Scientific Computing

What is scientific computing and what sets it apart from normal computing?

Scientific computing is highly realistic modeling of real world objects such as business models or algorithms that deal with data that can pertain to things like trends or societal interests using specific copmutational methods taht is dubbed "scientific computation". A common area that scientific computation can be seen is in business that need to track their finances, profit margins, and predict future trends that will affect their business.

Scientific computation is mathematical and informatical basis of a numerical simulation. Scientific computing reconstructs or predicts future trends or process that are used heavily in business, sciences, and engineering. This is the third way to obtain knowledge or data apart from theories and experiments.

In scientific computing, the objectives and goals depend on what the task is. It can be to reconstruct and understand certain situations like natural disasters, or optimize scenarios like improving the processing power and efficiency of a computer. And it can be used to predict scenarios such as weather and new materials.

Needless to say, scientific computing is an invaluable tool in a competitive economy and scientific community

http://www.brockport.edu/cps/whatis.html

http://www5.in.tum.de/lehre/vorlesungen/sci_comp/ws03/material/slides01.pdf

Computer Graphics, From One Extreme End to Another

Computers are a completely new invention in relation to the history of man. But in such a short time of under a century, computers have made an unimaginably contribution to our lives and become integrated in such a way that was completely unforeseen.

One of the major ways we use computers is to play games on them, and because of this the evolution of computer graphics has exponentially increased its pace, starting from 8-bit character models to the game textures (or detail and resolution) of such degree that they are now photo-realistic thus making that virtual world you are playing much more immersive and enjoyable.

A short history of the major developments in computer graphics starts in 1998 where 16-bit depth with color and textures were developed. Then in 1999, multi-texture 32-bit rendering emereged. From there cube maps, texture compression, and antripsopic filtering. In 2001 programmable vertex, 3d textures, shadow maps, and multisampling. In 2002 early z-cull and dual-monitor capability was added. In 2003 fragment programs and color and depth compression. In 2004 flow control, and floating point textures, and valve texture control, in 2005 transparency antialiasing, in 2006 unifided shaders, geometry shaders, and in 2007 double precision.

That is to say, each of  these things are incredibly complex, but in an extremely summarized version, developers continued to push the definition and detail of what they were able to incorporate into games and improved on software and hardware in computers that would help to render these images efficiently and quickly.

A 16-bit images compared next to current generation photorealistic graphics

http://www.nvidia.com/content/nvision2008/tech_presentations/Technology_Keynotes/NVISION08-Tech_Keynote-GPU.pdf

Computer Security Practicality

In the 21st century, wherever we go, it seems that we are always surrounded by a computer in one form or another. The most common devices that almost everyone keeps on their person at all times is a smartphone and a laptop. These devices commonly contain items of major importance to us, whether it be personal information, work related projects or data, or purchased virtual items may be contained on them. Thus it is of the utmost importance to keep our personal devices and the items kept in them safe from unwanted use.

Things that can damage the integrity of cyber security are malware, worms, and trojans which attempt to install themselves onto your computer and seek out sensitive information; typical targets include usernames and passwords for financial accounts and credit card information. Other threats include social network attacks which seek to lure users with fake links for personal information, and botnets which are compromised computers which seek to break computer encryptions.

http://wyoming.gov/pdf/brochure_security-is-important.pdf

http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/C45-626825-00_Cyber_Security_Responsibility_AAG.pdf