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November 2013

Thanksgiving Woes? IBM and Big Data May Help.

Tanya Gupta's picture

In just about a week, on Thursday November 28, people all over the United States will kick off the "holiday season" with the celebration of Thanksgiving Day. While the day's significance is both historical and profound, in modern times it consists of a lot of shopping and a big meal with family and friends gathered around the dinner table. Pre-thanksgiving is a time to be on the lookout for creative new recipes.  Sure, we can get recipes from magazines, websites and friends and while they may be special, they will not be unique.  Wouldn’t it be nice to have an app that would create a special unique recipe just for you? A delightful recipe that has never been executed before.  Well the idea is not as futuristic as it sounds. It may be here sooner than you think.  IBM and big data have a lot to do with this particular innovation.
 
Can computers be creative?  IBM thinks they can.  IBM scientists Lav R. Varshney and other members of an IBM team, have used data sets and proprietary algorithms in the daunting field of the culinary arts to develop a computational creativity system. The data sets they have used are recipes, molecular level food related data and data about the compounds, ingredients and dishes that people like and dislike.  They then developed an algorithm that produces thousands or millions of new ideas from the recipes.  The recipes are then evaluated to select the best ones that combine ingredients in a way that has never been attempted before.  Humans can interact with the system by choosing a key ingredient and the kind of cuisine.

Women and Trade in Africa: Essential to the Continent's Success

Catherine Sear's picture

Seoul, KoreaWhen it comes to urban development, “green” has become the buzzword. Among the public, “green” is often understood to be synonymous with reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In policymaking, “green” has much broader implications. It can range from preventing, treating, and abating pollution, to preserving and restoring environmental quality. It may simply be providing basic urban services which improve the cleanliness of streets. Apparently, there are different shades of “green” — we could define interventions targeting global public goods as dark green and those focusing more on local public goods as light green. Among them, what is the right one for South Asian cities?

Practitioners and government officials from the region had intensive discussions on this question throughout a recent workshop on urbanization in Korea, organized by the World Bank in collaboration with the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements.

Calling CSOs in Bangladesh: Grants on Social Accountability Initiatives

Naomi Ahmad's picture
A bypass under construction in Lilongwe. A sign that Malawi is inching its way forward. Photo: Govati Nyirenda/World Bank


A new Country Economic Memorandum gives us a chance to step back and look at the deep drivers of growth since Malawi’s independence in 1964. What stands out, though, is just how far Malawi has fallen behind its peers. It’s easy to look at the seemingly insurmountable challenges the country faces—from droughts and floods to the country’s landlocked status—yet other countries in the region have experienced just as many climate-related disasters, and overcome them better. And throughout the 50 plus years of its independence, Malawi has been fortunate to be at peace and mostly politically stable.

Committed to Healthier Forests and Landscapes

Ellysar Baroudy's picture
The ODI’s Liz Carolan reflects on a new network of government leaders driving open data 

À l'Open Data Institute (ODI) (a), l'une de nos missions est d’offrir un nid aux start-up. J'y travaille depuis un an et j'y ai appris qu’à l’origine de toute start-up, il y a généralement une ou deux personnes qui ont une bonne idée. Qu’elles ont un plan plus ou moins abouti pour faire de cette idée une réalité et qu’elles affichent des qualités de leadership propres aux entrepreneurs pour au moins essayer de mettre cette idée en pratique. Mais elles manquent toujours de temps, d'argent ou de personnel, et sont habituellement entourées de gens qui leur expliquent toutes les raisons pour lesquelles ça ne marchera pas.

Toilets Critical to Ending Poverty

Jaehyang So's picture
Rapid motorization and traffic congestion are becoming a major challenge for large cities in the developing world, and generating significant economic and social costs. In Cairo, for instance, the World Bank estimates that congestion costs are as high as US$8 billion or 4% of the city’s GDP.

Multilateral Cooperation in Promoting a Safe and Secure Global Internet

Natalija Gelvanovska's picture

Rich countries and emerging markets alike have participated in a rapid integration into global capital markets over the last 25 years. Proponents of financial globalization believed this would bring a myriad of benefits via improved financial intermediation, with a more efficient allocation of capital to productive firms and increased access to finance to those outside the halls of political power.

But the recent financial crisis has given pause to the pro-globalization advocates. The marked increase in capital flows to emerging markets quickly reversed in the wake of the financial crisis, leaving these countries looking vulnerable. Might the globalizers have gotten their prescriptions wrong?

A recent paper entitled Does Financial Openness Lead to Deeper Domestic Financial Markets? finds that, in fact, developing countries have reaped a number of benefits from financial globalization. In particular, the authors of the paper have found that greater financial openness:


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