PASTIC::News Letter

Patron/Executive Editor

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Akram Shaikh

Director General, PASTIC

Managing Editors

Ms. Nageen Ainuddin

Mr. M. Aqil Khan

Editor

Dr. Syed Aftab Hussain Shah

Composer

Kashif Farooqui

ECHNOLOGY

OUNDUP

Technology Information Services Section (TIS)

Pakistan Scientific & Technological Information Centre

PASTIC

May-June, 2018

Vol.10 No3

A NEWS BULLETIN FROM

Tech News Headlines

Tech & Trade Offers

Phone: 051-9248103-4, 9248128
Fax: 051-9248113
Email: shah_aftab@yahoo.com
Web: www.pastic.gov.pk

PASTIC National Centre
Quaid-i-Azam University Campus
P.O. Box 1217, Islamabad

Editorial Board

Pakistan got its First Peer to Peer Renting Platform

My Doctor.PK Raises $1.1Million in Funding from International VC

Firm and rebrands to oladoc.com

World's Groundwater Stores fall under the deep insight of an

Australian Physicist's Space Mission

Putting the brakes on Metastatic Cancer: Medical Researchers find

11 Genes responsible for the Spread of Cancer

A week with Keecker: the R2D2-like Robot that wants to replace your

TV and Speakers

European Supercomputer Shines with Energy Efficiency

Automotive, Technology Players join Forces on in-Car Multi-Gig-

Networking

Wind Power

Forthcoming Tech Events

2 Young Researchers National Conference on Water and

Environment

International Conference on Science and Technology and

Management

l ITCN Asia IT & Telecom Show

l International Academic Conference on Development in Science

and Technology

International Energy Conference

International Science and Technology Conference

l International Conference on Communication and Network

Technology

l International Conference on Clean Energy and Renewable Energy

Technology Roundup

Pakistan got its First Peer to Peer Renting Platform

Source: www.perspective.pk

Pakistan was lacking its renting platform where people could list their unused items for rent. UpRenting is not just
a listing platform. It's a complete rental platform with features like escrow payments and CNIC verified accounts.
Lender can mark the pickup location on the map where the item can be picked up by borrower.

This startup from Karachi wants people to stop buying and start renting. People spend tons of money on items
which are used once and then those expensive items are kept in your home and start getting dust. So why not to turn
these items into cash? A lot of people can't even afford to buy these expensive items. When you buy an expensive
item you've got to stick with it for months. UpRenting is a peer to peer renting platform. Where people can rent out
stuff between each other. UpRenting makes the deal safe by holding money into escrow as a third party. It also has
online verification platform, users need to submit their national id card to verify their account and then they can't
take items for rent. Renting process is developed in very simple way, when lender handover goods to borrower. He
have to click on “Start Renting” in the order page and when he have got the item back he need to click on “End
Renting” and give user a rating and feedback. It's like an uber ride process. After both users gives rating to each
other. Escrow is unlocked, rental charges are sent to Lender and security deposit is sent back to borrower.

To make the renting safe you can enable Verify ID on your listing. It will require borrower to have his/her account
verified through CNIC. Escrow is win win situation for both borrower and lender. The borrower will need to pay
the money in escrow to UpRenting. This amount is not sent to the lender directly. Borrower is always risk free of
giving his security deposit to borrower directly and similarly lender feels confident when rental charges are safe
already. UpRenting will release the money when both borrower and lender will finalize the deal by giving rating
and feedback to each. “We have many future plans but right now we've to go niche by niche. We'll be going to add
pickup and delivery service as well by creating our own fulfillment centers where people can send their unused
stuff and we handle everything for them. They will receive payments in their bank account.” says Usama Khalid,
Founder of UpRenting. UpRenting has still long way to go. But it can boost the sharing economy and revolutionize
the renting industry in Pakistan if in coming years UpRenting is able to scale themselves.

Technology Roundup

My Doctor.PK Raises $1.1Million in Funding from International VC

Firm and rebrands to oladoc.com

Source: www.perspective.pk

MyDoctor.pk, Pakistan's leading online health platform, has announced that it has officially changed its
name to oladoc.com.

MyDoctor.pk was founded in 2016 to make it easy for users to find the best doctors and specialists near
them. Moreover, it allows users to book confirmed appointments with top doctors and specialists instantly
as a free service. It has over 14,000 PMDC verified doctors listed on its website allowing the users to find the
right doctor for their needs across Pakistan. The company also expanded to include online medicine and lab
testordering to its services. It has been recognized as a pioneer in Pakistan's online health sector whereby its
technology is helping users access 'Health at their fingertips' through its easy-to-use website and mobile
applications.

Commenting on the rebrand, Abid Zuberi, Co-Founder and CEO of MyDoctor said, “While our brand name
'MyDoctor.pk' helped us connect with Pakistani users and bring them online for their healthcare needs, we
realized its limitations to expand internationally. We wanted our name to reflect our position as a user-
friendly company that is making it easier for users to take care of their health as well as allows us to expand
internationally. Therefore, we have taken the decision to rebrand as oladoc.com and jump-start our plans to
become a global force in the online health sector.

In 2017, MyDoctor.pk helped over 10 lakh Pakistanis find the right doctors and specialists for their medical
needs. This traction allowed the company to secure a USD 1.1 million investment in January 2018 from
Glowfish Capital, a UAE based venture capital firm with investors from Europe, Middle-East and Asia.
Commenting on the investment, Wim Torfs, Managing Partner at Glowfish Capital said, “We are very
excited about being part of the digitization of the Pakistani Health sector, making it easier for patients to find
the right doctors and bringing professional digital tools into the Doctors' practice. We are committed to
being a driving force to further grow and professionalize the industry through oladoc.com. Moreover, we
were very impressed by the team and track record of MyDoctor.pk (now oladoc.com) and will support them
further with international best practices.”

Technology Roundup

World's Groundwater Stores fall under the deep insight of an Australian

Physicist's Space Mission

Source: www.abc.net.au

An Australian physicist has developed satellite technology that measures the world's freshwater reserves from
space.

GRACE works by measuring the distance between two satellites as they change speed due to minute changes
in gravity. (credit: NASA)

The technology is at the heart of the NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-
FO) mission, which launched last month, and follows the first GRACE mission which launched in 2002. "It was a
little bit surreal," Professor Shaddock Australian physicist Daniel Shaddock from the Australian National
University said. Professor Shaddock developed a retro reflector that uses lasers to measure the world's water
reserves from space with unprecedented accuracy. "It measures something that's really important; the presence of
water whether that's frozen form or liquid form across the entire globe at once. And that's something you can only
do from space.

For the device to work, two laser beams from two separate satellites each travelling at thousands of kilometres per
hour need to link with each other from a distance of over two hundred kilometres. "Once the laser links have been
acquired I'll certainly rest a little easier that's really the biggest challenge facing GRACE," Professor Shaddock
said. "If that doesn't work we won't get any data back, and if it does work, I'm much more confident that we'll get
some really valuable insights."

"Any large body of water will generate gravity and that gravity can be picked up by GRACE." Australian
National University water expert, Albert Van Dijk, said the first GRACE mission painted a disturbing picture
of freshwater loss. Professor Van Dijk said in populated, arid parts of the world such as India, a huge amount
of water is being pumped out of the ground. "We're actually mining groundwater and the magnitude of that is
actually quite impressive. The mission also revealed that freshwater is disappearing from Greenland and West
Antarctica faster than any other place on Earth as ice caps melt.

GRACE detects tiny changes in gravity caused by large masses of water on Earth, which then causes a pair of
satellites to speed up or slow down. Professor Shaddock's laser device measures these changes in speed. "In
the case of the Laser Ranging Interferometer, we can pick up changes in the separation of the spacecraft by ten
nanometres. That's ten billionths of a metre about the diameter of a virus.”

Technology Roundup

Putting the brakes on Metastatic Cancer: Medical Researchers find 11 Genes

responsible for the Spread of Cancer

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

A groundbreaking discovery by University of Alberta researchers has identified previously unknown therapeutic
targets that could be key to preventing the spread of cancer. Researchers found that by inhibiting several newly
identified gene targets they could block more than 99.5 per cent of cancer metastasis in living cells.

In the study, the team used a unique platform it created -- a shell-less avian embryo -- to visualize the growth and
spread of cancer cells in real time. The researchers used a molecular tool called a knockout library to insert short
hairpin RNA (shRNA) vectors into cancer cells, which bound to specific genes in the cells and stopped them
from activating. They then inserted those cancer cells into the embyros and observed as they formed clusters of
cancer, identifying which ones showed properties of being non-metastatic.

"When we found compact colonies [of cancer], that meant all the steps to metastasis were blocked," said
Konstantin Stoletov, lead author of the study and a research associate in the Lewis lab. "After that we could pull
them out, query what the gene is, and then validate that the gene is actually responsible for metastasis."

The approach enabled the team to detect and identify 11 genes that appear to play essential roles in cancer cell
metastasis. According to the researchers, these genes are widely involved in the process of metastasis and not
unique to any one cancer. They now plan to test the metastasis-associated genes and gene products as drug targets
with an aim of stopping metastasis. The research was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and the Alberta
Cancer Foundation.

Technology Roundup

A week with Keecker: the R2D2-like Robot that wants to replace your TV

and Speakers

Source: www.wired.co.uk/article/keecker-robot-review

Keecker has voice and remote control, a Full HD projector, Bluetooth speakers, subwoofer and 360-degree home
monitoring - but is this the future of home entertainment or simply, as C3PO might say, another "overweight glob
of grease"?

Keecker is an Android-based, app-controlled orb (iOS or Android) loaded with a 720p projector, 4.1 speaker

package including subwoofer, multiple web cameras and proximity sensors, Chromecast, voice control and a

stripped back Android interface powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon quad-core processor and hefty 12Ah

300Wh lithium-ion battery offering six hours of continuous movie watching. Essentially it's R2D2 without the

snippy attitude.

Measuring 38.8cm tall and roughly 27cm in diameter, the 9kg dome of white plastic is hardly discreet, but, despite

our dog's initial misgivings we soon grew accustomed to it being around. There's something Wall-E (or rather his

hi-tech girlfriend EVE) about it, which is no bad thing, but remember it will need a permanent home to dock and

charge.

Technology Roundup

European Supercomputer Shines with Energy Efficiency

Source: www.eenewseurope.com

Europe is catching up in developing innovative supercomputer architectures. One example of this is the new

high-performance computer that is currently being launched at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC).

JUWELS (Jülich Wizard for European Leadership Science) is regarded as a milestone in the development of a

new generation of flexible, modular supercomputers that target an extended range of tasks, from big data

applications to computational simulations. With his first module it qualified as number 1 of the German

computers for the TOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world.

Supercomputers help to understand complex interrelationships in research, for example in climate research or
neuroscience. But they are also increasingly being used in many other areas. In addition to classical
applications such as simulations in engineering, physics or chemistry, supercomputers are increasingly being
used for other tasks involving the evaluation of large amounts of data or machine learning and artificial
intelligence (AI). JUWELS has a modular design to meet such different requirements. Thomas Lippert,
Director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, sees this approach as the key to an affordable and energy-
efficient technology with which the coming exascale systems in particular can be realised. Lippert's concept of
an adaptable design - also known as "Smart Exascale" - has developed into a comprehensive European project
in recent years and has been turned into reality in the EU research project DEEP. Since 2011, experts from 16
European partners have been working on DEEP projects funded by the EU.

The modular concept provides for a supercomputer consisting of several specialized modules that can be
dynamically and flexibly combined as required via software. The cluster module delivered in spring 2018 by
French IT company Atos together with the software specialists of the German company ParTec is equipped
with Intel Xeon 24-core Skylake CPUs. This results in a theoretical peak performance of up to 12 petaflops,
roughly equivalent to the computing power of 60,000 PCs. The nodes are interconnected by a Mellanox
InfiniBand high-speed network with transfer rates of up to 200 Gb/s.

Technology Roundup

Automotive, Technology Players join Forces on in-Car

Multi-Gig-Networking

Source: www.eenewseurope.com

Autonomous driving is creating a need for a new breed of in-vehicle networking solutions that can transmit
data between the increasing number of high-resolution sensors, cameras and processing engines at blazing-fast
speeds. Against this background, a number of players from the automotive and semiconductor industry
announced the formation of the Networking for Autonomous Vehicles (NAV) Alliance, to drive the ecosystem
development required for the next generation of Multi-Gig Ethernet networking in vehicles.

Members of the NAV Alliance are chipmakers Aquantia and Nvidia, automotive tier one suppliers Bosch and
Continental, as well as Volkswagen through its North American subsidiary Volkswagen Group of America.
The NAV alliance's members are joining together in an effort to shape the future of in-vehicle networking
technologies as society prepares for the paradigm shift to autonomous driving.

Akin to an advanced nervous system, this next-generation networking architecture is based on an array of
ECUs, CPUs, GPUs, high-definition cameras, sensors, gateways, and storage devices, all connected through a
high-speed, Multi-Gigabit/s Ethernet network that works to seamlessly move data throughout the vehicle
securely and reliably. In the first place, the group intends to develop an ecosystem for next-generation in-car,
multi-gigabit Ethernet. In addition, the members plan to devise the specs for interoperability, security and
reliability of this network. Furthermore, the members of the group will drive standardization and establish the
necessary standards body liaisons.

“Redundant and diverse AI algorithms are the key to level 5 automation. However, the volume of data
generated by multiple types of sensors (camera, radar, lidar, ultrasound) can reach 32TB every 8 hours that
level of data transfer calls for a new breed of ultra-high-speed networks, including Multi-gig Ethernet,2
commented James Hodgson, Senior Analyst Autonomous Driving for market watcher ABI Research. “The
NAV alliance will catalyze the development of a reliable next generation of networking platform for self-
driving cars.”

Technology Roundup

National

International Conference on Science Technology and Management

www.iastem.org/Conference2018/Pakistan/1/ICSTM/

2 Young Researchers National Conference on Water and Environment

www.ncwe.water.muet.edu.pk

ITCN Asia IT & Telecom Show

www.itcn.asia.com

International Academic Conference on Development in Science & Technology

www.academicsworld.org

International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering , Science and

Technology

www.internationalconferencealerts.com

International Conference on Communication and Network Technology

www.worldconferencealerts.com

International Conference on Clean and Renewable Energy 2018

Www.worldconferencealerts.com

International Conference Energy & Meteorology

www internationalconferencealerts.com

28-29 July, 2018

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

2 -3 August, 2018
Jamshoro, Sindh

25-27 September, 2018
Expo Center, Karachi

28-29 September, 2018
Rawalpindi, Pakistan

1-2 September, 2018
Hong Kong

22-24 September, 2018
Stockholm, Sweden

15-17 September, 2018
Chongqing, China

16-17 October, 2018
Orlando, USA

International Events

Forthcoming Tech Events

Tech & Trade Offers

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Wind Power

Silent Features

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Companies
M 3-4 Akber Paradise
Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block 10-A Oppostie Aladin Park
Karachi-75300
Tel: 92-21-34971610, 34971642
Fax: (92-21) 34971813
www.meseconline.com
Email: mesec@cyber.net.pk

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Technology Roundup

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