AMD: Cryptocurrency Mining Isn’t ‘A Long-Term Growth Driver … – CoinDesk

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Chip maker AMD has seen its sales buoyed in recent months by big demand for graphics cards by cryptocurrency miners.

According to its latest financial report, AMD recorded $1.22 billion in revenue duringthe second quarter of 2017, up 19% compared to the same period last year. This increase, the company said, is being spurred "by higher revenue in the computing and graphics segment."

Yet cryptocurrency mining isn't part of its long-term strategy for growth, accordingto Lisa Su, the firm's president and CEO, who remarked on the phenomenon during a Q2earnings call this week.

However, that state of affairs could change depending on how the situation progresses in the months ahead.

Su said during the call:

"Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand. But it's important to say we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward."

Mining is an energy intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain. In return for adding a new blocks, miners are awarded with new tokens, with the profits being derived from the difference between the energy expended and the prevailing exchange rate of those tokens.

Much of the demand for graphics cards, or GPUs, is being driven by ethereum miners. Bitcoin mining, by comparison, is accomplished through special-purpose computers designed for that singular purpose.

Graphics cardsimage via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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EXMO integrates Zcash cryptocurrency – newsBTC

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Because of the growing attention towards Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency, EXMO exchange reports about the launching of trades in four currency pairs at a time: ZEC/BTC, ZEC/USD,ZEC/EUR, ZEC/RUB.

28th July, EXMO cryptocurrency exchange expanded the list of financial instruments, having integrated Zcash (ZEC) cryptocurrency, which total market capitalization is estimated at $302 700 000. The cryptocurrency has gained users attention and trust because of the high degree of anonymity of transactions in the system and the simplicity of its mining.

Why its cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) that weve chozen? The decision to launch this cryptocurrency was based on the results of the survey, conducted earlier among active exchange users, according to which, Zcash (ZE) cryptocurrency took the first place.

New financial instruments of Zcash It should be noted that due to Zcash integration platform users are able now to perform trading operations for the most demanded currency pairs: ZEC/BTC, ZEC/USD, ZEC/EUR, ZEC/RUB. The deposit and the withdrawal are already accessible on the page Wallet.

Let us remind you, that EXMO cryptocurrency exchange has already added three new currency pairs: ETH/EUR, ETH/LTC, DASH/RUB and also promising WAVES token. In the near future the company is also planning to extend the list of financial trading instruments.

Follow our updates, that are published on EXMO trading platform in the News section and follow us on Telegram, Facebook, Twitter pages. Thank you for staying with us! Best regards, EXMO team

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EXMO integrates Zcash cryptocurrency - newsBTC

Vanished Cryptsy CEO ‘Big Vern’ Ordered to Pay $8M in Class Action Lawsuit – Bitcoin News (press release)

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This week Judge Kenneth Marra came to a conclusion in the District of Florida class action lawsuit against Paul Vernon and his company Project Investors (Cryptsy). According to the final default judgment, Vernon is liable for the principal sum of $8.2 million.

Also read:Fork Watch: Take Extra Precaution When Trying to Access Post-Fork Tokens

The curious case of the now defunct Cryptsy exchange has been a drawn out mystery for a very long time and is still not over. Back in January of 2016 the cryptocurrency trading platform Cryptsy said it was hacked for 13,000 BTC, and 300,000 LTC. Since then the founder of the exchange Paul Vernon, otherwise known as Big Vern, left his residency in Florida and allegedly is hiding out somewhere around Liaoning, China.

The Cryptsy operator has also managed to do some interviews with Floridas regional publication the Miami New Times. Vernon has denied any wrong doings and told the reporter he just regretted not being able to handle the hack the right way. Customers were not notified about the loss that happened in 2014 until the exchange was under water in 2016. Vernon and company operated the trading platform like a fractional reserve and hoped to pay the funds back but said bitcoins low price deterred that outcome. Since then Silver Law Group, Wites & Kapetan Law, two plaintiffs, and all others similarly situated started a class action lawsuit, No. 9:16-cv-80060, against Vernon and his exchange. There was also some involvement with the San Francisco-based exchange Coinbase.

Now U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra has cast judgment down upon Vernon by favoring the plaintiffs side. If Vernon is found and detained he will be liable for $8.2 million.

Plaintiffs motion for entry of final default judgment is granted, explains the court order.

Defendant Vernon is liable to the Plaintiff Class in the principal sum of $8,200,000.00, for which let execution issue forthwith.

Judge Kenneth Marra adds, prejudgment interest in the amount of $688,788.76 shall be awarded as interest on that principal sum from November 1, 2015, to the date of entry of this final judgment at the rate fixed by the Florida Department of Financial Services, as set forth by 55.03, Florida statutes.

Further, the order also details that 11,325 BTC that werestolen from the trading platform and their tethered wallets, are the property of the plaintiffs.

As of the date of this final judgment, and stored in the following cryptocurrency wallets, are property of the plaintiff class and subject to and encompassed within this final judgment

Vernons exact whereabouts are unknown, and if he is in China as is rumored, an extradition treaty will be difficult. Copies of the court order were sent to Vernons PO box in Delray Beach and his publicly known email.

Images via Bitcoin.com, District of FloridaCase 9:16-cv-80060-KAM Document 123, Pixabay, Cryptsysettlement.com and the Crypsty archives.

Have you seen our new widget service? It allows anyone to embed informative Bitcoin.com widgets on their website. Theyre pretty cool and you can customize by size and color. The widgets include price-only, price and graph, price and news, forum threads. Theres also a widget dedicated to our mining pool, displaying our hash power.

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Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/31/2017 New Consolidation – newsBTC

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Bitcoin price is stuck in consolidation as traders are biting their nails ahead of a big market catalyst.

Bitcoin Price Key Highlights

Bitcoin price is stuck in consolidation as traders are biting their nails ahead of a big market catalyst.

Technical Indicator Signals

The 100 SMA is crossing above the longer-term 200 SMA to signal that the path of least resistance is to the upside. This could mean that the triangle support could be more likely to hold as a floor than to break or that an upside break past the resistance around 2750 might be underway.

Note that the triangle formation spans 2200 to 2900 so the resulting breakout could last by the same amount. However, the moving averages might also be oscillating to signal that further consolidation is possible.

Stochastic is on its way down so bitcoin price might follow suit. RSI is also heading south to signal that sellers have the upper hand for now. But once both oscillators hit oversold levels and turn higher, buying pressure could return.

Also note that the triangle support is steeper compared to the resistance, which is also indicative of stronger buying pressure.

Market Factors

Traders are playing it safe ahead of the August 1 upgrade to SegWit as this could signal whether or not hard fork issues could continue to stay in place. Over the weekend, a number of exchanges already issued warnings to their clients about holding bitcoin deposits and the potential incompatibilities that may arise.

If the industry is able to emerge from this test unscathed, bitcoin price could be on its way to break past its record highs. On the other hand, weak support for the new version of the software could mean more losses for the cryptocurrency. Also, additional volatility is to be expected as the shift draws near as evidenced by the market reaction to the other weeks BIP 91 lock-in.

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Bitcoin Price Technical Analysis for 07/31/2017 New Consolidation - newsBTC

Amherst Baseball July Classic: Comets pull off wild comeback to win semifinal, but can’t muster same magic against … – Chronicle Telegram

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AMHERST After staging a dramatic seventh-inning rally just to earn a place in the finals of the inaugural Amherst Baseball July Classic on Sunday, the host Comets were forced to settle for the runner-up trophy.

Medinas Kyle Maruna threw a complete game six-hitter and Bryce Vogels single drove in Nathan Lucarelli with the winning run in the sixth inning as the Bees defeated Amherst 2-1 in the championship game.

The Comets scored their only run in the first inning when Jacob Lezon singled home Jake Hart, who drew a one-out walk. Amhersts inability to score over the final six innings overshadowed the fine performance of sophomore pitcher Justin Hritsko.

Hritsko worked out of trouble in almost every inning to hold the Bees to two runs. Although Hritsko allowed 12 hits, he forced the Bees to strand a runner in scoring position in every inning except the fifth.

When Hritsko wasnt pitching this weekend, he was playing shortstop where he turned in a number of fine defensive plays.

I was a little nervous pitching at this level, Hritsko said. I just went out and tried my hardest and threw strikes and allowed my defense to make outs. I feel like I really improved this weekend and hopefully showed I can play at a higher level.

Amherst was nearly a spectator at its own party as it trailed 5-4 going into its final at-bat in the semifinal against Willoughby South.

Against all odds, and thanks to the Rebels defense making a huge mental error, the Comets scored five runs with two outs in the top of the seventh inning to steal a 9-5 win.

With two outs and the bases loaded, senior Gabe Solak hit a popup to the left side of the infield for what looked to be the final out of the game. Instead, two Willoughby South fielders converged and both appeared to lose the ball in the sun. As the ball dropped harmlessly onto the infield dirt, Kyle Dalzall and Hart scored to put Amherst on top 6-5.

Junior Connon Emch followed with a triple down the right-field line to score two more runs. Then Emch stole home as Christian Velez, who walked after the triple, got caught in a rundown between first and second base.

The improvements I saw in our team from Wednesday to Sunday was just phenomenal, Amherst coach Matt Rositano said. Justin (Hritsko) pitched really well today. Some of our guys were seeing varsity pitching for the first time this weekend and they had good approaches at the plate. You could see the game really slow down for the young guys from the beginning of the week until today. I was very encouraged with what I saw this weekend.

Medina advanced to the championship game with a 7-5 win against Canal Fulton Northwest in Sundays other semifinal at Penfield.

Solak doubled to lead off the seventh inning against the Bees but Maruna retired the next three hitters in order to end the game.

Rositano said he intends to make the July Classic an annual event and hopefully expand the field beyond six days.

Ohio High School Athletic Association rules permit teams to play or practice together with their coaches for 10 days in the offseason between June 1 and July 31. With that in mind, Rositano said he is exploring the possibility of making next years July Classic a week-long event.

Contact Todd Shapiro at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.

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Amherst Baseball July Classic: Comets pull off wild comeback to win semifinal, but can't muster same magic against ... - Chronicle Telegram

Treatment of psoriasis – UpToDate

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Literature review current through: Jun 2017. | This topic last updated: Jun 28, 2017.

INTRODUCTIONPsoriasis is a common chronic skin disorder typically characterized by erythematous papules and plaques with a silver scale, although other presentations occur. Most cases are not severe enough to affect general health and are treated in the outpatient setting. Rare life-threatening presentations can occur that require intensive inpatient management.

This topic reviews the treatment of psoriatic skin disease. The epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and diagnosis of psoriatic skin disease are discussed in detail separately, as are psoriatic arthritis and the management of psoriasis in pregnant women and special populations. (See "Epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and diagnosis of psoriasis" and "Treatment of psoriatic arthritis" and "Pathogenesis of psoriatic arthritis" and "Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis" and "Management of psoriasis in pregnancy" and "Treatment selection for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in special populations".)

APPROACHPsoriasis is a chronic disease that can have a significant effect on quality of life. Therefore, management of psoriasis involves addressing both psychosocial and physical aspects of the disease.

Numerous topical and systemic therapies are available for the treatment of the cutaneous manifestations of psoriasis. Treatment modalities are chosen on the basis of disease severity, relevant comorbidities, patient preference (including cost and convenience), efficacy, and evaluation of individual patient response [1]. Although medication safety plays an important role in treatment selection, this must be balanced by the risk of undertreatment of psoriasis, leading to inadequate clinical improvement and patient dissatisfaction [2,3].

Psychosocial aspectsPsoriasis can be a frustrating disease for the patient and the provider. The clinician needs to be empathetic and spend adequate time with the patient. It may be helpful for the clinician to touch the patient when appropriate to communicate physically that the skin disorder is neither repulsive nor contagious.

Clinicians should lay out reasonable aims of treatment, making it clear to the patient that the primary goal of treatment is control of the disease. Although treatment can provide patients with high degrees of disease improvement, there is no cure for psoriasis.

Educating the patient about psoriasis is important and referral to an organization such as the National Psoriasis Foundation (www.psoriasis.org) is often helpful.

Psoriasis may affect patients' perceptions of themselves and this can potentially initiate or exacerbate psychological disorders such as depression [4,5]. Patients with limited skin disease may still have significant psychosocial disability [6]. Some patients with psoriasis may benefit from counseling and/or treatment with psychoactive medications.

Choice of therapyFor most patients, the initial decision point around therapy will be between topical and systemic therapy. However, even patients on systemic therapy will likely continue to need some topical agents. Topical therapy may provide symptomatic relief, minimize required doses of systemic medications, and may even be psychologically cathartic for some patients.

For purposes of treatment planning, patients may be grouped into mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe disease categories. Limited, or mild-to-moderate, skin disease can often be managed with topical agents, while patients with moderate-to-severe disease may need phototherapy or systemic therapy. The location of the disease and the presence of psoriatic arthritis also affect the choice of therapy. Psoriasis of the hand, foot, or face can be debilitating functionally or socially and may deserve a more aggressive treatment approach. The treatment of psoriatic arthritis is discussed separately. (See "Treatment of psoriatic arthritis".)

Moderate-to-severe psoriasis is typically defined as involvement of more than 5 to 10 percent of the body surface area (the entire palmar surface, including fingers, of one hand is approximately 1 percent of the body surface area [7]) or involvement of the face, palm or sole, or disease that is otherwise disabling. Patients with more than 5 to 10 percent body surface area affected are generally candidates for phototherapy or systemic therapy, since application of topical agents to a large area is not usually practical or acceptable for most patients. Attempts to treat extensive disease with topical agents are often met with failure, can add cost, and lead to frustration in the patient-clinician relationship.

There is ample evidence of efficacy of the newer systemic therapies ("biologics"); however, cost is a major consideration with these agents. Established therapies such as methotrexate and phototherapy continue to play a role in the management of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. (See 'Biologic agents' below.)

The management of patients with extensive or recalcitrant disease is a challenge even for experienced dermatologists. However, the availability of biologic medications has reduced the challenge considerably.

The concept that many patients with psoriasis in the United States do not receive sufficient treatment to control the disease is suggested by an analysis of surveys performed by the National Psoriasis Foundation between 2003 and 2011 [2]. Among the 5604 survey respondents with psoriasis, 52 percent expressed dissatisfaction with their treatment. Many patients received no treatment, including 37 to 49 percent of respondents with mild psoriasis, 24 to 36 percent of respondents with moderate psoriasis, and 9 to 30 percent of respondents with severe psoriasis. Further studies will be useful for clarifying the reasons for these observations and for determining the value of interventions to increase the accessibility of treatment.

Widespread pustular disease requires aggressive treatment, which may include hospitalization. Therapeutic approaches to generalized pustular psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis are discussed separately. (See "Pustular psoriasis: Management" and "Treatment of psoriatic arthritis".)

Mild-to-moderate diseaseLimited plaque psoriasis responds well to topical corticosteroids and emollients. Alternatives include vitamin D analogs, such as calcipotriene and calcitriol, tar, and topical retinoids (tazarotene). For facial or intertriginous areas, topical tacrolimus or pimecrolimus may be used as alternatives or as corticosteroid sparing agents, though improvement may not be as rapid. Localized phototherapy is another option for recalcitrant disease.

Combinations of potent topical corticosteroids (table 1) and either calcipotriene, calcitriol, tazarotene, or UVB phototherapy are commonly prescribed by dermatologists. Calcipotriene in combination with Class I topical corticosteroids is highly effective for short-term control. Calcipotriene alone can then be used continuously and the combination with potent corticosteroids used intermittently (on weekends) for maintenance. A combination product containing calcipotriene and betamethasone dipropionate is available for this use. With proper adherence, considerable improvement with topical therapies may be seen in as little as one week, though several weeks may be required to demonstrate full benefits.

Because adherence to topical treatment can be a major hurdle, keeping the treatment regimen simple and using treatment vehicles that the patient finds acceptable is often beneficial [8].

Severe diseaseSevere psoriasis requires phototherapy or systemic therapies such as retinoids, methotrexate, cyclosporine, apremilast, or biologic immune modifying agents. Biologic agents used in the treatment of psoriasis include the anti-TNF agents adalimumab, etanercept, and infliximab, the anti-interleukin (IL)-12/23 antibody ustekinumab, and the anti-IL-17 antibody secukinumab. Improvement usually occurs within weeks. Patients with severe psoriasis generally require care by a dermatologist.

Intertriginous psoriasisIntertriginous (inverse) psoriasis should be treated with class VI and VII low potency corticosteroids (table 1) due to an increased risk of corticosteroid-induced cutaneous atrophy in the intertriginous areas. Topical calcipotriene or calcitriol and the topical calcineurin inhibitors tacrolimus or pimecrolimus are additional first-line treatments [9,10]. These agents may be used alone or in combination with topical corticosteroids as corticosteroid sparing agents for long term maintenance therapy. Calcipotriene, tacrolimus, and pimecrolimus are more expensive options than topical corticosteroids. Some concerns have been raised about the safety of the calcineurin inhibitors (see 'Calcineurin inhibitors' below and "Epidemiology, clinical manifestations, and diagnosis of psoriasis", section on 'Inverse psoriasis').

Scalp psoriasisThe presence of hair on the scalp can make topical treatment of psoriasis challenging because patients may find certain products messy or difficult to apply. Recognizing the patient's preference for a drug vehicle may help to improve adherence to therapy. For many patients, lotion, solution, gel, foam, or spray vehicles are preferable to thicker creams or ointments.

Topical corticosteroids are the primary topical agents used for psoriasis on the scalp [11]. Support for the use of these agents is evident in a systematic review of randomized trials that found that very potent or potent topical corticosteroids are more effective treatments for scalp psoriasis than topical vitamin D analogs [12]. Combining a corticosteroid and vitamin D analog may offer additional benefit; in the systematic review, combination treatment with a potent topical corticosteroid and a vitamin D analog appeared slightly more effective than potent topical corticosteroid monotherapy. However, in clinical practice, complicating the treatment regimen with more than one topical product may reduce the likelihood of consistent adherence to the treatment regimen. Thus, we usually prescribe a topical corticosteroid alone as initial therapy. Commercial betamethasone dipropionate-calcipotriene combination products are available, but are more expensive than most topical corticosteroid preparations.

Other topical therapies used for psoriasis (eg, tazarotene, coal tar shampoo, anthralin) and intralesional corticosteroid injections also may be beneficial for scalp involvement, though data on efficacy specifically in scalp disease are limited [11]. Salicylic acid can be a helpful adjunctive treatment because of its keratolytic effect. Phototherapy (eg, excimer laser) and systemic agents are additional treatment options for patients who cannot achieve sufficient improvement with topical agents [11].

Guttate psoriasisThe management of guttate psoriasis is reviewed separately. (See "Guttate psoriasis", section on 'Treatment'.)

Generalized pustular psoriasisThe management of generalized pustular psoriasis is reviewed separately. (See "Pustular psoriasis: Management".)

Localized pustular psoriasisLocalized pustular psoriasis (palms and soles) is difficult to treat. Approaches include potent topical corticosteroids and topical bath psoralen plus UVA phototherapy (PUVA). (See "Psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA) photochemotherapy".)

Data are limited on the use of systemic retinoids for localized pustular psoriasis. However, these drugs appear to be particularly effective in the treatment of pustular psoriasis, and we consider them first line therapy. Acitretin is the retinoid that is used most often for this indication. Acitretin is a potent teratogen and should not be used in women who might become pregnant. Pregnancy is contraindicated for three years following acitretin therapy. (See 'Retinoids' below.)

Nail psoriasisAlthough nail involvement alone is uncommon, many patients with psoriasis have disease that involves the nails. The management of nail psoriasis is reviewed in detail separately. (See "Nail psoriasis", section on 'Treatment'.)

Erythrodermic psoriasisThere is no high quality evidence to support specific recommendations for the management of erythrodermic psoriasis. Based upon data from open-label or retrospective studies and case reports, a panel of experts suggested that patients with severe, unstable disease should be treated with cyclosporine or infliximab due to the rapid onset and high efficacy of these agents [13]. Patients with less acute disease can be treated with acitretin or methotrexate as first-line agents. The panel advised against the use of systemic glucocorticoids due to the perceived potential for these drugs to induce a flare of psoriasis upon withdrawal of therapy. (See 'Systemic therapies' below.)

Data are limited on the efficacy of biologic agents other than infliximab for the treatment of erythrodermic psoriasis. Etanercept was effective in an open-label study of 10 patients [14], and case reports have documented successful treatment with adalimumab and ustekinumab [15,16].

In general, patients with erythrodermic psoriasis should be cared for by a dermatologist and may require hospitalization and/or combinations of systemic treatments. Topical therapies, such as mid-potency topical corticosteroids, emollients, wet dressings, and oatmeal baths can be used in concordance with systemic treatment to manage symptoms [13]. Long-term maintenance therapy for psoriasis is required.

ChildrenThe immediate and long-term adverse effects of therapies for psoriasis are of particular concern in the pediatric population. Many agents used in the treatment of adult psoriasis have also been used for children [17]. However, high quality studies on the efficacy and safety of therapies for psoriasis in children are limited. Guidelines for the treatment of children based upon the available evidence have been published [18].

Special populationsThe treatment of psoriasis in pregnant women and patients with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, human immunodeficiency virus infection, latent tuberculosis, or malignancy is reviewed separately. (See "Treatment selection for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in special populations" and "Management of psoriasis in pregnancy".)

ReferralReferral to a dermatologist should be considered in the following settings:

Confirmation of the diagnosis is needed.

The response to treatment is inadequate as measured by the clinician, patient, or both.

There is significant impact on quality of life.

The primary care clinician is not familiar with the treatment modality recommended such as PUVA, phototherapy, or immunosuppressive medications.

The patient has widespread severe disease.

In cases of psoriatic arthritis, referral and/or collaboration with a rheumatologist is indicated. (See "Treatment of psoriatic arthritis".)

TOPICAL THERAPIESPatient adherence may be the largest barrier to treatment success with topical therapies [8]; early patient follow-up (within a week of initiating treatment) may improve adherence. Published guidelines for the treatment of psoriasis with topical therapies are available [19].

EmollientsHydration and emollients are valuable and inexpensive adjuncts to psoriasis treatment. Keeping psoriatic skin soft and moist minimizes the symptoms of itching and tenderness. Additionally, maintaining proper skin hydration can help prevent irritation and thus the potential for subsequent Koebnerization (development of new psoriatic lesions at sites of trauma).

The most effective are ointments such as petroleum jelly or thick creams, especially when applied immediately after a hydrating bath or shower.

CorticosteroidsTopical corticosteroids remain the mainstay of topical psoriasis treatment despite the development of newer agents [20]. The mechanism of action of corticosteroids in psoriasis is not fully understood. Corticosteroids exert antiinflammatory, antiproliferative, and immunosuppressive actions by affecting gene transcription.

The inherent potency of a topical corticosteroid is frequently reported using a I to VII scale based on vasoconstrictive assays (table 1). Although ointments are sometimes thought to be inherently more effective because of their occlusive properties, this is not uniformly correct. In practice, the efficacy/potency of a topical corticosteroid is dependent on many factors including skin type, plaque thickness, and, perhaps most importantly, compliance.

To minimize adverse effects and maximize compliance, the site of application needs to be considered in choosing the appropriately potent corticosteroid:

On the scalp or in the external ear canal, potent corticosteroids in a solution or foam vehicle (eg, fluocinonide 0.05% or clobetasol propionate 0.05%) are frequently indicated. Clobetasol 0.05% shampoo or spray can also be used for scalp involvement.

On the face and intertriginous areas, a low potency cream (eg, hydrocortisone 1%) is often sufficient.

For thick plaques on extensor surfaces, potent preparations (eg, betamethasone 0.05% or clobetasol propionate 0.05%) are often required.

The typical regimen consists of twice daily application of topical corticosteroids. Most patients will show a rapid decrease in inflammation with such therapy, but complete normalization of skin or lasting remission is unpredictable.

Topical corticosteroids generally can be continued as long as the patient has thick active lesions. Skin atrophy from topical corticosteroids usually is not a problem unless the medication is continuously applied after the skin has returned to normal thickness. Once clinical improvement occurs, the frequency of application should be reduced [19]. For patients in whom lesions recur quickly, topical corticosteroids can be applied intermittently (such as on weekends only) to maintain improvement. The addition of non-corticosteroid topical treatments can also facilitate the avoidance of long-term daily topical corticosteroids. (See 'Mild-to-moderate disease' above.)

The risks of cutaneous and systemic side effects associated with chronic topical corticosteroid use are increased with high potency formulations. Data support limiting the continuous application of Class I topical corticosteroids to two to four weeks; thus, close clinician supervision should be employed if longer treatment durations are required (table 1) [19]. Data are less clear regarding treatment durations for less potent topical corticosteroids. Side effects of topical corticosteroids, including the potential for suppression of the hypothalamic axis, are discussed separately. (See "Pharmacologic use of glucocorticoids" and "General principles of dermatologic therapy and topical corticosteroid use".)

The cost of topical corticosteroids varies widely. The price of a 60 gram tube of a potent corticosteroid brand name product can be hundreds of dollars. There are generic preparations in each potency class that have reduced the cost somewhat, though generic prices in the United States are rising [21]. Examples of available generics include, in order of increasing potency, hydrocortisone 1%, triamcinolone 0.1%, fluocinonide 0.05%, betamethasone dipropionate 0.05%, and clobetasol 0.05%.

Different formulations have been developed in an effort to enhance the delivery of topical corticosteroids. Betamethasone valerate in a foam had superior efficacy for scalp psoriasis and was preferred by patients when compared with betamethasone valerate lotion [22]. The foam becomes a liquid on contact with skin and is also well tolerated by patients with trunk and extremity psoriasis [23]. A clobetasol propionate spray is also available; like foams, sprays are easy to apply to large areas [24]. The main advantage of these newer preparations is likely greater patient acceptance, which may translate into greater adherence; the main disadvantage is cost.

Topical vitamin D analogsTopical vitamin D analogs for the treatment of psoriasis include calcipotriene (calcipotriol), calcitriol, and tacalcitol. Although topical vitamin D analogs are effective as monotherapy for some patients, a systematic review found that combination therapy with a topical corticosteroid is more effective than either treatment alone [25].

Until 2009, calcipotriene was the only topical vitamin D analog available in the United States. Calcipotriene is obtainable as a cream, solution, ointment, or foam, or as a combination ointment, suspension, or foam with betamethasone dipropionate. Topical calcitriol ointment has been prescribed in Europe for years, and is now available in the United States. When compared with calcipotriene, calcitriol appears to induce less irritation in sensitive areas of the skin (eg, skin folds) [26].

CalcipotrieneCalcipotriene (calcipotriol) is an established therapy in psoriasis. The precise mechanism is not clear, but a major effect is the hypoproliferative effect on keratinocytes [27]. An immune modulating effect has been postulated for calcipotriene, but has not been shown to be significant in psoriasis to date [28].

In a systematic review of randomized controlled trials, calcipotriene was at least as effective as potent topical corticosteroids, calcitriol, short contact dithranol, tacalcitol, coal tar and combined coal tar 5%, allantoin 2%, and hydrocortisone 0.5% [29]. Only potent topical corticosteroids appeared to have comparable efficacy at eight weeks. Skin irritation is the main adverse event associated with calcipotriene.

Combined use of calcipotriene and superpotent corticosteroids has demonstrated increased clinical response and tolerance in clinical trials compared with either agent used alone [30-32]. One regimen employed daily use of both calcipotriene ointment and halobetasol ointment for two weeks, followed by weekend use of the halobetasol ointment and weekday use of calcipotriene [30]. This regimen produced six-month remission maintenance in 76 percent compared with 40 percent with weekend halobetasol alone. A similar regimen with calcipotriene ointment and clobetasol propionate foam also appears to be effective [33].

In addition, a randomized trial found that a preparation that combines calcipotriene with betamethasone dipropionate (0.064%) was effective with once daily usage, and more effective than once daily therapy with either betamethasone or calcipotriene [34]; this combination preparation typically costs more than $400 for a 60 g tube. Patients who use topical corticosteroids in combination with calcipotriene must be monitored for adverse effects as with corticosteroid monotherapy. (See 'Corticosteroids' above.)

Thus, topical calcipotriene may be used as an alternative or adjunct to topical corticosteroid therapy. It is applied twice daily when used as monotherapy. No controlled trials guide how best to use topical corticosteroids in conjunction with calcipotriene. Once daily use of each may be adequate. Acidic products can inactivate topical calcipotriene, and some topical corticosteroids may be acidic. A reasonable approach to combination therapy is to have patients apply topical calcipotriene and topical corticosteroids each once daily at different times of day.

Other than skin irritation, side effects of topical calcipotriene are usually minimal; the risk of hypercalcemia is low when the drug is used appropriately [35]. However, topical calcipotriene is more expensive than many generic potent corticosteroids.

CalcitriolThe mechanism of action of calcitriol is thought to be similar to that of calcipotriene and involves the drug's ability to inhibit keratinocyte proliferation and stimulate keratinocyte differentiation [36]. In addition, calcitriol inhibits T-cell proliferation and other inflammatory mediators [36]. In two randomized trials with a total of 839 patients with mild to moderate plaque psoriasis, calcitriol 3 mcg/g ointment was more effective than vehicle [37]. At the end of the study periods (up to eight weeks), 39.6 and 32.7 percent of the calcitriol groups versus 21.2 and 12 percent of the vehicle groups exhibited at least marked global improvement.

In a systematic review, calcipotriene and calcitriol were equally effective [25]. However, on sensitive areas of the skin, calcitriol appears to be less irritating than calcipotriene. An intraindividual randomized trial of 75 patients compared treatment with calcitriol 3 mcg/g ointment to calcipotriene 50 mcg/g ointment for mild to moderate psoriasis on facial, hairline, retroauricular, and flexural areas [26]. Perilesional erythema, perilesional edema, and stinging or burning sensations were significantly lower in the areas treated with calcitriol. A 52-week open-label study of the safety of calcitriol ointment did not reveal an adverse effect on calcium homeostasis [38].

Similar to calcipotriene, calcitriol ointment is more expensive than many generic potent topical corticosteroids. The drug is applied twice daily.

TarThe use of tar is a time-honored modality for treating psoriasis, although newer (and less messy) treatment options have reduced its popularity. The precise mechanism of action of tar is not known; it has an apparent antiproliferative effect.

Tar can be helpful as an adjunct to topical corticosteroids. There are no commercially available corticosteroid/tar combinations. Tar products are available without a prescription in the form of shampoos, creams, lotions, ointments, and oils. Newer products include a solution and a foam. Some patients may prefer the less messy formulations.

Tar can also be compounded into creams and ointments. A commonly used compound is 2% or 3% crude coal tar in triamcinolone cream 0.1% applied twice daily to individual plaques. An alternative is 4 to 10% LCD (liquor carbonis detergens, a tar distillate) in triamcinolone cream or ointment, used similarly. A preparation of 1% tar in a fatty-acid based lotion may be superior to conventional 5% tar products [39] and appears to have efficacy similar to that of calcipotriene [40].

Topical tar preparations, including shampoos, creams, and other preparations, can be used once daily. Patients should be warned that tar products have the potential to stain hair, skin, and clothing. It may help to use them at night and wear inexpensive night clothes (eg, old pajamas) as they tend to be messy. Patients may also find the odor of tar products unpleasant.

For shampoos, the emphasis should be on making sure the product reaches the scalp. Tar shampoo should be left in place for 5 to 10 minutes before rinsing it out.

TazaroteneTazarotene is a topical retinoid that was safe and effective in two randomized, vehicle-controlled trials that included 1303 patients with psoriasis [41]. The 0.1% cream was somewhat more effective than 0.05% cream, but with a slightly higher rate of local side effects. Another study found that once daily administration of tazarotene gel, 0.05% or 0.1%, compared favorably with the twice daily administration of topical fluocinonide 0.05% [42]. Absorption of tazarotene was minimal over the 12-week course of the study, suggesting that systemic toxicity is unlikely during long-term therapy. A small uncontrolled study of short contact tazarotene found that a 20 minute application followed by washing appeared to be less irritating than traditional use, and seemed to have similar efficacy [43]. Irritation limits use of tazarotene by itself; the irritation is reduced by concomitant treatment with a topical corticosteroid [44].

Calcineurin inhibitorsTopical tacrolimus 0.1% and pimecrolimus 1% are effective in the treatment of psoriasis [45-48]. Facial and intertriginous areas may be well suited to these treatments, which can allow patients to avoid chronic topical corticosteroid use:

An eight-week randomized trial in 167 patients ages 16 and older found that twice daily treatment to intertriginous and facial lesions with tacrolimus 0.1% ointment resulted in more patients achieving clearance of lesions or excellent improvement compared with placebo (65 versus 32 percent) [49].

An eight-week randomized trial in 57 adults with moderate to severe inverse psoriasis found that twice daily treatment with pimecrolimus 1% cream resulted in more patients clearing or almost clearing lesions compared with placebo (71 versus 21 percent) [50].

Topical tacrolimus and pimecrolimus are generally well tolerated when used to treat facial and intertriginous psoriasis [49,50]. However, corticosteroid therapy may be more effective, at least compared with pimecrolimus. This was suggested in a four-week randomized trial in 80 patients with intertriginous psoriasis that compared various therapies applied once daily [51]. Betamethasone valerate 0.1% was more effective than pimecrolimus 1%.

In 2005, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert about a possible link between topical tacrolimus and pimecrolimus and cases of lymphoma and skin cancer in children and adults [52], and in 2006 placed a "black box" warning on the prescribing information for these medications [53]. No definite causal relationship has been established; however, the FDA recommended that these agents only be used as second line agents for atopic dermatitis. Subsequent studies have not, however, found evidence of an increased risk of lymphoma [54,55]. (See "Treatment of atopic dermatitis (eczema)", section on 'Topical calcineurin inhibitors'.)

AnthralinTopical anthralin (also known as dithranol) is an effective treatment for psoriasis that has been utilized since the early 20th century [56-58]. The mechanism of action of anthralin in psoriasis is not well understood, but may involve antiinflammatory effects and normalization of keratinocyte differentiation [19].

Skin irritation is an expected side effect of anthralin that can limit the use of this therapy. This side effect and the ability of anthralin to cause permanent red-brown stains on clothing and temporary staining of skin have contributed to a decline in the use of anthralin therapy.

In order to minimize irritation, anthralin treatment is usually prescribed as a short-contact regimen that is titrated according to patient tolerance. For example, treatment may begin with concentrations as low as 0.1% or 0.25% applied for 10 to 20 minutes per day, with weekly step-wise increases in duration to reach a total contact time up to one hour [59]. Then, weekly, serial increases in the concentration of anthralin can be performed (eg, 0.5, 1, and 2%) based upon patient tolerance and lesion response.

In the United States, anthralin is commercially marketed only as a 1% or 1.2% cream or a 1% shampoo. Thus, in the outpatient setting in the United States, the initial treatment regimen often consists of 1% or 1.2% anthralin applied for 5 to 10 minutes per day. Subsequently, the application time is titrated up to 20 to 30 minutes as tolerated.

Application to surrounding unaffected skin should be avoided to minimize irritation. For patients with well-defined plaques, petrolatum or zinc oxide may be applied to the surrounding skin as a protectant prior to application. After the desired contact period has elapsed, anthralin should be washed off the treated area [19].

Benefit from anthralin therapy is often evident within the first few weeks of therapy. When administered by patients in the outpatient setting, anthralin is less effective than topical vitamin D or potent topical corticosteroid therapy [25,60,61].

ULTRAVIOLET LIGHTUltraviolet (UV) irradiation has long been recognized as beneficial for the control of psoriatic skin lesions. As an example, patients often notice improvement in skin lesions during the summer months. UV radiation may act via antiproliferative effects (slowing keratinization) and anti-inflammatory effects (inducing apoptosis of pathogenic T-cells in psoriatic plaques). In choosing UV therapy, consideration must be given to the potential for UV radiation to accelerate photodamage and increase the risk of cutaneous malignancy.

Phototherapy and photochemotherapy require the supervision of a dermatologist trained in these treatment modalities. The American Academy of Dermatology has provided guidelines for the treatment of psoriasis with ultraviolet light [62]. Despite high efficacy and safety, the use of office-based phototherapy has declined in the United States because of administrative issues and the development of new systemic medications [63].

ModalitiesTherapeutic doses of ultraviolet light can be administered in several ways:

Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation (290 to 320 nm) is used in patients with extensive disease, alone or in combination with topical tar. The mechanism of action of UVB is likely through its immunomodulatory effects [64]. Patients receive near-erythema-inducing doses of UVB at least three times weekly until remission is achieved, after which a maintenance regimen is usually recommended to prolong the remission.

Narrow band UVB (311 nm) is an alternative to standard (broadband- 290 to 320 nm) UVB in the treatment of psoriasis. Suberythemogenic doses of narrow band UVB are more effective than broadband UVB in clearing plaque psoriasis [65]. Apoptosis of T cells is also more common with 311 nm than with broadband UVB.

Photochemotherapy (PUVA) involves treatment with either oral or bath psoralen followed by ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation (320 to 400 nm) under strict medical supervision. UVA penetrates deeper into the dermis than UVB and does not have the latter's potential for burning the skin. A number of possible mechanisms have been postulated to explain PUVA's effects [66]. With oral PUVA, patients ingest the photosensitizing drug, 8-methoxypsoralen, followed within two hours by exposure to UVA; this sequence is performed three times weekly in increasing doses until remission, then twice or once weekly as a maintenance dose. With bath PUVA, the psoralen capsules are dissolved in water, and affected skin (hands, feet, or total body) is soaked for 15 to 30 minutes prior to UVA exposure. There are few data on the comparative efficacy of oral and bath PUVA for psoriasis. A small open randomized trial of 74 patients with moderate to severe psoriasis did not find a significant difference in efficacy between the two treatments [67]. Additional studies are necessary to confirm this finding.

Some patients take psoralen prior to coming into the office or clinic for PUVA. Increased photosensitivity is typically present starting one hour after an oral dose and resolves after eight hours. Pre and post treatment photoprotection (eg, hat, sunscreen, sun protective goggles) are critical in preventing serious burn injury to the skin and eyes from being outside. (See "Psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA) photochemotherapy".)

Pretreatment emollients have long been thought to improve results with UVB. However, while thin oils do not impede UV penetration, emollient creams can actually inhibit the penetration of the UV and should not be applied before treatment [68]. Gentle removal of plaques by bathing does help prior to UV exposure.

Uncertainty remains about the comparative efficacy of UVB phototherapy and PUVA photochemotherapy for plaque psoriasis. Randomized trials comparing the efficacy of narrowband UVB to PUVA have yielded inconsistent findings [69]. The convenience of not needing to administer a psoralen prior to treatment is a favorable feature of UVB phototherapy.

Home phototherapyAn alternative to office-based phototherapy is the use of a home ultraviolet B (UVB) phototherapy unit prescribed by the treating clinician [70]. This option may be preferred by patients who are not in close proximity to an office-based phototherapy center, whose schedules do not permit frequent office visits, or for whom the costs of in-office treatment exceed those of a home phototherapy unit. Home units cost about $3000, but may prove cost-effective in the long term, particularly when compared with biologic therapies. Insurance coverage of these units varies.

For some dermatologists, uncertainty regarding the safety of home units has led to a reluctance to prescribe them. Some have expressed concern for the potential for improper or excessive usage of these devices [71]. In contrast, a randomized trial of 196 subjects found that narrowband UVB administered via home units was as safe and effective as office-based treatments [71]. Home phototherapy units that are equipped with electronic controls that allow only a prescribed number of treatments are available and may help to mitigate clinician concerns.

Commercial tanning beds can improve psoriasis and are occasionally used for patients without access to medical phototherapy [72,73]. However, data are limited on this mode of treatment, and clinicians and patients should be cognizant that there is significant variability in the UV output of tanning beds [74].

Excimer laserAnother development in ultraviolet therapy for psoriasis involves use of a high energy 308 nm excimer laser. The laser allows treatment of only involved skin; thus, considerably higher doses of UVB can be administered to psoriatic plaques at a given treatment compared with traditional phototherapy. Uncontrolled trials suggest that laser therapy results in faster responses than conventional phototherapy [75,76]. As an example, one study of excimer laser therapy involved 124 patients with stable mild to moderate plaque psoriasis, of whom 80 completed the entire protocol [75]. Treatments were scheduled twice weekly. After 10 or fewer treatments, 84 and 50 percent of patients achieved the outcomes of 75 percent or better and 90 percent or better clearing of plaques, respectively. This number of treatments was far fewer than that typically required of phototherapy (25 or more). Side effects of laser therapy included erythema and blistering; these were generally well tolerated, and no patient discontinued therapy because of adverse effects.

A common sequela of excimer laser therapy is the induction of UV-induced hyperpigmentation (tanning) in treated areas, which can be cosmetically distressing for some patients. Hyperpigmentation resolves after the discontinuation of treatment.

Like 311 nm UVB, the excimer laser represents a therapeutic advance toward specific wavelength therapies for psoriasis. While both the excimer laser and narrow band UVB are approved for use in psoriasis, inconsistencies in third party coverage for these treatments limit their utilization.

Cancer riskA concern with PUVA is an increased risk of nonmelanoma skin cancer and melanoma. Ongoing monitoring is indicated in patients who have received prolonged courses of PUVA. In general, phototherapy is contraindicated in patients with a history of melanoma or extensive nonmelanoma skin cancer. (See "Psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA) photochemotherapy", section on 'Skin cancer'.)

Folate deficiencyFolate deficiency has been associated with health disorders such as neural tube defects in fetuses of affected pregnant women, anemia, and hyperhomocysteinemia (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease). In an in vitro study, exposure of plasma to UVA led to a 30 to 50 percent decrease in the serum folate level within 60 minutes [77]. However, folate deficiency secondary to UVA exposure has not been proven to occur in vivo. In a small randomized trial of healthy subjects, no difference in serum folate levels was identified between subjects irradiated with UVA for six sessions and untreated subjects [78]. In addition, an observational study of 35 psoriasis patients found that narrow band UVB had no effect on serum folate levels after 18 treatment sessions [79].

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Treatment of psoriasis - UpToDate

Barcelona, Real Madrid fans from around the world travel to Miami for El Clasico – Sun Sentinel

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Donoban Escobar stared into the side mirror of the white pickup truck, applying the finishing touches to his Barcelona face paint.

Beneath the red and blue stripes coating nearly every inch of his skin was a smile.

Im not the biggest Barcelona fan, Escobar, 15, said. But I like [Lionel] Messi.

The last time he was at Hard Rock Stadium, nearly two years ago, he was painting a different teams colors across his face the white and blue of his native Honduras, who was playing England in an international friendly match.

But on Saturday, about four hours before FC Barcelona was set to play Real Madrid in Miami for the first ever United States rendition of El Clasico, there was no blue and white in sight. Instead, Escobar blended into the swarm of red and blue Messi jerseys walking toward the stadium.

Off to the side, wedged in a crowd near the entrance of the El Clasico fan zone, two white jerseys stood out.

Victor Ramirez, 22, and Carlos Risso, 21, had just noticed why hundreds of people were rushing to a nearby fence, camera phones in their hands.

Its Hugo Sanchez! Ramirez yelled to Risso. They pushed to the front to take a picture.

The two friends were both born in Mexico, and Sanchez, 59, who won five La Liga scoring titles, is widely considered the best Mexican soccer player ever.

In their white Real Madrid jerseys, the two snapped pictures of Sanchez and huddled together to look at their phones. Their 11 1/2 hour drive from their home in South Carolina was worth it.

Its El Clasico, man, Ramirez said with a smile.

Risso said he started following Real Madrid when he was 14. Ramirez said he has been a fan of the Spanish club forever. They bought tickets for Saturdays game three months ago, all to see their favorite player in person.

Ronaldo, the two said simultaneously.

Ramirez said he was disappointed when he found out Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo wouldnt be participating in El Clasico because of his busy schedule, but there were more than enough star players on both teams to keep them excited during their Friday drive down to Miami.

But while Ronaldo was noticeably absent from Saturdays game, his jerseys werent.

His signature home-white uniform dotted the crowd milling about the fan zone, and covered the backs of most of the Real Madrid fans waiting in line to take pictures with the teams European Cup trophy outside Hard Rock Stadium.

But the jersey was hard to find on the Barcelona side of the fan zone, where fans were waiting in a similar line, hundreds of people long, to take pictures with Barcelonas silver Champions League trophy.

Fadi Jamaleddin, 24, and his brother, Jadi, 20, waited in the line for 40 minutes. They left with three new pictures on their phones and two blue Barcelona foam fingers.

The two flew into Miami at 12 a.m. on Saturday morning from their home in New Mexico. They were both born in Venezuela, but said they have been Barcelona fans since they were 2 years old.

I like their style, Fadi said.

In Venezuela, Fadi grew up playing futbol calle jero, or street soccer, for 16 years. He said he has gone to a few Venezuelan national team soccer games, and even watched Brazil play Argentina during a World Cup.

But Saturday was his first time seeing Barcelona.

I grew up playing soccer every day, Fadi said. So this is special.

iacohen@sun-sentinel.com or Twitter @icohenb

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Barcelona, Real Madrid fans from around the world travel to Miami for El Clasico - Sun Sentinel

Couple takes retirement 20 years early to travel the world – Tulsa World

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Megan and Jim Luetkemeyer learned how precious life is the hard way.

Jims friend died from a heart attack at the age of 34, and Megans dad died three weeks after receiving an esophageal cancer diagnosis.

A loss like that puts everything in perspective, Jim Luetkemeyer, 42, said. We lost some people, and we had some people have some scary times that made us think we are saving for retirement, what are we really saving for? Is this saving for a point when we are 60 or 70 or 80? Are we going to be able to enjoy that retirement?

They reacted and didnt look back. Almost a year ago, they decided to travel to 32 countries and more than 100 cities across the world.

The loss of the Luetkemeyers loved ones wasnt the only thing that pushed them into what theyve called their 1 year retirement venture. Both had come to a stand-still in their careers.

Jim, a native of Okeene, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State graduate, managed a team at a public relations firm, and Megan, 37, was a genetic counselor at an obstetrics and gynecology office at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. They had found success and contentment at their jobs, but they were yearning for a change.

While having drinks with friends, Jim jokingly proposed the couple should travel the world for a year, thinking Megan would call his bluff.

I said, That sounds like a great idea. How can we make that work? she asked.

The silly-turned-serious exchange spring-boarded the couple into two months of nonstop logistical planning. They would take the down payment they had saved for a house and retire for a year, with the knowledge their permanent retirement would be pushed back.

They each made a list with 10 to 15 of their must-see destinations and asked Facebook friends for suggestions. They didnt disclose their complete travel plans.

When they proposed the idea to friends and family, the feedback was unanimous.

Jim, that is everybodys dream, Betty Luetkemeyer, Jims 86-year-old mother, said when he told her about his plan. If there is anyway to do that, you should do that.

Barbara Allen, the best woman in Jims wedding, said it was the wackiest thing she could have conceived for him to do because he is a very thoughtful, structured, analytical person.

I said, OK, crazy, go for it, Allen said in a phone interview.

The couple did receive some wide-eyed looks from people when they heard they were going to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week together for a year after only being married a year.

Ultimately, everyone was supportive of their decision.

Every person that we talked to was like, Its a great idea, I wanted to do that when I was at this point in my career, Jim said.

The universal approval gave the couple an added boost of confidence. Jim started finding direct flights from the couples main destinations to cities along the way and their route started taking shape.

He also, to Megans amusement, talked about packing for the trip like NASA packs for a mission.

Eight days worth of clothing and three pairs of shoes were strategically placed into two matching black Patagonia duffel bags. They made strict no souvenirs and if something comes in, something must go out rules.

I kind of laughed at him during these conversations, but when we were in India and it was over 100 degrees out and we were carrying those packs I was glad we didnt have those extra pounds, Megan said.

Last July, Jim and Megan put in their two-week notice on the same day to keep each other accountable to sticking to their plan. Their bosses were surprised but excited for each of them, they said.

The night before their first flight, Megan walked out of her office for the last time with a box in her hands. They sold their car, handed over their apartment keys to a renter and made a run to storage to pack away the last of their belongings.

The morning of their first flight, the couple felt like bush league travelers, Jim said.

Megan threw away her boarding pass and lost her phone an hour before they were supposed to board. They also packed away their headphones in their checked luggage.

Maybe the most stressful part of the trip was the first day, and then it got better from there, he said.

After making their first stops in Colorado and the Virgin Islands to visit friends and family, about a month into the trip, Jim and Megan were on their own.

They quickly realized no matter where they were, kindness was in abundance. They formed some international friendships, as well.

We were in Cape Town wine tasting and we were at a big table and sat next to a couple and started talking maybe for 15 minutes or so, Megan said. They were from Scotland and later in the year we met up with them and they showed us around their town in Aberdeen.

Not only did the Scottish couple show the Luetkemeyers around their town, but also invited them to stay at their home and cooked them dinner.

The couple smiled as they said their adventure was filled with many similar experiences.

During their eight-day boat tour of the Galapagos Islands, for instance, they made friends with a woman from Frankfurt, Germany, and a couple from Munich. They met up with both later in the trip.

They also made an effort to get out of their comfort zone.

They laughed thinking back to flying through Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on the back of Vespas through sheets of rain for a food tour and marveled at the kindness of one Japanese woman who abandoned her commute to work to walk them back in the right direction.

No one covers entertainment, food and restaurants, and things to do like the Tulsa Worlds Scene and Weekend. For a limited time, get a digital subscription for just $3.95 a month. Sign up now at tulsaworld.com/subscribe.

It was uncomfortable at times, it was stressful at times, it got a little crazy and frustrating at times, but I dont even have an inkling of regret, Jim said.

As the trip went on, the couple got better at logging the places they stayed, the sights they saw and the food they indulged in. The log they made helped them make travel guides for friends who are traveling to Japan and Machu Picchu.

The best meal of the trip was a pork dish with a potato dumpling topped with gravy the owner of a hotel in Nuremberg, Germany, told them to order.

We ate really well in places that were very modest, Jim said.

They made a pact to avoid three dollar sign restaurants and stuck to it. A picture of the two eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches with salt-and-vinegar chips in Cannes, France, on their blog is a perfect embodiment of their commitment to make frugal choices.

They are happy to report the total spending for their trip came in about 25 percent under their allotted budget.

Jim and Megan landed in the U.S. on July 12 at the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City.

Before heading back to D.C., they decided to spend their last month of the trip in Oklahoma researching jobs, as Jim has family throughout the state. He hasnt been back for an extended stay for about 20 years.

The couple made a stop to visit Jims mother, who is happy theyre home and glad they went, she said. Although, she did wake up every morning to check her Find My Friends app so she could see where her son and daughter-in-law were staying.

Really and truly, I didnt think they would make the whole year, she said in a phone interview. I thought surely they will get tired and come home, but they made the whole year and I thought it was great.

The only changes Jims mother can detect is that he drinks coffee now when he didnt when they left. He also has grown a beard.

The next step for the couple is like a row of dominoes find a job, maybe that gets us an apartment at the same time and then depending on where the apartment is will determine when we get a car, Jim said.

In regards to how the trip affected their marriage, Megan said, I think having the time to just be together was so nice because we had the time to learn things that I dont know necessarily if we would have with our day-to-day life.

There were times when we would bicker a little bit, but we knew we were in this together so we got through it together, Jim said.

Looking back on the past year of travel, the couple learned steady employment isnt everything, Jim said.

The fears you have about where you are in your career and how everything is going to work out ultimately always works out, he said. If doing something like this makes sense for you, dont let inertia be the force that makes you keep doing what youre doing.

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Couple takes retirement 20 years early to travel the world - Tulsa World

Guy Pens Epic Love Letter to His Girlfriend After Traveling the World With Her – Travel+Leisure

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Traveling the world with your life partner isnt for the faint of heart; for many couples, a vacation together can be the make or break moment in a relationship.

For traveler Kyle James, the experience of jetting off to new destinations with his girlfriend Ashley proved to be a life-changing experience, so much so that he decided to write a book about it.

Related:Couples That Travel Together Have a Deeper Connection, Better Sex

In his debut book, Not Afraid of the Fall: 114 Days Through 38 Cities in 15 Countries, James shares theunvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey that started when they quit their jobs and bought one-way tickets to Paris. And while the entire book is worth the read, it is the dedication page that has everyone buzzing.

My sweet Ash, without your push, we never would have fallen, the dedication begins.

You always dreamed of traveling the world. When we began dating, it was all you talked about. You told me how you couldnt wait to get out of this small college town, how you couldnt wait to experience life through a different lens.

In a poignant letter, James shares with the world just how special his relationship is with his girlfriend Ashley, and just how much she changed his life forever, explaining that it was her who convinced him that the 9-to-5 office grind wouldnt ultimately bring the pair happiness.

A few weeks into the new job and I hated it. It was not what the job I thought it was and I came home feeling lost. I had worked so hard for years to get to this point and it turned out it was not what I wanted to do with my life. You sat me down on the couch, looked me in the eye, and told me you had a great idea.

James letter continues by expressing his sheer gratitude toward Ashley for believing in him and for pushing him into the great unknown. Then, the letter ends with a simple question.

Related: The 50 Best Romantic Getaways

Read the entire letter below, but perhaps grab a few tissues first, as youll certainly need them by the end.

My sweet Ash,

Without your push, we never would have fallen.

You always dreamed of traveling the world. When we began dating, it was all you talked about. You told me how you couldnt wait to get out of this small college town, how you couldnt wait to experience life through a different lens.

When we graduated from college, you wanted to celebrate 16 years of schooling by traveling together. I told you we had new careers to start and that these were our prime years. I told you that we didnt have the time or money to travel the world just yet and asked that we wait a while. You listened to me.

We settled on moving to Denver to start our careers. You filled young minds with love and letters as a kindergarten teacher, and I raised money to teach kids financial literacy for a large nonprofit.

Each year at midnight, as we toasted our cheap Champagne and kissed softly to the background noise of cheering New Years Eve patrons, you asked me to travel the world with you. You asked me to take you to romantic corners of Prague and intimate islands in Thailand. You asked me to spend miserable sunburned nights with you in Italy and long days under beach cabanas in the Greek Isles. Each year you asked me and each year I gave you a reason why we should wait. I told you we needed more work experience. You listened to me.

One year later, I was offered a new job, my dream job. When I came home with the news, you looked like you had the air knocked out of you. I could see that you were devastated. Your eyes began to glisten as you smiled and congratulated me on accepting what I had worked so hard for. Now we can take epic vacations! I assured you. But we both knew that what we had talked about for years and what you had been dreaming about your whole life had just slipped away from us.

A few weeks into the new job and I hated it. It was not what the job I thought it was and I came home feeling lost. I had worked so hard for years to get to this point and it turned out it was not what I wanted to do with my life. You sat me down on the couch, looked me in the eye, and told me you had a great idea.

I was afraid to leave the comfort of our lives in Denver but waking up to your smiling face every morning, eager to explore, assured me that everything was going to be OK. It was hard for me to embrace our journey during the many sleepless nights in the sweltering Tuscan heat and exhausting back-to-back travel days in the jungles of Thailand, but by conquering these trials and tribulations together, we fell deeper in love because all we had was each other. When we got home, I was afraid of not finishing my book about our travels, or not being able to find a publisher, but you urged me to keep writing. Ash, you are the wind to my sails and the ink to my pen. No matter where I go or what I do, the only thing I am sure of is that I want you by my side. Every cliff I jump off, every moped I crash, every morning after a night of food poisoning, every Mediterranean sunset, I want you by my side. I never want to stop exploring with you, Ash.

Will you marry me?

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Guy Pens Epic Love Letter to His Girlfriend After Traveling the World With Her - Travel+Leisure

Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism’s faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite – The Conversation UK

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Distant Earth.

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.

They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedom we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or advance our cognitive capacities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions. Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this convergence may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.

Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology that we should embrace self-directed human evolution. If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankinds attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankinds nature to better serve its fantasies.

As David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+, says:

If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves. If we want eternal life, then well need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the world. Compassion alone is not enough.

But there is a darker side to the naive faith that Pearce and other proponents have in transhumanism one that is decidedly dystopian.

There is unlikely to be a clear moment when we emerge as transhuman. Rather technologies will become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body. Technology has long been thought of as an extension of the self. Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems, are already largely machine-based. There is much to learn from these evolving human/machine hybrid systems.

Yet the often Utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of these developments have been under-interrogated. The profound changes that lie ahead are often talked about in abstract ways, because evolutionary advancements are deemed so radical that they ignore the reality of current social conditions.

In this way, transhumanism becomes a kind of techno-anthropocentrism, in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology. They see it as a controllable, malleable tool that, with the correct logic and scientific rigour, can be turned to any end. In fact, just as technological developments are dependent on and reflective of the environment in which they arise, they in turn feed back into the culture and create new dynamics often imperceptibly.

Situating transhumanism, then, within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which it emerges is vital to understanding how ethical it is.

Max More and Natasha Vita-More, in their edited volume The Transhumanist Reader, claim the need in transhumanism for inclusivity, plurality and continuous questioning of our knowledge.

Yet these three principles are incompatible with developing transformative technologies within the prevailing system from which they are currently emerging: advanced capitalism.

One problem is that a highly competitive social environment doesnt lend itself to diverse ways of being. Instead it demands increasingly efficient behaviour. Take students, for example. If some have access to pills that allow them to achieve better results, can other students afford not to follow? This is already a quandary. Increasing numbers of students reportedly pop performance-enhancing pills. And if pills become more powerful, or if the enhancements involve genetic engineering or intrusive nanotechnology that offer even stronger competitive advantages, what then? Rejecting an advanced technological orthodoxy could potentially render someone socially and economically moribund (perhaps evolutionarily so), while everyone with access is effectively forced to participate to keep up.

Going beyond everyday limits is suggestive of some kind of liberation. However, here it is an imprisoning compulsion to act a certain way. We literally have to transcend in order to conform (and survive). The more extreme the transcendence, the more profound the decision to conform and the imperative to do so.

The systemic forces cajoling the individual into being upgraded to remain competitive also play out on a geo-political level. One area where technology R&D has the greatest transhumanist potential is defence. DARPA (the US defence department responsible for developing military technologies), which is attempting to create metabolically dominant soldiers, is a clear example of how vested interests of a particular social system could determine the development of radically powerful transformative technologies that have destructive rather than Utopian applications.

The rush to develop super-intelligent AI by globally competitive and mutually distrustful nation states could also become an arms race. In Radical Evolution, novelist Verner Vinge describes a scenario in which superhuman intelligence is the ultimate weapon. Ideally, mankind would proceed with the utmost care in developing such a powerful and transformative innovation.

There is quite rightly a huge amount of trepidation around the creation of super-intelligence and the emergence of the singularity the idea that once AI reaches a certain level it will rapidly redesign itself, leading to an explosion of intelligence that will quickly surpass that of humans (something that will happen by 2029 according to futurist Ray Kurzweil). If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal could an AI destroy humankind from a desire to produce the most paperclips for example?

Its also difficult to conceive of any aspect of humanity that could not be improved by being made more efficient at satisfying the demands of a competitive system. It is the system, then, that determines humanitys evolution without taking any view on what humans are or what they should be. One of the ways in which advanced capitalism proves extremely dynamic is in its ideology of moral and metaphysical neutrality. As philosopher Michael Sandel says: markets dont wag fingers. In advanced capitalism, maximising ones spending power maximises ones ability to flourish hence shopping could be said to be a primary moral imperative of the individual.

Philosopher Bob Doede rightly suggests it is this banal logic of the market that will dominate:

If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it. And so whose designs will our successor post-human artefacts likely bear? I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way. So the commercial imperative would be the true architect of the future human.

Whether the evolutionary process is determined by a super-intelligent AI or advanced capitalism, we may be compelled to conform to a perpetual transcendence that only makes us more efficient at activities demanded by the most powerful system. The end point is predictably an entirely nonhuman though very efficient technological entity derived from humanity that doesnt necessarily serve a purpose that a modern-day human would value in any way. The ability to serve the system effectively will be the driving force. This is also true of natural evolution technology is not a simple tool that allows us to engineer ourselves out of this conundrum. But transhumanism could amplify the speed and least desirable aspects of the process.

For bioethicist Julian Savulescu, the main reason humans must be enhanced is for our species to survive. He says we face a Bermuda Triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature. As a transhumanist, Savulescu extols technological progress, also deeming it inevitable and unstoppable. It is liberal democracy and particularly our moral nature that should alter.

The failings of humankind to deal with global problems are increasingly obvious. But Savulescu neglects to situate our moral failings within their wider cultural, political and economic context, instead believing that solutions lie within our biological make up.

Yet how would Savulescus morality-enhancing technologies be disseminated, prescribed and potentially enforced to address the moral failings they seek to cure? This would likely reside in the power structures that may well bear much of the responsibility for these failings in the first place. Hes also quickly drawn into revealing how relative and contestable the concept of morality is:

We will need to relax our commitment to maximum protection of privacy. Were seeing an increase in the surveillance of individuals and that will be necessary if we are to avert the threats that those with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism, represent through their access to radically enhanced technology.

Such surveillance allows corporations and governments to access and make use of extremely valuable information. In Who Owns the Future, internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:

Troves of dossiers on the private lives and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are packaged into a new private form of elite money It is a new kind of security the rich trade in, and the value is naturally driven up. It becomes a giant-scale levee inaccessible to ordinary people.

Crucially, this levee is also invisible to most people. Its impacts extend beyond skewing the economic system towards elites to significantly altering the very conception of liberty, because the authority of power is both radically more effective and dispersed.

Foucaults notion that we live in a panoptic society one in which the sense of being perpetually watched instils discipline is now stretched to the point where todays incessant machinery has been called a superpanopticon. The knowledge and information that transhumanist technologies will tend to create could strengthen existing power structures that cement the inherent logic of the system in which the knowledge arises.

This is in part evident in the tendency of algorithms toward race and gender bias, which reflects our already existing social failings. Information technology tends to interpret the world in defined ways: it privileges information that is easily measurable, such as GDP, at the expense of unquantifiable information such as human happiness or well-being. As invasive technologies provide ever more granular data about us, this data may in a very real sense come to define the world and intangible information may not maintain its rightful place in human affairs.

Existing inequities will surely be magnified with the introduction of highly effective psycho-pharmaceuticals, genetic modification, super intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prosthetics, and the possible development of life expansion. They are all fundamentally inegalitarian, based on a notion of limitlessness rather than a standard level of physical and mental well-being weve come to assume in healthcare. Its not easy to conceive of a way in which these potentialities can be enjoyed by all.

Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks of the new logics of expulsion, that capture the pathologies of todays global capitalism. The expelled include the more than 60,000 migrants who have lost their lives on fatal journeys in the past 20 years, and the victims of the racially skewed profile of the increasing prison population.

In Britain, they include the 30,000 people whose deaths in 2015 were linked to health and social care cuts and the many who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire. Their deaths can be said to have resulted from systematic marginalisation.

Unprecedented acute concentration of wealth happens alongside these expulsions. Advanced economic and technical achievements enable this wealth and the expulsion of surplus groups. At the same time, Sassen writes, they create a kind of nebulous centrelessness as the locus of power:

The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive a great distance from their oppressors The oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks, and machines with no obvious centre.

Surplus populations removed from the productive aspects of the social world may rapidly increase in the near future as improvements in AI and robotics potentially result in significant automation unemployment. Large swaths of society may become productively and economically redundant. For historian Yuval Noah Harari the most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: what should we do with all the superfluous people?

We would be left with the scenario of a small elite that has an almost total concentration of wealth with access to the most powerfully transformative technologies in world history and a redundant mass of people, no longer suited to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and entirely dependent on the benevolence of that elite. The dehumanising treatment of todays expelled groups shows that prevailing liberal values in developed countries dont always extend to those who dont share the same privilege, race, culture or religion.

In an era of radical technological power, the masses may even represent a significant security threat to the elite, which could be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions (perhaps enabled further by a culture of surveillance).

In their transhumanist tract, The Proactionary Imperative, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska argue that we are obliged to pursue techno-scientific progress relentlessly, until we achieve our god-like destiny or infinite power effectively to serve God by becoming God. They unabashedly reveal the incipient violence and destruction such Promethean aims would require: replacing the natural with the artificial is so key to proactionary strategy at least as a serious possibility if not a likelihood [it will lead to] the long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.

The extent of suffering they would be willing to gamble in their cosmic casino is only fully evident when analysing what their project would mean for individual human beings:

A proactionary world would not merely tolerate risk-taking but outright encourage it, as people are provided with legal incentives to speculate with their bio-economic assets. Living riskily would amount to an entrepreneurship of the self [proactionaries] seek large long-term benefits for survivors of a revolutionary regime that would permit many harms along the way.

Progress on overdrive will require sacrifices.

The economic fragility that humans may soon be faced with as a result of automation unemployment would likely prove extremely useful to proactionary goals. In a society where vast swaths of people are reliant on handouts for survival, market forces would determine that less social security means people will risk more for a lower reward, so proactionaries would reinvent the welfare state as a vehicle for fostering securitised risk taking while the proactionary state would operate like a venture capitalist writ large.

At the heart of this is the removal of basic rights for Humanity 1.0, Fullers term for modern, non-augmented human beings, replaced with duties towards the future augmented Humanity 2.0. Hence the very code of our being can and perhaps must be monetised: personal autonomy should be seen as a politically licensed franchise whereby individuals understand their bodies as akin to plots of land in what might be called the genetic commons.

The neoliberal preoccupation with privatisation would so extend to human beings. Indeed, the lifetime of debt that is the reality for most citizens in developed advanced capitalist nations, takes a further step when you are born into debt simply by being alive you are invested with capital on which a return is expected.

Socially moribund masses may thus be forced to serve the technoscientific super-project of Humanity 2.0, which uses the ideology of market fundamentalism in its quest for perpetual progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated aim of godlike capabilities in Humanity 2.0 is overt, as opposed to the undefined end determined by the infinite progress of an ever more efficient market logic that we have now.

Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious limitations to what humans can achieve are social and cultural not technical. However, all too often their reframing of politics falls into the same trap as their techno-centric worldview. They commonly argue the new political poles are not left-right but techno-conservative or techno-progressive (and even techno-libertarian and techno-sceptic). Meanwhile Fuller and Lipinska argue that the new political poles will be up and down instead of left and right: those who want to dominate the skies and became all powerful, and those who want to preserve the Earth and its species-rich diversity. It is a false dichotomy. Preservation of the latter is likely to be necessary for any hope of achieving the former.

Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value progress and efficiency above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes. Where we stand on questions of social justice and environmental sustainability has never been more important. Technology doesnt allow us to escape these questions it doesnt permit political neutrality. The contrary is true. It determines that our politics have never been important. Savulescu is right when he says radical technologies are coming. He is wrong in thinking they will fix our morality. They will reflect it.

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Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism's faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite - The Conversation UK

UT Austin’s New Supercomputer Stampede2 Storms Out of the … – UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

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In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $30 million award to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin to acquire and deploy a new large-scale supercomputing system, Stampede 2, as a strategic national resource to provide high-performance computing capabilities for thousands of researchers across the U.S. Photo courtesy of Texas Advanced Computing Center

AUSTIN, Texas The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin has launched Stampede2, the most powerful supercomputer at any U.S. university and one of the most powerful in the world.

For 16 years, the Texas Advanced Computing Center has earned its reputation for innovation andtechnological leadership, said Gregory L. Fenves, president of UT Austin.It is only fitting thatTACC has designed and now operates the most powerful supercomputer at any university in the U.S., enabling scientists and engineers to take on the greatest challenges facing society.

Made possible by a $30 million award from the National Science Foundation, Stampede2 is the newest strategic resource for the nations academic community and will enable researchers nationwide from all disciplines to answer questions that cannot be addressed through theory or experimentation alone and that require high-performance computing power.

Researchers will be able to use a wide range of applications, from large-scale simulations and data analyses using thousands of processors simultaneously, to smaller computations or interacting with Stampede2 through web-based community platforms.

Stampede2 represents a new horizon for academic researchers, said Dan Stanzione, TACCs executive director. It will serve as the workhorse for our nations scientists and engineers, allowing them to improve our competitiveness and ensure that UT Austin remains a leader in computational research for the national open science community.

Phase 1 of the system, which is complete, ranked as the 12th most powerful supercomputer in the world on the June Top500 list. Later this summer, Phase 2 will add additional hardware and processors, giving it a peak performance of 18 petaflops, or 18 quadrillion mathematical operations per second. The system will have about the equivalent processing power of 100,000 desktop computers one for every seat in UT Austins Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Stampede2 will be the largest supercomputing resource available to researchers through the NSF-supported Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, which will allocate time on the supercomputer to researchers based on a competitive peer-review process.

"NSF is proud to join with UT Austin in supporting the nation's academic researchers in science and engineering with the latest in advanced computing technology and expertise," said Irene Qualters, NSF division director for advanced cyberinfrastructure. "Stampede2's capabilities will complement and significantly expand the diverse portfolio of computing resources increasingly essential to exploration at the frontiers of science and engineering."

The system continues the important service to the scientific community provided by Stampede1 also supported by NSF which operated from 2013 to 2017 at TACC. Over the course of its existence, that system ran 8 million compute jobs in support of tens of thousands of researchers and more than 3,000 science and engineering projects.

Stampede2 will double the peak performance, memory, storage capacity and bandwidth of its predecessor, but it will occupy half as much physical size and consume half as much power. It will be integrated into TACCs ecosystem of more than 15 advanced computing systems, providing access to long-term storage, scientific visualization, machine learning and cloud computing capabilities. In addition to its massive scale, the new system will be among the first to employ the most advanced computer processor, memory, networking and storage technology from its industry partners DELLEMC, Intel and Seagate.

TACC staff members worked since January to construct Stampede2 in TACCs data center, and they deployed the system ahead of schedule. Since April, researchers have used the system to conduct large-scale scientific studies of gravitational waves, earthquakes, nanoparticles, cancer proteins and severe storms.

A number of universities will collaborate with TACC to provide cyberinfrastructure expertise and services for Stampede2. The partner institutions are Clemson University, Cornell University, Indiana University, Ohio State University and the University of Colorado.

The system comes online at a time when the use of NSF-supported research cyberinfrastructure resources is at an all-time high across all science and engineering disciplines. Since 2005, the number of active institutions using research cyberinfrastructure has doubled, the number of principal investigators has tripled, and the number of active users has quintupled.

Stampede2 will help a growing number of scientists access computation at scale, powering discoveries that change the world, Stanzione said.

Video is available here:https://youtu.be/HoGek4lgl-M.

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UT Austin's New Supercomputer Stampede2 Storms Out of the ... - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

Chinese scientists created the largest virtual universe – Engadget

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Simulations of the cosmos can help astronomers look for the most promising regions of space to investigate and could shed light on its mysterious components, like dark matter and dark energy. The Chinese team's simulation, in particular, recreated the birth and early expansion of the universe, around tens of millions years after the Big Bang. Unfortunately, they had to stop after they reached that point: Team leader Gao Liang said the supercomputer had other clients in line that day.

SCMP says Chinese-made supercomputers typically have major weaknesses and rarely run at full capacity. The team must have found a way to maximize Sunway's powers, because the project reportedly stretched the machine to the limit without breaking it. Gao is hoping to run a simulation from the birth of the universe up until the current era -- it's now around 13.8 billion years old -- but they might wait until Sunway's successor is ready before launching their next attempt. The next-gen supercomputer will apparently be 10 times faster than Sunway and could be up and running sometime in 2019.

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Chinese scientists created the largest virtual universe - Engadget

Scientists create the largest virtual universe using world’s fastest supercomputer – TechJuice (press release) (blog)

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A team of scientists in China has created the worlds largest virtual universe by using the supercomputer called Sunway TaihuLight and scientists are calling it a warm-up exercise. The universe created by Sunway supercomputer was 5 times bigger than the last biggest simulation run by the scientists from the University of Zurich back in June this year. But this simulation run for only an hour and the previous simulation was run for around 80 hours.

Chinese scientists recreated the birth of the universe (Big Bang) and its early expansion around tens of millions of years after the Big Bang under just an hour. But they had to stop the process because there were some other clients waiting in line that day. The simulation will help scientists to look through the universe more deeply and look for the most interesting and useful regions of the space.

Sunway TaihuLight, the supercomputer used in creating the simulation, is the worlds fastest supercomputer. This supercomputer has 10 million CPU cores which can process a huge amount of data in the blink of an eye. It has the processing power of 93 petaflops which is 3 times more than the worlds second fastest supercomputer which has 33.85 petaflops of processing power. The Chinese scientists manufactured Sunway TaihuLight last year with the aim to solve big data problems around the world.

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In the future, Chinese scientists are hoping to run a simulation from the Big Bang to the present time and they are creating an even more powerful supercomputer for it. The next most powerful supercomputer will be 10 times more powerful than the Sunway TaihuLight and will be ready by the end of 2019.

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UT now home to USA’s most powerful college-operated supercomputer – FOX 29

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UT's Texas Advanced Computing Center shows off its new Stampede 2 supercomputer. (Photo: CBS Austin)

Friday, the University of Texas officially dedicated a new supercomputer, the Stampede 2, the most powerful of any you'll find at a US academic institution. What this system can do in the hands of the researchers who will use it is both breathtaking and lifesaving.

Today VIPs got to see the Stampede 2 in action. This machine has the power of 100,000 desktop PCs. It can do 18 quadrillion calculations per second. A quadrillion is a million billion or 1,000,000,000,000,000 per second.

And that helps speed up projects that involve a lot of data. Tommy Minyard is director of advanced computing systems at UTs Texas Advanced Computing Center. He says, We've been working with the storm prediction teams in Oklahoma where they run simulations on our computers at night so that they can predict what the weather will be for that day."

After the Onion Creek floods in 2014, UT researchers created models that explained what happened. Civil Engineering Professor Davis Maidment explained, As soon as you increase the watershed size you increase the flood risk."

But the faster Stampede 2 lets researchers use the most current data from rain gauges and weather stations and get their results sooner. Minyard adds, So they can put the storm researchers, the guys that are actually chasing the storms, in the appropriate areas where they think the storms are going to arrive, where they're going to form during the day."

The National Science Foundation invested $30 million in building UTs new supercomputer which is open to researchers of all stripes. And since they get their results quicker they can move forward faster. Minyard explains: "It can result in innovations and new technologies that they may not have even thought about."

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UT now home to USA's most powerful college-operated supercomputer - FOX 29

Treating veterans’ ‘inner wounds’: The role of spirituality – News … – MPNnow.com

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Center of Excellence at the Canandaigua VA making strides in mission to prevent suicide

Its no surprise that helping veterans find meaning in their lives after military service is crucial. Wounds of war, mental and physical, take their toll not to mention separation from community and loved ones.

Last month, Gulf war veteran Ken Bardo of Phelps talked about the struggle. So did Vietnam veteran Gene Simes of Walworth. Both men have been in counseling for years, among other treatments, and expect they will need help for the rest of their lives.

Sometimes we cry because it hurts, said Simes.

What is surprising to some is how powerful a new treatment based on an age-old philosophy that spirituality is good for you could be in helping vets find meaning in their lives and thus help prevent veteran suicide.

For many veterans self-image has just plummeted, said Canandaigua VA Chaplain Robert Searle, who is behind a research study at the Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center. The study is about the effect of spiritual care on preventing suicide. Veterans feel guilt, they have inner wounds, Searle said. When a person is broken and bruised inside as many veterans are, they need to feel forgiveness and that their life has meaning, he said.

Last July, Veterans Affairs released its largest analysis of veteran suicide rates. VA found anaverage of 20 veterans died from suicide every day in 2014. The Center of Excellence at Canandaigua VA is one of a number of VA centers of excellence nationwide but the only center whose studies and research focus on suicide prevention.

The study at Canandaigua involving the effect of spirituality was recently published in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine and Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy. While preliminary, an evaluation of the program is promising, according to Searle and others involved such as Dr. Marek S. Kopacz, a researcher with the Center of Excellence.

The concept of spiritual care contributing to mental health goes back a long time, said Kopacz. What makes this study significant is its a first step to looking at data, looking at the before and after to provide evidence, he said.

Searle said the study grew out of an approach he uses as chaplain with a centuries-old practice called lectio divina. It involves focused scripture reading (typically in the Judeo-Christian tradition) in small groups. As the reading is repeated, each veteran pinpoints one word that for him or her has special meaning and then talks about it.

The word goes from head to heart, said Searle.

The chaplain added that more and more veterans wanted to get involved in lectio divina. There is an identity of self that goes beyond what we see, said Seale. The program helps veterans find that identity and sense of purpose, he said. Veterans who have been in the program express relief, he said.

Veterans come to me and say, I feel loved, I feel forgiven, Searle said. Now they can be in a relationship, with their community, with their family.

While this first-of-its kind study on spirituality and veteran suicide prevention takes off, the Center of Excellence at the VA on Fort Hill Avenue is making strides in other ways as well.

In Building 37, a floor below the Veterans Crisis Line center where dispatchers take calls, theres another call center where VA employees call out. About 20 staffers work in the research call center focused on gathering information. Calls go out to veterans, family members and others who willingly offer insight and information used to improve communication, treatment and education pertaining to suicide prevention.

We take a public health approach, said Dr. Elizabeth Karras, a research investigator for the VA Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention. Also a senior clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, Karras talked about the partnership between the Center of Excellence and other institutions such as the University of Rochester and agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Research at the center targets risk factors, intervention and education. Research deals with everything from the effect of sleep on suicide prevention to the effect of prescription drugs and other factors.

We carry it all the way through, said Stephanie Gamble, a research psychologist at the Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention. Gamble, also assistant professor of psychiatry (psychology) at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said the center touches all areas involved with suicide prevention. She and Karras called the center a one-stop-shop with a most serious mission.

Everybody sees the nature of the problem, said Kopacz. They see us as part of the solution.

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Text message: 838255

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From aromatherapy to volunteering: how to DIY your kids’ spirituality – CBC.ca

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Sunday July 30, 2017

How do you give your kids the benefits of spirituality without the trappings of organized religion?

That's the conundrumRevaSeth faces. She and her husband are raising their three sons in Toronto.

"All the data shows us that having a spiritual foundation has all of these incredible outcomes in terms of depression, addiction, mental health, mental wellness.I wanted to give that to my kids but I didn't see myself joining an organized religion,"Sethtells Tapestry guest host AliHassan.

Instead of signing up at the nearest church, synagogue, or mosque,shedecided to create her own secular traditions for her family.

Reva Seth says taking time for little rituals like aromatherapy or gratitude will help her boys' mental health in the long run. (Courtesy)

Some of the ritualsSethhas introduced to her childrenare group yoga classes, mindful meditation, gratitude practice, andaromatherapy.Some of these things are a hard sell for her three boys, but she believes it's worth the effort.

"Sometimes it's just so hard to just stop and say, 'Ok we're going to have a good day, you've got this'; there's something you can connect to," she says.

Sethwas raised withHinduismin the background, but it wasn't a central part of her childhood.

"My mother had her ownpujasset up. She would light incense in the morning and I think just take a moment for herself but that was her personal thing. My father viewed religion like insurance, like 'just do it because you don't know,but don't ask a lot of questions.'"

Reva doing mindfulness meditation with her boys. She's adopted many different traditions to give her kids a strong spiritual foundation. (Courtesy)

AlthoughSethstrongly believes her secular curriculum is the best answer for her family, she admits that leaving the structure of organized religion presents challenges.

"I've had on my to-do list for the past year: 'Find a place where the boys can go serve other people.' When you stray away from your [religious] framework, you lose the community, you lose the opportunities. It would just be so much easier if they went there and after temple they served food or helped old people with their shoes. I have to now scramble around to find those opportunities."

ForSeth,the task of providing her boys with spirituality outside of organized religion is a work in progress.

And she believes the eye-rolls over scented oils and group meditation are worth it if, in the long run, her sons retain some tools to help them navigate the messy world around them.

Click LISTEN to hear more aboutRevaSeth's DIY spiritual curriculum for kids.

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From aromatherapy to volunteering: how to DIY your kids' spirituality - CBC.ca

8 Powerful Ways to Live Your Life More Intentionally – HuffPost

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From the moment I had an awareness of life, its beauty and impermanence, I wanted to make my life matter. I scoured books, videos and podcasts of spiritual teachings, to learn how to I could purposefully cultivate practices that would enable me to live with more intention. After lots of research, prayers and seeking, I passed through a spiritual portal, through which I cannot return. I awakened, and with that awakening came a different way of thinking about life, and a realization that I live in this body, but am of spiritual form. I began to implement changes that would further my spiritual evolution; and found that devoting my focus to a few simple, yet practical beliefs and practices gave me powerful results.

Know that energy is everything. Before we were born, we were infinite energy. This means that we are more than our physical limits. This means that our experience of life is based on how we use our energy. Our emotions are a frequency, and the level at which we vibrate attracts more of the same in every area of our lives. Focus on feeling good, staying in love, gratitude, acceptance and flow, and every cell in your body will respond to bring you more of the same.

Make a decision. Decide what you want your life to look like and then and be that. Make a decision about how you want to feel, spend your time, who you spend it with and what you want to life to look like. I decided years ago, that at the end of my life, I would have no regrets. That one decision has changed my life radically because it required me to be braver, take an honest look at myself, and do better if I wanted life to be better. It also required me to be aware of my words and actions, and to take responsibility for how they impacted me and those around me.

Live your life as a church. As a child, I spent a lot of time in church. I was in awe of my the older parishioners, singing about their faith and a life of Godly living. Yet, Id see these same people out of church, doing the opposite of what theyd committed to in church. At an early age that I made a commitment to do my best to life my life as a church - I would practice everyday, what I promised God I would on Sunday. To me, the church is not confined to a building, but our entire life. More important than memorizing readings and lessons of virtue was living them.

Be your own freaking evangelist. Don't put a pastor or a spiritual guru on a pedestal. They are not perfect and neither are you, and that's okay. Spiritual evolution and leadership isn't based on being perfect, but by perfecting your unique self. You don't have to be on a pulpit, a stage, spend hours in meditation or chant mantras all day. You don't have to speak reverently or always be zen. You can be a warrior, a badass or have the mouth of a sailor. Just be you - be your own type of evangelist. Speak your truth, preach your gospel in your own words. Inspire others by the way you live.

Be intentional with your words. Words are more powerful than we think. What we say and how we say it can change the way we feel, think and act. According to Psychology Today, any form of negative rumination...will stimulate the release of destructive neurochemicals. Conversely, positive words and thoughts propel the motivational centers of the brain into action and they help us build resilience when we are faced with lifes problems. Every word you say has an impact on you emotionally, how you interact with others and how they respond to you, so be careful how you use them.

Master your mind. Your mind is a muscle, so flex it, and master of how you think. Dont get carried away by all the things that come at you. Letting your mind run untrained leaves you open to outside influences determining and ultimately running your life. Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts. Notice them and when you find them going in a direction that does not serve your vision for your life, shift them to where you want them to be.

Be open to messages from God and angels. They come in ways you least expect. God talks to me through sunlight, a butterflyon a leaf, a child smiling in a passing car, or through a stranger you meet on an airplane. I was recently traveling for work, and sat next to a lady on a plane. She was a stranger when we boarded, but I realized she was a messenger by the time we landed. Id began talking to her about my work, faith and my journey of spiritual enlightenment. Then, my new friend shared that her name was Jyoti, which in Hindi, means light. One of her children was named Khushee, which meant happiness and the other was named Devansh, which means, part of God. Our meeting was not an accident. She was a message from God, letting me know that I was where I was supposed to be.

Live in joyful, thankful expectation. One of my favorite books is from Wayne Dyer is Youll See It When You Believe It. The premise of the book is that you manifest what you believe. What this means for me is that I must always focus on joy and live in expectation, believing in the wonderful things that are coming my way!

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8 Powerful Ways to Live Your Life More Intentionally - HuffPost

Spiritual Shenanigans: Body and spirit – Creative Loafing Tampa

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Exercise and spirituality meet at two prominent Tampa Bay institutions, St. Petersburg Yoga and the Taoist Tai Chi Society.

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Working out can be a religious experience for many Americans, with billions spent each year at fitness centers and gyms. But some types of exercise deliberately fuse the religious and the physical, particularly those that come out of Asia, like yoga, Tai chi, and a variety of martial art forms. The average American who takes part in these spiritual exercises often doesn't understand the spiritual roots of such exercises, focusing instead on their physical benefits. Two Tampa Bay institutions, St. Petersburg Yoga and the Taoist Tai Chi Society, are working to unite the physical and spiritual sides of their chosen forms of exercise, while also remaining accessible to the Average Joe and Jane who just want a good workout.

Yoga

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St. Petersburg Yoga

Yoga is perhaps the most popular type of spiritually-rooted exercise in the United States. It started out in India with Hinduism, where its exact origins are unknown, but yoga was mentioned in the earliest Hindu texts like the Rigveda. Hindus see yoga as encompassing physical, mental and spiritual exercises intended to help a soul make its way to enlightenment. Yoga has gradually made its way around the world and now an estimated 20 million Americans or 8.7% of US adults practice yoga. Americans love yoga, even with sporadic controversies from some Christians who distrust the Eastern roots of the practice and scattered complaints from Indians who see Western yoga as overly secularized in its emphasis on the physical.

St. Petersburg Yoga is a prominent yoga center, with its main headquarters sharing a building with the Rollin Oats Market and Cafe (2842 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N.) Its founder, Chris Acosta, started the business when he was in his 20s and his seen his business grow over the past 25 years as yoga exploded in the United States. Acosta wonders how beneficial this growth of yoga has been, however, as it has led to a surge in injuries for a discipline that is not supposed to cause pain. And he asks if yoga is still yoga if it is 99% physical.

Acosta sees his role as a yogi or teacher to be as a bridge from where people are to where they need to be. In spiritual terms, this involves unlocking the atman, the eternal soul at the heart of Hinduism. Many students in the over 70 classes a week are simply interested in the physical side of yoga, but some become more interested in the meditative and philosophical side over time. Most who come already have an existing faith; that's fine with Acosta, who isn't seeking converts but long-term transformation at a physical, spiritual and mental level.

Finding ways to bring about this transformation in students is not always easy. He gives two examples. The first, a person who is addicted to exercise to a near-unhealthy extent. That person may want the most strenuous classes, but encouraging a class on meditation would be more helpful. The second, an overweight person on the verge of obesity may be more interested in meditation but needs a more physical class. While Acosta has lost students from trying to steer them in the right direction, he remains committed to the values behind his business.

Tai Chi

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Taoist Tai Chi Society

Tai Chi is significantly less well-known than yoga, echoing the lower prominence of its source, the mellow Chinese philosophy/religion Taoism. But Tai Chi certainly has its fans in the United States, with classes found in local rec centers. Perhaps the most visible place for Tai Chi in the United States would be through the Taoist Tai Chi Society. The Society was founded by Moy Lin Shin, a native of China who fled to Canada, and from the 1970s until his death in 1998 built an organization centered around Tai Chi classes and a philosophy centered around Taoism and traditional Chinese religion. The Society now has 500 locations around the world, including four in the Tampa Bay area. In fact, the group is currently working to renovate the long-closed Fenway Hotel in Dunedin into a major national center.

I met a leader, Pegoty Packman, at the temporary Dunedin location (453 Edgewater Dr.). She explained the work and beliefs of the Society. As is common in Chinese philosophy and religion, the Society draws on a number of different religions and principles. Of course, Taoism is central with its emphasis on harmony and the cultivation of the cosmic energy known as chi. But the Society members also chant Buddhist sutras and includes a statue of the popular goddess of compassion, Guanyin. The Society also focuses on the Eight Heavenly Virtues that Moy Lin Shin found vital from Confucian philosophy, which were: a Sense of Shame, Honor, Sacrifice, Propriety, Trustworthiness, Dedication, Sibling Harmony and Filial Piety.

But what has enabled the Society to prosper around the world has been its Tai Chi classes, which Packman notes revolve around action. Tai Chi is about action of a relaxed nature, however, as its 108 moves aim to cultivate stillness. Attendees in the Dunedin classes range from people in their 30s through 90s. The older students tend to enjoy the physical benefits of the Tai Chi exercises, which are famously accessible to people at a broad range of fitness levels and ages. Younger members are more interested in the philosophy and meditative ideals.

As with St. Petersburg Yoga, the great majority of students at the Society belong to other faiths and the Society sees itself as an inclusive institution. Its mission is to use Taoist principles to help people to be better and improve their health and mental attitude. As Packman observes of the practices of Tai Chi, however you work it, it works in you.

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Spiritual Shenanigans: Body and spirit - Creative Loafing Tampa

Three-man crew reaches space station as US boosts research – Reuters

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - A new crew arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, giving NASA for the first time four astronauts to boost U.S. research projects aboard the orbiting laboratory.

A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying three spaceflight veterans slipped into a docking port aboard the station at 5:54 p.m. EDT (2154 GMT) as the $100 billion research outpost sailed about 250 miles (400 km) over Germany, a NASA TV broadcast showed.

Strapped inside the capsule, which blasted off aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan six hours earlier, were Randy Bresnik, with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Sergey Ryazanskiy, with the Russian space agency Roscosmos; and Italy's Paolo Nespoli, with the European Space Agency.

The men will join two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut already aboard the station, a project of 15 nations.

Their arrival means the U.S. space agency now has four crew members instead of three available for medical experiments, technology demonstrations and other research aboard the station, the U.S. space agency said.

The extra astronaut will effectively double the amount of time for research, program manager Kirk Shireman said at a station conference last week.

NASA does not oversee the Russian staff, which was reduced to two in April until a long-delayed research module joins the station next year.

Previously, Russia flew three cosmonauts, with the remaining three positions filled by a combination of European, Japanese, Canadian and U.S. astronauts, who are trained and overseen by NASA.

By the end of next year, NASA intends to begin flying astronauts aboard space taxis under development by SpaceX and Boeing. Both spaceships have room for a fourth seat, bumping the stations overall crew size to seven once Russia returns to full staffing.

NASA is using the station to prepare for human missions to the moon and Mars and to stimulate commercial space transportation, pharmaceutical research, manufacturing and other businesses.

The agency also conducts physics, astronomy and Earth science investigations aboard the outpost, which has been staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since 2000.

Bresnik, 49, last flew on the space shuttle in 2009 during a space station assembly mission. Ryazanskiy, 42, spent five-and-a-half months aboard the station in 2013-2014. Nespoli, 60, is making his third space flight, having previously served on both space shuttle and space station crews.

The men are slated to return to Earth in December.

Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Tom Brown

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Three-man crew reaches space station as US boosts research - Reuters

You can see the International Space Station above Greater Manchester this week – here’s how – Manchester Evening News

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You will once again be able to view the International Space Station (ISS) from Greater Manchester in over week or so.

Over the next few days it will be possible to spot the glowing space station as it passes above in the night sky.

The ISS, which appears as a bright glowing object, looks like a fast-moving plane or star moving across the horizon usually from the west.

The ISS is currently crewed by six astronauts and cosmonauts.

It orbits at a height of about 264 miles, traveling around the earth 15 times a day.

The ISS has been in space for around 6,700 days, during which time it has completed around 100,000 orbits of Earth, and has been continuously occupied for more than 13 years.

To see it look south or west at night at the time given below.

It pretty much looks like a bright star or fast-moving plane, usually from the west or south west.

It has no flashing lights and doesn't make a sound so that's how you can tell the difference between it and any aircraft in the sky.

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You can see the International Space Station above Greater Manchester this week - here's how - Manchester Evening News