January 21, 2021 — Philip Maymin, Guest Author
Editor’s note: The following post is based on the 2020 Advent of Code challenge, “an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in any programming language you like.” Guest author Philip Maymin delves into why he chose to use the Wolfram Language to solve these queries with a how-to on learning the language.
January 7, 2021 — Jofre Espigule-Pons, Machine Learning
Today’s handheld devices are powerful enough to run neural networks locally without the need for a cloud server connection, which can be a great convenience when you’re on the go. Deploying and running a custom neural network on your phone or tablet is not straightforward, though, and the process depends on the operating system of the machine. In this post, I will focus on iOS devices and walk you through all the necessary steps to train a custom image classifier neural network model using the Wolfram Language, export it through ONNX (new in Version 12.2), convert it to Core ML (Apple’s machine learning framework for iOS apps) and finally deploy it to your iPhone or iPad.
December 31, 2020 — Andrew Steinacher, Lead Developer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
Cars are getting smarter and more connected, yet how much have you explored the technology that helps run our vehicles? I was curious to see how I could connect to my vehicle’s communication center and what kind of interface I could create in Wolfram Notebooks to report on the data gathered.
December 17, 2020 — Jeffrey Bryant, Research Programmer, Wolfram|Alpha Scientific Content
On December 21, 2020, a visual astronomical spectacle will occur. The planets Jupiter and Saturn will pass so close to each other in the sky that, to the unaided eye, they will be difficult to separate. This is the closest the two planets have come in 397 years; the last time they were this close was July 16, 1623. When Jupiter and Saturn come close to each other in the sky as seen from Earth, this is known as a “great conjunction” and happens about every 20 years or so. But not all great conjunctions are as close as this one. The next great conjunction will be on November 5, 2040, and again on April 10, 2060, but the planets will be a bit over a degree apart, so not as close as the 2020 event. The next comparable event will be on March 15, 2080.
November 25, 2020 — Jesse Friedman, Software Engineer, Engine Connectivity Engineering
In early October, by what at this point can only be a time-honored tradition, the Livecoding Championship returned in its fifth annual iteration as a special event during the 2020 Wolfram Technology Conference. As in preceding years, the championship offered top Wolfram Language programmers a chance to show off their knowledge, agility, typing speed and documentation-reading skills to an unfailingly adoring audience.
Follow along with this post by watching this recorded video of the 2020 Livecoding Championship livestream!
November 4, 2020 — Vitaliy Kaurov, Academic Director, Wolfram Science and Innovation Initiatives
Halloween this year had a surprise up its sleeve. In rare celestial serendipity, the night of costume metamorphosis also featured a full moon, which helped to conjure the spooky mood. Because it might have been the first and last full-moon Halloween that some people witnessed in their lifetime (cue ominous music), I think it was significantly underrated. Moreover, it was the day of a blue moon (the second full moon within a month), but that is not a surprise, as any Halloween’s full moon is always a blue moon. The Moon’s color did not change, though, at least for those away from the smoke of volcanos and forest fires that are capable of turning it visibly blue. To appreciate the science and uniqueness of a full moon this Halloween, I built this visualization that tells the whole story in one picture. This is how I did it.
October 20, 2020 — Christopher Carlson, Senior User Interface Developer, User Interfaces
Although this year’s Wolfram Technology Conference was virtual, that didn’t stop us from running the ninth annual One-Liner Competition, where attendees vie to produce the most amazing results they can with 128 or fewer characters of Wolfram Language code. Here are the winners, including an audio game, a hands-free 3D viewer and code that makes up countries.
October 16, 2020 — Christian Pasquel, Manager, Wolfram Research South America Connectivity
Blockchain was integrated into the Wolfram Language in 2018 with the release of Version 11.3, featuring a set of functions that is constantly improved and expanded upon by our team. Currently supporting a seamless connection to the Bitcoin, Ethereum, ARK and bloxberg mainnets, testnets and devnets, Wolfram introduced to the distributed ledger technology (DLT) space its philosophy of injecting computational intelligence everywhere through Wolfram Blockchain Labs, with the mission of enabling blockchain-based commerce and business model innovation.
October 6, 2020 — Jofre Espigule-Pons, Machine Learning
Earth has experienced five major extinctions since life first appeared almost four billion years ago. The sixth is happening right now; the current extinction rate is between one hundred and one thousand times greater than what it was before 1800.
Despite the alarming extinction rate, it’s easier than ever to document biodiversity with the help of the Wolfram Language. Using the monarch butterfly as an example, I will explore the new biodiversity data access functions in the Wolfram Function Repository and how they can help you join a community of thousands of citizen scientists from iNaturalist in preserving biodiversity.
September 4, 2020 — Mads Bahrami, Community & Content Developer, Community Advancement
This roundup of Wolfram Community contributions features several different functions and tools related to current times, from the global pandemic to sustainable spaces and homeschool puzzles. Read on to see just a few creative examples from some of our favorite Community members and Wolfram Language wizzes.
