Floris Verpaux

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Normally, bioscience researchers would have to come up with hypothesis themselves and test how two or more, for example, proteins interact. Vector Space Biosciences (VSB) is speeding things up using Natural Language Modeling and a network of data engineering pipelines combined with blockchain technology to deliver real-time data on possible interactions (Vector Space Bioscience, 2022).

Using their top tier technology they are trying to find as they call ‘hidden relationships’ between concepts. Their top tier technology consists of a combination of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing/Understanding, enabling them to read academic papers which are saved in vectors seeking for hidden relationships for example. These datasets can be acquired by organizations to gain insights on quick changing relations. For example, Imperial College London has teamed up with VSB to use their technology to track the quick changing information on proteins and how they are related to each other (Dunning, 2022). Around 1,500 completely new articles are peer reviewed and submitted to the data base of PubMMed every 24 hours. Another 2,500 adjusted papers, creating a total 4,000 new medical papers a day, can be analyzed by their technology. This enables organizations to prevent manual checking of changements as VSB’s technology enables them, powered by their VXV coin, to gain real-time data on relationships between genes, proteins, etc (Businesswire, 2022).

Also, bigger institutions like NASA Genelab, NASA’s Human Research Roadmap, CERN, Microsoft Azure, and SpaceX are working together with VSB to make use of their technology (Dunning, 2022). VSB is now even widening their scope by focusing on financial markets. Their ‘tip of the spear’ technology can also be used to serve financial markets focused on investing, providing hedge funds, asset management companies and others with correlation matrixes to protect their portfolios and create real-time baskets for both crypto’s and stocks (Bloomberg, 2022).

To conclude, learning computers how to read, is speeding things up. Researchers and financials are empowered by VSB’s technology and have acces to unique data on how events, genes, proteins and other data points are correlated, all powered by learning computers how to read and understand text.

References:

Bloomberg. (2021, November 29). Vector Space Biosciences Expands Scientific Advisory Board & Collaborations. Available at https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2021-11-29/vector-space-biosciences-expands-scientific-advisory-board-collaborations-kwl9lbyr

Businesswire. (2022, August 18). Vector Space Biosciences Announces New Tools for Developing Countermeasures Associated to Stressors During Spaceflight. Available at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220818005407/en/Vector-Space-Biosciences-Announces-New-Tools-for-Developing-Countermeasures-Associated-to-Stressors-During-Spaceflight

Dunning, H. (2022, February 18). AI for life sciences research gets boost from the financial markets. Imperial News. Available at https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234034/ai-life-sciences-research-gets-boost/

Vector Space Biosciences. (2022). Our technology. Available at https://vectorspacebio.science/technology/

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The popular techno festival in the Netherlands, DGTL, has leaked the personal information of around 130 thousand visitors including usernames, passwords, email addresses, phone numbers, full names, and birth dates. The data leaked was a consequence of using legacy systems, vulnerable to hacking (NU, 2022). The use of simple encryptions, labeled as outdated and broken in 2008, made it possible for hackers to simply obtain the visitors information in several minutes (rtlnieuws, 2022).

Legacy systems are old outdated systems that are still used by organizations as they remain to perform the tasks they are meant to do. As companies change because of changing economies, new laws, or other effects, normally IT systems would have to innovate equal to these changing conditions. This vision is not very likely to follow as IT systems can last for multiple years and technology is evolving on a higher rate, meaning that companies would have to innovate their systems equally, which is unlikely to do for multiple reasons (Carrero, 2021).

First, companies do not replace their systems as their systems are still fulfilling their task contributing to their missions. Also, the investments in new systems could not have been covered yet which makes reinvesting in new systems financially irresponsible. Next to financial resources, IT skills, staff, and time, are of great importance to substitute legacy systems. Taking these challenges into account, companies may decide to run their business on legacy systems, accepting the potential risk arising of it (Carrero, 2021).

Next to the risk of data leaks as in the case of DGTL, companies could expect the followings risks and issues:

Maintaining those systems could be very costly as 60 to 80 percent of IT’s budget would go to maintaining to systems and keep them online.
As companies are using their data more and more for analytics, issues could arise caused by the effects of unstructured data.
In most cases old systems are less convenient and efficient, meaning employees being less productive and enjoying their work to a lesser extent.
Using legacy systems could lead to a bad brand reputation causing the loss of customers and being less attractive to potential customers (Rashleigh, 2019).

In short, companies should be aware of their legacy systems in use, and the impact on their business. In the case of DGTL this has caused a widely spread news article about their outdated systems and the leaked data about their visitors causing brand damage.

References:

Carrero, L. (2022, August 24). What is a legacy system? Stackscale. Available at: https://www.stackscale.com/blog/legacy-systems/#Why_are_legacy_systems_still_used

Rashleigh, P. (July 24, 2019). The cost of legacy IT. Available at: https://audacia.co.uk/blog/cost-of-legacy-systems

RTL Nieuws. (September 9, 2022) Festival DGTL lekt wachtwoorden en privégegevens 130.000 bezoekers. Available at: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/5332177/dgtl-datalek-wachtwoorden-privegegevens-bezoekers-hacker

NU.nl. (2022, September 9). Gegevens van 130.000 bezoekers festival DGTL op straat door datalek. Available at: https://www.nu.nl/tech/6222999/gegevens-van-130000-bezoekers-festival-dgtl-op-straat-door-datalek.html#nujij

Discovering Hidden Relationships

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On The Effects of Legacy Systems

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