organs,
especially of brain.
To fully develop potential of 3D printing.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 32/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
I
Perhaps the most complex, difficult and of huge
immediate importance for the whole society is the
challenge to make network information processing
and information processing systems secure, in a
broad sense.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 33/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
II
The goal of computer and information processing systems
security is, in general, to protect integrity and
confidentiality of data in storage, during processing and
transmissions as well as information processing systems,
processes and services from disclosers, tampering, damage
or collapse by unauthorized parties and activities (by
hackers or malicious programs) or by unplanned events.
Problems, the security challenge requires to deal with, are
VERY complex. Negative consequences of breaking
security can be Huge. It is therefore very unpleasant, and
makes the challenge even greater, that in spite of a large
effort in this area for years, and many local successes, the
overall situation can hardly be seen as much improved.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 34/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
III
The security challenge is so formidable mainly due to the following five reasons:
(1) Society increasingly depends on reliable functioning of
huge software and communication systems (for example
those controlling major transportation systems for people,
goods, energy, water, munition carriers, information, emails
as well as in defence, finances, and so on). Their collapses
due to ”cyberattacks” could have huge consequences;
(2) Attackers are in principle capable (due to their larger
motivation) to make a faster use of the progress in
sciences and technologies than are able to do so those
developing to-be-secure systems;
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 35/1
CONTINUATION - I.
(3) To achieve sufficient security is so difficult also
because strategies and methodologies to achieve
information processing systems security are much different
from other computer systems design technologies.
Moreover, unless security is taken care already in the
design process, through so-called built-in security,
especially into programming languages and operating
systems, what is very costly and cumbersome, it is
extremely difficult, almost impossible, to enhance security
after the design is finished. To achieve computer security
very special hardware and software tools as well as the
system administration policies have to be used;
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 36/1
CONTINUATION - II.
(4) One needs to achieve multilevel security across
multiple networks and domains with a variety of
distributed information sources and targets and web
applications and to have in such a complex and ever
evolving environment well working tools for automatic
monitoring and managing security threads;
(5) It is very hard to make users to cooperate and to
behave in sufficiently security-concerned ways, in spite of
the fact that trustworthiness, confidentiality, privacy and
even anonymity of information is clearly of large
importance.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 37/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
IV
There is nowadays a whole variety of ways security of
information processing systems can be broken and also
ways how ”cybercrimes” can be carried out.
Viruses, worms, Trojan horses and “denial of services” as
well as other malware and spyware, are perhaps the most
known ones, but they represent only a small portion of the
dangerous systems that have been already identified.
Security of huge software systems and communication
networks should be seen as a very global problem of such
systems and networks and to solve this problem it is not
sufficient to ensure security of its basic components
(processes/protocols) related to security problems of
particular data and users.prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 38/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
V
There is nowadays a lot of sophisticated techniques to
ensure integrity and confidentiality of data in storage and
during communications as well as identity, digital
signatures, privacy or anonymity of users at simple and
isolated communication schemes.
However, all these problems get a completely different
dimension in case of communication in huge (global)
networks where it is hard to check or even know all
channels information has to go through.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 39/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SECURITY
VI
Quite promising, but still not sufficiently explored are
recent attempts to use quantum phenomena (quantum
non-locality), laws (Heisenberg uncertainty) and limitations
(no-cloning theorem), to create a new level of security so-called
unconditional security - for certain security tasks.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 40/1
SHAMIR’s OBSERVATION
Concerning security, we won several battles, but
we are loosing the war.
A. Shamir, one of the inventors of RSA cryptosystem and one of the leading
cryptographers.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 41/1
MALWARE -MALICIOUS SOFTWARE
It is claimed that each year about 280 millions of new pieces of malware appear.
Malware is growing so capable that it can be considered as exhibiting some
intelligence.
Expertize in malware has become commoditized - you can even hire easily hacking
services and products.
Most of malware is created by software that writes softwarw.
There are many types of malware - all of them have as a goal to exploit computers
without the owner´s contents.
Malware can also enslave computers themselves as a part of a botnet - robot
network.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 42/1
BOTNETS
A botnet is often comprised of a million of computers - that have been infected by a
malware.
n 20111 botnet victims increaased more than 650%.
Using botnets or simple malware to steal from computers grew from multimillion
dollars in 2007 to one-trillion dollars industry by 2010.
Cybercrime has become a more lucrative business than the illegal drug trade.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 43/1
CYBERATTACKS
Cyberattacks are of enormous danger and hard to defend from.
Internet can be seen as a new domain of warfare - along with land, see and sky.
One point is that the attacker has to succeeed once in a thousand attacks,the
defender has to succeed evry time - it is a mismatch.
Another point is that de luxe antiwirus software is between 500 and 1000 megabytes
in size but the average piece of malware has often only 150 lines.
From 2007 to 2009 an average 47,000 cyberattacks a year were against Department
of Deffence, State, Homeland security and Commerece.
China is seen as responsible for 30% of all targeted attacks against US facilities.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 44/1
STUXNET
Perhaps the most famous are outcomes of the malware ”suxnet”, developed by
US-Israel effort.
It is claimed that stuxnet crippled during ten months between 1,000 and 2,000
centrifuges in natanz, Iran and by that allegedly set back Iran´s nuclear weapons
development rogram by two years.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 45/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS SOFTWARE
DESIGN I
The second grand challenge is to develop methods and
tools to specify, design, analyse, verify, maintain and make
reliable unprecedentedly large and complex software and
hardware systems, often ever evolving. Systems the state
space of which is often far larger than the state space of
any of the systems in the universe.
This challenge inspires also much scientific Informatics.
Formal systems are perhaps the main basis for the
development of powerful and reliable methodologies, tools,
systems and finally also skills. Evidence amounts that
security issues have to be embedded into all stages of the
design and maintenance of huge systems.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 46/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS MORE
MOORE - I.
Another grand challenge is to keep prolonging much
validity of the Moore law for performance of information
storing, processing, imaging and communication
technologies as well as to create technologies to transfer
and to reproduce sounds, smell and other sensual
information (needed much to create real virtual reality).
New materials to replace silicon, to achieve low-energy
consumption, high fidelity and cost-effectiveness are by
that key issues.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 47/1
GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS MORE
MOORE - II.
Massive parallelism and fragile micro- and nano-world
objects and effects, down to the quantum objects and
effects, seem to be main current way to increase
information storage and processing power.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 48/1
CASE STUDY: ROADS to MINIATURISATION
In 2008, scientists from the University of Manchester
announced a transistor 1 atom thick and 10 atoms
across;
In December 2009 a working transistor was announced
that was made of a single (benzene) molecule
(attached to gold contacts) by a team from Yale
University and from South Korea;
In January 2010 Intel announced 25nm NAND flash.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 49/1
CASE STUDY: DNA and MOLECULAR COMPUTING
DNA computing has been developed already for quite a while as a form of
computing that uses DNA, biochemistry and molecular biology to do computation.
For example, in 2002 a programmable molecular computer composed of enzymes
and DNA molecules was announced (by scientists from Weizman Institute of Science
in Rehovot);
In 2004 a DNA computer was announced by, E. Shapiro et al., that was coupled
with an input and output module which would theoretically be capable of diagnosing
cancerous activity within a cell, and releasing an anticancer drug upon diagnosis;
In 2009 bio-computing systems were coupled, by scientists from Clarkson University,
with standard silicon based chips for the first time.
In 2009 Strassen’s matrix multiplication algorithm has been implemented on a DNA
computer.
In 2011 researchers in Caltex designed a circuit made from 130 DNA strands to
calculate square roots of numbers up to 15.
In 2013 In Weizman institute they were able to store a JPEG photo, a set of
Shakespearen sonets and an audio file of Martin luther’s speech in DNA-digital data
storage.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 50/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: ATOMIC and MOLECULAR SCALE ICT
DEVICES
Another big challenge is to explore the potential of a single
atom, a molecule or a small assembles thereof, as
elementary functional resources for future ICT systems.
The key issues to take care about are the existence of
robust fabrication processes, control, sensing and
picometer interconnection precisions, etc.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 51/1
FURTHER GRAND CHALLENGES of TECHNOLOGICAL
INFORMATICS - I.
The fourth grand challenge is to design, analyse and
maintain a global, ever evolving and geographically
distributed computer (network).
A global computer capable to process, in an efficient,
intelligent and secure (and privacy preserving) way, huge
amounts or streams of data and tasks, as well as to store
most (all) of information and knowledge all fields of
science, technology, learning, scholarship, art, medicine
and so on produce, and in such a way that all can be
efficiently retrieved and used if needed.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 52/1
CONTINUATION I.
The global/total computer challenge amounts, in a limit,
to a creation of a heterogeneous, distributed and ever
evolving huge computer network of computers
accumulating all available knowledge and information
producing and processing resources and tools.
Design of such a global computer would result in a new
synthesis of different areas of science, technologies,
environmental and health care and so on with informatics
products as a gluing and interacting substance.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 53/1
CONTINUATION - II.
Currently, as a way to deal with this challenge, are notable
efforts to design a ”New generation internet”, an ”Internet
of people”, ”Internet of things” (computers, sensors, home
devices, medical equipment, smart devices, etc.) and
”Internet of (digital) content” as platforms for ”cloud
computing”.
Emphasis are on built-in privacy, security, as well as on
efforts to make integration of satellite and terrestrial
communication technologies.
Internet and cloud computing technologies will radically
change how people and businesses use technology and
individuals live their lives.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 54/1
INTEGRATION of HETEROGENEOUS TECHNOLOGIES
The goal is an integration of key enabling ICT
technologies for components and systems across multiple
research fields (nano-technology, organic electronics,
micro-nano-bio systems, bio-photonics) materials (organic
and inorganic) and functions (sensing, actuating,
communicating, processing, energy harvesting).
Emphasis are to be given to support the semiconductor
heterogeneous integration (hardware, softwar, photonics
etc.).
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 55/1
EXASCALE COMPUTING SYSTEMS
The goal is to develope computing platforms, technologies
and applications for exascale computing.
The poin is to address such challenges as:
Efficient management of extreme parallelism with
millions of cores.
Development of system libraries in the area of I/O
Middleware, programming models and modeling
architectures to address the increasing heterogeneity of
systems;
Modularity, parallelisation and scalability of applications
Data-driven/data-intensive computations
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 56/1
COGNITIVE SYSTEMS and ROBOTS - I.
The design of systems capable of activities that used to be
in the domain of living beings, especially concerning
intellectual capabilities, and systems imitating behaviour of
living beings is another big challenge of technological
Informatics in cooperation with scientific Informatics and
several other areas of technology.
Of a special interest is the design of robots, namely of
robots capable to replace people in situations people can
hardly operate in or their precision is not sufficient - in
space and deep-sea explorations or activities, surgeries and
so on.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 57/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: COGNITIVE SYSTEMS and ROBOTS II.
A lot of progress has been already done in designing
industrial robots to be used in manufacturing, assembly,
packing, transport, weaponry and so on.
In a quite advance state is the design of artificial hands,
legs, walking robots and humanoids robots.
Advances in the vision and simulation of other senses are
of the crucial importance for that.
Unmanned fighting and surveillance air-crafts are perhaps
highlights so far in this direction.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 58/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: BIO-INSPIRED INFORMATION
PROCESSING
Another grand challenge is to design
information-processing artifacts inspired by those the
nature has developed for information storing and
processing.
Cells- and brain-inspired information processing are some
of the main challenges.
Developments in bio-chips, bio-sensors and in-silicon
biology are steps in this direction.
Big HBS (Human Brain Simulation) project a part of
which is a new brain activities computer architecture is a
significant step in such a direction.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 59/1
NANOBOTS as a GRAND CHALLENGE
Nanobots (or nanorobots) are small robots that can travel inside the bloodstream.
This notion is not as futuristic as it may sound - many such micro-scale devises are
already working in animals.
Their main envisioned applications are: to facilitate brain reverse engineering by
”sensoring” inside the brain; to perform a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic
functions in human bodies.
A. Freitas has designed: robotic replacements for human blood cell that perform 105
times more effectively that their biological counterparts; DNA-repair robot capable
to correct DNA transcription errors and implement needed DNA changes.
An important fact is that medical nanobots will not require such extensive overhead
biological cells need to maintain metabolic processes such as digestion and
respiration.
Nanobots are expected to communicate among themselves and with :mainframes”
and that they can be, using wireless communication, reprogrammed.
A big problem concerning nanobots is that for many tasks an enormous number of
them would be needed and so problem of their production and self-reproduction is
very nontrivial.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 60/1
GRAND CAHLLENGES: 3D PRINTING
3D printing is a process of creating 3D solid objects objects of virtuallyany shape
from a digital model by an additive process.
3D printing is achieved by an additive process, where successive layers of moleculs
are laid down in different shapes.
A 3D printer can be seen as a type of industrial robot capable of carying out an
additive process under computer control.
The first 3D printer was designed in 1984.In 2012 market for 3D printers and
services was worth 2.2 Billions of dollars, up 29% from 2011.
3D technology is used for prototyping and distributed manufacturing. Applications
are: idustrial design, automotive and aerospace industries, dental and medical
industries, biotechnology (human tissue replacement) fashion, footwear, jewelry,
eyewear, food.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 61/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - I.
Design of ever improving virtual reality systems, especially
virtual worlds, is another grand challenge of Informatics
that can have enormous impact on the standards and style
of working in many fields, including many sciences and
technology fields, as well as on the way people live,
develop and entertain themselves.
Virtual realities can be also seen as systems that create a
sufficiently good, for a given purpose, illusion/impression
of being either in the current or in one of the past or
potential future real worlds or in an imaginary world. The
illusion should be good enough, from the point of view of
our senses, and impacts of “being” in these worlds on
human brain and bodies should be (almost) perfect indistinguishable
from those in the real world.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 62/1
VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - II.
The term virtual reality/environment/world refers to
computer-simulations of places and activities in the real
world or in imaginary/fantasy worlds.
The first basic problem for the design of such systems is to
simulate basic sensory experiences with high fidelity and
cost-effectiveness. Quite advanced, and believed to come
to a very satisfactory state soon, are simulations of the
sight and sound (even 3D) experiences. On the
experimental level are simulations of the smell experience
and cost-effectiveness seems to be the main issue by that.
To meet this challenge requires a significant progress in
several other areas of scientific and engineering
Informatics.prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 63/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - III.
Significant advances have also been in the simulation of
the touch experience. For other senses simulations seem to
need to manipulate brain directly what is currently on the
initial experimental level.
The second basic problem is to simulate realistically
advanced sensory experiences, especially to handle their
changes, of the potential inhabitants of virtual reality,
so-called avatars, as they move, handle objects and
interact with the environment and other inhabitants. This
includes a simulation of locomotion, balance senses,
gravity, feelings, facial expressions, gestures and so on.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 64/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - IV.
Virtual worlds are virtual reality systems in which users can
interact with the environment, with other users and other
inhabitants, can use and create objects and perform
various activities (social interactions, business, shopping,
financial and so on) and socialize. One can then talk also
about virtual economy, real-estate business, properties and
their values, and also about advertisements for real worlds
in virtual worlds.
Virtual worlds are fast growing in importance and impacts.
There have been estimates that the number of people
using virtual worlds has been increasing much every month.
It was estimated, for example, that more than 600 millions
of people used, in 2010, a virtual world and that their uses
will be soon so widespread as are that of internet.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 65/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - V.
Virtual reality systems currently available are already
successfully used in various design and training activities
because they are faster, cheaper and allow easily to
perform various tests and actions.
Museums and galleries as parts of virtual realities are quite
clearly within the reach of foreseeable technology as well
as visits of various interesting places of nature (as caves)
or archaeological and our heritage places. Potential uses of
the virtual reality systems for training and education (for
example of drivers, pilots, surgeons seems to be great.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 66/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEMS - VI.
Possibility to switch to a virtaual reality and to live for a
while in a different parts of the world or in different era
can bring fascinating personal experiences, enhance
people’s internal life to new heights and bring also into a
new dimension variety of behavioral and social sciences.
There are already no doubts that design of virtaul worlds is
one way informatics should go. Less clear is where are
limits it can go and limitations for being useful to do that.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 67/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: DESIGN of GLOBAL WARNING SYSTEMS
This is another big challenge of engineering Informatics
that requires a broad cooperation with other areas of
science and technology.
The task is to crate huge networks of sensors and on the
basis of data obtained from them to simulate model of the
environment and to predict a natural disaster.
Similar, though much more sophisticated, systems are
needed to detect potential terrorist attacks.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 68/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: E-LEARNING
Another grand challenge is to develop Informatics based
strategies and tools for personalized (e)learning that would
be aimed to increase learning outcomes using systems
tailored to specific learning capabilities and motivations of
individuals.
The goal is to learn more effectively, in convenient time
and way, and to support acquisition of new skills.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 69/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: DESIGN of CREATIVITY ENHANCING
TOOLS
Creativity start to be seen as one of the essential 21st
century skills in professional contexts.
On theoretical level the task is to develop formal
understanding/theory of creativity and also ways to
judge/measure products of creative activities of humans,
computers a and hybrid, humans-computer systems, that
could be judged as original and/or surprising.
The challenge is to provide better (and interactive) tools,
capabilities and insights for those working in the ”culture
and creative industries”, to enhance the creativity of
people in these industries.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 70/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: DESIGN of CREATIVITY ENHANCING
TOOLS - I.
The goal is to design creative experience tools that can
make use of all our senses and allow for richer, more
collaborative and interactive experiences: real time
simulation and visualisation, augmented reality, 3D
animation, visual computing, games engines and immerse
experiences.
Creative and cultural industries (such as advertising,
architecture, arts, crafts, design, fashion, films, music,
publishing, video games, Tv and radio etc.) represent
4.5% of total European GDP and account for 3.8% of the
workforce.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 71/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: IMPROVING HEALTH CARE
Another grand challenge of technological informatics or
medical informatics is to create a variety of information
processing systems to improve health care by making it
global and to make also medical treatments more
personalised and by that more efficient.
One of subchallenges is to develop ICT technologies
supporting multiscale modelling and simulation of of
human organs, systems and bodies, aggregating
information from multiple biological levels - to create a
personalised digital patient.
The model can be then used for in-silico clinical trials - for
prediction of impacts of suggested treatments and drugs
and to predict the overall evolution of patient health.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 72/1
GRAND CHALLENGE: ADVANCED INTERFACES
Profound changes are needed to transform how consumer
and business interface with ICT. In particular, development
Touch screens
3D displays
Augmented reality
Multisensory interfaces
Reliable multilingual speech recognition
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 73/1
SCIENTIFIC versus TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS
Informatics
Science versus technology
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 74/1
BASIC VIEWS
Informatics as a science concentrates to a large extent on
gathering knowledge. Curiosity and search for knowledge
for its own sake should be its main driving forces.
Informatics as an engineering discipline has as its main
concern demonstrable utility. Improvements of
performance and reliability, as well as economical success,
should be some of its main driving forces.
One can also say that the goal of science used to be seen
as the quest for knowledge; the goal of engineering used to
be seen as the quest for skills.
Informatics as a methodology and tools blurs to a large
extent this distinction between the goals of scientific and
engineering Informatics.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 75/1
SCIENTIFIC versus ENGINEERING INFORMATICS - I.
Distinctions between scientific and engineering Informatics are in many aspects
blurry.
Engineering Informatics is much helping scientific informatics in many ways to deal
with its main challenges and attempts to explore information processing worlds and
our physical and biological nature.
Design of various models and simulations as well as virtual worlds in one of the ways
to do that.
On the other side, engineering informatics has to tackle specification, design,
analysis and verification problems of such a dimension that without paradigms,
insights, methods and tools they cannot be handled.
Scientific and engineering informatics are therefore, and should be developed as,
partners in both quest for dealing with most fundamental questions and most
difficult design challenges.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 76/1
SCIENTIFIC versus TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS - II.
Our views of (natural) sciences and their (achievable)
challenges have always been much shaped by available
instruments: telescopes, microscopes, accelerators and so
on. Telescopes and microscopes have changed astronomy,
cosmology, biology, chemistry and physics - they increased
much information gathering power of our eyes. High
energy accelerators allow us to reach bottom of matter.
The possibility to turn the enormous power of computers,
via sophisticated algorithms and carefully designed
software, into new powerful instruments has much
increased frequency of the design of new powerful
instruments and by that the development of science and
technology, medicine and so on.prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 77/1
SCIENTIFIC versus TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS - III.
The history of mankind teaches us that no matter how
radically new a technology has been, it could have an
immense impact on science, technology and society at
large, only when a very new way of thinking and seeing the
world had already been emerging for quite a while, in
science and society, that could make full use of this
technology.
The history of mankind also demonstrates that the main
long run contribution of such a technology has always
been to help to develop much further this new way of
seeing, understanding and managing the world, and to
help to make this new view of the world more coherent
and more powerful.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 78/1
SCIENTIFIC versus TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS - IV.
Current science is often seen as being engineering driven
and current engineering as being science driven.
The key fact behind is that Informatics paradigms,
methods and tools play such a key role in both, in science
and engineering.
They allow to pursue the quest for knowledge in such a
way that engineering outcomes are a natural consequence
of it.
On the other hand, current top engineering depends much
on the scientific outcomes transformed mostly into the
informatics driven/supported products.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 79/1
HISTORY of TECHNOLOGICAL INFORMATICS
The history of informatics, as of an area of technology and science, should be seen
as being very old - as perhaps the oldest of technologies.
In order to see properly the history of informatics as a science it is of large
importance to realise that the ”twin science” to informatics is not only mathematics
but all ”natural sciences”.
In order to see properly the history of informatics as an engineering discipline it is of
large importance to realise that ”twin technology” to informatics is not only
electrical engineering, but all engineering.
History of mathematics should be seen as a (very important) part of the history of
informatics.
A very crucial part of the history of biological systems will also be part of the history
of informatics.
Concerning history of information processing devices, created by nature, we are
nowadays actually only in the very beginning of its understanding.
Similarly, we are still in the very beginnings of understanding of the development of
the universe and life as of (quantum?) information processing systems.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 80/1
APPLIED INFORMATICS
APPLIED INFORMATICS
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 81/1
APPLIED INFORMATICS - GOALS and GRAND CHALLENGES
Main goals and grand challenges of applied informatics are
motivated by the following facts
1 We are coming to the peta(exa)-world with computers
of peta(exa)flops performance and petabytes memories.
2 In 20-30 year we can expect to have for 1000 $
computers with information processing power larger
than of all human brains.
3 We are coming fast to the world with ever increasing
merge of bio- and non-bio- intelligence.
4 Informatics methods and tools helped already much to
assemble human genome and database of genomes is
expected to have big value in our understanding of life
and evolution, in new drugs developments etc.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 82/1
APPLICATIONS of INFORMATICS in ACADEMIC DOMAINS - I.
The main application of informatics in the academic
domain consists of an infiltration of its concepts,
paradigms, methods and tools to other academic
disciplines.
This allows not only to solve problems that were out of
considerations before so powerful information
precessing and communication tools were available.
The most important is that it allows to ask new
questions that could not be asked before and especially
questions the answer to which may lead to unforeseen
insights and can therefore revolutionize thinking in a
field.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 83/1
APPLICATIONS of INFORMATICS in ACADEMIC DOMAINS - I.
For example, it is quite obvious that there are questions
in many areas of science that cannot be answered unless
huge amounts of data are collected and processed.
For example, in astronomy, earth sciences, particle
physics, genetics and so on.
Less obvious is that there are are types of
informatics-driven questions that can have other
enormous and fundamental impacts.
For example, questions about information processing
power of quantum phenomena revealed an enormous
power of entanglement and non-locality. That is of the
features that used to be seen as strange, useless and
even contra-intuitive.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 84/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS I
Informatics makes fast many very successful steps, in
cooperation with other areas of science and technology,
to achieve its goal that information processing ”energy”
is available easily, anytime, everywhere, to everyone and
from anyplace.
Design of global sensors-, surveillance- , as well as
computers networks, through the development of grid
computing, peer-to-peer computing, wireless- and
mobile- as well as cloud computing, . . .; development of
better and better web services (as the semantic web
promises) and search engines, are some of the main
current steps towards that goal.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 85/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS II
In all these areas goals are so ambitious that one starts
to talk about global computing on one side and on
”dust and clay computing” and molecular computers to
explore human cells on the other side.
Informatics makes fast and successful steps, in
cooperation with other areas of science and technology,
to achieve that data mining and information/knowledge
retrieval devices, as well as information processing and
providing systems, penetrate ”everything and everyone”
- that information processing is so ubiquitous that it is
thoroughly integrated into many objects and activities
even of our everyday personal and domestic life.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 86/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS III
Design of embedded systems, developments in so-called
ubiquitous/pervasive computing, as well as in the
so-called ambient intelligence, are some of the main
current developments towards that goal.
One of the most ambitious sub-goals is to embed
nano-scale monitoring, data retrieving and drugs
delivering systems (to proper places) into human
bodies.
A perhaps bit less ambitious goal is the design of
domestic ubiquitous computing and robotic
environments.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 87/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS IV
Nano-scale miniaturization and low-energy consumption
are some of the main issues in this context.
Embodiment, environment/context-awareness,
adaptivness and anticipation are some of the main
concerns.
All that goes so far that one starts to see large parts of
medicine as being soon developed as applied robotics
and to consider entertainment industry and show
business as being soon Informatics, especially robotics,
animation and virtual worlds driven. It seems to be also
only a question of time when this will be the case also
for sport industries.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 88/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS V
Informatics takes special care for improving
human-computer, computer-computer,
computer-human and human-human communication
and interaction.
Developments in the area of wireless networks, mobile
computing and communication on one-side, as well as a
concentration on the development of the
user/human-centric information processing devices and
voice- as well as brain-driven computing, are some of
the main developments in that directions.
Under explorations are also human-computer interfaces
based on gestures, mimics, body postures, emotions
and so on.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 89/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS VI
Informatics starts to take special care that its
methodology will be massively used and actually will
penetrate human reasoning to such an extent that
”information processing dissolves into behaviour” and
”behaviour will be driven to a large extent by
information processing paradigms, tools and outcomes”.
Attempts to teach so called ”computational thinking”,
and ways to incorporate it into all spheres of the
education process, are an example of activities along
these lines.
Attempts to push education concerning fluency with
information processing technology into all forms of
education are another step in this direction.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 90/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS - VII.
Informatics takes special care to develop theories,
methods and tools to make better use of the so-far
accumulated information and knowledge in learning,
scholarship, science, technology and so on and also and
products in sciences, technologies, medicine,
archeology, music, art and so on.
This is done, on one side, by developing techniques of
(also semantics driven) searching through enormous
amounts of texts, images and also through more
dimensional data.
A search for similarities play by that the key role and
represents a big challenge of the field.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 91/1
WAYS INFORMATICS FACILITATES its APPLICATIONS VII
Development of the corresponding theories and
methods can have very broad applications and
especially medicine and life sciences could profit
enormously out of it.
Archeology, history and music are other areas that
could be much changed by such techniques.
On the other side, this leads to the design of digital
encyclopedias, (global) digital libraries, galleries,
museums, archives and so on.
The main outcome of that could be an enormous
enhancement of personalized learning and also of
personalized entertainment.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 92/1
CURRENT GRAND CHALLENGES of APPLIED INFORMATICS
To informatize all production processes and at the same
time to put care for protection of intellectual rights at
another level.
To create global and intelligent information and
knowledge precessing systems for health care.
To create global and intelligent information and
knowledge processing systems for environment care.
To create complex information and knowledge
processing systems to bring governance on local and
state levels to another level of efficiency, transparency
and democracy.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 93/1
CURRENT GRAND CHALLENGES of APPLIED INFORMATICS - I.
To create global and intelligent information processing
systems for making our cultural heritage available from
anywhere to anybody.
To digitize all available knowledge and information in a
proper structural way and to have it trustworthy and
retrievable. (Trustworthiness of the available digital
networks information is a huge problem due to the
decentralisation of the process of its creation.)
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 94/1
CURRENT GRAND CHALLENGES of APPLIED INFORMATICS -
II.
Digitalization of all information and knowledge and its
storing should be done in such a way that information
and knowledge would be accessible by anyone from
anywhere anytime and almost immediately and, in
addition it can be quite ”easily” updated.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 95/1
CURRENT GRAND CHALLENGES of APPLIED INFORMATICS -
III.
To explore how informatics-based tools and
methodologies will not only change human and societal
potential but also the overall culture and the inner
worlds of individuals.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 96/1
CURRENT GRAND CHALLENGES of APPLIED INFORMATICS -
IV.
To deal with formidable social and legal problems
related to the privacy, intellectual property rights,
security and so on that global networking, commerce,
financing and so on are bringing.
A big challenge is to extend, in a scalable way, the
internet to a global system handling several orders of
magnitude more users, more information, more (as well
as more complex) services and more diversified uses,
and all that in a reliable, secure and fast way preserving
privacy and intellectual rights.
To find out how to make an effective use of the
enormously fast growing wealth of data, information
and knowledge.prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 97/1
CASE STUDT - OPENESS PROBLEM
Enormous problem is how to store enormous amounts of data scientific instruments
and processes produce in such a way that they remain accessible also to future
generations.
Only LHC produces 25 petabytes of ”raw” data per year. This is only a thousandth
of the real raw data produced by detectors that are already filtered to remove
”uninteresting data”. The rate of real data is cc. 300 GB/s. The obvious fact is
that a huge amount of gathered data is definitively lost.
Having access to the knowledge and wisdom of previous generations has been vital
for the success of mankind and in non-negligible extend this applies also to the raw
scientific data. This poses a lot of potential barricades that has to be overcame permanent
storage and preservation of data and data accessibility.
The permanent and open access to the knowledge base we have is a challenge for
the informatics and will become a big challenge in future with growing amounts of
data and users.
Having the development as well as results of science preserved and available is a
crucial point for mankind’s advancement in science and technologies.
It is a big challenge of informatics to provide better and better tools, mechanisms
and in general environments for such open source and collaborative efforts.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 98/1
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 99/1
IMPORTANCE of MACHINES for UNDERSTANDING of NATURE
Many of the most general and powerful discoveries of
science have arisen, not through the study of
phenomena as they occur in nature, but, rather,
through the study of phenomena in man-made
machines, in products of technology.
This is because phenomena in man’s machines are
simplified and ordered in comparison to those occurring
naturally, and it is this simplified phenomena that one
can understand more easily.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 100/1
HUMAN GENOME PROJECT (HGP)
This was one of the largest and most important of the
recent research projects in which methods and tools of
informatics played an important role.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 101/1
HISTORY of HGP
The idea to create such a project started to be
discussed in 1984.
The project started in 1988 with participation of 20
leading institutions from 6 countries and was scheduled
for 15 years.
The goal was to finish complete human genome
sequence by th end of 2013.
A rough draft of humane genome (90% with one error
per 1,000 base pairs) was finished in June 2000; final
version, on April 2003, covered 99% with 1 error for 10,
000 base pairs.
Project cost from US taxpayers was 2.7 billions of
dollars - a bit less than planned (3 billions)
Results of the project are freely available to public.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 102/1
GENOME SEQUENCING - I.
A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA.
DNA molecules are made of two twisting , paired
strands.
Each strand is made of four chemical units, called
nucleotide bases and denoted A, T, G, C.
The human genome contains approximately 3 billions of
such pairs, which reside in 23 pairs of chromosomes
within the nucleus of our cells.
Each chromosome contains hundreds to thousands of
genes, which carry instructions for making proteins.
Genome sequencing means determining the exact order
of the base pairs in a sigment of DNA.
prof. Jozef Gruska IV054 2515. Future in the informatics era - Chapter 4 103/1
GENOME SEQUENCING - II.
Human chromosomes range in size from about 50 to
300 millions base pairs.
The primary method used by the HGP to produce the
finished version of the human genetic code is
BAC-based sequencing - the acronym for ”bacterial
artificial chromosome”.
Human DNA is fragmented into large, but still
manageable pieces and such fragments are cloned in
bacteria, which store and replicate the human DNA so
it can be prepared in quantities large enough for
sequencing.
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BIOINFORMATICS and COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY OFFICIAL
GOALS of HGP
Improve content and utility of databases.
Develop better tools for data generation, capture and
annotation;
Develop and improve tools and databases for
comprehensive functional studies.
Develop and improve tools for representing and
analyzing sequence similarity and variation.
Create mechanisms to support effective approaches for
producing robust, portable software that can be widely
shared.
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IMPACTS
The GHP has already fueled the discovery of more than
1800 disease genes.
Due to HGP outcomes today’s researchers can find a
gene suspected of causing an inherited disease in
number of days.
There are now more than 2000 genetic tests for human
conditions. They enable patients to learn their genetic
risks for diseases and also help to diagnose diseases.
To summarize, we can say that informatics methods
and tools helped to assemble human genome and the
database of genomes is expected to have enormous
value in our understanding of life and evolution, in
health-care and in the development of new drugs.
At least 350 biotechnology based products resulting
from HGP are currently in clinical trials.
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NEXT STEPS - I.
New project ”The Cancer Genome Atlas” aims to
identify all the genetic abnormalities seen in 50 major
types of cancer.
100K Genome project (2012-2017). Goal is to sequence
genome of 100,000 infectious microorganisms.
Application: to speedup the diagnosis of foodborne
illnesses. This is a public-private collaborative project.
Completed gene sequences will be stored in a public
database and are expected to be used to develop new
methods of controling disease-causing bacteria in the
food chain.
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NEXT STEPS - II.
Progress in genome sequencing can be summarized as
follows:
In 2003 first genome was sequenced in 15 years and
at a cost of more than 3 billions of dollars.
In 2008 the genome of James Watson, DNA
discovery man, was sequenced in 4 months at the
price of 1 million of dolars.
In 2012 a possibility was annonced to make a
genome sequencing in 1 day at the price of one
thousand of dollars.
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