The Continuum: A Blog by PHI Learning

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Tag: engineering

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  • Futuristic Digital Forensics In Today’s Tech-Savvy Age

    In today’s digital age, the field of digital forensics is rapidly evolving, driven by technological advancements that enhance the identification, preservation, and analysis of electronic evidence. AI and machine learning have enabled revolutionary advancements across various industries, including the field of digital forensics.

    These days, all activities are conducted on devices. Just look around you and you’ll see what we mean! Everybody is on a device, creating records of their daily conversations, professional activities, and even their search history. Such information is likely to provide ample clues about a person’s personal motives or beliefs — don’t you think?

    In context of digital forensics, a large amount of digital data is likely to be retrieved from digital records such as emails, text messages, search histories, and other online activities that can provide a wealth of evidence for those who know how to analyze them.

    Modern AI algorithms are capable of automatically identifying and extracting relevant data from large volumes of digital evidence, including files, emails, and logs. Furthermore, machine learning can read this data to detect patterns indicating irregularities or suspicious activities.

    Even when direct evidence is not available, AI can analyze the “digital footprint” of suspects or individuals involved in a crime. This includes user behavior on online messaging apps, social media platforms, shopping apps, dating apps, hotel booking apps, emails, and business-related software.

    Would it be possible to conduct this type of an investigation without AI? Next to impossible as this type of data could not be processed by a person alone — or even a whole team of people! It’s too large to compute manually, and this is where AI is instrumental.

    AI’s knack for spotting patterns in digital activities can be a game-changer for investigations. Even if it doesn’t provide direct clues, it can still steer things in the right direction.

    AI’s capability to identify patterns and anomalies are unlike any human detection abilities. As an example: AI has the ability to correlate user activity logs from a dating app with social media interactions. It can find correlations between purchase history from a shopping app with social media interactions.  These types of associations are near impossible to detect by just the human eye.

    These days, AI is transforming business by providing insights into correlations between (consensually provided) consumer data across different apps. This helps us further understand what consumers really want. As someone who has used AI to uncover such correlations, it is easy to imagine how this type of information could be invaluable to crime scene investigators!

    Also related to AI-powered data is Natural language processing (NLP). NLP analyzes the natural human language in a context that is more colloquial and human than mechanical or robotic.

    NLP can also play a crucial role in analyzing vast amounts of textual data from emails, chat logs, reviews, and other written communications. This is since NLP conducts sentiment analysis to uncover deeper emotions, viewpoints, values, and beliefs relevant to crime scenes.

    The Role of Sentiment Analysis in Crime Scene Investigations
    Sentiment analysis, while commonly used in business analytics, is particularly useful in crime scene investigations.
    Crimes are driven by sentiments. Often, those who try to cover up crimes may also harbour sentimental motives. As the crime fiction writer, Agatha Christie says, “Very few of us are what we seem. Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend.” The complexities of human emotions are often hard to decipher. To uncover the deep sentiments that drive human motives, data is the only answer.

    Sentiment analysis can provide valuable insights into the intense human emotions behind criminal acts. By analyzing digital communications or transcribed oral communications, investigators can determine the overall perspective of a person towards various topics, identifying whether their opinion is neutral, positive, or negative.
    Sentiment analysis, using AI and machine learning along with other sophisticated software, is gaining traction across industries. Imagine going from guessing your way through purchase-histories of your customers for an idea on their preferences to having access to their very opinions and attitudes towards your product!

    This type of data isn’t limited to business. In digital forensics, the analysis of sentiment using AI can lead to crucial clues about their mental state, motives, emotional triggers, and potential behavioral patterns related to a crime.

    Alignment with NEP 2020: The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims to transform India’s educational landscape by fostering multidisciplinary learning, critical thinking, and practical applications. The book “Laws of Electronic Evidence and Digital Forensics” aligns with these objectives by blending theoretical concepts with real-world applications. It is tailored for a diverse audience, including LLB and LLM students, B.Sc. and M.Sc. students in Digital Forensics and Information Security, B.Tech students in Computer Science (Cyber Security and Digital Forensics), and those pursuing PG Diplomas in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics.

    This book provides a comprehensive understanding of digital forensics and its legal implications, equipping students with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in their careers. By addressing recent technological advancements and aligning with NEP 2020’s goals, “Laws of Electronic Evidence and Digital Forensics” serves as an essential guide for students and professionals navigating the complexities of electronic evidence and digital investigations.

     

     

  • Metro Operations And Their Management

    Economic Development and Economy of any country relates directly to its infrastructure  and urban transport system of which Metro systems plays a significant role. In India, the continued support of Government over the past decades led the development of a wide range rail-based mass transport systems across the country.

    Although the metro system is considered as a sub-system or extension of railways, the nuances of metro operations are very different from that of mainline railways. Operations and maintenance services in Metro systems include various functions and services, such as train service operations, station operations, customer service, ticketing and fare collection, control centre management, security management, asset management planning and deployment, rolling stock maintenance, stations and depot facility management, track and structures, signaling and traction power maintenance and many more functions.

    Today, however, several metro rail systems in India are in the different phases of design, construction, and operations. DMRC has always been at the forefront to support these metro rail systems by sharing its experiences. Every metro rail system has to traverse its own journey, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel every time.

    The solutions to the challenges faced in O&M of Metro systems should be handy to the managers. Hence, in dearth of literary work on Metro operations and management, the authors have made a sincere effort to bring out a comprehensive book addressing the needs of the professionals and the future managers. They have shared their wide experience and expertise on various aspects of MRTS, starting from the planning, execution, operations, maintenance and management for the future development in the field of MRTS. The book covers key areas in metro railway operations management and discusses important issues, supported with case studies, to be considered while planning a metro system to ensure efficient operations.

    Simply, the book is a concise yet comprehensive guide to metro operations, and is a must-read for all professionals and the scholars who aspire to be metro managers. 

    Incredible endorsement and foreword by the Experts— Dr. E. Sreedharan, Dr. Mangu Singh, and Mr. Vikas Kumar. 

    Visit us @ www.phindia.com and Grab your copy now…!

     

     

  • What is AI? Video Lecture By Vinod Chandra and Hareendran

    There has been a movement over the years to make machines intelligent. With the advent of modern technology, AI has become the core part of day-to-day life. But it is accentuated to have a book that keeps abreast of all the state-of-the-art concepts (pertaining to AI) in simplified, explicit and elegant way, expounding on ample examples so that the beginners are able to comprehend the subject with ease.

    Listen to Lecture 1 on Artificial Intelligence by Vinod Chandra and Hareendran on Artificial Intelligence.

    Our book Artificial Intelligence, dexterously divided into 21 chapters, fully satisfies all these pressing needs. It is intended to put each and every concept related to intelligent system in front of the readers in the most simplified way so that while understanding the basic concepts, they will develop thought process that can contribute to the building of advanced intelligent systems. Read about the book in detail. Click https://www.phindia.com/Books/BookDetail/9788120350465/artificial-intelligence-joshi-kulkarni

     

  • Our Author Chetan Singh Solanki to Deliver a Talk at Google

    It is a rare moment when one gets invited by Google to talk about the *Climate Change and Energy Swaraj Yatra* Our author of 5 bestselling books for PHI Learning on renewable energy and solar photovoltaics, Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki, in talk with Mr. Johnson Jose, Director, Google Cloud Platform. Prof. Solanki, a humble man, has been endowed with the names “Solar Gandhi” and “Solar Manav of India” for his dedication towards the cause of solar energy.

  • AI’s First Philosopher: Alan Turing

    Alan Turing was a pioneer of machine learning, whose work continues to shape the crucial question: can machines think?

    When Alan Turing turned his attention to artificial intelligence, there was probably no one in the world better equipped for the task. His paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ (1950) is still one of the most frequently cited in the field. Turing died young, however, and for a long time most of his work remained either classified or otherwise inaccessible. So it is perhaps not surprising that there are important lessons left to learn from him, including about the philosophical foundations of AI.

    Turing’s thinking on this topic was far ahead of everyone else’s, partly because he had discovered the fundamental principle of modern computing machinery – the stored-program design – as early as 1936 (a full 12 years before the first modern computer was actually engineered). Turing had only just (in 1934) completed a first degree in mathematics at King’s College, Cambridge, when his article ‘On Computable Numbers’ (1936) was published – one of the most important mathematical papers in history – in which he described an abstract digital computing machine, known today as a universal Turing machine.

    Virtually all modern computers are modelled on Turing’s idea. However, he originally conceived these machines merely because he saw that a human engaged in the process of computing could be compared to one, in a way that was useful for mathematics. His aim was to define the subset of real numbers that are computable in principle, independently of time and space. For this reason, he needed his imaginary computing machine to be maximally powerful.

    To achieve this, he first imagined there being an infinite supply of tape (the storage medium of the imaginary machine). But most importantly, he discovered a method for setting the central mechanism of the machine, which had to be capable of being set in infinitely many different ways to do one thing or another in response to what it scans on the tape, in such a way as to be able to imitate any possible setting of the central mechanism. The essential ingredient of this method is the stored-program design: a universal Turing machine can imitate any other Turing machine, only because – as Turing noted – the basic programming of the central mechanism (ie the way the mechanism is set) can itself be stored on the tape, and hence can be modified (scanned, written, erased). Thus, Turing specified a type of machine that could compute any real number, and indeed anything whatsoever, that any machine that can scan, print and erase automatically according to a given set of instructions could possibly compute; moreover, to the extent that the basic analogy with a human in the process of computing holds, anything that a human could possibly compute.

    It is important to understand that the stored-program design is not only the most fundamental principle of modern computing – it also already contains a deep insight into the limits of machine learning: namely, that there is nothing that such a machine can do in principle that it cannot in principle figure out for itself. Turing saw this implication and its practical potential very early on. And he soon became very interested in the question of machine learning, several years before the stored-program design was first implemented in an actual machine.

    As Turing’s Cambridge teacher, life-long collaborator and fellow computer pioneer Max Newman wrote: ‘The description that he gave of a “universal” computing machine was entirely theoretical in purpose, but Turing’s strong interest in all kinds of practical experiment made him even then interested in the possibility of actually constructing a machine on these lines.’

    Article reproduced from https://aeon.co/essays/why-we-should-remember-alan-turing-as-a-philosopher

    Alan Turing photographed by Elliott and Fry in 1951. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

     

    PHI Learning books on AI and Machine Learning can be browsed respectively at

    https://www.phindia.com/Books/ShowBooks/MTE0OA/Artificial-Intelligence-Neural-Networks-Fuzzy-Logic-Soft-Computing

    https://www.phindia.com/Books/ShowBooks/ODA/Machine-Learning

     

     

     

     

  • Groundbreaking ICT Inventions: A Book Review by Pallavi Ghosh

    Our latest publication, “Groundbreaking Inventions in Information and Communication Technology” by V. Rajaraman is an informative and enjoyable read. The book is targeted towards those with a pre-university education and does not require readers to have any prior knowledge on the subject. It aims to provide an overview and historical background of various technological inventions in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) from 1957 to-date.

    Rajaraman explains 15 Groundbreaking Inventions in our history, using a uniform and consistent format, divided into 3 categories in accordance with the timeline within which they were created– ‘Between 1957 and 1974’, ‘Between 1975 and 1984’, and ‘Between 1985 and 2011’. Further, each groundbreaking invention is delineated through 2 subheadings: 1) What is the invention? ; 2) Why is it a groundbreaking invention? Alongside this, there are loads of interesting fact boxes and relevant information about the invention, organised in separate sections to educate the

    The relevance of the inventions is illustrated as we move through them serially,  in the order in   which they were invented, from  FORTRAN, Integrated Circuits, Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), Local Area Network (LAN), Personal Computers, Public Key Cryptography, Computer Graphics, The Internet, Global Positioning System (GPS), World Wide Web, Search Engines, Digitisation and compression of multimedia, Mobile Computers, and Cloud Computing to Deep Learning. Each of these technical terms are broken down and simplified for the benefit of the non-expert enthusiast. Moreover, the technical concepts related to these inventions are explained in a very simple and expressive language so that they are uncomplicated and fun to read.

    In the first introductory chapter, Rajaraman explains his reasons for creating this collection of 15 groundbreaking inventions. The author explains, “ICT has spawned a number of new industries that employ millions of people.” He elaborates upon the relevance of ICT and elucidates why it is important for all to have knowledge on the subject. Further, the author provides interesting facts about the history of ICT and introduced readers with ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built in 1946 and UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), the first commercial computer made available in 1951. The author contends that the first groundbreaking invention in ICT was FORTRAN, a high-level programming language, created in 1957, which enabled scientists and engineers to use computers to solve complex problems easily.  The chapter contains countless fascinating fun facts.

    The subsection “What is a Groundbreaking Invention?” is particularly riveting since it clarifies the concept of a Groundbreaking Invention and defines the term citing authentic sources.

    Further, the author lists 8 criteria to classify advancement in ICT as a “Groundbreaking Invention”. These are:

    1. “The idea should be novel ”
    2. “It should fulfil a need ”
    3. “It should improve our  productivity”
    4. “It should change the way in which computing is done and computers are used ”
    5. “It should lead to  innovations”
    6. “The invention must have a long life and be continuously used and not be transient ”
    7. “It should create new industries that lead to further innovations and may, as a consequence, disrupt some old industries”
    8. “It should transform the way we live and thereby result in societal changes.”

    Throughout the book these 8 criteria are used to explain why each of the 15 chosen innovations can be considered groundbreaking. This introduction also features a chronological list of the 15 groundbreaking inventions in ICT from 1957 – 2011.

    In the second chapter, “The First Four Inventions”, the author explains FORTRAN, Integrated Circuits, RDBMS, and LAN. The author provides background information about each invention, choosing to tell stories which are interesting and memorable. A fun fact included in this chapter is: John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN, formed a group of diverse professionals (engineers, scientists, and programmers) to help write the program. For FORTRAN, out of the 8 aforementioned criteria, I found the final criteria, “Societal Impact” to be an excellent measure of its status as a Groundbreaking Invention. The author argues that the code has deeply affected the society we live in.

    On Integrated Circuits, the author notes that although the advent of transistors revolutionised electronics, it was soon to be found that building complex circuits with them was not as easy as it seemed. He then provides a detailed explanation of the ideas and experiments which led to the creation of the first integrated circuit. The technical concepts to be used alongside complex terms are written in a simple language and seem to flow into the reader’s mind. The author makes the readers feel as if they are reading a simple story rather than a book full of complex terms. The ‘fact boxes’, included in relevant topics, present thought-provoking information. For example, the section features box items like “How Does a Transistor Function as a Switch” and “How are Integrated Circuits Fabricated?” in a simple and easily understandable explanation blended with excellent diagrams. Next, the author gives reasons for why Integrated Circuits are a groundbreaking invention as per his aforementioned 8 criteria. A noteworthy point amongst these eight is that the invention “Leads to the start of a new industry” — paving the way for the industry of silicon devices and circuits, employing half a billion people worldwide. Later, in a similar format and under the same section headings the author explains RDBMS and LAN, illustrating why these inventions are, in fact, “groundbreaking”.

    In the third chapter, the author describes “The Next Five Inventions.” These are: Personal Computer (PC), Public Key Encryption, Computer Graphics, Internet, and GPS. Included in this chapter is a noteworthy box – a biography of Gary Kildall who is best known as the designer of the first operating system for Personal Computers. The book is peppered with such fact boxes which makes the experience of reading about the various technical concepts more interesting. Chapter 3 also contains some compelling and inspiring biographies, such as the biographies of computer wizards Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are written concisely and eloquently, making them more enjoyable to read than the information available online. Another noteworthy section in this chapter is the one on the Apple I, Apple II, and its subsequent models. These were the first computers to feature a keyboard, power supply, and display in their design. These computers also have a memorable name, Steve Jobs, attached to them.

    As the author explains why the relevance and historical background of the Internet makes it a Groundbreaking Invention, a very riveting detail in the history of the Internet is mentioned. The author explains the historical relevance of the internet by divulging that the internet was originally created as a defence weapon for the US Department of Defence (DoD). The author states, “J.C.R Licklider was convinced that a country-wide communications network to connect computers would be essential for the defence of the USA.”

    Amongst the reasons for why the internet is a groundbreaking invention, the most noteworthy are: 1) It leads to innovations: the internet has provided the format using which further inventions such as Search Engines, the World Wide Web, Video on Demand, Internet Radio, and Cloud Computing have emerged ; 2) Leads to the start of new industries: for example, e-commerce firms such as Flipkart, Search engine companies such as Google, and social networking companies such as Facebook ; 3) Societal Changes: the ability to instantly network with a large number of people online to communicate, consume information, buy, and sell has changed the way our society functions.

    Another notable section in this chapter is the one on GPS where the author provides the readers with some interesting facts. For example, the author states “Originally, GPS was intended only for the use of the defence forces of the USA.’ He informs us that GPS is still controlled by the US Department of Defence. He goes on to explain the political effects of this circumstance. This section on the geopolitical effects of the USA’s control on GPS is truly very compelling.

    In the final chapter, the author discusses the last six inventions: World Wide Web, Search Engine, Digitization and Compression, Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, and Deep Learning. He uses the same organised format and easy to read language in this final chapter for clear understanding.

    Overall, what I found to be the best feature of this book is the format using which it is organised. The author presents his explanations of and relevant information on 15 groundbreaking inventions in a uniform format which consists of congruously repeating sections with consistent headings for each invention. Personally, the section I found most enjoyable in each chapter was the part where the author explains ‘Why’ – “Why is this invention a groundbreaking invention in ICT?”. This is since it is quite compelling to learn about why the author chose to write about these inventions in the first place. It is eye-opening to know that certain advancements in ICT can be set apart from others and called a “groundbreaking invention”.

    Arguably, the author does a commendable job at achieving what he set out to do. He explains the groundbreaking inventions in a simple style to allow anyone with a pre-university education to understand and appreciate how ICT has been developed.

    Readers will gain a deep understanding of 15 groundbreaking inventions in ICT from 1957 to-date and will find that this book is not only informative but also an enjoyable read.

    I highly recommend this book! Log on to https://www.phindia.com/Books/BookDetail/9789389347524/groundbreaking-inventions-in-information-and-communication