This Week in Charts 3/10/23
We’re constantly receiving a stream of new studies, articles, and topics. Some important ones are shared here with a bit of analysis. Thank you for reading!
Agricultural Technology
Amidst growing concerns of food shortage and environmental migration, this graphic provides a depiction of international uses of agricultural technology, or agtech.
We can now take for granted that one out of every three growers of food globally are using some farm management software. In Europe and South America remote sensing is a popular application. In Asia, by far the most populated continent on Earth, the percentage of operations employing modern agricultural technology remains in the single digits.
Judging from a region’s ability to scale inputs versus outputs, “the West” seems far more capable of producing food for their citizens to eat or export.
Medical Technology
An algorithm produced by scientists at Osaka University was able to produce relatively readable images from fMRI readings. The chart at left depicts readings and reconstructions taken from a subject’s mind.
The Ground Truths column exhibits images shown to the subject.
Z represents the initial reading, which maintained a rough image consistency.
C is the computer’s reconstruction of “spirit” of the item, representing semantic consistency.
Their combination, Zc, is the joining of the two for image and semantic consistency.
Recall that these datasets were reconstructed with data from an fMRI machine. In other words, they were read out of the subject’s mind. While we’re not sure yet where if anywhere this will take humans, the trail is surely blazed for the direct interface to the human brain. Projects like OpenBCI, a net-like brain-control interface which picks up simple signals from the subject’s mental processes, are no longer stand-alone applications. The integration of those command-and-control tools with this mental image recognition algorithm is an interesting step indeed.
Organizational Success ~ Foundation ~
At right is the pyramid of success, a system developed by celebrated college basketball coach and leadership visionary John Wooden. In today’s article I want to pick apart the foundation of this pyramid and provide some insight to how the officers here at Griffin act, work, and think.
Before examining the individual building blocks, let us consider the mindset with which Wooden approaches “success”. To Wooden success rarely if ever ought to be defined in consideration of the opponent. Success is the result of the full realization of personal performance: “knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
The foundation of this pyramid is held together by the two cornerstones: Industriousness and Enthusiasm. Without these traits, the chances of achieving performance at full potential drastically fall. Enthusiasm brings and shares the energy; true enthusiasm is contagious! Industriousness puts that energy to work, manifesting one’s ideas into the physical world. Industriousness and Enthusiasm are both essential and complementary, seriously diminishing one’s effect in the other’s absence.
Three other elements of the foundation exist between the cornerstones: Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation. While the cornerstones are personal traits, these building blocks are the true foundation of the team. These lay the beginning of not just personal success but team success, as the individuals brush aside the ego in interest of, as Wooden puts it, “finding the best way, not in having your own way.”
The ability to operate effectively on a team is truly a foundation to personal success: no man is an island. Here at Griffin we take pride in growing an organization of people who hold to these tenets to produce a powerful company of people.
