Collaborative gifting startup Giftiki is its first mobile presence with a new iPhone App. Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to give their friends the perfect gift. And Giftiki leverages social ties and game mechanics to get users to contribute to the gifting process and add more money to the pool. Giftiki users can sign in via Facebook, which will automatically pull in friends and their birthdays. Givers choose a friend and decide on an amount to give. Giftiki now allows users to invite their friends to gift a specific individual. After selecting an amount to gift, wrapping, and sending a Giftiki, a pop up window will appear that shows the giver what friends they have in common with the individual they just gifted. Users can then choose friends and write a personal message that invites them to join and chip in. This message posts to Facebook allowing more people spread the love.
The last few times I've brought my camera out into the wilderness, I've had a few fears regarding its safety. Sure, a foam case will prevent the lens from getting scratched and so on, but what it is mauled by a bear, or we are attacked by werewolves? Most hard cases, like those from Pelican, are reliable but bulky, designed for air travel with multiple lenses, but not hiking or climbing and quick access. This Kickstarter project, the Cam Crate, hopes to make a simple hardened case for your full-size SLR and its attached lens.
Forum rules This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.
Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!
This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?X.Y. Academy?. Anything posted here will also show up there.
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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup. This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "X.Y. Academy"
You may edit this first post as you see fit.
Night guys. When this is bold, I'm probably tired and going to sleep/ have to get off. When it's not, well. Whatever. Status: Splitting headache and feeling hot. Too lazy to turn on AC; Will make tea.
I have a great respect for real musicians. You guys are wonderful.
Gay or European? It's hard to guar-an-tee. Is he Gay or European? Well, hey, don't look at me!
SunshinexDeath
Member for 0 years
Hey Sunny.
I WIN!
Anything you need me to do?
I am... to put it simply... Everything. Anything. You may happily pretend if you like, whatever you like. I can be the boy of your dreams or your best girl friend. I am that one chick that is not nearly as great as you but you hang around because you like the ego boost. I can be the guy who always stands off to one side and is great fun to talk to even though all his words are cryptic. I can listen. But please, don't stab me in the gut because the one thing I am for sure is human. And I can hurt.
pieluver
Member for 1 years
This looks fun :) not sure whether to go for a felon student or not, when filling out a CS thought, do we do the general first then add on the Felon if want to be a Felon or do we only fill out the felon CS??
HiddenNymph
Member for 0 years
@ Pie:
Hey! Um, yes. I'll talk to you over PM about some things, alright? But I do want you to start preparing a character. But not yet! Just get ideas! I still have things to do and edit.
@ Hidden:
If you want to be a Felon Student, do the General Information/Application first and then add the Felon Part. c:
SunshinexDeath
Member for 0 years
Okie-doke. I shall do that... Can I make two? As twinnehs? I don't know... I'm just in that kinda mood right now.
pieluver
Member for 1 years
@ Pie:
Sure. Make what you'd like. Like one as This and the other as This.
SunshinexDeath
Member for 0 years
yaaay. Ah, I must depart for the moment. Would you like me to hunt down a pic for next to the title thingie? I can reduce it too if you like. it'd probably get more people to see it so you can find the laddies and girlies that you want.
pieluver
Member for 1 years
@ pie:
You are heaven-sent darling. I would love that, thank you! I may have to leave soon as well. So bye!
SunshinexDeath
Member for 0 years
Looks cool! :D One problem: I've got three characters that would be great for this, but I can't choose between them. *facepalm* How many characters would I be allowed to submit?
SolrSurfr3
Member for 1 years
Return to Out of Character
Post a reply
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Contact: Lester Kok lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg 65-974-15593 Nanyang Technological University
An innovative microchip that is energy efficient was unveiled yesterday at Singapore's first international chip design competition.
The winner, a team from Institute of Microelectronics, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), was announced at the biennial International Symposium on Integrated Circuits (ISIC) 2011, one of the world's major conferences in the area of integrated circuits engineering, held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre from 12 to 14 December 2011.
The winning team had pulled ahead of 12 other finalists to clinch the top prize of $10,000. The two other silver award winners received $6,000 each, while seven bronze winners received $3,000. The finalists hail from six countries, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan. Leading semiconductor companies MediaTek and Infineon sponsored the prizes.
The team from Institute of Microelectronics, which had four NTU alumni out of 11 team members, were awarded the top prize because of their creative and innovative design. The team had designed an ultra-low-power wireless implantable blood flow sensing microsystem for vascular graft applications.
Team leader, Dr Xue Rui-Feng, said their chip is designed to provide sensor data on the blood flow in patients from within the body, which will instantly give doctors an early warning if the patient has abnormal blood flow, unlike current methods of testing which is time consuming and is only conducted during a clinic visit.
"It took us two years to develop this innovative technology, which has yet to be seen commercially in the market," said Dr Xue.
"The two unique features which we have implemented in our chip are the wireless transmission of data and the fact that it can be implanted into the human body."
"It is also non-invasive as it can be implanted in the patient at the same time as the vascular graft, such as during a heart bypass operation," Dr Xue said, adding that more work still needs to be done to turn it into a commercial product.
The team had beaten over 40 other project submissions from around the world. The works submitted for the competition will be published in the ISIC 2011 proceedings, which will be listed in IEEE Xplore, an impactful international digital library accessed by all the electrical & electronic engineers worldwide.
General Chair of the Symposium, Assoc Prof See Kye Yak from Nanyang Technological University, said, "Consumer electronics manufacturers face constant challenge to design portable products that last longer on smaller batteries, so highly efficient chips are becoming increasingly more important. This competition enables us to spur innovation in the microchip industry by encouraging designers to come up with better and faster chips that consume much less power.
Fostering expertise in energy efficient Integrated Circuits (IC) research is also crucial to the industry's future, as the electronics sector has a powerful role to play in promoting environmental sustainability.
"Having such a competition also positions Singapore as a leading IC research and development hub instead of just being an IC chip manufacturer," said the don from NTU's School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering.
"Promoting IC design activities in Singapore will lead to more intellectual property being developed, which will benefit Singapore in achieving its vision of a knowledge-based economy," he added.
NTU's Assoc Prof Chan Pak Kwong, the chairman of the judging panel comprising five academics and two industry experts, said they were looking for a team which scored best in five criteria: Originality/novelty, State-of-the-Art, Application Impact, Complexity and Integration, and Robustness and Reliability.
"As modern devices are becoming smaller, so have the microchips. There is a need for better compact circuits and systems integrated solutions to avoid unnecessary increase of system complexity, which causes the increase of power consumption as well as the resources needed during manufacturing," said Assoc Prof Chan.
"With the world's shift towards greener energy, electronics industries will have to adapt to using less power in a bid to do their part, to conserve dwindling natural resources and at the same time, increase operation time of devices using batteries and other alternative power sources or what is termed as a 'green chip'", he added.
One example of a "green chip" is the extremely low-powered Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader developed by the NTU team, which received a bronze award. RFID tags are commonly used in shops, tagged on products to deter theft, since the tag will sound off an alarm if it is brought out of the shop. Compared to existing commercial readers on the market, this new RFID reader uses 35 per cent less energy and yet is able to pick up weak signals from tags properly.
Such green technologies are in line with NTU's commitment to Sustainability, as it is one of NTU's Five Peaks of Excellence which the university aims to make its mark globally under NTU 2015 five year strategic plan. The other four peaks include future healthcare, new media, the best of the East and West, and innovation.
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. In 2013, NTU will enrol the first batch of students at its new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which is set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to four world-class autonomous institutes the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.
Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore's science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.
For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Lester Kok lesterkok@ntu.edu.sg 65-974-15593 Nanyang Technological University
An innovative microchip that is energy efficient was unveiled yesterday at Singapore's first international chip design competition.
The winner, a team from Institute of Microelectronics, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), was announced at the biennial International Symposium on Integrated Circuits (ISIC) 2011, one of the world's major conferences in the area of integrated circuits engineering, held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre from 12 to 14 December 2011.
The winning team had pulled ahead of 12 other finalists to clinch the top prize of $10,000. The two other silver award winners received $6,000 each, while seven bronze winners received $3,000. The finalists hail from six countries, including India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan. Leading semiconductor companies MediaTek and Infineon sponsored the prizes.
The team from Institute of Microelectronics, which had four NTU alumni out of 11 team members, were awarded the top prize because of their creative and innovative design. The team had designed an ultra-low-power wireless implantable blood flow sensing microsystem for vascular graft applications.
Team leader, Dr Xue Rui-Feng, said their chip is designed to provide sensor data on the blood flow in patients from within the body, which will instantly give doctors an early warning if the patient has abnormal blood flow, unlike current methods of testing which is time consuming and is only conducted during a clinic visit.
"It took us two years to develop this innovative technology, which has yet to be seen commercially in the market," said Dr Xue.
"The two unique features which we have implemented in our chip are the wireless transmission of data and the fact that it can be implanted into the human body."
"It is also non-invasive as it can be implanted in the patient at the same time as the vascular graft, such as during a heart bypass operation," Dr Xue said, adding that more work still needs to be done to turn it into a commercial product.
The team had beaten over 40 other project submissions from around the world. The works submitted for the competition will be published in the ISIC 2011 proceedings, which will be listed in IEEE Xplore, an impactful international digital library accessed by all the electrical & electronic engineers worldwide.
General Chair of the Symposium, Assoc Prof See Kye Yak from Nanyang Technological University, said, "Consumer electronics manufacturers face constant challenge to design portable products that last longer on smaller batteries, so highly efficient chips are becoming increasingly more important. This competition enables us to spur innovation in the microchip industry by encouraging designers to come up with better and faster chips that consume much less power.
Fostering expertise in energy efficient Integrated Circuits (IC) research is also crucial to the industry's future, as the electronics sector has a powerful role to play in promoting environmental sustainability.
"Having such a competition also positions Singapore as a leading IC research and development hub instead of just being an IC chip manufacturer," said the don from NTU's School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering.
"Promoting IC design activities in Singapore will lead to more intellectual property being developed, which will benefit Singapore in achieving its vision of a knowledge-based economy," he added.
NTU's Assoc Prof Chan Pak Kwong, the chairman of the judging panel comprising five academics and two industry experts, said they were looking for a team which scored best in five criteria: Originality/novelty, State-of-the-Art, Application Impact, Complexity and Integration, and Robustness and Reliability.
"As modern devices are becoming smaller, so have the microchips. There is a need for better compact circuits and systems integrated solutions to avoid unnecessary increase of system complexity, which causes the increase of power consumption as well as the resources needed during manufacturing," said Assoc Prof Chan.
"With the world's shift towards greener energy, electronics industries will have to adapt to using less power in a bid to do their part, to conserve dwindling natural resources and at the same time, increase operation time of devices using batteries and other alternative power sources or what is termed as a 'green chip'", he added.
One example of a "green chip" is the extremely low-powered Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader developed by the NTU team, which received a bronze award. RFID tags are commonly used in shops, tagged on products to deter theft, since the tag will sound off an alarm if it is brought out of the shop. Compared to existing commercial readers on the market, this new RFID reader uses 35 per cent less energy and yet is able to pick up weak signals from tags properly.
Such green technologies are in line with NTU's commitment to Sustainability, as it is one of NTU's Five Peaks of Excellence which the university aims to make its mark globally under NTU 2015 five year strategic plan. The other four peaks include future healthcare, new media, the best of the East and West, and innovation.
A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, and Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences. In 2013, NTU will enrol the first batch of students at its new medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which is set up jointly with Imperial College London.
NTU is also home to four world-class autonomous institutes the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).
A fast-growing university with an international outlook, NTU is putting its global stamp on Five Peaks of Excellence: Sustainable Earth, Future Healthcare, New Media, New Silk Road, and Innovation Asia.
Besides the main Yunnan Garden campus, NTU also has a satellite campus in Singapore's science and tech hub, one-north, and is setting up a third campus in Novena, Singapore's medical district.
For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
BEIJING ? If there were one place that is living proof that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 jumped the largest amount on record, it?s got to be the Middle Kingdom.
Emissions leapt 5.9 per cent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project.
And the world?s biggest emitter ?yes, China ? was a big contributor.? It pumped 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the air, compared to the 1.5 billion tons of carbon by the U.S.
On days like Monday ? and there have been way too many this year ? it feels like Beijing is the receptacle.
'Hazardous' days We?ve already written about it, but this time returning to the Chinese capital after a break, I found my hardy NBC News colleagues ordering air filter machines for their homes and air filter masks for cycling (to get around the traffic).
Adrienne Mong/NBC News
The NBC News Beijing bureau invests in air filter masks to combat the pollution.
Monday, while the @BeijingAir index ? which comes from an air quality monitor housed atop the U.S. embassy in Beijing ??tweeted hourly ?hazardous? readings all day, we took a peek at readings back home to see how levels of air pollution were faring across the Pacific.
Across a map of the United States, it was a depressing monochromatic ?green? color signifying ?good? quality air ? with only a few slashes of ?yellow,? meaning ?moderate.??
Bear in mind, according to the chart developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ?hazardous? is the highest alert level, which would trigger ?health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected,? according to the site.
There were no readings from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau?s (EPB) own air monitor until mid-afternoon Monday, when it acknowledged ?slight pollution.??
Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection suggested it was finally heeding growing concerns among Beijing residents? about air pollution.
The ministry said it would begin publishing measurements for the smallest particulate matter or PM2.5, also considered the most dangerous to human health because they?re tiny enough to enter the lungs and cause damage to the respiratory system.
Courtesy of Daxian/Weibo
"I thought I was looking at a mirage!" said a Weibo user by the name of Daxian after posting a photo from Beijing Monday morning.
On Thursday, however, the Beijing EPB emphatically announced PM2.5 readings for the city would not be made public.
A 'mirage' To add insult to health injury, officials have been quoted in local newspapers as saying they will set up a new air monitoring system for Beijing in ? Tianjin ? a metropolis?80 miles away from the capital.
Mind you, photos posted on the Shanghaiist blogsite suggest we in Beijing are not the only ones suffering.
(There?s been plenty of supporting visual evidence coming out of Beijing all day.? One user of Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, posted a photo of high-rises apparently floating above a cloud of pollution, calling it a ?mirage.?? And YouKu, a Chinese version of YouTube, posted a video of this morning?s commute.)
Soho property mogul Pan Shiyi, who led an online petition to get PM2.5 readings published by the EPB, has begun posting on his Weibo account screen shots from an iPhone app that compiles the U.S. embassy?s BeijingAir index.? ?
In the meantime, Chinese authorities are still determined to call the smog by any other name.
Flight after flight on the Beijing Capital International airport website was shown to be cancelled ? owing to ?fog.??A Xinhua news agency report described it as ?heavy fog.?
But an AFP report called it ?smog,? tallying the airport casualties: 213 domestic and 15 international cancelled flights.
See Shanghaiist for more photos of the smog in Beijing and China
Update: Since this posting, a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, quoted meteorological officials as saying the ?dense fog? enveloping Beijing and parts of the northeast will persist until Friday.?One official described it as a ?normal climate condition in Beijing.??Good thing we got our masks.
TOO HEAVY A HAND? As economic growth wanes, Beijing has begun easing tight credit policies meant to cool inflation but China's leaders are insisting there is no leeway for loosening curbs on the housing sector. There are concerns that the campaign to cool overheated housing prices may go too far.
EFFECTS ELSEWHERE: With growth heavily dependent on construction and related industries, the slowdown already is sapping demand for domestic and imported products and materials and dampening Chinese investors' interest in buying properties overseas.
REAL ESTATE REALITY: The curbs are just beginning to let some air out of the property bubble, the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily proclaimed that the "time for making easy money is over." Barclays Capital forecast that prices could drop by 30 percent before stabilizing once the government begins to ease the curbs it used to bring the market under control as prices shot out of reach of many city dwellers.
LILLEHAMMER, Norway (AP) ? American teenager Sarah Hendrickson won the first women's World Cup ski jump on the same Lillehammer hill used by the men in the 1994 Winter Olympics.
The 17-year-old Hendrickson jumped 95? meters Saturday, pushing French opponent Coline Mattel to second place.
Hendrickson, of Park City, Utah, scored 277 points, Mettel 247.7, and Melanie Faisst of Germany 245.5 for third.
"I held it together and I'm very happy," a smiling Hendrickson said after the race.
The competition was delayed by more than an hour because of the snowy and windy weather conditions, but Hendrickson said she wasn't affected by the extra wait.
"You just have to jump like you do always," she said. "You can't change anything ? stay strong and keep relaxed and hopefully it will come together."
World champion Daniela Iraschko of Austria was fourth.
Nearly 50 women from 15 countries took part, although American Lindsey Van ? who became the sport's first female world champion in 2009 ? missed the inaugural World Cup event because of a hip injury.
Beginning with the women's second-tier Continental Cup began seven years ago, the competition Saturday was another milestone in a long battle to get women's ski jumping recognized as an elite sport.
The sport was included on the Olympic program for the 2014 Sochi Games after the International Olympic Committee twice rejected it for the 2010 Vancouver program, arguing that it lacked elite competition.
In the men's event, Austria's Andreas Kofler won after setting a hill record with a leap of 105 meters in the first round. He jumped 98 meters in the second round, earning a total score of 279.3 points.
Germany's Richard Freitag was second with 273.3 points and Poland's Kamil Stoch came third.
Collaborative gifting startup Giftiki is its first mobile presence with a new iPhone App. Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to give their friends the perfect gift. And Giftiki leverages social ties and game mechanics to get users to contribute to the gifting process and add more money to the pool. Giftiki users can sign in via Facebook, which will automatically pull in friends and their birthdays. Givers choose a friend and decide on an amount to give. Giftiki now allows users to invite their friends to gift a specific individual. After selecting an amount to gift, wrapping, and sending a Giftiki, a pop up window will appear that shows the giver what friends they have in common with the individual they just gifted. Users can then choose friends and write a personal message that invites them to join and chip in. This message posts to Facebook allowing more people spread the love.
The last few times I've brought my camera out into the wilderness, I've had a few fears regarding its safety. Sure, a foam case will prevent the lens from getting scratched and so on, but what it is mauled by a bear, or we are attacked by werewolves? Most hard cases, like those from Pelican, are reliable but bulky, designed for air travel with multiple lenses, but not hiking or climbing and quick access. This Kickstarter project, the 
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Public release date: 14-Dec-2011
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