Pakistani delegates shine at Telenor Youth Forum

ISLAMABAD (PR): Telenor Pakistan has selected two delegates, Sara Waqar and Safa Iftikhar, to participate in Telenor Youth Forum (TYF) 2017. TYF is run in cooperation with the Nobel Peace Center that brings together young, talented leaders from 12 countries where Telenor operates, and challenges these youth to find ways to use digital technology for the social good.

While in Oslo, the TYF delegates will participate in a service design program to create a digital service that tackles a global, social challenge. They will also explore the connection between digital technology and peace, by participating in the Nobel Peace Prize festivities while in Oslo. The TYF delegates will continue with the TYF program throughout 2018, developing their digital service and building an exhibition on their social cause, in collaboration with the Nobel Peace Center.

Pakistani delegates have always showcased excellent performance at the forum and raised the bar for global delegates. Telenor Youth Forum (TYF) conducted its first ever digital exhibition recently. The exhibition showcased digital interventions in five different fields including, gender equality, education for young refugees, climate change, unemployment and social instability, and mental health.

Results are in after the exhibition and the winner of Telenor Youth Forum 2016 is team GreenCred, where Sajawal Waseem, Pakistani delegate is part of the team.

This team received the challenges of “climate change” in December 2016, and has been working ever since to develop a new take on sustainable shopping. Their solution is an ecosystem in which users are rewarded for shopping more sustainably and incentivized to be ‘green’ through a shared shopping model.

Sajawal will visit Oslo again this year as featured speaker in the program.

Two-day Cuban Food Festival at IMH

ISLAMABAD (PR): To celebrate the rich diversity of the Cuban culture, the Islamabad Marriott Hotel (IMH) is hosting a two-day Cuban Food Festival in collaboration with the Embassy of Cuba.

Sponsored by the Turkish Airlines, the first-of-its kind festival will kick off on Saturday (October 21) at the hotel.

Reflective of the vibrant Cuban culture, the food festival will offer a slice of Cuban cuisine that combines traditional flavours with a unique flair.

Guest Chef Gioelkis Sosa Hernandez from Cuba and the Executive Chef of the IMH Chef Thomas, along with their teams, will offer mothering-watering delights from the exquisite cuisine and extend warm hospitality from Havana to the Pool Terrace of the hotel.

Following the two-day extravaganza at IMH, the festival will travel to Karachi Marriott Hotel and Pearl Continental Hotel, Lahore.

Sindh Madrassatul Islam to organise festival in Dec

KARACHI (PR): Sindh Madressatul Islam University is organising the first-ever “Festival of Arts and Ideas” in Pakistan from 8th to 10th December 2017 as a part of Pakistan’s 70 years celebrations. The festival comprises about fifty events, concurrently running in a heavily packed program, within three days. The events include lectures and talk by international scholars and eminent persons of Pakistan, panel discussions on important issues; depiction of cultural heritage of Pakistan; screening of classic films; performing art shows; exhibitions of paintings, photographs and documentaries and other such events.

This was disclosed in a meeting of the Coordination Committee of the “SMIU Festival of Arts and Ideas,” chaired by Dr Muhammad Ali Shaikh, Vice Chancellor of SMIU.

Mobile AI: the new reality of mobile intelligence

LAHORE (PR): Intelligent smartphones are no longer simply something to look forward to in the future. As Huawei unveils the Kirin 970, the new smartphoneSoC (system on chip) which combines an 8-core CPU, a new generation 12-core GPU, and a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to power AI computing, a significantly better user experience in now an imminent reality. As we sit on the cusp of an exciting new era of smartphones, the result is a device that can understand and predict the needs of their users, providing them with relevant information and services based on that understanding.

The AI powered flagship HUAWEI Mate 10, set to hit the market this fall, is expected to make a giant leap in smartphone technology by providing more comprehensive mobile intelligence through Mobile AI.

Huawei’s NPU, embedded in the Kirin970 chipset, will focus on artificial intelligence tasks linked to the cloud and on the device for real-time calculations from end to end. By utilizing the benefits for both Cloud-AI and On-Device AI, Huawei will deliver truly personalized and readily accessible services on the HUAWEI Mate 10 device.

The benefits of the Kirin 970 NPU (on-device AI) are multifold and are set to change the trajectory of smartphone technology for years to come. The soon-to-be-released HUAWEI Mate 10 will function at a much higher speed with faster responses because it is no longer necessary to upload data from the device into the cloud, then do the computing, and then send it back into the device. The NPU also makes the device more secure with higher user privacy as the computing is done on a local device, which means there is no need to upload data into the server. The power and batter consumption of the NPU are also much lower compared to cloud-based AI which featured a big calculating system, ensuring a far more reliability and efficiency for users of the latest Mate series device.

Most importantly, the performance of the Kirin 970 NPU is unparalleled with 25 times that of a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and with 50 times the efficiency of a CPU. In a benchmark image recognition test, the NPU allows the Kirin 970 to process 2,000 images per minute, considerably more than other chips with similar capabilities.

The NPU in the HUAWEI Mate 10 will take smartphone photography to the next level allowing the smartphone to truly know and understand their users, supporting real-time image recognition, voice interaction and intelligent photography with ease.

The NPU will also promote development of innovative apps that use On-Device AI. New developments in AI require joint effort across the entire value chain, involving tens of millions of developers, and the experience and feedback of hundreds of millions of users. Huawei is positioning the Kirin 970 as an open platform for mobile AI, opening up the chipset to developers and partners who can find new and innovative uses for its processing capabilities