HOW VIRTUAL REALITY COULD SAVE PLANNED PARENTHOOD
Regardless of what is and isn’t available at Planned Parenthood, this is just not how to act toward people, McDonald-Mosley says, and her organization made the film—and chose to make it in virtual reality—to help people see what it’s like to be treated that way. “Imagine how you would be if you were in a vulnerable situation just going to see your health care provider,” she says.
Jeremy Bailenson, founder of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, sees virtual environments as psychological states in which individuals can perceive themselves in new ways. Along with perfecting the technology, he wants to get a greater handle on its psychological effects. His is the first lab to study the effects of VR over the long term, with approximately 1,000 people participating in a wide range of scenarios that deal with prejudice, bullying and other social ills. At his lab, researchers create and manipulate VR representations of users in an attempt to fool their brains into changing their behaviors.
In one experiment, researchers altered college students’ avatars to look like their 65-year-old future selves and found those students were willing to put away twice as much money in savings than those whose avatars were unchanged. Bailenson told PBS NewsHour the visceral experience of seeing yourself older as opposed to just thinking how one day that will be true creates a “deep connection to your future self.” If VR can build that kind of connection in other cases, it could be a powerful tool.
See the full story here: http://www.newsweek.com/2016/07/15/planned-parenthood-virtual-reality-across-lines-478230.html
Virtual reality: It’s what’s for dinner
The way it works: You put on the headset and you're transported to an interesting location, which is probably the most normal element of this exercise.
Also on the table are several other devices. One is an "aromatic diffuser," which has a tube sticking out of it that blasts food aromas at you. Another is a "bone conduction transducer" that wraps around the back of your head to mimic the sounds and vibrations of chewing. There's a cup for drinking. Finally, there's a utensil shaped like tweezers. For eating.
Put all those items together, and you could be eating sushi in Japan, or be having a simulated food experience totally foreign to this world.
"There is no demand for an application like this, nobody will use it, and I'm shocked that it will attract any funding at all," said Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities.
Or maybe it's so weird it just might work.
Eating too much chocolate? Try Project Nourished.
"Flavor is about 80 percent aroma and 20 percent taste," said Robert McGorrin, department head of Oregon State's Food Science and Technology department.
So, could Project Nourished help kick-start a new Willy Wonka-like magical food revolution? It will need to convince a lot of people.
Project Nourished is still working on its recipes, whose ingredients An said are "massaged" every day. The starter kit, available for preorder online for $59.84 and shipping this summer, is a "smell module." The devices that replicate the sensation of eating will follow in the latter part of 2016.
See the full story here: http://www.cnet.com/news/virtual-reality-its-whats-for-dinner/
5 Best Augmented Reality Games Like Pokemon GO
1. Ingress
2. SpecTrek
3. Life is Crime
4. Zombies, Run!
5. Parallel Kingdom MMO
See the full story here: http://www.mobipicker.com/games-like-pokemon-go/
Pokémon Go has already taught me so much
Hilarious review; sample - Catching Pokémon at a busy intersection definitely makes you look super weird
See the full article here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/pokemon-go-an-education/?ncid=tcdaily
Disney CTOs Talk Virtual Reality
At a recent event hosted by The Walt Disney Studios’ Technology Innovation Group (TIG), employees from across the Company gathered at its headquarters in Burbank, California, to discuss the impact VR has had and will continue to have on Disney experiences.
Disney|ABC Television Group Senior Vice President (SVP) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Skarpi Hedinsson talked about innovations from his side of the business, as they are focused on making news and programming even more immersive.
“Our angle with VR is on cinematic storytelling,” The Walt Disney Studios SVP and CTO Jamie Voris said during the panel. The Jungle Book was the studio’s latest experiment with VR, and the team created four different experiences for a variety of platforms.
In the global marketplace, Walt Disney International SVP and CTO Emmanuel Frenehard expressed that VR will play an important role in bringing the magic of Disney in new ways to virtually ever corner of the world.
The panel agreed that close collaboration between Disney’s businesses would continue to be a catalyst in creating even more VR content to share stories in never-before-seen ways. Frenehard summarized the momentum on the technology at the Company best by saying: “We are all working as one company, in unison, toward looking at VR.”
See the full story here: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-ctos-talk-virtual-reality/
Why AMD is betting big on virtual reality
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su was conducting a live interview with CNBC's "Squawk Alley" a few weeks ago when the questions turned to one of this year's most buzzed-about technologies: virtual reality.
"Virtual reality is one of those great applications that just changes the way you deal with immersive applications and devices - and it's not just gaming. It's really across a number of different segments," Su told the CBNC reporters. "We actually really believe that as we get the performance levels to the right place we can get the next 100 million VR users - and that's our goal."
AMD recently released its first VR-capable graphics cards, called Radeon RX 480, which are based on its new Polaris design
Price point is the important part: AMD will sell it for $199, making it at least $100 cheaper than its main competitor, Nvidia Corp.
AMD also wants to be the go-to chipmaker for VR developers. The company announced in March a special graphics process for VR developers called Radeon Pro Duo, which retails for $1,499. It is packaged with AMD's "LiquidVR" software.
The chipmaker hasn't reported an annual profit since 2011. In the last quarter it lost $109 million. Its sales declined nearly 28 percent in 2015 from the previous year.
Much of AMD's troubles are due to the sales slump in the PC market,..."AMD has to do 'Hail Mary' kind of activities because their back is against the wall," Kay said. "They need to take a fairly high risk and take big bets on things that might pay out because that's what will get them out of the hole."
Hacking a Desktop Printer to Make Batteries and Circuits
Under a bench at Sang-Young Lee’s lab is an ordinary, somewhat beat-up ink-jet printer he has modified so that it spits out electronic circuits and a type of energy storage device called a supercapacitor. To make it work, Lee empties the ink cartridges and refills them with specially formulated battery materials and conductive inks. When loaded with treated paper, his hacked printers make flexible, durable supercapacitors and simple circuit components in the form of a high-resolution map of the Republic of Korea, a flower, a logo, or any other desired design.
Lee, a battery chemist at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea, has been working on flexible printed batteries for the past five years. “The architecture of the battery hasn’t changed since the birth of the lithium-ion battery,” he says.
To make it work, he had to tailor all the materials in the recipe. If the inks smear or run in the paper, the supercapacitor won’t work. So the first layer to be printed is a cellulose primer that absorbs inks and won’t run. That’s followed by carbon nanotubes, which replace the foil current collector in a battery, and silver nanowire electrodes, followed by an electrolyte ink. Each ink had to be formulated so that it would flow through the print head and not clump up while sitting in the cartridge.
Lee’s prototype, described in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, shows how the battery and the circuit alike disappear into printed designs. On one printed sheet, the word “BATTERY” powers the words “Printed Circuit,” which carry electricity into an LED. In a design for a coffee-mug wrap, a supercapacitor powers a sensor to turn on a blue light by the printed word “COLD” or a red light by the word “HOT” depending on the beverage’s temperature.
“The goal for the Internet of things and ubiquitous computing is to have technology go into the background so we can interact with the world in ways that feel natural,”...
See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601800/hacking-a-desktop-printer-to-make-batteries-and-circuits/
Pokémon Go is launching on iOS and Android today
Surprise! It looks like Pokémon Go, the much-anticipated augmented reality game backed by Nintendo, is coming to Android and iOS devices near you today.
The game is free to download, but has in-app purchases to unlock some characters. A $35 wearable device to accompany the game is set to go on sale later this month.
The game is very similar to Ingress, the flagship game from Niantic Labs, the company behind Pokémon Go which was spun out of Google last year. Ingress is essentially a global battle between two different teams, who compete to capture flags and gain territories across the world. Unlike an online game, AR lights up Ingress by turning the world into the game’s battlefield.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/pokemon-go-is-launching-on-ios-and-android-today/?ncid=tcdaily