VR 2016

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545011/four-important-things-to-expect-in-virtual-reality-in-2016/

Four Important Things to Expect in Virtual Reality in 2016

Expect a banner year for virtual reality. Here are some of the biggest things to look forward to in the months ahead.

• By Rachel Metz on December 28, 2015

Virtual reality has grown immensely over the past few years, but 2016 looks like the most important year yet: it will be the first time that consumers can get their hands on a number of powerful headsets for viewing alternate realities in immersive 3-D.

To get a sense of how quickly virtual reality is moving toward the mainstream, consider this: in early January, more than 40 exhibitors will be showing off their technology in a dedicated “Gaming and Virtual Reality Marketplace” at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The trade group that puts on the show, the Consumer Electronics Association, says this is a 77 percent increase over what it saw in 2015.

With all that in mind, what will really matter? Here’s what we’re watching.

Oculus’s first consumer headset, Rift, will be released in the first quarter of 2016.

High-Powered Headsets
Several virtual-reality headsets are expected to hit the market this winter and spring. Facebook-owned Oculus’s first consumer headset, Rift, is slated for release in the first quarter of the year, while the HTC Vive—a headset created by smartphone maker HTC and video-game company Valve—is set to be available to consumers in April. Sony, meanwhile, is building its own headset, called PlayStation VR, which the company says will be released in the first half of the year.

The price tags for these headsets haven’t yet been announced, and buyers may also have to factor in the cost of a compatible computer (or, in the case of the Sony headset, a PlayStation 4), since all three of them will need to be physically connected to one of these in order to work. Rift has released details about PCs that will work with it (they start at $949), but HTC hasn’t yet said what the requirements will be for Vive-compatible PCs.

Despite the fact that few headsets are yet on the market, the Consumer Electronics Association forecasts sales of 1.2 million in 2016.

Eagle Flight, a forthcoming virtual-reality video game from Ubisoft Entertainment, lets you play from the perspective of an eagle.

A New Breed of Games
Companies are developing a number of games and other experiences to go along with these new virtual-reality headsets.

A silly but fun game from Owlchemy Labs, called Job Simulator, will be available for Oculus’s Rift, HTC’s Vive, and Sony’s PlayStation VR. The game, which I got to try out at Oculus’s developer conference in the fall, is set in a future where robots have taken over all work, and it invites the player to simulate what it’s like to perform jobs like working in an office or as a chef.
And Ubisoft Entertainment, which makes the Assassin’s Creed video games and many others, expects to release Eagle Flight in 2016. The game lets you fly around above Paris, taking on the perspective of an eagle.

The games won’t all be new: the Windows 10 version of Minecraft, the extremely popular building-block game, will be coming to Rift in the spring, as well as to Samsung’s Gear VR, an existing $100 headset developed with Oculus that requires a Samsung smartphone to serve as its computer and display.

Nokia is building a virtual-reality camera called Ozo for capturing spherical 3-D videos.

Better Camera Options
Virtual reality isn’t all about computer-generated graphics; a number of companies are making live-action content, too. There aren’t too many options out there for filmmakers, though, and some companies are coming out with cameras that they hope will help.

Nokia expects to start selling Ozo, a nine-pound, mostly spherical video camera with a long protuberance on its back (for its special combined battery and recording cartridges), for $60,000 sometime in the first quarter. And Lytro—which hasn’t had much success with a camera that lets you change the focus of images after they’ve been shot—says it’s also building a professional-grade spherical camera, called Immerge, that will be about the size of a beach ball and cost “in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.” It is expected to be available within the same time frame.

A model of the Void’s Rapture headset, which the company plans to use when it opens its first virtual entertainment center in 2016.

Beyond the Living Room
Though much of the virtual-reality action in 2016 is expected to focus on the living room, a startup in suburban Utah is bringing it into a much larger space by opening a virtual-reality entertainment center called the Void later in the year.

Located in Pleasant Grove, Utah, the Void will outfit visitors with a headset and other gear, and then let them loose in groups of six to eight people to roam a 60-by-60-foot stage filled with a maze of physical walls and effects like heat and sprays of water that match up with a range of images you’ll see on the headset.

The Void is already operating a demo stage in neighboring Lindon, Utah, where visitors pay $10 apiece for experiences that last about six or seven minutes; when the real thing opens in August or September, the company plans to charge about $34 for a 20-minute experience.
More traditional theme parks may also add virtual-reality technology in 2016, too. Ontario-based amusement park Canada’s Wonderland, for example, reportedly plans to let users pay an extra fee to wear headsets on one of its roller coasters.

UK 'Victorian' diseases - Immigration

http://www.pulseheadlines.com/uk-faces-alarming-rates-victorian-diseases/13672/

London – It has been mistakenly assumed that ancient diseases are totally eradicated, especially in developed countries. The United Kingdom particularly is now facing a “Victorian” disease epidemic, as cases of tuberculosis, scurvy, cholera, whooping cough, and scarlet fever are rising alarmingly. Experts believe the main causes could be immigration, malnutrition, poverty and lack of access to health care.

Dr. Nuria Martinez-Alier, an immunologist based in London, said that there has been a dramatic spike in scarlet fever, with 14,000 cases last year, the highest since the 1960s. According to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), scarlet fever cases have increased 136%; cases of cholera have spiked 300% over the past five years; and, scurvy rates are up 38%. As for tuberculosis, diagnoses have decreased but rates are still disproportionately high, especially in some British neighborhoods where TB rates are even higher than in Guatemala, Iraq, Rwanda and other developing countries. Surprisingly, TB caused more global deaths this year than HIV and AIDS.

“Victorian” illnesses such as tuberculosis, cholera, and scarlet fever have been on the rise in the UK. 

Even though TB cases have been steadily decreasing also in the United States, on Tuesday, the White House published information about a new 5-year program to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide, after the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed the latest statistics on TB diagnosis and deaths. Named as the National Action Plan, the program involves efforts of governments of all affected nations, including partners from the private sector, as well as bilateral and multilateral partners.
 
Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, commented that despite the fact that advances in TB control have helped save many lives around the world, leaders must encourage improvement in health care services and “critically invest in research” in order to definitely end the epidemic.

Malnutrition: A leading cause of severe diseases

British experts highlight the recent spike in malnutrition. It figures as the primary or secondary cause of admissions to the hospital, as the number of patients admitted with malnutrition has doubled in three years. Dianne Jeffrey, head of the Malnutrition Task Force, told earlier this year that professionals and the elderly mistakenly assume that it is normal to lose weight and have a reduced appetite as a consequence of aging.

“Much malnutrition is preventable, so it is totally unacceptable that estimates suggest there are at least one million older people malnourished or at risk of malnourishment,” expressed Jeffrey. “Cuts to social care mean many older people are being left to cope on their own.”

Raise awareness: Infectious diseases are not eradicated

Martinez-Alier warned that low vaccination rates significantly contribute to the problem. Of course, if people in this modern world believe that infectious diseases are a matter of history, no one will think of the importance of getting a vaccine against them. Most of the illnesses resurging today can be cured with medication. TB, for instance, can spread quickly and cause death if left untreated. In 2013, an estimated of 9 million cases of TB were reported worldwide, killing around 1.5 million people.

“I think there is a general sense in this country, at least for me — which is incorrect — that infectious diseases are completely eradicated, or that we found some way to get rid of them and that they are ‘Victorian’ illnesses,” said Josie Garrett, a London resident who is currently taking medication for TB. He added that people need to be aware of the fact that those diseases remain a threat.

Ted Cruz an unwitting Brutus to Trump's dream of becoming Caesar

Ted's video is kitschy, but I'm afraid Donald Trump is buttering up Cruz to follow his path of grandstanding for visibility and power.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/22/ted-cruz-strikes-back-at-washington-post-cartoonist-for-mocking-his-daughters-theyre-out-of-your-league/

 Ted Cruz mocked by political cartoonist Ann Telnaes for using his kids as political props:

My thoughts:

Ted Cruz is struck by a strange imbalance of what some enjoy as maverick bombast, offset by a Robin Williams-like need to go into unconvincing, theatrical emotive appeal. And, for this very characteristic, I believe he is symptomatic of and susceptible to the wiles and styles of Trump, who once jousted Cruz as a maniac and then backpedaled to endorse, likely as a future acquisition for running mate.

By contrast, regardless of what critics say about their foreign policies, Ron and Rand Paul stay in the reason zone, especially when it comes to rhetoric. I hate to think that Rand may never be electable for such a virtue - that he's not dramatic enough to win over our American couch culture. One would hope that the public would be happy to get their dose of drama from reality TV and know well enough to separate that need from life itself, but just the opposite is true. Like the late Greg Giraldo said (3:49), if they ever made a reality show about paraplegics being thrown in a lake and called it 'The Floater', not only would people watch, they would line up to be on the show.

Ironically, Trump harshly criticized the media for capitalizing on his media value during the Republican debates. But, Rand Paul points out how Trump has borrowed a lot of his own findings to tap into a voter base. Trump followed Paul's lead on keeping open dialogue with Putin, for example, but seems to be carrying it to another level and with curious reciprocity from Russia.

Trump can benefit from the youth and political roots of Ted Cruz, but it's the infamous 'Junior Senator' Rand Paul, ten years Ted's elder, who points out that the would be Emperor Trump isn't wearing any clothes. Trump has consistently and aggressively attacked Rand, and at some point I think Trump is going to show us he's a mob-style guy, bent more on muscle than good form, and he may just drag us all into deeper waters than he's prepared to swim. If he continues trying to push Rand out of sight completely, including his Senate seat, he may not have a clear head around to play lifeguard.

My prediction if Trump came to power - it would be a short and sweet several rounds of power stunts, flag planting and gloating, followed very shortly by a backlash of unimaginable horror and devastation from hostile forces to make 911 look like the warm-up gig.

And/Or, maybe we'd see some unconventional, creative negotiations with countries like Russia, China, and Iran that rope us into stranger configurations that further distort our world identity or recast us as Empire builder, as I can only imagine how much Trump may like to be Caesar. Ben Franklin predicted our Republic would inevitably fall like Rome, so maybe we need such an ego as The Donald to take us there. Perhaps Cruz would make an unwitting Brutus to complete the tragedy.

Once again, it's looking like the usual two terms left, two terms right, pendulum of executive power carrying the momentum, and furthering us from the Constitution.

x-ray vision

http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/offbeat/2015/12/22/us-scientists-developing--x-ray-vision-.html

A company set up to market the technology, now dubbed Emerald, will spin out of the MIT lab next year, with a goal of marketing the device early in 2017, and it's expected to sell for $US250-$US300 ($A348-$A418), Adib said. The team is working to make the device smaller and to develop an interface that will let users configure it through a smartphone app, Katabi added.
AP
- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/offbeat/2015/12/22/us-scientists-developing--x-ray-vision-.html#sthash.4vhJeY47.dpuf

A group of researchers led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dina Katabi has developed software that uses variations in radio signals to recognize human silhouettes through walls and track their movements.
Researchers say the technology will be able to help health care providers and families keep closer tabs on toddlers and the elderly, and it could be a new strategic tool for law enforcement and the military.
"Think of it just like cameras, except that it's not a camera," said Fadel Adib, a researcher on the MIT team developing the device.
"It's a sensor that can monitor people and allow you to control devices just by pointing at them," he said.
Work began in 2012 to determine how wireless signals could be used to "see" what's happening in another room, said Katabi, who directs the MIT Wireless Center.
"At first we were just interested ... can you at all use wireless signals to detect what's happening in occluded spaces, behind a wall, couch, something like that," Katabi said.
"It turned out that we were able to detect that. And when we figured out we could detect that, we started asking more advanced questions: Could we use it to detect exactly how people are moving in a space if they are behind a wall?"
The device displays the signal on a screen, where the person's movements can be tracked in real time. It depicts the target as a red dot moving around the room, occupying a chair and speeding up or slowing down.
The wireless signals used to track a person's motions also can measure the individual's breathing and heart rate - and potentially identify the person based on the shape of his or her skeleton, said researcher Zach Kabelac.
"The person won't be wearing anything on them, and the person it's tracking doesn't even need to know the device is there," Kabelac said.
"If something unfortunate happens to them, like a fall, the device will contact the caregiver that they chose to alert" by generating a text message or an email, he added.
That makes health care applications especially interesting, Katabi said. But she also sees military and law enforcement possibilities - particularly in hostage situations.
"You don't want to send the police inside without knowing where the people are standing or where the hostages are," she said. "If there is someone with a gun, where they are standing?"
A company set up to market the technology, now dubbed Emerald, will spin out of the MIT lab next year, with a goal of marketing the device early in 2017, and it's expected to sell for $US250-$US300 ($A348-$A418), Adib said. The team is working to make the device smaller and to develop an interface that will let users configure it through a smartphone app, Katabi added.
AP
- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/offbeat/2015/12/22/us-scientists-developing--x-ray-vision-.html#sthash.4vhJeY47.dpuf

A group of researchers led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dina Katabi has developed software that uses variations in radio signals to recognize human silhouettes through walls and track their movements.
Researchers say the technology will be able to help health care providers and families keep closer tabs on toddlers and the elderly, and it could be a new strategic tool for law enforcement and the military.
"Think of it just like cameras, except that it's not a camera," said Fadel Adib, a researcher on the MIT team developing the device.
"It's a sensor that can monitor people and allow you to control devices just by pointing at them," he said.
Work began in 2012 to determine how wireless signals could be used to "see" what's happening in another room, said Katabi, who directs the MIT Wireless Center.
"At first we were just interested ... can you at all use wireless signals to detect what's happening in occluded spaces, behind a wall, couch, something like that," Katabi said.
"It turned out that we were able to detect that. And when we figured out we could detect that, we started asking more advanced questions: Could we use it to detect exactly how people are moving in a space if they are behind a wall?"
The device displays the signal on a screen, where the person's movements can be tracked in real time. It depicts the target as a red dot moving around the room, occupying a chair and speeding up or slowing down.
The wireless signals used to track a person's motions also can measure the individual's breathing and heart rate - and potentially identify the person based on the shape of his or her skeleton, said researcher Zach Kabelac.
"The person won't be wearing anything on them, and the person it's tracking doesn't even need to know the device is there," Kabelac said.
"If something unfortunate happens to them, like a fall, the device will contact the caregiver that they chose to alert" by generating a text message or an email, he added.
That makes health care applications especially interesting, Katabi said. But she also sees military and law enforcement possibilities - particularly in hostage situations.
"You don't want to send the police inside without knowing where the people are standing or where the hostages are," she said. "If there is someone with a gun, where they are standing?"
A company set up to market the technology, now dubbed Emerald, will spin out of the MIT lab next year, with a goal of marketing the device early in 2017, and it's expected to sell for $US250-$US300 ($A348-$A418), Adib said. The team is working to make the device smaller and to develop an interface that will let users configure it through a smartphone app, Katabi added.
AP
- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/offbeat/2015/12/22/us-scientists-developing--x-ray-vision-.html#sthash.4vhJeY47.dpuf

A group of researchers led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dina Katabi has developed software that uses variations in radio signals to recognize human silhouettes through walls and track their movements.
Researchers say the technology will be able to help health care providers and families keep closer tabs on toddlers and the elderly, and it could be a new strategic tool for law enforcement and the military.
"Think of it just like cameras, except that it's not a camera," said Fadel Adib, a researcher on the MIT team developing the device.
"It's a sensor that can monitor people and allow you to control devices just by pointing at them," he said.
Work began in 2012 to determine how wireless signals could be used to "see" what's happening in another room, said Katabi, who directs the MIT Wireless Center.
"At first we were just interested ... can you at all use wireless signals to detect what's happening in occluded spaces, behind a wall, couch, something like that," Katabi said.
"It turned out that we were able to detect that. And when we figured out we could detect that, we started asking more advanced questions: Could we use it to detect exactly how people are moving in a space if they are behind a wall?"
The device displays the signal on a screen, where the person's movements can be tracked in real time. It depicts the target as a red dot moving around the room, occupying a chair and speeding up or slowing down.
The wireless signals used to track a person's motions also can measure the individual's breathing and heart rate - and potentially identify the person based on the shape of his or her skeleton, said researcher Zach Kabelac.
"The person won't be wearing anything on them, and the person it's tracking doesn't even need to know the device is there," Kabelac said.
"If something unfortunate happens to them, like a fall, the device will contact the caregiver that they chose to alert" by generating a text message or an email, he added.
That makes health care applications especially interesting, Katabi said. But she also sees military and law enforcement possibilities - particularly in hostage situations.
"You don't want to send the police inside without knowing where the people are standing or where the hostages are," she said. "If there is someone with a gun, where they are standing?"
A company set up to market the technology, now dubbed Emerald, will spin out of the MIT lab next year, with a goal of marketing the device early in 2017, and it's expected to sell for $US250-$US300 ($A348-$A418), Adib said. The team is working to make the device smaller and to develop an interface that will let users configure it through a smartphone app, Katabi added.
AP
- See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/offbeat/2015/12/22/us-scientists-developing--x-ray-vision-.html#sthash.4vhJeY47.dpuf

Revolutionary steel treatment paves the way for radically lighter, stronger, cheaper cars

http://www.gizmag.com/flash-bainite-automotive-testing/40774/

• Loz Blain
• December 10, 2015

Flash Bainite crush can – folds almost as tightly as paper without cracking (Credit: Flash Bainite)
Image Gallery (10 images) 

 

Back in 2011, we wrote about a fascinating new way to heat-treat regular, cheap steel to endow it with an almost miraculous blend of characteristics. Radically cheaper, quicker and less energy-intensive to produce, Flash Bainite is stronger than titanium by weight, and ductile enough to be pressed into shape while cold without thinning or cracking. It's now being tested by three of the world's five largest car manufacturers, who are finding they can produce thinner structural car components that are between 30-50 percent lighter and cheaper than the steel they've been using, while maintaining the same performance is crash tests. Those are revolutionary numbers in the auto space.

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Darren Quick did a good job explaining exactly how Flash Bainite is produced in our original story, but in basic terms, you take regular, off-the-shelf AISI1020 carbon steel, and instead of heat treating it for 10 minutes like costly alloyed steel, you put it through a roller-driven system that induction-heats and liquid-cools the steel in a matter of 10 seconds or so.

Generally, when you choose steel you're trading off between strength and ductility. The hardest steels are the martensitic types, but their crystalline structure makes them brittle and prone to cracking when you press or bend them, so they need to be hot pressed. Flash Bainite breaks this rule by delivering a specific strength some 7 percent higher than martensitic steel but staying remarkably bendable to the point where it can be cold pressed into shapes. The quick heating and cooling stages produce a unique mix of fine martensite, bainite and carbides – if you want to get all metallurgical about it, knock yourself out.

With such characteristics, you could theoretically take anything you're making out of martensitic steel and make it stronger and vastly cheaper, or take many shapes you're cold pressing out of more ductile steel and use vastly thinner Flash Bainite to get the same strength. It sounded almost too good to be true, but recent testing from a number of different parties appears to be validating the original findings.

In July 2011, US Army tests called it "an extremely energy efficient and environmentally friendly process" and concluded that "the costs to produce Flash Bainite should be extremely reasonable and could enable widespread use for applications requiring very high strength and adequate elongation, ductility, and toughness. Current opportunities for flash bainite include armor and vehicle applications requiring ultra-high strength steels for high specific strength, weight reduction, and high cycle fatigue enhancement."

In 2013, a few auto manufacturers (who can't be named due to NDAs) began running a series of tests to see how Flash Bainite might perform in an automotive setting. Could it be cold pressed into the kinds of challenging shapes required by automakers? In short, yes. Flash 1600 (Flash-processed AISI1020) forms as well as the leading cold-stampable "advanced high strength steel" DP1180 that's only 75 percent the strength. Here are some sample parts displayed in March 2015, cold pressed with no noticeable thinning:

These parts were created in the same sizes and thicknesses as the OEM parts, so there's no weight saving per se, but the simple and energy-efficient nature of the Flash forming process makes them 1/3 to 1/2 less expensive than the process currently used in manufacture.

As this data became available, other auto manufacturers have started dipping toes in the water as well. The Flash Project's Gary Cola tells us of another major manufacturer that used Flash processed tubing to create car door impact beams, roof rails and other parts that were built into full cars, then roof crush tested to high test results.

"This OEM found that Flash 1500 could offer a 1/3 mass reduction and cost savings over the 'industry standard' DP1000 known at the time to be the strongest hydroformable tube," Cola says. "During this development, it was discovered that Flash 1500 (Flash-processed AISI1020) could be formed into very tight bends, almost as tight as simply folding a sheet of paper."
In Flash 1500 energy absorbing crush in this story's lead image, the bends are twice the strength of the DP780 cans in cars today.

Another major manufacturer "that makes 10 million vehicles per year," according to Cola, tested Flash-processed steel on a structural/safety component of a car that is 3 mm thick and 3 lb (1.4 kg) in weight in its current form. Using the flash treatment, a part was created that weighs 2 lb (0.9 kg) at 2 mm thick, and passes all the same tests – and the OEM estimated it could be made at a cost savings.
There are only three OEMs that can claim that kind of manufacturing capacity in the world. Only one of them is headquartered in Detroit where the Flash Bainite team is based, and it conveniently happens to be locked in a war of words with a competitor that has chosen to go to aluminum truck bodies instead of steel. Cola notes, "while aluminum is good for hoods, decklids and door skins, Flash offers higher strength per pound for structural safety components."

In short, Flash Bainite is starting to look suspiciously like the real deal, pointing the way towards significantly lighter cars that are less expensive and more environmentally friendly to produce, and every bit as safe in a crash – and of course, that's just in the automotive world.
Another factor in Flash's favour is an extremely low capital cost of entry for companies looking to get involved in the manufacturing process.

"The entry point for Flash equipment is about US$300K and a one car garage, while large format equipment would only cost $5M to generate about $75M in annual sales," Cola tells us. "Imagine if 100s of fabrication shops around the country could make higher performing steel than the Big Steel Industry can in their $400M seven-story tall furnaces."
Having said that, there's currently no large scale manufacture up and running. Cola and the Flash Project team are working toward developing their own commercial manufacturing operation, but hoping to license the Flash technology to other entrepreneurs to get it out into the market. If the business side is managed well, this looks like a genuinely disruptive shift in manufacturing. We'll keep an eye on it!

http://avegant.com/

Glyph cost is $700.


Avegant Brand Video from Avegant on Vimeo.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/avegant-glyph-is-a-different-kind-of-face-computer/

• David Pierce Gear

Avegant’s Glyph Headset Is a Movie Theater for Your Face

When I put on the Glyph, the $699 headphones-meets-face-computer headset Avegant’s been working on, Ed Tang didn’t put on a game. Avegant’s founder and chief strategy officer didn’t drop me in some immersive other world, where I could look around and explore or interact with a robot.
He put on The Avengers.

The Glyph looks like a VR headset, but it’s not a VR headset. It also looks like an overgrown pair of Beats headphones, but it’s not an overgrown pair of Beats headphones. It’s something else. Avegant calls it “Mediawear,” which is terrible. It amounts to this: a pair of great-sounding headphones, with two eyepieces on the underside of the band. Flip it down over your eyes, and suddenly it’s like you’re sitting dead center in your own movie theater. It’s kinda like Oculus Rift meets Bose meets holding your phone inches from your face. After years of development, a $1.5 million Kickstarter campaign, and lots of user testing, Avegant is getting ready to ship the Glyph this spring.

I first saw the Glyph almost exactly two years ago. It was a mess of circuitry and plastic ties, like futuristic sunglasses someone might wear in a campy 1950s sci-fi flick. All Avegant had was concept art and a line about it looking like a pair of headphones. Now it’s far slicker than even the concept art, thought it still looks like a pair of headphones. The cans go over your ears, and the band rests on your nose via an interchangeable nosepad. (User testing revealed that people have crazy-different noses, so the Glyph ships with four options.) It looks silly, like you’re wearing a crappy Geordi La Forge costume, but Avegant is betting we’ll all be comfortable wearing face-computers soon enough. It’s probably right.

Put it on, adjust the two eyepieces to suit your vision, spin the dial on the lens to match your prescription if you have one, then sit back and watch. It’s almost boring, in a way—it really is just a screen on your face.

Let me say this one more time: It’s not a VR headset. It’s not designed to take over your entire field of vision and make you feel like you’re somewhere else. Maybe it’s meant for travelers who want a better screen than the scratched and smudged slap of polycarbonate on the back of 17D. Rather than build something you play while sitting on your couch, Avegant’s trying to build something you can take out into the world.

Whatever you watch in the Glyph takes up the same amount of your view that a 65-inch TV in your living room does, or the huge screen in a theater. But you can look down and see your hands, or up and see the sky. This helps keep your eyes from tiring, and prevents some of the motion-sickness virtual reality has dealt with. It’s a personal movie theater, the headphones and screen giving you a private and high-end experience.

One more clarification: It’s not really a screen. It’s called Virtual Retinal Display, and it’s actually a projection directly onto your eyes, light reflecting off of small objects just as it does in the real world. In my experience, it’s also much faster for my eyes to get used to, and much more comfortable over long periods of time.

Those long periods are exactly what Avegant is after. Nearly any device you connect it to—your computer, your phone—will see it as nothing more than a big television. Just about anything you can display on another screen is compatible with the Glyph; you can play second-screen games, you can watch Netflix, you can play YouTube videos. It’ll play 2D content just fine, or 3D footage without any other requirements. All you need is an HDMI cable. (And probably an adapter.)

The initial vision is small, probably because Avegant already has enough to explain. No, it’s not VR. No, there’s no screen. Yes, it works with your phone. Yes, you do look silly. And Avegant might have a hard time finding enough hardcore travelers willing to drop seven Benjamins on a better way of watching movies. But there are hints of more in the Glyph already, from the head-tracking support to the dormant Bluetooth chip. Avegant has big plans that involve exclusive and optimized content, and its already working with Jaunt to enable 360-degree video (with 360-degree sound) in the Glyph. They have ideas about gaming, sports, and more. Eventually, Avegant probably will venture into virtual reality, but not with the Glyph. The Glyph is about taking you somewhere else, while still comfortably keeping you where you are.

Avegant promised to ship a year ago, but it seems like the company skipped the first version altogether and is shipping the second iteration. It’s remarkably comfortable and usable, it’s compatible with all the movies and games you already play. It’s just like having a television on your face. Which is weird, because who wants a television on their face? But weirder still, it works.

Maternal exposure to anti-depressant SSRIs linked to autism in children

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/12/14/maternal-exposure-to-anti-depressant-ssris-linked-to-autism-in-children/

By Ariana Eunjung Cha December 14 at 11:07 AM

A new study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that using an antidepressant like Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft during the final two trimesters of pregnancy may be linked to a higher risk of autism spectrum disorder for the child.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, work by influencing naturally occurring chemical messengers in our brains.

The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, involved the analysis of health records in Quebec from January 1999 and December 2009. During that time 145,456 full-term singleton infants were born, and 1,054 or 0.72 percent were subsequently diagnosed with autism. The average age at first diagnosis was 4.6 years and the average age of children at the end of follow-up was 6.2 years. Boys with autism outnumbered girls 4 to 1.

Researchers identified 4,724 infants (3.2 percent) who were exposed to antidepressants in utero, with 4,200 exposed ruing the first trimester; 2,532 during the second and/or third trimester.
Of the first group, 40 were diagnosed with autism and in the latter group 31 were diagnosed with autism.

When taking into account maternal depression as a factor, that translates to no association for use of antidepressants in the first trimester but an 87 percent  increased risk when used in the second or third trimester, Anick Bérard, a researcher at the University of Montreal, and co-authors wrote.
The researchers said that there may be several mechanisms at work that explain the phenomenon and it has to do with how serotonin impacts brain development. Scientists believe that the capacity of the brain to synthesize serotonin develops atypically in children with autism.

Due to the fact that antidepressants are "likely to remain widely used" in the future, "a better understanding of the long-term neurodevelopmental effects of [antidepressants] on children when used during gestation is a public health priority," Bérard wrote.

Doctors have long had mixed feelings about prescribing antidepressants to pregnant women. Previous studies have shown an increased risk of spontaneous abortion, prematurity and other physical issues and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has wanted that one drug, Paxil, may increase the risk of birth defects.

But many doctors have tended to weigh the harms of maternal depression — which may lead to poor nutrition, avoidance of medical care among other issues — as potentially more directly damaging to a fetus than the drugs.

The new study may shift the conversation.

"What this tells us is that we need to think even more carefully about the prenatal environment. And not just about birth defects you can see at the time of delivery but about longer-term consequences," said Susan Hyman, a former chairperson of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on autism, who is not affiliated with the study.

Surveys have shown that the use of SSRIs in pregnant women is rising in the United States — from less than 6 percent in 1999 to 13 percent in 2003 — and Hyman emphasized that the overwhelming majority of them do not have children with autism spectrum disorders.

"We would not want people to feel guilty," said Hyman, a professor of neurodevelopmental pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "That is something that is not productive."
Scientists believe SSRIs balance the level of serotonin, which boosts mood for the mother. But the drugs also cross the placental barrier and the effect of such drugs on the brain development of a fetus at its earliest and more vulnerable state is still being studied.

The JAMA Pedatrics research adds to the growing number of studies about antidepressant and developmental delays, autism or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder  (ADHD) — but the picture is far from clear as the results have been mixed.

From a study design standpoint, the new study is stronger than some of the previous work because it is prospective, taking information about the pregnancies before they knew the outcome. But it has a number of limitations. First, the study used prescription filling data to determine which women were on antidepressants, but they may or may not have actually taken them. Perhaps more importantly, the data didn't have information about lifestyle, and it's possible that myriad factors, such as whether they smoke or their body mass index, may have influenced the findings.

Last April, Johns Hopkins University researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics that boys with autism were almost three times as likely to have been exposed to SSRIs than their typically developing counterparts. The team, which looked at nearly 1,000 mother-child pairs, found that the effect appeared to be stronger in those exposed during the first trimester and in boys than girls. A similar link was seen between a mother's SSRI use and developmental delays, but the sample was smaller and the researchers said those results should be interpreted with caution.

In another study, Harvard scientists analyzing electronic medical records reported that children who were exposed to antidepressants in the womb were at 80 percent increased risk of ADHD.

However, that same study found that children were not more likely to have autism spectrum disorders when accounting for a mother's medical history. That is, mothers with a history of psychiatric illness were more likely to have a child with autism regardless of whether or not they are on medication.
So if you're on antidepressants and pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, what should you do?
Hyman said that it should still remain an individual decision, but that prospective mothers might want to have a serious discussion with their doctor about the possibility of other types of therapies for depression and anxiety, such as counseling.

Bryan H. King, a doctor at Seattle Children’s Hospital, had similar advice, writing in an editorial accompanying the study that "it makes no more sense to suggest that [antidepressants] should always be avoided than to say that they should never be stopped."

actor reconstruction from photos

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/144-graphics-and-games/9263-create-your-favourite-actor-from-nothing-but-photos.html



Create Your Favourite Actor From Nothing But Photos

Written by David Conrad
Sunday, 13 December 2015
Graphics techniques are becoming so sophisticated that it really does seem like magic is being done. Now a team of researchers has implemented a way of constructing a 3D model of a well known actor and using it to create scenes they never played in. If you always wanted to see John Wayne play the lead in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly you might not have to wait much longer. A University of Washington team has essentially reversed engineered what makes an actor recognizable as that actor, or as the title of the paper puts it "What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks". The model is first created using photos. The method relies on facial recognition to locate the standard points that make up a face. The face is then warped to place the standard points in the same orientation so that all of the photos are reduced to face-on shots. Then they are wrapped around a standard 3D model customized to give the required distances between the standard points. The warped photos are then used to construct a texture to overlay the 3D model to make it look natural and more like the target. This amazing enough, but the next stage is to analyse a video of the "driver", i.e. to work out the deformations in the puppet needed to make it follow the driver. This is the real innovation - working out how to convert the movement of one person into those of the actor. To quote the paper: "Our answer to the question of what makes Tom Hanks look like Tom Hanks is in the form of a demonstration, i.e., a system that is capable of very convincing renderings of one actor believably mimicking the behavior of another. Making this work well is challenging, as we need to determine what aspects are preserved from actor A’s performance and actor B’s personality. For example, if actor A smiles, should actor B smile in the exact same manner? Or use actor B’s own particular brand of smile? After a great deal of experimentation, we obtained surprisingly convincing results using the following simple recipe: use actor B’s shape, B’s texture, and A’s motion (adjusted for the geometry of B’s face)." So it seems that it is sufficient to use the movements generated by the driver and simply modify them to take account of the geometry of the actor's face. Although the researchers don't draw any conclusion from this, it suggests that the character of an actor comes about from displaying a universal human facial expression using the physiology they happen to have. So much for acting...

machines learn like humans

http://stgist.com/2015/12/scientists-develop-algorithm-that-teach-machines-to-learn-like-humans-6039

Scientists say they’ve developed an algorithm that can teach machines how to learn like humans.

By: Matt Dayo |

contact@stgist.com

 

 

 

Artificial Intelligence researchers at the New York University, University of Toronto in Canada and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported Thursday that they’ve developed an algorithm that captures the human-level learning abilities allowing machines to surpass humans for a narrow set of vision-related tasks.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the scientific article published in the journal Science is “noteworthy” because machine-vision technology is becoming more common, from video games to roads courtesy of self-driving cars, e.g. Google self-driving car that can detect pedestrians.
Brenden Lake, lead author of the research, explains in a press release that by “reverse engineering” how humans think about the problem — they can develop a better algorithm. Lake, a Moore-Sloan Data Science Fellow at New York University, also added that their research could also help develop other methods to narrow the gap for other machine learning tasks.

When humans are exposed to new abstract ideas, like for instance a new letter in an unfamiliar alphabet, they often need only a few examples to understand its form and recognize new instances. Meanwhile, machines typically need to be given hundreds to thousands of examples before they can perform with similar accuracy.

Ruslan Salakhutdinov, the study co-author, explains that it has been difficult to build machines that can replicate the human-level learning.

Salakhutdinov, a University of Toronto assistant professor of Computer Science, says replicating these human-level abilities is an exciting area of research that connects machine learning with statistics, computer vision and even cognitive science.

Lake, Salakhutdinov and Professor Joshua Tenenbaum of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, have developed a framework called “Bayesian Program Learning” or BPL where concepts are represented as simple machine programs. For example, the letter A in the English alphabet is represented by a computer code that resembles a computer programmer work. The study says no computer programmer is required during the learning process, because the algorithm itself can construct its own code to produce the letter it sees.

In addition, this algorithm can produce different outputs at each execution — allowing machines to capture the way instances of a concept vary, like for example the difference between the letter ‘A’ drawn by a 15-year-old and a 30-year-old man.

Researchers say the BPL is designed to capture both the causal and compositional properties of processes, and it will allow machines to use data more efficiently. Their model also “learns to learn” by using knowledge from previous concepts to speed learning on new concepts. For example, using its own knowledge from learning the Greek Alphabet, it can learn Latin alphabet much faster.
Lake, Salakhutdinov, and Tenenbaum have applied their algorithm to over 1,600 types of human handwritten characters in fifty of the world’s writing systems including Sanskrit, and even the characters invented in Futurama, a U.S. television series.

In the research, the authors tested their algorithm with humans and machines through “visual Turing tests.”

The authors asked both humans and computers with the algorithm to reproduce a series of handwritten characters after being shown a single example of each character — and then they compared the outputs from both machines and humans.

In the visual Turing Tests, human judges were given paired examples of both the human and machine output, along with the original prompt, and the authors asked the judges to identify which of the symbols were produced by the computer.

While human judges’ correct responses varied across characters, for each visual Turing test, researchers say fewer than 25 percent of human judges performed significantly better than chance in assessing whether a computer or a human produced a given set of symbols.
Professor Tenenbaum says they’re “still far” from building machines that are as smart as a human child, but this is the first time we had a machine that can learn and use a large class of concepts.
—
Credit: The research is titled “Human-level concept learning through probabilistic program induction” and it’s now accessible via the Sciencemag.org.

Unauthorized Immigrant Population by State

 http://www.ibtimes.com/isis-crossing-southern-border-mexico-terror-debate-sparks-alarm-over-possible-islamic-2216434

Unauthorized Immigrant Population by State | InsideGov

ISIS Crossing Southern Border From Mexico? Terror Debate Sparks Alarm Over Possible Islamic State Immigration

By Michael Kaplan 

Tim Foley recently returned from a 10-day patrol mission through the cactus and bush-covered borderland that stretches between Mexico and the U.S. states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. He’s one of many Americans concerned about a porous border that sits just 400 yards from his home, but also among the few who has taken matters into his own hands.

The 56-year-old former construction worker nicknamed "Nailer" has led the Arizona Border Recon, a group of heavily armed volunteers, on expeditions to intercept undocumented border crossers and stem the flow of drugs coming through the desert for the last five years. His group, which is not sanctioned by the government, has detained hundreds of undocumented immigrants and narco-scouts and reported them to authorities, he said. Increasingly, however, he’s been concerned by the prospect of militants with the Islamic State group exploiting a weak border.

“You’ve got a war on drugs, and a war on terror, and they’re coming together -- right here, right now,” said Foley, who calls Arizona home.

Following last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, and more recently since the last week’s San Bernardino, California, massacre, conservative-leaning voters and politicians have raised alarm over the possibility of terrorists slipping into the U.S. illegally. Immigrants from as far away as China have been crossing into the southern tip of Texas for years, but it’s only recently that a small number of Arabs has tapped into an elaborate human-smuggling pipeline. Immigration analysts said it was an unlikely path for terrorists, however, and much more likely to be used by desperate refugees fleeing war in hopes of connecting with family members already in the U.S.

“There are politicians who want to stoke fears about terrorism or are stoking fears about terrorism,” said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. “I don’t want to say it’s a total non-issue, but the Southwest border is not the greatest point of vulnerability in terms of national security.”

The U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into border security amid a years-long nationwide debate over undocumented immigration. Authorities have erected hundreds of miles of fencing, as well as hundreds of radar and camera towers. They've also begun using drones to survey the terrain, and there are today more than 21,000 border agents on the ground. Whereas refugees might file asylum claims once apprehended, the possibility of being caught is likely to keep extremists searching for other ways to get in, security analysts said.

The journey across the vast expanse is an arduous and costly one, but hundreds of thousands of people each year attempt to make it. Many are from South or Central America, but the number of Chinese and Indians slipping through has surged in recent years. Smuggling agents in Asia generally charge between $12,000 and $20,000 for the whole journey, and they usually organize clients to first fly to a third-party country, like Ecuador or Venezuela. The roundabout routes are necessary as Mexico requires visas for entrants from many countries. The immigrants then typically take vehicles into Mexico before moving on to the closest border crossing into the U.S.

Mexican crime networks are suspected of being involved in the operations, and immigrants are often coached on what to tell border security on the other side, in the event they are apprehended without prior plans of making an asylum claim.

There's no telling how many Syrians, Iraqis and other Middle Easterners have tapped into those networks. There were 104 asylum cases filed by Syrians as of June this year, almost double as many as in 2010, but only a fraction of those were individuals who showed up at the border. Fourteen Syrians were apprehended attempting to cross in 2014, the last year for which Department of Homeland Security statistics are available, and seven Iraqis. In comparison, more than 1,500 individuals from India were apprehended in 2014.

There might be more people from the Middle East coming through the U.S. border than those listed on the books, Naim Haroon Sakhia, a California immigration attorney, said. Some of the prospective clients with whom he has met have been people from the Middle East or elsewhere posing as Indians, since identifying as an Indian may raise fewer red flags, he said. There are also much stronger Indian smuggling networks, Sakhia added.

“When you ask them, ‘Where is the passport?’ they say they don’t have one. When you talk to them, sometimes you suspect from the accent that they’re not Indian. Sometimes you ask them questions about places in India and they’re not aware of them,” Sakhia said. “If I feel that they have a credible claim, then I accept them as a client, otherwise I turn them down.”

There have been a few widely reported cases of Syrians making it to the U.S. Last month, three Syrian families showed up at a Texas border crossing, prompting alarm among some immigration officials and lawmakers that they might pose a security threat. As it turned out, some were Syrian Christians seeking asylum, and all of the individuals presented themselves to authorities at a border crossing. They are still being held in detention, as asylum-seekers without valid documentation are usually kept in custody until after undergoing preliminary security screening.

“They did everything right in terms of asking for help. They’ve done everything they can to not only save their own lives but the lives of their families,” attorney Jonathan Ryan, executive director of Raices (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), an immigrant legal advocacy group based in San Antonio, told the Los Angeles Times. “The question is, why are they continuing to be held compared to other families we are seeing released without these additional hurdles.” 

Officials have said the threat of Islamic State group fighters slipping in through the border is a concern they take seriously. Five Pakistanis and one Afghan immigrant were detained last month while attempting to cross the border. In a statement, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said the news was worrisome, given recent threats against the U.S. from the group -- which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. But none of the individuals was believed to have been connected to terrorist organizations.
"This latest incident only reinforces the need to take our national security seriously on all fronts," the statement continued. "It's clear, our nation needs to up its game and improve border resources if we are going to protect our homeland."
 
Given the difficulties immigrants face crossing through the Southwest border -- including the high risk of being apprehended -- immigration experts said it wouldn't be easy getting into the U.S. undetected. However, if they had the money and the means, obtaining forged documents and passing through official ports of entry with visas might be simpler, immigration analysts said.

"I think it is right after an attack like in Paris for people to be apprehensive and to take stock of our defenses," said Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. “But we should recognize that the border is far more secure than it has been historically, that the flow continues to be down and has been down for decades, and that we have invested [a lot into] technology, manpower and fencing.” 

But according to Foley, who was preparing for his next patrol trip, smugglers have gotten more sophisticated, finding new trails for higher bidders who want to evade authorities -- trails he fears terrorists might be able to exploit. 

“We don’t know who they are, [many] are coming without identification. We have more than 78 nations coming through this border, so we’re just trying to help border control with another set of eyes and ears,” he said.

Foley's Arizona Border Recon has been accused of being anti-immigrant and extremist -- accusations that he said he welcomes. “If getting off the couch and trying to protect your country is extreme," he said, "then call me an extremist.”

Jimmy Carter Saved By Israeli Cancer Treatment

http://freebeacon.com/issues/jimmy-carter-saved-by-israeli-cancer-treatment/

BY: Adam Kredo

Former president Jimmy Carter, who in the past has been supportive of boycotts against Israel, is having his cancer treated by a “breakthrough” drug created in the Jewish state, according to reports.
Carter, who is being treated for cancer in his liver and brain, said he has been making a recovery since taking a cancer drug known as Keytruda, which was created by Israeli doctors.
Carter has been a vocal critic of Israel.

The drug is believed to be the next generation of treatment for cancer.
Carter has not commented on the fact that this drug was made by Israeli doctors.

http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=92335&siteSection=freebeacon_hom_non_non_dynamic&videoId=29580503

Google’s new quantum computer is '100 million times faster than your PC'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/12042781/Google-D-Wave-quantum-computer-is-100-million-times-faster-than-your-PC.html

Google and NASA have been working on a lightning-fast quantum computer that is 3,600 times faster than a supercomputer at solving complex problems

By Mark Molloy 

Has Google won the race to build the world’s first commercial quantum computer?

The technology company’s artificial intelligence lab believe they may finally have proof that their opinion-dividing quantum computer actually works.

Google and Nasa announced they were collaborating on the D-Wave X2 quantum computer, which they say is 100 million times faster than a conventional computer chip, in 2013. It can answer certain algorithms in seconds rather than years.

Google director of engineering, Hartmut Neven, said: “For a specific, carefully crafted proof-of-concept problem we achieve a 100-million-fold speed-up.”

In a blog post he added: “We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 108 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core.

“We also compared the quantum hardware to another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo. This is a method designed to emulate the behaviour of quantum systems, but it runs on conventional processors.

“While the scaling with size between these two methods is comparable, they are again separated by a large factor sometimes as high as 108.”

However, Matthias Troyer of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich said he wasn’t convinced.

“You need to read the fine print,” he told New Scientist. “This is 108 times faster than some specific classical algorithm on problems designed to be very hard for that algorithm but easy for D-Wave.”

Hemet does admit in his blog post that other algorithms can currently beat D-wave but says Google expect “those methods will soon become ineffective”.

 

Smartphones to die out 'within five years', says new study

Smartphones to die out 'within five years', says new study According to a new study of 100,000 consumers, mobile technology is expected to be replaced by artificial intelligence
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/12039813/Smartphones-to-die-out-within-five-years-says-new-study.html

By Adam Boult

Many consumers believe smartphones will cease to exist within five years, according to new research carried out by researchers on behalf of Ericsson. The company's ConsumerLab questioned more than 100,000 customers in its native Sweden and 39 other countries, seeking their views on their technological desires for the future. Half of the respondents said they thought mobile technology would be a thing of the past by 2021, with increasingly prevalent artificial intelligence superseding many of its functions.

Rebecka Cedering Ångström of Ericsson ConsumerLab said: "A smartphone in the hand, it's really not that practical. For example, not when one is driving a car or cooking. And there are many situations where display screens are not so good. Therefore, one in two think that smartphones will belong to the past within five years." She also predicts that evolving technologies will enable customers to enhance their leisure time. "Just imagine watching football and being able to choose from where you want to see the game from different places in the stands, or perhaps even from the pitch. Shopping is also an area where you could [virtually] try on shoes and see how they fit on your own feet."

 Ericsson ConsumerLab's new report, 10 Hot Consumer Trends for 2016, claims to represent the views of 1.1 billion people across 24 countries. Michael Björn, Head of Research at Ericsson ConsumerLab, said: "Some of these trends may seem futuristic.

But consumer interest in new interaction paradigms such as AI and virtual reality (VR), as well as in embedding the internet in the walls of homes or even in our bodies, is quite strong. This means we could soon see new consumer product categories appearing – and whole industries transforming – to accommodate this development." "This means we could soon see new consumer product categories appearing - and whole industries transforming - to accommodate this development."

At a glance Ericsson's 10 Hot
Consumer Trends for 2016

1. The Lifestyle Network Effect. Four out of five people now experience an effect where the benefits gained from online services increases as more people use them. Globally, one in three consumers already participates in various forms of the sharing economy.

2. Streaming Natives. Teenagers watch more YouTube video content daily than other age groups. Forty-six percent of 16-19 year-olds spend an hour or more on YouTube every day.

3. AI Ends The Screen Age. Artificial intelligence will enable interaction with objects without the need for a smartphone screen. One in two smartphone users think smartphones will be a thing of the past within the next five years.

4. Virtual Gets Real. Consumers want virtual technology for everyday activities such as watching sports and making video calls. Forty-four percent even want to print their own food.

5. Sensing Homes. Fifty-five percent of smartphone owners believe bricks used to build homes could include sensors that monitor mold, leakage and electricity issues within the next five years. As a result, the concept of smart homes may need to be rethought from the ground up.

6. Smart Commuters. Commuters want to use their time meaningfully and not feel like passive objects in transit. Eighty-six percent would use personalized commuting services if they were available.

7. Emergency Chat. Social networks may become the preferred way to contact emergency services. Six out of 10 consumers are also interested in a disaster information app.

8. Internables. Internal sensors that measure well-being in our bodies may become the new wearables. Eight out of 10 consumers would like to use technology to enhance sensory perceptions and cognitive abilities such as vision, memory and hearing.

9. Everything Gets Hacked. Most smartphone users believe hacking and viruses will continue to be an issue. As a positive side-effect, one in five say they have greater trust in an organization that was hacked but then solved the problem. 10. Netizen Journalists. Consumers share more information than ever and believe it increases their influence on society. More than a third believe blowing the whistle on a corrupt

word of the day - Stochastic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic

Use in a sentence: "You stochastic I wanna have yo baby".

Google search this word and the first thing that comes up is an audio clip of the pronunciation - the guy sounds very happy, and even pleasantly surprised. For the life of me, I cannot find that source file.

Other examples of 'stochastic' in a sentence:

"Dude, Neil's drumming is you know, like, really stochastic, he's so original. Dude."

"I might be willing to dismiss her mannerisms as mere eccentricities if they were even slightly more stochastic, but no, she's consistently annoying as hell."

"Stewart was stoked stupid by the stochastic staccato stitching in Stephanie's stylish stagger-step stockings."

ISIS targeted refugee program to enter US, Homeland Security chairman says

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/262316-isis-has-targeted-refugee-program-to-enter-us-chairman-says

By Julian Hattem

Intelligence officials have determined that Islamic extremists have explored using the refugee program to enter the United States, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee said on Monday.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) declined to go into detail about the determination, which the Obama administration has not announced publicly.
Yet the disclosure could add ammunition to critics of the White House’s refugee plans who have warned that the program is vulnerable to infiltration by adherents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

 

“ISIS members in Syria have attempted to exploit it to get into the United States,” McCaul said during a speech at the National Defense University.

“The U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.”

McCaul would not say specifically who informed him and other lawmakers about the revelation, only describing the sources as “elements of the intelligence community.”

“That was very courageous for them to come forward with this, to tell me about this personally, given the political debate on the Hill,” he added, suggesting that the news did not come from intelligence leaders.

The briefing happened “earlier this week,” McCaul said.

The White House would not confirm or deny McCaul's claim, instead referring reporters to his office to explain where he got the information.

A spokesman with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also declined to comment on the record about the assertion.

McCaul’s speech comes amid escalating concerns about Islamic extremism in the West, following the killings of 130 people in Paris and 14 in San Bernardino, Calif. The massacres have caused American fears about terrorism to spike, and left Congress grasping for a response.

President Obama has repeatedly pushed back against warnings that ISIS could attack the United States by sending over fighters as refugees.

The Syrian civil war has killed more than 200,000 people since it began in 2011, and forced more than 4 million refugees to flee.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest defended the U.S. refugee screening process, which typically takes two years for an individual to complete.

“Those individuals who seek to enter the United States through the refugee resettlement program do so only after undergoing the most intensive screening of anybody who attempts to enter the United States," Earnest told reporters on Monday.

Refugees undergo rigorous screenings that last for up to two years, the Obama administration has said, making them among the most thoroughly vetted people coming into the country.

Still, Republicans and some Democrats have been wary of the president’s plans to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country next year.

Last month, the House voted overwhelmingly to make it more difficult for refugees from Iraq and Syria to enter the United States.

In his speech Monday, McCaul painted a bleak picture of American national security, which he compared to the World War II fight against fascism.

The current threat posed by Islamic extremists is greater than at any time since 9/11, he said, and ISIS is “now more dangerous than al Qaeda ever was under Osama bin Laden.”

“I believe the state of our homeland is increasingly not secure,” McCaul said.

“I believe 2015 will be seen as a watershed year in this long war — the year when our enemies gained an upper hand and when the spread of terror once again awoke the West.”

McCaul’s dire outlook stood in contrast to the message from Obama, who less than 24 hours before attempted to reassure the nation about terrorism in his third-ever address from the Oval Office.
“The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it,” Obama said.

“We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values, or giving into fear,” he added, using an alternate acronym for ISIS. “Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless, and by drawing upon every aspect of American power.”

McCaul's comments could signal a renewed commitment to keep national security at the forefront of Congress’s focus, even as it rushes to finish its legislative work and adjourn for the year.

This week, the House is expected to take up legislation tightening a program allowing travelers from 38 countries to enter the U.S. without a visa. The reform is the only White House recommendation that Congress is likely to act on in the wake of the recent killings.

“This is just the beginning,” McCaul promised. “Over the coming weeks, we will introduce a slate of new bills based on the findings of the [bipartisan congressional] task force to keep terrorists from crossing our borders.”

Among other steps, McCaul said that lawmakers were interested in further hardening the country’s borders against extremists, sharing intelligence with foreign countries and developing a special commission to examine challenges posed by the proliferation of encryption technologies, which prevent the government from intercepting a suspect’s messages.

This story was updated at 3:59 p.m. 
Jordan Fabian contributed to this story.

Matt Kent illustration

Image posted here:

Barack Obama’s Achilles heel on terrorism

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/88b589d2-9c2d-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861.html

Portfolio of Illustrator, Matt Kent

Venezuela opposition wins majority in country's National Assembly

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/12/07/venezuela-opposition-claims-victory-in-legislative-elections/

CARACAS, Venezuela –  Venezuela's opposition won control of the National Assembly by a landslide, trouncing the ruling party and altering the balance of power after almost 17 years of socialist rule.

The opposition coalition won at least 99 seats in the incoming 167-seat legislature, electoral authorities announced after midnight Sunday. The ruling socialist party won 46 seats. The 19 remaining races remain up for grabs, but if enough are won by the opposition it could give the coalition a two-thirds supermajority needed to strongly challenge President Nicolas Maduro's grip on power.

The streets of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas broke out in shouts of joy, fireworks and car honks after National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced the partial results six hours after polls closed. In the plaza in wealthy eastern Caracas that was the epicenter of last year's bloody anti-government protests, a small group of opponents, some of them sipping champagne, burned red shirts that are the obligatory revolutionary attire.

Within seconds, Maduro recognized the opposition's win, saying that despite an adverse result Venezuela's democracy had triumphed. But he recalled the long history of U.S.-supported coups in Latin America in blaming the "circumstantial" loss on a conservative "counter revolution" trying to sabotage the oil-dependent economy and destabilize his rule.
"I can say today that the economic war has triumphed," Maduro, surrounded by his party's top leadership, said from the presidential palace.

Opposition leaders meanwhile spoke in strident terms, a prelude to what's likely to be a period of intense political fighting in a deeply polarized country mired in an economic crisis. Voter turnout was a stunning 74 percent, near levels normally seen in presidential voting, as Venezuelans punished Maduro's government for widespread shortages, a plunging currency and triple-digit inflation that has brought the economy to the edge of collapse.

"Venezuelan families are tired of living the consequences of the failure," Jesus Torrealba, head of the Democratic Unity opposition coalition, told supporters at campaign headquarters. "The country wants change and that change is beginning today."

The opposition victory deals a serious setback to the socialist revolution started almost 17 years ago by the late Hugo Chavez, who until his death in 2013 had an almost-magical hold on the political aspirations of Venezuela's long-excluded masses.

It was also a major blow to Latin America's left, which gained power in the wake of Chavez's ascent but more recently has been struggling in the face of a region-wide economic slowdown and voter fatigue in some countries with rampant corruption. Last month, Argentines elected a conservative businessman over the chosen successor of Cristina Fernandez, who was a close ally of Chavez. In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff is battling impeachment over a corruption scandal in her long-ruling Workers' Party.

Maduro had repeatedly vowed in recent weeks to take to the streets and defend his mentor Chavez's legacy if his party lost. But on Sunday night he softened his tone, urging his supporters to regroup from the loss in calm.

"I call on all of our people to recognize in peace these results and re-evaluate many political aspects of the revolution," he said.

But some government supporters were bracing for a fight.

"Now everything will just get worse. The Chavistas will go to war with the opposition," said Diana Areaz, who waited with her friend who makes a living dressing up as Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara to hear the results.

For Areaz, who was 8 years old when Chavez came to power, the defeat was unimaginable.
"I've only ever known one government. But the truth is Maduro abandoned the revolution, and now it's hardly a revolution at all," she said.

The result marked the opposition's first major electoral victory since Chavez became president.
Voting was mostly peaceful, though fears of unrest prompted some Venezuelans to line up before dawn so they could cast their ballots and go home to wait for results.  Foreshadowing the historic win, several ruling party governors were caught on film braving boos and insults as they entered their polling places, including Chavez's brother Adan.

The opposition is likely to use its newfound leverage to pass an amnesty for dozens of opponents jailed during last year's protests. Some hardliners are vowing to seek a recall referendum to cut short Maduro's term before it ends in 2019.

But reining in Maduro, who became president after Chavez died in 2013, will be tough. Maduro's near-complete grip on other branches of government like the Supreme Court mean he can easily outflank a hostile congress. And some have already floated the idea that outgoing lawmakers can pass a law granting Maduro special decree powers to ride roughshod over the new congress, which won't be sworn in until January.

Their work will be easier if they obtain a two-thirds majority of 112 lawmakers -- still a possibility if enough of the undecided races break the opposition's way. Such a super majority would allow the congress to sack supreme court justices, pass major legislation and even convene a convention to rewrite Chavez's 1999 constitution.