This Week I Learned - Week #11 2024

This Week I Learned - 

* Anthropic’s Claude 3 models are now available in Google Cloud Vertex AI. The Claude 3 family joins over 130 models already available in Vertex AI Model Garden. Claude models are offered in Vertex AI as managed APIs — meaning customers can concentrate on building groundbreaking applications instead of worrying about backend complexity or the management overhead of underlying infrastructure.  

* All Claude 3 models boast improved fluency in non-English languages, as well as vision capabilities that unlock tasks ranging from image metadata generation to insights extraction across PDFs, flow charts, and a diverse range of other formats.

* The New Stack Better, Faster, Stronger: How Generative AI Transforms Software Development eBook (2024, 45 pages) by Janakiram MSV

* Cassie Kozyrkov on current state of AI - "The truth is, no one knows exactly where we're headed. We are building the plane while it's taking off.  Which is why it's worth reminding people to zoom out and focus on the problem they're trying to solve. Don't get too attached to the tools you're using to solve a problem. Focus on developing clear thinking, precise expression, good taste for design, and an insatiable hunger for the bigger picture."

* Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s advice to Stanford students - "People with very high expectations have very low resilience and unfortunately resilience matters in success. I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you. I was fortunate that I grew up with it with my parents providing a condition for us to be successful on the one hand but there were plenty of opportunities for setbacks and suffering and to this day I use the word the phrase pain and suffering inside our company with great glee...I mean that in a happy way because you want to train...you want to refine the character of your company...you want greatness...Greatness comes from character and character isn't formed out of smart people. It's formed out of people who suffered...and so if I could wish upon you, I don't know how to do it for all of you Stanford students...I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering."

* The official language of Indonesia is Indonesian, locally known as Bahasa Indonesia, which serves as the lingua franca of the nation. Despite the prevalence of Indonesian, there are numerous local languages and dialects spoken across different regions of Indonesia. Some of the distinctly different local languages include Acehnese, Batak, Sundanese, Javanese, Sasak, Tetum of Timor, Dayak, Minahasa, Toraja, Buginese, and Halmahera

* In physics and geometry, a catenary is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends in a uniform gravitational field. The catenary curve has a U-like shape, superficially similar in appearance to a parabola, which it is not. Catenaries and related curves are used in architecture and engineering (e.g., in the design of bridges and arches so that forces do not result in bending moments). Catenary arches are often used in the construction of kilns. Most suspension bridge cables follow a parabolic, not a catenary curve, because the roadway is much heavier than the cable. 

* The silk on a spider's web forming multiple elastic catenaries.

* Research shows that only 50% of people who've had heart attacks had high LDL levels. So, many doctors use another test, called the C-reactive protein test, to help figure out who’s at risk. C-reactive protein (CRP) is produced by the liver. Its level rises when there's inflammation in your body. LDL cholesterol not only coats the walls of your arteries, but it also damages them. This damage causes inflammation that the body tries to heal by sending a "response team" of proteins called "acute phase reactants." CRP is one of these proteins. CRP is the most studied biomarker of inflammation.

* "You have to focus on what you can do." - Life advice from 2023 medicine laureate Katalin Karikó 

* Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888 – 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918) against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

* "Endocrinology is, in a way, a branch that deals with oddballs. We have patients who are too tall, too short, too fat, too thin, too dark, too flat and so on."  - Dr Karthik Balachandran, Endocrinologist.

* "Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed" - Emily Dickinson

* London-listed BAT currently owns 29.03% stake in the Indian cigarettes-to-hotels company, ITC.

* Firms with more than 10% overseas shareholding rose to 275 on the BSE 500 Index as of December-end.