Egyptian youth flock to heavy metal

Cats and dogs, water and electricity, wine and cheeseburgers, some things just don’t mix. But how about heavy metal and the Middle East? What may seem like a strange combination to outside observers apparently isn’t so on the ground.

21-year-old Lina is a student in her final year of university. She may not look like a typical heavy metal fan, and she is a devout Muslim, but apparently that doesn’t stop her from singing in a doom metal band. The music focuses on themes of depression, fear and grief. Lina and her band mates see no contradiction between their music and their faith.

Lina El-Gohary, vocalist, said, "Some people think that you can’t fulfill your religious duty by praying regularly or worshipping your creator and still be into heavy metal. But I see no link between the two. I really care about my relationship with God, but my musical tastes are not involved in this. At the end of the day I keep these parts of my life separate."

But in Egypt, state and local media are deeply suspicious of the music. Many people find it offensive - incompatible with their culture and values. In the past, members of the heavy metal scene have even been accused of devil worship. A media witch-hunt ultimately resulted in the arrest of hundreds of teenagers and university students.

Tarek Ahmed, bassist, said, "The obstacles we have faced were actually an important experience that ultimately enriched our music. Youth can seldom follow their dreams because there is usually someone trying to stop them. This applies to the Middle East in general, not just Egypt. These struggles have been woven into our music. We believe that everyone has the right to be who they want to be."

Similar acts are blooming all across Cairo. And the scene is expanding more rapidly than most thought it would. A typical night at a central Cairo venue sees hundreds of head banging fans. And it’s an opportunity for the bands too... who are finally getting a bit of a chance to move from rehearsal rooms to the public sphere. Still, there are challenges.

Ayman Azab, metal music fan, said, "We need new heavy metal bands in the country, and the scene generally needs more attention from the media. As things stand, fans still don’t have access to enough information. This is why heavy metal remains underground in Egypt and why negative stereotypes about it still persist. People are afraid of it."

That push for publicity may ultimately mean greater adversity for some, but it seems these rockers are sticking to their guns. Their hope is that someday the music will transcend all bounds.  (CCTV)

Poor students to benefit from $115m donation to Oxford

A SILICON Valley venture capitalist has donated £75 million ($115 million) to Oxford University to help poor students attend the prestigious institution.

The money is a gift from Sequoia Capital president Michael Moritz and his wife, novelist Harriet Heyman.

Oxford said the donation will form part of a fund to subsidise fees and living costs for students with family incomes below $24,500.

About 100 students will recieve the award in the first year.

Welsh-born Moritz says the goal is to ensure that money is not a barrier to an Oxford education.

Moritz, who attended a state school in Cardiff before being accepted into Christ Church, Oxford to read history, said he was motivated from his father's escape from Nazism as a teenager and how he had attended Oxford on a scholarship.

The number of students applying to British universities has fallen since the government tripled university fees to $13,500 starting this autumn. Students on the scholarship will pay just $5,300.

Moritz made his fortune after investing in numerous internet success stories, such as Google, PayPal and YouTube.

Thief's Covenant (Widdershins Adventures #1) by Ari Marmell

Once she was Adrienne Satti. An orphan of Davillon, she had somehow escaped destitution and climbed to the ranks of the city’s aristocracy in a rags-to-riches story straight from an ancient fairy tale. Until one horrid night, when a conspiracy of forces—human and other—stole it all away in a flurry of blood and murder.

Today she is Widdershins, a thief making her way through Davillon’s underbelly with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and the mystical aid of Olgun, a foreign god with no other worshippers but Widdershins herself. It’s not a great life, certainly nothing compared to the one she once had, but it’s hers.

But now, in the midst of Davillon’s political turmoil, an array of hands are once again rising up against her, prepared to tear down all that she’s built. The City Guard wants her in prison. Members of her own Guild want her dead. And something horrid, something dark, something ancient is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go. Widdershins and Olgun are going to find answers, and justice, for what happened to her—but only if those who almost destroyed her in those years gone by don’t finish the job first.

Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012)

Shut Up and Play the Hits is a 2012 documentary film directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace that follows LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy over a 48-hour period, from the day of the band's final gig at Madison Square Garden to the morning after the show. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2012. The film will be released nationwide for one night, Wednesday, July 18, 2012.

Synopsis: On April 2nd, 2011, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM played its final show at Madison Square Garden. LCD frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity, ensuring that the band would go out on top with the biggest and most ambitious concert of its career. Shut Up and Play the Hits is simultaneously a document of a once-in-a-lifetime performance and an intimate portrait of Murphy as he navigates both the personal and professional ramifications of his decision.

Women change clothes four times a day on vacation: Report

A UK study has revealed the average woman wears 28 different outfits during a weeklong holiday, with one in 20 admitting they often change attire several times a day just to get through all the garments in their suitcase.

The survey of 2,000 women, commissioned by clothing line F&F at British high street store Tesco, also revealed women will then buy another two items of clothing or shoes to add to their wardrobe while on vacation.

And the constant outfit changing can sometimes cause friction when remarked by a partner or travelling companion -- one in ten ladies even admitted their outfit changes had caused rows while they were away.

According to the study, the average suitcase for a holiday abroad will contain four dresses, six tops and four pairs of shorts or skirts. Two pairs of trousers or jeans also go in the suitcase, as do three bikinis or swimsuits, three pairs of flip-flops or sandals and two other pairs of shoes.

Speaking to Britain's The Daily Mail July 9, Bernadette Lusher from F&F explained the importance of a capsule holiday wardrobe to avoid over packing.

"Unlike the typical day at home, which can involve an outfit for work or for popping to the shops, an average day on holiday can consist of several different activities.

"Each needs a different outfit -- a bikini by the pool, shorts for walking around the shops and then a chic maxi dress for an evening meal.

"This can make packing a nightmare, especially if you are travelling by plane and can only carry a certain amount of luggage," said Lusher.

"The trick is to make sure you plan your clothes rather than just chucking the entire contents of your wardrobe into your case. Packing some staple items, along with some accessories can give you several different outfits without the bulging suitcase."

For ladies in need of holiday packing help, there are an array of useful sites to offer advice including style-passport.com and whattowearonholiday.com.

The latter gives destination-tailored tips as well as advising on essentials to purchase from its online store, while style-passport.com offers style solutions for holidays ranging from beach vacations to city breaks.

(Source: AFP)

Modern Day Prometheus

Pay close attention to the Olympic torchbearers as the flame makes its way through the streets of Buckingham, July 9, on its 70-day journey to the Olympic Games. One of the women running in the torch relay will be rising Scripps College sophomore Sarah Williams ’15.

Williams is one of 22 Americans who will participate in the Buckingham leg of the historic relay that leads into the opening ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic Games. She’s in good company, too – Olympic medalists Michelle Kwan and Summer Sanders will also be on hand to carry the torch as well.

“I am so honored and grateful to be selected,” Williams said. “I was shocked – out of all the people nominated, I thought why me?”

The answer lies in Creative Kindness, a charity founded by Williams when she was 15. The organization networks with other committed individuals in the production of fleece blankets for foster children. To date, the project has spread to six different states, impacting the lives of more than 10,000 foster children and volunteers and raising $80,000 in the process.

Suitably impressed, relay sponsor Coca Cola chose Williams from a highly selective pool of applicants. She now joins a tradition dating back to ancient Greece, a tradition commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek gods by Prometheus. The torch relay builds on this and dates back to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Williams said in a recent interview. “I’ll be running through Buckingham. I think it’s about a mile.”

The end result for Williams? Memories that will last a lifetime and an unmatched Olympics souvenir – she gets to keep the torch she carries.

Sarah recently spoke with California Edition’s Brad Pomerance about Creative Kindness and carrying the Olympic torch. Watch her segment below:

Original source here

Stuyvesant High School Students Will Retake Regents Exams Following Cheating Scandal

A group of Stuyvesant High School students will have to retake their Regents exams following a cheating scandal that rocked the elite New York City public school last month, the New York Daily News reports.

Six of those students face suspensions -- five because of their connection to 16-year-old junior Nayeem Ahsan, who was expelled last month after he was caught using a cell phone to take pictures of the exams and distribute test answers to more than 50 classmates.

“Cheating has taken place for who knows how long,” Chancellor Dennis Walcott said in a radio appearance Monday. “People have the ability to use new technology to try to cheat. So people are always trying to think of new ways to do things. It’s not acceptable. We’re not going to tolerate it.”

According to the Daily News, the chancellor emphasized that cheating is a major reason why cell phones are prohibited in city schools. However, recent Stuyvesant graduate Madeline S. Rivera told the New York Times that “as long as they are out of sight and out of mind,” the ban on bringing phones inside is not enforced.

Education Department officials said the majority of students who received and responded to incriminating text messages from Ahsan are juniors who will have to retake a citywide Spanish, U.S. history, English or Physics Regents exam. Almost every Stuyvesant student passes the U.S. history and English exams, according to theTimes.

The students can retake the tests as soon as August.

Officials also said that the suspensions can appear on the students’ permanent records, but the voided exam will not.

According to the Times, school Principal Stanley Teitel sent a letter to dozens of students implicated in the cheating ring last month, notifying them that some of their class privileges -- including the right to leave school for lunch or be members of the Student Union -- would be revoked.

Walcott said his office is looking into whether Teitel and his staff handled the scandal appropriately.

Original source here

Reading and writing catch-up classes for poorer pupils

Disadvantaged pupils, who are behind in reading and writing, are to be offered extra lessons before starting secondary school, ministers have announced.

Under the £10m scheme, poorer pupils in England who fail to reach Level 4 in English by the end of primary school will be given the chance to take part.

Last year, some 100,000 11-year-olds did not reach this level - the standard expected of the age group.

The first projects will start this September and the rest from next year.

Ministers said the move, which is being funded through the pupil premium - personal funding for disadvantaged children - is part of a bid to narrow the achievement gap with their richer classmates.

It follows concerns that some children can fall behind or struggle to make the transition between primary and secondary school.

Organisations such as schools, councils and charities are being asked to bid for funding to run the literacy catch-up classes.

Pupils who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) and looked-after children (those whose birth parents are unable to provide continuing care) will have access to the classes, the Department for Education said.


'Close the gulf'

Children's Minister Sarah Teather said: "Improving reading standards in schools is central to the coalition government's education reforms.

"Being able to read fluently by the end of primary school is essential. Without these skills children fall further behind in their education.

"This programme, funded by the pupil premium, will help struggling pupils catch up.

"It will also help close the gulf in achievement, where the poorest children are less likely to leave school with five good GCSEs than their less disadvantaged classmates."

The pupil premium, a key initiative for the coalition government, is given to pupils who are eligible for free school meals.

It is allocated to schools, and head teachers have the freedom to decide how it is spent.


'Wasted money'

Nansi Ellis, head of education policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "We are concerned that the government seems to be rather confused about whether the funding is intended to boost literacy or to support pupils' transition from primary to secondary school.

"While we are pleased the government says robust evidence will be used to decide which projects get funded, we are not happy about money being wasted on competitive bids.

"We hope the literacy catch-up programme for Year 6 and 7 pupils won't just be more synthetic phonics, because if it didn't help these children initially learn to read it is hard to see how it will when they are older.

"Of course, it's good that the government wants to help disadvantaged children, but it's a pity that the highly prescriptive new primary curriculum will give little space for teachers to use their professional skills to help disadvantaged children reach their potential."


Original source here

The Workplace Benefits of Being Out of Touch

MOST people I know feel too connected — not to family or friends, but to electronic devices like smartphones and computers. They feel a need to check e-mails, texts and social networks almost constantly on the off chance that an emergency has popped up in the last five minutes that they absolutely, positively have to address.

Most people I know also would like to feel less connected to those devices. They realize that they could go an hour or a day — or (gasp!) even longer — without going online, but two things prevent it: constantly checking our texts and e-mails has become like a tic, or a hard habit to break; and most of us feel that if everyone else is available 24 hours, then we have to be, too.

“Some industries are so highly volatile that people need to be connected all the time, but most of us overexaggerate our own importance,” said Dalton Conley, dean for the social services at New York University and author of “Elsewhere” (Pantheon, 2009).

“Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — if we’re always available, then we’re expected to always be available.”

But, as Professor Conley added, companies are increasingly realizing that employees need to be disconnected from time to time and that “giving workers time to chill helps ultimate long-term productivity.”

But the question arises: Is this something we can do unilaterally as individuals or do we need some sort of corporate shift that acknowledges and addresses the burnout of always being on call?

“It’s very hard to turn off by yourself,” said Leslie A. Perlow, a professor of leadership at Harvard Business School and author of “Sleeping With Your Smartphone” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).

Professor Perlow did a survey of 1,600 managers and professionals and found that only 2 percent turned off their devices, even while on vacation. But Professor Perlow discovered during her research that organizational change, even on a relatively small scale, could make a huge difference.

She did an experiment with a six-person team at the Boston Consulting Group.

Each team member would have a night off a week, starting about 6 p.m., when they would be unreachable electronically. There also was a weekly team discussion about how the process was working.

Not everyone was happy to participate. Although the workers could each choose their night off, many of them — at least at first — didn’t want to take it. “Some said they didn’t know what they would do with a night off,” she said. There was a safety net. The team member covering for the out-of-pocket employee would receive any e-mails and assess whether they were urgent.

If it was a rare, real emergency and no other team member could handle it, then the worker taking the night off would be called.

When everyone was on board, the process worked far better and with more positive results than Professor Perlow expected. Team members felt empowered and expressed increased satisfaction with work and their work-life balance. They started scrutinizing operations, like whether their travel schedules might be shifted to make their lives more relaxed and productive.

“We were surprised — we didn’t go in expecting to get that result,” she said. “People were more engaged, were prioritizing and talking more.”

Professor Perlow replicated the pilot program several times at the Boston Consulting Group and has now expanded it to 14 countries with more than 1,000 teams. She stressed, however, that it was not enough to take the time off. Employees also need the element of group discussion to “collectively rethink how to do work.”

Other companies have tackled the problem as well. At the beginning of 2012, Volkswagen reached an agreement with a small portion of its work force to stop the e-mail server for employees who used BlackBerrys 30 minutes after their shift ended and restore it half an hour before work began the next day.

Original source here.

Messy Experiment Cleans Up Cornstarch and Water Mystery

Most people buy cornstarch to make custard or gravy, but Scott Waitukaitis and Heinrich Jaeger have used it to solve a longstanding physics problem with a substance known to generations of Dr. Seuss readers as "Oobleck," and to scientists as a non-Newtonian liquid.

This substance, a liquid that can instantaneously turn into a solid under the force of a sudden impact, behaves in surprising ways. It consists of a simple mixture of cornstarch and water, and adults can actually run across a vat of this liquid, as has been done many times on television game shows and programs such as MythBusters.

The University of Chicago's Waitukaitis and Jaeger suspect that many similarly constituted suspensions -- liquids laden with micron-sized particles -- will behave exactly the same way. Scientists and engineers have attempted to explain the underlying physics of this phenomenon since the 1930s, but with incomplete success.

Current explanations predict a thickening of the suspension when it's subjected to the push-pull of shearing forces, but fall far short of accounting for the large forces needed to keep an adult high and dry while running across a pool of the stuff.

Now Waitukaitis and Jaeger report in the July 12 issue of the journal Nature how compressive forces can generate a rapidly growing, solid-like mass in the suspension. The study culminates a long struggle to understand a phenomenon that has elicited a wide range of explanations over the years.

"We found that when you hit the suspension, a solid-like column grows below the impact site," said Waitukaitis, a graduate student in physics. "The way it grows is similar to how a snowplow works. If I push a shovel in loose snow, a big pile of compacted snow grows out in front of the shovel, which makes it harder and harder for me to push." With the suspension, the "snowplow" is caused by individual cornstarch grains piling up in front of the impacting object and becoming temporarily jammed after compression has halted all movement.

Jaeger's group has studied the physics phenomenon of "jamming" in numerous contexts, such as when the creation of a vacuum turns a fluid substance like coffee grounds into a solid.

Handling suspensions is important to a broad range of industries, from construction to biomedicine. Some engineers are even investigating these suspensions as the basis for a new type of body armor.

"It would be liquid, so it would conform to a particular shape, and when it gets hit hard it knows it needs to become hard," Waitukaitis said. It's a smart material, one that increases resistance with the amount of force applied against it.

Cornstarch and water individually behave strikingly differently to the application of force than they do when mixed. With water, a normal liquid, the resistance to intruding objects is hundreds of times smaller. A bucket of dry cornstarch grains, meanwhile, exists in a jammed state courtesy of gravity, and slamming a rod into the bucket unjams the grains. With mixtures of cornstarch and water, the material starts out unjammed and blunt force drives it to jam locally.

The UChicago experiment highlights how complex and often puzzling phenomena emerge from simple ingredients, and how established ways of looking at them need to be revisited with the benefit of modern technology. Historically, most experiments have looked at relatively small volumes of suspensions, and primarily under conditions of continuous shearing.

"To notice a transient phenomenon of the type that we describe, you need a large set up and you need to look very fast," said Jaeger, the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Professor in Physics.

The UChicago experiment did just that with a combination of high- and low-tech instruments, including force sensors, laser sheets, X-rays, high-speed cameras taking images at 10,000 frames a second, and an industrial cement mixer.

"It's an incredibly messy experiment," Waitukaitis said. "I have a blue jumpsuit I wear all day. When I do these experiments, I'm totally covered in cornstarch."

The experiment was the first to investigate direct compression in these suspensions. The experiment shows that driving a rod into the cornstarch and water mixture easily generated stresses 100 times greater than the largest stresses encountered during shear.

The researchers found that their impacting rod initiated a shock-like, moving front that starts directly beneath the impacting object and then grows downward, transforming the initially liquid suspension into a temporarily jammed state. As the front of this jammed region moves forward, it transforms the liquid region directly ahead of it. "It essentially grows its own solid as it propagates," Jaeger said.

The UChicago scientists called this process "impact-activated solidification." Impacts typically are destructive processes but in the suspension they actually lead to the creation of a solid from a liquid, although only temporarily.

Waitukaitis and Jaeger now are extending this work by collaborating with researchers at Leiden University in The Netherlands to model the propagating shock fronts in more detail. The are also working closely with UChicago colleagues Wendy Zhang, associate professor in physics, and Jake Ellowitz, graduate student in physics. Zhang and Ellowitz are developing simulations to test how altering the ingredients of various suspensions affect their behavior under impact.

"The feedback between the particle movements and the liquid flow makes this challenging. It's actually not at all easy to perform simulations on such a system," Jaeger said.

Original source here.

Controlling Your Computer With Your Eyes

Millions of people suffering from multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, muscular dystrophy, spinal cord injuries or amputees could soon interact with their computers and surroundings using just their eyes, thanks to a new device that costs less than £40.

Composed from off-the-shelf materials, the new device can work out exactly where a person is looking by tracking their eye movements, allowing them to control a cursor on a screen just like a normal computer mouse.

The technology comprises an eye-tracking device and "smart" software that have been presented July 13, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering. Researchers from Imperial College London demonstrated its functionality by getting a group of people to play the classic computer game Pong without any kind of handset. In addition users were able to browse the web and write emails "hands-off."

The GT3D device is made up of two fast video game console cameras, costing less than £20 each, that are attached, outside of the line of vision, to a pair of glasses that cost just £3. The cameras constantly take pictures of the eye, working out where the pupil is pointing, and from this the researchers can use a set of calibrations to work out exactly where a person is looking on the screen.

Even more impressively, the researchers are also able to use more detailed calibrations to work out the 3D gaze of the subjects -- in other words, how far into the distance they were looking. It is believed that this could allow people to control an electronic wheelchair simply by looking where they want to go or control a robotic prosthetic arm.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the eye-tracker, the researchers got subjects to play the video game Pong. In this game, the subject used his or her eyes to move a bat to hit a ball that was bouncing around the screen -- a feat that is difficult to accomplish with other read-out mechanisms such as brain waves (EEG).

Dr Aldo Faisal, Lecturer in Neurotechnology at Imperial's Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Computing, is confident in the ability to utilise eye movements given that six of the subjects, who had never used their eyes as a control input before, could still register a respectable score within 20 per cent of the able bodied users after just 10 minutes of using the device for the first time.

The commercially viable device uses just one watt of power and can transmit data wirelessly over Wi-Fi or via USB into any Windows or Linux computer.

The GT3D system has also solved the 'Midas touch problem', allowing users to click on an item on the screen using their eyes, instead of a mouse button.

This problem has previously been resolved by staring at an icon for a prolonged period or blinking; however, the latter is part of our natural behaviour and happens unintentionally. Instead, the researchers calibrated the system so that a simple wink would represent a mouse click, which only occurs voluntarily unlike the blink.

Dr Faisal said: "Crucially, we have achieved two things: we have built a 3D eye tracking system hundreds of times cheaper than commercial systems and used it to build a real-time brain machine interface that allows patients to interact more smoothly and more quickly than existing invasive technologies that are tens of thousands of times more expensive.

"This is frugal innovation; developing smarter software and piggy-backing existing hardware to create devices that can help people worldwide independent of their healthcare circumstances."

Original source here.

Mechanical Engineers Develop an 'Intelligent Co-Pilot' for Cars

Barrels and cones dot an open field in Saline, Mich., forming an obstacle course for a modified vehicle. A driver remotely steers the vehicle through the course from a nearby location as a researcher looks on. Occasionally, the researcher instructs the driver to keep the wheel straight -- a trajectory that appears to put the vehicle on a collision course with a barrel. Despite the driver's actions, the vehicle steers itself around the obstacle, transitioning control back to the driver once the danger has passed.

The key to the maneuver is a new semiautonomous safety system developed by Sterling Anderson, a PhD student in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Karl Iagnemma, a principal research scientist in MIT's Robotic Mobility Group.

The system uses an onboard camera and laser rangefinder to identify hazards in a vehicle's environment. The team devised an algorithm to analyze the data and identify safe zones -- avoiding, for example, barrels in a field, or other cars on a roadway. The system allows a driver to control the vehicle, only taking the wheel when the driver is about to exit a safe zone.

Anderson, who has been testing the system in Michigan since last September, describes it as an "intelligent co-pilot" that monitors a driver's performance and makes behind-the-scenes adjustments to keep the vehicle from colliding with obstacles, or within a safe region of the environment, such as a lane or open area.

"The real innovation is enabling the car to share [control] with you," Anderson says. "If you want to drive, it'll just … make sure you don't hit anything." The group presented details of the safety system recently at the Intelligent Vehicles Symposium in Spain.

Off the beaten path

Robotics research has focused in recent years on developing systems -- from cars to medical equipment to industrial machinery -- that can be controlled by either robots or humans. For the most part, such systems operate along preprogrammed paths.

As an example, Anderson points to the technology behind self-parking cars. To parallel park, a driver engages the technology by flipping a switch and taking his hands off the wheel. The car then parks itself, following a preplanned path based on the distance between neighboring cars.

While a planned path may work well in a parking situation, Anderson says when it comes to driving, one or even multiple paths is far too limiting.

"The problem is, humans don't think that way," Anderson says. "When you and I drive, [we don't] choose just one path and obsessively follow it. Typically you and I see a lane or a parking lot, and we say, 'Here is the field of safe travel, here's the entire region of the roadway I can use, and I'm not going to worry about remaining on a specific line, as long as I'm safely on the roadway and I avoid collisions.'"

Anderson and Iagnemma integrated this human perspective into their robotic system. The team came up with an approach to identify safe zones, or "homotopies," rather than specific paths of travel. Instead of mapping out individual paths along a roadway, the researchers divided a vehicle's environment into triangles, with certain triangle edges representing an obstacle or a lane's boundary.

The researchers devised an algorithm that "constrains" obstacle-abutting edges, allowing a driver to navigate across any triangle edge except those that are constrained. If a driver is in danger of crossing a constrained edge -- for instance, if he's fallen asleep at the wheel and is about to run into a barrier or obstacle -- the system takes over, steering the car back into the safe zone.

Building trust

So far, the team has run more than 1,200 trials of the system, with few collisions; most of these occurred when glitches in the vehicle's camera failed to identify an obstacle. For the most part, the system has successfully helped drivers avoid collisions.

Benjamin Saltsman, manager of intelligent truck vehicle technology and innovation at Eaton Corp., says the system has several advantages over fully autonomous variants such as the self-driving cars developed by Google and Ford. Such systems, he says, are loaded with expensive sensors, and require vast amounts of computation to plan out safe routes.

"The implications of [Anderson's] system is it makes it lighter in terms of sensors and computational requirements than what a fully autonomous vehicle would require," says Saltsman, who was not involved in the research. "This simplification makes it a lot less costly, and closer in terms of potential implementation."

In experiments, Anderson has also observed an interesting human response: Those who trust the system tend to perform better than those who don't. For instance, when asked to hold the wheel straight, even in the face of a possible collision, drivers who trusted the system drove through the course more quickly and confidently than those who were wary of the system.

And what would the system feel like for someone who is unaware that it's activated? "You would likely just think you're a talented driver," Anderson says. "You'd say, 'Hey, I pulled this off,' and you wouldn't know that the car is changing things behind the scenes to make sure the vehicle remains safe, even if your inputs are not."

He acknowledges that this isn't necessarily a good thing, particularly for people just learning to drive; beginners may end up thinking they are better drivers than they actually are. Without negative feedback, these drivers can actually become less skilled and more dependent on assistance over time. On the other hand, Anderson says expert drivers may feel hemmed in by the safety system. He and Iagnemma are now exploring ways to tailor the system to various levels of driving experience.

The team is also hoping to pare down the system to identify obstacles using a single cellphone. "You could stick your cellphone on the dashboard, and it would use the camera, accelerometers and gyro to provide the feedback needed by the system," Anderson says. "I think we'll find better ways of doing it that will be simpler, cheaper and allow more users access to the technology."

This research was supported by the United States Army Research Office and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The experimental platform was developed in collaboration with Quantum Signal LLC with assistance from James Walker, Steven Peters and Sisir Karumanchi.

Original source here.

Uber Delivers Ice Cream

Popular car service Uber is delivering ice cream today only to promote their newly diversified private rides. Last week, Uber expanded its fleet from Lincoln Town Cars to SUVs and hybrids in an additional service called “Uber X.” To market the change, Uber is offering on-demand ice cream to users, ordered and paid for through their app, in Boston, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, and Washington D.C.

In San Francisco, you can get ice cream between noon and 6 pm (a few hours left, hungry readers). I just got back from riding in one of the trucks (AOL actually pays me in Choco Tacos), and saw the marketing genius firsthand.

I rode along in “Molly Moo’s Ice Cream,” which the owner purchased a year ago from a puppeteer in Las Vegas, with Molly and Uber engineer Dom Narducci. As we pass one of Uber’s signature black town cars and pull up to the first stop, a group of coworkers comes running up to the truck like children. While Narducci starts handing out ice cream, I sit back and watch the genius of the operation.

The first customers work together at The Climate Corporation and are purchasing ice cream for their all company meeting. Narducci gives them ice cream, t-shirts, stickers and $10 gift cards for new customers for their office. No money exchanges hands, as they pay for the ice cream on Uber’s app. Meanwhile, one self-proclaimed Uber-lover organically makes an Uber sales pitch to her co-workers.

Four young professionals—potentially prime customers—walk past the truck. “It’s an Uber promotion, right?” one asks. Two of his friends haven’t heard of Uber before; he explains the service as they walk down the street.

Uber engineer Dom Narducci awaits the first customers of the day. I wonder if he codes in that outfit.


At a later stop, an advertising agency spills out of the office to get ice cream and the user-generated marketing pitches continue. The system isn’t perfect, though. As we leave one stop, a group of Uber users comes up to buy ice cream but can’t get their request through on the app. Sticking to a tight schedule, we leave them behind, ice cream-less.

Most of the times I see advertisements, I want to punch their marketing director in the face (Cross-advertising for Prometheus and Coors Light, every Verizon commercial ever). But a few glorious times (AmeriCan Budweiser, anyone?), I want to shake the marketing genius’ hand or give them a medal. Whatever Uber employee came up with this idea deserves a big raise, whether it’s in Choco Tacos or, you know, real people dollars.

What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway?

Andreessen Horowitz announced a whopping $100 million investment in GitHub this week. You can read commentary and speculation all over the web about what GitHub will do with the money, whether this was a good investment for Andreessen Horowitz and whether taking such a large investment is a good thing for GitHub.

But what the heck is GitHub and why are developers so excited about it? You may have heard that GitHub is a code sharing and publishing service, or that it’s a social networking site for programmers. Both statements are true, but neither explain exactly why GitHub is special.

At the heart of GitHub is Git, an open source project started by Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Matthew McCullough, a trainer at GitHub, explains that Git, like other version control systems, manages and stores revisions of projects. Although it’s mostly used for code, McCullough says Git could be used to manage any other type of file, such as Word documents or Final Cut projects. Think of it as a filing system for every draft of a document.

Some of Git’s predecessors, such as CVS and Subversion, have a central “repository” of all the files associated with a project. McCullough explains that when a developer makes changes, those changes are made directly to the central repository. With distributed version control systems like Git, if you want to make a change to a project you copy the whole repository to your own system. You make your changes on your local copy, then you “check in” the changes to the central server. McCullough says this encourages the sharing of more granular changes since you don’t have to connect to the server every time you make a change.

GitHub is a Git repository hosting service, but it adds many of its own features. While Git is a command line tool, GitHub provides a Web-based graphical interface. It also provides access control and several collaboration features, such as a wikis and basic task management tools for every project.

The flagship functionality of GitHub is “forking” – copying a repository from one user’s account to another. This enables you to take a project that you don’t have write access to and modify it under your own account. If you make changes you’d like to share, you can send a notification called a “pull request” to the original owner. That user can then, with a click of a button, merge the changes found in your repo with the original repo.

These three features – fork, pull request and merge – are what make GitHub so powerful. Gregg Pollack of Code School (which just launched a class called TryGit) explains that before GitHub, if you wanted to contribute to an open source project you had to manually download the project’s source code, make your changes locally, create a list of changes called a “patch” and then e-mail the patch to the project’s maintainer. The maintainer would then have to evaluate this patch, possibly sent by a total stranger, and decide whether to merge the changes.

This is where the network effect starts to play a role in GitHub, Pollack explains. When you submit a pull request, the project’s maintainer can see your profile, which includes all of your contributions on GitHub. If your patch is accepted, you get credit on the original site, and it shows up in your profile. It’s like a resume that helps the maintainer determine your reputation. The more people and projects on GitHub, the better idea picture a project maintainer can get of potential contributors. Patches can also be publicly discussed.

Even for maintainers who don’t end up using the GitHub interface, GitHub can make contribution management easier. “I end up just downloading the patch anyway, or merging from the command line instead of from the merge button,” says Isaac Schlueter, the maintainer of the open source development platform Node.js. “But GitHub provides a centralized place where people can discuss the patch.”

Lowering the barrier to entry democratizes open source development, and helps young projects grow. “Node.js wouldn’t be what it is today without GitHub,” Schlueter says.

Besides its public facing open source repositories, GitHub also sells private repositories and on-premise instances of its software for enterprises. These solutions obviously can’t take full advantage of GitHub’s network effect, but they can take advantage of the collaboration features. That’s how GitHub makes money, but it’s not alone in this market.

Atlassian acquired a competitor called BitBucket in 2010. And earlier this year Atlassian launched Stash, a product that enables you to host private, on-premise Git repositories with BitBucket/GitHub-style collaboration features. The company also sells developer collaboration tools like the bug tracker Jira and the wiki Confluence. Competition from Atlassian, which took $60 million in funding from Accel Partners in 2010, could help explain why GitHub took this round of funding, and hint at some possible future directions for the company. For example, Schlueter says GitHub’s issue tracking feature could eventually compete with JIRA for some projects.

The money may be in private and on-premise hosting, but the love is in the public repositories. Perhaps most importantly, GitHub has become the Library of Alexandria for code examples. Since Git encourages granular recording of changes, programmers, be they absolute beginners or experts, can trace the steps of some of the greatest developers in the world and find out how they solved thorny problems. But if GitHub were ever to meet the same fate as the Library of Alexandria, it could be reconstructed from all those local forks distributed on so many developers laptops all over the world. Regardless of how this investment works out, that’s a hell of a legacy for the GitHub team to leave behind.

Original source here.

Metastasized Software And Life 3.0

“Center For Digital Archaeology,” said the banner above one of the startups at the Funders and Founders Life 3.0 demo show, and for a moment I got excited, thinking of Vernor Vinge‘s software archaeologists. It wasn’t quite that. Instead, Codifi was a “solution for turning cultural heritage datasets and rich media into web- and mobile-ready interactive experiences.”

Which is cool, and worthwhile, but more a niche market than a world-shaker. As were a lot of the startups there. TennisRound: “find a tennis partner.” DreamBoard: an app for dream tracking and analysis. Plus the usual panoply of social marketplaces, socialsourced services, gamified giving, “Instagram for Products,” etc etc yadda yadda.

I apologize for being jaded. Michael Church’s scathing essay “Don’t waste your time in crappy startup jobs“–go read it–was still ringing in my ears, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of these startups were founded more for the sake of founding a startup than because the founders had an idea that wouldn’t let them go.

But then I thought: I bet Marc “Software Is Eating The World” Andreessen would interpret all this very differently. And who am I to gainsay him?

I suspect he would argue that software is spreading, metastasizing, from its ‘usual’ domains, and beginning to infect, devour, and remake every aspect–and every niche–of human life. Tennis, dreams, laundry, you name it. That’s why he just invested $100 million in Github; because everyhuman being and organization will be an indirect Github user before long, whether they know it or not. In the short term, Church may be right, most startups are dead ends–but in the long run, Andreessen has him beat cold.

And there were some genuinely interesting startups at Life 3.0. My favorite was MapsWithMe, not least because I’ve implemented (relatively crude) offline mapping in Android/iOS apps myself, so I have some idea of the size of the technical difficulties they’ve surmounted. Now you too can have a full-scale offline OpenStreetMap of the entire world on your phone or tablet, if you’re willing to sacrifice 8Gb of storage. What they offer is significantly better than Google Maps offline, no mean feat for a tiny company from Belarus–and they’re planning to offer an API and SDK to other developers soon.

I also really liked Coaster, “Uber for drinks”, which aims to save you time previously wasted waiting at the bar, and getArtup, which is so brilliantly simple – a subscription service to rent art from contemporary local artists, for businesses and wealthy individuals – that I can’t believe no one else has already cornered the market.

But the company that intrigued me the most was quite different. It had the terrible name SmogFarm. It was in a field–social-media sentiment measurement–that already seems crowded. But it seemed on first acquaintance to be more algorithmic, testable, and scientific than its competitors. More to the point, it was trying to do something new, something that has only recently been made even remotely possible; in this case, measuring the overall emotional state of the entire city of San Francisco. Who’s the market? I don’t know. What can you do with it? I’m not sure. Does it even really work? Good question. But it was a reassuring reminder that software isn’t just devouring the world we already know. From time to time, it may also open up new worlds to discover.

Original source here.

Headline July15,2012 / "Yanni: We destroy the young"

"YANNI: WE DESTROY THE YOUNG!"

He read all of Freud by the time he was 16, "wanting to know who we are and why we are here?" For the faithfuls, all this inward gazing is manifest in Yanni's concert monologues, delivered he says, because "I want to give them an attitude about life." Invariably, thr ticket buying faithful roar approval at pronouncements like this one, from what fans refer to as his Gandhi speech: "I truly believe greatness in all of us. Don't let anyone talk us out of our truth!"

"So you see a very big wave in this country toward what's inside. I think there is a tendency for a large part of the society to try and understand themselves." In march, 1989 he called his friend and fellow Greek George Veras. "Yorgo, I want to go on TV and I've got to break through." He wanted to film a live performance for spots to promote his tour. They went to Dallas with an absurd $40,000 budget, shot some footage, and soon Yanni took his place amid the collagen creams and Ginsu knives. To his reckord company's initial chagrin, the spots hyped Yanni, not his albums. But after they aired, his first tour sold out. Of his unorthodox but canny marketing, he says, "That's what art is. You just do it. Put it out there and see how many people respond to it."

Out on the hustings, he has been ----if we might borrow a phrase from fellow seeker Shirley Maclaine: "dancing in the light." Yanni is the world's heart throb as a white garbed stage presence in boots and billowing sleeves, he materializes in a swirling mist of atomized mineral water.In performance, he is an impassioned keyboardist who can lay a solid claim to a place in the Kathleen Turner ring of Nibelungen hair tossing. The PBS special was the chrysalis from which Yanni emerged godlike, bathed in golden light, in the very shadow of Parthenon.

He performed at the ancient Herod Atticus amphitheater with his band and London's Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and filmed the nighttime concert amid the dramatically lit ruins with fourteen video cameras. Well, what about........Does he listen to other music? "Rarely. Most of the stuff is boring. There hasn't been any music for a long long time! Nothing!"  He then goes pensive for a moment.

Only recently, he is coming off one of those ascetic interludes, and says he feels his age more. "Being famous" he muses."Being famous. it's oxymoron isn't it?" "It's one thing to be poor and dream of being rich. It's another thing to get your dream and be unhappy!" He then goes on to stare at the approaching dusk. "Hey, I have been in that scary part of town!"  The genius, the sage and the mortal are merging!

Thanks as ever to !WOW! for this super post. Hope you all loved it! Good night and God bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Snake Venom Clots Blood

They’re not the cuddliest of creatures but this video of what occurs when hemotoxic snake venom comes into contact with blood is truly disturbing.

A YouTube user has posted fascinating footage of blood reacting dramatically to snake venom.

The video shows a Russell viper being milked by a snake handler who then collects the venom in a glass jar.

One drop of the potent yellow venom is then extracted and mixed with a vial of human blood.

Within thirty seconds, the blood has turned into a solid block of jelly, demonstrating the venom's phenomenal blood-clotting abilities.

It’s a horrifying sight, but does beg the question as to whether the clotting agent in a snake's venom could be used to prevent people from bleeding to death.

Last month Australian biotechnology company Q-Sera announced it had raised funds to develop technology for producing a serum based on the blood clotting properties of snake venom.

China Q2 GDP growth 7.6%, lowest in 3 years

China's statistics agency says the country's economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter, the lowest pace since the third quarter of 2009. Analysts say the lower-than-expected economic growth was mainly due to gloomy domestic manufacturing activities and volatilities in external markets.


According to the figures released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, China’s economy expanded by 7.6 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, slowing from 8.1 percent in the first quarter. That is the slowest growth since March 2009, when the heavy impact of the global financial crisis was felt around the world. The spokesman of the statistics bureau said that China has full confidence to meet its full-year growth target of 7.5 percent.

Sheng Laiyun, Spokesman of National Bureau of Statistics, said, "According to preliminary data, in the first half of this year, GDP was 22.7 trillion yuan, rising by 7.8 percent. In the first quarter it grew by 8.1 percent and in the second quarter by 7.6 percent. "

US autistic man survives in Utah desert for three weeks

The Escalante River ends in the
man-made Lake Powell 

An autistic man who survived for three weeks in a remote Utah desert is said to be in a stable condition.

William Martin LaFever, 28, travelled an estimated 40 miles (64 km) in the Escalante Desert in southern Utah, in an attempt to walk to Page, Arizona.

Mr LaFever told his family that his hiking gear had been stolen, and his father had wired money to Page.

To survive, he scavenged food, including frogs, and drank water from the Escalante river.

Deputy Ray Gardner, who was aboard the helicopter that spotted Mr LaFever, said the 28-year-old was emaciated and could not stand when he was found.

"I could not believe that he was alive, and feel certain that in another 24 hours he would not have been alive," Mr Gardner said in a statement.

A sheriff's office said that Mr LaFever had called his father in early June to say he was hiking in the area with his dog, but that some of his hiking gear had been stolen and he was out of money.

John LaFever, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, told his son to catch a ride to Page to get the money.

Instead William LaFever apparently decided to hike along the Escalante river and then hitch a boat ride along Lake Powell to the Arizona town, according to the sheriff's department.

Garfield County Sheriff's spokeswoman Becki Bronson told the Associated Press that the desert is "some of the most rugged, unforgiving terrain you will find anywhere on Earth", including "jagged cliffs, stone ledges".

"Where William was hiking, there just isn't anyone out there," she said. "There are no people. There are no towns."

Mr LaFever was flown to Garfield Memorial Hospital, and Ms Bronson told the BBC he is in stable condition. (BBC.co.uk)

Terry faces questions as FA reopens inquiry

 John Terry arrives at court to hear the verdict

Chelsea defender, John Terry, was cleared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court court of committing a racial abuse on Anton Ferdinand during the match between Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers last October, but now faces further investigation into whether he racially abused Anton Ferdinand after the Football Association said it was reopening its inquiry.



The unsavoury case, which has brought some shameful publicity to the game, could be a watershed moment.
Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association last night admitted that the game’s image had been badly damaged and called on the Respect campaign to be stepped up.

“It has been an unedifying process and the game has been damaged as a result of the dirty linen being washed in public,” Taylor said.

“I now want to see an improvement in the Respect campaign.

Tour de France: David Millar wins stage 12 as Bradley Wiggins leads

David Millar won stage 12 of the Tour de France as fellow Briton Bradley Wiggins retained the race lead.
Millar, who was in a five-man breakaway on the 226km race from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Annonay Davezieux, beat Jean-Christopher Peraud in a sprint.

The victory was the fourth by a Briton on this year's Tour after wins for Mark Cavendish, Chris Froome and Wiggins.

Team Sky's Wiggins finished in the peloton and leads by just over two minutes from team-mate Chris Froome.

Wiggins is aiming to become the first Briton to win the famous race.

Garmin rider Millar won the prologue on his Tour debut 12 years ago and last won a stage nine years ago.
The 35-year-old Scot said: "I was determined. As soon as I got in the break I had in my head I was going to win. I just gave myself no options and was going to do whatever it took [to win the stage].


Saturday's 13th stage is a 217km race from Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux to Le Cap d'Agde on the Mediterranean coast.

Stage 12 result:

1. David Millar (GB) Garmin 5hrs 42 mins 46 secs

2. Jean Christophe Peraud (Fra) AG2R

3. Egoi Martinez (Spa) Euskaltel @ 6"

4. Cyril Gautier (Fra) Europcar

5. Robert Kiserlovski (Cro) Astana

Overall standings after stage 12:

1. Bradley Wiggins (GB) Team Sky 54hrs 34mins 33secs

2. Chris Froome (GB) Team Sky @ 2'05"

3. Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas @ 2'23"

4. Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing @ 3'19"

5. Jurgen van den Broeck (Bel) Lotto Belisol @ 4'48"

Brett Lee retires from international cricket

Australia fast bowler Brett Lee has retired from international cricket.

The 35-year-old returned home early from the recent one-day tour of England with a calf strain, the latest in a long line of injuries.

Lee quit Test cricket in February 2010 and exits the one-day arena with 380 wickets - one short of Glenn McGrath's record for an Australian - at an average of 23.36 from 221 matches.

He will continue to play domestic Twenty20 cricket for NSW and in the Indian Premier League



"You get to the point in life where you say enough is enough," Lee said.

"The last two or three nights I thought about it a lot. I woke up this morning and just felt like I was ready."
He told Australia's Channel 9: "I think in a team environment you have to have 100% commitment, mentally and physically.

"I guess, looking at the next few months, I just didn't have that desire any more. It wouldn't be fair on me or my team if I went with that attitude."

At his peak, Lee was arguably the finest quick bowler in the world, and bowled the second-fastest recorded delivery of all time at 99.9mph in Napier, New Zealand, in 2005.

Born in New South Wales, Lee made his Test debut against India in 1999 and his one-day bow the following year.
Only six players have bettered Lee's tally of 380 ODI wickets. He also took 310 wickets at an average of 30.81 in 76 Tests, and 28 wickets at 25.50 apiece in 25 Twenty20 internationals.

He was a central figure in the Australia sides that dominated world cricket in the 1990s and 2000s, and won the World Cup in 2003 as well as three of the four Ashes series he took part in.

Australia national selector John Inverarity said: "Today one of Australia's most outstanding fast bowlers announced his retirement.

"The statistics only tell part of the story. On top of this, and this is a significant part of his legacy, Brett inspired young Australians to play cricket and bowl fast."

Andrew Flintoff, the former England all-rounder who was involved in a memorable contest with Lee during the Ashes Test at Edgbaston in 2005, tweeted:  "The game has lost one of its few gentlemen. For all my bravado I never did like him trying to hit me on the head."  (BBC.co.uk)

Yahoo gives all clear after hack attack

Yahoo finally gave the all clear this morning in the aftermath of a massive password leak that exposed more than 450,000 Yahoo log-in credentials.

The company says it has since deployed "additional security measures" and "enhanced our underlying security controls" as it goes about notifying affected users.

From Yahoo's latest missive:
Yahoo recently confirmed that an older file containing approximately 450,000 e-mail addresses and passwords was compromised. The compromised information was provided by writers who had joined Associated Content prior to May 2010, when it was acquired by Yahoo. (Associated Content is now the Yahoo Contributor Network.) This compromised file was a standalone file that was not used to grant access to Yahoo systems and services.

We have taken swift action and have now fixed this vulnerability, deployed additional security measures for affected Yahoo users, enhanced our underlying security controls, and are in the process of notifying affected users. In addition, we will continue to take significant measures to protect our users and their data.

If you joined Associated Content prior to May 2010 using your Yahoo e-mail address, please log in to your Yahoo account, where you may be prompted to answer a series of authentication questions to change and validate your credentials.

Dog wedding sets new world record

A wedding between two dogs has set a new world record for the most expensive pet wedding.

The New York City nuptials between Baby Hope Diamond and Chilly Pasternak had a price tag of $158,000, but was also a fundraiser for the Humane Society of New York. Chilly won a contest to find Baby Hope's groom.

Baby Hope, a Coton Du Tulear, wore a dress by designers Henry and Michelle Roth. The reception included jazz music and a sushi buffet. Representatives from Guinness World Records were also on hand for the event.

Baby Hope's owner, Wendy Diamond, said the event was to commemorate another dog she had named Lucky, which died recently, and to raise awareness of canine cancer, as well as animal rescue and welfare.

The Fairytail Wedding of the Century cost $250 per person to attend.

Lemurs sliding to extinction

A new survey shows lemurs are far more threatened than previously thought.

A group of specialists is in Madagascar - the only place where lemurs are found in the wild - to systematically assess the animals and decide where they sit on the Red List of Threatened Species.

More than 90% of the 103 species should be on the Red List, they say.

Since a coup in 2009, conservation groups have repeatedly found evidence of illegal logging, and hunting of lemurs has emerged as a new threat.

The assessment, conducted by the Primate Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), concludes that 23 lemurs qualify as Critically Endangered - the highest class of threat.

Fifty-two are in the Endangered classification, and a further 19 Vulnerable to extinction.

Species can qualify for a Red List category on several measures.

A Critically Endangered listing can mean the population numbers less than 50 matur

JPMorgan admits to losing $5.8 billion this year so far

There’s bad news out of Wall Street this week after JPMorgan Chase admits that a trading goof earlier this year has helped earn the country’s biggest bank $5.8 billion in losses — nearly triple the original estimate.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon tells reporters early Friday that the botched deal overseen by then-Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew is now believed to have cost the bank around $4.4 billion in the second quarter for 2012. Originally JPMorgan staffers saw the gaffe as costing them only around $2 billion, but between Friday morning’s revelation and the revisions made on its first quarter losses, the actual amount lost in 2012 for the bank stands to be around $5.8 billion, notwithstanding any further developments.

Speaking to the press early Friday, Dimon tells the media, “we don’t take it lightly,” but adds that he believes the snafu was not part of any larger screw-up.

"We're not making light of this error, but we do think it's an isolated event,” Dimon pleads.

Dimon has dismissed claims that the mix-up earlier this year will have long-lasting effects on the bank, but has also been open to admitting their faults. In a statement delivered in May, Dimon said, “We maintain our fortress balance sheet and capital strength to withstand setbacks like this, and we will learn from our mistakes and remain diligently focused on our clients, who count on us every day.”

Drew, the former CIO for the bank, resigned from that role in May after news of the gaffe made international headlines. Even after overseeing a deal that cost the company only an estimated $2 billion at the time, though, Drew’s departure from JPMorgan was accompanied by a payout expected to bring her $15 million personally by walking away.

“Despite our recent losses in the CIO, Ina’s vast contributions to our company should not be overshadowed by these events,” Dimon insisted after the resignation was made public.

Mind Readers From CUNY Know What’s On Your Mind

How consumers think, adopt, consume certain goods and services on priority bases is the secret every business organization yearns to know about. Every single year a number of surveys are conducted to dig deeper into knowing about consumer behavior, so to improve and enhance the quality of offered products by conglomerates.

Dr. Lucas Parra who is a biomedical engineer at City University of New York (CUNY), devised a system in which he tested a number volunteers’ engagement into watching Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Bang! You’re dead”. Their brain activity was monitored by using a cap having multiple electrodes that were attached to an EEG monitor.

Scientists noted that during the time of strong visuals and meaningful transitions the brainwaves of volunteers peaked for a second or more but then it dropped, in other words the stimuli stopped working on them. The CUNY team re-edited some of the scenes from the movie and repeated the same test which didn’t produce results as it had earlier.

The experiment is a next step in the notion of neuromarketing in which brain signals are monitored to check the consumer’s reaction toward certain adverts, a technique used to target the exact audience.

Mind readers from the NY’s university are hoping to get more précised output from their future in-lab experiments.

Source:etechmag.com