Chip Technology is Changing the Way we Buy Things

If you don’t have one already you probably have seen how they work. Chip technology is a tiny change to the way we pay for things with a credit card which greatly increases these cards’ security. Normally when we swipe a credit card software in a POS (Point of Sale) system reads your credit card number from the magnetic stripe on the back of your card. This works fine but the magnetic stripe leaves room for credit card theft. When a card is swiped, the information from the card is read by the software in the terminal and then encrypted so as to prevent theft. The problem with this is that the information on the card itself is unsecured. If someone reads the stripe on the card, they have access to your credit card information. Enter chip cards. Instead of a magnetic stripe being swiped, chip cards have a tiny chip on the front of the card which is inserted into the payment terminal. This chip acts as a tiny computer and can store data as well as process it. Since the card has no power source, it doesn’t do anything until it is inserted into the terminal. Once that happens, the chip encrypts credit card information before the software in the terminal receives it. Because the information is delivered to the terminal already encrypted, the software must be programed to decode the information before it processes it. This makes it much harder for this information to be stolen because the information is already encrypted when it is stored on the card.

sources:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/emv-chip-credit-cards-required-law/

http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/quantum-cryptology.htm

http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-management/chip-and-pin-credit-cards2.htm

A New Method for Diagnosing Speech and Language Disorders

Approximately 8-9 percent of children in the United States have some sort of speech or language disorder. In other words, they have trouble communicating with their voice. About 5 percent of these cases reveal themselves by first grade but the others go undiagnosed for many more years. Catching these disorders early is the most important step in treating them and researchers have found a promising method for detecting the symptoms early. In a preliminary study, a program developed by researchers at the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at MIT was able to help with identifying, and even diagnosing speech and language disorders in children.

   The program works by analyzing recordings of children speaking. The children were given a series of pictures with a story and were asked to retell the story in their own words. Their recordings are analyzed by the program for signals such as pauses in speech, and then compared to a data set of signals consistently present in children with these types of disorders. The system can then conclude if the child has a language disorder or not, which a physician can then use to decide treatment. The fact that this is a computer program is particularly exciting because it can potentially be extended for use as an at home treatment. John Guttag, the author of the paper about this study believes it has the potential to be enormously beneficial to society. He is quoted saying, “You could imagine the storytelling task being totally done with a tablet or a phone. I think this opens up the possibility of low-cost screening for large numbers of children, and I think that if we could do that, it would be a great boon to society.”

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Sources:

http://news.mit.edu/2016/automated-screening-childhood-communication-disorders-0922

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/statistics-voice-speech-and-language

What is a Firewall?

All of us have had experience with firewalls at some point or another but what exactly are firewalls and how do they work? Firewalls are programs (or sometimes hardware devices) that are used to filter information coming from the internet to a private network or computer. This means that a computer doesn’t have a direct path to the internet; instead the computer and the material have to pass through the firewall, which will sort out anything it deems harmful to the system.

These programs are customizable and so the firewall can be told what to let through and what to block. As such, firewalls are often used by corporations who have hundreds upon hundreds of computers to manage. Instead of installing software on every individual computer on the network, the company can use a firewall which has many of the same benefits. What firewalls are best at is protecting networks or computers from anyone who would want to remotely access them. However, there are still many ways that a computer can be vulnerable which is why many firewalls are paired with antivirus software. 

Sources
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http://computer.howstuffworks.com/firewall.htm

http://www.teach-ict.com/as_a2_ict_new/ocr/AS_G061/317_role_impact_ict/ict_crime/miniweb/pg9.htm