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<DIV
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000">timelord09@comcast.net<BR><BR>There
Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See<BR><BR>William and Leader Dog
Lynerd</DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=f.wurtzel@att.net
href="mailto:f.wurtzel@att.net">Fred Wurtzel</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, March 24, 2016 12:22 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=the-facts-machine@freelists.org
href="mailto:the-facts-machine@freelists.org">the-facts-machine@freelists.org</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Cc:</B> <A title=marywurtzel@att.net
href="mailto:marywurtzel@att.net">marywurtzel@att.net</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [the-facts-machine] IBM, Dogs and Clouds</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT color=#252324 size=2
face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>Published
March 24, 2016<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><B><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'><IMG
id=Picture_x0020_1 alt=IBM-Guiding-Eyes
src="cid:0F67A3D844D94EC78D7FB3DB56315B8B@DESKTOPFF85UP6" width=350
height=219></SPAN></FONT></B><B><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'>ARMONK,
N.Y. – Mar 24 2016:</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>
IBM (NYSE: </SPAN></FONT><A href="http://www.ibm.com/investors"><FONT
color=#196dad size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #196dad'>IBM</SPAN></FONT></A><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>)
today announced that Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a non-profit organization
dedicated to the breeding, raising, training and placement of service dogs with
people who are blind or visually impaired, is adopting the IBM Cloud for better
management and faster access to its increasing canine
data.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>Since
its founding in 1954, Guiding Eyes has graduated more than 7,300 guide dogs. But
perhaps the most famous is two year-old, “Wrangler,” a yellow Labrador Retriever
who gained notoriety over the past year as a regular on NBC’s </SPAN></FONT><A
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brtRMdCmtmk"><FONT color=#196dad size=2
face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #196dad'>The
Today Show</SPAN></FONT></A><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>Over
the years Guiding Eyes has worked to continuously perfect its process for
identifying preferred qualities in dogs such as health, confidence, love and
temperament. Through its Canine Development Center (CDC), the organization has
been a leader in canine genetics research, breeding technology, and behavioral
development.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>At
the core of the CDC is data. Through many generations of selective breeding, the
CDC has captured untold amounts of structured information such as medical
records and complex genetic mapping. It has also generated volumes of
unstructured data from virtually innumerable scanned hard-copy questionnaires
that trainers and host families complete about their experiences with the
dogs.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>Not
surprisingly, having collected more than a dozen generations of breeding
information, data had become unwieldy to manage, increasingly difficult to
access, and even harder to extract meaningful
insights.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>That’s
when Guiding Eyes turned to IBM Cloud. By migrating more than half a million
health records and more than 65,000 temperament records on thousands of dogs to
the IBM Cloud, the organization will be afforded greater reliability,
simplicity, and scalability. In addition, by being on the cloud, Guiding Eyes
will be able to provide easier access to colleagues across the U.S., as well as
partners and scientists, each of whom will be able to positively impact research
and analysis of genetic and behavioral data.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>“People
don’t typically think about an organization like ours as a Big Data company, but
we cannot succeed or grow without it,” said Thomas Panek, President and CEO,
Guiding Eyes. “By collecting information about our dogs over the years, we can
dig into the data to pull out meaningful insights about health, behavior,
temperament and so much more. However, all of that was becoming increasingly
difficult on our legacy systems. By putting it on the IBM Cloud, we will
simplify our IT and make our data more accessible for more
analysis.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>With
all of the efficiencies afforded by IBM Cloud, Guiding Eyes is hoping to improve
its screening and breeding processes and eventually improve the current
graduation rate of its guide dogs from 36 percent annually. Considering that it
costs Guiding Eyes approximately $50,000 to train a guide dog, any improvements
to the graduation rate, no matter how slight, will improve financial
efficiencies and make more guide dogs available for those who need
them.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>IBM
Cloud will also enable Guiding Eyes to open up its data to external partners for
the first time for additional research support. In January, for example, the
organization invited Professor Chris Tseng, Ph.D., and Professor of Computer
Science at San Jose State University to analyze its trove of DNA and behavioral
data.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>Using
IBM Watson Personality and Natural Language Processing on IBM Bluemix, Dr. Tseng
and his machine-learning students are spending the spring semester analyzing the
organization’s vast amounts of structured and unstructured data. By May, the
group is hoping to establish a process for identifying data patterns and
correlating traits, characteristics, environmental conditions, and personalities
– of both dogs and trainers – to help improve Guiding Eyes’ dog graduation rates
and to better match young dogs with trainers and ultimately
owners.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'>“Guiding
Eyes, is a great example of how IBM Cloud can help organizations innovate new
business models and processes that were heretofore unthinkable,” said William
Karpovich, General Manager, IBM Cloud Platform. “Through the IBM Cloud, Guiding
Eyes is now able to advance even further its critical work in breeding, raising
and training service dogs for those in need.”<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 11.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15pt"><B><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'>For
more on IBM Cloud, </SPAN></FONT></B><A
href="http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing"><B><FONT color=#196dad size=2
face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #196dad'>click
here</SPAN></FONT></B></A><B><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'>.</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'><BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">For more on Thomas Panek, </SPAN></B></SPAN></FONT><A
href="http://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2016/02/23/how-technology-levels-the-playing-field-for-the-blind/"><B><FONT
color=#196dad size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #196dad'>click
here</SPAN></FONT></B></A><B><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'>.</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'><BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">For more about Guiding Eyes,
</SPAN></B></SPAN></FONT><A href="https://www.guidingeyes.org/"><B><FONT
color=#196dad size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #196dad'>click
here</SPAN></FONT></B></A><B><FONT color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #252324'>.</SPAN></FONT></B><FONT
color=#252324 size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 10.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #252324'><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
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