Monthly Archives: August 2017

Disgraced Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk loses legal battle over … – The Korea Herald

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Hwang Woo-suk, a South Korean stem cell scientist who caused a major stir in the scientific community for academic fraud in 2005, has recently lost a legal battle over the rights to a technique critical to re-creating the woolly mammoth.

According to local reports Tuesday, Hwang had filed a criminal complaint against Park Se-pil of Jeju National University and his research colleagues, accusing them of embezzlement and attempted blackmail.

However, the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office said it did not find sufficient evidence of the claims against Park and his team, closing the case that had been open for years.

The plan was to replicate the mammoth cells in a lab. From the copied cells, researchers would extract the nucleus, which contains the animals genetic information. The nucleus would then be inserted into the eggs of female elephants, the closest living relatives to the now-extinct animal.

Hwangs mammoth cloning project had garnered international attention at the time, even prompting National Geographic to air a detailed documentary on the Korean scientist and his work in 2013.

However, Hwang and his Russian research partners ran into technological hurdles even before the cloning process could begin. For years, the team continuously failed to artificially cultivate the mammoth cells in the lab.

In 2015, Hwang recruited the help of Park and his team, who claimed they were able to successfully cultivate the mammoth cells needed for the nucleus transplant, based on the samples provided by Hwang.

Hwang and Park ended up clashing over the ownership of the cell cultivation technology. Hwang argued that Parks work constitutes a part of his own research and that he thus possesses the sole rights related to all the related experimental methods.

Meanwhile, Park claimed Hwang provided the mammoth cells without prior conditions and the research should be considered a collaborative effort, as his teams cell cultivation method plays a critical role.

According to records, Park refused to hand over his work to Hwang without signing proper terms of agreement, stating that he would rather dispose of the cultivated mammoth cells than freely pass them on to Hwang.

Hwang then sued Park and his team on embezzlement and attempted blackmail. However, the prosecution decided not to pursue the charges of the alleged offenses earlier this month.

The recent investigation has also prompted new allegations that Hwang illegally imported the mammoth samples into Korea without duly reporting to local authorities. Hwang has denied such allegations to the prosecution, according to local reports.

Hwang Woo-suk, 64, is a former professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Seoul National University. He was placed at the center of one of the worlds biggest scientific scandals in 2005 for fabricating evidence he had successfully cloned human embryos and yielded stem cell lines from them.

Recently, the disgraced scientist rose to the domestic spotlight for being a close collaborator to Sunchon National University professor Park Ki-young, who was recently appointed as the new chief of the Science, Technology and Innovation Office at Koreas Ministry of Science and ICT.

However, Park, who had been a co-author of Hwangs fraudulent research paper in 2005, resigned from her post last week after the local science community and politicians fiercely opposed her appointment, citing ethical lapses.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)

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Disgraced Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk loses legal battle over ... - The Korea Herald

Using ‘tap and go’ will protect against fraud through ‘ghost’ EFTPOS terminals, police say – ABC Online

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Updated August 15, 2017 16:45:25

Police are urging people to use the 'tap and go' chip on their bank cards in order to protect themselves from fraud through "ghost" terminals.

Detectives from the NSW fraud squad are investigating a series of fraudulent ATM withdrawals across Sydney's south-west using "cloned" credit and debit cards.

Cloned cards are made by swiping the magnetic strip data and PIN from legitimate cards and then transferring the information to a plastic card with a magnetic strip, often a cheap store loyalty card.

"For a cloned card to be used in an ATM they need to have two pieces of information," Acting Superintendent Matt Craft said.

"They need to have the information on the magnetic strip and your PIN if they don't have your PIN they can't make the transaction.

"So it's about reducing the opportunity for criminal syndicates to get access to your PIN by covering it and making sure people can't see you enter your PIN."

Superintendent Craft said criminal syndicates obtained data from card's magnetic strips using a skimming device attached to an ATM or EFTPOS terminal, or they used so-called "ghost" terminals.

He said magnetic strips were "old technology" and customers should rely on their card's secure chip instead.

"It is very difficult for individuals when they're conducting transactions to identify a device that's been placed on an ATM that shouldn't be there or indeed a ghost terminal," he said.

"Often ghost terminals, which are used to capture your data, look very much like the original device.

"You need to be very cautious about using those devices and wherever you can, you should use the chip and tap that's the most secure way."

The prevalence of card cloning in Australia is much lower than overseas, Superintendent Craft said, but it has risen 13 per cent in the past year.

EFTPOS terminals in taxis, restaurants and small businesses, or skimming devices placed on ATMs, were the most common culprits for card skimming and cloning.

The fraud squad has released CCTV footage of a man who is believed to have used a cloned card to steal several hundred dollars in cash.

The man stole the money from several ATMs at Peakhurst and Roselands in Sydney's southwest on June 19.

He is described as Caucasian, aged in his 30s or 40s with short brown hair and a full beard.

He can be seen wearing a black T-shirt with a yellow and white print on the back, black jeans and white sneakers.

He was also wearing a wrist brace or bandage on his right hand.

Topics: police, consumer-protection, fraud-and-corporate-crime, nsw

First posted August 15, 2017 16:42:55

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Using 'tap and go' will protect against fraud through 'ghost' EFTPOS terminals, police say - ABC Online

DollyWould: Sh!t Theatre’s fringe tribute to the country singer and the cloned sheep – The Guardian

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If we are asked to sell out, then we gladly will Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole in DollyWould. Photograph: The Other Richard

The theatrical double-act Sh!t Theatre got their name as a joke. Founders Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit heard the sort of work they do performance art combined with theatrical improvisation described as just shit theatre. But the self-deprecating designation caused problems for broadcasters. The first time we ever appeared on radio, remembers Mothersole, it was to talk about a show called Sh!t Theatre Presents Sh!t Theatre, and we were told that we couldnt say the name of the company or the production. Which obviously made marketing it quite hard.

The duo have since won a Fringe First award at Edinburgh and they received Arts Council funding for their latest project, DollyWould, which is one of the standout shows at this years fringe. Applications for public funding must be supported by a mission statement, which, the women admit, was difficult to write in support of DollyWould. Having previously made shows that were documentary based and political Guinea Pigs on Trial concerned medical research, while Job Seekers Anonymous was about the benefits system they wanted to create a piece that was pure fun, exploring their joint obsession with Dolly Parton, who they admire for her musical theatricality and consider a lesbian icon.

The shows framing device is an entertaining variation on a verbatim musical, with Mothersole and Biscuit duetting a cappella answers from Parton interviews, including a 1977 American TV encounter with Barbara Walters, in which the performer, not yet having honed her hokey-jokey media persona, was startlingly unguarded about her career, marriage and body.

The last subject prompts the performers, at one point in DollyWould, to cut two circles in their T-shirts, exposing nipples and areolas for much of the show. In a culture where female nudity on stage has to be carefully negotiated and justified, was this a hard moment to agree? Not at all, they say together, before Biscuit continues: At some level, a show about Dolly Parton is going to be about breasts. But one of the rules we set ourselves was that the word breasts would never actually be spoken. So the idea is that they are just literally out there. Mothersole adds: And were not actually topless were still wearing tops so it doesnt feel as exposing as you might think.

This partial nudity is ended when each of the women dons one large fake bouncy breast that covers their torso. They came up with such props during the rehearsal period, but admit to spending a lot of money on devices that are never used. A large model of a mouse with an ear growing out of its back a reference to a briefly famous experiment in the cloning of human organs is stored in London, having been dropped from the show before they travelled north.

Although they have never previously gone so flat out for jokes, DollyWould also has more typically journalistic sequences: featuring the history of the first cloned sheep, named Dolly after the singer, and the macabre Body Farm, an FBI facility for investigating the decomposition of bodies, which incongruously neighbours the performers theme park Dollywood, with surprisingly similar memorabilia on sale in both gift shops.

At one point in the show, Mothersole and Biscuit, who met in the improv group Alphabetties, tell the audience that they split up last year, but were reunited through the singer whose biggest hits include the song D.I.V.O.R.C.E. Thats all true, says Biscuit. She and Mothersole, their relationship fractured by creative disagreements, moved out of the north London apartment block referenced in their 2016 show, Letters to Windsor House, which explored the law relating to opening correspondence sent to previous occupants of an address.

The trip to Dollywood was the first time we really got back together, says Mothersole. DollyWould is their eighth joint appearance at the fringe, having started at the free non-ticketed festival, before slowly graduating to their current peak-time (9.15pm) slot at Summerhall. Performing on the fringe is notoriously expensive in the early years, they once shared the bedroom of a relative who was a student in the city with seven other performers and, even now, August on the fringe is economically daunting. You end up losing money, says Biscuit, but, if it works, exposure in Edinburgh gets you bookings elsewhere. (DollyWould and Letters to Windsor House already have post-Edinburgh dates around the UK.)

Sh!t Theatre recently received ACE funding for a 2018 show, which they expect to bring to Edinburgh. Noting that the Arts Council is funded by donations from the National Lottery, they came up with an idea for a show that would use a grant from the cultural funding body to buy Lottery tickets, returning any winnings to their patron.

After talking to the Arts Council and lawyers, says Biscuit, it turned out that we wouldnt legally be allowed to use a funding grant in that way. So were going to do something more general about money and wealth. Mothersole adds that it will probably be in a very different format to anything weve done before a sort of gameshow, with lots of audience participation.

One of their early ideas was to perform the show only on Wednesday and Saturday nights, coinciding with the Lottery draws, but that would have the effect of making an Edinburgh residency even less economic, although they hope to come to Scotland every August, unless lucrative commercial offers intervene.

Weve already made the moral decision over that, says Mothersole. If we are asked to sell out, then we gladly will. But, until then, well go on being performance artists.

DollyWould is at Summerhall in Edinburgh, to 27 August. Box office: 0131 560 1580. Then on tour.

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DollyWould: Sh!t Theatre's fringe tribute to the country singer and the cloned sheep - The Guardian

CRE Opinion: The Evolution of Tenant Representation in DFW – D Magazine

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Ran Holman of Cushman & Wakefield

Dallas is a real estate town, it always has been. With so much homegrown talent, there was a time, not that long ago, when major firms from faraway places like New York, LA, and Chicago had some challenges in establishing a tenant representation foothold here. Those firms had high-level relationships that they brought to DFW, but had stiff competition in developing organic, local business. The hometown firms in Dallas were smart, aggressive, and unique. And due to the citys periodic explosive growth, they were battle-tested.

But times change, and so has the industry. I recently reviewed a list of the top 75 office prospects in DFW and found something interesting: The top three global firms control two-thirds of the top 75 deals in the market. Even more stark was the fall off after No. 3.

Thats not to say that firms outside the top three are not successful. Many are very productive, creative, and formidable. But in the larger requirement arena, the shift to the larger firms is very apparent. The reason for this is a function of the evolution of our industry and the deep and sophisticated requirements of major users. Those needs are specialized, costly, and difficult to pencil without scale. Our business at its core is transactional; however, what many clients need before and after that transaction has changed. Simply put, major users want more, and they want consistency, irrespective of geography.

The good news is, there are a lot of fish in the ocean. And although the big deals capture a lot of attention, there are myriad others that are meaningful and do not require the scope and depth of resources that many of the larger tenants do. There will always be room for entrepreneurs in DFW.

Dallas offers one of the best business environments in the world. Thats good news for commercial real estate in DFWand for the clients we all serve.

Managing Principal Ran Holman leads Cushman & Wakefields Dallas-Fort Worth office, one of the largest and most active within the global organization.

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CRE Opinion: The Evolution of Tenant Representation in DFW - D Magazine

Amy Heckerling and Beyond: The Evolution of Teen Girls On Screen – Film School Rejects

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With some great women at the helm, teenage girls are anything but overlooked.

Picture the 1980s for a minute. It heralded the vast popularization of the blockbuster in full force. Horror films prevailed. Kevin Bacon/dancing movies were undoubtedly a thing. And then theres John Hughes. Hughes solidified many a filmgoers ideal expression of teenage life. Judd Nelsons triumph is palpable in our marrow when he throws his fist in the air at the end of The Breakfast Club.Everyone probably still secretly wants to be Ferris Bueller for a day.

The 80s teen movie has a rather special inclusion in its arsenal:Amy Heckerling, who burst onto the scene with the Cameron Crowe-penned Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The film celebrates its 35th anniversary this week, and it is considered quintessential in its portrayals of teenage concerns. Heckerling navigates baby-faced future Hollywood mainstays through the trials of growing up and makes a particularly lasting impression with the young women in the film.

So many of our memorable teen girls are directed by men, which made Heckerling and the mainstream appeal of Fast Times all the more historic. There is constant warranted pushback against pervasive masculinity in media, from print to broadcast to cinema and digital screens of today. Particularly in the male-infused film scene of the 80s, Heckerling provided a kind of alternative to constructing teen girl identity.

Here, we examine a brief timeline of womens portrayals of teen girls over the last 35 years. This is not an exhaustive study. Instead, it is a selection of some of the most memorable of films in that time period and perhaps those that deserve more recognition and finding a pattern of teen girl identity within them.

Lets start with a meaty quote here because its a kind of sentiment that is often repeated. The debate over the presence of women in art and media rages on, and rightly so:

the exclusion of a female imaginary certainly puts women in the position of experiencing herself only fragmentarilyas waste, or excess, what is left of a mirror invested by the (masculine) subject, to reflect himself, to copy himself. (Irigaray as in Bainbridge, 130)

There are many things about teen movies that are stereotypical you dont need us to tell you that. But more prevalent in the 80s was the constant reinforcement of reductive tropes characterizing young women as boy-obsessed and not much else. In Fast Times, Stacy Hamiltons (Jennifer Jason Leigh) only concern is sex and dating. As a virginal 15-year-old sophomore, she constantly wonders what her first time will be like. Unfortunately for Stacy, each of her sexual encounters leaves her underwhelmed. One even leads to an abortion. However, she finally realizes that a relationship is what shes after and ends the movie in a passionate love affair with Mark (Brian Backer) one good guy in a sea of inconsiderate, terrible ones.

Universal Pictures

Its easy to be dismissive about teenagers lives given the general presumptions people have about them in the first place. Watch enough teen films and youll know that the quest for a straight romance is usually treated with the utmost importance. In 1961, Jessie Bernard published a journal article titled Teen-age Culture. The abstract alone classifies such culture as a product of affluence, with specific material concerns (clothes, cars, recreation) and nonmaterial concerns (language and customs). There is an assumption of nonchalance and even vapidity when it comes to teen culture, with the era of high school being the pinnacle of teen existence.

That is evident in films like Fast Times. At the very least, Stacy has her best friend, Linda (Phoebe Cates), to go to for advice. While Linda very much enables Stacys quest for sexual fulfilment and truthfully, both girls dont talk about anything besides boys, Heckerling builds a sense of amity between them. Theyre positive forces and support systems in each others lives no matter the boy trouble.

Universal Pictures

In contrast, theres a film like Martha Coolidges Valley Girl a flat-out fairytale of a movie. Loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, the premise is simple: Girl meets Boy, but they are tragically from different worlds. Boy introduces Girl to brand new, exhilarating experiences, and widens her worldview. They are the only ones who can make each other happy.

This is an against all odds kind of story. Julie Richman (Deborah Foreman) isnt supported by her clique. They instead tease her about wanting to hang out with someone so urban and dangerous. For a moment, Julie actually caves under that pressure and returns to her obnoxious, unappreciative high school boyfriend.

The film ends with Julie and her new beau, Randy (Nicolas Cage), riding off into the distance after literally causing a food fight as a distraction, ostensibly leaving the mess of high school and popularity contests behind. True love conquers alland viewers are left feelingas fulfilled as Julie supposedly is. However, if ending up in a relationship is the only thing these young girls seem to care about, its easy to question the legitimacy of that freedom too.

Atlantic Releasing

The chick flick is on the rise and that includes a bunch of Shakespeare adaptations. Anything between Heckerlings own Clueless and Gil Jungers 10 Things I Hate About You prove to be a commodity between their modern take on classic literature and highly attractive casting decisions. In the case of Clueless a film often included in many best of the 90s lists Heckerling continues to lead by example by bringing the fashion-conscious, well-intentioned, but painfully obtuse Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) to life.

Cher is a Popular Girl in the vein of Julie Richman. Rather than focus solely on boyfriends and dating (although she does obsess about them), she is very headstrong and possibly takes too much pride in her talents and achievements. Cher believes herself to be a good Samaritan, setting up her teachers on dates and trying to rehabilitate the awkward new girl, Tai (Brittany Murphy), by bringing her into the inner circle of affluent popularity. However, Cher treats people as projects until it backfires completely. Tais popularity begins to eclipse her own and so begins an avalanche of bad luck, in her eyes.

Cher may not be the most likable girl on campus, but she is certainly someone we learn to empathize with over the course of Clueless. Her romance with Josh (Paul Rudd) figures in a more incidental fashion than the ones in most teen films he playfully mocks her for her superficiality but that in itself doesnt push her towards the change she needs to make in her life. Self-reflection and an investment in her good intentions do it for Cher.

Paramount Pictures

Yet on an abruptly darker note, another of the decades most prominent woman-directed films was Sofia Coppolas The Virgin Suicides. Coppolas film introduces a variety of contradictory perceptions of teen girls. It is told from the perspective of a group of boys observing the comings and goings of the reclusive Lisbon family. Confined and constrained by deeply religious parents, the Lisbon sisters try to secretly navigate the teen experience, including sneaking out, going to a school dance and having sex. But their isolation eventually causes them meet dire ends.

Everything is portrayed through Coppolas surreal and dreamy filmic gaze. The camera pans softly over the girls who are both idealized and brutalized. The boys end up admitting that they did not actually know the Lisbon sisters, but could only guess from the legends that they came to be. This along with the films structure of telling and retelling provides apt commentary about how young girls themselves are viewed, reshaped for consumption by men without having voices of their own.

Paramount Classics

It would be remiss to talk about powerful cinematic images of young women of the early 2000s without mentioning Lindsay Lohan. She steadily worked on a wide variety of pictures directed by women and men for the first five years of the decade bringing teen girls to life. The Disney Channel Original Movie, Get a Clue (directed by Maggie Greenwald), featured Lohan as a teen detective investigating a teachers disappearance. Sarah Sugarmans Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is a teen rom-com with a touch of personal drive and female friendship goals. Finally, Angela Robinsons Herbie: Fully Loaded sees Lohan as the newest driver of the famous sentient Volkswagon Beetle. As an actress, Lohan portrayed feisty go-getting characters throughout most of her teen idol career, those ranging from petulant to bubbly but never scrimping on likability. It sealed her status as a poster child of the modern teenage girl.

Meanwhile, across the Pond, Gurinder Chadhas Bend It Like Beckham further brought inclusion to the table. In the film, 18-year-old Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) desperately wants to play football despite her parents disapproval. But despite their protestations, she manages to strike a balance between upholding culture and chasing her dreams, eventually moving away from home on a sports scholarship to university. Chadhas later effort, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, riffs on similar themes to Clueless. 14-year-old Georgia (Georgia Groome) ostensibly stresses out over her 15th birthday party while awkwardly trying to woo the boy of her dreams (baby-faced Aaron Taylor-Johnson). But ultimately, the films emotional crutch hinges on acquired self-awareness and a commitment to be a better person.

The 2000s also brought the supernatural to a fever pitch. Yes, were talking about Twilight. Catherine Hardwickes adaptation of Stephenie Meyers bestselling novel was perhaps the only film in its four-part life cycle in which Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) had any regard for herself outside of her relationship with Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Twilight is the epitome of grand fantasy wherein its protagonist falls in love and uncontrollably so. Bella is willing to sacrifice a lot for Edward, and it is debatable whether she is ultimately strong or weak in her decisions.

On the flipside, there is Karyn Kusamas Jennifers Body, which has thankfully gained cult classic status since its lukewarm initial release. Its a movie that allows a teenage girl to take her power back in every sense of the word. Girls and horror have long been associated with each other, whether its the so-called inherent horror of girlhood (see:Carrie) or the final girl trope in its many iterations. In Jennifers Body, Needy (Amanda Seyfried) bookish and shy has to contend with her popular, supernaturally-imbued, literally boy-hungry best friend, Jennifer (Megan Fox). They face off towards the end of the film but overall the narrative celebrates female friendships albeit to an extremewith Needy eventually taking on supernatural capabilities and being able to fend for herself without Jennifer.

Paramount Pictures

Summit Entertainment

Strong female characters continue to permeate blockbusters as the YA adaptation craze reignited with films such as The Hunger Games and Divergent. (These were still directed by men.) Despite this, consistent calls for industry inclusion have brought more arthouse efforts to the forefront. As a result, noteworthy women-led and women-directed films have appeared at a higher frequency in recent years.

Dee Rees Pariah tells the story of a lesbian African-American girl, Alike (Adepero Oduye), and depicts the struggles she faces coming to terms with her identity and cultivating relationships with the people around her, including family and friends. While not every relationship is mendable and not everyone is accepting of her, Alike chooses her destiny as best as she can.

The French drama Girlhood follows 16-year-old Marieme, a working-class girl longing for a life away from her abusive brother and vocational training. The film is a sobering look at developing identity, friendship and loyalty. Marieme greatly depends on the sisterhood she forms with Lady (Assa Sylla) and her girl gang, however questionable their activities were. A particularly iconic scene one celebrating excess and female camaraderie set to Diamonds by Rihanna is as carefree as she gets. Marieme ends the film at a crossroads after realizing she never attained the independence she was after in the first place.

Mustang, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergven, is essentially a more positiveVirgin Suicides situation. Five Turkish girls fight for autonomy of their actions. Not a single boy tells their story for them, and none of them dies. The film is far from devoid of the dark recesses of violence and oppression, but it importantly gives its girls a much sweeter, warmer ending.

Andrea Arnold consistently deals with realism onscreen and is regularly concerned with teenage girls. Fish Tank and American Honey focus on young women in the throes of poverty trying to pave their way to stability. Arnolds teenage girls display both worldliness and naivete, allowing them to boldly go for what they want but without necessarily letting them land on their feet completely. Their revelations about themselves are heartbreaking but life-affirming in the long run.

And coming full circle and looking back at the 80s is Kelly Fremon Craigs The Edge of Seventeen. Fremon Craig has described the film as an homage to John Hughes movies for this age. The film tracks its deeply troubled protagonist, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), as she struggles with issues of self-discovery. She attempts to deal with the fast-paced changes happening in her life involving her brother, her best friend and two potential love interests, while juggling feelings of self-loathing and jealousy. Its not a pretty film in the slightest, which is whats amazing about it. But it does so without perpetuating harmful stereotypes. In the end, Nadine begins to willingly open up to others, and theres a genuine sense of hope for her as a person.

Focus Features

STX Entertainment

These werent 35 wasted years in the slightest, even if many films aimed at women including those helmed by women continue to operate on face value. The quest for women paving the way for themselves looks promising regardless. It is definitely much easier to appreciate the simple and the feel-good when its tempered by realism and even heartbreak. If anything, the trends of the last three and a half decades prove that womens cinema is slowly but surely moving out of the shadows, finding a middle ground of much-needed representation and respect for teen girls.

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Amy Heckerling and Beyond: The Evolution of Teen Girls On Screen - Film School Rejects

The Evolution of Christopher Nolan’s Widowers – Film School Rejects

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Christopher Nolan has a thing for widowers.

I like to think there are two main classes of Nolan film: high concept and Dark Knight. (And a smattering of others that now includeDunkirk). The former are the films that play with time and perception, that make you question what youve seen and studied it later. These films areMemento, The Prestige, Inception,andInterstellar.

And they all star widowers.

Each of these films protagonists loses his wife, and his character is shaped by it. How much hes shaped varies, however, because with each successive film you can see a very clear progression. The protagonists grow and evolve, becoming less defined by and obsessed with their wives deaths, more focused forward. They find solace and meaning in the future, in their children. Its as if each is a new moment in the grieving process, working toward acceptance and catharsis over the course of the 14 years in which the films come out.

Does this mean Nolans widowers are all the same person? Maybe. They certainly all share a tragedy, and the ways in which they cope with it follows a clear progression that Ill study below.

But firstthe deaths of these characters wives arent particular spoilers since they come early or even before the start of the film. Im going to talk about their deaths in the context of the rest of the films, however, and that will be spoiler heavy. So tread carefully if you havent seen these films. Or dont tread at all. Its up to you.

If youre still here, lets get started.

Newmarket

Memento(2000) is about Leonard (Guy Pearce), a man obsessed with revenge. Leonards wife was raped and murdered in front of him, and hes devoted his life to tracking down and killing the person who did it. As avengers go, Leonard is more obsessive than mosthe cant form new memories, and the last thing hecan remember is his wifes death. Hes innately defined by his loss.

Of course, the big reveal at the end of the film is that Leonards wife actually survived the night she was raped. And the implication is that he accidentally killed her himself, giving her too much insulin when she tried to call his bluff on his memory problem.

Leonard has conditioned himself to believe his wife was murdered, altering his final memory of her and devoting his life to tracking down the person he thinks killed her. Whats worse is that he does find and kill the man who raped her, but he decides to expunge the evidence of it. This way he can devote the rest of his life to revenge, the only thing that matters.

Leonards existence is informed exclusively by his wifes deathhe literally cant form any new reasons to live. His entire life takes place in his distant past, and his only plan for the future is a vengeance he doesnt know hes already achieved.

Warner Bros.

The Prestige(2006) could be argued to have two (or three) protagonists, but since far fewer of his secrets are kept from the audience, I would argue that the main character is Robert (Hugh Jackman). Early in their careers, Robert and Alfred (Christian Bale) are friends. The friendship ends when Roberts wife drowns during a magic trick because she cant undo the knot Alfred has tied around her hands. This sparks a desperate, lifelong feud.

Just like Leonard inMemento, Robert becomes obsessed with his wifes killer. But unlike Leonard, he knows exactly who his target is. And instead of killing him, he devotes his life to besting him, to being a better magician. Healthy it is not, but this obsession is at least focused more outwardRobert lives his life, and he excels at what he loves. His revenge is productive, rather than destructive.

And most importantly, he has an eye to the future. When Robert sees Alfred with a wife and baby, it kills himhe begrudges Alfred for having everything that hes lost, everything hell never have. Near the end of the film, he actually adopts Alfreds daughter. Its meant to be one more insult for Alfred, of course, but it also gives Robert a portion of the future he lost. Unlike Leonard, he has something new to live for.

Its the first appearance of children in these widowers lives, and its an important introduction that will get more and more prominent.

Warner Bros.

Inception(2010) is a big step forward for our widowers. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has turned his anger inwardhe considers himself wholly responsible for his wifes death, and his grief and guilt make it almost impossible for him to work. Cobb may not be set on revenge, but his subconscious is.

Importantly, though, Cobb has children. Unlike his predecessors, he has the future to look to. He has people to live for.

And he does live for them. The entire plot of the film hinges on Cobbs desperation to see his children again. He exposes himself and his team to all kinds of danger so he can get back to them. And, against all odds, it works. (I wont get into it here, but the prevailing theory of many interpretations is that the final sequence of the film does take place in reality).

This success of Cobbs plan is important because hes the first of Nolans widowers to get a happy ending. And that happy ending is contingent upon both the past and the futurethe plan can only succeed if Cobb finally lets go of his wife. By accepting Mals death and voicing the guilt he feels, Cobb can rescue Saito and return to reality. By rescuing Saito and returning to reality, he can be reunited with his kids.

Cobb gets past defining himself by his wifes death, and he moves into the future with his children.

Warner Bros.

Interstellar(2014) is the continuation of Cobbs happy family life. Coop (MatthewMcConaughey) has lost his wife to cancer. He resents his post-science world for not having the technology to save her, but thats all it isresentment. Theres no guilt, no thirst for revenge.

In fact, this explanation of Coops wifes absence is one of her only mentions. Another comes when Coop quotes her, trying to convince Murph that he has to leave:

After you kids came along, your mom said something to me I never quite understood. She said, Now were just here to be memories for our kids. And I think now I understand what she meant. Once youre a parent, youre the ghost of you childrens future.

This is some obvious ghost foreshadowing, of course, but its also a strong message about the secondary nature of parents and, by extension, of spouses. The moment his children were born, they became the most important thing in Coops life. His wifes death has been hard on him, of course, but by the start of the film hes already achieved the acceptance it took Cobb almost all ofInception to get. He lives entirely for his children, and for the future.

Because thats what the entire film is for: the future. Coops world is dying, and he devotes himself to finding a better one for his children. In the end, Coop succeeds, getting the human race off of Earth and pointing them toward a new home. Just as importantly, however, he gets to see his own future generations. When he visits Murph on her deathbed, shes surrounded by her children and their children and on and on. Its the ultimate continuation of living for your children.

Coop doesnt just let go of his pasthe sees his future.

Warner Bros.

The widowers of Christopher Nolans concept films follow a clear trajectory toward healing and redemption. Little by little, each lets go more of the past and defines himself less by grief, focusing instead on his children and the future. They go from living completely in the past and bent on revenge, to living for a present revenge with half an eye to the future, to letting go of the past in favor of the future, to abandoning a lifetimes worth of the past and working exclusively for the future.

Is this the mark of a filmmaker whos aging, both refining his craft and shifting his priorities as he has children of his own?

Probably.

But its also possible to think of these widowers as a single character of sorts, gradually dealing with the same tragedy over the years, healing and coping more with each iteration.

Nolans asked us to accept stranger things, after all.

Christopher NolanHugh JackmanLeonardo DiCaprio

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The Evolution of Christopher Nolan's Widowers - Film School Rejects

Editor’s Letter: The Evolution of Travel – Cond Nast Traveler

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I recently reconnected with my college friend Cindy, whom I'd scarcely seen since the summer after graduation when we traveled for a month throughout Italy and France . She reminded me of the time we raced back to the youth hostel in Verona after an open-air concert in the amphitheater to make curfew. I can still hear the clapping of flip-flops on cobblestones behind us and the hopeful lilt of Australian accents calling for us to hold the doors open. We made plans to meet those same Aussies in Avignon later that month, the logical coda to an easy kinship born of averted misadventure. That night, we all slipped into our travel sheets, money belts safely stowed, and slept the deep hummingbird sleep that only relief brings.

Nostalgia sparked a conversation about our shared lifelong wanderlust, the places we have yet to visit, and the bittersweet sense of a foreshortening future at middle age. "My working theory is that we have a better (or worse?) sense of time now, because we know the next thing's coming and the next," she wrote to me in an email. "We always see the horizon line, so we don't have that slow unfolding we once had as kids." Add to that our compulsive need to document and share every sunset and avocado toast , and there are few occasions when we actually allow a moment to play out.

Except, of course, when we travel. While we may have moved from American Express Travelers Cheques and postcards to Apple Pay and Facebook Live, what doesn't change is the way in which walking into a medieval hilltop town square in Liguria at the golden hour, or diving through a pristine wave in Sumba, reminds us how lucky we feel to be alive, and changes our perception of time.

In the age of TMI, and the deafening chorus of self-anointed expertise across digital and social media, we've almost come full circle in our desire to narrow the universe to those recommendations we trust most. When Sir Harold Evans launched Cond Nast Traveler 30 years ago, he did just that, creating a publication that drew a hard line between travelers who crave genuine connection to place and mere tourists ticking off a bucket list.

Thirty years later, we still believe that the very best kind of travel comes when we are armed with the right information, itineraries, on the ground inteland, yes, technology to move through the world with a confidence that allows for serendipity. I know I should be less concerned with timing the afternoon light so it reflects off the church steeple just so for my Instagram. But I am also keenly aware that what took me off the highway in pursuit of that church in the first place was a description I read by my favorite food writer (and confirmed by a local bartender), its corresponding Insta geotag, and Google Maps. It takes both vulnerability and confidence to follow the recommendation of a no-frills osteria meal over an acclaimedif overratedMichelin-starred one. But it is only in stepping outside of our comfort zone, permitting ourselves to move toward something we can't quite picture, that we allow for the slow unfolding of memories in the makingand, yes, for that horizon line to inch back just a little further.

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Editor's Letter: The Evolution of Travel - Cond Nast Traveler

The evolution of network security strategies being adopted by the financial services sector. – Finextra (blog)

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The rise in popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) and a consumer desire to access valuable data on various devices has led to network security becoming increasingly complicated for financial services providers.

As financial institutions transition their network security strategies to meet these consumer demands and grant greater individual access to their networks, they must also be conscious of the ever-evolving threat landscape. The cyberattacks of today are constantly becoming more sophisticated in order to outwit traditional network security measures. In addition, increased access to the network by IoT devices (such as mobile phones, and tablets) has resulted in an increase of possible attack vectors. As such, the need for evolved network security is further emphasised by the attention it has garnered from government regulators, who are shining a spotlight on compliance and security at financial institutions of all sizes.

The Challenge

Strong network security revolves around two key factors: speed and service. Network experience is typically judged by how quickly bits of information get from point A to point B, and how quickly applications are able to respond to queries. In finance in particular, rapid communication and effective security is vital, and neither can come at the expense of the other. Furthermore, consumers have come to expect access and the ability to edit information stored within the network through the web. This ability is integral to staying competitive, with more than 60 per cent of financial institutions currently developing cloud strategies as a result.

Network security strategies are having to change and adapt to meet this increase in demand for real-time, on-demand services. Data must now be more secure, travel faster, and be more readily available across devices, all of this in spite of being constantly under attack from sophisticated threats.

Looking ahead, financial services firms will be forced to respond to new attack vectors that threaten their core functions. And as these trends persist, robust network security strategies need to evolve to include the following tactics:

Detection

In order to adapt to meet these new challenges requires moving away from the traditional tactic of simply focusing your security efforts at your network perimeter whats required is something much more comprehensive. As todays perimeters are become more dynamic and increasingly temporary, rendering edge-based protection less and less relevant. Whats more, security professionals have come to understand that it is simply impossible to stop every attack. The reality is, an organisation will be breached, and security needs to be designed with this in mind.

Effective security strategies have had to transition from simply relying on intrusion protection to intrusion detection as well. Intrusion detection systems operate on the assumption that an attack will breach network perimeter defences. They are able to scan the network for abnormal behaviour in order to detect live attacks that have evaded the perimeter in order to reduce the time security teams are kept in the dark, because the longer an intruder or malware resides undetected within the network, the higher the probability it will be able to find and steal valuable information. The goal is to detect and mitigate the threat before data loss occurs.

This expansion from perimeter-based protection to include security measures at network segmentation demarcation points, deep in the core of the network marks, and out to the cloud are an important strategic shift in network security as financial services firms navigate todays threat landscape with the digital evolution of the modern workforce.

Response

With intrusion detection systems in place, incident response is the next logical step in ensuring attacks are mitigated quickly and effectively once detected. With todays new threats, incident response is required to go beyond having a list of procedures to follow in the event of an attack. A response needs to include integrated tools that provide full visibility into the security posture of the network. It should also include automated solutions that are able to identify and respond to the abnormal activity, and the forensic tools to analyse and ensure similar threats are thwarted in the future. Once malware is detected, its important to have an integrated security structure in place across your entire extended network to mitigate its impact before it can further compromise your network.

Intelligence

Once a threat has been mitigated, the incident response team needs to assess the threat to ensure that protocols are updated to keep similar threats from being successful in the future. Threat research is just as important as intrusion prevention and incident response. Teams study critical areas such as malware, botnets, and zero-day attacks in order to identify device or network vulnerabilities, uncover weak threat vectors, and create mitigation signatures, putting your organisation in the best possible footing to face down threats in the future. In doing so, the broader network security is hardened, and updated with abnormalities to look out for, and enhanced with the tools needed to stop them from causing damage. Solid threat intelligence is key to keepings your network steps ahead of attackers by establishing protocols for both known and unknown vulnerabilities.

Four key changes have made it necessary for financial institutions to re-evaluate their approach to network security: cloud-based infrastructure and services, the rise of IoT, the ever-increasing sophistication of cyberattacks, and stricter government regulations. As the internal network interacts more with the cloud, and attacks become more grandiose, it is inevitable that an attack will successfully breach the network. Which is why it is critical that an organisations security focus shift in order to ensure that once malware has made it into the network, it can be detected and remediation efforts can begin as quickly as possible to ensure the least possible damage and reduce the chance of recurrence.

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The evolution of network security strategies being adopted by the financial services sector. - Finextra (blog)

Making the Grade: Robotics comes full circle; student becomes teacher – Atlanta Journal Constitution

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In 2005, Jon Welsch was president of the robotics club in his Forsyth County high school. We made little Erector Set robots and entered robotics competitions where wed build huge ones, he recalls. Every January, wed compete with different schools. Thats what got me going on this track.

That track wasnt being an engineer or designer. Instead, Welsch so enjoyed working on the team projects that he earned a degree in career and technical education from UGA in 2012 an immediately went into the classroom. I knew I wanted to come back and work with the next generation of students, he said.

In 2013, Welsch started teaching at Forsyths STEM academy, and three years ago, he became the engineering and tech teacher at North Forsyth Middle. Neither of those jobs would have been possibilities before he joined the robotics team, something Rick Folea knows as well. Folea, a senior tech marketer at Automation Direct in Cumming, was there when the robotics program kicked off in the county. His son, Chris, had worked on a robotics project at North Forsyth High, and he and his friends, including Welsch, wanted to start a team to enter competitions.

I quickly realized it wasnt just about robotics, said Folea. It was about getting students engaged in learning through competition. My son had never touched a robot, but he wound up at [Savannah College of Art and Design], and now hes a fulltime animator.

Folea went to his employer and asked for the backing to support robotics teams in every county school. The idea flourished and with the companys assistance, grew into the Forsyth Alliance.

Its a farm system, if you will, that gets kids from elementary and middle schools into these programs in high (schools), said Folea. Almost all the funding comes entirely from Automation Direct. These are after-school, extracurricular activities and some of these competitions cost $5,000 to register. We can help with that and things like travel and parts - things that would be stumbling blocks for the schools. We do it because we believe in the idea hat if you get a young kid involved in a program theyre interested in, it gets them exited to learn. Kids go from sitting in class with a glazed look in their eyes to I have to learn this stuff to make my robot work.

Today, Welsch said, robotics programs flourish in the countys five high schools, 10 middle schools and about 15 elementary schools. That came about because Automation Direct saw the value of our program way back in the beginning, he said. They wanted to get it into all the schools.

The teams enter contests on an almost monthly basis and face off with students from around the world. About two dozen teams have won spots at national and world competitions. Last year, Welsch coached six teams, all of whom went to state finals; two went to the nationals. The teams successes have spurred more interest across grade levels, he added.

In my program alone, I had 50 7th and 8th graders last year. I also have 240 students in classes where we do robotics, too. Having it in class has also changed my numbers; last year, it was 60-40 boys to girls, and this year, Im looking at the opposite. Robotics have really become a big part of what the students do here, and I love seeing what it does for them.

Folea is happy to see that an idea from a handful of kids has mushroomed into meaningful learning. There are now schools running more than a dozen teams in the same school, even at the elementary and middle levels, he said. Jon was on that very first team, so the program has come full circle.

Information about the ForsythAlliance Robotics teams: facebook.com/ForsythAlliance.

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Making the Grade: Robotics comes full circle; student becomes teacher - Atlanta Journal Constitution

A robotic technology stack aimed at developers on a budget – ZDNet

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With HEXA, Vincross is taking aim at a market that founder and CEO Sun Tianqi feels has long been ignored: Independent tinkerers and developers on a budget.

Vincross, a Beijing-based robotics company, has announced a small programmable robot called HEXA. The new bot runs on MIND, an operating system built on the Linux kernel and optimized for robotics.

It's the second bit of news from Vincross in the last few months. The company was a CES 2017 Asia Innovation Award Honoree in May.

With HEXA, Vincross is taking aim at a market that founder and CEO Sun Tianqi feels has long been ignored: Independent tinkerers and developers on a budget.

"There hasn't been a single robot or platform built for the masses -- especially for those developers and innovators eager to create [new] robots," said Sun.

HEXA, which, as its name implies, is a sensor-rich, six-legged robot that resembles a crab. It's designed to be a platform and not a finished product.

"We all have this dream of what robots should be, of robots interacting with and helping humans on a daily basis," Sun said. "But the reality is, robots have a long way to go. To date, the industry has focused on single-use robots for industrial labs or household cleaning purposes or robots for children."

Sun's reference to the Roomba vacuum, which is the best-selling consumer robot of all time, is perhaps poorly chosen. iRobot has offered its own programmable platform based on the Roomba and targeting developers for some time. It's become a go-to for STEM classrooms, college robotics teams, and tinkerers in need of small mobile robots for all kinds of tasks.

Still, HEXA is a capable piece of technology. Because it has six legs, it can handle terrain that a platform like the Roomba never could. Sensors include a camera with night vision capability, two three-axis accelerometers, an infrared transmitter, and a distance-measuring sensor.

The idea is that developers can pick up one of these for about $500 and -- using Vincross's standard developer kit -- shape it into anything they'd like. Some examples on the company's website include surveying volcanos on Mars or helping save lives after earthquakes.

"The single biggest impediment to technologies like robotics and AI is that talented developers don't have ready access to the full technology stack required to engineer new products," Jenny Lee, managing director at GGV Capital said. GGV Capital recently invested in Vincross's $6 million series A round.

Vincross has chosen to launch HEXA as a Kickstarter campaign. Funded companies are doing this more and more, and it raises some issues in this case. Vincross's campaign is slick, bespeaking resources that unfunded DIY developers looking for crowdfunding can't afford. Since crowdfunding dollars are limited, that edge seems to fly in the face of the "for the masses" ethos the company is promoting.

Vincross COO Andy Xu defended the play in an email to me.

"This is a go-to-market strategy that we've seen work well, especially in the US and allows us both to distribute and market HEXA to a broader audience. We're not relying solely on this money to build our robots -- we have a full-fledged manufacturing operation set up in China, but Kickstarter's larger unit orders allow us to drive down costs to the end user."

Units ordered via Kickstarter pledges will be delivered on a rolling schedule between December and February.

There are some cool videos and project ideas on the Kickstarter page. Given the price point and functionality, I have a sense we're going to see some novel stuff built on this platform in 2018.

Crowdsourcing may have just helped close the "analogy gap" for computers

It's vexed computer scientists for decades, but a huge roadblock for true AI is falling

South Korea mulling world's first robot tax

Controversial idea seems to formally acknowledge a tough future for workers

Robotic suit now has Amazon Echo integration

"Alexa, let's walk to the kitchen"

Humans like mistake-prone robots better than perfect performers

To err is human, but to replicate errors may soon be robotic.

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A robotic technology stack aimed at developers on a budget - ZDNet

UD lab in Lewes home to cutting-edge robotics – CapeGazette.com

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The University of Delaware's Robotic Discovery Laboratories in Lewes is all about about automation.

At least that's the way robotics is headed, as researchers, interns and students develop ideas for jet-powered kayaks and automated drones that can capture data about coastal ecosystems for an array of projects.

The high-tech equipment housed at the university's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment or the College of Earth, Wind and Fire if you're U.S. Sen. Tom Carper is impressive enough to attract the attention of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Park Service as well as the Department of Defense, federal agencies that have taken advantage of the advanced robotic systems found at the lab.

We develop and utilize robots in a variety of applications, whether it's tracking sharks and sturgeon to using aerial drones for mapping, said robotics professor Art Trembanis, who added that UD hosts one of the nations largest collections of coastal robotics systems. And even since last summer, we've acquired some other toys I mean, equipment.

Carper stopped by the lab Aug. 8 to meet and greet the minds that operate the fancy tools, pose for photos on the quadski a combination between a jet ski and an ATV that looks more like fun than work and try his hand at flying one of the school's automated drones.

I'm not an oceanographer, but I know a little bit about the ocean, Carper said, noting his naval career as a flight officer. Meanwhile, researchers showed off underwater contour maps highlighted by an augmented reality display and sensors that can help find buried munitions along the beaches.

UD's robotics lab, which officially opened in 2014, previously focused on underwater robots. Much of the data collected by robots is used for localized studies on coastal habitats and marine life, but the tools can have much broader application, explained Katy O'Connell, executive director of Project Recover.

Robots are being used in Project Recover, a public-private partnership that helped locate a downed World War II aircraft in the waters surrounding the Pacific Islands last year. The idea is to help locate the resting places of those who went missing in action, information that is then passed on to the Department of Defense, she said.

It's a chance for us to use those technologies in a meaningful way, Trembanis said.

The lab also offers a unique opportunity for U.S. Naval Academy students to study the science that will support their future military endeavors. An educational partnership between the college and the academy allows students to step up their engineering game while also receiving a four-year degree.

Sussex Tech High School graduate Natalie Sava is pursuing a bachelor's in ocean engineering through the program before she is commissioned into the Navy. The Seaford native, who was nominated by Carper and Sen. Chris Coons for the U.S. Naval Academy, said she is considering a future in aviation.

I do hope to do something with the ocean degree once I retire from the Navy, and who knows where that's going to take me, Sava said. I think the partnership is awesome. I knew about this lab from growing up in the area, and this has kind of connected my two worlds together.

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UD lab in Lewes home to cutting-edge robotics - CapeGazette.com

UC Berkeley Robotics Expert Joins Company’s Advisory Board – Patch.com

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Patch.com
UC Berkeley Robotics Expert Joins Company's Advisory Board
Patch.com
From Business Wire: ROBO Global, creator of the first benchmark index to track the global robotics, automation and artificial intelligence market, continues to hand-pick world-renowned robotics and automations experts for its team. Famed researcher and ...
ROBO Gl Robotics and Automation GO UCITS ETF (ROBG.L) Moves 0.94%Morgan Research
Needle Tilting Mid-Session For ROBO Gl Robotics and Automation GO UCITS ETF (ROBG.L)Evergreen Caller

all 14 news articles »

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UC Berkeley Robotics Expert Joins Company's Advisory Board - Patch.com

Global robotics market set to soar – Investment Week

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The global robotics market is expected to grow by 10% yearly until 2025, according to Boston Consulting Group. The uptick is projected to be driven by an increase in consumer demand, as well as falling prices and an increase in private investment in robotics.

The underlying technology that enables advanced robotics is only in its formative stages but considerable value has already been created, says Johan Van Der Biest, Senior Fund Manager at Candriam Investors Group.

Candriam, a European multi-specialist asset manager with 102bn of assets under management, launched a new Robotics and Innovative Technology strategy in March this year. The fund has been designed to invest in companies within the technology and robotics space who are developing innovative products to positively impact the future.

And it's not just start-ups that investors should be eyeing, says Van der Biest. "Opportunities also exist in known brands, which have reinvented themselves to benefit from this automation trend. These include Delphi, which was a unit of General Motors and is now a prominent independent player in autonomous and electrical vehicles. Or John Deere, the largest producer of agricultural equipment, which is reinventing its legacy products."

Candriam perform sophisticated screenings on thousands of companies worldwide and assess which companies derive meaningful revenues from robotics and/or innovative technologies. The use of machine learning, big data technology, virtual reality, 5G technology, advanced robotics and programmatic advertising are examples of exciting trends the group are investing in.

In the sensors and mechatronics area there are still some excellent names with nice upside, explains Van der Biest, but in terms of industrial robots and service robots, those valuations are starting to become rather stretched.

The manager, who has been with Candriam since 1993, added that the demographic angle is a long-term market driver behind all this and to cope with an ageing population we will have to automate.

"Going forward one of the most important factors to evaluate is economic activity. If we observe that global economic activity continues to go well then I think there might be some further upside."

Value and wealth in the sector has been created for years and this is likely to accelerate as the "fourth industrial revolution" becomes a significant driver of the global economy, Candriam's manager concludes.

Click here to learn more about industry trends in robotics and computing power, and how Candriam are unearthing market-leading technology at sensible prices.

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Global robotics market set to soar - Investment Week

Get fit: Fitness gurus you can work out with for free on YouTube – Daily Commercial

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By Kaitlyn McLintock / Tribune News Service

Instead of neglecting our workout (and the mood-boosting benefits that come from it), we schedule ourselves a little one-on-one workout time with YouTube. The workouts are time-flexible, accessible and expert-led. In other words, its basically a treasure trove of fitness.

A quick search unearths everything from yoga to Pilates to HIIT training routines; whatever type of sweat session you prefer, YouTube likely has it. Thats why we decided to put together a list of our favorite online fitness channels just to help you narrow your search a little bit.

YOGA WITH ADRIENE

Adriene Mishler is the light-hearted yogi behind this YouTube channel. Her yoga videos range from targeted practices for anxiety, depression, sleep and pain (like this one for neck and shoulder relief) to power flows for strengthening and lengthening. Her goofy yet calming presence is enough to make you change into comfortable clothes, drink a cup of tea and relax into a yoga routine.

CASSEY HO OF BLOGILATES

Cassey Ho has been a mainstay on the YouTube fitness scene since she started uploading Pilates videos in 2009. Her website, Blogilates, provides fitness and nutrition advice, along with body-positive inspiration and sporty merchandise.

She specializes in workouts that build and tone muscle using nothing else but your own body weight. The workouts are hard but fun. Her bubbly and outgoing personality almost makes you forget your arms are screaming in the middle of a 15-minute workout (almost). Stay dedicated to her videos, try your best, and youll see real change.

TARA STILES

Although she does have videos fit for beginners, chances are that youll love Tara Stiless yoga videos if youre an intermediate or advanced yoga devotee. Her no-frills approach is quieting, calming and strengthening for both the body and mind. (If youre not super into yoga, check her videos out anyway, because they might majorly inspire you; shes the most graceful human being weve ever seen).

JEANETTE JENKINS

Jeanette Jenkins is a celebrity personal trainer (responsible for training A-listers such as Kelly Rowland) who posts a variety of different workouts designed to increase strength. Many of her videos are extremely short think no longer than 30 seconds just so she can show a few reps of effective moves. Then, depending on how much time you have, you can make it an extended workout, or just do a few circuits. Take this Zumba video, for instance. Its solely concentrated on planks and high knees for an intense cardio sweat.

THE TONE IT UP GIRLS

Karena Dawn and Katrina Scott started their Tone It Up empire to share workout, nutrition, and even lifestyle advice. Many of their workouts take place in front of a beautiful backdrop of the Pacific ocean, so you can kind of feel like youre working out while on a SoCal vacation (better than working out at home, right?).

Theyre also regular Byrdie contributors. Check out all of their stories. (Personally, we love this piece on the 5 exercises you should do if you sit all day).

XHIT DAILY

XHIT Daily is a YouTube channel that regularly posts workout videos ranging from Crossfit to Pilates. The three hosts are incredibly knowledgeable, reminding their viewers how to correct their form and get the most from their workouts throughout.

THE RUN EXPERIENCE

Weve covered yoga, Pilates, and strength training workouts, but this one is for any runners out there. The Run Experience has almost 70,000 YouTube subscribers, to which it shares motivating running tips, tricks, and advice. They have videos on everything from hydration and nutrition to race-day prep. Regardless if youre a runner or not, they share super-effective targeted workouts that are great for doing on the go.

WHITNEY SIMMONS

Simmons posts regularly on YouTube, so youll never be without a new workout to try. The best part? You dont need a ton of equipment. Many of her videos use your body weight, and maybe a dumbbell or two to target specific muscle groups. Plus, she produces videos on healthy meal prep, to keep you going throughout a busy week.

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Get fit: Fitness gurus you can work out with for free on YouTube - Daily Commercial

Watch The Heart-Stopping Moment A Biker Cartwheeled In Front Of A Car – Car Throttle

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Drifting a motorcycle is a fine art. It takes a tremendous amount of skill, and if it goes wrong, its probably going to hurt. With that in mind, we really cant recommend you try it on the road. On a busy residential street. With pretty much no safety gear other than a helmet.

Unfortunately, thats precisely what this guy did in Newcastle, New South Wales, with the ever-scary Dashcam Owners Australia YouTube channel uploading the moderately terrifying footage for our viewing displeasure.

Hes thrown off the bike but initially stays upright, with the momentum forcing him into an almost graceful cartwheel - right in front of an oncoming car. Fortunately, the car in question - which recorded the whole thing via a dashcam - was able to stop in time.

The driver had this to say about the crash:

Fella took the corner a little to fast, but seemed fine afterwards - although there was a little bit of shock, as he rode off without a chance for me to get out of the car (short conversation through the window). He apologised, and no damage was done to my car. I noticed a fair bit of fluid pouring from the bottom of his bike as he drove away.

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Watch The Heart-Stopping Moment A Biker Cartwheeled In Front Of A Car - Car Throttle

UPS is developing virtual reality tech to train its drivers – TechCrunch

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UPS drivers preparing to get behind the wheel will soon be using virtual reality to do so.

The companys new VR training program will be rolling out next month at nine of the companys training facilities, simulating some of the uncertainties and challenges of delivering packages on city streets. Trainees will interact with the content using voice commands to identify obstacles while wearing headsets.

Virtual Reality offers a big technological leap in the realm of driver safety training, said UPS exec Juan Perez in a statement. VR creates a hyper-realistic streetscape that will dazzle even the youngest of our drivers whose previous exposure to the technology was through video games.

While companies like Walmart have signed onto programs with enterprise-focused startups like Strivr Labs, UPS will be building its training materials in-house.

Virtual reality may be a more immersive technology but, when done poorly, training videos can be just as unbearable as more traditional instructional materials. The big issue right now is that making custom, realistic VR content able to take advantage of everything the medium has to offer really isnt worth the effort.

Enterprise software companies could build (and some have) game engine-rendered content that allows you to move around and interact with the environment, but they often end up with dumpy PlayStation 1 graphics that wander too far from the real-world. Largely for this reason, most companies are opting for more realistic but less interactive 360 video.

While VR may not be as revolutionary as, say, drones to a company that ships packages across the globe, it can still be an effective tool for getting prospective employees ready before they get out on the job. Its also important because UPS drivers are a clear candidate for utilizing AR headsets in the future to more easily keep track of shipments hands-free while preparing for drop-offs and pick-ups.

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UPS is developing virtual reality tech to train its drivers - TechCrunch

BEING THERE: Virtual reality lets therapy patients return to the scene of their fear – Sarasota Herald-Tribune

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By Cade MetzThe New York Times

Dawn Jewell recently treated a patient haunted by a car crash. The patient had developed acute anxiety over the cross streets where the crash occurred, unable to drive a route that carried so many painful memories.

So Jewell, a psychologist in Colorado, treated the patient through a technique called exposure therapy, providing emotional guidance as they revisited the intersection together.

But they did not physically return to the site. They revisited it through virtual reality.

Jewell is among a handful of psychologists testing a new service from a Silicon Valley startup called Limbix that offers exposure therapy through Daydream View, the Google headset that works in tandem with a smartphone.

It provides exposure in a way that patients feel safe, she said. We can go to a location together, and the patient can tell me what theyre feeling and what theyre thinking.

The service recreates outdoor locations by tapping into another Google product, Street View, a vast online database of photos that delivers panoramic scenes of roadways and other locations around the world. Using these virtual street scenes, Jewell has treated a second patient who struggled with anxiety after being injured by another person outside a local building.

The service is also designed to provide treatment in other ways, like taking patients to the top of a virtual skyscraper so they can face a fear of heights or to a virtual bar so they can address an alcohol addiction.

Backed by the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, Limbix is less than 1 year old. The creators of its new service, including its chief executive and co-founder, Benjamin Lewis, worked in the seminal virtual reality efforts at Google and Facebook.

The hardware and software they are working with is still very young, but Limbix builds on more than two decades of research and clinical trials involving virtual reality and exposure therapy. At a time when much-hyped headsets like the Daydream and Facebooks Oculus are still struggling to find a wide audience in the world of gaming let alone other markets psychology is an area where technology and medical experts believe this technology can be a benefit.

As far back as the mid-1990s, clinical trials showed that this kind of technology could help treat phobias and other conditions, like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Traditionally, psychologists have treated such conditions by helping patients imagine they are facing a fear, mentally creating a situation where they can address their anxieties. Virtual reality takes this a step further.

We feel pretty confident that exposure therapy using VR can supplement what a patients imagination alone can do, said Skip Rizzo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California who has explored such technology over the past 20 years.

Facing the trauma

Barbara Rothbaum helped pioneer the practice at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and her work spawned a company called Virtually Better, which has long offered virtual reality exposure therapy tools to some doctors and hospitals through an older breed of headset. According to one clinical trial she helped build, virtual reality was just as effective as trips to airports in treating the fear of flying, with 90 percent of patients eventually conquering their anxieties.

Such technology has also been effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. Unlike treatments built solely on imagination, Rothbaum said, virtual reality can force patients to face their past traumas.

PTSD is a disorder of avoidance. People dont want to think about it, she said. We need them to be engaged emotionally, and with virtual reality, its harder for them to avoid that.

Now, headsets like Googles Daydream, which works in tandem with common smartphones, and Facebooks Oculus, the self-contained $400 headset that sparked the recent resurgence in virtual reality technologies, could bring this kind of therapy to a much wider audience.

Virtually Better built its technology for virtual reality hardware that sold for several thousands of dollars. Today, Limbix and other companies, including a Spanish startup called Psious, can offer services that are far less expensive. Limbix is beginning to offer its tools to psychologists and other therapists outside its initial test. The service is free for now, with the company planning to sell more advanced tools at some point.

After testing the Limbix offering, Jewell said it allowed patients to face their anxieties in more controlled ways than they otherwise could. At the same time, such a tool can truly give patients the feeling that they are being transported to a different locations at least in some cases.

Standing atop a virtual skyscraper, for instance, can cause anxiety even in those who are relatively comfortable with heights. Experts warn that a service like the one offered by Limbix requires the guiding hand of trained psychologists while still in development.

Limbix combines technical and medical expertise. One key employee, Scott Satkin, is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher who worked on the Daydream project at Google. Limbix also works with its own psychologist, Sean Sullivan, who continues to run a therapy practice in San Francisco.

Sullivan is using the new service to treat patients, including a young man who recently developed a fear of flying, something that causes anxiety simply when he talks about it. Using the service alongside Sullivan, the young man, who asked that his name be withheld for privacy reasons spent several sessions visiting a virtual airport and, eventually, flying on a virtual plane.

In some ways, the young man said, the service is still less than perfect. Like the Street View scenes Jewell uses in treating her patients, some of this virtual reality is static, built from still images. But like the rest of the virtual reality market, these tools are still evolving toward more realistic scenes.

And even in its current form, the service can be convincing. The young man recently took a flight across the country here in the real world.

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BEING THERE: Virtual reality lets therapy patients return to the scene of their fear - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Will AI Blur the Lines Between Physical and Virtual Reality? – Futurism

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The Notion of Reality

As technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), big data, 5G, and the internet of things (IoT) advance over the next generation, they will reinforce and spur one another. One plausible scenario is a physical world so enhanced by personalized, AI-curated digital content (experienced with what we today call augmented reality) that the very notion of reality is called into question.

Immersion can change how we interact with content in fundamental ways. For example, a fully immersive AR environment of the future, achieved with a wide-field-of-view headset and full of live content integrated with the built environment, would be intended by design to create in the user an illusion that everything being sensed was real. The evolution toward this kind of environment raises a host of ethical questions, specifically with attention to the AI that would underlie such an intelligent and compelling illusion.

When watching a movie, the viewer is physically separated from the illusion. The screen is framed, explicitly distinct from the viewer. The frame is a part of traditional art forms; from the book to the painting to the skyscraper, each is explicitly separated from the audience. It is bounded and physically defined.

But with digital eyewear, things change. Digital eyewear moves the distance of digital mediation from the screen (approximately 20 feet) to the human face, which is at zero distance, and almost eliminates the frame. It starts raising inevitable questions about what constitutes reality when much of ones sensory input is superimposed on the physical world by AI. At that stage of the technologys evolution, one could still simply opt out by removing the eyewear. Although almost indistinguishable from the physical world, that near-future world would still be clinging precariously to the human face.

The next step would be moving the source of the digital illusion into the human body a distance of less than zero through contact lenses, implants, and ultimately direct communication. At that point, the frame is long gone. The digital source commandeers the senses, and it becomes very hard to argue that the digital content isnt as real as a building on the corner which, frankly, could be an illusion itself in such an environment. Enthusiasts will probably argue that our perception is already an electrochemical illusion, and implants merely enhance our natural selves. In any case, opting out would become impractical at best. This is the stage of the technology that will raise practical questions we have never had to address before.

At that point, what is real? How much agency are we humans deprived of when we are making decisions based on AI-generated content and guidance that may or may not be working at cross-purposes to our needs? How would we even know? In the longer term, what happens to our desire to control our own lives when we get better outcomes by letting those decisions be made by AI? What if societal behavior became deliberately manipulated for the greater good, as interpreted by one entity? If efficiency and order were to supersede all other criteria as ideal social values, how could an AI-driven AR capability be dissuaded from manipulating individual behavior to those ends? What happens to individual choice? Is a person capable of being good without the option to be bad?

Perhaps the discussion surrounding the next generation of AI-informed AR could consider the possibility that the ethical questions change as the source of digital content gets closer to the human body and ultimately becomes a part of it. Its not simply a matter of higher-fidelity visuals. First, the frame disappears, which raises new questions of illusion and identity. Then, the content seems to come from within the body, which diminishes the possibility of opting out and raises further questions about agency and free will.

This combination of next-generation technologies might well find its ultimate expression after we have collectively engaged questions of philosophy and brought them right into the worlds of software development and corporate strategy.

Movies, advertising, and broadcasting have always been influential, but there was never a confusion between the content and the self as we will likely see in the next generation. Having these conversations about ethics and thinking through the implications of new technologies early in their development (i.e. right now) could help guide this remarkable convergence in a way that benefits humanity by modeling a world that reflects our best impulses.

Jay Iorio is the Innovation Director for the IEEE Standards Association.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views of Futurism or its affiliates.

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Will AI Blur the Lines Between Physical and Virtual Reality? - Futurism

Allen-backed AI2 incubator aims to connect AI startups with world-class talent – TechCrunch

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You cant swing a cat these days without hitting some incubator or accelerator, or a startup touting its artificial intelligence chops but for some reason, there are few if any incubators focused just on the AI sector. Seattles Allen Institute for AI is doing just that, with the promise of connecting small classes of startups with the organizations formidable brains (and 250 grand).

AI2, as the Paul Allen-backed nonprofit is more commonly called, already spun off two companies: XNOR.ai, which has made major advances in enabling AI tasks to run on edge devices, is operating independently and licensing its tech to eager customers. And Kitt.ai, a (profitable!) natural language processing platform, was bought by Baidu just last month.

Were two for two, and not in a small way, said Jacob Colker, who has led several Seattle and Bay Area startups and incubators, and is currently the Entrepreneur-in-Residence charged with putting AI2s program on the map. Until now the incubation program has kept a low profile.

Startups will get the expected mentorship and guidance on how to, you know, actually run a company but the draw, Colker emphasized, is the people. A good AI-based startup might get good advice and fancy office space from just about anyone but only AI2, he pointed out, is a major concentration of three core competencies in machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.

YOLO in action, from the paper presented at CVPR.

XNOR.ai, still partly run out of the AI2 office, is evidence of that. The companys latest computer vision system, YOLO, performs the rather incredible feat of both detecting and classifying hundreds of object types on the same network, locally and in real time. YOLO scored runner-up for Best Paper at this years CVPR, and thats not the first time its authors have been honored. Id spend more time on the system but its not what this article is about.

There are dozens more PhDs and published researchers; AI2 has plucked (or politely borrowed) high-profile academics from all over, but especially the University of Washington, a longstanding presence at the frontiers of tech. AI2 CEO Oren Etzioni is himself a veteran researcher and is clearly proud of the team hes built.

Obviously AI is hot right now, he told me, but were not jumping on the bandwagon here.

The incubator will have just a handful of companies at a time, he and Colker explained, and the potential investment of up to $250K is more than most such organizations are willing to part with. And as a nonprofit, there are fewer worries about equity terms and ROI.

But the applications of supervised learning are innumerable, and machine learning has become a standard developer tool so ambitious and unique applications of AI are encouraged.

Were not looking for a doohickey, Etzioni said. We want to make big bets and big companies.

AI2 is hoping to get just 2-5 companies for its first batch. Makes it a lot easier for me to keep eyes on them, thats for sure. Interested startups can apply at the AI2 site.

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Allen-backed AI2 incubator aims to connect AI startups with world-class talent - TechCrunch

How AI could make living in cities much less miserable – MarketWatch

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How AI could make living in cities much less miserable
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How AI could make living in cities much less miserable. By. Share. Here's how artificial intelligence can be used to create the 'smart city' of the future. Posted August 15, 2017. Latest from SectorWatch. Play All. By 2021, your Lyft ride will likely ...

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How AI could make living in cities much less miserable - MarketWatch