Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
How to train your test-taking brain for ACT, SAT
Excerpts from article by Tiffany Sorensen published in U.S. News
To do well in the ACT or SAT, you must know the content and format of the exam. It can also boost your performance to apply-test section-specific strategies.
However, the ingredients for successful test prep do not end there. In addition to acquiring knowledge, students should work on enhancing three cognitive functions that are indispensable yet often overlooked in the test prep process – endurance, resilience and focus.
Here are some out-of-the-box routines to get yourself ready for the length and rigour of college admissions exams:
1. Training for Endurance
Both the ACT and the SAT last roughly three hours, so they certainly put a person’s mental stamina to the test. Those who are unaccustomed to taking lengthy, high-pressure exams tend to run out of steam before reaching the finish line.
Even 30 minutes of exercise per day is enough to boost short-term memory, a key skill for reading comprehension in particular. Exercise can also lead to increased energy levels, which is of obvious importance when working through long exams. To galvanise your academic performance, do some light exercise of your liking – perhaps running or walking – before your test prep sessions.
2. Training for Resilience
Knowing that a test score may determine whether you receive a scholarship or an admissions offer to a top-choice college is enough to send anyone into a state of worry.
To reroute counterproductive thought patterns, especially those involving fear and worry, students can engage in therapeutic storytelling. Therapeutic storytelling can take many different forms:
- Write down an uncomfortable situation you have lived through, but create a completely new and positive ending for it.
- Write down an uncomfortable situation you have lived through and the good that came out of it – for instance, a lesson you learned or a friend you made.
3. Training for Focus
Smartphones are wonderful tools. However, when your goal is to improve your focus, smartphones can be your biggest enemy.
To sharpen your focus, shy away from technology for a few hours a day and rely on your own mental resources. For instance, instead of pulling up your calculator app, compute taxes and tips in your head. Allow yourself to think of a synonym rather than going to Thesaurus.com right away.
Also, ensure you put your phone away during your test prep sessions. If you need to time yourself on an activity, use a traditional timer.
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Career
Artificial Intelligence will revamp a civil engineer’s career
Excerpts from article by Puja Das published in Analytics Insight
Artificial intelligence (AI) provides a wide range of society applications, including predicting, classifying and solving both social and scientific problems. As one of the oldest and most traditional engineering disciplines, civil engineering covers various aspects of the built environment, from design and construction to maintenance.
Civil engineering offers ample practical scope for applications of AI. In turn, AI can improve human life quality and originate novel approaches to solving engineering problems.
AI methods and techniques, including neural networks, evolutionary computation, fuzzy logic systems, and deep learning, have rapidly evolved over the past few years. AI algorithms have recently attracted close attention from researchers and have also been applied successfully to solve problems in civil engineering, i.e., intelligent and fully automatic urban and regional planning, and developing new technologies in civil engineering design, construction, maintenance, and disaster management.
1. Quality Management
Construction enterprises utilize deep-learning techniques to improve the level of quality of their construction processes. Image recognition of photographs gathered through manual drones is used to detect risk areas and is also compared against existing blueprints to identify any possible construction defects.
AI algorithms can use trial and error techniques to recognize the best processes, followed through reinforcement learning. By implementing these process changes in project planning and scheduling, construction companies can significantly improve their overall project workflow quality. By using artificial intelligence to create 3D models, they can match them with the original models to check for any quality discrepancies.
2. Better Designs
Building Information Modeling is a 3D model-based process that gives architecture, engineering, and construction professionals’ insights to efficiently plan, design, construct and manage buildings and infrastructure. The 3D model needs to consider the architecture, engineering, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) plans and the sequence of activities of the respective teams to plan and design the construction of a building.
Some softwares use a machine-learning algorithm to explore all the variations of a solution and generate design alternatives. They leverages machine learning to create 3D models of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems while simultaneously ensuring that MEP systems’ entire routes do not clash with the building architecture.
3. Prevent Cost Overruns
Most big projects exceed budget despite employing the best project teams. Artificial neural networks are used to predict cost overruns based on factors like project size, contract type, and the competence level of project managers. Predictive models use historical data such as planned start and end dates to envision realistic timelines for future projects. AI helps staff remotely access real-life training material that helps them improve their skills and knowledge quickly.
4. Risk Mitigation
Artificial neural networks through artificial intelligence help construction firms predict the likelihood of possible failures, therefore, preparing them to develop appropriate contingency plans.
Construction firms can also apply AI techniques to address client and market risk factors. Through certain algorithms, engineers can perform sentiment analysis on their firm’s standing in the market and thus come with targeted efforts to prevent stock prices from falling.
Making project development faster and more cost-effective, AI has carved a niche for itself in the civil sector.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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