O:9:"MagpieRSS":23:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:37:"10 Worst Uses Of CGI In Horror Movies";s:4:"link";s:93:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/10-worst-uses-of-cgi-in-horror-movies/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 02:19:00 +0000";s:8:"category";s:31:"Scream AwayCGIHorrorMoviesworst";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61321";s:11:"description";s:570:"From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to the films of Ti West, horror has developed quite a bit since the genre’s inception in film. One aspect of older horror films that are often referenced in newer ones is the “money shots” – the moments when the special effects crew can wrangle up some ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:25222:"
From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to the films of Ti West, horror has developed quite a bit since the genre’s inception in film. One aspect of older horror films that are often referenced in newer ones is the “money shots” – the moments when the special effects crew can wrangle up some plastic, wood, and gooey material to convincingly convey the death (or physical transformation) of a character.
Practical effects, unfortunately, have mostly gone by the wayside in modern cinema, and it’s not as noticeable in any other genre as it is in horror. Excellent special effects lead to a reaction in the viewer; the same can be said of particularly poor ones.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
The Vampire Cats — Sleepwalkers (1992)
Even if Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers were based on an existing work of his, it would hardly be called just as scary as its book counterpart.
RELATED: The 10 Best CGI Characters From Superhero Movies
The film is an extremely silly take on the vampire film, turning its eternal lifers into cat people instead of bat humans. The plot follows a mother-and-son shapeshifting duo who scrounge their way through elongated lifespans by feeding on others, but there’s a good chance no one is feeding more than mom off her son.
The Langoliers — The Langoliers (1995)
Far from being one of the best TV horror miniseries, this three-hour adaptation of a Stephen King novella, one of four in Four Past Midnightis at least two hours too long.
The viewing experience isn’t helped by the extremely poor digital effects, which don’t even look convincing for a mid-1990s television film. What’s disappointing about The Langoliers‘ effects is the fact the film was directed by Tom Holland, who had already shown proficiency in shooting practical effects in Fright Night and Child’s Play.
The Werewolf — An American Werewolf In Paris (1997)
Rick Baker’s jaw-dropping effects for 1981’s An American Werewolf in London received the first Academy Award for Best Makeup. The film’s transformation scene stands as one of the best examples of practical effects committed to film, horror or otherwise.
RELATED: 10 Film Locations That Look Like CGI But Are Actually Real
Released 16 years later and barely connected to the original, An American Werewolf in Paris has special effects of the diametric opposite quality. The werewolf in the original film had a presence that made the viewer feel unsafe for everyone within a five-mile radius of it. When watching Paristhe viewer feels like the werewolf’s intended victims are just going to laugh at it.
Malebolgia — Spawn (1997)
Spawnone of the best comic book movies on Netflix, also functions as a horror movie. Riddled with near-gothic imagery in the vein of The Crowno aspect of Spawn‘s world feels safe for the protagonist, especially once he gets down to Hell.
The early comic adaptation has aspects that work for it—namely John Leguizamo as Violator/Clown—but the CGI in the third act looked weak in 1997 and looks atrocious in the 2020s. Violator’s true form was captured partially using practical effects, and in closeup shots, it’s one of the more well-aged aspects of the film, aesthetically. While it would have been extremely expensive to build a practical Hell, the appearance of Malebolgia is laughable, and the film had already proven it was capable of much better, albeit imperfect, CGI.
The Xenos — Alone In The Dark (2005)
An Uwe Boll “movie” was never going to give birth to one of the most impressive CGI creatures, but it couldn’t have done much worse than the shoddily-designed, blurry Xenos (short for xenomorph, the antagonist of the Alien franchise).
Starring Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff, Boll’s low-rent video game adaptation is poorly-constructed from front to back, with even Slater being unable to elevate the proceedings. Working with a thin video game plot, any success would rely upon the special effects, and they’re not convincing for a moment, making Alone in the Dark an extremely long 96 minutes.
The Deer — The Ring Two (2005)
Deer make several appearances throughout the runtime of The Ring Twoand considering both how bad they look and how widely available actual deer are, it probably would have been best for the filmmakers to have gone with the latter.
RELATED: The 10 Blockbuster Movies With The Worst CGI, According To Reddit
In the theatrical cut, young Aidan (David Dorfman, reprising his role from the first film) comes across a single CGI deer relatively early on. While this scene was excised from the unrated version, the attack scene remains. It finds Naomi Watts’ (also reprising) Rachel Keller driving Aidan to their home. Suddenly, a herd of deer makes its way out of the woods and crashes the car. The issue is that it’s obvious the car is run off the road by what is clearly a computer’s creation. Deer aren’t particularly scary, to begin with, especially when they don’t even look like the animal is supposed to.
Emerging Freddy — A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
Wes Craven’s seminal 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street received a vapid, MTV music video-style remake in 2010 that settled for replicating the original film’s most iconic scenes as opposed to coming up with anything new.
While Craven’s film had a flurry of still-impressive visual effects crafted from physical material, the remake throws unconvincing CGI at the same once-unsettling scenes, e.g. Tina’s ceiling climb. The replications are hollow at best, and they still would be if the CGI were not very poor. As the film stands, though, the unscary scenes are cheapened even further by shoddy effects work.
Every Variation Of The Thing — The Thing (2011)
John Carpenter’s The Thing is not just one of the greatest horror films ever made, but one of the best films ever made. The 2011 prequel of the same name is different. Even with a stellar cast including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen, the film never lifts off the ground, and that’s because it’s missing at least one production aspect crucial to the success of the original: its effects.
Carpenter’s original has the most detailed, grotesque practical effects committed to celluloid, and the remake goes for shocking body horror as well, but it approaches gross-out with CGI, and computer-generated images will never produce the same result in the viewer as gooey, tangible material.
Mama – Mama (2013)
Andy Muschietti’s Mama is a fine entry in the glut of early 2010s supernatural scarers, bolstered by game performances from Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. However, the titular ghost never manages to be convincing, much less frightening, instead just looking like a goofy, floating blue woman.
The plot follows Annabel (Chastain) and her boyfriend (Coster-Waldau), Lucas. The latter is grieving after his twin brother murders his wife, takes his own life, and leaves his two little girls out in the woods. Now, Lucas and Annabel take it upon themselves to raise the two kids, but they keep talking about some guardian named “Mama.”
CGI Pennywise — It (2017)
When Pennywise the Dancing Clown is shown as simply Bill Skarsgård in makeup and costume, the character looks phenomenal. The actor imbues the sadistic alien with enough personality to make him truly scary, which is a level of effectiveness immediately lost whenever he turns into Pennywise the CGI monster running towards the camera.
Mama director Andy Muschietti’s first It (2017) delved into the world of CGI a bit too often, with only one effective usage (the projector scene). But 2019’s It Chapter Two took it to the level where Pennywise was never scary, which didn’t help an already problematic weaker half of an otherwise excellent novel.
NEXT: 10 Best Film Adaptations Of Stephen King’s Books, According To Ranker
Amber Heard May Be Cut From Aquaman 2 After Being Released From Contract
About The Author
Ben Hathaway (334 Articles Published)
Ben Hathaway is a Senior Writer (Lists) for Screen Rant. A former Therapeutic Day Treatment counselor, Ben is now a career writer. When not working, he is writing and self-publishing (on Amazon) novels under the name Scott Gray. In his spare time, he’s reading on the porch or watching every film under the sun. Ben can be contacted at scottgraywrk@gmail.com.
More From Ben Hathaway
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this incredible material
";}s:7:"summary";s:570:"From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to the films of Ti West, horror has developed quite a bit since the genre’s inception in film. One aspect of older horror films that are often referenced in newer ones is the “money shots” – the moments when the special effects crew can wrangle up some ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:25222:"
From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to the films of Ti West, horror has developed quite a bit since the genre’s inception in film. One aspect of older horror films that are often referenced in newer ones is the “money shots” – the moments when the special effects crew can wrangle up some plastic, wood, and gooey material to convincingly convey the death (or physical transformation) of a character.
Practical effects, unfortunately, have mostly gone by the wayside in modern cinema, and it’s not as noticeable in any other genre as it is in horror. Excellent special effects lead to a reaction in the viewer; the same can be said of particularly poor ones.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
The Vampire Cats — Sleepwalkers (1992)
Even if Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers were based on an existing work of his, it would hardly be called just as scary as its book counterpart.
RELATED: The 10 Best CGI Characters From Superhero Movies
The film is an extremely silly take on the vampire film, turning its eternal lifers into cat people instead of bat humans. The plot follows a mother-and-son shapeshifting duo who scrounge their way through elongated lifespans by feeding on others, but there’s a good chance no one is feeding more than mom off her son.
The Langoliers — The Langoliers (1995)
Far from being one of the best TV horror miniseries, this three-hour adaptation of a Stephen King novella, one of four in Four Past Midnightis at least two hours too long.
The viewing experience isn’t helped by the extremely poor digital effects, which don’t even look convincing for a mid-1990s television film. What’s disappointing about The Langoliers‘ effects is the fact the film was directed by Tom Holland, who had already shown proficiency in shooting practical effects in Fright Night and Child’s Play.
The Werewolf — An American Werewolf In Paris (1997)
Rick Baker’s jaw-dropping effects for 1981’s An American Werewolf in London received the first Academy Award for Best Makeup. The film’s transformation scene stands as one of the best examples of practical effects committed to film, horror or otherwise.
RELATED: 10 Film Locations That Look Like CGI But Are Actually Real
Released 16 years later and barely connected to the original, An American Werewolf in Paris has special effects of the diametric opposite quality. The werewolf in the original film had a presence that made the viewer feel unsafe for everyone within a five-mile radius of it. When watching Paristhe viewer feels like the werewolf’s intended victims are just going to laugh at it.
Malebolgia — Spawn (1997)
Spawnone of the best comic book movies on Netflix, also functions as a horror movie. Riddled with near-gothic imagery in the vein of The Crowno aspect of Spawn‘s world feels safe for the protagonist, especially once he gets down to Hell.
The early comic adaptation has aspects that work for it—namely John Leguizamo as Violator/Clown—but the CGI in the third act looked weak in 1997 and looks atrocious in the 2020s. Violator’s true form was captured partially using practical effects, and in closeup shots, it’s one of the more well-aged aspects of the film, aesthetically. While it would have been extremely expensive to build a practical Hell, the appearance of Malebolgia is laughable, and the film had already proven it was capable of much better, albeit imperfect, CGI.
The Xenos — Alone In The Dark (2005)
An Uwe Boll “movie” was never going to give birth to one of the most impressive CGI creatures, but it couldn’t have done much worse than the shoddily-designed, blurry Xenos (short for xenomorph, the antagonist of the Alien franchise).
Starring Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff, Boll’s low-rent video game adaptation is poorly-constructed from front to back, with even Slater being unable to elevate the proceedings. Working with a thin video game plot, any success would rely upon the special effects, and they’re not convincing for a moment, making Alone in the Dark an extremely long 96 minutes.
The Deer — The Ring Two (2005)
Deer make several appearances throughout the runtime of The Ring Twoand considering both how bad they look and how widely available actual deer are, it probably would have been best for the filmmakers to have gone with the latter.
RELATED: The 10 Blockbuster Movies With The Worst CGI, According To Reddit
In the theatrical cut, young Aidan (David Dorfman, reprising his role from the first film) comes across a single CGI deer relatively early on. While this scene was excised from the unrated version, the attack scene remains. It finds Naomi Watts’ (also reprising) Rachel Keller driving Aidan to their home. Suddenly, a herd of deer makes its way out of the woods and crashes the car. The issue is that it’s obvious the car is run off the road by what is clearly a computer’s creation. Deer aren’t particularly scary, to begin with, especially when they don’t even look like the animal is supposed to.
Emerging Freddy — A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
Wes Craven’s seminal 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street received a vapid, MTV music video-style remake in 2010 that settled for replicating the original film’s most iconic scenes as opposed to coming up with anything new.
While Craven’s film had a flurry of still-impressive visual effects crafted from physical material, the remake throws unconvincing CGI at the same once-unsettling scenes, e.g. Tina’s ceiling climb. The replications are hollow at best, and they still would be if the CGI were not very poor. As the film stands, though, the unscary scenes are cheapened even further by shoddy effects work.
Every Variation Of The Thing — The Thing (2011)
John Carpenter’s The Thing is not just one of the greatest horror films ever made, but one of the best films ever made. The 2011 prequel of the same name is different. Even with a stellar cast including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Eric Christian Olsen, the film never lifts off the ground, and that’s because it’s missing at least one production aspect crucial to the success of the original: its effects.
Carpenter’s original has the most detailed, grotesque practical effects committed to celluloid, and the remake goes for shocking body horror as well, but it approaches gross-out with CGI, and computer-generated images will never produce the same result in the viewer as gooey, tangible material.
Mama – Mama (2013)
Andy Muschietti’s Mama is a fine entry in the glut of early 2010s supernatural scarers, bolstered by game performances from Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. However, the titular ghost never manages to be convincing, much less frightening, instead just looking like a goofy, floating blue woman.
The plot follows Annabel (Chastain) and her boyfriend (Coster-Waldau), Lucas. The latter is grieving after his twin brother murders his wife, takes his own life, and leaves his two little girls out in the woods. Now, Lucas and Annabel take it upon themselves to raise the two kids, but they keep talking about some guardian named “Mama.”
CGI Pennywise — It (2017)
When Pennywise the Dancing Clown is shown as simply Bill Skarsgård in makeup and costume, the character looks phenomenal. The actor imbues the sadistic alien with enough personality to make him truly scary, which is a level of effectiveness immediately lost whenever he turns into Pennywise the CGI monster running towards the camera.
Mama director Andy Muschietti’s first It (2017) delved into the world of CGI a bit too often, with only one effective usage (the projector scene). But 2019’s It Chapter Two took it to the level where Pennywise was never scary, which didn’t help an already problematic weaker half of an otherwise excellent novel.
NEXT: 10 Best Film Adaptations Of Stephen King’s Books, According To Ranker
Amber Heard May Be Cut From Aquaman 2 After Being Released From Contract
About The Author
Ben Hathaway (334 Articles Published)
Ben Hathaway is a Senior Writer (Lists) for Screen Rant. A former Therapeutic Day Treatment counselor, Ben is now a career writer. When not working, he is writing and self-publishing (on Amazon) novels under the name Scott Gray. In his spare time, he’s reading on the porch or watching every film under the sun. Ben can be contacted at scottgraywrk@gmail.com.
More From Ben Hathaway
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this incredible material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652926740;}i:1;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:98:"Ashwagandha – a real treasure of Ayurvedic medicine – Anna Lewandowska – healthy plan by Ann";s:4:"link";s:140:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/lifestyle/ashwagandha-a-real-treasure-of-ayurvedic-medicine-anna-lewandowska-healthy-plan-by-ann/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Holly June";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 02:17:54 +0000";s:8:"category";s:78:"LifestyleAnnAnnaAshwagandhaAyurvedichealthyLewandowskaMedicinePlanRealtreasure";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61315";s:11:"description";s:811:"Ashwagandha is included in the group of substances called substances that are gaining more and more popularity adaptogenami. Why are adaptogens so popular lately? According to the professional literature, these are plant substances that can have a beneficial effect on the body, primarily by supporting the nervous system, and thus increasing the body’s resistance to ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5653:"
Ashwagandha is included in the group of substances called substances that are gaining more and more popularity adaptogenami. Why are adaptogens so popular lately? According to the professional literature, these are plant substances that can have a beneficial effect on the body, primarily by supporting the nervous system, and thus increasing the body’s resistance to stress. This is extremely important because most of us unfortunately function in a state of increased mental tension. For this reason, natural methods that effectively support our body in the fight against ubiquitous stress are “worth its weight in gold”. In simple translation, the name adaptogen means a substance that facilitates the adaptation of an organism to adverse environmental conditions.
Stress, sleep, concentration
Numerous studies show that Ashwagandha increases the body’s natural resistance not only to mental but also physical stress, thanks to which it has a positive effect on the mood and contributes to the reduction of fatigue. It has also been proven that supplementation has a positive effect on cognitive functions, i.e. memory, thinking, perception, as well as the so-called expressive functions, e.g. speaking, writing and reading.
The fact that Ashwagandha helps to improve the quality of sleep and fall asleep. The problem is particularly important because sleep disorders, which are not irrelevant to the quality of life and mental well-being, are becoming more and more common.
Scientific studies have confirmed too beneficial effect of Ashwagandha on supporting memory processes and the ability to concentrate. Its supplementation is worth considering when there is a problem with mental exhaustion and the occurrence of anxiety.
Activity and health
But it is not everything. Ashwagandha used by physically active people leads to the improvement of motor coordination and increased efficiency. Due to its influence on the increase of muscle mass and strength, it can also be recommended for people who train in strength. Due to the multidimensional course of action, it seems to be an excellent solution supporting the condition of the body in sport – not only competitive.
It has been shown more than that Ashwagandha promotes antioxidant and anti-inflammatory processes at the same time, protecting our body against the negative effects of free oxygen radicals.
An additional advantage is the beneficial effect of the adaptogen on sexual function and fertility. In men, supplementation may be useful as an adjunct in the treatment of stress-related infertility. Due to the effect on the reduction of stress, a subsequent improvement in the quality of sperm is observed. In turn, in women, a beneficial effect on sexual function has been proven.
Capsules from Ashwagandhą you will find in my store HERE. When taken regularly, 1 package of the supplement is sufficient for 2 months of treatment. The addition of an adaptogen also appeared in the latest news – Aronia & Black Currant Smoothie 🙂
We would love to give thanks to the author of this article for this remarkable web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:811:"Ashwagandha is included in the group of substances called substances that are gaining more and more popularity adaptogenami. Why are adaptogens so popular lately? According to the professional literature, these are plant substances that can have a beneficial effect on the body, primarily by supporting the nervous system, and thus increasing the body’s resistance to ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:5653:"
Ashwagandha is included in the group of substances called substances that are gaining more and more popularity adaptogenami. Why are adaptogens so popular lately? According to the professional literature, these are plant substances that can have a beneficial effect on the body, primarily by supporting the nervous system, and thus increasing the body’s resistance to stress. This is extremely important because most of us unfortunately function in a state of increased mental tension. For this reason, natural methods that effectively support our body in the fight against ubiquitous stress are “worth its weight in gold”. In simple translation, the name adaptogen means a substance that facilitates the adaptation of an organism to adverse environmental conditions.
Stress, sleep, concentration
Numerous studies show that Ashwagandha increases the body’s natural resistance not only to mental but also physical stress, thanks to which it has a positive effect on the mood and contributes to the reduction of fatigue. It has also been proven that supplementation has a positive effect on cognitive functions, i.e. memory, thinking, perception, as well as the so-called expressive functions, e.g. speaking, writing and reading.
The fact that Ashwagandha helps to improve the quality of sleep and fall asleep. The problem is particularly important because sleep disorders, which are not irrelevant to the quality of life and mental well-being, are becoming more and more common.
Scientific studies have confirmed too beneficial effect of Ashwagandha on supporting memory processes and the ability to concentrate. Its supplementation is worth considering when there is a problem with mental exhaustion and the occurrence of anxiety.
Activity and health
But it is not everything. Ashwagandha used by physically active people leads to the improvement of motor coordination and increased efficiency. Due to its influence on the increase of muscle mass and strength, it can also be recommended for people who train in strength. Due to the multidimensional course of action, it seems to be an excellent solution supporting the condition of the body in sport – not only competitive.
It has been shown more than that Ashwagandha promotes antioxidant and anti-inflammatory processes at the same time, protecting our body against the negative effects of free oxygen radicals.
An additional advantage is the beneficial effect of the adaptogen on sexual function and fertility. In men, supplementation may be useful as an adjunct in the treatment of stress-related infertility. Due to the effect on the reduction of stress, a subsequent improvement in the quality of sperm is observed. In turn, in women, a beneficial effect on sexual function has been proven.
Capsules from Ashwagandhą you will find in my store HERE. When taken regularly, 1 package of the supplement is sufficient for 2 months of treatment. The addition of an adaptogen also appeared in the latest news – Aronia & Black Currant Smoothie 🙂
We would love to give thanks to the author of this article for this remarkable web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652926674;}i:2;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:95:"‘Eye-catching’ smartphone app could make it easy to screen for neurological disease at home";s:4:"link";s:150:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/healthandscience/eye-catching-smartphone-app-could-make-it-easy-to-screen-for-neurological-disease-at-home/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Tony Grantly";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 02:02:59 +0000";s:8:"category";s:71:"Health And ScienceappdiseaseEasyEyecatchingneurologicalScreenSmartphone";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61310";s:11:"description";s:821:"Journal Reference: Colin Barry, Jessica de Souza, Yinan Xuan, Jason Holden, Eric Granholm, Edward Jay Wang. At-Home Pupillometry using Smartphone Facial Identification Cameras. CHI ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022 Proceedings, 2022 DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3502493 The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5846:"
Journal Reference:
Colin Barry, Jessica de Souza, Yinan Xuan, Jason Holden, Eric Granholm, Edward Jay Wang. At-Home Pupillometry using Smartphone Facial Identification Cameras. CHI ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022 Proceedings, 2022 DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3502493
The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with a regular selfie camera to track how a person’s pupil changes in size. These pupil measurements could be used to assess a person’s cognitive condition.
The technology is described in a paper that will be presented at the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), which will take place from April 30 to May 5 in New Orleans as a hybrid-onsite event.
“While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am excited about the potential for using this technology to bring neurological screening out of clinical lab settings and into homes,” said Colin Barry, an electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and the first author of the paper, which received an Honorable Mention for Best Paper award. “We hope that this opens the door to novel explorations of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier on.”
Pupil size can provide information about a person’s neurological functions, recent research has shown. For example, pupil size increases when a person performs a difficult cognitive task or hears an unexpected sound.
Measuring the changes in pupil diameter is done by performing what’s called a pupil response test. The test could offer a simple and easy way to diagnose and monitor various neurological diseases and disorders. However, it currently requires specialized and costly equipment, making it impractical to perform outside the lab or clinic.
Engineers in the Digital Health Lab, led by UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Edward Wang, collaborated with researchers at the UC San Diego Center for Mental Health Technology (MHTech Center) to develop a more affordable and accessible solution.
“A scalable smartphone assessment tool that can be used for large-scale community screenings could facilitate the development of pupil response tests as minimally-invasive and inexpensive tests to aid in the detection and understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. This could have a huge public health impact,” said Eric Granholm, a psychiatry professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of the MHTech Center.
The app developed by the UC San Diego team uses a smartphone’s near-infrared camera to detect a person’s pupil. In the near-infrared spectrum, the pupil can be easily differentiated from the iris, even in eyes with darker iris colors. This enables the app to calculate pupil size with sub-millimeter accuracy across various eye colors. The app also uses a color picture taken by the smartphone’s selfie camera to capture the stereoscopic distance between the smartphone and the user. The app then uses this distance to convert the pupil size from the near-infrared image into millimeter units.
The app’s measurements were comparable to those taken by a device called a pupillometer, which is the gold standard for measuring pupil size.
The researchers also included various features in their app to make it more user friendly for older adults.
“For us, one of the most important factors in technology development is to ensure that these solutions are ultimately usable for anyone. This includes individuals like older adults who might not be accustomed to using smartphones,” said Barry.
The researchers worked with older adult participants to design a simple app interface that allows users to self administer pupil response tests. This interface included voice commands, image-based instructions, and a cheap, plastic scope to direct the user to place their eye within the view of the smartphone camera.
“By testing directly with older adults, we learned about ways to improve our system’s overall usability and even helped us innovate older adult specific solutions that make it easier for those with different physical limits to still use our system successfully,” said Wang, who is also a faculty member in the UC San Diego Design Lab. “When developing technologies, we must look beyond function as the only metric of success, but understand how our solutions will be utilized by end-users who are very diverse.”
The Digital Health Lab is continuing this work in a project to enable similar pupillometry function on any smartphone rather than just the newer smartphones. Future studies will also involve working with older adults to evaluate home use of the technology. The team will work with older individuals with mild cognitive impairment to test the app as a risk screening tool for early stage Alzheimer’s disease.
This work was funded by the National Institute of Aging.
We would like to give thanks to the writer of this article for this incredible material
";}s:7:"summary";s:821:"Journal Reference: Colin Barry, Jessica de Souza, Yinan Xuan, Jason Holden, Eric Granholm, Edward Jay Wang. At-Home Pupillometry using Smartphone Facial Identification Cameras. CHI ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022 Proceedings, 2022 DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3502493 The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:5846:"
Journal Reference:
Colin Barry, Jessica de Souza, Yinan Xuan, Jason Holden, Eric Granholm, Edward Jay Wang. At-Home Pupillometry using Smartphone Facial Identification Cameras. CHI ’22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022 Proceedings, 2022 DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3502493
The app uses a near-infrared camera, which is built into newer smartphones for facial recognition, along with a regular selfie camera to track how a person’s pupil changes in size. These pupil measurements could be used to assess a person’s cognitive condition.
The technology is described in a paper that will be presented at the ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022), which will take place from April 30 to May 5 in New Orleans as a hybrid-onsite event.
“While there is still a lot of work to be done, I am excited about the potential for using this technology to bring neurological screening out of clinical lab settings and into homes,” said Colin Barry, an electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and the first author of the paper, which received an Honorable Mention for Best Paper award. “We hope that this opens the door to novel explorations of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier on.”
Pupil size can provide information about a person’s neurological functions, recent research has shown. For example, pupil size increases when a person performs a difficult cognitive task or hears an unexpected sound.
Measuring the changes in pupil diameter is done by performing what’s called a pupil response test. The test could offer a simple and easy way to diagnose and monitor various neurological diseases and disorders. However, it currently requires specialized and costly equipment, making it impractical to perform outside the lab or clinic.
Engineers in the Digital Health Lab, led by UC San Diego electrical and computer engineering professor Edward Wang, collaborated with researchers at the UC San Diego Center for Mental Health Technology (MHTech Center) to develop a more affordable and accessible solution.
“A scalable smartphone assessment tool that can be used for large-scale community screenings could facilitate the development of pupil response tests as minimally-invasive and inexpensive tests to aid in the detection and understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. This could have a huge public health impact,” said Eric Granholm, a psychiatry professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of the MHTech Center.
The app developed by the UC San Diego team uses a smartphone’s near-infrared camera to detect a person’s pupil. In the near-infrared spectrum, the pupil can be easily differentiated from the iris, even in eyes with darker iris colors. This enables the app to calculate pupil size with sub-millimeter accuracy across various eye colors. The app also uses a color picture taken by the smartphone’s selfie camera to capture the stereoscopic distance between the smartphone and the user. The app then uses this distance to convert the pupil size from the near-infrared image into millimeter units.
The app’s measurements were comparable to those taken by a device called a pupillometer, which is the gold standard for measuring pupil size.
The researchers also included various features in their app to make it more user friendly for older adults.
“For us, one of the most important factors in technology development is to ensure that these solutions are ultimately usable for anyone. This includes individuals like older adults who might not be accustomed to using smartphones,” said Barry.
The researchers worked with older adult participants to design a simple app interface that allows users to self administer pupil response tests. This interface included voice commands, image-based instructions, and a cheap, plastic scope to direct the user to place their eye within the view of the smartphone camera.
“By testing directly with older adults, we learned about ways to improve our system’s overall usability and even helped us innovate older adult specific solutions that make it easier for those with different physical limits to still use our system successfully,” said Wang, who is also a faculty member in the UC San Diego Design Lab. “When developing technologies, we must look beyond function as the only metric of success, but understand how our solutions will be utilized by end-users who are very diverse.”
The Digital Health Lab is continuing this work in a project to enable similar pupillometry function on any smartphone rather than just the newer smartphones. Future studies will also involve working with older adults to evaluate home use of the technology. The team will work with older individuals with mild cognitive impairment to test the app as a risk screening tool for early stage Alzheimer’s disease.
This work was funded by the National Institute of Aging.
We would like to give thanks to the writer of this article for this incredible material
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652925779;}i:3;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:62:"“We are made of one DNA!” Who did Ayushmann Khurrana say?";s:4:"link";s:104:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/movies/we-are-made-of-one-dna-who-did-ayushmann-khurrana-say/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Sally Scully";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 01:24:13 +0000";s:8:"category";s:26:"MoviesAyushmannDNAKhurrana";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61304";s:11:"description";s:694:"One lives in front of the camera. Others stay behind. But both of them want to break the rules. He is changing Bollywood by taking pictures outside the known ‘formula’. Talking about Anubhav Sinha and Ayushman Khurana. After ‘Article 15’ in 2019, once again, the director-actor duo has the opportunity to visualize the duet.Ayushman’s partner ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:4170:"
One lives in front of the camera. Others stay behind. But both of them want to break the rules. He is changing Bollywood by taking pictures outside the known ‘formula’. Talking about Anubhav Sinha and Ayushman Khurana. After ‘Article 15’ in 2019, once again, the director-actor duo has the opportunity to visualize the duet.Ayushman’s partner in Anek movie is Nagaland supermodel The trailer of their new movie ‘Aneek’ has been released a few days ago. Once again Ayushman will be seen in the role of police. Fans have no doubt that the pair will make a bet at the box office.Ayushmann Khurrana: “Sangam is the best workout”, candid Ayushman wife Tahira Confident Ayushman too. He said, “I think when it comes to making movies, I feel like I’m made with the same DNA. He is a director who challenges our environment. He loves to take risks. Work with a free mind. I find many ideological similarities with him. ”Ayushmann Khurrana: After 10 years in Bollywood, Ayushman floated in the nostalgia of ‘Vicky Donor’ Three years ago, through ‘Article 15’, Anubhav raised the issue of caste discrimination in the society, such as Honor Killing. Ayushman was also seen in the role of a police officer in that film. Impressions are gained in a fluid, global, diffused way. Expectations are skyrocketing around ‘many’.The director of Andhadhun is looking for ‘Fresh Face’ for the new photo, please apply like this … In the words of Ayushman, “I am very happy that together we made a picture like ‘Article 15’. Again we made a picture like ‘many’. I am really proud of this picture. “It will make us proud as many Indians.”
From the very beginning, Ayushman wanted to break the various prejudices and ways through the film. The actor has claimed that he will maintain the same style through ‘many’. This movie is going to be released on 26th May.
The actor is undergoing training for the action-packed film ‘Anek’ from international action instructor Stephen Richter. He said in a recent interview, “Yes, it is Stephen Richter who is arranging the action scenes. He has worked all over the world. He has immense knowledge about this subject. Many of his magic films will not only compete with Bollywood, but also with Hollywood. ”
Ayushman made his Bollywood debut in 2012. Success is in the hands of ‘Vicky Donor’. After that he has been seen in films like ‘Andhadhun’, ‘Shubh Mangal Sabdhan’, ‘Badhai Ho’, ‘Chandigarh Ke Aashiqui’.
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:694:"One lives in front of the camera. Others stay behind. But both of them want to break the rules. He is changing Bollywood by taking pictures outside the known ‘formula’. Talking about Anubhav Sinha and Ayushman Khurana. After ‘Article 15’ in 2019, once again, the director-actor duo has the opportunity to visualize the duet.Ayushman’s partner ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:4170:"
One lives in front of the camera. Others stay behind. But both of them want to break the rules. He is changing Bollywood by taking pictures outside the known ‘formula’. Talking about Anubhav Sinha and Ayushman Khurana. After ‘Article 15’ in 2019, once again, the director-actor duo has the opportunity to visualize the duet.Ayushman’s partner in Anek movie is Nagaland supermodel The trailer of their new movie ‘Aneek’ has been released a few days ago. Once again Ayushman will be seen in the role of police. Fans have no doubt that the pair will make a bet at the box office.Ayushmann Khurrana: “Sangam is the best workout”, candid Ayushman wife Tahira Confident Ayushman too. He said, “I think when it comes to making movies, I feel like I’m made with the same DNA. He is a director who challenges our environment. He loves to take risks. Work with a free mind. I find many ideological similarities with him. ”Ayushmann Khurrana: After 10 years in Bollywood, Ayushman floated in the nostalgia of ‘Vicky Donor’ Three years ago, through ‘Article 15’, Anubhav raised the issue of caste discrimination in the society, such as Honor Killing. Ayushman was also seen in the role of a police officer in that film. Impressions are gained in a fluid, global, diffused way. Expectations are skyrocketing around ‘many’.The director of Andhadhun is looking for ‘Fresh Face’ for the new photo, please apply like this … In the words of Ayushman, “I am very happy that together we made a picture like ‘Article 15’. Again we made a picture like ‘many’. I am really proud of this picture. “It will make us proud as many Indians.”
From the very beginning, Ayushman wanted to break the various prejudices and ways through the film. The actor has claimed that he will maintain the same style through ‘many’. This movie is going to be released on 26th May.
The actor is undergoing training for the action-packed film ‘Anek’ from international action instructor Stephen Richter. He said in a recent interview, “Yes, it is Stephen Richter who is arranging the action scenes. He has worked all over the world. He has immense knowledge about this subject. Many of his magic films will not only compete with Bollywood, but also with Hollywood. ”
Ayushman made his Bollywood debut in 2012. Success is in the hands of ‘Vicky Donor’. After that he has been seen in films like ‘Andhadhun’, ‘Shubh Mangal Sabdhan’, ‘Badhai Ho’, ‘Chandigarh Ke Aashiqui’.
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652923453;}i:4;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:89:"Victoria Beckham and the praise of curvy women: “Wanting to be thin is old fashioned”";s:4:"link";s:133:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/gossip/victoria-beckham-and-the-praise-of-curvy-women-wanting-to-be-thin-is-old-fashioned/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Debby Kent";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 01:00:20 +0000";s:8:"category";s:46:"GossipBeckhamcurvyfashionedPraiseVictoriawomen";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61298";s:11:"description";s:733:"
After years of very strict diets, Victoria Beckham discovers the beauty of being curvy. Whether it’s a like-catching statement ahead of the launch of his new VB Body collection or the new credo of the former Spice Girl, curvy bodies have become the new role model for the footballer’s wife to ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3630:"
After years of very strict diets, Victoria Beckhamdiscovers the beauty of being curvy. Whether it’s a like-catching statement ahead of the launch of his new VB Body collection or the new credo of the former Spice Girl, curvy bodies have become the new role model for the footballer’s wife to follow or, at least, to appreciate.
Read also> Salmo debuts in a series with Block 181: «See me on the screen? A trauma “
Victoria Beckham and the beauty of being curvy: “Wanting to be slim is old fashioned, every woman wants a round and curvy butt”
To confess it was the same singer loaned to the fashion world, who in a recent interview with Grazia UK exposed her beliefs in terms of beauty. “Every woman wants a nice, round and curvy butt, right?” rhetoric is asked. «For this, you need a very tight shirt that squeezes your waist and keeps you in the right places. You need fully modeled, weighted and perfectly placed details to create a truly flattering silhouette. This is how you create what I call the quintessential cool dress ». Which in Victoria’s vision would coincide with the jersey garments of her new collection, of which her husband David Beckham, needless to say, is already crazy.
The inspiration for these new dresses, she says, came from Miami: “There are a lot of really curvy women in Miami, they walk along Miami Beach without a lot of clothes on and they look fantastic. They show their bodies with such confidence. I found both their attitude and style to be truly liberating. And as a mother, I loved the fact that Harper (daughter, ndr) could hang out with women who celebrated their curves and enjoyed their looks. “
To conclude, according to Victoria: “It’s an old-fashioned attitude, wanting to be thin.” “I think today’s women want to look healthy and curvy. They want to have boobs and a butt. The more curvy you are, the better my VB Body dresses will look ». In short, a not entirely disinterested change of course for Beckham who, after having cultivated the cult of thinness, today reveals that she has found a “balance between the desire to have fun and be disciplined in eating healthy and training”. Because, as she says, “it’s not about being a certain size. It’s about knowing who you are and being as happy as you are. “
";}s:7:"summary";s:733:"
After years of very strict diets, Victoria Beckham discovers the beauty of being curvy. Whether it’s a like-catching statement ahead of the launch of his new VB Body collection or the new credo of the former Spice Girl, curvy bodies have become the new role model for the footballer’s wife to ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:3630:"
After years of very strict diets, Victoria Beckhamdiscovers the beauty of being curvy. Whether it’s a like-catching statement ahead of the launch of his new VB Body collection or the new credo of the former Spice Girl, curvy bodies have become the new role model for the footballer’s wife to follow or, at least, to appreciate.
Read also> Salmo debuts in a series with Block 181: «See me on the screen? A trauma “
Victoria Beckham and the beauty of being curvy: “Wanting to be slim is old fashioned, every woman wants a round and curvy butt”
To confess it was the same singer loaned to the fashion world, who in a recent interview with Grazia UK exposed her beliefs in terms of beauty. “Every woman wants a nice, round and curvy butt, right?” rhetoric is asked. «For this, you need a very tight shirt that squeezes your waist and keeps you in the right places. You need fully modeled, weighted and perfectly placed details to create a truly flattering silhouette. This is how you create what I call the quintessential cool dress ». Which in Victoria’s vision would coincide with the jersey garments of her new collection, of which her husband David Beckham, needless to say, is already crazy.
The inspiration for these new dresses, she says, came from Miami: “There are a lot of really curvy women in Miami, they walk along Miami Beach without a lot of clothes on and they look fantastic. They show their bodies with such confidence. I found both their attitude and style to be truly liberating. And as a mother, I loved the fact that Harper (daughter, ndr) could hang out with women who celebrated their curves and enjoyed their looks. “
To conclude, according to Victoria: “It’s an old-fashioned attitude, wanting to be thin.” “I think today’s women want to look healthy and curvy. They want to have boobs and a butt. The more curvy you are, the better my VB Body dresses will look ». In short, a not entirely disinterested change of course for Beckham who, after having cultivated the cult of thinness, today reveals that she has found a “balance between the desire to have fun and be disciplined in eating healthy and training”. Because, as she says, “it’s not about being a certain size. It’s about knowing who you are and being as happy as you are. “
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652922020;}i:5;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:92:"‘Cast a Deadly Spell’ – Fred Ward Battled Lovecraftian Terrors in 1991 Horror-Noir Gem";s:4:"link";s:138:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/cast-a-deadly-spell-fred-ward-battled-lovecraftian-terrors-in-1991-horror-noir-gem/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 00:54:31 +0000";s:8:"category";s:73:"Scream AwayBattledcastdeadlyFredGemHorrorNoirLovecraftianspellTerrorsWard";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61292";s:11:"description";s:728:"Social media is a cursed necessity of modern life. The hunt for likes, RTs, comments, and shares is never-ending. Most days, it feels as though you’re just circling the drain and waiting for that next dopamine fix. The crushing weight to constantly level-up in the online world is insurmountable and forces users to push their ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:16070:"
Social media is a cursed necessity of modern life. The hunt for likes, RTs, comments, and shares is never-ending. Most days, it feels as though you’re just circling the drain and waiting for that next dopamine fix. The crushing weight to constantly level-up in the online world is insurmountable and forces users to push their own psychological and emotional limits to get a bigger payback in virtual currency. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree and Brandon Christensen’s Superhost play in extremes, both films delving into the world of online streamers and YouTube content creators.
“We’re all kind of sad, pathetic, and desperate regardless of what side of the ideological spectrum we’re on,” commented Kotlyarenko in an interview. He later noted his film as “anti-ideological” in many ways, particularly in how it cultivates a collective unease around online identity and the lost art of nurturing actual value. Desperation to be liked fuels the film’s central character, Kurt Kunkle (played by Joe Keery), who leverages even the most mundane real life interactions for digital ones.
Seeing his platform (known as Kurt’s World) hemorrhaging subscribers, Kurt becomes a Spree driver and decides to stream his day as a way to lure back his audience. He quickly learns, however, that his once-thriving viewership is just not interested 一 even Bobby (Joshua Ovalle), a kid he used to babysit, sees through his veneer and calls him out on his feeble attempts. Bobby, firmly Gen Z, sees Kurt’s pathetic behavior indicative of the aging millennial generation, barely clinging onto faux authenticity and old ways of digital curation. He has his own problems, too; his own digital empire is all in illusion.
There’s no sustainability when the goalposts constantly recalibrate and the glass ceiling rises higher and higher. Thresholds that once gave a satisfying dopamine injection are no longer effective, and you must push further and higher to get the same level of pleasure. It makes sense when you really think about it. It operates just as traditional drugs do.
“Social media is basically a way to drugify human connection,” Anna Lembke, MD, psychiatry professor and Chief of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, observed in a deeply-probing Teen Vogue report last year. “We’ve evolved over millions of years to want to connect with people because it helps us protect ourselves from predators, use scarce resources, find a mate. One of the ways our brain gets us to make those connections is [to] release dopamine.”
‘Spree’
From Kurt’s perspective, the only way to get that same high again is to double-down on the antics at whatever cost necessary. He’s even willing to commit murder, if he has to, and boy does he ever. He has it all planned out in his head: he’ll live-stream his shift, pick up as many passengers as he can, and offer them drug-laced water bottles. What’s most disturbing is he is completely transparent in his live feeds, yet no one takes him seriously. It all happens in plain sight, but the world is so self-absorbed and addicted to their own dopamine chase they don’t even read (or understand) the signs.
He first poisons a real estate agent (Jessalyn Gilsig) and later drives a group of rich kids out to a secluded spot before slaughtering them in gruesome fashion. It’s the name of the game, and the game is murder for subscribers. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. Kurt goes one step further and confronts Bobby at his house. In a heated conversation, he stabs Bobby and assumes his account and the massive following it entails, claiming the deadly scuffle was a prank. Throughout the rest of the night, Kurt spirals further out of control (if you can believe that), and he’s only stopped when another prominent influencer Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), the single most honest, real person in the entire film, deals him a deadly blow.
The same Teen Vogue report later cuts to the heart of the matter. By design, social media is meant to “influence and manipulate your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors” and that often involves greatly exacerbating mental illness. In the extreme case of Kurt Kunkle, his world became about equating value as a human being to what people said about him online and how they mindlessly flocked to his account. And it was never about what he could bring to the world or even the joy that he may have once had for his content. It’s a dehumanizing system that repeats.
Christensen approaches these issues through a slightly different lens. Superhost follows two popular vloggers, Claire (Sara Canning) and Teddy (Osric Chau), our anti-heros who become consumed alive by the system they once exploited. Their content centers around traveling the country and taking up residence in various Airbnb rentals, detailing their experience, and then giving a rating. Many of their video reviews have gone viral and led to a fairly lucrative living. However, they’ve experienced a recent dip in both viewership and subscribers. They begin to feel the heat to deliver top-notch content, and the lengths they’ll go to be controversial test their bounds as creators and human beings.
Their previous experience with a woman named Vera (Barbara Crampton) brought a new host of unwanted problems. Their scathing assessment directly contributed to Vera’s own business crumbling, suggesting how online activity, no matter how small, can have a dangerous outward ripple effect. And all it takes is one erroneous tweet or Instagram post or TikTok video and someone’s life is ruined.
‘Superhost’
But Claire and Teddy hope to turn things around.
They’ve finally managed to book a secluded cabin from a seemingly normal young woman named Rebecca (Grace Gillam). The vacation rental is quite the hot spot, requiring a reservation months ahead of time. Only woods and mountains surround them, and it could be the place that gets them back on track. When Claire and Teddy arrive, they immediately start filming the trip, pouring on the overly dramatic reactions and obvious on screen personas on thick. It’s like a peek at the wizard behind the curtain. Streaming is all smoke and mirrors 一 and behind the camera, it’s two people desperately wanting to be liked.
Everything immediately starts going sideways. First, they have the wrong door code to get into the rental, and then, the primary toilet appears clogged. It’s all downhill from there. A toothy smile and wild eyes, Rebecca always appears a little off, almost as if she is some modernized pod person. Much like her new occupants, there’s always a façade behind which she moves through the world. She attempts to give them the best possible trip with little fuss, but everything comes unglued in the third act.
Rebecca is the highly concentrated version of Claire and Teddy. When all is revealed that she’s actually a serial killer, who slaughtered and hid the bodies of the property’s actual owners, she flips the tables on the vlogger team and films their deaths. In Claire’s final moments, she’s managed to upload a video pleading with her subscribers for help 一 but everyone believes it’s just another stunt. Looking on, blood dripping down her face, Rebecca simply smirks into the laptop camera. It’s a downright chilling turn of events that drives home the entire film’s thesis.
What people want more than anything on social media is transparency 一 not authenticity. Authenticity is one of those loaded buzzwords that don’t actually mean anything these days. Claire and Teddy were two mice on a wheel, chasing imaginary cheese and going nowhere. Their exploitation of real life 一 Teddy secretly plotting the trip as an engagement announcement, and Claire not even believing his sincerity 一 is not far removed from our own.
Each of us are manipulating ourselves into sharing and posting every thought that runs through our heads; and it’s not totally our fault, platforms are built to be addicting. We engage 24/7 because we just want to be liked. From Facebook’s reaction panel to quote RTs and Insta Stories, we compartmentalize our moments and feelings into easily digestible chunks and then only exist to feed the machine until nothing about it is human anymore.
Much like many Black Mirror episodes, Spree and Superhost capture the disastrous present and the downward trajectory we’re not likely to escape. Where Kurt Kunkle, Rebecca, and Claire and Teddy reside on opposing extremes, we’re all comfortably occupying a slot somewhere on the sliding scale. And hopefully, none of us have exploited tragedy (think Logan Paul and that gross “suicide forest” video) or committed murder. There’s still time for the rest of us, I suppose.
Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.
‘Superhost’
We wish to thank the author of this write-up for this incredible content
";}s:7:"summary";s:728:"Social media is a cursed necessity of modern life. The hunt for likes, RTs, comments, and shares is never-ending. Most days, it feels as though you’re just circling the drain and waiting for that next dopamine fix. The crushing weight to constantly level-up in the online world is insurmountable and forces users to push their ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:16070:"
Social media is a cursed necessity of modern life. The hunt for likes, RTs, comments, and shares is never-ending. Most days, it feels as though you’re just circling the drain and waiting for that next dopamine fix. The crushing weight to constantly level-up in the online world is insurmountable and forces users to push their own psychological and emotional limits to get a bigger payback in virtual currency. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Spree and Brandon Christensen’s Superhost play in extremes, both films delving into the world of online streamers and YouTube content creators.
“We’re all kind of sad, pathetic, and desperate regardless of what side of the ideological spectrum we’re on,” commented Kotlyarenko in an interview. He later noted his film as “anti-ideological” in many ways, particularly in how it cultivates a collective unease around online identity and the lost art of nurturing actual value. Desperation to be liked fuels the film’s central character, Kurt Kunkle (played by Joe Keery), who leverages even the most mundane real life interactions for digital ones.
Seeing his platform (known as Kurt’s World) hemorrhaging subscribers, Kurt becomes a Spree driver and decides to stream his day as a way to lure back his audience. He quickly learns, however, that his once-thriving viewership is just not interested 一 even Bobby (Joshua Ovalle), a kid he used to babysit, sees through his veneer and calls him out on his feeble attempts. Bobby, firmly Gen Z, sees Kurt’s pathetic behavior indicative of the aging millennial generation, barely clinging onto faux authenticity and old ways of digital curation. He has his own problems, too; his own digital empire is all in illusion.
There’s no sustainability when the goalposts constantly recalibrate and the glass ceiling rises higher and higher. Thresholds that once gave a satisfying dopamine injection are no longer effective, and you must push further and higher to get the same level of pleasure. It makes sense when you really think about it. It operates just as traditional drugs do.
“Social media is basically a way to drugify human connection,” Anna Lembke, MD, psychiatry professor and Chief of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, observed in a deeply-probing Teen Vogue report last year. “We’ve evolved over millions of years to want to connect with people because it helps us protect ourselves from predators, use scarce resources, find a mate. One of the ways our brain gets us to make those connections is [to] release dopamine.”
‘Spree’
From Kurt’s perspective, the only way to get that same high again is to double-down on the antics at whatever cost necessary. He’s even willing to commit murder, if he has to, and boy does he ever. He has it all planned out in his head: he’ll live-stream his shift, pick up as many passengers as he can, and offer them drug-laced water bottles. What’s most disturbing is he is completely transparent in his live feeds, yet no one takes him seriously. It all happens in plain sight, but the world is so self-absorbed and addicted to their own dopamine chase they don’t even read (or understand) the signs.
He first poisons a real estate agent (Jessalyn Gilsig) and later drives a group of rich kids out to a secluded spot before slaughtering them in gruesome fashion. It’s the name of the game, and the game is murder for subscribers. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. Kurt goes one step further and confronts Bobby at his house. In a heated conversation, he stabs Bobby and assumes his account and the massive following it entails, claiming the deadly scuffle was a prank. Throughout the rest of the night, Kurt spirals further out of control (if you can believe that), and he’s only stopped when another prominent influencer Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), the single most honest, real person in the entire film, deals him a deadly blow.
The same Teen Vogue report later cuts to the heart of the matter. By design, social media is meant to “influence and manipulate your thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors” and that often involves greatly exacerbating mental illness. In the extreme case of Kurt Kunkle, his world became about equating value as a human being to what people said about him online and how they mindlessly flocked to his account. And it was never about what he could bring to the world or even the joy that he may have once had for his content. It’s a dehumanizing system that repeats.
Christensen approaches these issues through a slightly different lens. Superhost follows two popular vloggers, Claire (Sara Canning) and Teddy (Osric Chau), our anti-heros who become consumed alive by the system they once exploited. Their content centers around traveling the country and taking up residence in various Airbnb rentals, detailing their experience, and then giving a rating. Many of their video reviews have gone viral and led to a fairly lucrative living. However, they’ve experienced a recent dip in both viewership and subscribers. They begin to feel the heat to deliver top-notch content, and the lengths they’ll go to be controversial test their bounds as creators and human beings.
Their previous experience with a woman named Vera (Barbara Crampton) brought a new host of unwanted problems. Their scathing assessment directly contributed to Vera’s own business crumbling, suggesting how online activity, no matter how small, can have a dangerous outward ripple effect. And all it takes is one erroneous tweet or Instagram post or TikTok video and someone’s life is ruined.
‘Superhost’
But Claire and Teddy hope to turn things around.
They’ve finally managed to book a secluded cabin from a seemingly normal young woman named Rebecca (Grace Gillam). The vacation rental is quite the hot spot, requiring a reservation months ahead of time. Only woods and mountains surround them, and it could be the place that gets them back on track. When Claire and Teddy arrive, they immediately start filming the trip, pouring on the overly dramatic reactions and obvious on screen personas on thick. It’s like a peek at the wizard behind the curtain. Streaming is all smoke and mirrors 一 and behind the camera, it’s two people desperately wanting to be liked.
Everything immediately starts going sideways. First, they have the wrong door code to get into the rental, and then, the primary toilet appears clogged. It’s all downhill from there. A toothy smile and wild eyes, Rebecca always appears a little off, almost as if she is some modernized pod person. Much like her new occupants, there’s always a façade behind which she moves through the world. She attempts to give them the best possible trip with little fuss, but everything comes unglued in the third act.
Rebecca is the highly concentrated version of Claire and Teddy. When all is revealed that she’s actually a serial killer, who slaughtered and hid the bodies of the property’s actual owners, she flips the tables on the vlogger team and films their deaths. In Claire’s final moments, she’s managed to upload a video pleading with her subscribers for help 一 but everyone believes it’s just another stunt. Looking on, blood dripping down her face, Rebecca simply smirks into the laptop camera. It’s a downright chilling turn of events that drives home the entire film’s thesis.
What people want more than anything on social media is transparency 一 not authenticity. Authenticity is one of those loaded buzzwords that don’t actually mean anything these days. Claire and Teddy were two mice on a wheel, chasing imaginary cheese and going nowhere. Their exploitation of real life 一 Teddy secretly plotting the trip as an engagement announcement, and Claire not even believing his sincerity 一 is not far removed from our own.
Each of us are manipulating ourselves into sharing and posting every thought that runs through our heads; and it’s not totally our fault, platforms are built to be addicting. We engage 24/7 because we just want to be liked. From Facebook’s reaction panel to quote RTs and Insta Stories, we compartmentalize our moments and feelings into easily digestible chunks and then only exist to feed the machine until nothing about it is human anymore.
Much like many Black Mirror episodes, Spree and Superhost capture the disastrous present and the downward trajectory we’re not likely to escape. Where Kurt Kunkle, Rebecca, and Claire and Teddy reside on opposing extremes, we’re all comfortably occupying a slot somewhere on the sliding scale. And hopefully, none of us have exploited tragedy (think Logan Paul and that gross “suicide forest” video) or committed murder. There’s still time for the rest of us, I suppose.
Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.
‘Superhost’
We wish to thank the author of this write-up for this incredible content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652921671;}i:6;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:49:"Statins may provide protection against depression";s:4:"link";s:110:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/healthandscience/statins-may-provide-protection-against-depression/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Tony Grantly";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 19 May 2022 00:45:18 +0000";s:8:"category";s:52:"Health And SciencedepressionprotectionprovideStatins";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61287";s:11:"description";s:716:"Journal Reference: Amy L. Gillespie, Chloe Wigg, Indra van Assche, Susannah E. Murphy, Catherine J. Harmer. Associations between statin use and negative affective bias during COVID-19: an observational, longitudinal UK study investigating depression vulnerability. Biological Psychiatry, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.03.009 Researchers led by Amy Gillespie, PhD, at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, conducted the online ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3826:"
Journal Reference:
Amy L. Gillespie, Chloe Wigg, Indra van Assche, Susannah E. Murphy, Catherine J. Harmer. Associations between statin use and negative affective bias during COVID-19: an observational, longitudinal UK study investigating depression vulnerability. Biological Psychiatry, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.03.009
Researchers led by Amy Gillespie, PhD, at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, conducted the online observational study from April 2020 through February 2021, at the height of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, when global stress levels were elevated and the incidence of psychiatric disorders spiked.
Over 2000 participants in the UK recorded information about their current psychiatric symptoms, medications, and other lifestyle factors. They also performed cognitive tasks meant to measure memory, reward, and emotion processing, which are linked to depression vulnerability. One task required participants to identify the emotional expressions of faces, which displayed varying degrees of fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, or fear.
The vast majority of subjects (84%) were not taking either medication, but a small group were taking only statins (4%), only a different class of anti-hypertension medication (6%), or both (5%).
Participants taking statins were less likely to recognize fearful or angry faces and more likely to report them as positive, indicating they had reduced negative emotional bias.
Dr. Gillespie said, “We found that taking a statin medication was associated with significantly lower levels of negative emotional bias when interpreting facial expressions; this was not seen with other medications, such as blood pressure medications.”
“We know that reducing negative emotional bias can be important for the treatment of depression,” said Dr. Gillespie. “Our findings are important as they provide evidence that statins may provide protection against depression. Of particular note, we saw these results during the high-stress context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings also provide the first potential psychological explanation of statins’ mental health benefits,” in that they seem to affect emotion processing. It remains unclear exactly how statins could protect against mental illness, but one possibility is that they may work through anti-inflammatory mechanisms, which have also been implicated in depression.
John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, said of the work, “Statins are among the most commonly prescribed medications based on their ability to prevent heart attacks and strokes. These new data raise the possibility that some of their positive effects on health could be mediated by the effects of these drugs on the brain that promote emotional resilience.”
“Researchers should prioritize investigating the possible use of statins as a preventative intervention for depression. Before use in clinical practice, it is important that future research confirms the potential psychological benefits of statins through controlled, randomized clinical trials,” Dr. Gillespie concluded.
We would like to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:716:"Journal Reference: Amy L. Gillespie, Chloe Wigg, Indra van Assche, Susannah E. Murphy, Catherine J. Harmer. Associations between statin use and negative affective bias during COVID-19: an observational, longitudinal UK study investigating depression vulnerability. Biological Psychiatry, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.03.009 Researchers led by Amy Gillespie, PhD, at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, conducted the online ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:3826:"
Journal Reference:
Amy L. Gillespie, Chloe Wigg, Indra van Assche, Susannah E. Murphy, Catherine J. Harmer. Associations between statin use and negative affective bias during COVID-19: an observational, longitudinal UK study investigating depression vulnerability. Biological Psychiatry, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.03.009
Researchers led by Amy Gillespie, PhD, at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, conducted the online observational study from April 2020 through February 2021, at the height of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, when global stress levels were elevated and the incidence of psychiatric disorders spiked.
Over 2000 participants in the UK recorded information about their current psychiatric symptoms, medications, and other lifestyle factors. They also performed cognitive tasks meant to measure memory, reward, and emotion processing, which are linked to depression vulnerability. One task required participants to identify the emotional expressions of faces, which displayed varying degrees of fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, or fear.
The vast majority of subjects (84%) were not taking either medication, but a small group were taking only statins (4%), only a different class of anti-hypertension medication (6%), or both (5%).
Participants taking statins were less likely to recognize fearful or angry faces and more likely to report them as positive, indicating they had reduced negative emotional bias.
Dr. Gillespie said, “We found that taking a statin medication was associated with significantly lower levels of negative emotional bias when interpreting facial expressions; this was not seen with other medications, such as blood pressure medications.”
“We know that reducing negative emotional bias can be important for the treatment of depression,” said Dr. Gillespie. “Our findings are important as they provide evidence that statins may provide protection against depression. Of particular note, we saw these results during the high-stress context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings also provide the first potential psychological explanation of statins’ mental health benefits,” in that they seem to affect emotion processing. It remains unclear exactly how statins could protect against mental illness, but one possibility is that they may work through anti-inflammatory mechanisms, which have also been implicated in depression.
John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, said of the work, “Statins are among the most commonly prescribed medications based on their ability to prevent heart attacks and strokes. These new data raise the possibility that some of their positive effects on health could be mediated by the effects of these drugs on the brain that promote emotional resilience.”
“Researchers should prioritize investigating the possible use of statins as a preventative intervention for depression. Before use in clinical practice, it is important that future research confirms the potential psychological benefits of statins through controlled, randomized clinical trials,” Dr. Gillespie concluded.
We would like to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652921118;}i:7;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:59:"Why Silent Hill Has Never Matched Resident Evil’s Success";s:4:"link";s:112:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/scream-away/why-silent-hill-has-never-matched-resident-evils-success/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:11:"Harry World";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 18 May 2022 23:32:14 +0000";s:8:"category";s:48:"Scream AwayEvilsHillMatchedResidentSilentsuccess";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61282";s:11:"description";s:668:"Resident Evil relies on more “comfortable” styles of scares that, while often effective, are closer to the scares found in mainstream horror movies. Silent Hill often relies on scares that affect players on a more psychological level. Given that slasher films and zombie movies tend to be more successful than psychological horror movies, it’s no ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5626:"
Resident Evil relies on more “comfortable” styles of scares that, while often effective, are closer to the scares found in mainstream horror movies. Silent Hill often relies on scares that affect players on a more psychological level. Given that slasher films and zombie movies tend to be more successful than psychological horror movies, it’s no wonder why a zombie game ended up more successful than a psychological horror title.
Resident Evil Has Reached Wider Audiences Through a Wider Array of Multimedia Projects and Merchandise
Whenever a studio produces a successful product, tie-ins and licensed products are a foregone conclusion. However, no matter how successful a property’s cross-media marketing is, there’s always a bigger fish in the ocean.
Silent Hill might have started life as a video game, but it eventually found its way into platforms. The arguable most famous non-digital iteration is the Silent Hill movie, which grossed $100.6 million (according to Box Office Mojo), although that’s not the praise you think it is. Its sequel, Silent Hill Revelations 3Ddrew in half the profits and was shredded by critics and audiences alike. And the comics…oh boy the comics. A total of nine comics were produced by IDW Publishing, and three more were published by Konami. Three stories — Sinner’s Reward, Past Lifeand Anne’s Story — were somewhat well-received, but the rest were critically panned and condemned as fan-fiction. The only Silent Hill products that are truly considered good are official hats, shirts, skateboard decksand several lines of toys that revolve around Pyramid Head, the Bubble Head Nurse, and Robbie the Rabbit. Dead by Daylight and Dark Deception: Morals & Monsters sport Silent Hill-themed DLC, but that’s about it in terms of notable Silent Hill multimedia projects, crossovers, and merchandise.
Resident Evil’s cross-media iterations hit all the same beats as Silent Hillbut there’s just more of them. For instance, while Silent Hill received two movies, Resident Evil received six films directed by Paul W.S. Anderson that totaled over $1 billion in revenuea reboot film, an upcoming live-action Netflix series, four CGI films, one CGI show, and four Japanese stage plays — one of which was a musical. Various companies have also published Resident Evil comic books and novels. Plus, the amount of Resident Evil merchandise out there is overwhelming. You’ve got plenty of action figures and statues, but there’s also officially licensed Resident Evil coffee mugs, sunglasses, hats, shirts, and more. Resident Evil has entered mainstream culture in ways that no other horror game franchise has come close to doing.
The sad fact is that Silent Hill just doesn’t seem to be as marketable as Resident Evil. Resident Evil has more movies, shows, and merchandise than Silent Hillas well as more variety in said products. While we cannot overstate the creative successes of Silent Hillwe also cannot deny that it just doesn’t stack up to Resident Evil from a commercial perspective. From a comparative lack of merchandise to a company that doesn’t support the game as well as its competitors, Silent Hill just simply cannot match Resident Evil‘s success. At this point, it’s hard to imagine the forces that control the Silent Hill license giving the franchise the resources it needs to really reach that next level.
We would love to give thanks to the writer of this short article for this incredible web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:668:"Resident Evil relies on more “comfortable” styles of scares that, while often effective, are closer to the scares found in mainstream horror movies. Silent Hill often relies on scares that affect players on a more psychological level. Given that slasher films and zombie movies tend to be more successful than psychological horror movies, it’s no ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:5626:"
Resident Evil relies on more “comfortable” styles of scares that, while often effective, are closer to the scares found in mainstream horror movies. Silent Hill often relies on scares that affect players on a more psychological level. Given that slasher films and zombie movies tend to be more successful than psychological horror movies, it’s no wonder why a zombie game ended up more successful than a psychological horror title.
Resident Evil Has Reached Wider Audiences Through a Wider Array of Multimedia Projects and Merchandise
Whenever a studio produces a successful product, tie-ins and licensed products are a foregone conclusion. However, no matter how successful a property’s cross-media marketing is, there’s always a bigger fish in the ocean.
Silent Hill might have started life as a video game, but it eventually found its way into platforms. The arguable most famous non-digital iteration is the Silent Hill movie, which grossed $100.6 million (according to Box Office Mojo), although that’s not the praise you think it is. Its sequel, Silent Hill Revelations 3Ddrew in half the profits and was shredded by critics and audiences alike. And the comics…oh boy the comics. A total of nine comics were produced by IDW Publishing, and three more were published by Konami. Three stories — Sinner’s Reward, Past Lifeand Anne’s Story — were somewhat well-received, but the rest were critically panned and condemned as fan-fiction. The only Silent Hill products that are truly considered good are official hats, shirts, skateboard decksand several lines of toys that revolve around Pyramid Head, the Bubble Head Nurse, and Robbie the Rabbit. Dead by Daylight and Dark Deception: Morals & Monsters sport Silent Hill-themed DLC, but that’s about it in terms of notable Silent Hill multimedia projects, crossovers, and merchandise.
Resident Evil’s cross-media iterations hit all the same beats as Silent Hillbut there’s just more of them. For instance, while Silent Hill received two movies, Resident Evil received six films directed by Paul W.S. Anderson that totaled over $1 billion in revenuea reboot film, an upcoming live-action Netflix series, four CGI films, one CGI show, and four Japanese stage plays — one of which was a musical. Various companies have also published Resident Evil comic books and novels. Plus, the amount of Resident Evil merchandise out there is overwhelming. You’ve got plenty of action figures and statues, but there’s also officially licensed Resident Evil coffee mugs, sunglasses, hats, shirts, and more. Resident Evil has entered mainstream culture in ways that no other horror game franchise has come close to doing.
The sad fact is that Silent Hill just doesn’t seem to be as marketable as Resident Evil. Resident Evil has more movies, shows, and merchandise than Silent Hillas well as more variety in said products. While we cannot overstate the creative successes of Silent Hillwe also cannot deny that it just doesn’t stack up to Resident Evil from a commercial perspective. From a comparative lack of merchandise to a company that doesn’t support the game as well as its competitors, Silent Hill just simply cannot match Resident Evil‘s success. At this point, it’s hard to imagine the forces that control the Silent Hill license giving the franchise the resources it needs to really reach that next level.
We would love to give thanks to the writer of this short article for this incredible web content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652916734;}i:8;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:68:"Scientists see signs of traumatic brain injury in headbutting muskox";s:4:"link";s:129:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/healthandscience/scientists-see-signs-of-traumatic-brain-injury-in-headbutting-muskox/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:12:"Tony Grantly";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 18 May 2022 23:28:13 +0000";s:8:"category";s:70:"Health And SciencebrainheadbuttingINJURYmuskoxscientistssignstraumatic";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61277";s:11:"description";s:768:"Journal Reference: Nicole L. Ackermans, Merina Varghese, Terrie M. Williams, Nicholas Grimaldi, Enna Selmanovic, Akbar Alipour, Priti Balchandani, Joy S. Reidenberg, Patrick R. Hof. Evidence of traumatic brain injury in headbutting bovids. Acta Neuropathologica, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-022-02427-2 “Death and disability caused by traumatic brain injury is a widespread problem that needs better solutions,” said Nicole ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5341:"
Journal Reference:
Nicole L. Ackermans, Merina Varghese, Terrie M. Williams, Nicholas Grimaldi, Enna Selmanovic, Akbar Alipour, Priti Balchandani, Joy S. Reidenberg, Patrick R. Hof. Evidence of traumatic brain injury in headbutting bovids. Acta Neuropathologica, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-022-02427-2
“Death and disability caused by traumatic brain injury is a widespread problem that needs better solutions,” said Nicole Ackermans, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Icahn Mount Sinai and the study leader. “We showed that animals which regularly engage in headbutting may actually suffer the kind of traumatic brain injury seen in humans. This opens the possibility that by studying these animals we could learn a lot about traumatic brain injury.”
Dr. Ackermans and her colleagues studied the brains of three deceased muskoxen from Greenland and four bighorn sheep, which were obtained from parks in Colorado and Utah and the Buffalo Zoo in New York.
Part of the reason for obtaining brains from these horned animals is that they are known to engage in violent head-to-head collisions, usually in mating and social hierarchy rituals. For instance, male muskoxen often reach speeds of up to 30 miles an hour before impact. Although a few studies have observed symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as acting dazed, none have directly tested whether the brains of muskoxen and other ramming animals show any damage.
The other reason is that bovids — such as cows, sheep, buffalo, gazelles, and the animals in the study — have gyrencephalic, or folded, brains, which are also seen in humans.
“Our lab tries to use evolution to help solve medical mysteries,” said Patrick R. Hof, MD, Professor of Neuroscience at Icahn Mount Sinai and senior author of the study. “One of the difficulties of TBI research is that most of it is performed on smooth, rodent brains. We thought that studying the brains of ramming bovids might provide a better model for understanding TBI in humans.”
When they first arrived, the animals’ brains looked healthy, and brain scans showed that the overall structure of each animal’s brain was intact.
To look for signs of TBI damage, the researchers then cut the brains into thin slices and treated the slices with antibodies made to detect phosphorylated tau proteins found in humans or mice. This form of tau is a hallmark of damage that is often seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, or in people who have suffered TBIs, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
When they looked at the brains under a microscope, they saw that one of the antibodies stained muskoxen brains at easily detectable levels, whereas the bighorn sheep brains had lightly detectable levels of staining by a different antibody.
“At first we were surprised. One of the challenges with these kinds of studies is that we don’t know whether antibodies used on human and rodents will work on bovid brains,” Dr. Ackermans said. “The fact that we detected these antibodies was important. It suggested that the brains of these animals, especially the muskoxen, sustain TBI-like damage.”
Further analysis supported the idea. For example, the prefrontal cortex of the muskoxen brains had high levels of tau protein tangles, especially near the surface of the cortex.
“This pattern is sometimes seen in the brains of people who suffer from CTE,” Dr. Ackermans said. “Our results open the possibility that these animal’s brains undergo chronic, repetitive damage, as seen in some TBI patients.”
In contrast, when the researchers looked at brain slices from an Alzheimer’s disease patient, they saw a more even and widespread staining pattern.
Curiously, an old female muskox had much more — about 20 times more — staining than the older male and five times more staining than another female. This is the opposite of what the researchers hypothesized, as males are known to ram each other harder and more often than females.
“This study left us with many interesting questions, like: Why did the female muskox brains appear to have more damage than the male ones? Is this because of differences in skull anatomy? Why did the brains of bighorn sheep have so little damage? And is it possible to harness the knowledge we gain from these animals to develop better treatments for TBI?” said Dr. Ackermans.
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (P2ZHP3_191255) and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-20-452 1-2762; N00014-17-1-2737).
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable content
";}s:7:"summary";s:768:"Journal Reference: Nicole L. Ackermans, Merina Varghese, Terrie M. Williams, Nicholas Grimaldi, Enna Selmanovic, Akbar Alipour, Priti Balchandani, Joy S. Reidenberg, Patrick R. Hof. Evidence of traumatic brain injury in headbutting bovids. Acta Neuropathologica, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-022-02427-2 “Death and disability caused by traumatic brain injury is a widespread problem that needs better solutions,” said Nicole ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:5341:"
Journal Reference:
Nicole L. Ackermans, Merina Varghese, Terrie M. Williams, Nicholas Grimaldi, Enna Selmanovic, Akbar Alipour, Priti Balchandani, Joy S. Reidenberg, Patrick R. Hof. Evidence of traumatic brain injury in headbutting bovids. Acta Neuropathologica, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s00401-022-02427-2
“Death and disability caused by traumatic brain injury is a widespread problem that needs better solutions,” said Nicole Ackermans, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Icahn Mount Sinai and the study leader. “We showed that animals which regularly engage in headbutting may actually suffer the kind of traumatic brain injury seen in humans. This opens the possibility that by studying these animals we could learn a lot about traumatic brain injury.”
Dr. Ackermans and her colleagues studied the brains of three deceased muskoxen from Greenland and four bighorn sheep, which were obtained from parks in Colorado and Utah and the Buffalo Zoo in New York.
Part of the reason for obtaining brains from these horned animals is that they are known to engage in violent head-to-head collisions, usually in mating and social hierarchy rituals. For instance, male muskoxen often reach speeds of up to 30 miles an hour before impact. Although a few studies have observed symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as acting dazed, none have directly tested whether the brains of muskoxen and other ramming animals show any damage.
The other reason is that bovids — such as cows, sheep, buffalo, gazelles, and the animals in the study — have gyrencephalic, or folded, brains, which are also seen in humans.
“Our lab tries to use evolution to help solve medical mysteries,” said Patrick R. Hof, MD, Professor of Neuroscience at Icahn Mount Sinai and senior author of the study. “One of the difficulties of TBI research is that most of it is performed on smooth, rodent brains. We thought that studying the brains of ramming bovids might provide a better model for understanding TBI in humans.”
When they first arrived, the animals’ brains looked healthy, and brain scans showed that the overall structure of each animal’s brain was intact.
To look for signs of TBI damage, the researchers then cut the brains into thin slices and treated the slices with antibodies made to detect phosphorylated tau proteins found in humans or mice. This form of tau is a hallmark of damage that is often seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, or in people who have suffered TBIs, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
When they looked at the brains under a microscope, they saw that one of the antibodies stained muskoxen brains at easily detectable levels, whereas the bighorn sheep brains had lightly detectable levels of staining by a different antibody.
“At first we were surprised. One of the challenges with these kinds of studies is that we don’t know whether antibodies used on human and rodents will work on bovid brains,” Dr. Ackermans said. “The fact that we detected these antibodies was important. It suggested that the brains of these animals, especially the muskoxen, sustain TBI-like damage.”
Further analysis supported the idea. For example, the prefrontal cortex of the muskoxen brains had high levels of tau protein tangles, especially near the surface of the cortex.
“This pattern is sometimes seen in the brains of people who suffer from CTE,” Dr. Ackermans said. “Our results open the possibility that these animal’s brains undergo chronic, repetitive damage, as seen in some TBI patients.”
In contrast, when the researchers looked at brain slices from an Alzheimer’s disease patient, they saw a more even and widespread staining pattern.
Curiously, an old female muskox had much more — about 20 times more — staining than the older male and five times more staining than another female. This is the opposite of what the researchers hypothesized, as males are known to ram each other harder and more often than females.
“This study left us with many interesting questions, like: Why did the female muskox brains appear to have more damage than the male ones? Is this because of differences in skull anatomy? Why did the brains of bighorn sheep have so little damage? And is it possible to harness the knowledge we gain from these animals to develop better treatments for TBI?” said Dr. Ackermans.
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (P2ZHP3_191255) and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-20-452 1-2762; N00014-17-1-2737).
We would love to say thanks to the writer of this post for this remarkable content
";s:14:"date_timestamp";i:1652916493;}i:9;a:11:{s:5:"title";s:89:"Self-confidence: the routine that will change EVERYTHING – COOL PARENTS MAKE HAPPY KIDS";s:4:"link";s:138:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/lifestyle/self-confidence-the-routine-that-will-change-everything-cool-parents-make-happy-kids/";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Holly June";}s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 18 May 2022 23:16:42 +0000";s:8:"category";s:56:"LifestylechangecoolHappykidsparentsRoutineSelfconfidence";s:4:"guid";s:51:"https://bestmovies.packagingnewsonline.com/?p=61271";s:11:"description";s:694:"“Everyone is genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein In our society we often have the belief that what someone does has value, because he made “an effort” to do it. And that everything we ... Read more";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:6813:"
“Everyone is genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
In our society we often have the belief that what someone does has value, because he made “an effort” to do it. And that everything we do with naturalness and simplicity has less. While yet our real strengths, our real added value lie in the things we do with enthusiasm and ease natural !
But in our daily life, we are used to judging and congratulating our child on the areas where he has progressed. We congratulate him because he finally had the average in math, but his usual 18/20 in French goes unnoticed because “for him it’s easy”! We congratulate our child who finally participated in class, but we don’t talk about the good relationships he has with his friends! Because they are “normal” with him…
Do you also value what has required you to go beyond or an effort? And the other things you do easily but with talent, do you attach importance to them?
I have seen so many mothers who manage the family schedule, going out, social life and everyone’s activities with an ease and efficiency that I find impressive. Who, in the morning, are already anticipating the lunch meal and who in September have already organized their Christmas holidays… But is it “normal” to manage all this so well? I have friends of overflowing generosity and when I’m embarrassed by the huge gift they give us, they answer me as obvious “it’s normal”… But shouldn’t all these particular strengths be valued just because it is « facile » for us ?
For our child it is the same thing! We spend time pushing him to do things that are not natural for him and congratulating him when he has succeeded (and sometimes we even forget)… What if we put as much energy into seeing his strengths that are natural and yet have great value?Joie de vivre, determination (this famous “mule head” that we criticize), humor, ingenuity, creativity, curiosity, risk-taking (his famous “experiments”), etc…
Here is a very powerful little ritual: in the evening, let’s take a moment with them, inviting them to see all the little things they have done during the day that they can be proud of, even if they were done with ease or enthusiasm. Because the simplicity with which our children do things in no way detracts from their value. And this ritual changes EVERYTHING, for them as for us, who have so much the reflex to look at the MOUNTAIN of things that we didn’t do well, that we should have done, that we missed…
TYou will undeniably see the benefits of this “pride” ritual on his self-confidence and self-esteem.
NB: And if you want a nice notebook to write down his pride, but also to guide him on many other insights, the Self-confidence notebook (5-12 years) came out in limited edition yesterday ! A real nugget to guide our child to discover his strengths, find what interests him and to fully blossom.>> To discover without further delay! <<
NB 2 : Unpublished conference (and free) “A child who has self-confidence is built” Book your place hereit is readnd next! Meeting at 9 p.m. from your sofa, for all those who wish to accompany their children or their ado towards more self-confidence. It’s going to be exciting!!! 🤩 See the program
We wish to give thanks to the writer of this article for this outstanding web content
";}s:7:"summary";s:694:"“Everyone is genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein In our society we often have the belief that what someone does has value, because he made “an effort” to do it. And that everything we ... Read more";s:12:"atom_content";s:6813:"
“Everyone is genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
In our society we often have the belief that what someone does has value, because he made “an effort” to do it. And that everything we do with naturalness and simplicity has less. While yet our real strengths, our real added value lie in the things we do with enthusiasm and ease natural !
But in our daily life, we are used to judging and congratulating our child on the areas where he has progressed. We congratulate him because he finally had the average in math, but his usual 18/20 in French goes unnoticed because “for him it’s easy”! We congratulate our child who finally participated in class, but we don’t talk about the good relationships he has with his friends! Because they are “normal” with him…
Do you also value what has required you to go beyond or an effort? And the other things you do easily but with talent, do you attach importance to them?
I have seen so many mothers who manage the family schedule, going out, social life and everyone’s activities with an ease and efficiency that I find impressive. Who, in the morning, are already anticipating the lunch meal and who in September have already organized their Christmas holidays… But is it “normal” to manage all this so well? I have friends of overflowing generosity and when I’m embarrassed by the huge gift they give us, they answer me as obvious “it’s normal”… But shouldn’t all these particular strengths be valued just because it is « facile » for us ?
For our child it is the same thing! We spend time pushing him to do things that are not natural for him and congratulating him when he has succeeded (and sometimes we even forget)… What if we put as much energy into seeing his strengths that are natural and yet have great value?Joie de vivre, determination (this famous “mule head” that we criticize), humor, ingenuity, creativity, curiosity, risk-taking (his famous “experiments”), etc…
Here is a very powerful little ritual: in the evening, let’s take a moment with them, inviting them to see all the little things they have done during the day that they can be proud of, even if they were done with ease or enthusiasm. Because the simplicity with which our children do things in no way detracts from their value. And this ritual changes EVERYTHING, for them as for us, who have so much the reflex to look at the MOUNTAIN of things that we didn’t do well, that we should have done, that we missed…
TYou will undeniably see the benefits of this “pride” ritual on his self-confidence and self-esteem.
NB: And if you want a nice notebook to write down his pride, but also to guide him on many other insights, the Self-confidence notebook (5-12 years) came out in limited edition yesterday ! A real nugget to guide our child to discover his strengths, find what interests him and to fully blossom.>> To discover without further delay! <<
NB 2 : Unpublished conference (and free) “A child who has self-confidence is built” Book your place hereit is readnd next! Meeting at 9 p.m. from your sofa, for all those who wish to accompany their children or their ado towards more self-confidence. It’s going to be exciting!!! 🤩 See the program
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For our child it is the same thing! We spend time pushing him to do things that are not natural for him and congratulating him when he has succeeded (and sometimes we even forget)… What if we put as much energy into seeing his strengths that are natural and yet have great value?