Soft skills will be the X-factor in the workplace

         “Technical skills have been the holy grail of hiring in years past, but these skills have rapidly declining shelf lives. The rise of A.I. and automation means employees are increasingly tasked with jobs that only humans can do: thinking creatively, using judgment, employing empathy, etc. Adaptability will be the most durable skill in the years to come, as the ability to learn and adjust becomes more important than any one skill. Companies, as well as education systems, will need to shift how they assess and train people accordingly.”

         While technical, hard skills get the job done, they don’t contribute to the corporate culture, morale, or team-building. There is little use to recruiting a team member with an outstanding list of technical skills if they aren’t around long enough for the business to reap the rewards of their hard work.Soft skills go both ways. While employees should be expected to act with integrity and professionalism, the business must as well. Employees feel valued and trust the business

         Job advertisements can attract dozens of candidates, all of whom may be equally qualified. Candidates may have the same degree, industry experience, or produce work of equal quality. Job interviews give candidates the ability to explicitly and implicitly demonstrate their very own “x-factor”. Research published in the Business Communication Quarterly found ten key soft skills identified as important by business executives: i) Integrity, ii) Communication, iii) Courtesy, iv) Responsibility, v) Social skills, vi) Positive attitude, vii) Professionalism, viii) Flexibility, ix) Teamwork, x) Work ethic

Printable Organs

            Today, we are already at a turning point in our ability to 3D “bioprint” organ tissues, a process that involves depositing a “bio-ink” made of cells precisely in layers, resulting in a functional living human tissue for use in the lab. These tissues should be better predictors of drug function than animal models in many cases. In the long-term, this has the potential to pave the way to “printing” human organs, such as kidneys, livers and hearts. 

       

             Achieving such an outcome would be truly remarkable. Despite advances in medicine and increased awareness of organ donation, the gap between supply and demand of organs continues to widen. Without an accurate digital model of your target organ, bioprinters have nothing to guide them. This necessity gets more evident when attempting to grow a large solid, organ with its complicated architecture involving blood vessels, different cell types and geometrical quirks.

         Though printable organs won’t come easily, there is reason for optimism: i) Regenerative medicine isn’t brand new, ii) Costs are decreasing, Research is focused on the whole body, iii) 3D printed tissues and organs show promise in the lab. By 2020, our goal is to have the technology be broadly used by pharmaceutical companies, resulting in the identification of safer and better drug candidates and fewer failures in clinical trials.

More self-service IT for business users

          2019 will be a year of IT innovation designed to build more trust and collaboration between IT and end users. One strategy that several companies tried out in 2018 was the idea of a self-service kiosk filled with IT tools, apps, and resources that users could choose from. Already vetted for proper access, clearances, and security, the self-service IT kiosk would enable users to log on and choose what they want for the apps that they build. Look for more companies to try self-service IT in 2019.

         Self-service BI is a trend with a somewhat vague definition. In the most general sense, self-service BI tasks are those that business users carry out themselves instead of passing them on to IT for fulfilment. The aim is to give the users of BI tools more freedom and responsibility at the same time. At its heart lies the notion of user independence and self-sufficiency when it comes to the use of corporate information, which leads to a decentralization of BI in the organization.

         For example, casual BI users often only need to be able to filter and group data. In the very same environment, power users or business analysts might have to integrate local data from different sources on their own so they can quickly build or enhance existing reports. Therefore, the need for self-service within a BI environment varies according to user requirements.

Japan's tidal energy system makes a splash

         In December 2010, Shinji Hiejima, associate professor of the Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science at Okayama University, Japan, developed a new type of tidal energy system, called the “Hydro-VENUS” or “Hydrokinetic-Vortex Energy Utilization System.” The Hydro-VENUS system will make energy available to coastal communities and communities with coastal neighbours who can potentially transfer the electricity to them. This energy will be environmentally friendly and there will be a constant supply since ocean currents are always moving. 

              The Hydro-VENUS works through a cylinder attached to a rod which is connected to a rotating shaft. The cylinder is held upright through buoyancy since it is hollow. As the ocean currents pass by the cylinder, a vortex is created at the back side of the cylinder, pulling and rotating the shaft. That rotational energy is transferred to a generator, creating electricity. When the cylinder is released from the currents, it becomes upright, returning to its original position, thus starting the cycle over.

                  The tidal system is different from a propeller-based system where the currents have to spin the propeller in order to create energy and requires a lot of force since the propeller is hard to turn. More energy can be created through the Hydro-VENUS system since less force is needed to move the cylinder pendulum.