EOS, Ethereum and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis August 1st, 2020 – Yahoo Finance

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EOS

EOS rose by 1.36% on Friday, Following on from a 0.90% gain on Thursday, EOS ended the month up by 30.56% to $3.0950.

It was a mixed start to the day. EOS fell to an early morning intraday low $3.0163 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $2.9763, EOS rallied to a late afternoon intraday high $3.1481

EOS broke through the first major resistance level at $3.1191 before easing back to sub-$3.10 levels.

At the time of writing, EOS was down by 0.17% to $3.0896. A mixed start to the day saw EOS rise to an early morning high $3.1155 before falling to a low $3.0896.

EOS left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

EOS would need to avoid a fall through the $3.0865 pivot level to support a run at the first major resistance level at $3.1566.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for EOS to break back out from Fridays high $3.1481.

Barring another extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $3.0865 pivot would bring the first major support level at $3.0248 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, EOS should steer clear of the second major support level at $2.9547.

First Major Support Level: $3.0248

Pivot Level: $3.0865

First Major Resistance Level: $3.1566

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $6.62

38% FIB Retracement Level: $9.76

62% FIB Retracement Level: $14.82

Ethereum rose by 3.46% on Friday. Following on from a 5.39% rally on Thursday, Ethereum ended the month up by 53.82% to $346.86.

Another mixed start saw Ethereum fall to an early morning intraday low $328.35 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $319.09, Ethereum rallied to a late intraday high $349.74.

Ethereum broke through the first major resistance level at $346.97 to test resistance at $350 before easing back.

Ethereum slipped back through the first major resistance level at $346.97 late in the day.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was down by 0.28% to $345.88. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum rise to an early morning high $347.99 before falling to a low $345.56.

Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Story continues

Ethereum would need to avoid a fall through the $341.65 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $354.95.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out form Fridays high $349.74.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level should cap any upside.

A fall through the $341.65 pivot would bring the first major support level at $333.56 into play.

Barring an extended sell-off, however, Ethereum should steer well clear of the second major support level at $320.26.

First Major Support Level: $333.56

Pivot Level: $341.65

First Major Resistance Level: $354.95

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367

62% FIB Retracement Level: $543

Ripples XRP rallied by 6.22% on Friday. Following on from a 0.36% gain on Thursday, Ripples XRP ended the month up by 48.21% to $0.25983.

Tracking the broader market, Ripples XRP fell to an early morning intraday low $0.24201 before finding support.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $0.2359, Ripples XRP rallied to a late intraday high $0.26078.

Ripples XRP broke through the first major resistance level at $0.2517 and the second major resistance level at $0.2587.

On the day, it was the first visit to $0.26 levels since early February before wrapping up the day at $0.2590 levels.

At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down by 0.28% to $0.25909. A mixed start to the day saw Ripples XRP rise to an early morning high $0.26021 before falling to a low $0.25833.

Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Ripples XRP will need to avoid a fall through the $0.2542 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.2664.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ripples XRP to break out from Fridays high $0.26078.

Barring another broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level should cap any upside.

In the event of a breakout, Ripples XRP would likely test the second major resistance level at $0.0.2730 before any pullback.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $0.2542 pivot would bring the first major support level at $0.2476 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, Ripples XRP should avoid sub-$0.25 levels, however.

First Major Support Level: $0.2476

Pivot Level: $0.2542

First Major Resistance Level: $0.2664

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.3638

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $0.4800

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.6678

Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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EOS, Ethereum and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis August 1st, 2020 - Yahoo Finance

CoinDesk Live Recap: Ethereum Culture, Explained – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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What makes Ethereum culture click?

Maker Foundation board member Tonya Evans and former ConsenSys Chief Marketing Officer Amanda Cassatt joined CoinDesk senior reporter Leigh Cuen on Monday to discuss Ethereums ethos in an hour-long conversation streamed to the CoinDesk homepage.

In terms of its structure and what it accomplishes in the world, its by default a global movement, Cassat said of the worlds leading smart-contract blockchain.

Evans, also a law professor at Penn States Dickinson Law School, said Ethereum can yield a more equitable version of global finance. Inclusion is baked into the platform but shouldnt be taken for granted, she said.

We have a better chance with this system than we do with the existing infrastructure. But will this end up being a microcosm of tech and finance? In many ways, it looks like that now but there is promise.

The CoinDesk Live session was the first in a five-day series of live-streamed conversations. It comes as part of CoinDesks Ethereum at Five package.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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CoinDesk Live Recap: Ethereum Culture, Explained - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Ethereum Market Update: ETH/USD spaceship to $400 on the launchpad – FXStreet

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Ethereum bullish case to $400 began the moment it cleared the hurdle at the high traded in February at $284. The move encouraged more buyers to join the market. Moreover, with Bitcoin price rocketing to the skies, Ethereum had no option but to rally due to its increasing correlation with the largest digital asset.

Indeed, it has been a journey of breaking barriers to the extent of closing in on 2019s highs around $361. ETH/USD spike on the day, has traded a new 2020 high of $358.52. Meanwhile, the prevailing bullish trend suggests that it is only a matter of time before Ethereum breaks its one-year high as it sets for higher levels beyond $400.

Technically, the impact following the recent symmetrical triangle breakout is still contributing to the rally. The breakout has been supported by high trading volume. Besides, technical levels have remained bullish for over two weeks now.

For instance, the Elliot Wave Oscillator is at the helm of the bullish session. The RSI is holding well within the overbought region. For now, bulls are in control and if the technical picture remains intact, gains above $375 are within reach even this weekend session.

On the flip side, it is vital to realize that bullish markets are prone to retracements which also offer great opportunities for rebounds. In other words traders should carefully watch the market for confirmed reversals using the RSI and the MACD coupled with increased volume.

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Ethereum Market Update: ETH/USD spaceship to $400 on the launchpad - FXStreet

Is Ethereum’s DeFi boom sustainable in the long term? – Decrypt

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In recent weeks, weve seen a boom in decentralized finance (DeFi). Recent data have shown that total DeFi users have grown by 23% since the start of June, while over $2 billion worth ofEthereumand Bitcoin is now locked up in DeFi. And transaction volume across Ethereum-based DeFi dapps has increased by nearly 800% since April.

It's driven by the rise of yield farming, in which DeFi platforms offer token incentives in exchange for users' deposits. Its led to unintended consequences as users race to snap up tokens, creating artificial demand for some assets.

The big question is: is DeFis meteoric growth sustainable, or another bubble about to burst?

DeFi highlights the power of community-owned networks, permissionless innovation, and having a financial system that's global from day one, according to Itamar Lesuisse, co-founder and CEO of DeFi-friendly crypto wallet Argent.

At the moment it's still an early experiment and mostly caters to a crypto audience, but it's just the start, Lesuisse told Decrypt. In the years ahead we look forward to it solving significant problems for mainstream users around the world; we'd argue the user experience is already better than traditional finance in many areas.

The user experience [of DeFi] is already better than traditional finance in many areas.

Itamar Lesuisse

One of the principal proposed benefits behind DeFi is to offer lower fees, as theres no centralized entity rent-seeking in the middle of transactions, according to Alex Batlin, CEO of Trustology. DeFi also rewards every single contributor through built-in incentive programs, Batlin added.

It was too complex for a vast majority to understand initially, said Batlin. Were now getting to the point where its easy enough for people to take advantage and find value. On top of this, one-click services from the likes of Instadapp are enabling DeFi strategies such as flash loans to facilitate access to the average investor.

He adds that now, instead of requiring a specialist, the viability of yield farming is extending to a broader demographic. This is the kind of functionality Trustology will roll out through its APIs but with the necessary institutional controls and security. Users can easily access DeFi appsand soon staking on ETH 2.0without the same security concerns as those who self-custody.

According to Julian Sawyer, head of Europe at crypto exchange Gemini, while the concept of decentralized finance is sound, its often characterized that a few people are talking a lot about the boom in its adoption.

Whether it is on the mainstream agenda of central banks, regulators, major institutions and consumers is questionable, given the challenges that removing all central controls, intermediaries, and oversight bodies present to even simple processes like payments, cross-border transfers, and settlements, Sawyer said.

Whether [DeFi] is on the mainstream agenda of central banks, regulators, major institutions and consumers is questionable.

Julian Sawyer

For decentralized finance to move to broad adoption, Sawyer added, the DeFi space needs to develop controls and protections to allow it to interact with or exist in the same world as current financial systems. They include the implementation of effective compliance measures to combat financial crime and fraud, such as the ability to assess the source of wealth and funds running through applications.

While the banking and finance system is not perfect, it works for consumers, retailers, corporations and governments because it is underpinned by standards, processes, and controls that everyone can trust, Sawyer said. He added that it will be difficult for DeFi to build the credibility and trust it needs to gain traction without building bridges to existing institutions and engaging with regulators.

Whereas many fintech companies are just a shiny interface on legacy financial infrastructure, DeFi is an entirely new financial system. That has implications for the wider industry.

If it lives up to its potential, it could make finance more accessible, fair and transparent. It can innovate much more quickly than traditional finance, and with greater capital efficiency, Lesuisse told Decrypt.

Vance Spencer, co-founder of VC firm Framework Ventures, agreed. DeFi, he argued, allows for wider global access to financial services, affordable cross-border payments through the reduction in costly intermediaries, improved privacy and security, more transparent lines of credit, and increased control over ones assets.

Many projects in DeFi are still undergoing the process of decentralization, but even in this nascent stage, the user experience is already much more permissionless, he said.

Even in this nascent stage, the user experience [of DeFi] is already much more permissionless.

Vance Spencer

Spencer said that several DeFi tokens are infinitely more useful than cryptocurrency tokens from 2017 and 2018. They often have value extractive mechanisms (either through dividends or burning) meaning their value can actually be modeled, a sharp departure from the useless utility tokens of a previous age.

More importantly, consumers can immediately see the advantages that DeFi products provide, in that they mimic products we already use in our day to day lives, but in a way that is more transparent, efficient, and democratic, he adds.

Another challenge for decentralized finance is to articulate the exact real-world problems it can solve, given there are only a few users who will adopt it for the sake of being outside the system.

There will be viable use cases where DeFi does provide better, more efficient, and faster services to consumers, said Sawyer. The industry as a whole needs to focus on developing and communicating the value that these applications can bring to consumers and businesses.

Lesuisse says that we shouldn't underestimate the challenges in the near term, nor should we get carried away with the recent surge in assets locked in DeFi.

It's still an experiment, far from mass adoptionand, as with crypto as a whole, there will be ups and downs, he said. We nevertheless believe the underlying breakthroughs in technology, business models and governance will see it add considerable value to people over the long term.

Spencer says that some DeFi projects are likely to fail, but its a bit premature to start labeling this growing industry as a bubble.

The total market capitalization of DeFi is today less than $8 billion, a mere fraction of the larger cryptocurrency industry. Of course, a flight to quality will eventually happen, but the growth stage hasnt even really started yet, he says.

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Is Ethereum's DeFi boom sustainable in the long term? - Decrypt

Visa to offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple payments – The Paypers

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Payments provider Visa has announced plans to incorporate cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) into its payments network.

With access to over 61 million merchants globally, Visa is one of the largest payment companies to create a roadmap for adopting cryptocurrencies on its platform. Visa acknowledges that the advent of Bitcoin and stablecoins such as Tether are a form of financial innovation that has brought benefits to consumers and merchants. In that sense, they highlight the rapid expansion that cryptocurrencies have reached as a payment method. In May 2020, circulation with cryptocurrencies reached USD 10 billion.

One of the relevant obstacles in Visas roadmap is the position of politicians, regulators, and other government entities. The payment company said it has been working with regulated entities, including Coinbase and Fold, to create a bridge between digital currencies and its payment network. As a result, 25 crypto wallets are linked to the services offered by Visa. This way, users of these services can use their funds in cryptocurrencies to spend them with Visa cards or a prepaid credential, according to crypto-news-flash.com.

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Visa to offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple payments - The Paypers

DeFi Testing Ethereums Transaction Limits, These Solutions Offer Hope for Scaling – Crypto Briefing

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Key Takeaways

On-chain activity on the Ethereum network has been surging in 2020 to the levels previously seen amid the 2017-2018 bull run. Data suggests that its likely due to the rapid expansion of the DeFi sector.

While the growth of on-chain activity is beneficial for Ethereum, its low throughput can cause high transaction fees under heavy network load. Expensive transactions, in turn, are prohibitive for DeFi usage.

Etherum 2.0 could solve many of the networks current scalability issues, but its unlikely to come anytime soon. In the meantime, there are several already available scalability solutions to accommodate the networks rising activity.

The numbers of daily active addresses and daily transactions have been enjoying steady growth in 2020, suggesting that more people come to use the network. Importantly, people mostly move around ERC-20 tokens, while the number of ETH daily transactions has stayed around 2 million over several months.

Many of the platforms with the highest number of transactions, like 1inch.exchange, Synthetix, and Matcha, all belong to the DeFi sector, indicating the decentralized finance movement is responsible for the surge in on-chain activity.

As the on-chain activity increases, the network becomes congested. As a consequence, transactions become more expensive.

Miners fill blocks with transactions from a transaction pool. If the pool receives transactions too fast, users have to pay higher fees to push their transactions to the front of the queue. If a fee is set too low, a transaction may hang in the pool for a long time. This delay can be disastrous for traders on the hunt for ever-changing and lucrative yields.

The pool for pending transactions can get filled fast, given the low networks throughput of 14 transactions per second (TPS). As the queue grows, the premium for pushing a transaction to the front increases as well. As a result, the network becomes inefficient and expensive under a substantial load. Examples of this dynamic include Crypto Kitties and FCoin, which have caused considerable congestion in the past.

To solve this bottleneck, developers in the Ethereum community are working to transition the network form a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. A PoS algorithm would offer users a cheaper and more efficient Ethereum experience.

Unfortunately, the transition to Ethereum 2.0 has been delayed time and again. And without these upgrades, the DeFi boom may be capped due to the low TPS barrier and, thus, high transaction costs.

The primary reason behind Ethereum 2.0s delayed roll-out is risk. With so much on-chain value and activity, the stakes are high to get it right. Thus, to help cater to current bottlenecks, developers have launched an Ethereum 1.x initiative, which focuses on improving the existing network while building Ethereum 2.0 in parallel.

Several teams are working on various Ethereum 1.x-related proposals. The list includes Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-1108, EIP-1844, EIP-2028, and EIP-2200.

The improvements mentioned above were able to lower on-chain transaction fees and created advantages for implementing off-chain solutions.

The most sensible way to significantly scale Ethereum before version 2.0 becomes functional is moving some transactions off-chain. Although Layer 2 networks, like Lightning Network on Bitcoin, dont enjoy the same level of security as the underlying layer, they are relatively safe and practical.

Ethereum developers have been experimenting with off-chain setups for a while. One use case for off-chain transactions includes state and payment channels. These allow several users to lock up ETH on Layer 1 and transact or change state on Layer 2 fast and without congesting the network.

The Plasma network, for instance, resembles state and payment channels, except that the Layer 2 chain serves users in general.

The major downside of state channels and Plasma is that they dont have strong support for smart contracts, limiting their usage. Another popular alternative is optimistic rollups, which can provide a substantial increase of 1,000 TPS with smart-contract support.

Optimistic rollups offer a similar setup to PoS. There are off-chain aggregators acting like validators (nodes).

All the transactions that happen on Layer 2, including smart-contract interactions, are periodically summarized by nodes with stakes and submitted to Layer 1. These submissions are verifiable by anyone, so nodes risk to lose their stakes if they act maliciously.

Another way to put computation off-chain is by using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. ZK proofs enable a party performing computations to prove that theyve actually done them without revealing how. Instead of providing the entire operation history, ZK proofs create mathematical proofs of this history. These proofs are much smaller in size and thus offer more efficient use of blockchain space while still guarding the datas integrity.

Such an approach is useful for setups like decentralized exchanges (DEXes). These trading platforms can move order processing off-chain to preserve the Ethereum networks bandwidth and make DEXes comfortable to use.

State channels, Plasma, Optimistic Rollup, and ZK proofs are the building blocks of Ethereums scalability.

Ethereum indisputably has the largest developer community in the blockchain space. Developers come because of the large user base, so they have to overcome the platforms limitations to provide services under the current TPS restriction.

Raiden Network, Perun Network, State Channels, Celer Network, Machinomy, FunFair, and Liquidity Network are all building Ethereum state channels. The state channel niche is rather small and not widely popular. For example, Raiden Network was once making headlines but now occupies 300-400 rank on CoinMarketCap.

Plasma is more popular, given that some of the top-100 CoinMarketCap projects like Matic Network and OMG Network are using it. Importantly, Matic uses a modified version of Plasma along with PoS-based side chains, which enables it to host dApps. Such a solution has a potential value for DeFi projects.

Optimistic rollups have probably received the most attention from DeFi projects. The pilot implementation, Unipig, was jointly built by Plasma Group and Uniswap exchange, one of the top Ethereum DeFi dApps.

Following Unipig launch, Synthetix tapped into Optimistic rollups. The exchange is famous for tokenizing traditional financial instruments like commodities and Forex and making them available for trading against cryptocurrencies. Synthetix demoed an optimistic rollup implementation, which showed subsecond transaction confirmation times, putting user experience on par with centralized players like Binance.

ZK proofs in the form of ZK-STARKS have been lately adopted by DeFi projects as well. ZK-STARKS are developed by StarkWare, which received $4M with 6K ETH Performance-based bounties from the Ethereum Foundation.

ZK-STARKS enable ZK proofs in trustless setups. DeversiFi, a decentralized exchange formerly known as Ethfinex, became the first DEX to implement ZK-STARKS. The platform can now achieve over 9,000 TPS.

Besides scalability solutions, there is also Chi Gastoken introduced by 1inch, a highly-popular DEX aggregator. The token allows users to buy and store gas when prices are low. The major downside is that if the network is continuously congested, Gastokens minted earlier get used up, and there is no opportunity to mint the new tokens because gas is expensive. As a result, this solution doesnt always work as expected.

Although Ethereum is unlikely to shift to a fully functional PoS network anytime soon, DeFi and other dApps are far from doomed. The Layer 2 scalability workarounds have practical value given their adoption by popular DeFi projects. The blockchain space is still small, so an extra few thousand TPS and smart contract support should be enough for Ethereum to take advantage of the DeFi boom in the medium-term.

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You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.

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DeFi Testing Ethereums Transaction Limits, These Solutions Offer Hope for Scaling - Crypto Briefing

What Brands and Investors Need to Take Away from Fashion’s Enduring Labor, Wage Scandals – The Fashion Law

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Boohoo has found itself at the center of a headline-making scandal in connection with allegations that laborers in its supply chain are working in cramped high-density conditions, dominated by extreme temperatures and poor air quality, while being paid well below the national living wage. The allegations, as first revealed by way of an undercover investigation and subsequent report by the Sunday Times, have prompted pushback from British regulators, consumers, and investors, alike, with at least some, including one of its largest shareholders, Standard Life Aberdeen, which has soldtwo thirds of its holdings in the company opting to distance themselves from the burgeoning fast fashion group.

The attention that the Manchester-headquartered company which owns its marquee Boohoo brand, PrettyLittleThing, and Nasty Gal, among other fast fashion players has received as a result of the media report of striking wage and labor violations highlights a larger momentum by corporations and investors that are assessing their supply chains and portfolios for compliance with human rights standards and related risks, according toAkin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLPattorneys Isabel Foster, Chiara Klaui, Jasper Helder, Daniel Lund and Cassandra Padget.

This growing focus, they say, should serve as a reminder to companies and investors about the importance of conducting human rights and modern slavery risk assessments, and proactively dealing with any risks in advance and in the aftermath of investment decisions. To be exact, these efforts should be part of a corporate due diligence and risk mitigation strategy that encompasses wider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.

Attention to non-financial ESG elements is proving increasingly compelling as the number of retail and institutional investors that apply [them] to at least a quarter of their portfolios continues to grow, according to Deloitte, with the number of companies adopting responsible investment strategies jumping from 48 percent in 2017 to 75 percent in 2019. However, firms that invest in accordance with ESG integration efforts and thus, evaluate ESG-related risks alongside more traditional measures, are not the only ones that should be cognizant of ESG-related risks.

Companies and investors, alike, should be considering these factors, especially the S in ESG which consists of equality, diversity and inclusion, disciplinary issues, and health and safety concerns in light of enduring wage and labor issues that could give rise to legal obligations that go beyond the immediate companies, themselves, and in some cases, extend to their investors.

Foster, Klaui, Helder, Lund and Padget emphasize the importance of ESG consideration for companies and investors, asserting that the acquisition of assets derived (in whole or in part) from criminal conduct creates risks for acquirers and investors alike under the U.K.s Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, as amended (POCA), noting that even where the criminality threshold under POCA is not met, suspicions of problems or potentially criminal conduct should trigger further internal due diligence and risk assessments.

Looking beyond POCA, which provides law enforcement with the authority to confiscate the revenues generated by criminal activity, including in connection with gross human rights abuses or violations, they state that the U.K. governments and the European Unions commitment to the deterrence of and accountability for human rights abuses is on the rise. This is demonstrated, in part, by the U.K. governments July 2020 implementation of its new Global Human Rights sanctions regime, which is aimed at targeting individuals, as well as corporate entities.

As the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Hon. Dominic Raab MP asserted earlier this month that the ground-breaking global regime means the UK has new powers to stop those involved in serious human rights abuses and violations from entering the country, channelling money through UK banks, or profiting from our economy.

Just before that, in April 2020, on the heels of the European Commissionsstudy on due diligence requirements through the supply chain, European Union Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders announced that the Commission will introduce legislation in 2021 to make human rights due diligence mandatory for EU companies. Commissioner Reynders indicated that the anticipated scope of the impending new legislation will encompass the entire supply chain and all corporate-related risks, including human rights, social and environmental ones. At this stage, it is not clear how the potential scope of corporate liability for failure to carry out appropriate due diligence, according to Allens attorneys Rachel Nicolson, Dora Banyasz, Emily Turnbull, and Hamish McAvaney, but it does appear that the EU is moving towards to a general corporate duty to protect human rights.

Significantly, the EU legislation is expected to include provisions forcorporate liability, and is not only expected to apply to companies that are headquartered in the EU but will also likely extend to foreign companies conducting business within the EU.

These developments, among others, indicate that both the U.K. and EU are becoming increasingly serious about implementing ESG legislation that focuses on the role of corporate actors and holds them accountable, perFoster, Klaui, Helder, Lund and Padget, who assert that it is critical from a commercial, legal and reputational standpoint for companies to conduct thorough and regular diligence and monitoring on their supply chains to assess risk, identify possible non-compliance and determine where improvements can be made. This applies not only to goods produced in a corporations own manufacturing sites but also to their counterparties, subcontractors, suppliers and the suppliers of their suppliers, all the way down the supply chain.

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What Brands and Investors Need to Take Away from Fashion's Enduring Labor, Wage Scandals - The Fashion Law

How American racism changed the map of Africa – TheGrio

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(Photo: Adobe Stock)

American anti-Blackness is so pervasive that its impacts have devastated communities at home and abroad. The U.S. establishment of the West African nation of Liberia is a case in point.

From the late 18th to early 19th centuries, the U.S. government was obsessed with what it called The Negro Problem. Namely, how to manage the presence of the free population of African Americans, whom it had no desire to integrate into society as equal citizens.

During this period, American leaders wrestled with the contradictions between the ideals of freedom, justice and equality which drove the American Revolution and the capitalist and white supremacist ideals that justified slavery and deemed Black people inferior, undesirable and dangerous.

Read More: Africa is slowly peeling apart as new ocean forms, scientists say

Thomas Jefferson offered a poetic summation of the tensions between slavery and freedom for African Americans when he remarked:

But as it is, we have the wolf by theear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

Jefferson was not alone. His words evoked the fears of many white Americans slaveholders and non-slaveholders alike. To their minds, free Black people were a threat to the balance of society as seekers of revenge for mistreatment; as examples of the agency to those enslaved; as competitors for low wage labor with white counterparts; and for the prospect of racial mixing.

The surge of Black resistance to slavery nationally and internationally heightened these fears. The Haitian revolution (1790-1804) overthrowing France sent shockwaves throughout U.S. slaveholding society for its potential to inspire widespread rebellion among the enslaved.

Read More: Caribbean nations selling citizenship to Americans due to tourism decline

This potential became reality as a series of revolts took place in the following decades, including Gabriel Prossers rebellion in Virginia (1800); the German Coast Uprising in Louisiana (1811); Denmark Veseys revolt in South Carolina (1822); and Nat Turners insurrection in Virginia (1831).

These turbulent times galvanized support for an idea that Thomas Jefferson expressed in his Notes on the State of Virginia, and again proposed to him by Virginia Governor James Monroe in 1800 following Prossers rebellion. Believing that free Black people and whites could never peacefully co-exist in America, the proposal called for the deportation and resettlement of African Americans to a colony in West Africa.

In 1816, a group of prominent white Americans convened to establish the American Colonization Society (ACS) which hoped to rid the United States of both slavery and black people. The ACS planned to achieve this by identifying and securing territory in West Africa for the purpose of resettling free African Americans, and those who would become free.

The society was also responsible for garnering political support for the undertaking, and the funding to transport settlers to the new colony, along with the necessary provisions.

The Societys founders, Virginia politician Charles F. Mercer and Reverend Robert Finley director of Princetons Theological Seminary had no problem obtaining political support for the endeavor. From the beginning, ACS membership was comprised of leading figures in American society.

These would include Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Lincoln; Secretaries of State Henry Clay and Daniel Webster; Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington; and lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key.

Initial financial support for the ACS was provided by President James Monroe, who facilitated a congressional allocation of $100,000 to the Society in 1819. With cash in hand, the Society still struggled to obtain land in West Africa where the indigenous people in what was then known as the Pepper Coast resisted the American resettlement scheme.

In 1821, the U.S. Navy stepped in to coerce local leaders in West Africa to sell a strip of land to the Society. That same year, several dozen free-born Black settlers were brought to the territory, marking the beginning of a violent and contentious relationship between themselves and the indigenous people of the region. It would be established as the independent Republic of Liberia on July 26, 1847.

While some African Americans embraced the idea of being sent to Africa, under the belief that Black people would never receive just and equitable treatment in the United States the majority rejected the idea claiming the U.S. as the only home they knew. Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave voice to these sentiments when he stated:

Read More: Frederick Douglass statue torn down in New York

Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here have lived here have a right to live here, and mean to live here.

Colonization was ultimately a failed experiment losing economic and political support domestically and resettling little more than 13,000 African-Americans in Liberia.

It laid bare the racist ideologies that would stifle the growth of American democracy and exported them to West Africa where the legacy of American racism led to a history of conflict between the settled and the indigenous populations and a history rooted in repression, inequality, and civil war.

Travis L. Adkinsis a Lecturer of African and Security Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a media contributor on issues of social justice and African Affairs, and the host and creator of theOn Africapodcast. You can find him at@TravisLAdkins on Twitter.

Have you subscribed totheGrios new podcastDear Culture? Download our newest episodes now!

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How American racism changed the map of Africa - TheGrio

Donald Trump Is Writing A Terrifying New Chapter In The History Of Political Repression – HuffPost

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In his quest for reelection, President Donald Trump has gone hunting for demons. Federal law enforcement officers entered cities including Portland, Oregon; Chicago; Kansas City, Missouri; and Albuquerque at Trumps direction, clearly meant to gin up clashes and disorder between federal officers and the groups disfavored by his core supporters in pursuit of viral online content.

Trump officials deployed Border Patrol officers to suppress a small group of anarchists in Portland inflicting a federal courthouse with graffiti and minor property damage. When officers started snatching people off the streets in unmarked minivans, it provoked a larger protest reaction and a further increase in federal deployment. Some of those officers are now scheduled to leave Portland at the urging of state and local elected officials who called them an occupying force. The Department of Justice plans to surge federal officers into Black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Detroit and Cleveland to provoke scenes of racial conflict. Trump suggested he could send up to 75,000 federal officers into American cities this summer.

These conflicts are the reason Trumps most fervent supporters elected him. These voters, most of them white, wanted him to erase the legacy of the first Black president and wage war against the unfavored groups haunting their minds. With the economy cratering, unemployment skyrocketing and an uncontrolled pandemic sweeping the nation, Trumps last hope for reelection is fomenting disorder and division this time, using the power of the presidency.

White Americans have long defined themselves as threatened by racial, ethnic and political minority groups that they believe often based on conspiracy theories will change their way of life. Americans who think their freedom and right to hold on to power are at risk seek to strike down those they think are coming to take it.

American history is normally seen as a history of freedom rather than suppression, political scientist Michael Rogin wrote in his 1987 book, Ronald Reagan, The Movie, but that American racial history suggests that the suppression of people of color outside the normal political system has supported the freedom of the people within it.

This same logic animates Trumps deployment of federal forces to create scenes of disorder involving racial and political groups disfavored by his supporters the most fervent of whom are the white evangelical Protestants whose own political power and freedoms are tied to the suppression of disfavored groups.

Trump proclaimed as much during his Fourth of July speech in front of the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota. There he declared a war on a left-wing cultural revolution, emanating from cities that are run by liberal Democrats, that is, designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

Trumps War is waged in defense without apology, he said, of the traditional American mythological history of a people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean to create the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth.

This country will be everything that our citizens have hoped for, for so many years, Trump declared, and that our enemies fear.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressA demonstrator is pepper-sprayed Wednesday before being arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest at the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon.

Red Scares And Slave Uprisings

In his Mount Rushmore speech, Trump sings the sweet tune of the traditional American myths of a divinely inspired people who spread onto and beyond a frontier that made them free. Missing in Trumps tale are the many other peoples who were crushed, enslaved, overrun and ethnically cleansed to make that freedom possible.

The Manifest Destiny mythology originated from Jacksonian political writer John OSullivan, who in an 1845 article advocating for annexing Texas from Mexico, declaring it our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. OSullivans our meant, almost exclusively, Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent.

President Thomas Jefferson invoked such myths in his promise that he would help provide the Anglo-Saxon people room enough to reach a final consolidation when the land would be populated with white Northern European settlers from sea to shining sea.

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner would codify a more progressive vision of Manifest Destiny in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History. The frontiers free land provided a gate of escape from the bondage of the past and a safety valve for domestic pressures that gave birth to a unique American identity and spirit. Turners progressive twist was that this identity was open and available to all peoples of the world, not just Anglo-Saxons.

But the land they wanted to spread into wasnt free. It was occupied by indigenous tribes. American independence, as the Founding Father imagined it, was cramped from the beginning by the mere existence of Indians. To achieve white freedom, Indians had to be removed. And in order to justify it, Americans dehumanized them.

Indians were the first people to stand in American history as emblems of disorder, civilized breakdown, and alien control, Rogin wrote in 1987. Differences between reds and whites made cultural adaptation seem at once dangerous and impossible. The violent conquest of Indians legitimized violence against other alien groups, making coexistence appear to be unnecessary.

Freedom and demonization and repression went hand in hand. And so it was with racialized slavery. The enslavement and subjugation of Blacks gave whites their freedom, which meant in turn that enslaved and freed Blacks posed an internal threat to subvert the political culture by breaking their chains, gaining political power and seeking vengeance. To prevent such a result, those in power suppressed dissent, from whites as well as Blacks, and restricted rights.

Americans often explained their racialized fears of indigenous people and Black Americans through paranoid conspiracies claiming these groups were not only outside of the American national family but also directed by external threats to the nation. Before the Civil War, they claimed indigenous people were directed by the British and that Haiti influenced slave revolts in the U.S. And they used those external conspiracies to justify internal repression.

Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Getty ImagesAn illustration depicts the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, when soldiers fire on the crowd during a riot at the Halsted Street viaduct in Chicago.

[T]hey have seduced the greater part of the tribes, within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, Jefferson wrote in 1813 about the hidden British hand behind the Creek War in the Ohio Valley during the War of 1812.

The same was true of the racial demonization and violence directed at other groups, including Mexicans, preceding, during and after the Mexican-American War, and Chinese, Catholic and Jewish immigrants into the early 20th century. These groups were often seen as being directed to undermine the American way of life at the behest of external conspiracies emanating from the Vatican, the Illuminati or the Elders of Zion.

Political repression did not solely target racial or religious minorities. Left-wing working-class uprisings were similarly repressed and demonized as external threats. Movements for economic equality were perceived as threats to the private property rights that underpinned the foundation of American society. And they were perceived as external ideologies smuggled in from French Communism or, later, the Soviet Union.

But originally, working-class movements were seen through the same lens as the lives of Native Americans, whose practice of collective landholding was deemed dangerously subversive to the white settlers way of life.

Working-class revolts were then seen as an extension of the threat of Indian subversion. They were also viewed as providing a potential to unite Black and white working-class interests. In the political chaos and violence of the late 19th century, the demonization of these groups united into one tale of the nations history of political repression.

In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes pulled Union troops out of the former Confederate South and sent them West to begin the final fight to wipe out the Plains Indian tribes. The removal of American forces from the South allowed ex-Confederates to violently overthrow the post-Civil War Reconstruction state governments and impose a new system of oppression on freed Blacks. But those troops sent to the West were soon dispatched back east to suppress the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

When those troops entered Chicago to crush striking workers, the Chicago Tribune referred to it as a Red War, inciting fears of communism.

Trumps War

Freedom continued to be linked to repression through the anti-communist Red Scares of the 20th century. When imperial expansion on the North American continent ended with the closing of the frontier, that frontier soon extended into the Pacific and around the world. America would wage war against external threats to promote the freedoms at home, including consumer freedom now fueled by oil.

Paranoia about external contamination and infiltration colored all of Americas conflicts through the Cold War, the Middle East oil crises and then the war on terrorism. The country would create a vast national security state, both internally and externally focused, to root out this contamination. Anyone could be a threat, whether an opera singer, a Hollywood writer or a civil rights activist. Internal repression followed external demonization.

But with Trump, the direction of American energies externally has come to an end, as historian Greg Grandin notes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall. Overseas wars promise no fix or diversion for the countrys internal problems. They are simply endless. The frontier, meanwhile, should be walled at the border.

[T]oday the frontier is closed, the safety valve is shut, Grandin writes in his 2019 book. Whatever metaphor one wants to use, the country has lived past the end of its myth.

And so the country turns inward, bringing its external wars home. Just as the troops fighting the Plains Indians switched to fight striking workers and the national security state targeting Nazi fascists was turned against real and imaginary Communists at home, Trump directs federal officers fighting Americas demons at home and abroad to battle anti-racism protesters on city streets.

Border Patrol officers are redirected from countering what Trump called Mexicos most unwanted people, who are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, to now battle anarchists and protesters in Portland. Riot control officers are redeployed from prisons, the main institution used by America to repress Black people, to the streets of Washington, D.C., during Black Lives Matter protests. And federal agents from the Department of Justice will now be sent to fight crime in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

OLIVIER DOULIERY via Getty ImagesDemonstrators participate July 25 in a rally against "Trump's Police State" in Washington, D.C.

Trumps War is suffused with war on terrorism rhetoric. The deployment of officers into cities is a surge. The New York Post labels demonstrators damaging property as insurgents. The Pentagon calls protesters and journalists adversaries. The Department of Homeland Security circulates Baseball cards identifying protesters, as the military did for former ministers and generals in Saddam Husseins government in Iraq and al-Qaeda terrorist leaders.

Trump himself finds domestic property damage to be worse than war. This is worse than Afghanistan, by far, Trump said about the protests in Portland. This is worse than anything anyones ever seen.

Where Trumps War diverges from much of Americas history of repression is where he situates its source. The subversive behavior he aims to repress does not emanate from indigenous people in the forest; it doesnt originate from the USSR; it isnt directed by the pope; there is no anti-American axis of evil. The demons animating Trumps imagination are directed by the Democratic Party.

All run by the same liberal Democrats, Trump said about the cities hes targeting that have seen protests. And, you know what? If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell.

Trump has portrayed former Vice President Joe Biden, his likely Democratic opponent in the November election, as a Trojan horse for progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Joe Biden would be nothing more than an autopen, a Trojan horse for a radical agenda so radical, so all-encompassing that it would transform this country into something utterly unrecognizable, Vice President Mike Pence said in a July 17 speech in Racine, Wisconsin.

Biden is cast as a white exterior masking the subversive Latinos, Blacks, Muslims and socialist Jews inside.

This is also a tale about the Democratic Party. Biden is an elderly white Catholic of Irish descent who was raised in a blue-collar community. He represents the old Democratic Party, once the home for the interests of the white working class. But the party has shifted and now represents a broad multiracial and multi-religious coalition. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the white vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

The party is today the political home for large majorities of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, women (in particular, single women) and the working class. These groups are among those that have been demonized throughout American history as subversive to the American way of life.

And so Trump places the Democratic Party outside of America. It is now a threat to freedom, to the American way of life. It wouldnt be the first time in American history when the frontier collapsed in on itself and directed domestic political opponents against each other.

We now know a bloody civil war resulted from that rift. And who knows what all this may lead to.

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Randonautica: The viral app that led friends to a suitcase full of human remains – Economic Times

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By Lena WilsonThe app led one person to a friendly dog in the desert and another to a field of wildflowers. One young woman, after making her college decision, followed the app to a field where her schools initials had been mowed into the grass.

And then there were the friends who followed the app to a suitcase full of human remains.

That is the gamble one takes with Randonautica, which claims to channel users intentions to produce nearby coordinates for exploration. Think: The law of attraction meets geocaching.

Randonautica makes a few asks of users What would you like to get? Choose your entropy source before prompting them to focus on your intent while it fetches coordinates. This process relies on location settings and a random number generator, which, despite what the company says, cannot be directly affected by human thoughts.

Many of the places users have been sent to since Randonautica became available in February are unremarkable: parking lots, grasslands, many bodies of water. However, interest has been driven by the spooky and often synchronistic randonauting stories many have shared on social media. While several of them appear to be fake, others have raised some cause for concern.

A Brief History of RandonautingBefore Randonautica, there were the Randonauts: strangers who swapped stories about their bot-assisted adventures into the unknown. They wanted to open their minds to the world around them and make meaning of lifes coincidences.

The bots code came from a group of programmers called the Fatum Project who were interested in, among other things, using the technology to ensure the randomness of online gambling outcomes.

Joshua Lengfelder, 29, discovered the Fatum Project on the messenger app Telegram in January 2019, in a fringe-science chat room. He absorbed the projects theories about how random exploration could break people out of their predetermined realities and how people could influence random outcomes with their minds.

Lengfelder, a former circus performer, thought the code and its underlying ideas could be used to explore the relationship between consciousness and technology. In February 2019, while caring for his father, who had just suffered a stroke, he created a Telegram bot that used the Fatum Projects code to generate random coordinates. In March, he created a Randonauts subreddit, which now has 125,000 members. And in October, a developer named Simon Nishi McCorkindale created a web page for the bot.

Since its release, Randonautica has been downloaded 10.8 million times from the App Store and Google Play, according to the research firm Sensor Tower. After a few months of rapid growth, much of it propelled by TikTok, its downloads have started to taper off, according to data from the analytics firm App Annie.

In an interview in July, Lengfelder described Randonautica as a multimedia storytelling platform that encourages performance art. He said the overwhelming response had not surprised him.

I kind of figured it was inevitable, he said. Because basically what it is is like a machine that creates memes and legends, and it kind of virally propagates on its own.

So How Does It Work?On first use, Randonautica offers a brief intro and some tips (Always Randonaut with a charged phone, Never trespass) before prompting you to share your location.

Then it will ask you to choose which type of point you would like it to generate (the differences between which only matter if you believe the app can read your thoughts) before fetching coordinates from a random number generator. The user can then open that location in Google Maps to begin their journey.

Randonautica throws big words like quantum and entropy around a lot. Its creators believe that quantum random numbers are more likely to be influenced by human consciousness than non-quantum random numbers. This hypothesis is part of a theory Lengfelder refers to as mind-machine interaction, or MMI: It posits that when you focus on your intent, you are influencing the numbers.

Daniel Rogers, a physicist who has worked with quantum random number generators, called Randonauticas MMI theory completely absurd.

There is no quantum physics here, said Rogers, a founder of the Global Disinformation Index. This is just people using big science words to sound magical. There is no actual science here.

Several people who shared unsettling stories about the app say they have since sworn it off. Adrian Chavez, 21, was led to an ominous beach near his home in Orange County, California. A video of his journey, posted on TikTok in early June, has been viewed 4.5 million times.

I deleted the app right after that and never used it again since, Chavez said in an interview in July.

The 18-year-old TikTok user who posted the viral video about finding a suitcase of human remains on a Seattle beach, @UghHenry, wrote in the comments of his video: The moment I got back home, I broke down. I still cant sleep.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Lengfelder was blas about the story, which was covered by news outlets including KING 5 News and the New York Post. Its not the best press, but Im not really that upset about it, because its kind of cool, he said. I kind of wish it was me who found it.

Some adults have expressed concerns about the apps lack of safety precautions for children. Although Randonauticas terms of use specify that anyone who is a minor must obtain parental consent to use the app, such consent is collected by email, making it easy for young users to bypass.

Concerns about human trafficking and personal data use are addressed in Randonauticas FAQ, which specifies that all location data is anonymized and made available only to developers, and that starting locations are never saved by the app.

Pokmon Go, which uses augmented reality to encourage local exploration, has handled safety concerns by putting PokStops and Gyms in notable, public locations and encouraging users to remain vigilant.

Randonauticas safety tips are similar: Avoid dangerous areas, do not trespass, try to explore during the day or with friends. Randonauticas website repeatedly urges users to use common sense. The latest version of the app will feature multiple screens and pop-ups reminding users to use the app safely.

Salcedo said Randonauticas legal counsel reassured her and Lengfelder that the app would not be liable for any user misconduct.

Is Google Maps liable too, for giving them directions? Lengfelder said. At a certain point, if somebody wants to really go out of the way and harm themselves, theyre going to do it. Whether its with Randonautica or not.

Excerpt from:

Randonautica: The viral app that led friends to a suitcase full of human remains - Economic Times

Future Roadmap for the Global Virtual Reality Market 2020-2025 – Simulation and Training are Leading the Way – PRNewswire

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DUBLIN, July 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Virtual Reality Market by Segment (Consumer, Enterprise, Industrial, Government), Equipment (Hardware, Software, Components) Applications and Solutions 2020 - 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This research provides an in-depth assessment of the virtual reality market including analysis of VR ecosystem and role of value chain partners, evaluation of recent VR patent filings and intellectual property, and analysis of current price metrics VR devices, apps, and content. The report also provides an assessment of key VR companies and solutions with SWOT analysis, analysis of emerging business models and evolution of VR monetization, analysis of VR component market: devices, software, hardware, platforms. The report also presents key VR growth drivers, market challenges, and emerging opportunities.

Previously encumbered by a combination of technology gaps and consumer readiness issues, the virtual reality market is poised for substantive global growth, providing abundant opportunities for service providers, content developers, and ecosystem component providers. However, the high-growth phase for VR is anticipated to start within approximately two years, which is coincident with substantially lower broadband costs as a whole (wired and wireless connections) as well as greater user acceptance within both the consumer and business market segments.

It is important to note that the virtual reality market and other immersive technologies will also be important to many industries for a variety of enterprise purposes including internal operations, managing supply chains, and supporting customers. Important industry verticals include commercial real estate management, automotive, public safety, education, and training. The leading sector is anticipated to be the instruction (education, training, and simulations).

For the consumer virtual reality market, we see entertainment and lifestyle enhancements leading the way with the former including VR enhanced gaming and the latter including a plethora of new apps such as virtual location experiences in which groups of people get together virtually in the cyber-world. Examples include everything from virtual alumni events to watching your favorite football team play in a virtual stadium with ultra-real sights, sounds, and even feelings and smells of game day. The advancement of AI embedded within the VR market will add to the realism by introducing random events that happen within a given experience.

For enterprise and industrial virtual reality market segments, simulations and training are leading the way. We see everything from situational training to more traditional expectations such as VR enhanced simulations for flight and vehicle training. Businesses will also seek to use VR as a means to destress employees by offering them a virtual experience of their everyday work with random events thrown into the mix, both to add interest/amusement as well as to test and train them to see how they might react given a real-world experience such as how to best deal with a senile shoplifter.

This research provides an in-depth assessment of the VR market including the following:

Forecasts in Report:

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Key Topics Covered:

1.0 Executive Summary

2.0 Virtual Reality Market Segmentation

3.0 Introduction

4.0 Virtual Reality Ecosystem Analysis

5.0 VR Company Analysis

6.0 Virtual Reality Market Analysis and Forecasts 2020 - 2025

Companies Mentioned

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/whtgjl

About ResearchAndMarkets.comResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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Future Roadmap for the Global Virtual Reality Market 2020-2025 - Simulation and Training are Leading the Way - PRNewswire

Latest Study: Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market 2020 2030 Including COVID-19 Impact Analysis | Download Free Sample Report -…

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Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market Overview

The report study researched by The Holistic Reports gives comprehensive knowledge and valuable insights about the Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market. Also, the study attempts to deliver significant and detailed insights into the current market prospect and emerging growth scenarios. The report on the Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market also emphasizes on market players as well as the new entrants in the market landscape.

The Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market held a market size of $XX million in 2019 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of XX% from 2019 to 2030.

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The Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market report is a precise and deep-dive study on the current state that aims at the major drivers, market strategies, and imposing growth of the key players. Worldwide Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market Industry also offers a granular study of the dynamics, segmentation, revenue, share forecasts, and allows you to make superior business decisions. The report serves imperative statistics on the market stature of the prominent manufacturers and is an important source of guidance and advice for companies and individuals involved in the Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market industry.

Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is spreading across the world with a serious impact on the economy and the global market. The report considers and accounts for the impact of COVID-19 on Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market across all the segments, regions, countries, and key players. North America and Europe are worst-hit countries by Coronavirus which are key players in the global economy. The report provides a detailed analysis of the impact on the market, growth strategies, supply china disruption, consumption pattern of the Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market.

Market Segmentation

The report provides market size with 2019 as the base year in consideration and a yearly forecast until 2030 in terms of Revenue (USD Million). The estimates for all segments including type and application have been provided on a regional basis for the forecast period mentioned above. We have implemented a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches for market sizing, analyzing the key regional markets, dynamics, and trends for various applications.

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Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market by Key Segments:

By Type:

Augmented Reality in Healthcare MarketVirtual Reality in Healthcare Market

By Application:

Hospitals, Clinics, and Surgical CentersResearch Organizations and Pharma CompaniesResearch and Diagnostics LaboratoriesGovernment and Defense Institutions

Competitive Landscape:

GoogleAtheerPsiousMicrosoftMedical RealitiesDAQRIOculusFirsthand TechnologyMindmazeAugmedixHTCCAE HealthcareSiemensVirtaMedPhilipsVirtually Better3D Systems

The report of Global Augmented and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market studies the key players present in the market. The chapter includes the competitive landscape section which provides the full and in-depth analysis of the current market trends, changing technologies, and developments that will be beneficial for the companies, which are competing in the market. The report offers an overview of revenue, demand, and supply of data, futuristic cost, and growth analysis during the projected year. In addition to a brief overview of the company, analysts shed light on their valuation and evolution. It also discusses the list of important products and the ones in the pipeline. The competitive landscape is analyzed by understanding the approaches of the companies and the initiatives they have taken in recent years to triumph over the intensive competition.

Regional Analysis

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Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component Market 2020 Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trend and Forecast to 2025 – Galus…

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In Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component Market 2020 by Company, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025, the global market has been comprehensively analyzed and the results are presented in the market report published. The overview of the global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component industry is extensively researched in the report. The report spotlights on market size, market share, market segmentation, significant growth drivers, and market competition. The report reveals the market revenue earned by the different companies operating in the market. The research provides a detailed breakdown of the major aspect of the companies such as financial aspects, research including development. The report analyzes each segment in the market as well as opportunities.

NOTE: Our report highlights the major issues and hazards that companies might come across due to the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19.

Survey of Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component Market:

The report delivers extensive business summary and market growth analysis and discusses chain structure, industry environment, sales channels and distribution, and contemporary trends. The report highlights the market drivers, future opportunities, and restraints. The study then introduces effective manufacturing methods, production volume, manufacturing facilities, capacities, pricing analysis, product description. In order to fulfill the requirements, the industry analysts have examined the strategic activities of the competitors to help the major players increase their competitiveness.

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All the market players functioning in the global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component market are profiled in detail in the report. The list includes all the major players along with the distributors, retailers, and suppliers information. Details of the market players Blippar, Meta, Google, Daqri, Magic Leap, Eon Reality, Facebook, Intel, Himax Technologies, Microsoft, Vuzix, Osterhout Design Group (ODG), Sony, PTC, Samsung Electronics are also incorporated in the market report. Additionally, a detailed study of business strategies for the growth of the market market-leading players has been offered within the report.

Market segmentation by product: Hardware, Software

Market segmentation by application: Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component has been Consumer, Aerospace & Defense, Medical

The study provides an in-depth overview of country-level break-up classified as potentially high growth rate territory, countries with the highest market share in past and current scenario. Some of the regional break-up classified in the study are: North America (United States, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Russia and Italy), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Australia), South America (Brazil, Argentina), Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and South Africa)

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Global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Component Market 2020 Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trend and Forecast to 2025 - Galus...

Virtual Reality: A Boom in the World of Innovation Shaping the Future – News & Features

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Many of us think of science fiction films like 'Minority Report' when we talk about Virtual Reality (VR). The truth is that this technology nowadays blends completely in with our daily lives.

Video games, medicinal products, education... There's virtual reality everywhere. And it is here to stay. But what exactly is it?

Virtual Reality technology is a computer-generated environment with real-life scenes and objects, making the user feel immersed in their surroundings. This world is viewed by a computer known as a headset or helmet for Virtual Reality.

VR allows us to immerse ourselves as if we were one of the characters in video games, learn how to perform heart surgery, or improve the quality of sports training to maximize performance.

Although this may seem to be highly modern, the roots are not as new as we would think. Indeed, many believe that one of the first Virtual Reality devices was called Sensorama, a machine with an integrated seat that played 3D movies, gave off-odors, and generated vibrations to make the experience as vivid as possible. The design dates back to the mid-1950s.

Subsequent advances in hardware and applications over the next five years carried with them a radical change in both electronics and system architecture.

Virtual Reality is one of the technologies with maximum projected growth potential. Investment in VR and AR will increase 21-fold in the next four years, hitting 15.5 billion Euros by 2022, according to the new IDC Virtual Reality News (2018) estimates.

Both technologies will be essential to the digital transformation strategies of the businesses, and their investment in this area will surpass that of the consumer sector by 2019. In Europe, it is estimated that more than half of the larger European companies will have a VR and RA plan by 2020.

The industry today needs solutions that go beyond recreation, travel, or advertisement, and that is more accessible to consumers. There is also a need to develop computer interfaces to prevent flaws such as slicing, which lets some rigid objects look as though they can be pushed through.

And to reduce the symptoms VR causes in people, like motion sickness, which consists of dizziness caused by the difference between our body's orientation and what is seen in the virtual world. Big technology firms are now focusing on designing headsets that do not require cables and for displaying images in HD.

Big tech firms are developing 8 K headsets for Virtual Reality, with even more powerful processors. There's also speculation that they might incorporate Artificial Intelligence in the next few years.

Even the new 5 G standard has fascinating scenarios for VR evolution. This standard will allow connectivity between more devices and large user communities. Furthermore, its nearly invisible latency will enable consumers to receive images in real-time, almost as if they were seeing them with their own eyes.

Here are some of the most exciting virtual reality technology trends of 2020 about what's changed and what's coming over the horizon:

Early headsets used mobile phone screens that had never been designed to be viewed so close up this caused pixelated images and the 'screen-door' effect that reduced immersion. Since then, we've seen steady improvements in the quality and fidelity of the VR screens, and professional headsets such as Varjo and Pimax have twice or even four times the first-generation resolution offering '20:20' vision for a price!

More pixels need to render more processing power, especially when we want photorealistic graphics. Fortunately, GPU capacity was increasingly growing and foveated rendering techniques that allow the GPU to concentrate on only the part of the picture where the eye is centered helps a great deal.

It's just effortless wearing a headset in a single session for 30 minutes to an hour before our eyes get sore, restricting the VR apps. That's partly due to the rising headset weight and also due to 'goal range.'

When we focus on an object close up, our pupils align slightly as compared to far apart. The lens on current headsets has a single focal length, meaning we need to go 'cross-eyed' to focus outside of that length on objects.

Luckily Oculus has revealed new concept lenses that can change the focal point dynamically to where your eyes are looking. A promising by-product is that this also reduces the headset's scale and weight.

VR content is split down into versions 'desktop' and 'tethered' (the latter involving a PC). This offers users a very different degree of understanding, owing to the disparity in computing capacity between mobiles and PCs.

Oculus has also introduced a connect for their handheld Quest headset so that it can be used in both desktop and tethered mode, but that is just a part of the solution.

The rollout of superfast low latency 5G infrastructures ensures that we can overcome this issue by delivering content wirelessly to the headset in the cloud and downloading it. Google's Stadia also does this for mainstream games, and adding that to VR would be the next logical addition, while more changes to the methodology would be needed.

The broadcasting of headphone apps would reduce weight, expense, and power usage. While making it easier and cheaper to access content since it won't require downloading and installing individual applications. Instead, it would allow linked VR interactions with 'meta-verses' that we can switch seamlessly between while we currently browse internet services.

We believe this is potentially only 3-5 years away from commercial release. Still, it will pose several intriguing possibilities as well as concerns about who controls the channels on which we all view our modern environment.

Another issue with the VR experience was ease-of-use. Users had to learn how to use new handheld controllers while being blindfolded effectively. And with no programming language approved internationally, even each program behaved a little differently.

Luckily, strong programming practices for VR have been gradually converging, making them more intuitive. New controls such as the 'Knuckles' controller from Valve cleverly merge finger recognition with a creative interface that hangs from the hand, so it doesn't look like you are carrying it.

Next year, hand monitoring using cameras on the headset is becoming possible on commercial headsets. For specific applications like the one we designed for ANA, controllers are not needed at all.

Developments in speech recognition mean we say commands to AI characters or speak more naturally to them. If you want to look ahead, mind regulation is still arriving apps that can be programmed to follow commands already on the market.

All of this means more natural interactions this is what VR offers in the end.

One complaint about VR was that it might feel isolated, cut off from the real-world. New headsets allow you to smoothly cut through the system through cameras between the real-world and the virtual world.

The rise in headsets (6 m delivered in 2019, up 30 percent from last year) also means more internet users, and some of the most immersive interactions to date include playing and working together in Virtual Reality.

In other terms, you never need to be alone, single or isolated. A significant landmark here will be Facebook Horizon, a virtual world for VR users arriving next year.

You are also not limited to talking with animated characters; the new demonstrations feature photorealistic avatars representing nuanced facial gestures, look signals, and step in the not so distant future as you are arriving.

In deed, there is more to virtual Reality than a gimmick or just a fancy instrument. This technology is now built into our present reality, and it is poised to open up new opportunities and contribute to changes that will shape the future in the coming years.

Virtual Reality isn't science fiction any longer. It is an integral part of our modern world that you should not ignore, especially if you want to stay ahead of the curve in both your personal and professional life.

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Virtual Reality: A Boom in the World of Innovation Shaping the Future - News & Features

Global Impact of Covid-19 on Augmented and Virtual Reality Software and Service Market to Record Significant Revenue Growth During the Forecast Period…

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Agents of change: Chattanooga real estate pros never stop rethinking how the deals get done – Chattanooga Times Free Press

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The fundamentals of buying and selling real estate may not change much, but nearly everything about how the deals get done is transforming all the time. From 3D virtual reality home tours to buy-it-now cash transactions, agents have to get creative and stay ahead of market forces and intense competition.

"What I have realized over the last 19 years is that the market evolves rapidly, and you have to evolve faster than the market," says Mark Hite, whose team closed more than $83 million in real estate deals in 2019.

Current conditions don't make matters any easier. In June, there were about 2,300 real estate agents in the area and about 1,700 homes listed for sale. (Yes, there were more agents in the area than homes for sale.)

Historically low interest rates are fueling buyers' appetites, hundreds of people displaced by April tornados went looking for somewhere to live, and sellers' trepidation about listing homes during the coronavirus crisis have all combined to create an exceptionally crowded, competitive market.

But even outside of this time of tight inventory, real estate pros are always looking for ways to stand out.

Tech Support

From social media to virtual reality, technology has changed nearly everything about the business of buying and selling homes, says Matt McDonald, who works for the The Group Real Estate Brokerage. That said, the fundamentals of understanding what a client is looking for and helping them find it remain the same, he says.

"It's totally different, but it's the same, too," he says. "You go through the same steps, but things are different because the steps have all had a technological shift."

After 13 years in the real estate business, McDonald knows pictures speak volumes. So when he had a good year and a little extra cash, he invested about $5,000 in a Matterport camera that shoots 3D images and creates seamless virtual reality experiences for folks who want to tour properties remotely.

"The visual aspect of real estate marketing is perhaps the most important," McDonald says. "People don't envision their dream home when they look at a set of blueprints. They need visuals."

McDonald bought the camera in 2016 then the first of its kind on the Chattanooga real estate scene and had used it about 10 times a year for high-end homes. But when coronavirus hit and people became nervous about visiting properties, the fancy camera became central to his marketing strategy.

"I've done 20 in the last three months," says McDonald, who spends about an hour methodically capturing images for every 1,000 square feet of space. "I thought it was just exciting technology, but it has ended up being very valuable during the COVID-19 scare."

He recently used the camera to create a 3D tour of a $2.25 million riverfront penthouse full of custom furnishings and curated artworks. That's exactly the sort of place that is ripe for the Matterport treatment, McDonald says. The images are vividly detailed and not forgiving of any flaws, he says.

"If your home is not really ready to show, you don't want to use the Matterport," he says.

Social media has become another tech tool for attracting attention in a crowded market. Gary Crowe, owner of the Uptown Firm, uses social media and behind-the-scenes video storytelling to engage people whether or not they ever become clients. For example, Crowe posts videos of homes under development and asks for input on social media on tile choices, paint colors and other details.

"I use the ideas, I really love to do that," he says. "I really don't know what color I should paint this house, and some people have really clever ideas."

That interaction is one key to using social media in a way that stands out, Crowe says. Everyone uses social media to market their business, but much of the time he's not really trying to sell a specific house through those interactions, he says.

"Sometimes the house is already sold," he says. "People want to be part of the process. They don't want to be sold."

Those posts inviting input into decorating decisions have always brought a lot of engagement, but they've taken off recently, Crowe adds.

"Since COVID, everyone is staring at their phones and the interactions have really shot up," he says.

Buyers are more empowered than ever through online listings, which is a far cry from the days when an embargoed listing book came out every other week and buyers had to find an agent who would give them a peek, says Charlotte Mabry, who has been selling real estate for 34 years.

"In 1986, there was no computer, no cell phone, we would go at 11 at night and pass packets of paper to each other in the parking lot of Northgate Mall," Mabry laughs. "The listing information was in a book that came out every two weeks, and whoever had the truck in the office went and got those books for everybody."

Mabry uses Facebook Live videos and live radio to extend her reach. "That changed the feel of our listenership and viewership," she says. "Social media has really just blown up."

And in a market where so few homes are available, agents have to get creative, Mabry says.

"We have to go outside of the Multiple Listing and say, 'OK, I have a buyer that's going to move in a month, and I have to find them a house," she says. "That means knocking on doors, sending out mailers. That's just a fact of the marketplace right now."

Take a Matterport tour of the Penthouse at River Pier Landing: bit.ly/191ChestnutStreet

The home is listed by Anne-Marie Jolley with The Group Real Estate Brokerage

Buy It Now

In March, Hite started making as-is, cash offers to sellers who don't want to deal with the process of cleaning up and listing a property. The price he pays is lower than the price sellers might get on the open market, but it also spares them work they want to avoid.

For example, a home he recently bought in East Brainerd had years of deferred maintenance and needed wall-to-wall updates. Hite bought it for $190,000. He will spend $45,000 to fix it up, and then relist it at $289,000.

"This has been a huge success for us," says Hite, who has been selling real estate since 2002. "We're closing several a week. It's really starting to be a major force."

The reasons a seller will consider the buy-it-now option vary from busy young families who don't want to mess with the listing process to older homeowners who are ready to make the move to a lower-maintenance home, Hite says. People have also liked the as-is option because they don't want to show their homes in the age of COVID-19, he adds.

"One family, they have a 4-year-old and the wife is expecting and they didn't want people in their house," Hite says. "They're not making what they could make on the open market, but the ability to have peace of mind was worth it to them."

Hite leveraged his personal financial resources to launch the program because he felt strongly there was a need for it, he says.

"I was looking for the next item of change I could do to differentiate to help more people," he says.

It's been 15 years since Mabry started offering to buy any home she couldn't sell in 120 days, and she's only had to pay up four or five times, she says. As the market fluctuates, the appetite for those kinds of transactions does, as well, Mabry says.

The houses she bought after they didn't sell came in the 2009 to 2013 timeframe, when the market was hit hard by the housing crisis.

"When the market dropped in '07, '08, '09, you couldn't give a house away," she says. Now, with homes in short supply and mortgage rates in the basement, things look different.

"Today, if you came to me and said, 'I don't want to wait on the timeframe, would you buy my house?' I would absolutely buy your house," she says. "Though you might not like the price."

New Neighbors

Rocio Kemp spent a career in international logistics before she began selling real estate in 2017. The native of Costa Rica has carved out a niche helping first-time and Spanish-speaking homebuyers at a time when the local population is increasingly diverse.

"Chattanooga is a point of relocation these days," she says. "We have a growing population of Spanish-speaking people coming from Central or Latin America, and these people want to reach the American dream."

In a tight market where homes can be hard to come by, she focuses on helping people who may not know where to begin in their search, Kemp says.

"I love that, the ones that have been living here for 10 years, saving penny by penny, and now they see that they can buy a house after all," Kemp says. "My role is to make that dream come true because it's possible, it's attainable."

Josue and Ashley Fernandez met Kemp when they turned up at Buffalo Wild Wings in 2017 to watch the Costa Rican team play in a soccer match. He doesn't meet many fellow Costa Ricans here, and her jersey caught his eye, says Josue, who came to the United States in 2012 to play college soccer.

"I was not expecting anyone to know about that game," he says.

When Josue and Ashley, who met at Bryan College and married in December 2017, were ready to buy a house, they knew they wanted Kemp on the job. The rent on their apartment was about to jump to $1,100 a month, and it didn't make sense to keep paying that kind of money with no property to show for it, Josue says.

"We tried to build up our savings and reached out to her, and she told us about the different kinds of loans and a couple of contacts we could work with," Josue says.

Josue and Ashley bought their home in Brainerd in April 2019, and they've enjoyed being able to host friends and family a priority Kemp understood as she helped them house hunt, Josue says.

"Her passion is first-time homebuyers and so she really helped us with the different questions we had and eventually we got to the house we bought," Josue says.

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*Housing holds up: Scenic City housing market remains vibrant despite economic slowdown spurred by pandemic

*Going big ... Despite coronavirus, most large projects move ahead in Chattanooga

*Price Points: If you've got something to spend, the Chattanooga area offers a world of housing options

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Agents of change: Chattanooga real estate pros never stop rethinking how the deals get done - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Modest Tree awarded TISAX certification to support delivery of immersive AR and VR solutions for automotive industry – Auganix

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In Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality News

July 31, 2020 Modest Tree, a software development company specializing in augmented and virtual reality training for manufacturers, has recently announced that it has achieved Level 2 TISAX (Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange) certification to support and enhance the acceleration of immersive training for the automotive industry.

The TISAX standard was established in 2017 by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) based on ISO 27001 data and information security certification standards. Tailored specifically to the advanced security requirements of the automotive industry, TISAX is recognised internationally by automotive manufacturers and the entire supplier network, including companies such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Volkswagen.

Modest Tree stated that its TISAX certification is confirmation of its robust processes for maintaining the secure exchange of sensitive automotive manufacturing data. The automotive supply chain is now able to access a security credential that enables them to readily adopt and rollout immersive technology solutions as part of digitalization efforts.

As a result of the certification, Modest Tree stated that suppliers and manufacturers will now be able to engage with the company and benefit from its virtual and augmented reality services. Furthermore, the company added that it will allow it to meet current demand within the market from businesses wanting to adopt remote immersive solutions in order to support industrial training and product marketing. Modest Tree noted that this demand has also been accelerated within many sectors, including automotive, as a result of COVID-19.

Modest Trees acquisition of the TISAX certification represents an important milestone for the automotive industry to leverage immersive technology in their operations, stated Sam Sannandeji, CEO of Modest Tree. Modest Tree is now well-positioned to further accelerate the global use of immersive learning and marketing technologies across the automotive supply chain.

The company provides customized immersive solutions to a range of industries for delivery on any platform, including Microsoft HoloLens, virtual and mixed reality headsets, PC, Mobile (Android and iOS), and more.

Image credit: Modest Tree

About the author

Sam Sprigg

Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he covers news articles on both the AR and VR industries. He also has an interest in human augmentation technology as a whole, and does not just limit his learning specifically to the visual experience side of things.

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Modest Tree awarded TISAX certification to support delivery of immersive AR and VR solutions for automotive industry - Auganix

Augmented Realty and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market 2020 Global Outlook, Research, Trends and Forecast to 2025 – Express Journal

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The research report on Augmented Realty and Virtual Reality in Healthcare market comprises of insights in terms of pivotal parameters such as production as well as the consumption patterns alongside revenue estimations for the projected timeframe. Speaking of production aspects, the study offers an in-depth analysis regarding the manufacturing processes along with the gross revenue amassed by the leading producers operating in this business arena. The unit cost deployed by these producers in various regions during the estimated timeframe is also mentioned in the report.

The Augmented Realty and Virtual Reality in Healthcare market report highlights the significant growth drivers, opportunities, and challenges that will influence the growth trajectory of this industry vertical in the forthcoming years.

According to the document, the market is projected to record substantial gains, registering XX% CAGR over the study duration (20XX-20XX). With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing countries to enter an indefinite lockdown, majority of businesses are at a standstill. Apart from short-term revenue concerns, some industries are expected to face uncertainties even once the economy recovers from the pandemic.

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Augmented Realty and Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market 2020 Global Outlook, Research, Trends and Forecast to 2025 - Express Journal

Letter to out-of-school youth of blended learning – Philstar.com

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Letter to out-of-school youth of blended learning

Before K to 12, there was blended learning. Now that school as we know it, traditional face-to-face is indefinitely out until someone comes up with a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, there may be no other way to continue ones education but through blended means: a combination of indoor and outdoor, online and offline, giving credence to the gospel of hard knocks, claiming theyve learned as much if not more outside the classroom than in it.

Maybe nows the time to catch up with the classics theres only so much one can watch on Netflix, cable or free TV, and when thumbs get tired from Playstation what else can one do but twiddle them? By classics we mean the required reading from the old school, whether or not these be the tangible hard copy or digital soft, whichever is accessible, many of them having accompanying Cliff or Monarch notes for better understanding and analysis to guide discussions.

In the high school of the old days, there were, in fact, comics or graphic versions of the Rizal novels Noli and Fili, perhaps our first exposure to a kind of blended learning. And while Google and similar search engines have all but made the once-indispensable encyclopedia go the way of the dinosaur, there can still be found some quaint wonderment while perusing editions of Britannica or Book of Knowledge displayed on the creaky shelf indeed as if they were museum pieces.

Meanwhile the karaoke joints have all emptied, no one daring to pick up the mic or insert a coin into the machine, lyric book ready. Even the billiard halls are no longer the hangouts they once were, though in some backstreet dives in Mandaluyong the hustlers continue to hold fort, waiting for a chance to spring a quick buck. The chess puzzles on the sidewalks of Sta. Cruz mate in three for 20 pesos havent seen those in a while. Underneath the LRT, theres still a ghost of a chance of purchasing a Seamans Book, but what for? Many ships are in dry dock due to COVID.

But blended must continue, whether whisky rum or knowledge, or a combination thereof. Back In the day we learned as much drinking our first beers under an aratiles tree by Juniors sari-sari store in UP Village, trying to figure out what the acronym printed on our bottles stood for: Sa Aming Nayon, May isang Grupong Umiinom, Eh Lasing. Never did remember what Pale Pilsen meant, lost in the rap style burp of a buddy breaking into laughter.

These days on TV we catch the marathon hearings on whether to grant a franchise to ABS-CBN, which, as kids, we understood to be Alak, Babae, Sugal, Cabaret, Babae Na naman, and not at all associated with oligarchs. A chance here to get reacquainted with the Panatang Makabayan citizens oath, which an anti-oligarch pro-dictator congressman wanted the dual citizen broadcast owner to recite, in thought word and deed, how he loves the Philippines land of his parents birth. The home of his race, which has given him shelter and help in order to be strong, nationalistic and ever reliable.

Not everyone can have the comfort of drinking beer under an aratiles tree, at least not in places with lingering liquor ban under GCQ (gift certificates quarantine). Pag Aratiles Lang Eh Palibhasa Inumin Lang Sana Eh, No?

In the US the race riots unravel a deep-seated confusion. On home soil the Anti-Terror Bill debate has divided a COVID-wracked nation. The Philippine Collegian has just released a collectors edition which editors said could be the last in a long while in the time of virus and terror. If anyone has a spare copy you know where to send it, certainly not the last gasp of the fourth estate.

Back to the classics, then. Apart from Noli and Fili, we remember Hectors kid Astyanax thrown down the burning walls of Troy from where Aeneas fled with his father Anchises on his back. Which image was used by Nick Joaquin for the unseen painting in Portrait of the Artist as a Filipino. Whose other story, May Day Eve, is read aloud annually at a bookstore in Baguio City almost lost in the clouds. Blended with or without internet or Wi-Fi is the only way to go, for the tailor who thought he looked like Thomas Mann, and the portrait of the artist as a Mangyan. (Last two puns courtesy of Cesar Ruiz.)

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Letter to out-of-school youth of blended learning - Philstar.com

Macomb Center for the Performing Arts to host drive-in concert – C&G Newspapers

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Blues rocker Laith Al-Saadi will perform July 31 in a drive-in concert at the Macomb Center for Performing Arts in Clinton Township.

Photo by Doug Coombe

CLINTON TOWNSHIP Audiences might know Laith Al-Saadi from watching him perform at venues around the state, or maybe fans will recognize him from season 10 of The Voice on NBC.

This Friday, Al-Saadi and his band will bring their flavor of blues, soul and classic rock n roll to the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts for a drive-in concert from 7 to 8:30 p.m. If youre in the mood for some Memphis groove or could use a shot of classic rock, the show is for you.

The July 31 drive-in concert is a first for the Macomb Center as a way to provide live entertainment in a safe environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The center is located at 44575 Gareld Road, on the Macomb Community College Center Campus in Clinton Township.

First State Bank is presenting the concert, which will be held in parking lot no. 10, located on the west end of the campus, parallel to Dalcoma Road.

Tickets cost $45 per car, and the limit is four people per vehicle. Since the box office is currently closed, tickets are available online only at http://www.macombcenter.com.

Since March, Al-Saadi has been entertaining his followers through virtual shows at 8 p.m. Friday evenings from his Facebook page. The upcoming Macomb Center show will mark Al-Saadis second live performance since the shutdown; his first was at the Great Lakes Center for the Arts in the Petoskey area. Al-Saadi cant wait for showtime, something he has been missing since live music was mostly silenced due to the pandemic.

I am incredibly happy were still able to go forward with this new format. Im excited to play with the band, the Ann Arbor native said. Music is a unifying force. It puts smiles on peoples faces. It brings people together.

Al-Saadi has been bringing people together since age 4 when he joined the Boychoir of Ann Arbor. He also honed his talent on the local musical theater circuit and began playing piano although he admitted that he didnt practice. By the time he was a teen, Al-Saadi was writing songs and learning guitar.

I wanted to sit around the campfire singing Beatles songs with friends, the musician said. Al-Saadi also found his calling playing guitar and upright bass in the jazz program at Community High School in Ann Arbor.

It was bands like Led Zeppelin, Cream and Pink Floyd that influenced the budding musician, as did Motown artists and blues greats Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson.

At age 15, Al-Saadi was in a band known as Blue Vinyl, which cut a CD and once opened for bluesman Buddy Guy in Battle Creek. Before the show and carrying his Stratocaster, Al-Saadi knocked on Guys dressing room. For about 30 minutes, the pair bonded over stories about Chess Records and the Chicago blues.

He was excited about cultivating my love for the blues, Al-Saadi said.

Feeling he had nothing to lose, in 2016 Al-Saadi auditioned for The Voice, got on the show and was coached by Maroon 5s Adam Levine.

It gave me some good exposure and increased my gigs around Michigan, said the guitarist, who has played all around the country and even in the Netherlands. I was able to play live blues on national television. Adam was nice to work with. He was a cool guy.

The Voice also paved the way for him to perform on stage with Joe Walsh of the Eagles and Keith Urban on Walshs Rocky Mountain Way. Another highlight came in 2019, when Al-Saadi opened up for another homegrown artist Bob Seger, who also grew up in Ann Arbor. While having a pre-show conversation with Seger back-up singer Shaun Murphy, he met the Ramblin Gamblin Man himself.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said Laith, Laith, Al-Saadi recalled. I turned around and its Bob Seger. It was really wonderful to be tied in with that rock n roll history.

Event officials have set forth procedures for the concert that meet COVID-19 state-mandated guidelines. Only passenger vehicles will be admitted. Full size vans, recreational vehicles and trucks with campers are not permitted. No one may enter by foot, bicycle or motorcycle, and every vehicle must have a ticket. Attendees must present their printed ticket at the entrance tickets on phones will not be accepted.

Vehicles will be parked at the discretion of the event manager and within distanced markings. Vehicles with an overall height of over 5 feet, primarily pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles are to park in the back half of the parking area.

Attendees may open a rear hatch and sit if the hatch does not go higher than the roof of the vehicle. Those in attendance may sit in the bed of a pickup truck. Attendees must remain in their vehicles except to use the restrooms provided. When outside of a vehicle, concert-goers must wear masks and maintain six feet of distance from others.

Alcohol is not permitted, and all vehicle engines must be turned off until the end of the performance. Anyone not complying with the regulations or the directions of event staff will be asked to leave. The event is subject to change based on inclement weather conditions or a change in COVID-19 state regulations.

More information about the July 31 concert is available at http://www.macombcenter.com.

Link:

Macomb Center for the Performing Arts to host drive-in concert - C&G Newspapers