Ozics And The Future Of Mending Bones

 The worldwide orthopedic market had global revenues of more than $36b in 2008. The market is dominated by six global companies that hold 80% of that global revenue. Osteoporosis has been on a relentless march. Worldwide, an osteoporotic fracture is estimated to occur every three seconds. Osteoporosis is estimated to affect 200 million women worldwide: approximately one-tenth of women aged 60, one-fifth of women aged 70, two-fifths of women aged 80 and two-thirds of women aged 90. Osteoporosis affects an estimated 75 million people in Europe, USA and Japan. And here is the statistic that demonstrates the size of the market potential for mending bones: by 2050, 30% of the EU population will be over the age of 65. *

The Ozics Group, a Swiss biotech firm, believes it has found a way to manage osteoporosis with a newly discovered innovative material that is the perfect marriage of science and device design. The technology platform, known as Ozics CompO6™, enables minimally invasive transcutaneous repair of load-bearing fractures such as osteoporotic proximal femoral fractures  - commonly known as hip fractures to you and me.

Now, let me paint a picture for you. For decades, the primary method to treat factures has been to use metallic hardware such as plates, screws and pins or a total joint prosthesis combined with standard bone cement known as Poly-Methyl-Methlacrylate (PMMA). PMMA is supplied as a powder and a liquid that have to be mixed together to form a dough-like resin. Then, it’s applied surgically with a spatula or syringe and it hardens on the bone. In recent biomechanical studies** both in the US and Switzerland, PMMA bone cement has been shown to enhance fixation strength in femoral fractures when it was used around metallic fixation screws. However, it still has no bonding abilities, so no bonding to the bone, it only fills the void without any true integration to the bone.

This is where Ozics' CompO6™ Bone Replacement composite takes a step forward in the next line of advanced medicine for osteoporosis. Unlike conventional PMMA bone cement – it forms a solid bond with the bone. CompO6™ is a composite material of polymer and ceramic including hydroxyapatite. When that mixture comes into contact with a watery solution it forms an apatite-rich layer over the bone, think of it as a bio-compatible ceramic that’s chemically related to bone. (Quick science lesson: Apatite is a mineral found in the bone, so it’s about as natural as it comes, without apatite, there can’t be any bond to the bone.)

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Within minutes after delivery of CompO6™, a solid bond between the implant surface and the bone is formed. The paste-like material from CompO6™ flows into the interstitial spaces of the cancellous bone (cancellous bone is softer, less dense and typically found at the end of  long bones, around joints and within the interior of vertebrae), forming a mechanical lock with the bone. The load-bearing feature of CompO6™ allows patients to regain pain-free mobility with less rehabilitation shortly after the minimally invasive application. The first set of clinical trials for CompO6™ will be in 2012.

According to Dr. Auvo Kaikkonen, President and CEO, Ozics Group, CompO6™ will initially be targeted for the treatment of osteoporotic spinal fractures. “We believe the unique innovative material that Ozics has created will revolutionize fracture management and eventually be used prophylactically before the fracture has occurred ,” said Dr. Kaikkonen. “CompO6™ will be the first injectable load-bearing fracture fixation implant offering which will improve patients’ fracture care.”

Ozics is not alone. Other companies, such as BoneSupport (Sweden), Orthovita (US - acquired by Stryker in May 2011), BoneSolutions (USA), IlluminOss Medical (USA) and PolyNovo (Australia) have also been working on new ways to mend bones. Several companies are developing similar bone mending products for small bone fractures but with no load-bearing characteristics.

Everyone talks about disruptive technology and they all see something different. In the end, the technology that can be the most disruptive is one that can improve the quality of life for an aging population. In this case, Ozics' CompO6™ Bone Replacement composite is live matter that generates bioactivity around the bone and simply revolutionizes the way bone fractures are treated. Ozics’ discovery will also have a domino effect in the fracture and osteoporosis industry by enabling other physicians, such as interventional radiologists and geriatricians, to treat these patients without the need of an expensive surgical facility to perform the procedure.

Disruptive in the healthcare industry can also boil down to changing the status quo. There were around 1.6m hip fractures in the US and EU in 2010. It costs around €13,000 in treatment for a 3-5 day hospital stay and extended rehabilitation time significantly increases cost to around €30,000 in EU.

That's an industry that needs a little disruption.

Massive Helps the BBC Deliver News App to Connected TVs

 The BBC went and developed a news application for connected TVs to complement its 24-hour television news channel and web site. The news app will initially be available free of charge on Samsung Smart TVs through their apps store and later it will be accessible on a variety of connected devices and displays, including an international version.

But the story you might not hear is how that Over The Top (OTT) application for connected televisions came to be. Think of the Wizard of Oz; behind the curtain there's someone moving the levers to create the best design and software that lets broadcasters commercialize their video and content for any device – connected TV, tablet, mobile, PC.

Why? Because the connected TV market is seriously heating up.

According to Dan Cryan, Head of Broadband, IHS Screen Digest, the number of TVs actively connected to the internet is set to hit 17.3m in 2014; up from 0.8m in 2010.

“The number of TVs connected to the internet both as the functionality becomes more widespread but also as the service offered become more diverse and compelling, giving consumers are real reason to plug in their new TV set,” said Cryan.

Massive, a UK company that specializes in creating next generation video entertainment for on-demand television, makes the stuff  you probably won’t ever hear of. What that means is they figure out how to interpret and get that content from the internet to you on your connected TV in a way that you have come to expect which is as if you are on your PC or tablet.

Massive announced today that they did just that, working with the BBC User Experience and Design team to design the newly launched BBC News product for connected TV which was launched last week in the UK.

The news TV app combines existing on-demand video and text content from BBC News online and brings it to connected living-room TV screens. Initially, it will be available on Samsung’s range of smart TVs, with plans to support other connected devices over time.

Samsung sold around two million Smart TVs worldwide in the first three months since their launch in early April 2011, selling at an average rate of 22,000 a day, with about 700,000 of them in Europe.

This isn’t the first time Massive has made broadcasters look good. They have delivered dozens of complex and large-scale content solutions for deployment on the web, ITV, IPTV, mobile and in-flight entertainment platforms. From Australia’s first ITV service (Austar) which was the first implementation of MS Windows Media Center for an IPTV application to Telstra/BigPond, the first integration of Google Earth for a Sports site for the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Massive is behind some of the most advanced on demand television out there.

Even though you might not know it, there's a lot that goes into your TV experience so you can just sit back, crack open your favorite beverage and channel surf.

Peer raises prospect House of Lords could be replaced by bots 'with deeper knowledge and lower running costs'

 A crossbench peer raised concerns about AI's ability to mimic the speeches of politicians during a debate about the risks and benefits of the technology.The House of Lords could be replaced by bots with "higher productivity, deeper knowledge and lower running costs", a peer warned as the debate continues over the risks of artificial intelligence (AI).

Lord Londesborough said AI will soon be advanced enough to deliver his speeches in his voice by analysing and processing the comments he has made on parliament's live TV feed.

He asked the upper chamber if the prospect of being replaced by "peer bots" is either an "exciting" or an "alarming" one, before raising concerns about the impact AI could have on millions of workers in the UK.The hereditary peer's comments came during the latest debate in parliament on the development of advanced AI, associated risks and potential approaches to regulation within the UK and internationally.

Lord Londesborough, an independent crossbencher, said he was "briefly tempted to outsource my AI speech to a chatbot and to see if anybody noticed".

"I did in fact test out two large language models. In seconds, both delivered 500-word speeches which were credible, if somewhat generic."He said AI "will soon be able to write my speeches in my personal style, having scraped Hansard, and deliver it in my voice through natural language understanding, having analysed and processed my speeches on parliament.tv".

He said the technology will do this "with no hesitation, repetition or deviation".

"Is it an exciting or alarming prospect that Your Lordships might one day be replaced by peer bots with deeper knowledge, higher productivity and lower running costs?" he asked.As a few peers chuckled, Lord Londesborough insisted this is a prospect for "millions" of UK workers over the next decade, whose jobs could be replaced by AI.

But he also conceded that artificial intelligence could bring benefits, saying the UK economy is in "dire need of AI to address low productivity and growth and critical capacity".

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is not only raising concerns among politicians, but also some tech leaders at the heart of its development.

UK 'must prepare for AI on same scale as pandemic'

While AI can perform life-saving tasks, such as algorithms analysing medical images like X-rays, scans and ultrasounds, there are concerns around its ability to do humans' jobs, disinformation and so-called deepfakes.

The last few months have seen apocalyptic predictions, with leading developers warning that "generative" AI, capable of producing text and images from prompts and learning as it goes, poses a "societal-scale" risk similar to pandemics and nuclear war.

During the debate in the Lords, several reservations were raised in relation to bias and discrimination, privacy, security, journalism and the impact the technology could have on jobs and wealth distribution.Crossbench peer Viscount Colville of Culross said he had asked ChatGPT to write him a speech on the threat AI poses to journalism and one of the paragraphs stated: "AI in its tireless efficiency threatens to overshadow human journalism.

"News articles can be automated and editorials composed without a single thought, a single beating heart behind the words."

The author embracing AI to help write novels - and why he's not worried about it taking his job

 For many writers, AI poses an existential threat to their livelihoods - but one author believes the technology could help drive him and his fellow creatives to new heights.The rain tapped lightly against the windowpanes of my London apartment, a steady rhythm that mirrored the musings within my little grey cells.

It was a day like any other, or so I believed, until a peculiar letter arrived. As I delicately unfolded the note, its contents gave rise to a most intriguing puzzle.'Mr Hercule Poirot,' it began in elegant script, 'I implore you to lend your unparalleled expertise to a matter of utmost secrecy and importance.

'An enigma of art, an amalgamation of shadows, a crescendo of whispers, await your perceptive insight.'

Asked to open a new novel starring detective Hercule Poirot, one of Agatha Christie's most famous creations, that's ChatGPT's first attempt at grabbing your attention.

Ciphers Of The Midnight Mind is the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot's suggested title - and it could no doubt craft the entire rest of the story in a matter of seconds.

For fans of the more than century-old character, whose popularity has endured beyond Christie's death in 1976, new stories composed on demand may be a tantalising prospect.

After all, the author's estate - like those who hold the keys to James Bond and Sherlock Holmes - has happily commissioned other writers to give readers new Poirot and Miss Marple adventures. Who's to say those same fans couldn't find enjoyment in a passable imitation by AI?

For many writers, it's an existential question that has them fearing for their livelihoods.

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But for Ajay Chowdhury, an award-winning crime author, it presents an opportunity for them to reach new heights.

"There's a lot of fear around it for a writer - but I don't believe it is going to replace us," he says.

"I started experimenting with AI in writing six or seven months ago, and it was of course slightly scary.

"But it's like having a fantastic editor on demand." Useful editor or existential threat?

Chowdhury's fascination with AI speaks to his background in tech, one which included co-founding the music discovery app Shazam, later bought by Apple for a reported $400m (then £300m).

But he is now known for his Kamil Rahman crime series, inspired by his Indian roots, which has won him several awards and will see a fifth entry - The Spy - released next year.

AI tools are playing a key role in its development - helping Chowdhury bounce thoughts around, generate potential outcomes for certain scenes, and rephrase sections to help with pacing.

He even used an image generator, Midjourney, to visualise a dramatic chase scene through a cave on the island of Elephanta, a world heritage site off the coast of Mumbai. It helped spark ideas about how it could play out.

"Eight out of 10 times, whatever AI gives you might be thrown away, but the other two times you might think it's a decent idea that can be expanded on," he says.

"Using a combination of these tools is giving me a much better draft to submit. I am finding that I get to what would have been a fifth draft by the second draft."

For Chowdhury, there's no shame in using AI to help get there, despite what many of his contemporaries fear.

Earlier this month, author Jane Friedman had to contend with AI-generated books purportedly written in her name, falsely listed as such on Amazon. She managed to have them removed, despite them not technically falling foul of copyright law because she had not trademarked her name.

"This promises to be a serious problem for the book publishing world," she warns.

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'Without writers we have nothing'

'Marvel formula' most at risk

More than 100,000 writers have endorsed an open letter by America's Authors Guild, which has demanded AI's development show "respect for human creators and copyright".

Generative models like ChatGPT are trained on huge amounts of trademarked material, prompting writers including comedian Sarah Silverman to sue its creator OpenAI for copyright infringement.

This potential to imitate human work is a driving force behind ongoing writers' strikes in Hollywood.

TV and theatre writer Lisa Holdsworth, who is chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, told the Sky News Daily podcast that would constitute theft more than creation, and the longer AI models are left to be trained without safeguards in place, "the more of a threat it becomes".

Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

Chowdhury backs the cause, saying left to its own devices, AI will only serve to indulge mediocrity.

"That beige world of creativity where everything is sequel 32 to something, that worries me," he admits.

"Look at films like Oppenheimer and Barbie, both extremely well written. Could AI create those? No. But could they write the next Marvel? Possibly, it's a pretty clear formula."

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Brian Cox: 'Strikes may get unpleasant'

A world of mediocrity?

For Chowdhury, the genie is out of the bottle and there's no going back - writers, like all of us, need to adapt.

Aside from the next main entry in his Kamil Rahman series, AI helped Chowdhury find time to work with Google on interactive novel The Invitation, a crime story set in London's East End.

The short story - which includes puzzles, a countdown clock, and sound effects - was made with commuters in mind and only takes around 20 minutes to get through. It's available for free on Chowdhury's website.

It's a little heavy on the Google product placement, with nods to Gmail and Maps that are clever or eye-rolling depending on your level of cynicism, though as a proof of concept for quick to make, accessible interactive novels, the kinds of which gamers have long been familiar, overall it's quite effective.

The whole thing came together in six weeks to mark the UK launch of the tech giant's new Pixel Fold phone, optimised to take advantage of its book-like screen. The production speed helped by Chowdhury generating the artwork using Midjourney.

It does the job, but it's a move that will no doubt rub some the wrong way given the criticism levelled at Marvel for using AI to generate opening title graphics for its latest TV series.

Read more:
How AI could transform future of crime
Music labels in talks over AI-generated songs
Google insists AI won't be replacing journalists

But Chowdhury still sees AI as a tool to take him and others "to another level".

"The utopia to me is people using AI to enhance their creativity," he says.

"The side that worries me is if large corporations start to think we don't need creatives any more.

"That will become a world of mediocrity."

As the rain continued to dance its elegy on the windowpane, Poirot leaned back in his chair, his little grey cells still whirring with satisfaction.

For within the labyrinthine corridors of art and deception, he had once again illuminated the truth, dispelling the shadows that sought refuge in the enigmatic corners of the human soul.

Thanks, ChatGPT, but when it comes to Poirot, I think I'll stick with Christie.

Papercut Shows us the Future of Publishing

 ustwo™ is a digital entertainment and design studio that delivers the UI/UX design, app development and content creation for global brands. They are singularly focused on releasing their own entertainment products in the form of apps, books and games. With almost 100 people working in Malmö and London (New York later this year) transforming digital publishing, ustwo™ is shaking up how we consume and provide content as the new and next generation of publishers.

Actually, the co-founder of ustwo™, who is known as "mills", says that they create content for "amazing" global brands. He's like that, well THEY are like that.  The innovative start up is bursting with passion for everything they do and it comes through in everything they touch including their first digital children's book, Nursery Rhymes with Storytime which launched three months ago.Nursery Rhymes was  “App of The Week” for iPad and iPhone, in both UK and the US. Pretty much the entire online community went a little nutty for the app, children included, and it was the buzz du jour among old school publishing houses. They were mostly stunned that you could take the look and feel of classic children's stories and make them come alive on a tablet or Smartphone. It's as if someone finally turned on the light for them.

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"Nursery Rhymes is a great example of the rapid change we’re seeing in the publishing industry at the moment," said mills. "Because of all the noise it generated, for several weeks Nursery Rhymes was the number one selling book and more importantly the highest grossing book app on the App Store (generating at best £2500 a day globally)."

According to mills, he believes the ke

Nursery Rhymes by Storytime

y to Nursery Rhymes success was not only the craft and love behind creating it in the first place, but the Storytime feature which allows users to remotely read to their kids. Again, transferring a traditional activity of reading with your children from a physical book to duplicating that experience digitally, complete with touch, topped with interactivity with the page, words and sound.

"Apples’ App Store has allowed developers like ustwo™ to question for the first time exactly who the publisher is. We had no previous experience in publishing books, but with our first attempt, we had secured a number one spot on both sides of the Atlantic. That in itself has created a huge stir in the industry," adds mills.

That's true.  There is an intense debate right now about the transformation of traditional media/publishing and how or if it will compete with digital media. As Ben Franklin said, the power of the press belongs to those that own one. With the advent of the internet, social media and the like, everyone has a megaphone. Everyone is a publisher now.

"We're constantly being flooded with reports, statistics and conferences about the future of publishing at the moment, but it’s crystal clear for us - the industry is going from paper to screen and it's happening right now. We’re seeing a lot of chat about how traditional publishing houses have to change to keep up with digital media. Nowadays it's all about speed, investment in the future and new platforms, global rights and new kinds of storytelling techniques. This means that unfortunately for publishing houses they have to deal with the new kids on the block, the new breed of competitor - companies like ustwo™."

mills says that it cost about £60,000 to develop Nursery Rhymes, and they are about half way to recouping that initial investment,  a mere three months later. To you this might not sound so good, but they are happy about it because they believe that it is still better than what their publishing counterparts are recouping.

ustwo™ wants to be a thought leader, they want to be the first to offer users great experiences, they pride themselves on delivering an experience the user can't live without. They believe there is no other point in developing it if there is not a good user experience in it for them. And so Nursery Rhymes has become their line in the sand and it's also where they got the idea for their next digital publishing adventure, Papercut.

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ercut is a publishing platform designed and developed to create a short story experience for users, somewhere between  plain text and a full-on movie. The platform will go live at the beginning of August.

"Working in collaboration with Shortfire Press, we invited three of the top British authors – Richard Beard, Nadifa Mohamed and Laura Dockrill to the Papercut platform. Working closely with our team of developers and visual and audio designers, they are going to take the art of story telling to the next level, creating truly immersive reading experiences," said mills.

"Authors, editors and readers are very closely connected with the process of simply reading a book. The book represents their love of storytelling and literature, and to some extent how they even see themselves. If you

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remove that element, in a way you’re questioning their identity," said mills. "At the moment we’re still seeing many in the industry confuse books with reading. But to us, books are just a format, a container, and the key thing to remember is and always has been the reading experience."

"Paper cut is simply about enhancing the reading experience by merging text with audio, visual and interactive elements. It's not rocket science," adds mills.

Solar Powered Energy Management for Hotels

 You know the scenario. You check into a hotel and anything goes. The air conditioner gets turned down to the coolest setting AND you open the windows because you want some fresh air. It’s not your house. Anything goes.

I was at a hotel in Italy recently and chose to leave my key card in the “activation slot” because I wanted my beagle to have AC and lights in the room while I was out. When I came back, the room was dark and hot. My beagle looked at me with annoyance and I realized the room had sensors that triggered the AC and the lights and his frame wasn’t enough to displace the air to tell the sensors to stay on. I think he’s recovered from that injustice.

Hotels consume massive amounts of energy and use 50% more energy than a similar sized residential building despite having only 55% occupancy rates on average.  Just for a comparison, hotels in Dubai on average use between 650 -1,250 liters of water per guest and consume 275 - 325 kWh of power per square meter. In Germany, the average hotel uses only 350 liters of water and 100 kWh per square meter. Europe has approximately 5.45 million hotel rooms, which represents almost half of the world total. You do the math.

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Most hotels are rapidly moving towards smart energy management solutions, but it’s expensive to retrofit old hotels and most won’t shut down for major renovations if they don’t really have to. Energy costs are the highest fixed cost for hotels after salaries. Major energy costs for hotels include heating, light and power (HLP).

Zenros, a start up in Denmark has created a new solar powered energy management system for hotels they believe will save hotels at least 35% in HLP costs over current sensor based technology.

Their solar panel system is integrated with the lights via the room controller, drawing power from man-made and natural light. Then, using Zigbee Smart Energy, the panel wirelessly communicates with all the electrical devices in the room – the minibar, doors, windows, lights, TVs, etc. The use of solar energy and wireless eliminates any need for re-wiring the hotel room meaning that installation is significantly simplified in existing hotel buildings. The Zenros Solar Touch panels can be installed without the use of any new cables or external power and retrofitted to any hotel.

The bigger picture is that the Zenros Solar Touch panels are ideal for appliances or locations that have no electrical grid nearby. The solar lights can be used all day. Instead of kicking on or off like most sensors, the panels adjust all the electrical devices in the room to what is happening. The reporting system detects when the system has changed and then calculates how much has been saved or what the interruption was to illustrate the savings that were generated.

The Zenros system has been sold to a 6,000-room luxury hotel in Qatar and is expected to go live later this year. To date, the company has raised €684,000 from private investors, and is based in Copenhagen.

Live TV on your PC

 Zattoo lets you watch real TV on your PC. Real TV, as in live TV from major channels in Europe just like on cable or satellite or even over the air. Channels like CNN, EuroNews, MTV (in German) and France2.

How the heck can they do that? Zattoo retransmits live TV channels via licensing agreements for each country they launch in. Right now the majority of the channels are German, followed by Spanish, French, English and Polish. They have one Arabic channel, Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English. In March, they added BBC Alba, the Gaelic channel which is a digital TV channel broadcasting Gaelic programming daily from 17:00-23:30, in case you want to brush up on your Gaelic.

Zattoo carries more than 200 channels, but due to geographical content licensing issues that dominate the TV and content landscape today, they can't show all channels in all geographies. Zattoo is free, all you have to do is download the player and if it is available in your country (currently not Italy), you can start watching right away.

An estimated 80% of Zattoo’s eight million registered viewers already have TV from cable, satellite or over the air. Zattoo serves as a second screen when those viewers are not in the living room or when the TV is already in use, as well as when users are multi-tasking on their PC or commuting to/from work.

Interview

 

Q. Please Share a Little Background?

I have an M.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering specializing in Parallel and Distributed Computing from IIT Kanpur, India.

Q. How and Why Did You Get Interested in Machine Learning?

I was working in the loans department of a bank.

The bank had developed software which used machine learning to predict whether it would be a good bet to sanction a loan application or not.

The results of the software in many cases were better than some of the credit officers.

I was impressed by this technology and started developing an interest in machine learning since then.

Q. How has Machine Learning Mastery Helped You on Your Journey?

Machine Learning Mastery helped me master machine learning. Period.

I don’t have a background in mathematics and statistics.

I was under the wrong assumption that I needed one.

I struggled for close to 3 years to get a good hold on ML algorithms. Lots of time got wasted in learning unnecessary things from many books which were theoretical in nature.

Progress made using Machine Learning Mastery books helped improve my skills by leaps and bounds in a very short span of time.

Q. Share your Experiences on Kaggle?

Kaggle is a great platform for learning Machine Learning.

The datasets hosted represent real-world observations. Experts all across the world post solutions to these problems. Learning from these solutions helped accelerate my learning.

It made learning machine learning fun and enjoyable.

Q. What is a Kaggle Dataset That You Worked On?

I worked on the Allstate Claims Severity dataset.

I did a spot-check using the popular regression algorithms such as LR, Ridge, Lasso, Elastic Net, etc.

I used the seaborn library for EDA and the scikit-learn library for modeling.

Q. Well done on your top-voted Kernel, how did it come to be?

Santhosh Sharma Top Voted Kaggle Kernel
(currently the 4th most popular kernel by votes)

The approach followed is inspired by the recipes and the approach in ML Mastery Python books.

In the feedback received for this kernel, most of the users say that it is very easy to follow.

I am thankful to Machine Learning Mastery books which taught me how to approach a machine learning problem.

I have followed this in all of my kernels.

Q. Can You Walk Us Through The Steps In Your Popular Kernel?

The kernel can be accessed directly here.

The steps followed is in accordance with the approach mentioned in the Machine Learning Mastery books. The steps are mentioned below.

Santhosh Sharma Top Voted Kaggle Kernel

Data statistics

• Shape of the train and test dataset
• Peek – eyeball the data
• Description – min, max, avg, etc of each column
• Skew – of each numerical column to check if correction is necessary

Transformation

• Correction of skew – one of the columns needed correction – I used log transform

Data Interaction

• Correlation – I filtered out only highly correlated pairs
• Scatter plot – plotting using seaborn

Data Visualization

• Box and density plots – violin plot showed spectacular visualization
• Grouping of one hot encoded attributes – to show the count

Data Preparation

• One hot encoding of categorical data – many columns are categorical
• Test-train split – for model evaluation

Evaluation and analysis

• Linear Regression (Linear algo)
• Ridge Regression (Linear algo)
• LASSO Linear Regression (Linear algo)
• Elastic Net Regression (Linear algo)
• KNN (non-linear algo)
• CART (non-linear algo)
• SVM (Non-linear algo)
• Bagged Decision Trees (Bagging)
• Random Forest (Bagging)
• Extra Trees (Bagging)
• AdaBoost (Boosting)
• Stochastic Gradient Boosting (Boosting)
• MLP (Deep Learning)
• XGBoost

Prediction

• Using the best model (XGBRegressor)
• Surprising results : Simple linear models such as LR, Ridge, Lasso, and ElasticNet performed very well

Q. Congratulations On The New Job, How Did You Get It?

I showcased my top-voted kernel on Kaggle to the interviewer.

He was very impressed by the systematic approach and the results I got.

I will be working as a Senior Data Scientist with Target Corporation.

Q. Any Idea What You’ll Work on at Target?

I will be joining next week.

I’m looking forward to working with the team and make a small difference in the shopping experience of millions of customers of Target.

Q. What is Next?

I’m looking forward to the next book by Machine Learning Mastery on Time Series!

Summary

In this post, you discovered how a Santhosh went from working in a bank to getting a job as a Senior Data Scientist at Target.

You learned that:

• Santhosh applied the skills he learned to real datasets on a Kaggle problem.
• He shared his results publically, showing how others can do what he did and in turn gaining credibility with a top ranking Kaggle Kernel.
• The top voted Kernel helped Santhosh get a new job as a Data Scientist at Target.

So, what can you do?

• Are you practicing on real datasets?
• Are you sharing everything you’re learning publicly?
• Are you helping others?

What is your next step going to be?
Share it in the comments below.

Adyen and Mobile Payments

The first modern credit card was Diners Club. It was paper and was issued to 200 people in New York City in 1950. By 1951, there were 20,000 cards in circulation. The payment industry was born.

Credit cards made buying stuff easier and safer. They transformed how we shop, first in stores, then online and now on our phones.

The introduction of e-commerce and mobile commerce are like the industry equivalent of the big bang. As customers want more and want it faster, the only obstacles to this expansion are security and infrastructure.

Today, we still buy things in physical stores, but we now have the luxury of shopping online, via our mobile phones, PCs and tablets. Merchants want to expand and push into the vast wilderness that is consumers-on-the-go using multiple devices to make purchases, so they need to offer options for online and mobile payments.

But the paradox is that a lot of work goes into making online payments as frictionless as possible. The catch-22 is that merchants have a lot to worry about when they take your credit card, the biggest issue being Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance, which officially came on the scene in 2006. PCI Compliance is simply adherence to a set of specific security standards developed to protect card information during and after a financial transaction. It’s required by all card types (ATM, debit, credit and POS) and all merchants that want to let you use a credit card to buy something must comply.

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PCI compliance is good for consumers because it protects our sensitive data and we are good at creating data. Let’s put that date into perspective:

In 2009, credit cards were responsible for more than $2.5 trillion in transactions a year and were accepted at more than 24 million locations in more than 200 countries and territories. (Source: American Bankers Association, March 2009)

An estimated 10,000 payment card transactions are made every second around the world. (Source: American Bankers Association, March 2009)

Credit card data has grown in significance because of the proliferation of online and mobile purchases that can now be made. Consumers don’t like it when their data gets stolen, it’s a matter of trust. And merchants need to deliver that trust to you, their customers. This point has recently been emphasized with the recent security breaches at Sony and Sega.

Swedish internet visionary and CEO of Mindpark, Joakim Jardenberg, says we live in a world where trust, penetration and volume are everything.

And this is where Adyen comes in. Adyen is a mobile payment solutions company, managing the new international payment complexity and PCI Compliance for merchants that accompanies how we purchase and pay today. With Adyen, merchants can focus on expanding their global reach by giving customers more options for online and mobile payments and keeping their credit card data safe.

Founded in Amsterdam and operating across six continents from both Amsterdam and Boston, the financially sound start-up is proving that first generation banks like Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) cannot deliver a global payments platform that performs to meet the diverse payment needs of today’s global e-commerce market.

Adyen, despite being led by a tenured team of banking and finance gurus from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Bibit, and Rabobank, doesn't like to call itself a payments company, but rather a tech company that specializes in global payments. Driving their developers to stay one step ahead on the technology front, Adyen constantly focuses on innovation, which they believe their larger counterparts can not do.

With Adyen, the look and feel of the payment page is from the merchant’s perspective. You don’t click to pay and then see a third-party page appear. One click payment – giving peace of mind to both the merchant for PCI Compliance and the consumer who trusts the merchant and the brand. But more than that, Adyen has the potential to follow the merchant across their sales channels, devices and geographies with an optimized solution for all channels, not just mobile or online.

Peter Caparso, Adyen President, North America, puts trust into perspective. “Trust goes down when you click away from the merchant page. The global recession melted trust, but now that we are in a recovery, merchants are ramping up to create new payment methods to reach out to consumers and push into new territory. Merchants need to grow and they need to trust the company that helps them do that.”

But confidence and trust are also cultural. In 2009, Caparso says Adyen saw a different level of confidence in outsourcing payment solutions by geography. In the US, most merchants didn’t want to lose access to consumers, i.e. outsource the payments to a third party despite the fact they could still retain their own brand. In fact, Caparso says that in 2009, 95% of all US customers preferred NOT to outsource payments as opposed to Europe, which was only 20%. Today in 2011, the numbers are dramatically different, with only 15% of the US customer based choosing not to outsource and Europe down to a mere 5%.

The real eye opener for Adyen was airlines. Their first airline, Chilean Airlines, chose to outsource their payments solution this year and was a key indicator that Adyen's technology and service platform matched the payment requirements in Latin America.

Adyen is quite pragmatic. They claim their innovation is due to closely following their merchants and what they are offering to their merchants. Knowing your customer, creating trust within the confines of a highly technological virtual world.