miércoles, 21 de junio de 2017

The thermo-dynamics of entrepreneurship

Monday, 17 April 2017

by joy lee

Hard work is practically forced upon Aaron Patel but he is determined to make it work

THEY say youth is wasted on the young. But not on Aaron Patel.

The 25-year-old has fought his way through every challenge that has come his way and has come out firmly grounded.

He founded iHandal Energy Solutions Sdn Bhd right out of school but started running a business long before that.

Aaron was thrown into the deep end of entrepreneurship at the age of 15.

His father, who was running a solar panel trading company, had suffered a severe stroke and was left disabled. Overnight, Aaron and his mother had to take over the small setup and were forced to figure out how to run a business to make ends meet.

Aaron, an only child, juggled between taking care of his father, managing the business, handling school work and dealing with all the other stresses of being a teenager.

While completing his International Baccalaureate programme, he took particular interest in theories and applications related to heat as they were relevant to his solar-based company. 

However, he soon discovered that there were other opportunities in the thermal heating industry.

He saw potential in supplying energy solutions that recycled waste heat back to boilers. This would reduce energy consumption and help businesses make significant savings on energy cost.

Aaron purchased waste heat recovery units from Europe to test it with potential clients.

Fortunately for Aaron, a family friend opened the door for him to test out his heat pumps on two Tune Hotels' properties, one of which was in Penang.

Aaron would leave his class at 3pm to drive from Kuala Lumpur to Penang to make the installation and drive back to KL to assume his usual responsibilities at home. But it was worth the hard work for Aaron as the business with Tune Hotels turned out to be a boon.

"They were the ones who gave us the idea for our business model. We had a fantastic idea on how to save energy for their heating needs. But how many CEOs would take a chance on a 17-year-old right?

"So basically the business model is this: you install the system, if it works, we pay you. If it doesn't work, you take it back. And that was how we started our entire business model, which was guaranteeing the performance and efficiency of what we do," he explains.

With the success he had with Tune Hotels, Aaron started to tinker about with different components of the heat recovery units in his car porch to make his own heat pumps, often earning the ire of his neighbours.

But Aaron continued to grind away noisily to put together his own heat recovery device that is smaller in size, performs better than the industry average and is more suited for Malaysia's tropical climate.

"My key study was in thermodynamics. From there, I found applications that were related to my field. I put the two and two together and we came up with our first system in 2009," he says, rather nonchalantly.

Aaron graduated high school at 17 with a new venture, iHandal, on his hands to sell his own proprietary energy solutions.

He started cold-calling various hotels to offer them his solutions.

But note that while he had engineered his own product, Aaron's heat pumps had yet to be used in an actual installation.

"I knew the performance of how it could work in theory. We just had to get it to work. So we tested it on-site. We actually informed our clients that this was something brand new and if they would like to test it out," he explains.

The heat pump basically absorbs waste heat in places such as car parks in shopping malls that is usually around 30 to 40 degrees celsius. It then concentrates the heat into higher temperature at 80 degrees celsius to make it useable for applications like heating water.

Aaron had no reservations about diving in with his product and was confident that it would work. He reckoned that his solution would give businesses an average savings of 60%-80% on their heating cost.

A little young and foolish, perhaps?

"Thinking back, you'd think it was quite risky but I'd call it calculated risk," he replies with a grin.

iHandal's big break came when the company secured a deal with IGB Corp Bhd to install the heat pumps at their property.

The group became their largest promoter after iHandal completed the project. It was their most valuable form of marketing.

Business started picking up.

However, not everyone was behind Aaron on his ideas.

"There was a lot of negativity along the way from family friends because people didn't believe that this business could scale and with someone like me at the helm especially, with no background in engineering whatsoever and at my age," he recalls.

But Aaron was determined. He was fully invested in the business as he couldn't continue his studies due to his family commitments. 

He had no choice but to make it work.

The support of his parents was good enough to keep him focused.

Aaron remained a one-man show for the next two years, building his own products, making his own installations and servicing his clients.

But Aaron sold an image of a company much bigger than just himself.

"People think we are a huge company because of the number of projects we've done. When they call our phone line, there'll be a 'dial 1' for this department, 'dial 2' for this department and so on, but all the lines are channeled back to my phone," he laughs. 

"That kind of put us on a different level with our clients. But we had to back it up with service, of course. We serve them as if we had a 100-man team," he adds.

A lot of iHandal's clients also paved the way for the company to go regional. 

"Our entire business up till now, we have about 60 different properties using our system, is all through references after IGB," he says.

Aaron started hiring people in 2011 to grow the company. 

Now that he was no longer a one-man team, he had to learn how to deal with employees who were older and more experienced than him. But as with every other challenge, he found his way around it. 

Today, the company's headcount has grown to 25 people over offices in six different countries including Singapore and Indonesia.

After many years of having to go it alone, Aaron got a boost when iHandal was among the 10 companies selected by Endeavor, an international non-profit organisation which accelerates high-impact entrepreneurs, to gain access to its network of top business leaders and entrepreneurs from across the globe to help them scale their businesses.

Aaron is excited about the prospects of such an opportunity.

He is gearing up for bigger growth and is looking at revenue of about US$1mil this year.

"There is so much more that we can do with our business. We started with hospitality but we are now looking to expand into other sectors such as the industrial space and food manufacturing companies.

"Our expertise is in being able to switch over to our system live. You don't need to stop your operations for us to make the installments. We are focused on efficiency. And we are also looking at offering different energy solution soon," he says.

It has been quite an amazing journey, says Aaron, but at 25, he has many more years to go and grow. 

Are his parents proud of his achievement? Certainly.

In fact, sometimes, they are overly proud, he says, a little sheepish.

Source

lunes, 28 de marzo de 2016

Peregrine Semiconductor Expands Glitch-less RF Digital Step Attenuator Portfolio with New 75-Ohm Chip

PRNewswire/ -- Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, announces the UltraCMOS® PE4314, a 75-ohm glitch-less RF digital step attenuator (DSA). This new DSA extends Peregrine's existing glitch-less DSA portfolio to 75 ohms. The PE4314 is ideal for wired broadband applications in cable/satellite customer premises equipment (CPE) and infrastructure equipment.

The 75-ohm PE4314 joins Peregrine's 50-ohm glitch-less DSAs—the PE43711, the PE43712 and the PE43713—in offering glitch-less attenuation state transitions. When switching attenuation states with a DSA, there is a brief "glitch" or transient spike in output power. This glitch, if left alone, could lead to degraded signal quality and possible damage to power amplifier sub-assemblies. To minimize this glitch, engineers deploy a software or firmware workaround that reduces the effect of this transient spike. With a Peregrine glitch-less DSA, this output power glitch is significantly reduced to less than 0.5 dB, enabling customers to decrease their engineering overhead and prevent damage to expensive sub-assemblies.

"As the founders of RF SOI, Peregrine is recognized as a performance leader in RF products," says Kinana Hussain, director of marketing at Peregrine Semiconductor. "Our products offer best-in-class performance and proven quality and reliability. The PE4314 is a testament to staying true to this philosophy. Peregrine introduced the world's first single-chip DSA in 2004, and we are now expanding our DSA portfolio to include this 75-ohm solution to solve one of our customers' biggest challenges—attenuation state transition glitches."

Features, Packaging, Pricing & Availability
Supporting a frequency range from 1 MHz to 2.5 GHz, the PE4314 is a 75-ohm, 6-bit RF DSA. It is a pin-for-pin compatible upgraded version of the PE4304, PE4307, PE4308 and PE43404 DSAs.

The PE4314 covers a 31.5 dB attenuation range in a 0.5 dB step. It is capable of maintaining 0.5 dB monotonicity through 2.5 GHz. An integrated digital control interface supports both serial and parallel programming of the attenuation, including the capability to program an initial attenuation state at power up. The DSA supports 1.8V control voltage and has an extended operating temperature range up to 105-degrees Celsius.

The PE4314 is offered in a 20-lead 4 x 4 x 0.85 mm QFN package. Samples and evaluation kits are available now; volume production units will be available in March.

 

Source

 

Traductor de Google podría ser más preciso gracias a la tecnología de aprendizaje profundo

Google ha mejorado varios de sus productos con un tipo de inteligencia artificial llamado Aprendizaje Profundo, el cual permite la formación de redes neuronales a partir de gran cantidad de datos, las cuales a futuro permitirán predicción de nuevos datos. Tal es el caso de Google Maps, Google Photos y Gmail, que se han mejorado con este tipo de tecnología y uno de los próximos servicios que podría obtener ganancias es Google Translate.

En realidad, el traductor de Google ya se encuentra utilizando el aprendizaje profundo. Esto sería la traducción visual instantánea que se puede obtener mediante un dispositivo móvil, utilizando la cámara sobre las palabras que desea traducir. En tal caso, si se usa el traductor de Google simplemente para traducir un texto, se sabe que no siempre el servicio es 100% correcto.

En una entrevista realizada en San Francisco en la conferencia de estructura de datos, el miembro de Google, Jeff Dean, trabajó en algunas de las tecnologías principales de la búsqueda y la publicidad de Google, y ahora es el jefe del equipo Google Brain que trabaja constantemente en el aprendizaje profundo.

Jeff Dean comentó que su equipo ha estado trabajando con el equipo de traducción de Google para llevar a cabo experimentos con traducción basada en el aprendizaje profundo. Específicamente, el trabajo se basa en la tecnología descrita en un documento titulado “Secuencia a secuencia de aprendizaje con redes neuronales”.

La idea es implementar la tecnología para el desarrollo de productos del traductor de Google. Dean le dijo a Tom Simonite, que él piensa que con esa tecnología ellos verán resultados, bajando por la tubería.

Fuente

lunes, 30 de junio de 2014

¿Puede el vino curar el cáncer y aumentar la longevidad?

México- El resveratrol, un componente de las uvas y por lo tanto del vino tinto, aporta beneficios a la salud.

Estudios han demostrado que tiene propiedades antioxidantes y anticancerígenas. No obstante, el vino goza de una buena reputación que quizá no merece. ¿Realmente puede curar el cáncer y aumentar la longevidad?

Primero, es importante remarcar que si bien el resveratrol ha demostrado ser beneficioso en pruebas con roedores, nunca se ha hecho un ensayo clínico en humanos. Si bien es lógico asumir que será igualmente beneficioso en nuestro organismo, aún se debe investigar la manera en que debe introducirse al cuerpo. No se sabe si el resveratrol ingerido, como se encuentra en el vino, es metabolizado de manera saludable. El resveratrol en el vino podría no servir de la misma manera que los suplementos de resveratrol.

Aún olvidando esta cuestión y asumiendo que el resveratrol ayuda a combatir el cáncer, no existe un ser humano que pudiera beber la cantidad de vino suficiente para obtener el resveratrol necesario. Para obtener la sustancia en cantidades equiparables a las que recibieron los animales durante los estudios, es decir de 2 a 5 gramos, se necesitaría beber 2 mil 500 copas de vino -el vino contiene aproximadamente 180 microgramos de resveratrol por onza, y una copa grande de vino contiene 5 onzas-, es decir 492.2 botellas. Antes de recibir los beneficios del resveratrol, una persona moriría de intoxicación alcohólica.

Actualmente existen suplementos de resveratrol disponibles en tiendas de nutrición, pero no están reguladas ni han sido probadas eficazmente en humanos. La mayoría de estos contienen entre 200 y 500mg de resveratrol; 25% menos de lo empleado en los estudios. No se ha probado que estas dosis mínimas produzcan los efectos deseados.

Esto no quiere decir que el resveratrol no sea benéfico para la salud, sino simplemente que hace falta una investigación más profunda. Si tomas vino para recibir los beneficios del resveratrol , probablemente te estés embriagando en vano.... Pero si sirve de consuelo, el vino tinto puede aumentar el rendimiento físico.

 

Fuente

sábado, 7 de junio de 2014

Microsoft muestra un Skype que traduce idiomas en tiempo real

No son pocas las películas de ciencia ficción que muestran un sistema de traducción automático en tiempo real, algo extremadamente práctico para comunicarse con razas extraterrestres. Ahora Microsoft ha mostrado que están trabajando en un producto semejante, aunque de momento parecen centrarse en nuestro planeta.

En la conferencia que han realizado hoy han mostrado una versión de Skype que hace precisamente eso: escucha en un idioma y habla en otro, permitiendo la comunicación sin interrupciones entre dos personas que hablan diferentes lenguas.

El concepto, que fue presentado hace ya varios años, ahora ha ganado una versión beta ya funcional, y prometen lanzarla al mercado aún este año, aunque de forma muy limitada en lo que a idiomas se refiere (no se han divulgado los idiomas que estarán presentes en esta primera versión). Estará disponible, de momento, solo para Skype en su versión Windows, según comentan en recode.

Es un proyecto en el que han trabajado Skype, Bing, y el Microsoft’s Research Lab, que usa mucha de la inteligencia del asistente virtual Cortana (la parte de reconocimiento de voz) y que permite traducir el audio en texto, el texto a otro idioma y, finalmente, del texto traducido al idioma deseado, todo a una velocidad suficientemente rápida como para permitir la comunicación fluida.

 

Fuente

 

 

 

jueves, 13 de febrero de 2014

Aprender ingles es fundamental para visitar la ciudad más turística del mundo

Londres encabeza el ranking de las ciudades más visitadas del mundo por segundo año consecutivo.

Aprender ingles se antoja necesario no solo a nivel laboral sino también en el plano del ocio. Londres es la ciudad que más turistas recibe, y deberemos estudiar ingles si queremos visitar la capital británica.

Todos sabemos que aprender ingles resulta fundamental. Pero ahora lo es mucho más, al menos para los viajeros que quieran visitar la ciudad que más turistas recibe en todo el mundo. Estudiar ingles es necesario si queremos viajar a Londres, la joya del turismo mundial.

La capital de Inglaterra encabeza por segundo año de manera consecutiva la lista de las ciudades que más turistas acogieron en el año 2012. Así lo ha hecho púbico el último informe de Mastercard Worldwile. Londres es, además, la ciudad que más dinero ingresa a través del sector turístico, aunque otros grandes destinos como Nueva York, Bangkok, París y Singapur le siguen de cerca.

En el Índice Global de Ciudades de Mastercard también encontramos las españolas Madrid (sexta) y Barcelona (decimosexta). Entre los destinos que más han crecido se encuentran Rio de Janeiro, Tokio, Abu Dhabi, Túnez, Estambul y Toronto, y las europeas Dublín, Bruselas, Lisboa, Viena o Frankfurt.

Estudiar ingles ha sido tradicionalmente una asignatura pendiente en nuestro país. Las clases de ingles pueden resultar de mucha ayuda para adquirir vocabulario y soltura a la hora de hablar ingles, pues no debemos olvidar que se trata del tercer idioma más hablado del planeta. Estudiar ingles nos servirá, además, para acceder a una gran cantidad de información en la que sin duda es la lengua más influyente en todos los aspectos.

Aprender ingles no es imposible, pero sí que es importante escoger el método y la academia de idiomas adecuados. Hoy en día, existe una gran oferta en cuanto a escuelas de ingles, puesto que cada vez más gente quiere estudiar ingles. Precisamente por ello, la mayoría de escuelas de idiomas que ofrecen cursos de ingles acumulan muchos alumnos en sus aulas, lo que entorpece el correcto aprendizaje de los estudiantes.

 

 

 

Fuente

miércoles, 24 de abril de 2013

Joven sin brazos ingresó a la universidad en Chimbote


Nació sin brazos, pero ello no fue impedimento para desarrollar sus actividades cotidianas.
Un joven que carece de ambos brazos cumplió su anhelo de ingresar a la universidad , y desarrolló el respectivo examen de admisión empleando su pie derecho.
Jesús Hilario Arellano quiso cumplir sus sueños de estudiar derecho, por eso decidió postular a una carrera universitaria, dejando atrás sus limitaciones físicas.
Palomita, como lo conocen sus compañeros, nació sin ambos brazos, pero ello no fue impedimento para desarrollar sus actividades cotidianas propias de un joven de su edad.
Al respecto, Julio dominguez, rector de la Universidad Católica Los Ángeles de Chimbote se comprometió a brindarle el apoyo tecnológico necesario para que pueda desempeñar sus labores profesionales.
http://www.larepublica.pe/16-04-2013/joven-sin-brazos-ingreso-la-universidad-en-chimbote