Mediaboss Marketing

By Venkatachari Jagannathan

Chennai, Aug 1 (IANS): Chess pieces that move on their own as if possessed by some spirit, artistic boards, handcrafted pieces made of camel bones and several other novelties are available in the Indian market.

There is also a 100-square chess board -- normal boards have 64 squares -- with new pieces like bull, camel, kangaroo and dragon.

India that exported 'chaturanga', or the game of chess, is now shipping out chess boards to several countries like the USA, UAE and others in sizable numbers.

According to the Department of Commerce figures, India exported USD3.27m worth of chess boards between April 2021 and January 2023 as against USD2.49m worth of shipment during FY21.

A chess-board manufacturer also said his company has taken steps to make digital boards which are currently being imported.

"Smart chess boards are in demand as people want to move away from watching the screens -- mobile, laptops and desktops. The chess pieces move in an automated manner powered by robotics. There are also rollable electronic boards," said PN Naveen Karthikeyan, proprietor of My Chess Dreams, the Indian distributor for the US-based Square Off.

"With these boards, one can play chess anywhere with anyone in the world who is connected with certain chess portals," Karthikeyan, a FIDE arbiter and the author of the book 18x64 that links the 64-square chess board and the 18 chapters of Bhagavad Gita, said.

At the ongoing 44th Chess Olympiad venue, chess board manufacturers, who have put up stalls, are smiling as they are getting enquiries from several foreign participants.

"The demand for wooden chess boards and pieces will never go away even though there are vinyl boards there," Nikhil Dhir, partner, Paramount Dealz, told IANS.

Dhir, a mechanical engineer formerly with Reliance Industries at Jam Nagar in Gujarat, in partnership with Pratik Matlawala started his chess board company in 2018.

"We ship our boards to the US, UK and UAE. Our total turnover is about USD0.7 million and this year we hope to touch USD1 million," Dhir said.

Liking the wooden chess boards to the iconic 350cc Enfield Bullet bike, Dhir said, "Everyone wants to own a Bullet bike for its unique engine noise. But they also want modern features like button start and others. Similar is the case with wooden chess boards.

"The chess pieces are handcrafted as per the FIDE specifications," he added.

While vinyl chess boards are foldable and easy to carry, Paramount Dealz has come out with a wooden chess board that can be rolled up.

"We are planning to have a prototype of the digital chess board ready soon. Currently it is being imported," Dhir said.

For the 44th Chess Olympiad that is being held at Mamallapuram near here, the digital chess boards were sent by the international chess federation (FIDE).

Simply put, digital and electronic chess boards are the ones where the moves made by the players are automatically transferred to computers and also enables live transmission.

Be that as it may, apart from wooden chess boards and pieces, manufacturers also make metal boards and carve chess pieces out of camel bones.

"We also make chess pieces with camel bones apart from regular and special pieces in wood for domestic and export markets," Ricky, CEO, Taj Chess Store told IANS.

The five-year-old Taj Chess Store, after focusing on exports to the US, UK and Australia, has started retailing in India for the last two years.

The wooden chess boards and pieces are made with rose wood, box wood, maple wood, ebony wood, acacia wood and others.

According to Dhir, garden chess sets -- huge chess boards and pieces -- are in demand from hotels and other institutions.

The industry players said the holding of the Olympiad has further increased interest in chess and board sales are brisk.

"Owing to Covid-19, sales of chess boards went down. People were in lockdown due to the pandemic and the sale of chess boards went down. But now it is picking up," AL Muthukaruppan, the owner of 8x8 that makes rexine chess boards and plastic chess pieces, told IANS.

India exports chess boards and pieces made of wood, rexine and plastic.

"We export rexine boards and plastic pieces to Europe, Sri Lanka, UAE, Canada and the US. In the domestic market we sell across the country," Rajendra Sagar, owner of Sagar Sports told IANS.

Interestingly, his wife and two daughters are strong chess players -- elder daughter Tejaswani Sagar is a Woman International Master with an ELO rating of 2,166, while his younger daughter Siya Sagar has an ELO rating of 1,831 and wife Anjali R Sagar has a rating of 1,836.

See more here:
Of chess pieces that move on their own and handcrafted pieces made of camel bones - Daijiworld.com

44th Chess Olympiad 2022: Prime MinisterNarendra Modiwill inaugurate theworlds biggest chess event the 44th International Chess Olympiadat the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai Thursday. It will is scheduled to take place from July 28 to August 10 at Poonjeri village in Mamallapuram.

On July 22, Minister of Environment Climate Change and Youth Welfare and Sports Siva V Meyyanathan tweeted that according to the directions of the states CM M K Stalin, a review meeting to discuss the arrangements for the event with officials was also conducted.

The Olympiad was originally scheduled to take place in Russia but due to the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) started looking for new bidders. India emerged the topper among other countries and won the opportunity to host the high-profile event for the first time. The Union Government provided the hosting rights of the worlds biggest chess event to Tamil Nadu.

Chief Minister M K Stalin said the authorities are expecting over 2,000 participants from 187 countries across the globe to take part in the event for which the state government has set aside Rs 92 crore. On June 19, PM Modi flagged off the first-ever torch relay for the Chess Olympiad. The torch was aimed to be taken to 75 cities within the country before arriving in Mamallapuram.

The Tamil Nadu Government also announced a holiday for schools, colleges, and other non-essential government offices in four districts for Thursday, July 28, in view of the opening day of the Olympiad.

Tamil Nadu CM Stalin chaired a meeting at the venue a few weeks ago to review the arrangements ahead of the event. He directed the officers to set up a 247 control room to assist the participants, guests and public, and ensure that the accommodation and other facilities such as parking, water and power supply, road facilities, etc are being taken care of. The authorities have been directed to provide wide publicity of the event in all districts.

The Greater Chennai Police have put in place a five-tier security arrangement and have deployed 22,000 personnel ahead of Prime MinisterNarendra Modis visit to the city on July 28. Flying of drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles has been banned in the city limits on July 28 and 29 underSection 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. According to a statement issued by the police, under the City Commissioner of Police, four Additional Commissioners, seven officers of the rank of Joint Commissioner/DIG and 26 officers in the rank of Deputy Commissioner/Superintendent have been deployed for security duty.

The state government has already started dedicated efforts to give maximum promotion for the mega event. The official mascot Thambi, a horse clad in the traditional Veshti Sattai, and the logo was also unveiled.

Stalin flagged off buses bearing Namma Chess, Namma Pride promotional slogans to travel across the city.

Superstar Rajinikanth launched a teaser video of the event and said it is a great pride that the 44th FIDE Chess Olympiad is being hosted for the first time in India and that too in Tamil Nadu.

The teaser, directed by Vignesh Sivan, was shot at the citys British-era Napier Bridge near Marina Beach and also at ancient monuments in Mamallapuram. The video featuring Stalin and also Oscar winner A R Rahman was set against the backdrop resembling a chessboard.

Apart from giving a makeover to the entire bridge in Chennai, the mascot Thambi was also placed at Namma Chennai selfie point, at ECR and other areas. Billboards featuring the details of the event are installed at major bus stands.

Promotions were also done at Chennai Metro stations. In other cities such as Coimbatore and Trichy, the district administration had made arrangements like pasting stickers on the buses as part of boosting publicity for the event.

To make the programme more interesting, the organisers have announced a few contests as well where the people have been asked to take pictures with the mascot and post them on social media to stand a chance to win tickets to the opening ceremony at Nehru Indoor Stadium.

You can book tickets by logging into https://tickets.aicf.in./

There are two playing halls Hall 1 and Hall 2. According to the website, the prices for Hall 1 are high as it will feature top ranking teams (28 boards in open and 1 in womens section).

To witness the competition at Hall 2, the ticket price is Rs 2,000 for one person, and Rs 6000 for a foreigner. Students aged below 19 years, women and Tamil Nadu government staff can avail the ticket at a discounted price of Rs 200.

The price of a ticket to Hall 1 that will feature top-ranking teams is Rs 3000, whereas a foreign national needs to pay Rs 8,000. Students under 19 years, women and Tamil Nadu government staff will get the benefit of discounted ticket price at Rs 300.

According to the organisers, the visitors would be allowed to enter the venue after a thorough security check. As no electronic device, including mobile phones, is allowed inside the tournament hall, the gadgets of the visitors can be deposited at the counter.

From Monday, the Tamil Nadu Tourism Department is planning to run five hop-on hop-off buses for tourists to and from Mamallapuram, free of cost.

Speaking to Indianexpress.com Sandeep Nanduri, Managing Director, Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC) said the buses would start services from Madhya Kailash and will run via the IT corridor Rajiv Gandhi Salai to Sholinganallur junction and then take the East Coast Road route.

The hop-on hop-off bus services were in action 10 years ago. Now we are relaunching them alongside this Olympiad. We have identified 19 stops, a total of five buses will be used to take the visitors every one hour and it will be free of cost, he said.

Further, the Tamil Nadu Tourism Department is planning to rebrand the auto-rickshaws in the coastal town as Tourist-friendly Autos. Close to 25 auto-rickshaws have been identified and they are set to be decked up in new designs.

Director Nanduri said the department is providing behavioural training for the auto drivers so that passengers do not experience issues, especially on fleecing. The drivers would also provide a snippet about the destinations to tourists.

Link:
Chess Olympiad 2022: World's biggest Chess championship to begin today, here's all you need to know - The Indian Express

Artificial intelligence always surprises us with its rapidly developing human-like abilities, but can it ever master human creativity? To answer this question, we must first define creativity. Art is usually what first comes to mind, but creativity is also being original and unique in a variety of ways.

According to MIT, machine learning is defined as the ability of machines to learn without being directly taught and to develop to accomplish new and unique tasks. Previously, AI required an immense pool of data and strong computing power to produce results. Nonetheless, with todays significantly advanced computer processing and vast datasets, AI has finally surpassed these technical limits.

Recently, researchers at Berkeley AI Research have unveiled technology that is able to generate original content ranging from changing the season of a landscape photo to realistic human faces. Shattering the preconception of a mundane hunk of metal that could only calculate complex computations, AI has proven itself to be capable of creating authentic-looking images by mimicking a substantial data pool.

With these new advancements, AI has also ventured into areas that were previously untouched by machine intelligence, such as defeating the best humans in many popular games like Jeopardy, chess, poker and backgammon.

All of these games have been previously believed to require a human touch of creativity to play since they require players to come up with strategies and deep analysis of the opponents moves. The ancient Chinese game of Go, which has a vastly greater number of permutations than a game of chess, is considered one of the most difficult board games to play and impossible for a computer to master. That is until Googles AlphaGo program was created.

In March 2016, AlphaGo beat world champion Lee Sedol four out of five times, marking a great milestone. Most notably, AlphaGos 37th move of Game 2 shocked most go grandmasters since the move was so unorthodox and was initially believed to be a blunder. European go champion Fan Hui said: Its not a human move. Ive never seen a human play this move. So beautiful. Move 37 was key to AlphaGos victory.

By feeding AlphaGo an extensive stream of expert gameplay and setting up various versions of AlphaGo to play itself, AlphaGo was eventually able to deviate from textbook human moves and create its own playstyle with moves, such as move 37, which, according to AlphaGos software, only had a one-in-ten-thousand chance of being played by a human.

So can AI be creative? The answer is yes, but with limitations. AI can create new content but does not understand its creations.

According to the New York Times, since truly emotionally impactful art comes from the human imagination, AI is still far from being able to grasp the underlying message of a creative piece. Even though AI can produce art indistinguishable from that of a human, AI generates these art pieces from human data and is still incapable of understanding the meaning of that data.

See the original post:
Opinion: Can AI be creative? - Los Angeles Times

AlphaFold's prediction of the structure of vitellogenin, an essential protein for all animals that lay eggs.Deepmind

DeepMinds artificial intelligence (AI) software has predicted the structure of nearly every known protein about 200 million molecules. Knowing the structure of these molecules will help scientists understand the biology of every living thing on the planet, as well as how devastating diseases like malaria, Alzheimers and cancer develop.

Were at the beginning of new era of digital biology, said Demis Hassabis, the AI and neuroscience expert who is the principal developer of AlphaFold, the neural network system that has almost completely solved one of the biggest challenges in the field of biology.

A child chess prodigy and expert video gamer, Hassabis is a British citizen who founded DeepMind in 2010, a company that creates artificial intelligence systems capable of learning like humans. In 2013, DeepMind developed a system that surpasses human level performance on Atari video games. The following year, Google announced that it had bought the company for US$500 million. In 2017, DeepMinds AlphaGo system beat all the top players of Go, the highly complex Asian board game similar to chess. Hassabis then focused his company on a much bigger challenge predicting the 3D shapes of proteins by reading their 2D gene sequences written in DNA letters.

Knowing the 3D structure of these molecules is essential for understanding how they function, but it is an immensely difficult problem to solve. Some have compared it with trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with tens of thousands of blank pieces.

Without advanced technology, figuring out the structure or shape of a single protein composed of 100 basic units (amino acids) could take up to 13.7 billion years, the age of the universe. Some scientists using electron microscopy or huge particle accelerators such as the one at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble (France) reduced the problem-solving time to several years. But Googles AlphaFold system can determine the structure of a protein in just a few seconds.

This protein universe is a gift to humanity, said Hassabis during a joint July 26 press briefing conference with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research that collaborated in AlphaFolds development.

Before AlphaFold, it took 60 years and thousands of scientists to determine the structures of about 200,000 proteins. This research was used as learning material for AlphaFold, which searched for valid patterns that predict the shape of proteins. By 2021, it had successfully predicted the structures of a million proteins, including all human proteins. The latest release of AlphaFold results extends the number to 200 million proteins virtually every known protein of every living thing on the planet.

DeepMind is providing free and open access to the AlphaFold code and protein database, both of which can be downloaded. A search of this Google of life database will display the 2D sequence of a protein and a 3D model with a corresponding level of reliability, which has a margin of error comparable to or lower than conventional prediction methods.

It is important to note that AlphaFold does not determine reality it predicts reality. AlphaFold reads the genetic sequence and estimates the most likely configuration of its amino acids. The prediction has a high level of reliability, which saves a lot of time and money for scientists doing theoretical work, as they dont need to use expensive equipment to determine the actual structure of a protein until absolutely necessary.

The applications of this new tool are virtually endless because microscopic proteins are involved in every conceivable biological process, such as bee colony collapse and crop heat resistance. A team led by Matt Higgins at the University of Oxford (UK) has used AlphaFold to help develop an antibody (a type of protein) that is capable of neutralizing one of the proteins that must be present for the malaria pathogen to reproduce. This could accelerate research to develop the first highly effective vaccine against the disease, thereby preventing mosquito transmission of the parasite.

Another AlphaFold-related success is the development of the most detailed nuclear pore structure available. Nuclear pores are a doughnut-shaped protein complex that is the gateway to the nucleus of human cells, and have been linked to a host of diseases, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Jan Kosinski, an EMBL researcher and co-leader of the nuclear pore modeling effort, told EL PAS that AlphaFold provides scientists with unprecedented access to understanding how the recipe of life (written in the genome) works when translated into proteins.

Hassabis and his colleagues and DeepMind and EMBL say that they have analyzed the risks involved in making the AlphaFold system and data openly accessible. The benefits clearly outweigh the risks, said Hassabis, adding that its up to the international community to decide whether to restrict use of the technology as it develops further.

One of the most practical applications of AlphaFold is the design of tailor-made molecules that can block harmful proteins or, better yet, modulate their activity, a much more desirable effect when developing new drugs, said Carlos Fernndez, a scientist with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and leader of the structural biology group of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM). His team has used AlphaFold to predict part of the structure of a protein complex necessary for propagating the trypanosome found in sub-Saharan Africa that causes sleeping sickness.

Years of work now lie ahead to confirm the accuracy of AlphaFolds predictions, says biologist Jos Mrquez, an expert in protein structure at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble. The next frontier for AlphaFold will be its use in designing protein-blocking or protein-activating drugs, a problem they are already tackling, said Mrquez. And theres another puzzle to solve: AlphaFold cannot say why a protein is shaped as it is, which could be an essential element of research on diseases like Alzheimers or Parkinsons, both of which are related to misfolded proteins.

Alfonso Valencia, director of life sciences at the National Supercomputing Center in Barcelona (Spain), discusses some of the systems shortcomings. AlphaFold cant solve everything because it can only predict what is in the domain of known things. For example, it cannot accurately predict the structure of proteins that protect against freezing because they are rare, and the databases dont contain many samples. Nor can it predict the consequences of mutations, an issue of great concern to medicine, said Valencia.

Valencia acknowledges the advantages of providing free and open access to AlphaFold, which enables other scientists to improve or modify the system as needed. Its clear that the DeepMind people are looking to win the Nobel Prize by acting transparently, said Valencia. Its great for their image and gives them a competitive advantage over other companies like Facebook. On the other hand, they did hint that they might reserve specific health data for private use and drug development.

Read more:
AI predicts the structure of all known proteins and opens a new universe for science - EL PAS USA

At Quantum Quest, an all-girls quantum computing camp, 20 teenage female students recently stood on the precipice of a brand new technology: quantum coding.

(Scientists) use quantum computers, program manager Gabbie Meis said. (Quantum computers) actually use quantum mechanics to solve some of the worlds largest problems, like things with lots of data or simulations that our classical computers just dont have enough power to do. Instead of our classical computers, quantum computers are actually an entirely different type of machine that is still being developed today.

This kind of computer requires quantum coding and when programmed could be used to help solve problems like mitigating the impacts of climate change; transportation mapping, such as figuring out how to remap the entire country of Australia with more efficient roadways; or even biomedical research, such as protein folding for vaccine development or drug discovery research.

Back in 2019 Google ran a problem on their quantum computer that they estimated would take the most powerful supercomputer about 10,000 years to solve, Meis said. They said they got their (quantum) computers to solve it in less than two days.

During the camp, students learned the programming language, Qiskit, an open source (free) software development kit. Meis called it a Python-backed library, Python being a programming language. Qiskit allows the students classical computers the kind most of use at home to communicate with quantum computers. Ironically, although the students all had their laptops open, the learning was done on dry erase boards.

Quantum is interdisciplinary so theyre learning the basics in linear algebra, Meis said. Theyre learning computer science and how to code in Python, and theyre learning quantum physics, all wrapped in this single week.

The Coding School, located in Southern California, has a quantum coding initiative called Qubit by Qubit, the most basic unit of information in quantum computing. The initiative seeks to make quantum computing education accessible to students in K-12, because as it stands right now, according to Meis, students dont usually see quantum computing until they are graduate students.

To bring quantum coding to the masses, the school developed the Quantum Quest camp and partners with other organizations to offer it locally. For Tucson, they partnered with the University of Arizonas Office of Societal Impact and the Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona (GSSA).

When this all came about it was the perfect marriage between the Coding School, the U of A and the Girl Scouts in trying to bring accessibility to this more advanced part of STEM, said Colleen McDonald, director of staff supported programs for the GSSA. As Girl Scouts we see ourselves as the connector. We want to make sure that all girls have access to it.

The Coding School has been offering this camp for some time this is its 10th camp but its the first time its been offered in Tucson. Camp topics included everything from foundational concepts that make up the quantum world such as entanglement and qubits, and end with teaching girls how to code real quantum computers.

Its all new science. These students are at the very foundation of quantum coding, according to Meis, and that is part of why it is so important to offer this to young women. One, they are introduced to quantum computing, but two, so they are not alone and do not feel alone in their interest in this field, Meis said.

This is a hard science, right? Meis said. We really want our students to feel that theres a place in this for girls. Were really trying to empower them now while theyre still in high school.

Ive worked with girls for two decades doing STEM with them and one of the biggest things I hear is they think that theyre alone in liking STEM, that they dont realize there are other girls who are also willing to push themselves, Michelle Higgins added. Shes the associate director of the Office of Societal Impact.

The lead instructor for this camp is herself an example to these students. Emily Van Milligen is a doctoral student at the UArizona department of physics. Her field of study is quantum entanglement and routing protocols. She noticed that not one student fell behind; they all listened.

They love it, Van Milligen said. They like the lectures Im giving, which is exciting because that means they enjoy the content. Im not doing anything that special.

One student, 18-year-old Sagan Friskey and future Pima Community College student, spoke enthusiastically about the camp.

I think its super interesting to learn about, especially since were at the very beginning of it becoming a part of something that you can learn about and work with, she said.

Gabriela Malo-Molina, 14, and a student at Catalina Foothills High School, said shes never seen this before but could be interested in looking deeper into it.

I think this is a very special opportunity, and that this field will definitely be more commonly used in the future, she said. And quantum computing in the future will be very helpful for discoveries, especially in the medical field.

Read the original here:
Coding the future | Business | insidetucsonbusiness.com - Inside Tucson Business