Watch Beyonc’s Stunning 20-Year Evolution In This 20-Second GIF – Huffington Post

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A new GIF, created by the people behind the website aromahq.com, features 20 years of Beyonc looks, one each year from 1997 to 2017. And its pretty remarkable, especially considering Bey has been a staple in pop culture for two full decades now.

Beyonce is 35-years-old and was only 15 when Destinys Child landed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1997.

From a social standpoint, she hasnt missed a step over the years, a rep from aromahq.com told HuffPost. She... continues to just expand her star power consistently by being a great performer and putting out good music.

Plus, its also tons of fun to see all of the phases and styles shes had over the years.We mean, shes gone from this:

Its been a pleasure to see her grow and evolve.Heres to 20 more years, B!

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Watch Beyonc's Stunning 20-Year Evolution In This 20-Second GIF - Huffington Post

Doug Axe: Hidden Figures and the Engineering Challenge to Darwinism – Discovery Institute

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Ahead of tomorrow night's Academy Awards ceremonies, Doug Axe has an excellent post up at The Stream on the film Hidden Figures and the engineering challenge to Darwinism. The film, with several nominations including Best Picture, is the story of African-American women who were math prodigies, or "computers," at NASA.

Another lesson, more pragmatic, occurred to me as the drama unfolded. Having migrated in my own career from the measurable-fact culture of engineering to the more descriptive culture of biology, I felt a tinge of nostalgia as I watched a roomful of nerds with their calculators and chalk boards working together to find the answer to a pressing question: How can we bring an orbiting astronaut back safely to Earth?

Notice the very pre-post-truth essence of that phrase find the answer. Engineers have always taken for granted that clearly posed questions have uniquely correct answers -- there to be found by anyone with the skill to find them, and unambiguously recognized as correct when found. The joy of Hidden Figures is that it sweeps away our prejudicial attitudes as to who might have these requisite skills.

Celebrating National Engineers Week here yesterday, Sarah Chaffee observed, "[E]ngineering and medicine differ from evolutionary biology in that they focus on how things work. Evolutionists can seem at times to disregard function, but doctors and engineers never can." Yes, there's a blurred, fudging quality to much of evolutionary thinking.

By contrast, Dr. Axe admires the steely, unforgiving nature of an engineer's calculations:

Of course, those who've turned fuzziness into a paid profession are apt to sense more threat here than beauty. A famous 1960s meeting demonstrated this, convened under the heading Mathematical Challenges to the neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. There, a group of slide-rule toting engineering types, unconcerned with matters of etiquette, tried to put the slippery blob of evolutionary theory through the grinder gears of hard reality. Among the Darwinists present was Harvard's Ernst Mayr, who (in protest) titled his talk: "Evolutionary challenges to the mathematical interpretation of evolution." Stick that in your gears, you nerdy engineers!

This is rather unforgiving of Dr. Axe:

The evolutionary explanation of life cannot stand up to NASA-style engineering scrutiny.

If you doubt this, please join me in testing it. Hand pick your Darwin sympathizers from the most esteemed places. It doesn't matter who they are, because all the pomp and prestige of the academic world is powerless to change hard facts. All claims of Darwin having discovered the only scientifically valid explanation of life get torn to tiny bits when you put them in the grinder.

The response to this challenge is sure to be either silence or protest. There won't be a nerdy evolutionary biologist who marches up to the chalkboard and does the math that saves the theory. The math has been done; the theory undone. Nor will there be a lab test that shows natural selection to be a worker of wonders. We've been there. Too many tests to count, and the blind watchmaker never showed up.

The protest will be familiar, organized around the usual defensive themes. Different sciences work differently! -- they'll say. It isn't reasonable to hold a historical science to engineering standards! -- they'll say. No practicing evolutionary biologist would accept your proposal as valid! -- they'll say.

Let them speak. Then remind them that the difference is simply one of seriousness. When we really need to know that something will work, tested-and-approved certainty has always been the standard. Evolutionists ignore that standard because they can. Storytelling works for them because they're all telling stories together. Their grand stories are all wrong, but as long as no one is dying in orbit, most people are content to let them carry on.

Merciless, but true. Evolutionary theory's authority rests on muzziness as to details, and on the public's being willing to overlook and forgive it, despite what Axe identifies in his book Undeniable as our universal intuition of intelligent design in nature.

"Trust us," Darwinists in effect say. Trust our massive extrapolation to a grand theory from a spray of trivial observations (finch beaks, smaller voles, etc.). "Trust" is not a factor in engineering. Either you bring the astronaut safe and alive back to Earth, or you do not. There's no fudging that.

Photo credit: 20th Century Fox.

I'm on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.

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Doug Axe: Hidden Figures and the Engineering Challenge to Darwinism - Discovery Institute

Middle-schoolers start robotics club – Parsons Sun

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Parsons High School began its robotics program in 2003 and now Parsons Middle School has a new Robotics Club to offer younger students a similar opportunity.

Middle school industrial arts teacher Kenneth Rhuems has stepped up to the challenge of helping the students enter into the realm of building robots for competition.

Im learning, because this is new for me, he said. I enjoy it quite a bit and they are every serious. They are pretty focused on what they are doing.

Discussions had taken place the last few years on the possibility of beginning some type of robotics program at the middle school level, so as students enter high school, they have determined their level of interest and have been given some basic understanding of robotics should they want to participate in high school.

When Rhuems began teaching the program this year, he expressed his willingness to PHS robotics teacher Bruce Rea to work with the younger students, but wasnt sure if it would be feasible to obtain the needed equipment.

Come to find out, there were some kits that the school actually had. I had no clue. I found out last semester we could probably do that and then I found we had couple of kits. One of the students got some of his things done ahead of time, so he started building one and got the enthusiasm going, Rhuems said. And then we found we had some more kits at another building.

Then I wrote a grant and got two kits the Parsons Education Foundation bought for us, that were actually going to use in the contest. Weve got three that are different than what we are doing here today. They are the next level. Those will be our contest robots, he said.

Second semester, beginning in January during Friday Fun Time, students had the chance to join the Robotics Club if interested. About 10 students signed up.

Pairs of students were working at separate stations building their first level robots.

I think its really cool because hes my friend and we get to workas a team together, sixth grade student Brayden Myers said.

I think its cool because theres not a lot of things we can do in our grade andthis is one of the things we can do, Marion Ryan said. Like you cant do sports for the school or anything in our grade, but you can do robotics.

And in sixth grade you cant do any wood workingin here and today they did like race cars, I think, Brayden said. But we get to do this.

It will probably be another couple of weeks before they get to start work on their robots for the competition. With spring break and Easter recess the students are going to be down to the wire.

I may have to have them come back to school for a few nights to work on them, Rhuems said. They have the same screws, bolts, nuts, so as they become familiar with them at this level it will be easier, and theyll know the motors and other components and what they do, so it will go faster.

The students act as though they wouldnt mind putting in the additional time one bit.

Its fun. Its fun building them, Andy Winslow-Kephart said. My favorite part is the team work because you are helping and working together.

You learn all about teamwork, Ryan added.

The evening of April 5 parents will be invited to come watch a preview of the robots in action.

Well have like a little contest within our own class, Rhuems said.

April 24 the students will be headed to their first competition at Emporia State University, what they all said they are looking forward to the most.

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Middle-schoolers start robotics club - Parsons Sun

Soldier-turned-robotics-CEO has a special understanding of his product’s need – Stars and Stripes

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Soldier-turned-robotics-CEO has a special understanding of his product's need
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"These are small and narrow places, a very dangerous environment," the businessman said. Those missions prepared Abuhazira, 36, for his work as the chief executive of a Gaithersburg, Maryland, company called Roboteam. It sells high-tech robots capable ...

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CyberKnights ready for action in district robotics events – The Bristol … – Bristol Press

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SOUTHINGTON Southington High Schools CyberKnights robotics team has completed its robots for this years steampunk-themed competition. According to designers, the machine will support a strategy that emphasizes offense.

Steampunk refers to a science fiction genre in which stories have a historical setting and the weapons used are usually steam-powered.

First Robotics teams in schools worldwide will be competing with robots designed to scoop and launch balls into the fuel tank of an airship, place gears on a tray to spin the ships rotors, then climb aboard. During some parts of the competition, the robots will be unmanned operating on programmed commands. During others, the students will control them.

Three robots from each alliance of school teams will be on the field at a time and robots can try to push others around and stop them from scoring points.

Southington High Schools first scheduled matches are set for March 4 and 5 at the Waterbury District event and April 1 and 2 in the Hartford District competition.

Jake Hayes, a junior at Southington High School, is the design lead for the CyberKnights. He explained that the team had a limited time to construct its robot. With it completed, team members built several prototype robots to test and work out bugs. Before the first competition, the team will be able to adjust its machines based on these tests.

A lot of teams play really defensively and our goal is to have a machine that is impossible to defend against, he said. We will have a rotating turret that can shoot balls with 430 degrees of motion. It locks onto reflective tape on the target tower to line up its shots.

Hayes said this will be his third year on the team. The team has been active for 20 years and last year competed in the championships in St. Louis.

We did really well last year. We knew immediately what we wanted to do and how to do it, he said. It was awesome to see how great it turned out and gave us a sense that our hard work paid off. This year, the design had a lot more size constraints; the robots will be a lot smaller this year than last year. It was a pretty rigorous build but I think well do well.

Chris Bonomi, also a junior at SHS, is the lead programmer for the team.

This year the robots will need to be more accurate on turns versus the straight-line movements last year, he said. We need to calculate the velocity of our turns and it can be difficult to get them perfect but I feel we will get it done good.

Bonomi said that being a part of the CyberKnights program has been beneficial to him socially and academically.

I started programming in eighth grade and the advanced knowledge I received through this program has got me at an almost college-ready level, he said. It also helped me to open up and be more social. I used to be very shy.

Natiya Washer, who captains the CyberKnights team along with fellow senior Nick Rappi, said she is also on the electrical team.

I am really excited for this year, she said. There are so many ways to score points. Having a fifth drive-team member who is sitting on the field inside the airship will be very different.

Washer also described how much the robotics team has benefited her.

Being a part of this team has helped me tremendously with my people skills, she said. It is like running a business; you have to have good communication or nothing gets done. I also learned time management on top of the physical skills.

Sandra Brino, the team mentor, said that, due to the success of the CyberKnights, other teams have contacted them for advice. On Friday, they spoke to a team from Turkey and on Saturday they will be advising a team from India that is just starting the robotics program.

It is very flattering, said Washer. It is the first time Ive encountered another team asking for help. We fully support the expansion of the robotics program. We are very excited.

Brian M. Johnson can be reached at 860-973-1806 or bjohnson@bristolpress.com.

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Mount Paran Christian student is a trailblazer in Robotics, STEAM – MDJOnline.com

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Jasmine Chrisp is a member of Mount Parans Robotic team 7373 that just won the Think Award. Jasmine and her team will be moving on to Semi-Regionals in March.

Jasmine is comfortable hanging with the boys. She is the only high school girl in Robotics and Engineering, but she is busting open doors for the young women who are following in her footsteps. It is one of her passions to spread the word about STEAM and FIRST among young female students. She wishes to inspire, and encourage other girls to explore the opportunities that Robotics and Engineering can open up to females. She has participated in Women in Technology events, and Girls First. She has volunteered her time to mentor fifth- grade girls in a Girls Using Engineering and Science Skills club.

Jasmine is also a girl scout. Her Gold Award proposal of creating a free curriculum to inspire and encourage girls to learn STEAM skills, investigate STEAM careers, and participate in STEAM projects and competitions was approved. The Gold Award is the highest achievement within the Girl Scouts, earned by Senior and Ambassador Girl Scouts. Only 5.4 percent of eligible Girl Scouts successfully earn the Gold Award. The Mount Paran Christian Robotics team will be helping Jasmine to fulfill her project.

There is a great deal of evidence of Jasmine reaching out to help show students the importance of a STEAM program. She mentored a kindergartner during an Hour of Code event and made the lead page of Cobb in Focus magazines article on the use of 3-D printers in Cobb County schools.

Jasmine shows initiative and dependability. She is in her third year on the team and her teammates have chosen her to be the Business Manager. Jasmine has created a business plan for the team which includes an introduction to the team, an explanation of the team endeavor, budget histories and projections for the upcoming season, and an invitation to join the team in its quest. Jasmine manages a $28,000 budget and every penny is accounted for.

Jasmines list of accomplishments is impressive. She has a 4.42 GPA. She has an ACT composite of 29. She has taken Honors and AP classes, and won awards for Engineering and Math.

Jasmine passed the three hour Certified SolidWorks Associate exam. Passing this exam in 3D CAD Solid Modeling Software provides her with an industry-level certification.

Last summer, Jasmine completed a six-week intensive internship through the Technology Association of Georgia as an Input Sensor Circuit Card Lead with the Georgia Tech Research Institutes Rapid Prototype Program in the Engineering Design Process. Jasmine and 15 other high school students were trained in a mentor-based program designed to inspire and inform student career choices in STEAM as well as encourage, equip and reinforce skills in innovation, problem solving, leadership, decision-making and teamwork. By completing this program, Jasmine received GTRI certified training in a variety of areas. She was also a finalist for Tell Your Story, a video production, and was named a finalist for the Horizon Pinnacle Award.

Because of all of Jasmines accomplishments, she has been nominated for Mount Paran Christian Schools Executive Internship Program. Jasmine has been selected to work with Dr. Robert Funk at Georgia Tech Research Institute of Technologys Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory, completing a year-long internship in aerospace acoustics during her senior year.

When I asked Jasmine what had attracted her to robotics, she said that it is something that has always fascinated her. She wanted to start in middle school, but at the time that was not an option and she was told that she would have to wait. I also asked her what skills she has learned from Robotics, and she said, Robotics has improved my public speaking skills, and my ability to make technical presentations.

I asked her if she minded being the only girl, and she replied that it just felt normal. Jasmine Chrisp is anything but normal and this will not be the last time that we hear about her excellence.

Jennifer Bonn is a freelance writer and Kennesaw resident who teaches at Mount Paran Christian School. She has been published in several magazines, and has published a book titled Stay Away from the Girls Bathroom, A Teachers Guide. It is available from Deeds Publishing at http://www.deedspublishing.com.

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Virtual Reality Calling for Humanity – PR Newswire (press release)

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VRCalling.com, real time, with real people, creating real moments.

Booth 7N61, MWC17, BARCELONA, Spain, Feb 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -Summit Tech has launched real-time RCS virtual reality and augmented reality calling VRcalling.com. The solution allows wireless carriers to add support for RCS services such as IR.92/94 from within VR/AR environments.

Whereas many VR experiences isolate users from real life, Summit begins by connecting real people through real-time 360 live video streams including support for virtual environments. Users connect through globally standardized communication services such as RCS and VoLTE ensuring mass reachability by allowing VR users to share their experience with, well, virtually anyone with a smartphone.

Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Gear VR users connect to live VR streams, then by simply VRcalling their friends on RCS or ViLTE enabled devices, users share their experiences in real-time no app required. Additionally, while connected to streams, users can publish their social presence allowing for communication between any user connected to the stream. VR calling enables new, high-value experiences such as:

- Immersive live-streaming entertainment - by connecting to 360 streams from sporting events or music concerts, carriers can put their subscribers in the center of the action, allowing them to look around and experience the location like a physical attendee while sharing the stream with friends through RCS.

- Immersive meetings/training by giving visual context and 360 views of attendees and location, immersive business meetings bridge the divide between flat telepresence sessions and physical attendance.

- Immersive edutainment students can explore educational locations like museums, galleries and observatories and interact with students in distant locations through overlaid video calling and group chat.

RCS is the next generation communication and conversation platform being deployed by operators with services ranging from enriched calling to chatbots. Not limited to RCS smartphones, users access VR calling through VR headsets or AR glasses for immersive experiences, or tablets and web browsers as easily accessible alternatives.

Alido Di Giovanni, President of Summit commented: "We want to empower operators to rapidly launch VR/AR services and secure new revenue streams. To facilitate carriers in piloting RCS VR, we are also demonstrating a white-label IMS cloud service.

Summit Tech will also demonstrate the innovative IMS-enabled connected car and operator-managed connected living services supporting Cat M1 and NB-IoT.

Todd Haas, (917) 328-4426, todd.haas@summit-tech.ca, visit http://www.summit-tech.ca

SOURCE Summit Tech

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Virtual Reality Calling for Humanity - PR Newswire (press release)

The NBA is betting big on virtual reality, and fans should be thrilled – Digital Trends

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Getting court-side seats may have always seemed like something of a pipe dream, but now, technology is turning that dream into a reality. Virtual reality, that is. The NBA is betting big on VR technology, and last week, the league made its very first original content for VR headsets via a partnership withDigital Domain.

The NBA VR app now features on-demand episodes of House of Legends, a new talk show that gives viewers insights into their favorite NBA players careers and their views on pop culture topics. ButHouse of Legendsis really just the beginning for the NBA when it comes to VR. Really, the league is looking to do a whole lot more in this realm.

Last year, the NBA debuted a VR documentary calledFollow my Lead: The Story of the 2016 NBA Finals,but the film was actually spearheaded by Oculus. This year, however, the NBA itself is taking a front seat when it comes to creating content for its viewers.

More:Underwater virtual reality will give you anything but a sinking feeling

Back in 2015, the NBA first streamed a game in 360-degree video, and now the league is live-streaming a game every week to Gear VR and Google Daydream by way of NextVRs application. Its pretty inexpensive to access this experience just $7 a game to watch immersively rather than on your television screen.

Jeff Marsilio, the NBAs VP of global media distribution, told Engadget that this VR experience has proven hugely popular and extremely valuable to fans who are either outside the U.S. or cant exactly afford to be at the game every single week. With virtual reality, you can actually deliver something like that experience, Marsilio said, You can make people feel closer to the action. Currently, the VP noted, theres no other medium that allows for this kind of experience, but its still unclear as to whether itll be a successful strategy for the league in the long term.

All the same, if youre an NBA fan, it looks like you now have a way to enjoy all the action in a way thats more up close and personal than ever before, and its all thanks to virtual reality.

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What Google and IMAX Are Cooking Up in Virtual Reality – Madison.com

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IMAX forecasts profits in the field of virtual reality. Image source: IMAX.

IMAX Corporation (NYSE: IMAX)is the acknowledged industry leader in the premium large theater format and has built its reputation on the continuous innovation of its digital movie camera and high-performance laser projection system. With that expertise, it should come as no surprise that, whenAlphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Google decided to enter the field of virtual reality, it partnered with IMAX to develop the best "cinema-grade virtual reality (VR) camera." IMAX is providing a crew of engineers and technicians that will collaborate with Google to develop a high-resolution camera from scratch to address the unique challenges presented by virtual reality. It will leverage Google's Jump platform, which stitches together 360 degree video into a seamless panoramic view, providing an immersive experience.

IMAX then announced a virtual reality location-based initiative, in a joint venture with the game developer Starbreeze AB. This agreement would integrate the company's StarVR headset, which provides an industry-leading 210-degree view, and its library of virtual reality games and entertainment with content produced on the IMAX Google VR camera. Going further, IMAX is looking to leverage its existing relationships with Hollywood studios and directors to create new movie-based content.

Google's Jump 360 degree camera rig. Image source: Google.

Several notable Hollywood heavyweights are already onboard.Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE: LGF-A)will lend the lead character from its John Wick movies to the effort. Peter Levin, President of Interactive Ventures and Games for Lionsgate had this to say:

We are big believers in location-based entertainment VR and this is a great opportunity to expand the reach of our VR portfolio.

Michael Bay, best known as the director of Hasbro's (NASDAQ: HAS) highly successful Transformersfranchise said:

I've always been a big believer in IMAX, which has been a great longtime partner...As a filmmaker, IMAX's location-based VR offering presents an exciting opportunity to transport audiences even further into the worlds we create. We are in advanced discussions with IMAX now on some fun VR concepts and I look forward to test-driving their new technology.

John Wick joins IMAX VR team. Image source: IMAX.

IMAX envisions a communal virtual reality experience that friends would enjoy together, which would be available at multiplexes and shopping malls, as well as popular tourist destinations. Late last year, the company announced that it, and a number of its partners, had completed the first round of funding -- which amounted to $50 million -- to create 25 pieces of content over the next three years.

This technology may be in the early stages, but it is ramping up fast. A reportby Goldman Sachs estimates that virtual reality -- and its kissing cousin augmented reality -- could become an $80 billion industry by 2025. Investing now in this revolutionary technology could pay significant dividends in years to come. IMAX feels it is a natural fit with its existing business. On its most recent conference call, IMAX said:

The core requirements of launching a location-based VR experience line up nicely with our company's core skill sets. We have studio and film maker relationships on the content side; capture mechanisms for new content; relationships with exhibitors and real estate developers for potential VR sites; and a brand that is synonymous with immersive experiences.

IMAX has tied the disparate parts of the virtual reality experience together in a nice neat package. With its own cutting-edge filming and projecting technology, Google's Jump, Starbreeze headsets and games, and buy-in from Hollywood heavyweights brandishing premium content. Investors looking to invest in the nascent area of virtual reality should grab some popcorn. The movies about to start.

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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Danny Vena owns shares of Alphabet (A shares), Hasbro, IMAX, Lions Gate Entertainment Class A, and Lions Gate Entertainment Class B. Danny Vena has the following options: long January 2018 $640 calls on Alphabet (C shares), short January 2018 $650 calls on Alphabet (C shares), and long January 2018 $15 calls on Lions Gate Entertainment Class A. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Hasbro, IMAX, Lions Gate Entertainment Class A, and Lions Gate Entertainment Class B. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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These 2 Virtual Reality Stocks Are Ridiculously Cheap – Motley Fool

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Virtual reality is often touted as the "next big thing" among tech companies. Goldman Sachs believes that the market could blossom into an $80 billion one by2025, and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly called VRa next-gen "computing platform."

However, the aging bull market and hype regarding VR-related stocks have made it tough to find fundamentally cheap companies with meaningful exposure to the VR market.So today, we'll take a look at two stocks with meaningful exposure to the VR market that still trade at fairly low valuations -- Sony (NYSE:SNE) and HTC (NASDAQOTH:HTCKF).

Facebook's Oculus Rift. Image source: Oculus VR.

Sony's big bet on the VR market is the PlayStation VR, a high-end headset it released for the PS4 console last October. At $400, it cost much less than Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) $600 Oculus Rift and HTC's $800 Vive headsets. A PS4 costs around $250 today -- which is much cheaper than the high-end PCs that power the Rift and Vive.

Those price tags make it the cheapest high-end VR experience on the market today. Since Sony hassold nearly 55 million PS4s, it already has a built-in customer base that doesn't need new hardware. Its existing relationships with game publishers also makes it easy to secure a steady stream of exclusive VR content for its games.

Sony's PSVR. Image source: Sony.

Research firm SuperData estimates that Sony sold750,000 PSVRs last year (compared to its older, overly bullish forecast of 2.6 million). That figure doesn't sound impressive relative to its PS4 user base, but it makes it the top-selling VR headset in the world. HTC's Vive came in second at 450,000 units, followed by Facebook's Oculus Rift at 355,000 units.

750,000 units would only generate about $300 million in revenue, which translates to just 6% of Sony's G&NS (Game and Network Services) revenue and 1% of its total revenue lastquarter. However, demand for the headset could soar this year as new VR-enabled PS4 games -- like Resident Evil 7, Star Wars: Battlefront X-Wing VR, and Star Trek: Bridge Crew -- make the PSVR an essential PS4 accessory for next-gen gaming.

If that happens, PSVR sales could surge well past SuperData's original estimate of 2.6 million and make the PSVR a major growth driver for the G&NS business. Higher-quality VR-enabled games will also encourage customers to upgrade to Sony's new PS4 Pro, which features 4K gaming and a smoother VR experience.

Sony's profitability has declined in recent quarters due to the weak performance of its mobile and movie making units. However, the stock trades with an EV/Sales ratio of 0.5 -- making it very cheap relative to peers like Samsung (NASDAQOTH:SSNLF), which has anEV/Sales ratio of 1.

Many investors overlook HTC as a potential VR play for two reasons. First, the early adoption of the Vive headset has been largely overshadowed by the weakness of its core smartphone business, which has been crushed between premium players like Samsung and lower-end Android rivals like Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi.That pressure caused HTC's revenue to fall14% annually last quarter, and its bottom line remains deep in the red.

Second, HTC's sponsored ADR shares only trade on the OTC market, which doesn't get as much attention as the major exchanges.

The HTC Vive. Image source: HTC.

HTC stock has declined nearly 90% over the past five years, but that drop has reduced its EV/Sales ratio to just 0.4. With an enterprise value of just NT $28.3 billion ($660 million), it remains a lucrative takeover target for tech companies that want to establish a presence in the smartphone and VR headset markets.

HTC wants to turn its smartphone business around by abandoning lower-end devices and focusing on the premium market. We've seen Sony try the same strategy before, but with very little success.

While HTC's smartphone business will likely keep struggling, the Vive might post better sales this year as more PC users upgrade their systems and more VR-enabled titles hit the market. The Vive costs more than the Rift, but its use of full-room motion sensors and software support from Valve, which co-designed the device, arguably make it a better premium VR device for hardcore gamers than the Rift.

If SuperData's figures are accurate, then HTC's Vive sales generated $360 million in revenues last year -- which would be equivalent to 14% of its 2016 sales. This means that if VR adoption picks up this year, we could see stronger sales of the Vive offset its weaker smartphone sales -- which could help HTC stage a big comeback.

Sony and HTC are fundamentally cheap and have growing VR businesses, but investors should also pay close attention to the challenges facing both companies' core businesses. I wouldn't rush to buy either stock now, but I would keep them in mind as alternative VR plays to pricier market favorites like Facebook and chipmaker AMD.

Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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How a virtual reality game helped one man lose 50 pounds – Men’s Fitness

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How a virtual reality game helped one man lose 50 pounds
Men's Fitness
A similar (albeit brief) phenomenon occurred when Pokmon Go took thousands of gamers by storm in the summer of 2016, converting legions of couch potatoes into pedometer crushers. If you're looking to shed a few pounds without the virtual reality gear, ...

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How a virtual reality game helped one man lose 50 pounds - Men's Fitness

Virtual Reality helps WMU students reduce apprehension with communication – Western Herald

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The possibilities are virtually limitless with technology. In recent years, virtual reality has become more popular in the technology community. VR is a computer-generated system that lets the viewer experience videos, clips and photographs in a different way. A headset is used to cover your eyes completely and separate the viewer from the space they are a part of to gain a new virtual space through headset, according to cnet.com

Technology assists us in many ways throughout our daily lives. From our smartphones to the cars we drive, we have come a long way with technological advancements. VR takes us another step further in those advancements, using the technology for purposes of entertainment all the way to tourism and exploration.

The School of Communication at Western Michigan University uses VR in a multitude of educational ways that is sure to enhance students learning experience.

Some of our students work with the Bronco School of Nursing to run nursing students through various simulations so they would be able to experience what it might be like working with a patient who has autism or to experience what it would feel like to perform various surgeries and medical procedures, Professor of Communication Dr. Chad Edwards said.

VR can be useful in practically any field of study. People are constantly coming up with new ways to effectively use this device in educational settings.

In our basic course here at Western, COM 1000, we have a lab section that is using virtual reality to help students reduce communication apprehension. They are practicing giving their speeches in VR, Edwards said.

You can get VR in several forms, some are more expensive than others. The most affordable way to experience VR is with your smartphone. There are several versions of headsets that can give you the VR experience as well, including Samsung VR and Oculus Rift.

VR gives people the ability to feel like they are anywhere in the world, right in the comfort of their couch.

One could experience a trip to Mars, or a trip to Egypt and see the pyramids, it can also be used in journalism to help bring people closer to the story. VR lets you try things that might be otherwise dangerous, expensive, or even impossible, Edwards said.

VR also offers an assortment of short films that people can view. The Communication and Social Robotics Lab at Western has a number of short films in VR. Guests from around the community sometimes come into the lab and try out the device. The lab uses two kinds of VR headsets: Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

The Communication and Social Robotics Lab have walk-in hours for students who want to try out this device. You can also email Edwards in the School of Communication to find out more about VR and how you can experience this incredible device.

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Virtual Reality helps WMU students reduce apprehension with communication - Western Herald

Memetics | Psychology Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia

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Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme.

The term comes from a transliteration of a Greek word and was used in 1904 by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon in his work Die Mnemische Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalenempfindungen, translated into English in 1921 as The Mneme.

In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the slightly different term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that the meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the mutating replicator in human cultural evolution. It is a pattern that can influence its surroundings and can propagate. This created great debate among sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines, because Dawkins himself did not provide a sufficient explanation of how the replication of units of information in the brain controls human behavior and ultimately culture, since the principal topic of the book was genetics. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of memetics in The Selfish Gene, but rather coined the term meme in a speculative spirit. Accordingly, the term "unit of information" came to be defined in different ways by many scientists.

The modern memetics movement dates from the mid 1980s (a January 1983 Metamagical Themas column by Douglas Hofstadter in Scientific American was influential). The study differs from mainstream cultural evolutionary theory in that its practitioners frequently come from outside of the fields of anthropology and sociology, and are often not academics. The massive popular impact of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has undoubtedly been an important factor in drawing in people of disparate intellectual backgrounds. Another crucial stimulus was the publication in 1992 of Consciousness Explained by Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, which incorporated the meme concept into an influential theory of the mind. In his 1993 essay Viruses of the Mind, Richard Dawkins used memetics to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions.

However, the foundation of memetics in full modern incarnation originates in the publication in 1996, of two books by authors outside of the academic mainstream: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by former Microsoft executive turned motivational speaker and professional poker player, Richard Brodie, and Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch, a mathematician and philosopher who worked for many years as an engineer at Fermilab. Lynch conceived his theory totally independently of any contact with academics in the cultural evolutionary sphere, and apparently was not even aware of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene until his book was very close to publication.

Around the same time as the publication of the books by Lynch and Brodie, a new e-journal appeared on the web, hosted by the Centre for Policy Modelling at Manchester Metropolitan University Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. (There had been a short-lived paper memetics publication starting in 1990, the Journal of Ideas edited by Elan Moritz. [1]) The e-journal soon became the central point for publication and debate within the nascent memetics community. In 1999, Susan Blackmore, a psychologist at the University of the West of England, published The Meme Machine, which more fully worked out the ideas of Dennett, Lynch and Brodie and attempted to compare and contrast them with various approaches from the cultural evolutionary mainstream, as well as providing novel, and controversial, memetic-based theories for the evolution of language and the human sense of individual selfhood.

The memetics movement split almost immediately into those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of information in the brain", and those who wanted to redefine it as observable cultural artefacts and behaviours. These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists". Prominent internalists included both Lynch and Brodie; the most vocal externalists included Derek Gatherer, a geneticist from Liverpool John Moores University and William Benzon, a writer on cultural evolution and music. The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a quantitative science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the directly quantifiable aspects of culture. Internalists countered with various arguments: that brain states will eventually be directly observable with advanced technology, that most cultural anthropologists agree that culture is about beliefs and not artefacts, or that artefacts cannot be replicators in the same sense as mental entities (or DNA) are replicators. The debate became so heated that a 1998 Symposium on Memetics, organised as part of the 15th International Conference on Cybernetics, passed a motion calling for an end to definitional debates.

The most advanced statement of the internalist school came in 2002 with the publication of The Electric Meme, by Robert Aunger, an anthropologist from the University of Cambridge. Aunger also organised a conference in Cambridge in 1999, at which prominent sociologists and anthropologists were able to give their assessment of the progress made in memetics to that date. This resulted in the publication of Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, edited by Aunger and with a foreward by Dennett, in 2000.

In 2005, Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ceased publication and published a set of 'obituaries' for memetics. This was not intended to suggest that there can be no further work on memetics, but that the exciting childhood of memetics, which began in 1996, is finally drawing to a close, and that memetics will have to survive or become extinct in terms of the results it can generate for the field of cultural evolution. Memetics as a social, Internet-fueled popular scientific movement is now probably over. Many of the original proponents have moved away from it. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have both expressed some reservations as to its applicability, Susan Blackmore has left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer found the academic world of the north of England to be unsympathetic to his ideas, and gave up to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still publishes the odd memetics article from time to time. Richard Brodie is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. Aaron Lynch disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book).

Susan Blackmore (2002) re-stated the meme definition as whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive, memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes. In her definition, thus, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires brain capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the mutation rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every interaction of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture.

Dawkins responds in A Devil's Chaplain that there are actually two different types of memetic processes. The first is a type of cultural idea, action, or expression, which does have high variance; for instance, a student of his who had inherited some of the mannerisms of Wittgenstein. However, he also describes a self-correcting meme, highly resistant to mutation. As an example of this, he gives origami patterns in elementary schoolsexcept in rare cases, the meme is either passed on in the exact sequence of instructions, or (in the case of a forgetful child) terminates. This type of meme tends not to evolve, and to experience profound mutations in the rare event that it does. Some memeticists, however, see this as more of a continuum of meme strength, rather than two types of memes.

Another definition, given by Hokky Situngkir, tried to offer a more rigorous formalism for the meme, memeplexes, and the deme, seeing the meme as a cultural unit in a cultural complex system. It is based on the Darwinian genetic algorithm with some modifications to account for the different patterns of evolution seen in genes and memes. In the method of memetics as the way to see culture as a complex adaptive system, he describes a way to see memetics as an alternative methodology of cultural evolution. However, there are as many possible definitions that are credited to the word "meme". For example, in the sense of computer simulation the term memetic programming is used to define a particular computational viewpoint.

Memetics can be simply understood as a method for scientific analysis of cultural evolution. However, proponents of memetics as described in the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission believe that 'memetics' has the potential to be an important and promising analysis of culture using the framework of evolutionary concepts. Keith Henson who wrote Memetics and the Modular-Mind (Analog Aug. 1987) [2] makes the case that memetics needs to incorporate Evolutionary psychology to understand the psychological traits of a meme's host. [3] This is especially true of time varying host traits, such as those leading to wars.

The application of memetics to a difficult complex social system problem, environmental sustainability, has recently been attempted at thwink.org. Using meme types and memetic infection in several stock and flow simulation models, Jack Harich has demonstrated several interesting phenomenon that are best, and perhaps only, explained by memes. One model, The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace, argues that the fundamental reason corruption is the norm in politics is due to an inherent structural advantage of one feedback loop pitted against another. Another model, The Memetic Evolution of Solutions to Difficult Problems, uses memes, the evolutionary algorithm, and the scientific method to show how complex solutions evolve over time and how that process can be improved. The insights gained from these models are being used to engineer memetic solution elements to the sustainability problem.

In Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution (2004, Cambridge University Press), Austrian linguist Nikolaus Ritt has attempted to operationalise memetic concepts and use them for the explanation of long term sound changes and change conspiracies in early English. It is argued that a generalised Darwinian framework for handling cultural change can provide explanations where established, speaker centered approaches fail to do so. The book makes comparatively concrete suggestions about the possible material structure of memes, and provides two empirically rather rich case studies.

Memeoid is a neologism for people who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that that their own survival becomes inconsequential. Examples include kamikazes, suicide bombers and cult members who commit mass suicide. Compare with Zombie

The term was apparently coined by H. Keith Henson in "Memes, L5 and the Religion of the Space Colonies," L5 News, 1985 pp 5-8, [4] and referenced in Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, 2nd ed., page 330. ISBN 0-19-286092-5.

Memotype is the actual information-content of a meme.

A meme-complex (sometimes abbreviated memeplex, sometimes miss-pronounced/spelled Memoplex) is a collection or grouping of memes that have evolved into a mutually supportive or symbiotic relationship. Simply put, a meme-complex is a set of ideas that reinforce each other. Meme-complexes are roughly analogous to the symbiotic collection of individual genes that make up the genetic codes of biological organisms. An example of a Memeplex would be a religion.

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Going Underground: Cheltenham author’s book about cryonics to be used in groundbreaking scheme – Gloucestershire Live

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Eagle-eyed city commuters will have the chance to read a Cheltenham author's book about preserving human life on Monday.

Copies of The Husband Who Refused to Die are being hidden in and around London tube stations as part of the groundbreaking Books On the Underground initiative.

Read: There's a pub in Gloucestershire where you can buy your dog a pint

The debut novel, with its original, and topical, cryonics premise, has had a great response from readers since its launch in December, with one reviewer describing it as 'truly a one-of-a-kind read'.

Andrea Darby, a former journalist who lives near Cheltenham, said: "I'm thrilled to be part of this fantastic initiative and hope that the commuters who find my book will enjoy reading it and pass it on."

Cordelia Oxley, Director of Books on the Underground, said the aim was to get more people reading and sharing books. "Titles are left on seats, benches, station signs and around ticket areas, with finders often keen to share their free discoveries on social media.

"The Book Fairies are excited to be working with Andrea and are looking forward to hiding copies of her amazing book on the London Underground. It's sure to get a big reaction!"

Read: Foo Fighters announce Glastonbury news at secret gig last night

The Husband Who Refused to Die, which Andrea describes as 'a story of love, loss, family and friendship' is about 40-year-old mum Carrie, whose husband Dan dies unexpectedly, just a few years after he revealed his wish to be frozen.

The narrative focuses on the difficult repercussions of this wish for Carrie and her teenage daughter, not least an intrusive media, an interfering sister-in-law and a mystery person with a serious grudge.

The book is available from Waterstones in Cheltenham and Gloucester, the Suffolk Anthology bookshop, as well as from Amazon, WHSmith and other online retailers.

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Going Underground: Cheltenham author's book about cryonics to be used in groundbreaking scheme - Gloucestershire Live

Alternative medicine to treat pain and other ailments on the rise locally – Rockford Register Star

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Melissa Westphal

Maria Furgat wants people to know there are options when it comes to treating everything from pain to the common cold.

Furgat joined the team at Circles of Wellness, 3626 E. State St., Rockford,a few months back. She specializes in acupuncture, cupping and herbal remedies after earning her bachelors degree in nutritional counseling and masters degree in Chinese medicine from the Midwest College of Oriental Medicine in Chicago.

Patients come to Furgat to be proactive about their health, or out of frustration that other treatments and medications arent working or are causing unwanted side effects. Shes one of a handful of providers in the region offering alternative health treatments and alternative medicine.

I always say try it, Furgat said. Im not saying its the best thing for everyone, but they need to know there are options out there. You dont have to stick to the same routines.

Use of complementary and alternative medicine has no doubt increased since the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health released research on the topic nearly a decade ago. At the time, about four in 10 adults and one in nine children used them in some form.

Their use was greater among women and those with higher levels of education and higher incomes. The most common therapies were deep breathing exercises, meditation, massage therapy and yoga. Insurance covers some treatments such as acupuncture, but for the most part, alternative health treatments are self-pay.

Read on to learn more about other popular health trends that you can access from Freeport to Rockford and beyond.

Cupping

Furgat does a full history assessment when she sees a new patient. She wants to know if youre seeing other doctors, taking medications, she likes to look at lab work, shell ask you about your urine and bowel movements, and shell look at your tongue (appearance and qualities of which are used to diagnose ailments in Chinese medicine).

She doesnt necessarily promise cures, but she hopes to offer relief through a combination of treatment and often, herbal remedies. And she doesnt want you to stop seeing your primary doctor or taking prescribed medications.

Most people feel much better with herbs because some have such imbalance in their bodies, Furgat said. If you dont try to harmonize your body from the inside out, you never get to the root of the problem.

Fire cupping uses glass jars that are sanitized before and after use. Furgat wraps a cotton ball around a hemostat (a surgical tool with scissor-like handles and a clamp at the end), dips it in alcohol, lights it and moves it gently in a circular motion inside the jar to remove the inside air. The jar is then put onto the skin, creating a vacuum and pulling up the skin. Doing so lifts pain to the surface so Furgat can more easily manipulate the tissue and remove stubborn nodules.

Some people feel immediate relief of pain, others dont. There are different sizes of jars small, medium and large based on what type of pain shes trying to relieve. Fire cupping generally leaves circular bruises on the body think Michael Phelps during the 2016 Rio Olympics. Its tradition to put up with the marks, so to speak, but Furgat can use a technique called gua sha to scrape away, or reduce, some of the redness.

Furgat also does wet cupping, which incorporates the fire cupping with a tiny hammer equipped with acupuncture needles. The hammer is used lightly on the back to release blood within the cup. It can be painful, but Furgat has a patient with severe back and shoulder pain who said the treatment helped target the points where he feels the most pain.

Cupping ranges in price from $50 to $65 for about 30 to 45 minutes.

Acupuncture

There have been extensive studies conducted on acupuncture, especially for back and neck pain, osteoarthritis/knee pain, and headaches, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

With acupuncture, thin needles are inserted (or piped) at different points along the body just below the surface of the skin. Furgat wears gloves when she places and removes them, and the needles are used one time only.

The needles stay in between 15 to 30 minutes; patients report feeling a sensation of water dripping or moving around beneath the skin. Furgat said thats the body healing itself.

A potential ailment that could be soothed by acupuncture is recurrent urinary tract infections, she noted. In combination with antibiotics, there are points in the lower abdomen where acupuncture can open up channels to help alleviate pain and eliminate waste, Furgat explained.

If needles make you squeamish, Furgat also does acupressure, which uses finger pressure and/or magnets on the same acupuncture points. After treatments, she suggests drinking lukewarm water to help maintain a warmer body temperature.

What I want to do is help your body heal, balance you out so youre able to tolerate your medications better, Furgat said.

Acupuncture and acupressure are both $45 for about 20 minutes.

Essential oils and probiotics

Pat Leitzen Fye has long used patchouli essential oil as a fragrance and discovered other oils along the way for various purposes. She owns Your Core Being Wellness Collaborative, 107 W. Main St., Freeport, which opened in 2013 and focuses on yoga, massage, skin care and meditation. Shes a certified integrative health coach, and the business also has a wellness market that proudly stocks local and regional products, fair-trade items and gifts, and other natural, clean and healthy products.

Your Core Being sells several oils lavender is the top seller, while peppermint, patchouli, eucalyptus, jasmine and tea tree also are popular blends. Fye uses various oils in her yoga classes, either to energize and enliven at the beginning or to settle, calm and release at the end. She diffuses the oils into the air at the studio right now, using a blend of lavender and eucalyptus because the air gets so dry during the winter. Fye said eucalyptus is great for clearing the sinuses; lavender is a time-honored essential oil for its calming qualities, as is chamomile and sweet orange. Both of the Your Core Beings massage therapists use essential oils added to their massage oils and the esthetician uses them in some of her skin treatments or as a relaxing scent.

Essential oils have become so common that you can buy them at many grocery stores. A handful of local businesses carry them, including Choices Natural Market, 6718 Broadcast Parkway, Loves Park, and Nutrition Works, 4010 E. State St., Rockford.

Candle Crest, 1418 20th St., Rockford,started selling its oils this winter, co-owner Judy Bieck said. The local business had received several requests over the years to do so, but she and her husband, Dave, had to find a bottle distributor for the oils, create labels, make a display, and then find time to bottle and advertise them. So far, she said the response has been great, and during cold season, eucalyptus oil was the big seller.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a page on its website with consumer information about fragrance products such as essential oils and those marketed with aromatherapy claims. It notes that many plants are toxic, irritating or likely to cause allergic reactions when applied the skin. Cumin oil, for instance, is safe in food but can cause the skin to blister.

Some popular books to read on the topic are The Art of Aromatherapy by Robert Tisserand and Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art by Kathy Keville. Groups such as the National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy also offer some good guidelines for use.

Similarly available in many health food and vitamin stores are probiotics, which are live microorganisms that are intended to have health benefits, according to the Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Products can include foods such as yogurt, dietary supplements and skin creams. Probiotics may help prevent diarrhea caused by infections or antibiotics and may help with symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.

The 2012 National Health Interview Survey showed that about 4 million U.S. adults had used probiotics or prebiotics in the past 30 days. They were the third most commonly used dietary supplement other than vitamins and minerals.

Popular brands include NOW Foods, Culturelle, Align, Natures Bounty and Hyperbiotics.

Reiki

Your Core Being in Freeport also offers Reiki, a Japanese hands-on light massage technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also is said to promote healing. Its based on the idea that the therapist can channel energy into the patient by means of touch and stimulate the bodys natural healing process.

Vicki Johnson described it as a lighter massage that incorporates the flow of energy, but that Reiki is literally a laying-on of hands with no muscle manipulation. She said Reiki also can help individuals deal with emotional issues that block the flow of energy, helping restore balance in a persons mind, body and spirit.

Sharyn Gooder, founder of Stateline Reiki, was trained by William Lee Rand, who established the International Center for Reiki Training and is known as a Reiki guru. Gooder is a member of the international center, which means she abides by its code of ethics and standards of practice.

Stateline Reiki was established in 2003, and Gooder first started doing Reiki therapy sessions and then began teaching Reiki later. The organization offers basic, intermediate and more advanced levels of Reiki, as well as Master Level Reiki and Karuna Reiki. The group also offers Reiki drumming, animal Reiki and many other unique classes, which Gooder said are approved for continuing education hours for licensed massage therapists and body workers.

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Alternative medicine to treat pain and other ailments on the rise locally - Rockford Register Star

Masquelier’s Grape Seed Extract as a Supplement for Vascular Health – Medical News Bulletin

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The characterization and careful research of a nutraceutical is necessary to claim it has positive health benefits. A review published in Nutrition Journal follows Masqueliers grape seed extract from its isolation in 1947 to its use as a nutraceutical.

In the case of plant-derived food supplements, it is essential for the supplement to be well researched and have significant health benefits. Importantly, three major rules must be followed: 1) the product must be well characterized, 2) the claimed effect should be well-defined and pose a physiological benefit, and 3) there must be a cause and effect relationship between the intake of the food product and the claim on human health.

A new review published in Nutrition Journal followed a botanical preparation of monomeric and oligomeric flavan-3-ols from grape seeds from its creation in 1947 to a commonly used nutraceutical with proven health benefits. Nutraceuticals are any product derived from food sources with extra health benefits in addition to their nutritional value in food, and are generally standardized similar to pharmaceutical-grade nutrients.

Various food supplements contain Masqueliers Original OPCs (Anthogenol), the commercial herbal remedies of monomeric and oligomeric flavan-3-ols which are extracted from grape seeds. These flavonoids, or plant pigment molecules, are bioactive components which were first isolated in the early 20th century. Flavonoids are found ubiquitously in plants.

Flavanols are the most abundant flavonoids and are found in a wide variety of vegetables and plant-derived food such as wine, cocoa beans, and legumes. Among fruits, berries have the highest amounts of flavanols. Since the daily dietary intake of flavanols fluctuates between individuals, a flavanol supplement such as Masqueliers Original OPCs is a possible option since it can provide the health benefits of flavanols in a regulated concentration.

The first requirement to substantiate the health benefit of a food product is the characterization of the product. In contrast to many commercially available herbal remedies, Masqueliers grape seed preparation is rigorously standardized by HPLC and H-NMR/PCA fingerprinting. These methods are optimal for monitoring the quality of plant extracts.

The second requirement is that there is a physiological benefit to the nutraceutical. Through a number of studies, the grape seed extract has been shown to benefit human vascular health through the maintenance of vascular homeostasis. This has been shown through the flavanols effects on protecting collagen and elastin fibers, serving antioxidant properties and having anti-inflammatory effects.

Lastly, the third requirement for advocating the health benefit of a nutraceutical is demonstrating a cause and effect relationship between the supplement and the health effect. Studies on the Masqueliers grape seed extract have shown that the mode of action of flavanols in the commercial preparation parallels that of the specific monomeric and oligomeric flavanols originally isolated in the 1940s.

In conclusion, Masqueliers Original OPCs or grape seed extract is an interesting example of how specific research can isolate, identify and evolve a botanical ingredient to a nutritional supplement. The in-depth characterization and research on flavanols in this context explain how it can be applied as a herbal remedy and nutraceutical for vascular health.

Written By: Neeti Vashi, BSc

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Masquelier's Grape Seed Extract as a Supplement for Vascular Health - Medical News Bulletin

Ora Organic on ‘Shark Tank’: A Look Inside the Plant-Based Supplements – Heavy.com

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Ora Organic entered the Shark Tank in Season 8 with their fruit-flavored organic, plant-based supplements.

We interviewed CEO Will Smelko, a former strategy and operations consultant for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, who launched the company with his college friend Ronald Chang, who serves as their chef and COO. The duo spent two years on research and development, consulting with doctors, scientific researchers, nutritionists, health coaches, naturopaths and fitness experts to create the optimal supplement.

When asked about their bestselling products, Smelko responded, Our bestsellers are our Omega-3 Nothing Fishy Here Spray, derived from microalgae and flavored with a special pineapple and citrus blend, and our Way Better Than Whey protein powders, flavored with Chai spices and vanilla.

Heres what else he told us about

We were taking supplements for personal health and wellness reasons, but struggled to find products that met the same standards we hold for our food: organic, non-GMO, plant-based and sustainably sourced. We felt impassioned to create an honest supplement line for our people and planet. We also wanted our customers to feel excited about taking supplements, which inspired us to create culinary-flavored formula blends through aesthetically-pleasing packaging and interesting delivery methods. As a team of individuals who adheres to conscious food and lifestyle choices, we wanted to ensure our supplements demonstrated these values. Ora Organics supplements are kind to our bodies, our environment, and our taste palettes!

Ora Organics supplements differentiate from those in the mainstream, as weve developed 100 percent plant-based nutritional formulas. Our vegan-friendly supplement line sources its ingredients from organic farms to ensure the cleanest and most sustainable products possible. Ora Organics omega-3 supplement, for example, is derived from microalgae instead of fish (the primary source of the majority of omega-3 supplements on the market) and formulated into a spray. Likewise, all of Ora Organics products are carefully crafted to be as delicious as they are healthy. Our chef, Ronald Chang, uses vibrant flavors like pineapple, raspberry, and chai, in many of our recipe blends.

As a team, we were ready for the next step in growing the Ora Organic brand. We have felt that one of the biggest issues in the supplement space has been the lack of transparency between companies and consumers, especially when it comes to the ingredients used in their supplement formulas.After seeing so many people being mislead in grocery stores and daily conversation, we realized the urgent need to raise awareness about the current state of the supplement industry-after all, these products are often consumed daily. We have received immense support in our companys endeavors, and have reached a point at which we feel confident to expand our distribution and reach. Having known other company founders who were featured on Shark Tank and seeing the value-add that the Sharks provide, we wanted to go on the show to experience these benefits firsthand. We needed money to scale our business, and thought the Sharks would be amazing candidates to help us accomplish our goals and gain exposure.

Peaceful Fruits, organic snacks made from acai from the Amazon rainforest, entered the Shark Tank in Season 8. We interviewed its founder.

Dollop Gourmet entered the Shark Tank with its frosting that's vegan and gluten free. Heavy interviewed its owner about her dessert business.

Although Parker's Real Maple did not get a deal on Shark Tank, they did gain many customers. We interviewed owner Joshua Parker about their staggering growth.

Bee Fee Honee, a vegan alternative to honey, won a deal with Barbara, Chris and Mark on Shark Tank. Heavy asked their owners about the company's growth.

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Ora Organic on 'Shark Tank': A Look Inside the Plant-Based Supplements - Heavy.com

Cruising Down SoCal’s Boulevards: Streets as Spaces for Celebration and Cultural Resistance – KCET

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Janette Beckman, "The Rivera Bad Girls, East L.A. 1983," 1983. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

In partnership with theVincent Price Art Museum:The mission of the Vincent Price Art Museum is to serve as a unique educational resource through the exhibition, interpretation, collection, and preservation of works in all media.

"Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943 2016" is a multimedia exhibition that traverses eight decades of style, art, and music, and presents vignettes that consider youth culture as a social class, distinct issues associated with young people, principles of social organization, and the emergence of subcultural groups. Citing the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots as a seminal moment in the history of Los Angeles, the exhibition emphasizes a recirculation of shared experiences across time, reflecting recurrent and ongoing struggles and triumphs.

Through a series of articles, Artbound is digging deeper into the figures and themes explored in "Tastemakers & Earthshakers." The show is on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum through February 25, 2017.

[Left] "View of Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles just before dusk on September 9, 1979, where the cruisers were out as usual. A section of the street was closed at 9:30 p.m. to prevent gang violence." | Photo: Anne Knudsen, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library || [Right] "Night view of Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, where a section of the street has been closed at 9:30 p.m. to prevent gang violence." September 9, 1979. | Photo: Anne Knudsen, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Prominent cities are often characterized by their streets. Whether its the iconic passage known as Sunset Boulevard on the west side of Alamedaor Cesar Chavez Avenue to the east, boulevards have the practical function of ordering commerce and traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular. But they are also curated displays of a citys identity simultaneously, destinations, as well as, transitory spaces where culture, in its flow, is publicly shaped and performed.

In Southern California, car culture became both a symbol of transcendence over socio-economic and racial boundaries, and played a significant role in shaping the identity of West Coast art. Artists, such as Frank Romero and Ruben Ortiz-Torres, have made cars the subject and object of their work. For Chicanos and Mexican Americans, constructing and riding a tricked-out car became a way to turn vehicles into a cultura, which in its specific insularity could turn its back on a mainstream society thatdenied them. Cultura, as many barrio sages know, is a way to keep your head up, to smile now and leave the crying for later when the rancheras and beer in the company of your most trusted homies split you too wide.

Gusmano Cesaretti, "Mosca, 1974 East L.A.," 1974, archival pigment print. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Cruising, a prominent pastime of Chicano culture, elevates riding a car to a performance a public ritual of the street. For Eastside communities, boulevards have been a destination for car cruising and low-riding. To highlight its movement and flashy materiality, low-riding drops everything to a lower wavelength. It slows its speed to crawling, reduces its height to nearly scraping. Even the bass drops in sound systems to revel in its sonorous depths. To cruise is to ride a vibration at its heaviest. The car itself is a crown, often laden with precious urban metals, chrome and steel, and crafted with gem-toned fiberglass. The work of Ortiz-Torrez highlights the low-rider and its aesthetics by reconstructing them and re-engineering its hydraulic mechanisms to emphasize its cultural vernacular.

As a transitory public space, boulevards are also locations in which rites of passage are exhibited. On barrio streets, a quinceaera will take the gravity of a queen. In the act of cruising in her limo or decked out ranfla, she presents herself to the streets she had walked most of her life, as a rubber-soled kid, skipping down the gum-stained sidewalk to buy a bag of chips or walking alongside her mother to church on a given Sunday. On her 15th birthday, she navigates on her own terms, cruising down the boulevard. While in church she received the blessings of a priest before the eyes of God and her family, now on the streets, she becomes her own priestess evoking power through the broken asphalt with the wheels of her slow-riding limo. If she is inclined, she may ascend through the sunroof to reveal herself and see the world from these new heights.

And though rites of passage, such as quinceaeras, affirm our location within a social order, in some cases, the act of solely asserting the presence of marginalized bodies of color in public space is an act of political resistance. Over the decades, boulevards have also been used to enact social and political subversion.

Rafael Cardenas, "Quinceaera Limo Swag," 2014, digital archival print. | Photo: Courtesy of the artist

The 1968 student walkouts and the Chicano Moratorium in 1970 were two key moments that asserted the presence and power of Chicanos in history, culture and politics and established East Los Angeles as a symbolic cultural homeland for Chicanos in the Southwest. The blowouts captured the zeitgeist of a rising Chicano movement and represented a political initiation for young Chicano activists who experienced their first taste of political empowerment and would, in the following years, grow to become significant figures in policy, education and art.

Some young participants of the walkouts would also come of age as artists using the streets once again as a platform for their politics and aesthetics. ASCO, the East L.A.-based Chicano arts group that mainly consisted of Patssi Valdez, Gronk, Harry Gamboa and Willie Herrn, initiated their public performances on Whittier Boulevard with The Stations on Christmas Eve of 1971. Much of their work took place in public spaces, most notably Whittier Boulevard, including Walking Mural (1972), Instant Mural (1974) and Decoy Gang War Victim (1974), which eventually landed on the cover of Art Forum magazine in 2011.

[Left] Two young men hold a banner which reads, "National Chicano Moratorium, East Los Angeles, August 29." | Photo: Sal Castro, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library || [Right] A newly wedded couple march in the National Chicano Moratorium which took place in East Los Angeles, August 29, 1970. | Photo: Sal Castro, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

The Chicano movement reached a momentous yet entropic climax during the Chicano Moratorium in 1970. By then, many teenagers that had walked out of high schools had become politicized college students and rising professionals that were fully self-aware of their political strength. Planned by seasoned activists, the moratorium was a highly organized protest, however, this event erupted into chaos and violence as police shot tear gas canisters to disband the unlawful gathering. Students and protesters ran, taking refuge in nearby homes. According to numerous testimonies, police entered homes and private businesses in search of protesters. Most notably, police officers and riot police entered the Silver Dollar Bar where they fired three canisters, striking and killing prominent Mexican American journalist Ruben Salazar.

The unraveling of these events is useful in understanding a crucial function of the boulevard and the gridiron layout of the city to conduct police and military enforced discipline. In fact, critics of the grid or gridiron layout have noted that its design intentionally prevents and helps control uprisings. In the mid-19th century, Paris reconstructed its city after a brutal French revolution with a new urban layout that employed the modern boulevard as its centerpiece. The controversial author of this layout, Georges- Eugne Haussmann, noted the military value of his design as it prevented the outbreak of riots that had previously plagued Paris and revived not-too-distant memories of the bloody revolution.

In addition to political dissent, the mere presence of brown bodies in a public space has been criminalized in Los Angeles. Loitering laws have been known to target young people and people of color, preventing them from gathering in public spaces. More pernicious gang injunctions make the public gathering of people of color illegal, particularly in historically Latino neighborhoods such as Echo Park that are experiencing aggressive gentrification.

Another function of L.A.s predominant urban layout, as it is exemplified in the unraveling of the Chicano Moratorium, is its swift disciplinarian reach that could extendfrom public to private spheres.

Ricardo Valverde, "Boulevard Night," 1979/1991, hand-colored photograph. Collection of Esperanza Valverde and Christopher J. Valverde.

In a city known for being largely comprised of countless distinct suburbs, private spaces become increasingly important as subversive arenas for cultural production, transformation and resistance. When authoritarian powers clamp down on public spaces and privatized cities relinquish public space to strip malls and corporate plazas homes, backyards and even small businesses become necessary social platforms.

Punk culture has survived and thrived in a network of backyard gigs and homespun venues with the lifespan of a flower, not only in East L.A. but perhaps most notably in the conservative hinterlands of San Bernardino and Orange County. Underground electronic music scenes throughout greater L.A. have mushroomed from fog machine-enhanced house parties to a sophisticated economy of warehouse raves connected to an international electronica scene. Even modest family baptism celebrations in cleared-out garages or quinceaera parties in decked-out backyards or church halls serve as intergenerational, inter-genre mix spots. Its where many poor and working-class kids learn to dance cumbias and norteas with their tas and later find ways to mix these with new, more diverse styles that reflect an increasingly cosmopolitan lifestyle, even in the suburbs.

Social media collapses both private and public spheres to create yet another space for alternate cultural narratives. Artist Guadalupe Rosales Veteranas y Rucas Twitter project documents party culture of the 1990s using social media as a widely accessible public forum. As such, social media like Southern Californias boulevards will continue to be useful in organizing critical mass movements in the physical world, and, in some capacity, serve the function of public squares, where communities have gathered to celebrate one another.

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Cruising Down SoCal's Boulevards: Streets as Spaces for Celebration and Cultural Resistance - KCET

The age of the people – The News on Sunday

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The latest wave of populism is alarming because contemporary world politics is experiencing resurrection of majoritarian identity politics intertwined with populist zeitgeist

Donald Trump is amongst the many who personify populist zeitgeist in the West.

More than a decade back, Dutch political scientist, Cas Mudde argued today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of Western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist. In linguistics, the term zeitgeist means spirit of the times, however in combination with populism the term has a specific meaning: it connotes an ideology that values politics of identity based on ethno-cultural and religious superiority. The observation made by Mudde has proven prophetic; for now, the grand theatre of world politics justifies the claim.

Populism, as the name suggest, focuses on the people. However, populists have a very exclusive definition of the people that precludes certain identities being labeled as others. This rationale us versus them fuels populism. Furthermore, within the ideology there are two camps: far-right and far-left.

Populists on the political right tend to view the people sharing a common religious-ethno-cultural background. As in the case of contemporary world politics the people refer only to the white European and of Anglo-Saxon origins. Thus, all those who do not share these particular social, cultural, physiological traits are not considered the people.

On the other hand, the far-left populist discourse excludes a certain class of those elites who favour liberal values of freedom, equality and liberty for all, irrespective of class, gender, age, colour, religion and culture. It does not matter if the excluded elite have the same social, cultural, physiological attributes as the people they are disqualified because they belong to different economic class and have liberal attitudes.

Far-right or far-left, in populist way of thinking the people are fundamentally monolithic, a single entity devoid of any divisions across social, cultural, physiological, economic and religious lines. Populists argue liberal and multi-culturalist elite denigrate communitys values and promotes inflow of immigrants from hostile cultures. Furthermore, they contend liberal representative democracy has undervalued the monolithic cultural and social identity of the people.

Ironically, they are the majority but are now forgotten. Since political institutions in liberal democracy necessitate procedures in which plurality of views is included; such procedures however neutralise the people. Populists strongly believe liberal democratic arrangements devalue vox populi: political institutions, therefore must proceed based on the identity of the majority.

This year when citizens in Netherlands, France, and Germany vote for their prime minister, president and chancellor respectively; the citizens choice in these countries will have an unprecedented effect on world politics.

Though, politics of identity certainly has legitimate space in any functional democracy, however, if identity derives its strength from within the democratic framework. The advocates for politics of identity ought to frame their concerns within the democratic principles such as political equality, liberty and freedom for all. But if adherents contrive to supersede and subsume democratic principles it is death knell for the prized pluralism in liberal democracy.

This latest wave of populism is alarming because its adherents believe it is their existence that shall rein in unruly liberalism. The populist idea that the good, homogeneous people are betrayed by evil minorities and corrupted elites is potentially very attractive to voters. For example, rise of the alternative-right (Alt-Right) movement in US is one such example the movement is led by so-called white nationalists who believe in nativism and demand creation of separate, racially exclusive homelands for white people. Furthermore, what makes the recent wave exceptional is its semblance to fascism.

It seems, contemporary world politics is experiencing resurrection of majoritarian identity politics intertwined with populist zeitgeist. By reviewing the election manifestos of the populist political parties, such as Front National in France, British National Party in UK, Party for Freedom in Netherlands, and Germanys Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) through them we can ascertain the extent of nativist zeal in this latest populist zeitgeist in the West.

With this long prelude, let us look at what is happening the worldover.

The episode of Brexit was the first episode that signaled majoritarian version of the politics of identity. Surprisingly, long before Brexit we witnessed the Scottish Referendum. The result of the referendum (though) was positive in a sense that the British Isle remained a unified political entity. The result of the Brexit referendum, however, was negative in its effect. And, the result further stoked populist zeitgeist in Western democracies.

Traditionally, identity politics was considered to be the politics of marginal groups. However, contemporary rejuvenated politics of identity can be conceptualised as majoritarian version of identity politics. In the West, the majority among the people claim to be the new minority.

For example, a recent book The new minority: white working class politics in an age of immigration and inequality by a US-based political scientist Justin Gest looks into white populists distrust towards their political elite and liberal institutions. His findings are indicative of the rise of populism in a sense that all his interviewees (white working class in US and UK) strongly believe their political institutions have betrayed the majority natives (i.e., white population). They fault political correctness of the institutions, and democracys inclusive framework.

Gest contends political entrepreneurs thrive on this purported betrayal by fanning fear amongst the white working class. What more? This populist wave thrives on narratives constructed by conservative zealots that demonise the dynamics of free speech in democracy: terms like Islamisation, mass immigration, and leftist agendas serve to frame hysterical narrative and is endorsed by an exclusive the people just look at what right-wing Breitbart News website produces on regular basis. According to a US-based civil-rights think-tank Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the number of anti-Muslim groups in US has increased from 34 in 2015 to 100 in 2016.

The undeniable fact of contemporary world politics is that Donald Trump is amongst the many who personify populist zeitgeist in the West. Others like him are unified in their abrasive demeanour and disregard for democratic institutions. Trump is not the only in Western democracy to spearhead the course against immigrants; the others in Europe are in pursuit to emulate him.

This year when citizens in Netherlands, France, and Germany vote for their prime minister, president and chancellor respectively; the citizens choice in these countries will have an unprecedented effect on world politics.

Netherlands witness elections next month, and there are pre-electoral surveys that put populist leader Geert Wilders in carving a comfortable position for his far-right Party for Freedom in the Parliament. In France, the political party Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, rides on the populist wave. Experts believe she will make to the second round of presidential elections (a feat that was never achieved by her father).

Germany is a rather an interesting case for there are signs that incumbent Merkels Christian Democratic Union of Germany (the center-right, conservative party) might be ousted by the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany. Though the two parties seem to have favourable policy towards refugee influx and on the EU, how will they campaign on these issues will only be unfolded in due course. A lot now hangs on several European elections this year. Wait and see what unfolds in the upcoming elections in Netherlands, France and Germany.

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The age of the people - The News on Sunday