The acting, from Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen to Christopher Lee as Saruman and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the dwarfs, are all very good, inhabiting their roles with conviction and passion. So the effects work from Weta Digital is all the more impressive and astounding from skin textures to the manifold buildings of Rivendell, it's sometimes hard to believe it's not all real. For a film set in a mythical fantasy land, any poor special effects or sub-standard computer generated imagery will stand out glaringly. However, this raises a problem for the filmmaker. Instead of shooting at the normal speeds of twenty four frames per second, he has doubled it to forty eight frames a second so when viewed you have an astonishing clarity of detail as well as smoothness in camera movement with no motion stutter or blurry jerkiness when shown in 3D. So it is appropriate that Jackson is here breaking new ground with the very way we watch films. It was only at the dawn of the last century that people like Georges Méliès realised the potential of this medium. Of all the art forms of the world, film is the one most invested in technology created by scientists, not artists at the end of the nineteenth century. Tolkien's Middle Earth after his vast and Academy Award wining "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy (2001 – 2003), he is actually experimenting with cinema itself. While at first glance it may seem that he is travelling over familiar ground, again tackling the fantastical world of J.R.R. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" simultaneously takes director Peter Jackson in two different directions.
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Upon learning the situation, Reed also enlisted the assistance of Victor Von Doom. He himself chose to gain the assistance of his son Reed and his friend Ben (the Thing) while still in college. With he and only one other remaining, Nathaniel used his grandchildren of the future to help him with his plans. He chose not to participate in the Great Hunt but knew that one day it would come to him. Oddly enough, the reality in which they were stranded and forced to do battle was the home reality of Nathaniel responsible for the event taking place. Thus began the Great Hunt in which each version of Nathaniel began killing the others or resorted to committing suicide, the goal of all to be the last one standing. He ordered their deaths but did so in a most unexpected way: by making a game out of the execution process. This event garnered the attention of Immortus, a future incarnation of his alleged son Kang, who saw this as a great risk to the timestream. There was one side effect though: every Nathaniel Richards that existed in all realities were brought six thousand years into his future. Having been in contact with the explosion, Nathaniel gained control over time and possibly immortality (at minimum he gained a great extension on his aging). Sometime later, Nathaniel and Howard Stark's fight with The Night Machine ended with a massive explosion of temporal energy caused by the destruction of a powerful engine within The Night Machine's body. It is believed that Nathaniel is the father of Kang the Conqueror, which if it's true would make Kang half-brother to Mr. Nathaniel then took leave and ventured to another timeline. ![]() Uatu, who decided not to stay and aid his people in rebuilding him, teleported Nathaniel and the others back to his base in The Blue Area of The Moon. ![]() With Exitar gone, The Celestials retreated to far corners of The Universe and began the several thousand year process of rebuilding his armor and bringing him back to full power, while The Watchers did the same to The One, an Exitar-sized Watcher seeking to bring about the end of The Universe and free The Watchers of their Oath. While inside Exitar, Nathaniel and his allies were assaulted by Exitar's anti-bodies, who managed to incapacitate Nathaniel and the others, with the exception of The Invisible Woman who managed to reach the mind-chamber and sever Exitar's connection to our plane of existence. Sometime later, Nathaniel, The Fantastic Four, The Fantastic Force and Kristoff Vernard became wrapped up in an epic final confrontation between The Celestials and their arch-nemesis' The Watchers.Īfter revealing that the source of The Invisible Woman's powers was actually the same wavelength that The Celestials use to control and maintain the existence of their armor in our reality and its counterparts, he managed to infiltrate the armor of Exitar the Exterminator, one of the most powerful Celestials in existence. With the help of Agatha, the plan was successful and Nathaniel took his grandson to the future where he trained him as best he could alongside his aunt, Huntara. He had come from the future where he had learned that his grandson would set off a chain of events and came back to his son's life to take the boy away. Years later, Nathaniel once again appears in the lives of the FF, but this time with more dire consequences. Reed and the rest of the team eventually escaped but decided to leave Nathaniel behind. It was found out that it was his wife who was the cruel tyrant, manipulating Nathaniel's love for her and ultimately going too far. In time the truth would come to light, with the appearance of his son and the rest of the Fantastic Four. ![]() The daughter while beautiful, manipulated him and used Nathaniel's inventions for her own gain, the people of that dimension thinking Nathaniel was the cruel warlord. In reality, however, Nathaniel had traveled to a different dimension which was mixed in with cowboys and fantasy, and he stayed there upon meeting and falling in love with the daughter of the leader of the place. By the time Reed hit adulthood, his father disappeared (presumed dead) and Nathaniel left him all his fortune so his son could fulfill his dream. Nathaniel, always the scientist, was secretly developing a machine that would allow him to travel through different dimensions. Unfortunately, around the time Reed was 7 years old, his mother had passed away. He lived happily with his family, noting his son's intellect at a young age and trying his best to encourage it along with his wife. Nathaniel Richards is the loving husband of Evelyn Richards and father of Reed Richards who would later become the famous superhero, Mr. ![]() Not only did the update delete all of my preset locations it also deleted many of the settings. ![]() I don’t need that at 3:00 in the morning, especially since the storm had already passed my area! It would be nice if there was a way to set a schedule for muting non-emergency audible alerts especially if one chooses the special bulletin alerts. ![]() The last round of storms we had roll through, I had to finally shut off the audible alerts because they were going off almost every 30 min for lightning advisory updates and flash flood advisories. I checked the other alerts I want to get, but if there is a special weather statement concerning, say, air quality, and I don’t have “air quality” checked, I still get the alert. I want to know if there is bad weather coming or maybe thick fog in the morning, but I don’t want to get alerts for every time the wind blows or all night long while I’m trying to sleep. I also can’t seem to get a good setting on the “special weather bulletin” alerts. I dislike the fixed portrait orientation and haven’t found a way to adjust it to landscape for my iPad. I miss the old layout of the 7 day forecast. Isn't that what a mobile weather app is all about? Busy people turning to a quick look at the weather? Too bad I too often have to miss the details and go to another source for them. I know you have to pay for things, but it's so much that busy people will walk away. That's really bad in a severe weather event. When you go to WRAL online you get 10 minutes of ads before you can see any report, weather or anything. This new app is disappointing because it's clear that it intentionally forces users to go to WRAL online to get in depth reporting, especially video reporting (join us at WRAL online for the details'). WRAL weather reporting is good because of the expertise of the the weather staff. In a severe weather event the app and WRAL seem to have improved the availability, otherwise I'm likely to miss the video weather - but I can always find it at ABC 11, so I'm good. The detailed video is what I'm talking about and now you can only get a brief video without going to the Live News and Weather and wait for the ads to play. Sad to say, that part has only gotten worse. Edit: Haven't looked at this review in a long while so hadn't seen the developer response that "it isn't the intent of WRAL to 'force' anyone to go online to do anything". ![]() "For example you can subtract vectors using standard vector math. "What's important is not each number, but using the numbers to see how words are related to one another," said Jain, who leads a group working on discovery and design of new materials for energy applications using a mix of theory, computation, and data mining. Word2vec took each of the approximately 500,000 distinct words in those abstracts and turned each into a 200-dimensional vector, or an array of 200 numbers. The team collected the 3.3 million abstracts from papers published in more than 1,000 journals between 19. We thought, can machine learning do something to make use of all this collective knowledge in an unsupervised manner-without needing guidance from human researchers?" ![]() "A researcher can access only fraction of that. "In every research field there's 100 years of past research literature, and every week dozens more studies come out," he said. Tshitoyan said the project was motivated by the difficulty making sense of the overwhelming amount of published studies. "The paper establishes that text mining of scientific literature can uncover hidden knowledge, and that pure text-based extraction can establish basic scientific knowledge," said Ceder, who also has an appointment at UC Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Along with Jain, Berkeley Lab scientists Kristin Persson and Gerbrand Ceder helped lead the study. The lead author of the study, "Unsupervised Word Embeddings Capture Latent Knowledge from Materials Science Literature," is Vahe Tshitoyan, a Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow now working at Google. The findings were published July 3 in the journal Nature. But probably the most interesting thing we figured out is, you can use this algorithm to address gaps in materials research, things that people should study but haven't studied so far." "That hinted at the potential of the technique. "Without telling it anything about materials science, it learned concepts like the periodic table and the crystal structure of metals," said Jain. By analyzing relationships between words the algorithm was able to predict discoveries of new thermoelectric materials years in advance and suggest as-yet unknown materials as candidates for thermoelectric materials. A team led by Anubhav Jain, a scientist in Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage & Distributed Resources Division, collected 3.3 million abstracts of published materials science papers and fed them into an algorithm called Word2vec. Post questions, follow discussions and share your knowledge in the Community. Create a signature in Outlook In Outlook, click on the File tab. To get help and troubleshoot other Microsoft products and services, enter your problem here. If you can't sign in, click here.įor other help with your Microsoft account and subscriptions, visit Account The choice to shoot in black and white makes the photographs almost timeless. The series “These Dark Mountains” is an anthropological study that describes the abandonment of small mountain towns and the difficulty of preserving habits that have always linked man and nature. Giulia Degasperi has represented this age-old practice of the mountains of Trentino, without directly showing the beauty of the landscapes but that of work, effort and tradition. Along with the animals travel shepherds, who in the mountain pastures become part of a single cycle of life, which does not suffer pauses but flows slowly and steadily. In summer, whole herds of cattle move from the valleys to the mountain meadows, thousands of feet above sea level, where the air is thinner and the rhythms are dictated only by nature’s needs. Throughout the festival you will be able to see different installations, from the AV “Synchronator HD” by Bas Van Kolwijk, to the Videomapping show by Dark Light Studio, you will be able to visit the NetArt exhibition by and the AV Digital Archive by VJTelevision where the largest international archive dedicated to Audio Visual Performing Arts is available for consultation.īut that’s not all! Among the artists who will participate in FOTONICA 2020 we must mention the English band Coldcut, the Italian creative studio Ultravioletto, the Egyptian artist Noushka Farag, and of course there will be national and international partners who will curate various meetings in which different aspects of digital art will be analyzed, but also the current situation of this sector will be discussed.Īll you have to do is visit the FOTONICA website to discover the program in detail and mark down the unmissable appointments! Now they can do so while leaping around through the beautiful wireframes that Santa Ragione have given us.įotonica will be released as a Universal App for iPhone and iPad with an Android version coming at an unannounced date.FOTONICA, which is part of Romarama, the cultural program promoted by Roma Capitale and realized in collaboration with SIAE, this year offers a program that will satisfy all tastes, from those who want to watch performances to those who want to discover all the secrets of this field by participating in talks and workshops dedicated to the world of audio-video and digital art. Especially when you consider how often people walk around staring down at their phones. Thus, Fotonica’s arrival for iOS comes as a breath of (digital) fresh air. ![]() As it stands, the music in Fotonica already evokes the best sounds from Daft Punk’s work on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, as well as the snarling immediacy of Trent Reznor. Also new to the mobile version is the inclusion of two original tracks by electronica artist BAIYON, known to some as the composer for PixelJunk Eden. The iOS version of Fotonica will feature new levels, gameplay modes, and options. Pulling deep from their art and design backgrounds, Fotonica is a wireframe, minimal, trippy, that feels like leaping across the sidewalk in a techno nightmare. Developed by Italian design duo Pietro Riva and Nicolo Tedeschi, know together as Santa Ragione, Fotonica is not your average runner game. Hyper-minimalist runner Fotonica is coming to iOS this Thursday. ![]() Then, they would pull down the national flag and hoist up the Jolly Roger just before attacking. A common pirate technique was to fly the same national flag as their intended target until they pulled within cannon range. In the old days, most sailing ships displayed their national flags prominently to better identify each other. Henry Every's pirate flag had a skull and crossbones on a red background. Or attach it to your bike or car and watch everyone else get out of your way. I found some for as little as a penny each! Check out this page and you can have your very own pirate flag flying from your room. ![]() Want to get your own pirate flag? They’re surprisingly cheap on. And I’ll also show you where you can find some of the pirate flags hidden throughout Skullduggery Island on Poptropica. Here’s a brief look at some of the most popular and famous pirate flags used during the height of piracy and some of the colorful stories behind them. They knew the flag meant that the pirates were mean, nasty and would stop at nothing to get their treasure.īut I bet you didn’t know that there were a lot of different pirate flags in use throughout history. In fact, pirates often flew this flag before attacking because some crews of merchant ships would be so scared at the sight of the pirate flag that they’d simply surrender without fighting. The good old skull and crossbones on a black flag is a very recognizable symbol. As everyone who reads this blog already knows, Skullduggery is all about pirates! And nothing reminds people of pirates more than pirate flags. Of course, paid members have been able to play it for a few weeks, but everyone gets access on Thursday. Skullduggery Island is only a day away from the public launch. ![]() Syapse aggregates the best of breed analytics for oncologists. Syapse, based in San Francisco, CA raises $30 million of capital bringing total funding to $62 million We are willing to take the chance if it means people will be incentivized to look after their health. It is about time for people to get rewarded for good behavior but we do acknowledge that the stratification of risk pool can be a problem. The company partners with established life insurance companies and sells policies to marathon runners, vegans, cyclists and other health-conscious people with rates that start at 4% less than the traditional policies and can reach to 33% discount once the company can verify- for example- that the person can run an 8-minute mile. The company is in the life insurance business for healthy people. based in San Francisco, CA raises $34.6 million bringing total funding to $81 million For example, while running, it can warn the user about an upcoming incline and the speed that the user had climbed it before. The app knows specific information about the user. The company has built a $20 million revenue base in just two years. Audio coaching has been enthusiastically received by users. This is an audio-only fitness mobile app probably the only one in the market. We admit that the fitness sector is overcrowded. New York, NY-based Fitness app, Aaptiv raises $38 million ![]() Evive is known for compelling engagement tools which ranges from ER/Rx steerage to price transparency and gaps in care. The company helps people to make better benefit decisions and sells its services to large employers. For example, Washington State reported $34 million in savings in emergency costs and a decline of almost 10% in ED visits in its first year of use in 2013.Įvive Health based in Chicago, IL raises $43 million The company, which has been bootstrapped for eight years, claims to have the largest real-time care collaboration network across hundreds of hospitals, health systems and tens of thousands of providers including skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies and emergency medical services.Ĭollective has demonstrated impressive results. Collective builds a collaboration network platform unifying payers, patients and providers for the most complex patients who require multiple points of care. Kleiner Perkins led the round with Epic Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and others participating. We must admit that payer services are still the more attractive sector for private equity firms.Ĭollective Medical, based in Salt Lake City, UT raises $47 million Series A The combined entity will offer a deep network of physicians and nurse practitioners that will provide technology-enabled in-home health assessment nationwide. Advance Health is also in the assessment business but with an emphasis on member engagement and readmission prevention programs. New mountain backs CenseoHealth based in Dallas, TX and Advance Health based in Chantilly, VAĬenseoHealth provides health assessment for health plans and risk bearing healthcare delivery organizations. New Mountain is already putting their newly raised $6.0B fund to good use. Solutions range from reducing risk of product lifecycle to increasing R&D productivity. The company’s clinical trial solutions are used by over 400 life sciences customers including the top 30 largest pharmaceutical companies. Welcome to the Unicorn Club!Ĭytel of Cambridge, MA announces investment from New Mountain CapitalĬytel is an established analytical software provider to the life science industry. GE Ventures and Blue Cross Blue Shield fund are some of the existing investors. The product helps doctors detect coronary artery disease non-invasively. ![]() Heartflow of Redwood City, CA raises $150 million valuing the company at $1.4B Financial Technology, Data, and Analytics ![]() ![]() The game was said to take full advantage of next-generation consoles and be driven by live service offerings, seeing major innovations in multiplayer, social, and competition aspects that are new to the franchise. Soundtrack Main article: Battlefield 2042: Original SoundtrackĪ new, untitled Battlefield game was confirmed by EA CEO Andrew Wilson in an investor call on October 29, 2019. The rest of each Specialist's kit is fully customizable. Specialists have one unique Specialty gadget, such as Maria's Syrette Pistol and Boris' SG-36 Sentry System, and a unique passive Trait, such as Casper's passive Movement Sensor. Classesīattlefield 2042 introduces the Specialist system. By 2042, a massive open war is all but certain, and the No-Pats must choose sides in order to survive. The two nations begin a proxy war to secure remaining food and fuel supplies, hiring the No-Pat Task Forces to maintain plausible deniability. The United States of America and the Russian Federation, the only two remaining superpower states, blame each other for the catastrophe. ![]() A global blackout takes place, plunging the world into chaos as communication grids are destroyed and supply lines halt. In 2040, a space debris storm causes a Kessler Effect to occur, where most of the satellites orbiting the Earth cease to function and crash into the planet. The No-Pats create Task Forces of military Specialists to defend themselves. However, distrustful of the governments of the "Old World" that abandoned them, many No-Pats refuse to rejoin their former nations and create their own identity, unbound by loyalty to any country. Many of these outcasts band together for mutual survival, becoming known as the Non-Patriated or " No-Pats" for short.īy 2037, advances in technology have allowed humanity to begin rebuilding a global society, and some of the remaining countries begin to open their borders once again. The collapse of many government powers and the shuttering of borders has resulted in over 1.2 billion people becoming displaced. Extreme climate change events take place during the 2030s, causing massive global upheaval. Ģ042 takes place two decades after the events of the War of 2020. It is set in the same continuity as Battlefield 3 and 4. Similar to Battlefield 2142, Battlefield 2042 has a background narrative despite having no single-player campaign. "As the world stands on the brink of war, a new kind of stateless soldier emerges from the greatest crisis in human history. The Playstation 4 and Xbox One versions of 2042 will only support up to 64 players with smaller scale maps. Ĭertain multiplayer modes like Conquest and Breakthrough will support up to 128 players per server on ninth generation consoles and PC, the first Battlefield game to officially support over 100 players in a single match since the Korean exclusive Battlefield Online. However, similar to older entries in the series like Battlefield 2, players will have the option of playing against AI bots in either solo or co-op modes, although the game is always online and cannot be played offline. Battlefield 2042 is multiplayer focused and has no singleplayer campaign, the first main series entry to not include one since Battlefield 2142. While "composite stones" have been around for hundreds of years, these are produced in a different manner than old-fashioned composite stones, and as a result, went undetected until recently. ![]() Some labs are now describing such stones as "composite ruby" and many have been found to contain more glass than anything else. In the composites now being seen by gemologists and laboratories, the glass component typically comprises 30-40% of the stone, or more! They are created from opaque to semi-opaque rocks containing corundum and other minerals in which the extraneous minerals are leeched out by a chemical process, leaving numerous voids that are then infused with glass. In fact, they are nothing more than a mixture of very poor quality corundum (the mineral known as "ruby" only when it occurs in a red color) held together by tinted lead-glass. Today, however, an increasing number of people-both in America and abroad-are finding that the "ruby" they have purchased is not what they thought it was. Such stones command high prices, and the finest and rarest rubies cost more than sapphires, emeralds, or the finest colorless diamonds in comparable sizes. A fine ruby (i) has everything a precious stone should have: magnificent color, excellent hardness and overall durability, outstanding brilliance, and extreme rarity. All research described below was done by Lynch Matlins was active in determining the extent of the problem among retailers and other vendors.įor thousands of years, the ruby has been considered one of the most valuable gemstones on Earth. This article has been submitted to the AGA courtesy of Craig Lynch, AGA Board Member ( Ouellet & Lynch), with an introduction by Board Member Antoinette Matlins. Treated Rubies & Misrepresenting What You’re Selling? Put lipstick on a rock & call it ruby! ![]() Composite "Rubies" Pose Serious Problem for Consumers Are YOU One of the Increasing Number |
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