This Week I Learned - Week #237

This Week I Learned -

* The Azure Building Blocks project is a command line tool and set of Azure Resource Manager templates designed to simplify deployment of Azure resources.

* The licensing cost charged for SQL Server or Oracle is based on processors on the server they are deployed to. The latest versions of the most popular VM sizes (DS, ES, GS, and MS) constrain the vCPU count to one half or one quarter of the original VM size, while maintaining the same memory, storage and I/O bandwidth. These new VM sizes are marked with a suffix that specifies the number of active vCPUs to make them easier for you to identify. For example, the current VM size Standard_GS5 comes with 32 vCPUs, 448GB mem, 64 disks (up to 256 TB), and 80,000 IOPs or 2 GB/s of I/O bandwidth. The new VM sizes Standard_GS5-16 and Standard_GS5-8 comes with 16 and 8 active vCPUs respectively, while maintaining the rest of the specs of the Standard_GS5 in regards to memory, storage, and I/O bandwidth. These new VM sizes allow workloads to push higher CPU utilization at a fraction of the (per-core) licensing cost.

* Kudu on Linux doesn't have the same feature set as Kudu on Windows

App Service Isolated SKUs have the ability to be internally load balanced (ILB) with Azure Load Balancer, which means no public connectivity from the internet. As a result, some features of an ILB Isolated App Service must be used from machines that have direct access to the ILB network endpoint.

* Not all Azure products and services are available in all regions.

Microsoft partners, Rackspace and CDW, now offer Azure Site Recovery as a managed DR solution.

* Amazon India is running a Pen to Publish contest to recognize new books published through Kindle Direct Publishing in English across any genre

* Google's Photos app now allows you to group all your pet’s photos in one place, right beside the people Google Photos organized using facial recognition. In addition, Google Photos lets you type in an animal’s breed to search for photos of pets

* Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone

* Iran holds a whopping 9% of the world's oil reserves.

The UAE is one of the world's largest importers of arms and, after Saudi Arabia, has the second-largest defence budget of any of the Arab states.

* Our bodies have an internal clock that primes us for activity during hours when it is light and rest when it is dark. Remarkably, this clock doesn’t exist in just our brains. Almost every cell in our bodies — in our guts, livers and fat — shows an intrinsic rhythm when closely examined. Collectively, our cells’ rhythms affect not only waking and sleeping, but also blood pressure, body temperature and the ability to digest food and resist infection. Circadian rhythms are synchronized by daylight but, surprisingly, run independent of it. This is why jet lag occurs when you experience light cues that are at odds with your cellular biological clock. Drs. Hall, Rosbash and Young have been honored for uncovering the molecular pathways that control the circadian cycle. For their research, they studied the humble and ubiquitous fruit fly. This tiny insect turns out to be a
major engine of modern biological discovery. Five Nobel Prizes have now been awarded to science originating from fruit fly research. That research uncovered the chromosomal nature of the gene, the mutagenic nature of radiation, the molecular blueprint that underpins animal bodies and core secrets of the immune defense system. Learning about human health from fruit flies may sound like a stretch but it exemplifies a type of scientific inquiry called “basic research.” Also called “fundamental” or “pure” research (to forestall the misunderstanding that it is simplistic), basic research promotes curiosity-based exploration of the world, in contrast to “applied research” that is undertaken in an attempt to deliver a solution to a practical problem at hand. In biology, current revolutionary approaches to genome editing and cancer immunotherapy owe their existence to basic research...time and again, it has been a foundational understanding of how animals (and plants, fungi and microbes) work that leads to effective disease treatments and improvement in human health - NY Times

* Puerto Rico has become one of the world’s biggest centers for pharmaceutical manufacturing. Its factories make 13 of the world’s top-selling brand-name drugs

* ..efforts by the Government Mental Health Centre, Kuthiravattom, to enrol the inmates fetched an unexpected bonanza: identities of 32 patients whose names and addresses had remained unknown, became accessible...the data of 32 inmates were rejected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) system due to duplication. It turned out that the biometric details matched already existing Aadhaar records. The service providers knew then that they had struck gold. At the Superintendent of the Mental Health Centre, Mr. Rajendran’s request, they contacted the UIDAI authorities to get the details that were already recorded - The Hindu

* The cost of verification using Aadhaar can be as low as Rs 15 per person. The employee verification is similar to what Reliance Jio did to enrol customers. It's now acknowledged that this was what enabled Jio to enrol 10 crore customers in less than six months - The Times of India

Digital Unlocked is an initiative by Google in association with FICCI and Indian School of Business, to help Indian businesses unlock exponential growth with digital. The objective of the program is to build capacity and equip the Startups, SMEs and Innovators with the necessary skills for utilising the power of Internet, creating their online presence, launching and executing cost-effective targeted digital marketing campaigns, reaching out to a wider audience, increasing the sales volumes, keeping a consistent connect with the potential customers, staying competitive in the market place, etc

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