Our final day at the University of Nicosia (UNIC)! I am sad we have to say goodbye so soon to the university that has graciously hosted us, but we have learned a lot with our time with them. We began our final presentations off with a quick explanation about block chain and how cryptocurrencies affect the market and can be utilized commercially. Since crypto’s are simply a network of comports, they can be essentially traded instantaneously, and at any time of the day without having to go through the hassle of a third party like a bank. This can expedite the process of making payments between companies, which can even save lives like in one of the instance of Antonis Polemitis (CEO) described to us. Someone who was in Africa had to get an emergency to another part of Africa, something that could be done, but the company that was offering the airlift would operate without the payment beforehand. This was a do-or-die-situation and it was solved using a bitcoin transaction because a bank transfer would have taken to long in that instance. This real-life situation really put into perspective how important these forms of currency can be for ethical market. 

Our second two lectures were about data forecasting/ supply chain and machine learning/ data science. These two categories of work are actually very much intertwined now, with data forecasting being able to be done using machine learning since it is simply analyzing trends over time, something that it very efficiently done by using computers. By training a model to seek certain patterns or behaviors in the markets, one can create algorithms that search out these patterns and create projections about how the market will act in the future based on the data. While these forecasts are not always spot on, they are generally true when the markets are stable, and are a great way for companies to balance their inventory and predict how much of a product they should stock in the upcoming months. 

The final stop for the day was checking out some of the labs that were a part of UNIC. The first lab I was able to visit was a pharmaceutical testing lab where different drugs were made using a machine that pressed the drugs into tablets. I thought all of this was extremely interesting because I mom worked in pharmaceuticals for 25 years, so a lot of that we were witnessing is something she would have done when she was working. The precession that goes into formulating a tablet – measuring the components just right to balance the effectiveness of the drug, its hardness, and its ease of manufacturing – all seemed like an extremely delicate process and gave me a better sense of confidence in the over the counter drugs I take when I am ill. We were also able to visit a lab that was working with a variety of organisms including scorpions to test different proteins found in the animals for a variety of purposes. One of the uses for one of the proteins was for locating cancerous cells in the brain for brain cancer removal surgeries. When the skull is cut open, a mixture of the protein and some other chemicals will react with the cancerous cell, making them easy to spot and thus easier to clean. The fact that all of this came with some research on organisms all around us was astounding, and made me question what else was out there for us to discover!