MIT Scientists Translates Spider Webs into Music
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have turned spider webs into music — creating an eerie soundtrack that could help them better understand how the arachnids spin their complex creations and even how they communicate.
The MIT team worked with Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno to take two-dimensional laser scans of a spider web, which were stitched together and converted into a mathematical model that could recreate the web in 3D in virtual reality. They also worked with MIT’s music department to create the harp-like virtual instrument.
Listening to the music while moving through the VR spider web lets you see and hear these structural changes and gives a better idea of how spiders see the world. Spiders are able to build their webs without scaffolding or supports, so having a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques.
51 percent of Global Knowledge Workers will be Remote by 2021 End
By the end of 2021, 51 percent of all knowledge workers worldwide are expected to be working remotely, up from 27 percent of knowledge workers in 2019, according to Gartner.
Gartner also estimates that remote workers will represent 32 percent of all employees worldwide by the end of 2021. This is up from 17 percent of employees in 2019.
According to the research firm, 31 percent of all workers worldwide will be remote (a mix of hybrid and fully remote) in 2022. India and China will produce some of the largest numbers of remote workers, but their overall penetration rates will remain relatively low with 30 percent of workers in India being remote and 28 percent of workers in China working remote.
Oracle Launches Rewards Program to Help Customers Accelerate Cloud Migrations, Reduce Software License Support Costs
Oracle has launched a new Oracle Support Rewards program to help customers speed migrations to the cloud while reducing their software license support costs. Under the rewards program, customers making new commitments to buy Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services can earn rewards that reduce or even eliminate their Oracle on-premises technology licensing support bills.
With this program, all Oracle technology license support customers will earn at least 25 cents of Support Rewards for each dollar of OCI Universal Credits they purchase and consume. Customers with Oracle Unlimited License Agreements (ULA) will save even more – earning rewards at a 33 percent rate. This means that a ULA customer with an Oracle technology license support bill of $500,000 could eliminate that bill entirely by migrating $1.5 million of workloads to OCI.
