The move comes just a week after the software was added to the game.
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Friday, May 22, 2020
This New Streaming Platform Aims To Bring Inclusive Content For A Multicultural Audience
Streaming platforms have become the new dominant form of entertainment for millions around the world with networks like Netflix and Hulu. In addition to thousands of theatrically released films to network television shows, both platforms also feature original content for viewers.
Now a new streaming platform hopes to bring more inclusive content to a more multicultural audience.
VumaTV is set to launch today, on Friday, May 22, with a lineup of on-demand cultural content ranging from original series, feature films, shorts, and more from creative talent located all around the world. The name derives from the Zulu word vuma, meaning “all together.”
Founder and CEO Alberto Marzan’s goal for the entertainment platform is to speak directly to and for a truly diverse audience.
“Intellect is a universal language—and with VumaTV, we’ve created a streaming experience that is both elevated and inclusive,” says Marzan in a press statement.
“Viewers are demanding a more representative media reality and are increasingly interested in streaming content curated from cultures across the globe. Although audiences are more diverse than ever before, traditional media has not kept pace—and for most of the world, it’s not reflective of who they are and how they live in their daily lives. Our goal to change that.”
“VumaTV is committed to adding real diversity in content: Shattering the onscreen stereotypes and re-scripting the old narratives, so that younger generations across nations and all walks of life can see themselves in the content they consume.”
The platform will be available via multiple avenues including mobile (iOS & Android), Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Google.
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Sen. Kamala Harris Introduces Resolution Saying The Term ‘Wuhan Virus’ Is Anti-Asian
Sen. Kamala Harris, (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution condemning the term “Wuhan Virus” as an anti-Asian term for the coronavirus.
According to Fox News, the former Democratic presidential candidate introduced the bill Wednesday to condemn “all manifestations or expressions of racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Asian sentiment, scapegoating, and ethnic or religious intolerance” and “to expeditiously investigate and document all credible reports of hate crimes, incidents, and threats against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in the United States.”
The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council launched AAPI Stop Hate, an online incident reporting site that logged more than 650 incidents of discrimination against Asian Pacific American residents between March 18 and March 26.
The resolution also condemns other terms, such as “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” for promoting anti-Asian sentiment. Harris drafted the resolution along with Sens. Tammy Duckworth, (D-Ill.) and Mazie Hirono, (D-Hawaii).
Duckworth accused Trump of “inappropriate and racist efforts” to “rebrand” the disease.
In March, President Trump doubled down on the term “Chinese Virus,” during his coronavirus press briefings and in his tweets. After widespread criticism, Trump said in late March he’d stop using the term if China continued to protest against it.
Republicans have tried to hold on to the term during the coronavirus pandemic. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) told Fox & Friends Thursday morning that he objects to Harris’ resolution arguing it shows the Democrats’ overall lack of a strategy to deal with China as a threat to the United States.
“Wuhan is just a city, it’s not even a people,” Cotton said.” I guess she’s going to have to call out Lyme disease for being anti-Connecticut or even maybe Legionnaires’ disease for being anti-veteran or Zika since Zika is a forest in Africa.”
Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus said Monday, Trump’s words are having a trickle-down effect.
“We’ve seen officials double down on racist rhetoric when referring to COVID-19 including the president and not only have some members of his party aided and abetted him,” Takano said, “but they’ve actively participated in the kind of stereotypical characterizations of Asian Americans and have connected them to the type of mass blame and mass guilt to others in America being emboldened to verbally and physically threaten others in America.”
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Tracee Ellis Ross Adds Hair Accessories to Her Product Line, PATTERN
Tracee Ellis Ross has been busy lately with her releasing her debut single, prepping for her new movie, and adding hair accessories to her product line, PATTERN, which she launched last fall, according to Hello Beautiful.
The multitalented actress and businesswoman made the announcement through her Instagram account last week:
“Say hello to your new favorite accessories to top off all of your joyful hairstyles ~ link in bio to shop on patternbeauty.com #RockYourPattern“
The black-ish actress has a product line that includes shampoos, conditioners, moisturizing leave-ins, and oils for all the natural hair girls.
Here are the accessories just released by PATTERN
- PATTERN Hair Pins Variety Pack ($17): When your hair needs extra stability. Extra-sturdy pins to pull any look together. Includes 30 XL hairpins, 30 regular hairpins, 30 textured bobby pins and a reusable storage box.
- PATTERN Hair Ties ($6 for 5): When your hair needs heavy-duty hold. Super-stretchy, extra durable and snag-free, the must-have accessory for tight ponies, snatchbacks, buns and puffs.
- PATTERN Jumbo Scrunchies ($10 for 3): When your hair needs a gentle drip. Choose from satin or velvet finishes to hold hair in place without leaving a dent. Jumbo-sized to hold big, beautiful hair in luxury.
Ross just released a song and video from her upcoming movie, The High Note (which comes out May 29).” The single is titled “Love Myself.”
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Thursday, May 21, 2020
Solar energy farms could offer second life for electric vehicle batteries
As electric vehicles rapidly grow in popularity worldwide, there will soon be a wave of used batteries whose performance is no longer sufficient for vehicles that need reliable acceleration and range. But a new study shows that these batteries could still have a useful and profitable second life as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations, where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role.
The study, published in the journal Applied Energy, was carried out by six current and former MIT researchers, including postdoc Ian Mathews and professor of mechanical engineering Tonio Buonassisi, who is head of the Photovoltaics Research Laboratory.
As a test case, the researchers examined in detail a hypothetical grid-scale solar farm in California. They studied the economics of several scenarios: building a 2.5-megawatt solar farm alone; building the same array along with a new lithium-ion battery storage system; and building it with a battery array made of repurposed EV batteries that had declined to 80 percent of their original capacity, the point at which they would be considered too weak for continued vehicle use.
They found that the new battery installation would not provide a reasonable net return on investment, but that a properly managed system of used EV batteries could be a good, profitable investment as long as the batteries cost less than 60 percent of their original price.
Not so easy
The process might sound straightforward, and it has occasionally been implemented in smaller-scale projects, but expanding that to grid scale is not simple, Mathews explains. “There are many issues on a technical level. How do you screen batteries when you take them out of the car to make sure they’re good enough to reuse? How do you pack together batteries from different cars in a way that you know that they’ll work well together, and you won’t have one battery that’s much poorer than the others and will drag the performance of the system down?”
On the economic side, he says, there are also questions: “Are we sure that there’s enough value left in these batteries to justify the cost of taking them from cars, collecting them, checking them over, and repackaging them into a new application?” For the modeled case under California’s local conditions, the answer seems to be a solid yes, the team found.
The study used a semiempirical model of battery degradation, trained using measured data, to predict capacity fade in these lithium-ion batteries under different operating conditions, and found that the batteries could achieve maximum lifetimes and value by operating under relatively gentle charging and discharging cycles — never going above 65 percent of full charge or below 15 percent. This finding challenges some earlier assumptions that running the batteries at maximum capacity initially would provide the most value.
“I’ve talked to people who’ve said the best thing to do is just work your battery really hard, and front load all your revenue,” Mathews says. “When we looked at that, it just didn’t make sense at all.” It was clear from the analysis that maximizing the lifetime of the batteries would provide the best returns.
How long will they last?
One unknown factor is just how long the batteries can continue to operate usefully in this second application. The study made a conservative assumption, that the batteries would be retired from their solar-farm backup service after they had declined down to 70 percent of their rated capacity, from their initial 80 percent (the point when they were retired from EV use). But it may well be, Mathews says, that continuing to operate down to 60 percent of capacity or even lower might prove to be safe and worthwhile. Longer-term pilot studies will be required to determine that, he says. Many electric vehicle manufacturers are already beginning to do such pilot studies.
“That’s a whole area of research in itself,” he says, “because the typical battery has multiple degradation pathways. Trying to figure out what happens when you move into this more rapid degradation phase, it’s an active area of research.” In part, the degradation is determined by the way the batteries are controlled. “So, you might actually adapt your control algorithms over the lifetime of the project, to just really push that out as far as possible,” he says. This is one direction the team will pursue in their ongoing research, he says. “We think this could be a great application for machine-learning methods, trying to figure out the kind of intelligent methods and predictive analytics that adjust those control policies over the life of the project.”
The actual economics of such a project could vary widely depending on the local regulatory and rate-setting structures, he explains. For example, some local rules allow the cost of storage systems to be included in the overall cost of a new renewable energy supply, for rate-setting purposes, and others do not. The economics of such systems will be very site specific, but the California case study is intended to be an illustrative U.S. example.
“A lot of states are really starting to see the benefit that storage can provide,” Mathews says. “And this just shows that they should have an allowance that somehow incorporates second-life batteries in those regulations. That could be favorable for them.”
A recent report from McKinsey Corp. shows that as demand for backup storage for renewable energy projects grows between now and 2030, second use EV batteries could potentially meet half of that demand, Mathews says. Some EV companies, he says, including Rivian, founded by an MIT alumnus, are already designing their battery packs specifically to make this end-of-life repurposing as easy as possible.
Mathews says that “the point that I made in the paper was that technically, economically, … this could work.” For the next step, he says, “There’s a lot of stakeholders who would need to be involved in this: You need to have your EV manufacturer, your lithium ion battery manufacturer, your solar project developer, the power electronics guys.” The intent, he says, “was to say, ‘Hey, you guys should actually sit down and really look at this, because we think it could really work.’”
The study team included postdocs Bolum Xu and Wei He, MBA student Vanessa Barreto, and research scientist Ian Marius Peters. The work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program, the DoE-NSF ERF for Quantum Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) and the Singapore National Research Foundation through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
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Inside the new world of online dissertation defenses
Call it another MIT innovation. When PhD student Jesse Tordoff passed her dissertation defense this month, she learned about the outcome in a new way: Her professors sent a thumbs-up emoji on the Zoom screen they were all sharing.
Welcome to the new world of the online dissertation defense, one of many changes academia is making during the Covid-19 pandemic. For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates, something they spend years visualizing. At a defense, a student presents work and fields questions; the professors on the dissertation committee then confer privately, and render their verdict to the student.
Which, in Tordoff’s case, was delivered in good humor, via a familiar little symbol.
“That was my most 2020 moment, learning I passed my defense by Zoom emoji,” says Tordoff, a biological engineer specializing in self-assembling structures.
With the pandemic limiting activity on the MIT campus from mid-March onward, moving dissertation defenses to Zoom has been a necessary adjustment. MIT students who defended dissertations this spring say they have had a variety of reactions to the change: They appreciated that family members could suddenly watch their defenses online, and some felt more relaxed in the format. But students also felt it was more challenging to engage with their audiences on Zoom.
And, inevitably, social distancing meant students could not gather in person with advisors, friends, and family to rejoice, as per the usual MIT tradition.
“That feeling of celebration — it is not something you generate by yourself,” says André Snoeck, who in late March defended his dissertation on last-mile issues in supply chains, for MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.
That moment when you learn you have passed your doctoral dissertation defense. Congratulations to @MITSloan's Dr. Maarten Meeuwis!@MIT @MITGradStudents @MIT_alumni @MITSloanAlumni pic.twitter.com/U7wNdmBPx7
— MIT Sloan PhD (@MITSloanPhD) April 21, 2020
On Zoom, grandparents in the room
Dissertation defenses are typically quasipublic events, where an audience can attend the student’s presentation but then leaves before faculty tell a student if the defense was successful. Many MIT departments stage parties afterward.
A defense on Zoom means the circle of attendees is no longer restricted by geography — something students appreciated.
“My mom logged on in South Africa from her retirement village and watched online,” says Ian Ollis, from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, who in May defended his dissertation about public perceptions of mass transit in the Boston area. “She wouldn’t have been able to do that if it was done in person.”
Julia Zhao, a Department of Chemistry PhD student, says the defense was a unique opportunity for family and friends to watch her in a professional setting.
“It was nice to see all my friends, and my family could attend too,” Zhao says, whose research focuses on polymers that have both metal and organic components. “They were going to fly in for graduation but not attend my defense, so they got to sit in on that and listen to me talk about what I’ve been doing the last five years. So that was really cool.”
Tordoff also felt that on Zoom, she could focus more easily on her remarks.
“I was less nervous than if I had been standing up there in front of a group of people,” Tordoff says. “I was sitting on my couch.” One reason for that good feeling, Tordoff adds, is that when she logged on to Zoom before the defense, the only other people already there were her grandparents, watching from England.
“I was so happy,” Tordoff says. “That never would have happened in person.”
And in Snoeck’s case, his advisors did orchestrate a virtual toast after the defense, so they could celebrate simultaneously, if not in the same room.
Congratulations Dr. Julia Zhao (@jouleszhao)!!!
— The ~Remote~ Jeremiah Johnson Group (@johnsonchem) May 1, 2020
Today was her defense through zoom!!! We are so proud of how you finished your PhD through a pandemic in such an impressive fashion!!! @ChemistryMIT #PhDone #AcademicChatter pic.twitter.com/En5gCtDZjQ
Kudos from strangers
At the same time, MIT students note, being on Zoom limited their interaction with the audience, compared with the nature of an in-person talk.
“You can’t read the room,” Ollis says, adding: “It’s different. You don’t have a complete perspective on the audience — you see squares of people’s faces, whereas if you do it live, you get a sense of who you’re talking to by seeing faces you recognize.”
The slightly mysterious nature of Ollis’ audience became apparent to him almost immediately after he wrapped up his online defense.
“There were quite a few people watching, who, well, I didn’t know who they were,” Ollis says. “I’ve been staying in the Ashdown grad dorm, and I was walking to the elevator after doing the defense, and somebody walked past who I didn’t recognize, and said, ‘Hey! Good job! I enjoyed that!’ I had no idea who the person was.”
Overall, Ollis says, “I thought it was a good experience. I got good feedback from people.” Even so, he adds, “I prefer being in a room with people.”
For his part, Snoeck, who has accepted a job with Amazon, felt his defense was somewhat “more like a series of Q&As, rather than a conversation” — simply due to the dynamics of the format, like the segmented nature of Zoom and its slight delays in audio transmission.
“It is weird to have a conversation with some lag in it,” notes Zhao, who will soon begin a job with a Boston-area startup, developing hydrophobic coatings. “But I made an effort to say, ‘If I interrupted, please continue.’ It is a little awkward.”
I am very happy, honored and thankful to announce I successfully defended my PhD at MIT last Monday! Special thanks to all mentors and colleagues for your guidance and support during the last five years. pic.twitter.com/bsn4RA2nbk
— Felipe-Oviedo (@felipeoviedop) May 14, 2020
The blended defense
That said, for years now, academic faculty have sometimes been participating in dissertation defenses via Skype, Zoom, and other platforms. That typically happens when dissertation committee members are located at multiple universities, or when a professor is traveling for research or a conference. In Snoeck’s case, one of his committee members was already going to join remotely from the Netherlands anyway.
Zhao noticed a student in her department webcasting their defense last year, which seemed “a little out of the ordinary” in 2019, she recalls. But from 2020 onward, it may become standard.
“It’s kind of nice to have an extra component of people who aren’t in town but want to participate in the closing of your degree,” Zhao says. “It will definitely be more normalized, I think.”
Not all MIT PhD students defend dissertations. In MIT’s Department of Economics, the thesis consists of three papers that must be approved, and there is no formal defense, although finishing students do give fall-term presentations. Still, even for economics students, this year seems different.
“The biggest challenge has been a feeling of a lack of closure,” says Ryan Hill, a graduating MIT PhD in economics, who studies the dynamics of scientific research. “It’s been a long road.” In that vein, Hill adds, “I was really looking forward to commencement, and the doctoral hooding ceremony.” Those events will take place on May 29, online, with an in-person ceremony to be held at a later date.
To be sure, Hill is keeping matters in perspective. “In the grand scheme, it’s not bad,” says Hill, who will spend a year as a Northwestern University postdoc, and has accepted a tenure-track job at Brigham Young University.
For any new PhD, crossing that academic finish line is a huge achievement — and relief. Zhao, for instance, had to scramble to complete her lab research before MIT shuttered, and then finish writing the thesis, before the dissertation defense could occur.
“It’s been a pretty crazy two months,” Zhao reflects. “I’m just happy to be done with it.”
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