Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 74
September 29, 2017
A New Era for Diabetes Patients: FDA Clears First Prickless Blood Sugar Monitor
In a milestone for Americans with diabetes, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the first-ever continuous blood sugar monitoring device that doesn’t require patients to take potentially painful and invasive blood tests that require pricking their fingertips to collect samples. The approval was granted to Abbott Diabetes Care Inc.
The device, Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre Flash Glucose Monitoring System, is approved for adult diabetes patients 18 years of age and older, and the approval sent Abbott stock up 3.5% in Thursday trading. It slashes the need for the so-called fingerstick tests that people with diabetes regularly endure to figure out whether their blood sugar levels are too high or too low, and to monitor general fluctuation in blood glucose so they can adjust their diets or medication. The device itself uses an under-the-skin sensor wire which keeps tabs on sugar levels. In order to get a gauge on where those glucose levels are at, users simply have to wave an accompanying, specialized mobile reader device over the sensor like a wand.
“The FDA is always interested in new technologies that can help make the care of people living with chronic conditions, such as diabetes, easier and more manageable,” said the FDA’s Donald St. Pierre in a statement. “This system allows people with diabetes to avoid the additional step of fingerstick calibration, which can sometimes be painful, but still provides necessary information for treating their diabetes—with a wave of the mobile reader.”
Medical device and tech companies alike have shown growing interest in diabetes management and monitoring devices. Last year, the FDA approved an artificial pancreas from device giant Medtronic to treat people with type 1 diabetes with a largely automated glucose monitoring and insulin dose-adjusting system. And then there’s Apple, which made waves over the spring when reports emerged that it had hired a team of biomedical engineers to work on a blood sugar sensor of its own, possibly integrated into an AppleWatch-type device.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/09/28/diabetes-fda-abbott-prickless-blood-sugar-monitor/
Amazon is developing three new sci-fi shows in an attempt to find the next Game of Thrones
Earlier this month, Variety reported that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a mandate to the company’s studio: produce more “high-end drama series with a global appeal.” This morning, Variety reported that the company is following that order by moving forward with three major science fiction shows: adaptations of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Greg Rucka’s Lazarus.
Since launching the studio in 2010, Amazon has earned considerable acclaim for its shows, such as The Man in the High Castle, Transparent, and The Grand Tour, but it seems that Bezos is setting his sights a bit higher. In an interview with Variety earlier this month, the head of Amazon Studios, Roy Price, said that Amazon is looking to create “big shows that can make the biggest difference around the world,” by working on shows that appeal to a global audience.
Price compared their efforts to trying to create the next Game of Thrones, saying that HBO’s fantasy drama is akin to Jaws or Star Wars in the television world. “Everybody wants a big hit and certainly that’s the show of the moment in terms of being a model for a hit,” he said. Variety also says that Price sent an email to Amazon employees, saying that 2018 and 2019 are shaping up to be major years for the company. “Our overall content investment is increasing, which will allow us to continue to meet customer demand around the world for high quality and engaging programming,” he reportedly wrote in the email.
Earlier this year, the studio brought on former Fox executive Sharon Tal Yguado as head of event series. She was tasked with bringing major science fiction, fantasy, and horror television shows to the studio and Amazon’s Prime subscribers. Amazon has dipped its toes into science fiction television with with The Man in the High Castle, its forthcoming anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, and a pilot for a show called Oasis, which debuted earlier this year. The three shows that Amazon is developing could certainly become the same type of television juggernauts as Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, or The Handmaid’s Tale, and Variety notes that the studio is putting “significant production investment,” into each.
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Dubai is building a mock Martian city
Someday, you could take a flying taxi from Dubai to a Martian city in the middle of the desert right here on Earth. In preparation for its plans to establish a settlement on the red planet, the United Arab Emirates has announced that it’s building a 1.9 million square feet simulated Mars settlement. It will be called Mars Science City and will serve as home to interconnected domes housing various laboratories simulating the planet’s terrain. The team building the structure plans to use advanced 3D printing techniques and heat and radiation insulation to mimic the harsh environment of our neighbor.
Scientists will use those labs to develop technologies that can provide future Martian colonies with food, water and energy. That way, settlers wouldn’t have to spend years eating only potatoes in their new home. In addition to laboratories, the man-made city will house a museum showcasing humanity’s greatest space achievements, which will boast 3D-printed walls made of sand from the country’s desert. There will be areas meant to engage kids and ignite their interest in space, as well. Once the city’s up, the UAE intends to conduct an experiment involving a group of people living within its confines for a year.
According to the Government of Dubai, which is heading the project, it will cost around $140 million to build the artificial city. UAE’s Vice President and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said:
“The UAE seeks to establish international efforts to develop technologies that benefit humankind, and that establish the foundation of a better future for more generations to come. We also want to consolidate the passion for leadership in science in the UAE, contributing to improving life on earth and to developing innovative solutions to many of our global challenges.”
The country hasn’t revealed a timeline for the project yet, but we’d sure love to see Matt Damon grace the city’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/28/dubai-building-mock-martian-city/
Elon Musk revealed a new plan to colonize Mars with giant reusable spaceships
Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, has presented an updated plan for colonizing Mars with 1 million people.
The International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, hosted Musk’s presentation on Friday, and SpaceX streamed video of the event via a YouTube Live feed. (You can replay the 42-minute talk here.)
Musk tweeted on Monday that he’d unveil “major improvements” and “unexpected applications” in the talk, which is an update to his one-hour presentation at last year’s IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico — where he revealed his initial plans to build gigantic ships to reach Mars.
“The future is vastly more interesting and exciting if we’re a space-faring civilization and a multiplanet species than if we’re not,” Musk said on Friday. “I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there among the stars.”
Musk said lower cost was the biggest update
“I think the most important thing I’m going to convey in this presentation is that I think we’ve figured out how to pay for it,” he said, referring to the launch system.
Musk previously called it the Interplanetary Transport System, but this year he readopted an older name: the BFR, which is short for “Big F—ing Rocket.”
“We’re still sort of searching for the right name,” he added.
Musk said the goal of the BFR was to “cannibalize” and replace all of SpaceX’s existing launch and spaceflight systems, including its 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket, the coming Falcon Heavy rocket, and Dragon (its spaceship for NASA).
“If we can do that, then all the resources that are used on Falcon 9, Heavy, and Dragon … can be applied to this system,” he said.
SpaceX is actively building and testing parts of the BFR
Earlier this year, SpaceX built a 39-foot-tall fuel tank for the spaceship made out of carbon fiber.
Engineers then put it on a barge, towed it into the ocean, and pressure-tested it to see whether it could handle the strain of holding 1,200 tons of liquid oxygen.
The test was successful — but Musk said they pushed it as far as it could go to see when it’d burst.
“It shot about 300 feet into the air and landed in the ocean. Then we fished it out,” Musk said.
He added that a working carbon-fiber tank — the core of the BFR spaceship — is essential to keeping the spacecraft lightweight and efficient.
Musk also recapped SpaceX’s progress on its giant Raptor rocket engines.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-iac-mars-colonization-presentation-2017-9
Japan Issues Licenses for 11 Bitcoin Exchanges
Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has issued operating licenses to 11 bitcoin exchanges, the regulator announced today.
This follows an amendment to the payment services law, which stated that all cryptocurrency exchanges should register with authorities by the end of September.
Passed in April, the new law established bitcoin as a legal payment method, and extrapolated security guidelines for cryptocurrency exchanges.
The licensing enforces certain operational requirements for the exchanges, including high standards for cybersecurity, the segregation of customer accounts and the verification of customer identities.
Seventeen applications are still in review, while 12 firms have closed their doors in light of the new regulations.
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Local cryptocurrency exchange Quoine – one of the 11 firms to receive a license – said in a press release that it will work alongside regulators “towards the healthy development of the cryptocurrency industry within Japan and on a global scale.”
An FSA executive said earlier this week that it intended to foster “sound market development” by working with the exchanges.
Japan is uniquely proactive in its cryptocurrency regulations. Lawmakers have previously stated that this was driven by the now-notorious collapse of local bitcoin exchange Mt Gox in 2014, which led to the loss of millions of dollars in customer funds.
The news comes at a time of regulatory shifts in the broader cryptocurrency landscape. Earlier this month, China issued a blanket ban on fundraising methods involving token sales, or initial coin offerings (ICOs), and local cryptocurrency exchanges have indicated they will cease domestic trading following the ban.
South Korea has also stated ICOs are illegal as of today, as well as tightening the rules for exchanges.
Source:
https://www.coindesk.com/japans-finance-regulator-issues-licenses-for-11-bitcoin-exchanges/
September 28, 2017
‘Coming to America’ Sequel Moving Forward
Paramount Pictures is moving forward on a sequel to the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy “Coming to America” with Jonathan Levine on board to direct from a script by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris.
Levine, whose credits include “Snatched,” “The Night Before,” “50/50,” and “Warm Bodies,” will direct from a script that Barris will rewrite from a screenplay by original writers Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield. Kevin Misher is producing.
Murphy is involved with the development of the sequel, although there’s no deal in place yet for him to star. Kevin Misher is the producer.
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The original movie was directed by John Landis, with Murphy playing a charming African prince who traveled to New York City to escape an arranged marriage. Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones, Shari Headley, and John Amos co-starred in the “Coming to America,” which was a major hit, grossing nearly $300 million at the worldwide box office.
Humorist Art Buchwald sued the studio on grounds that the film’s idea was stolen from his 1982 script treatment and won the breach of contract part of the suit. The parties later settled the case prior to an appeal going to trial.
Barris co-wrote the comedy “Girls Trip” with Tracy Oliver and worked on New Line’s “Son of Shaft.”
Levine is repped by CAA. Barris is repped by CAA, Principato-Young Entertainment, and Morris Yorn.
Source:
‘Coming to America’ Sequel Moving Forward With Kenya Barris, Jonathan Levine
The six-episode final season of the hit HBO drama will cost an otherworldly $15 million per episode
Westeros might have a debt problem, but Game of Thrones is rolling in dough.
The six-episode final season of the hit HBO drama will cost an otherworldly $15 million per episode, Variety reports, while others have hinted that each installment could actually cost significantly more than that.
That would make the show’s last season the most expensive television season of all time on a per-episode basis. A few individual episodes of other TV shows have cost more—the pilot for HBO’s Westworld, for instance, reportedly cost $25 million—but no series has ever been so consistently costly across an entire season.
Some networks have come close. Netflix’s The Crown and recently-canceled The Get Down both cost about $10 million per episode. Many other shows on American cable and streaming TV cost in the $6-to-$8 million range. But when it comes to spending, no one does it better than Thrones.
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Compared to its current inflated production costs, the fantasy series was produced quite modestly when it first aired, at just $6 million per episode—on par with the first seasons of Netflix’s Stranger Things and FX’s American Crime Story. As Thrones has become more popular, though, it’s invested in more shooting locations, bigger and better visual effects, and an ever-growing list of talent. The series has filmed in Northern Ireland, Croatia, Malta, Spain, Iceland, and Morocco.
Elsewhere across TV, rising production costs are due to a confluence of factors:
more investment by deep-pocketed streaming services like Netflix;
increasingly competitive bidding wars over talent;
a shift in focus to big, bold, original dramas;
growing concern over growing subscriber numbers than improving dwindling ad revenues.
Variety offered another theory: Inexperienced filmmakers and crew members don’t know don’t know how to run a tight ship.
Industry insiders privately speculate that the strain on the talent pool of line producers and technical, craft and stunt crew members has been a factor in what seems to be a jump in the number of on-set accidents in recent months.
Simply put, it’s impossible to have seasoned people at the helm of every show when the volume of scripted series production spiked 71% between 2011 and 2016 — or from 266 series in 2011 to 455 in 2016, according to FX Networks Research. The 2017 tally is projected to top 500.
The $90 million final season of Game of Thrones will debut on HBO in either 2018 or 2019.
Source:
The age of $15-million-per-hour TV is upon us
Facebook Is Sending a Team to Hurricane-Ravaged Puerto Rico to Get the Island Back Online
Facebook has dispatched a “connectivity team” to supply emergency telecommunications support to Puerto Rico, much of which has been rendered a communications black spot after Hurricane Maria battered the island last week.
“Communication is critical during a disaster,” Facebook founder Zuckerberg wrote in a post Wednesday. “With 90% of cell towers on the island out of service, people can’t get in touch with their loved ones—and it’s harder for rescue workers to coordinate relief efforts.”
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In addition to sending a team to bring Puerto Rico back online, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is splitting a donation of $1.5 million between the World Food Program and Net Hope, a consortium of nonprofits and tech companies that Facebook previously collaborated with in response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
Puerto Rico’s population of 3.4 million American citizens is in the throes of a humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which killed 16 people and ravaged the islands electricity grid. Only 11 of the island’s 69 hospitals have power or fuel supply and almost half of the population is without potable water, according to a FEMA briefing issued Tuesday morning.
Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/09/28/facebook-connectivity-team-hurricane-maria/
Hugh Hefner, Who Built Playboy Empire and Embodied It, Dies at 91
Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant — all the while, as its very public avatar, squiring attractive young women (and sometimes marrying them) well into his 80s — died on Wednesday at his home, the Playboy Mansion near Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 91.
His death was announced by Playboy Enterprises.
Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years — as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s. His timing was perfect.
He was compared to Jay Gatsby, Citizen Kane and Walt Disney, but Mr. Hefner was his own production. He repeatedly likened his life to a romantic movie; it starred an ageless sophisticate in silk pajamas and smoking jacket, hosting a never-ending party for famous and fascinating people.
The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953, when Mr. Hefner was 27 years old, a new father married to, by his account, the first woman he had slept with.
Playboy was born more in fun than in anger. Mr. Hefner’s first publisher’s message, written at his kitchen table in Chicago, announced, “We don’t expect to solve any world problems or prove any great moral truths.”
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Still, Mr. Hefner wielded fierce resentment against his era’s sexual strictures, which he said had choked off his own youth. A virgin until he was 22, he married his longtime girlfriend. Her confession to an earlier affair, Mr. Hefner told an interviewer almost 50 years later, was “the single most devastating experience of my life.”
In “The Playboy Philosophy,” a mix of libertarian and libertine arguments that Mr. Hefner wrote in 25 installments starting in 1962, his message was simple: Society was to blame. His causes — abortion rights, decriminalization of marijuana and, most important, the repeal of 19th-century sex laws — were daring at the time. Ten years later, they would be unexceptional.
“Hefner won,” Mr. Gitlin said in a 2015 interview. “The prevailing values in the country now, for all the conservative backlash, are essentially libertarian, and that basically was what the Playboy Philosophy was.
“It’s laissez-faire. It’s anti-censorship. It’s consumerist: Let the buyer rule. It’s hedonistic. In the longer run, Hugh Hefner’s significance is as a salesman of the libertarian ideal.”
The Playboy Philosophy advocated freedom of speech in all its aspects, for which Mr. Hefner won civil liberties awards. He supported progressive social causes and lost some sponsors by inviting black guests to his televised parties at a time when much of the nation still had Jim Crow laws.
Source:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/obituaries/hugh-hefner-dead.html?mcubz=3
