Electric bike: A New Generation of Family Vehicles that can Charge at the Speed of Light

By Jennifer Dlouhy | 09/26/2018 06:02:28The electric bike has been a favorite for some time now.

The electric vehicle has been embraced by many of the world’s largest automakers, including Tesla Motors and Nissan Motor, but it was also heralded by a group of Americans who have been pushing for electric vehicle adoption for years.

Now, a group called the Electric Vehicle Alliance is making strides toward reaching the goal of reaching 1 million electric vehicles in 2020.

And the group has been working to get its sights on the 2020 goal with the release of its 2020 goal document on Wednesday.

The 2020 goal is ambitious.

The goal is to have at least 100 million electric motorcycles, SUVs and minivans on the road by 2020, but even that goal is going to require a lot of work, and the group says the work to reach the 2020 milestone is not done.

“We will have to keep doing things to get to that goal,” said Dan Siegel, executive director of the group.

According to the 2020 2020 goal, the electric vehicle industry is projected to have revenues of $6.9 trillion by 2020.

This includes revenues from plug-in hybrids, electric motorcycles and the electric firestarter.

This number is up from $4.8 trillion in 2020 and $3.9 billion in 2020, the group said in a press release.

While there is much work to do to reach 2020, some of the biggest obstacles to the goal are not necessarily the biggest problems.

Siegel said there are many areas where the electric motorcycle industry can benefit from the work done by the electric car industry.

First, the cost of electric vehicle batteries and the price of electric batteries are significantly lower than gasoline vehicles.

This can mean that electric vehicle owners can buy batteries that are cheaper and have lower costs.

Second, electric vehicles can be purchased by consumers who want to reduce the environmental impact of their vehicles.

Third, electric vehicle manufacturers can develop new products that are better than gasoline-powered vehicles and that could lower the price, he said.

Fourth, there is a lot more room for the electric bicycle industry.

The industry has more resources and expertise in electric bike development and production than in electric vehicle development and manufacturing.

Fifth, there are a lot fewer environmental impacts associated with electric vehicle ownership than there are associated with gasoline vehicles, Siegel said.

The group’s 2020 2020 plan is a step forward for electric vehicles and the transition to electric vehicles, but Siegel warned that there are still a lot that needs to be done.

For example, he expects the electric bike industry will need to find ways to improve the performance of electric motorbikes.

Electric motorcycles and electric motorcycles need to make significant improvements in the way they operate, he added.


Business Management / Leadership

5 leadership myths that could be holding you back

Laura Dolan

Updated: May 26, 2020 · 5 min read

Toolkit for download in this article

leadership myths

There are many misconceptions on what constitutes a good leader: we picture someone who is outgoing, decisive, type A, maybe slightly intimidating. While these are great qualities for a leader to have, they could be the primary reasons why some people don’t seek leadership roles.

For those individuals whose personalities don’t quite fit the mold of a leader, they may miss out on some great opportunities for rewarding projects, promotions, higher salaries and a greater sense of accomplishment.

By identifying some common leadership myths and understanding what actually defines a good leader, it’s possible to change one’s perspective on how to obtain a leadership role and advance their career.

Myth No. 1: Position determines leadership

Leadership is not associated with a job description. Just because someone holds the title of CEO or Business Owner does not make them a true example of leadership. Did they have the wherewithal to make it to the top and become successful? Of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re approachable or even a good manager. They’re still capable of making a series of poor decisions that affect a company’s bottom line. True leadership stems from influence; a true leader is in the trenches with the rest of the company, not only imparting guidance, but doing their part to move the organization forward just as much as everyone else on the team. A leader isn’t watching their team from 50 feet up and monitoring from afar, they’re working beside everyone else and observing to see where they can be the most useful within their department. They’re filling the gaps and completing tasks in people’s absence to ensure the momentum of the company doesn’t stop.

Myth No. 2: Leadership is synonymous with management

Many managers are leaders, but sometimes, management does not good leadership make. A manager’s role is to maintain the processes and systems that ensure workflow is moving as it should. They’re checking boxes, making sure certain deadlines are met, managing hiring and firing–their primary job is to foresee that work gets done. Management is task-based, while leadership is more based on inspiration. A leader is more of a visionary, focused on the bigger picture. While many leaders do have certain management tasks in their job description, a successful leader whose role also happens to be a manager helps the people who work for them feel valued and supported. Their team members don’t just feel like cogs in a machine, the manager in this case helps them feel as if they’re all working toward a common goal. The infographic below is an accurate depiction of a manager, well, a boss in this case, versus a leader.

Image Source: Modern Servant Leader

Myth No. 3: Leadership cannot be taught

“Leaders are born, not made.” That expression could not be further from the truth. While it’s true that some people are just natural born leaders, most people develop their leadership skills by learning, observing and growing. They seek guidance and look to their mentors in certain situations. Someone who desires to be a leader has to pursue the role with patience, focus and insights from leadership experts. Many people who are already in leadership roles seek to improve by attending seminars, reading books on leadership training and going back to school to gain advanced degrees to further develop their skills and progress with the times. Successful companies constantly evolve and it’s up to the leaders to avoid stagnation and assume different roles that can help their teams and their strategies keep up with the industry changes and stay ahead of the competition by always seeking improvement.

Myth No. 4: Leaders must always be leading

Quite the contrary; leadership doesn’t mean becoming a workaholic. Leaders know how to balance their work and their personal lives. Many people actually avoid leadership roles because they’re often intimidated by the misconception that leaders need to be working around the clock: constantly focused, strategizing and refining their vision. Efficient leaders know their limits and know what they can demand from themselves without experiencing burnout. They make time to refuel and step back to relax and reflect. They also impart this wisdom onto their teams. Working yourself to the bone is counterproductive. Leaders understand that it’s important to let your mind clear and step away from something that could be causing a mental roadblock. Sometimes the best ideas happen when you’re not even thinking about work responsibilities.

Myth No. 5: Leaders must be extroverted

While it’s often the case that leaders tend to be more outgoing, it’s not always true. When comparing introverted versus extroverted, these terms are often used to describe how outgoing someone is or isn’t; extroversion being associated with gregarious, talkative and confident, while introversion being synonymous with shy or withdrawn.

These characteristics actually have more to do with how information is processed and less to do with behavior in social situations. Extroverts tend to talk things through and aren’t afraid to seek others’ guidance and input to reach conclusions in a more outwardly manner. Introverts, however, tend to process ideas and conflict inwardly, carefully considering their position more independently from others.

When it comes to leadership roles, extroverts tend to be more attracted to those responsibilities due to their eagerness to engage with their team and other colleagues to plan, strategize and solve problems. Whereas, many successful leaders are also introverts, as they tend to lead on instinct and have a good sense of what is best for the team and the company in different situations. If something is amiss, they have a calming way of informing their team while still formulating a reasonable solution that will help move the company forward.

The takeaway

No one should feel they’re not cut out to be a leader. Pragmatically speaking, it would be ideal to know what would be best for the company depending on which industry you’re working in, but it’s also important to know what it takes to inspire a team, have trust in them, have the ability to generate enthusiasm and excitement for how the team is performing and always inform them on where the company is headed. Leaders should never rest on their laurels, they must always be seeking improvement and a willingness to grow in their environment in an effort to stay relevant and respected.

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References of "Bankers, Markets, Investors [=BMI]"
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Peer Reviewed
See detailThe fund Synthetic Index : An alternative benchmark for mutual funds
Terraza, Virginie UL; Razafitombo, Hery

in Bankers, Markets, Investors [=BMI] (2011), 114

Evaluation of the performance of investment funds is a topic of considerable interest to practitioners and academic researchers. Performance indicators of fi nancial places have for long posed interesting ... [more ▼]

Evaluation of the performance of investment funds is a topic of considerable interest to practitioners and academic researchers. Performance indicators of fi nancial places have for long posed interesting challenges with regards to funds investors, but also to legal regulators authorities. The two major issues that need to be addressed in any performance study are how to choose an appropriate benchmark for comparison and how to adjust a fund’s return for risk. Indeed, investors desire information about representative market indexes as a norm to evaluate the performance of their portfolios. MSCI Indexes are frequently used by institutional investors around the world as benchmarks to decide allocation of funds across asset classes and regions. Despite this wide acceptance, MSCI country index has in its original application a number of drawbacks and limitations. The main problems can be traced to the presence of usual biases, such as sampling, survivorship and instant history biases (Fung and Shieh, 2002), involving problems into the aggregation procedure. Thus, one can explain why certain fi nancial places are less representative, specifi cally for funds distribution places. Some results also indicate problems related to misclassifi cation in mutual funds (Sharpe, 1992). Each of these phenomena can have a signifi cant impact on international diversifi cation for fund managers. Based on these empirical fi ndings, Ferreira, Miguel and Ramos (2007) examine cross-country mutual fund performance using several alternative benchmark models including a domestic and an international version of the Carhart (1997) four-factor model. Using multiple regressions, they obtain signifi cant determinants explaining funds performance, like the funds size, the fees, the management style… . In this article, we contribute to the existing discussion on alternative benchmarks to compare fi nancial places, by conducting an analysis on funds time variation structure. Contrary to previous literature, we propose to use directly the information contained in the NAV to extract performance characteristics of funds. Then, each domiciliation place is compared by constructing a fund synthetic index that will capture the time structure of mutual fund performance. Usual statistical approach consists to estimate fi nancial returns of each fund in each country, which involves dealing with huge data sets that may cause the calculation processes to become slow and cumbersome and the results diffi cult to be interpreted and used in further applications. To reduce data sets, and give conclusions for each fi nancial place, indicators of the mean of fund’s returns can be used. Then one can identify classes of domicile funds that are subject to common properties. But this classical approach, gives only approximate results because it is based on an aggregation of average performance and risk and a boxplot statistical format. The construction of fund synthetic portfolio avoids this issue. First, it avoids the logic of representativity through market capitalization that is often diffi cult to apply to the mutual fund universe. Second, it is based on factor analysis techniques to generate indexes that are able to capture a very large fraction of the information. More precisely, it permits to take into account the common properties of fund returns relative to their domicile while keeping the maximum of information given by the original data. Indeed, it may be very useful to use a transformation to form a simplifi ed data set retaining the characteristics of the original data set. Principal component analysis, abbreviated as PCA, is a method of statistical analysis useful in data reduction and interpretation of multivariate data sets by identifying factors of common behavior such that not much of the contained information is lost. In our context, we use this method to derive portfolio weights in order to construct a synthetic portfolio of each fi nancial place. For that, we propose to replace the matrix of returns and to derive an index which keeps the global representation of each fi nancial place. [less ▲]

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And Now… Dynamic Data!

You may remember a while back that I blogged about how Orbital thinks of research data, using our “Smarties not tubes” approach. We then went away for a bit, and in our first functional release included a way of storing your tubes, but nothing about the Smarties. This understandably caused some confusion amongst those who had paid close attention to our poster and were expecting a bit more than a file uploader.

The reason behind this seeming disconnect in our plans was simple: a researcher had a bunch of files they wanted to publish through Orbital, and it made a lot more sense to build something that would let them do what they wanted straight out of the gate rather than devote our efforts to breaking up their nice datasets again and storing individual bits and pieces. Fortunately, our next functional release is planned to include our magical Smarty storage system. Here’s a quick overview.

Dynamic Data (as we’re calling it) uses a document storage database to keep tabs on individual data points within a research project. It’s designed specifically so that you can fill it up with fine-grained information as individual records rather than storing a single monolithic file. We think this is the best way to go about storing and managing research data during the lifetime of a research project for a few reasons:

  • It’s easier to find relevant stuff. Instead of trying to remember if the data you were looking for was in 2011-Nov-15_04_v2.xls or 2011-Nov-15_04_v3.xls you can instead just search the Dynamic Dataset.
  • It’s an awful lot easier for us to ensure a Dynamic Dataset is stored reliably than a bunch of files, due to databases’ tendencies to have good replication and resiliency options.
  • We can scale for storing individual files up to a few tens of gigabytes per file at most before things start to get silly, although we can store a lot of files at that size. We can scale a single Dynamic Dataset until we run out of resources.
  • Data can be reproduced in a number of standard ways from a single source. The same source can easily be turned into a CSV, or XML document, or JSON, or any other format we can write a structured description for.
  • With a little work, data can be reproduced in a number of non-standard ways from a single source. Templating engines can allow researchers to describe their own output formats.
  • Data can be interfaced with at a much more ‘raw’ level with only basic programming skills. Equipment such as sensors can automatically load data to a Dynamic Dataset, survey responses can be captured automatically and more. Data can be retrieved and analysed in the same way, for example scheduling analysis of a week’s worth of data.

The data in release v0.2 is manipulated purely at an API level through Orbital Core, although upcoming versions will have cool ways of manually entering and querying the data through the web interface. Data is then quickly processed to add things like tracking metadata (upload time etc) and shovelled off to our storage cluster of MongoDB servers.


Bernie Madoff's greed

Topics: Bernie Madoff

A Ponzi scheme in its purest form can be defined as a fraudulent scam that promises investors high returns with little risk. (Merriam-Webster,’2018) Ponzi schemes naturally require an endless supply of willing participants investing money for a specific purpose. To encourage the thought of success for investors, they are promised things that are highly unlikely to be acquired. However, with so much falsified information and little truth, it is easy to be manipulated. There is a sequence of law and order that must take place to ensure these schemes are hard to detect.

The newer investors are paid off with funds collected by old investors rather than funds that should be coming in from the projects the investors have invested in. Seemingly newer investors are satisfied due to their income of money, however, when the supply of investors dries up or an economic crash takes place the older investors lose their funds previously obtained by whichever company. The funds contributed to whichever company is being utilized fraudulently.

The person or people responsible for Ponzi Schemes are using these funds for personal gain and enjoyment as they rendezvous with money that should have been devoted to the project. One of the greatest examples of this horrific white-collar crime would be that of Bernard L. Madoff. Bernard, informally referred to as Bernie, was the former chairman of NASDAQ as well as the founder of a Wall Street firm formally known as Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. This crime was and is still currently deemed the most horrific and largest Ponzi scheme in history.

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That is what certifies this scam as a phenomenon. This elaborate scheme began in the early 1970s, lasted for about 38-40 years, and resulted in the loss of an estimated 50 billion to 65 billion. With such a disaster that took place within so many lives, precautions have been set in place to decipher when a scam is possibly taking place. In essence, Bernie paved the way for serious changes within workforces similar to his to be made due to his tarnished work ethic.

Part 1

The white-collar crime that took place was in the form of a Ponzi scheme. This particular crime can be distinguished in multiple different ways. It can also be managed in multiple different ways. Nonetheless, the outcome of complete and utter devastation remains the same. To better understand all that derives from a Ponzi scheme, it is vital to consider the history of this crime. The Ponzi scheme is named after Charles Ponzi who conned countless people out of their money in the early 1900s. “Ponzi’s bait to lure in investors was the idea that postal coupons purchased in Europe could be redeemed in America for six times their value, because of the difference in currency values (Zuckoff, 2005).” He promised returns and stayed true to his word until the funds ran out. Had the funds been properly handled instead of knowingly mistreated, the funds would have never evaporated. Ponzi schemes are so easy to get intertwined with because they “may be able to deliver a high rate of return to a few early investors for a short period (Valentine, 1998).” A Ponzi scheme, in essence, deceives investors with fabricated lies of high returns due to the project, firm, business, etc.. they are investing in when in reality they are taking from Greg to pay Gavin. They are simply paying new investors with old investors’ money. This concept ensures a constant money flow to be utilized in whatever way the con artists see fit. Bernie Madoff perfected the Ponzi scheme to the degree of 50-65 billion dollars. Bernie Madoff was so successful with his scam because of the cleverness linked to this crime. The way he conducted his firm revealed little to no error, therefore his ability to retrieve investors was not a hassle. “Madoff took in client assets, transferred client money to his accounts, and mailed out fictitious account statements to hide the ruse. Then, when clients withdrew funds, he used recently acquired capital from other investors to pay out redemptions (Rimkus, 2017).” Madoff was able to operate a Ponzi scheme due to his very intricate and detailed art of deception. He created a set of professional portfolios that lured in his victims. He also chose a specific clientele to work with and his standards would not lower. “By catering to an exclusive clientele, one that had to be both super-rich and selected by him, Madoff drove up the demand for his services through their scarcity (Petsko, 2009).” Aiming to integrate a specific clientele improved his reach and connections with other potential investors. Although the return on investing with Madoff was seemingly small it was intricately explained and large enough to gain the attention of extremely wealthy and prominent individuals. Madoff with his wit and charm and extensive utilization of manipulation was able to maintain his company without error for 40 years. His wide scope of knowledge in this field particularly enhanced his skills to scam investors. The offender, in this case, is Bernie Madoff. One man caused thousands, who were intertwined with his firm, to their unimaginable downfall. Some of the victims, in this case, were well-known, while others were not. However, one aspect they all shared was their filled-to-the-brim bank accounts. Some of these people include Steven Spielberg, the owners of the New York Mets, as well as various actors one being Kevin Bacon. Carl Shapiro, a well-known entrepreneur, lost out on more than 400 million dollars personally and through his foundation both invested in Madoff’s firm. Thousands of other outrageously wealthy singular individuals were defrauded as well. Organizations and charity funds that invested with Madoff such as The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost out on over 15 million dollars. Even NYU claimed to have lost 24,000,000$ invested through a third party. You can only imagine how this substantial loss affected programs within extracurricular activities and educational endeavors this university previously provided but could no longer fund. Individuals, consumers, and charities are not the only ones who were affected immensely. Banks that invested in Madoff’s firm ruined the comfort and security people felt using them. The trust was shattered. “In many cases, schemes affect the daily operations of banks and taint the banking industry’s overall reputation for safety and soundness (Valentine, 1998).” Analyzation shows how schemes injure the entire idea of banking. This is unfortunate for regular people and the foundation of banks. His schemes faithfully plague anyone associated unknowingly and will continue to do so.

Part 2

Ponzi schemes, similar to Madoff’s are not only highly unethical within the workplace and extremely immoral they are also classified as a white-collar crime that encourages the arrest and convictions of those involved. A white-collar crime is synonymous with a nonviolent crime that is traditionally motivated by financial greed committed by members of the government or business professionals. There are different levels of laws that are breached due to Ponzi schemes. To begin with, many investors insist on crafting up a contract in hopes of a mutual law-abiding agreement that “guarantees,” security. Many investors view this method as a way to ensure they are legally secure should something unforeseen occur. However, the entirety of a Ponzi scheme is built on deception therefore signing a contract does not seem like a significant factor considering the grand scheme of things. Contracts are violated and the entire premise of agreement between the investors and the scammers is now insufficient. With many laws violated due to Ponzi schemes, law enforcement agencies have partnered together. They have created an alliance as an attempt to dismantle any business that is exemplifying signs of fraud. Typically state officials will file suit against Ponzi scheme scammers, however, these crimes tend to go beyond local police to the headquarters of these law enforcement agencies. Both the Federal Trade Commission and The Securities and Exchange Commission work as a team to eliminate any organizations that display fraudulent activity. The SEC can utilize its resources to put a temporary hold on any suspected fraudulent activity in businesses. “The Securities and Exchange Commission also pursues these schemes, obtain injunctions against so-called ‘financial distribution networks’ (Valentine, 1998).” Not only are these steps taken but further action is introduced once there is enough evidence to pursue a criminal case. Once this occurs other federal agencies collaborate to serve justice. “The U.S. Department of Justice, in collaboration with investigative agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, prosecutes pyramid schemes (Valentine, 1998).” If we consider the amount of fraud, security issues, and money laundering that takes place it would seem practical for large agencies previously mentioned to try and rectify the problem. With the help of multiple different agencies, the SEC can formally begin a lawsuit. “After a Ponzi scheme is discovered by government regulators, the SEC files a lawsuit against the Ponzi perpetrator, (Jory & Perry).” Investments require a sense of security and honesty rather than deliberate fraud. Ponzi schemes invite all different forms of money discrepancies without any regard for those investing. The intentions are strictly egregious but the steps are taken to enable such a scheme are extremely illegal. Madoff’s firm undoubtedly indicated fraud. Once fraudulent activity within Madoff’s firm was confirmed his consequences were consistent with the consequences given by the government in cases such as his. Madoff’s demolition of his company began after he expressed to his sons, who were not aware of the scheme, that the foundation of his company was indeed a Ponzi scheme that mishandled billions of dollars. “According to data compiled by Investment News… Madoff’s scheme alone cost thousands of investors nearly $65 billion (Sullivan, 2010).” With such a life-altering set of news, his sons turned him into the FBI the very next day, and thus his criminal case began. On December 11, 2008, he was arrested and charged with securities fraud alongside other charges. He was released on a 10 million dollar bail. Shortly after a federal court order froze all of his assets. He has not considered a flight risk therefore several attempts to jail him were unsuccessful. However, he was placed on house arrest on December 17, 2008. After long months of gaining extensive information regarding his company and the scheme therein, he received a staggering sentence. He plead guilty to 11 felony charges which were charges of money laundering, fraud, and perjury. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison as well as having to pay back millions of dollars in restitution to his victims. Not only was he personally affected, but his family also suffered mounds of pain due to his professional incompetence. Both of his sons, his brother, and his niece who all worked at his firm were hit with a lawsuit of 199 million dollars simply based on their rank within the firm. As for the victims, billions of dollars in funds were recovered. Not nearly as much money invested has been recovered due to Madoff’s lavish spending, however, the US government set up an account in 2013 to distribute funds to his victims. Some restitution has been made and there has been excellent support for the victims who were undoubtedly destroyed by this scheme.

Part 3

Bernie Madoff is allegedly single-handedly responsible for one of, if not the most devastating Ponzi schemes in American history. With the amount of destruction that occurred, many people believe it to be nearly impossible that the presence of a scheme was not discerned.

Bernie mentioned himself that there was absolutely no way investors could not believe there was not some form of fraudulent activity going on. For the general mind, it may be more difficult to comprehend the entirety of his case or the extent of damage that occurred. However, criminological theories have been utilized as the reference of a reference to enhance the knowledge already known regarding Bernie Madoff’s 40-yea scam. These theorists also explain how this crime could have possibly occurred for such an extended period. Criminological theorists tend to examine cases by beginning at the root of the individual. They start examining the childhood of the person in hopes of finding some sort of understanding. Mark Colvin’s theory of Differential Coercion insists that there is a relative relationship between coercion and a high probability that they will create a crime. Coercion is simply something in a person that causes negative actions to occur because of fear, anger,  differential, and anxiety. DifferentialThe differential in this specific theory simply means the variation in the consistency of those negative exposures. Mark Colvin insists that the higher level of coercion the more likely the individual will develop social skills outside of the norm as well as deficits within their character and decision-making skills which ultimately leads to chronic criminal activity. Colvin theorizes that those who interact with social contexts will develop certain characteristics. “An individual reacting with them(social contexts) is more likely to develop coercive ideation and thus a greater propensity for chronic criminal behavior (Colvin, pg. 116).” Relating this theory to Bernie Madoff’s upbringing could help others better understand his ruthlessness as he crafted his firm on the foundation of a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff was not raised in a wealthy environment which is what may have prompted him the desire to gain a massive amount of funds. His parents could hardly afford the bare necessities. His home life was nothing short of unstable and his financial situation growing up equates to being without much. Mark Colvin’s theory of Differential Coercion implies that criminal behavior, such as fraud and money laundering, is a direct cause of coercion. Many will agree that the life and environment Madoff grew up in aided his desire to become wealthy no matter the cost. This assumption alongside Colvin’s theory possibly explains what led to such chronic criminal activity. The Rational Choice Theory of decision-making has been used as a way to process the decision-making skills of a criminal since the 18th century. The Rational Choice Theory suggests that people base choices on what supports their best interests. This theory indicates that even in an event regarding crime the potential risks are weighed heavily against the potential consequences. Whichever yields better results regarding the individuaindividual’sls self-interest will be utilized. This theory indicates complete rationalization in any situation, criminally or not. This theory suggests there was a significant amount of reasoning that took place when Madoff decided to create a firm that scammed billions of dollars out of people. “In rational choice theory, individuals are seen as motivated by the wants or goals that express their preferences (Scott, 127).” The framework used in his decision-making and to begin this firm embodied an extensive amount of benefits thus making this Ponzi scheme worth it. The motivation linked to the creation of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and a crime would be the elimination of poverty and integration of wealth. There is a direct connection between his intense desire to eradicate any form of living without what he enjoys and loves that aided his ability to create such a scheme. The rationalization that took place, the calculation of benefits, consequences, and costs all resulted in a choice to create a firm that was a Ponzi scheme in disguise. To Madoff, the pros outweighed the cons, and his desires regarding g his self-interests would be ultimately fulfilled despite the consequences. Both theories suggest the lasting effects that lingered with Bernie and trickled into his adulthood from his childhood could explain how and why this crime occurred.

Part 4

There is absolutely no doubt that Ponzi schemes and all other derivatives of white-collar crimes result in catastrophe. After the Madoff scheme efforts of extensive proportions have been made. The Security and Exchange Commission(SEC) is geared towards rtowardegulating and enforcing security concerns (Merriam-Webster). The SE has made some specific changes in hopes of rectifying current schemes and eliminating schemes before they begin. It is understood that the SEC “implemented a system to track and handle complaints, encourage cooperation of “insiders”, adopt rules that protect clients of investment advisors from theft, and adopt rules for enhanced protection of clients’ assets (Kfir, 2018).” With such great implementation from the SECNowell, there are other ways to avoid such scams from occurring again, but precautions must take place. There are roles set in stone to diminish such schemes from prevailing. There is the role of the individual or group that is interested in investing. They need to research as much as possible before even thinking of engaging in such a high leveled business endeavor. They must collectively take the time to examine the business and the paperwork as well as any portfolios that may be presented to them. It is also crucial not to get blinded by any relationship created as a result of business-orientedisand oriented plans. Madoff succeeded so long because of the long-lasting relationships he created with people who couldn’t possibly believe they were fooled in such a deliberate way. There is also the role of the specific agencies created such as “the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (,” that investigate and prosecute. The FBI in particular is one of the well knowell-known federal agencies that gear their attention specifically on corporate fraud. As a result “The FBI’s white-collar crime work integrates the analysis of intelligence with its investigations of criminal activities(,” to eliminate white- collar white-collar crime and restitute something for this kind of victim kindprioritiesnd of measures to control this crime from happening. After large Ponzi schemes have occurred these partnerships built between federal agencies were extremely specific changes that happened. Corporate fraud has been deemed one of the highest criminal prifororities to these agencies and continues to reign supreme. This is because of the amount of financial devastation that occurs that interrupts the well-being of people as well as destroys organizations and even charities that have devoted their existence to great causes. The immoral and unethical behavior of someone who willingly and knowingly participates in white-collar, crimes causes significant loss but also ignited a fire for justice within governmental agencies. With the discretion implemented by investors and the educational steps taken by investors generally, this crime will not occur so often. With the immense dedication and defense of victims by the government, the specific changes that have occurred have decreased the likelihood of this crime occurring at such a high peak.

Madoff was a clear renegade with his betrayal and unorthodox business ways. His hunger for power and lust for greed resulted in catastrophic changes within businesses like his own. There are more security measures now as well as organizations who are designated to uprootinguproot businesses with any sign of fraudulent activity. A plethora of people suffer to this day consequently because of the damages this Ponzi scheme enabled, encouraged, and executed.

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Variants in GH, IGF1, and LEP genes associated with body traits in Santa Inês sheep

Machado, Alessandro Lima; Meira, Ariana Nascimento; Jucá, Adriana de Farias; Azevedo, Hymerson Costa; Muniz, Evandro Neves; Coutinho, Luiz Lehmann; Mourão, Gerson Barreto; Pedrosa, Victor Breno; Pinto, Luís Fernando Batista.
Sci. agric.; 78(3): e20190216, 2021. tab, graf
Artigo em Inglês | VETINDEX | ID: vti-27076

Growth hormone (GH), insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), and leptin (LEP) can be candidate genes for association studies because they play vital roles in the metabolism process. Thus, this study aimed to identify variants in these genes associated with body traits in Santa Inês sheep. The following were recorded: body weight at 100 (BW100) and 240 days (BW240), average daily gain (ADG), withers (WH) and croup (CH) heights, body length (BL), thoracic (TG) and leg (LG) girths, thoracic (TW) and croup (CW) widths, body depth (BD), rib eye area (REA), fat thickness (FT), and carcass finishing score (CFS). Single-locus association analysis was performed with 11 variants in IGF1, 18 in LEP, and 16 in GH. Moreover, two haplotypes in IGF1 and one haplotype in LEP were evaluated in haplotype association analysis. The single-locus analysis revealed 23 suggestive additive effects (p < 0.05), but no additive effect was found at the Bonferroni threshold. Haplotype association analysis revealed 19 additive effects, of which ten were at the Bonferroni threshold (p < 0.0074). In IGF1 gene, haplotype replacements were associated with ADG 20.51(7.37), CH 4.09(1.21), WH 3.52(1.20), BL 3.94(1.19), TG 3.88(1.30), TW 1.13(0.36), and LG 3.40(1.08); while in the LEP gene the haplotype replacement was associated with BW100 1.83(0.51), BD −2.51(0.56), and CFS −0.24(0.06). Therefore, there are haplotypes in IGF1 and LEP genes associated with body traits in Santa Inês sheep, which can be useful in marker-assisted selection.(AU)
Biblioteca responsável: BR68.1
Localização: BR68.1


Rejecting Assimilation

The words assimilation, integration, and acculturation are often used interchangeably but they mean different things. Assimilation suggests giving up your culture to fit in with the people around you, whereas integration is a process in which people from different groups become more alike, and acculturation is the process of learning the rules of society. In her book, “You Sound Like a White Girl,” Author Julissa Arce spoke to ABC News about what it lost when people are forced to give up their identities to fit in.

Teaching Ideas:

The ideas in this interview speak to three questions from the Re-Imagining Migration Learning Arc:

  • How might the environment in the new land help or hinder newcomers’ inclusion?

You might begin a lesson exploring the ways that one’s surroundings shape the way people act. Consider asking students to reflect in writing about a time when they feel like the group/culture around them shaped their behavior. You might pair students up to share stores if there is a sense of community in the classroom.

To probe further, ask students to reflect further. Are there times when that pressure from the outside shapes behavior in a positive way? Are there times when that pressure has a negative impact?

Introduce the concepts of integration and assimilation and then have students examine the word cloud. It includes words associated with assimilation.  Ask students what they noticed about the words (and their tone) and how it shapes their understanding of the meaning of assimilation. What words might they have included?

Introduce the interview and use the connect-extend-challenge Project Zero to probe these issues further. This is a great way to promote perspective-taking skills.

You might wrap up the lesson with a reflection on the significance of these issues. Why do they matter? We like to use the Three Whys thinking routine to reinforce habits of inquiry.


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Model is 5'8” and wearing a Small/Medium size

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What is a good font size for a Bible?

What is considered large print for a Bible?

Large print is generally 16 to 18 point size.

Is font size 10 too small for a book?

For most books, a font size between 10 and 12 is generally used for fiction and non-fiction printed books. Basic recommendations for font selection: Fiction, memoirs, and (auto)biographies: A classic serif font that is easy to read is the safest choice.

What is an acceptable font size?

The standard font size for resumes is 12 points in a classic and easily readable font. Larger fonts are good for emphasizing your name and section headings. If you can’t fit your content on one page you could try using a sans-serif font at 10 points, but that’s the minimum font size you should use.

What size is a personal Bible?

Size: 5.375″ x 8.375″

Is size 8 font readable?

An easily legible font size for longer body text as used in magazines and books usually ranges between 8 and 12 points.

What is 10 point print size?

Comparison table

IMPORTANT:  What is the second story of creation in the Bible?
Point Metric size American system
8 ≈ 2.822 mm Brevier
9 ≈ 3.175 mm Bourgeois
10 ≈ 3.528 mm Long Primer

What is the average font size for a book?

What is the average font for a book?

What is the typical font for a book?

Is 12 the standard font size?

Is size 11 font too small?

What is normal font?

A regular font has no special treatments, such as italic or oblique, thin or bold. It is also not a stylized font, for example, Blackletter or Adventure. Stick with a serif font like Times Roman, or a popular sans-serif font such as Helvetica.

IMPORTANT:  Your question: Where is Rama in the Bible?

What size font is the ESV Study Bible?

The ESV Study Bible comes complete with a large library of multiple study tools including extensive charts, in-text maps, graphs, notes, and articles. It is created with 30 GSM paper with a lexicon 9/10 font.

What is a Large Print Compact bible?


Nathan tried to nap in his room. The others slept. Nathan wished he had an Ambien. He imagined the discreet white disk of one, then, failing to sleep, took out his MacBook and began to stream an Éric Rohmer film he had misremembered as being set in the Mediterranean but, watching, realized was set on the beaches of France’s other side. Somewhere between the protagonist being filled with longing and the protagonist being filled with more longing, Nathan opened Grindr.

He saw someone else from the house, blocked them, turned over on the bed, and browsed, each square on the screen a different body, each one tens of kilometers away.


Magnus Lygdbäck, a trainer in Hollywood who has worked with the likes of Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot to develop physiques for their roles as Batman and Wonder Woman, has revealed his process for turning Big Little Lies star Alexander Skarsgård into the hulking protagonist of the new Robert Eggers film The Northman.

Lydgbäck shared some of his own recommendations for dieting, which include avoiding peanuts and eating mashed potatoes too, and got into how Skarsgård handled the extremely intensive training. Lydbäck said that developing an actor’s transformation can be seen as “three different cycles,” he told Entnment Weekly.

Actors will first have to “bulk-up,” or put as much muscle as possible on without worrying about fat, and then Lydgbäck puts them through a “cutting cycle where you try to shed all the fat that needs to be shredded while keeping the muscle mass.” Actors then have to maintain that specific look through the whole filming period, which he calls the “maintenance cycle,” and refers to it as the “hardest” area.

Even though the actor began the program “skinny” and gained “between 20 and 30 pounds for this,” Lydgbäck praised him as “a dream client.” He said that the actor was always “focused” on whatever exercise had to do and joked “I think he just loves the process. Or sometimes he hates the process, but he knows it’s going to be worth it.”

The trainer even had a unique hand in Skarsgård’s actual performance. Lydgbåck’s role wasn’t just in preparation for the shoot, and he mentioned that he was also available on the film’s set to assist Skarsgård in developing his body language for the character of Amleth. “I do movement coaching and worked with him,” Lydgbåck began. “An actor can give you 200 emotions, but I can tell him to give more depth in the back, so your rhomboid pop out more. Or rotate forward so your trapezius pops out so you look more animal-like.”

Lydgbåck is still learning new tricks, however. When asked about the soundtracks for their workouts before and during The Northman filming, he said, “We were listening to a lot of old-school electronic music from the ’80s, and also an Italian disco genre called Italo.” The trainer admitted he hadn’t heard of Italo before, but said the “cheesy, cool, electronic music,” ended up being perfect to have on in the gym.

You can watch the second trailer for The Northman, which was released in Theaters on April 22, 2022, here:

Read more about:


Volsec Security installs CCTV to areas you need constant monitoring. CCTV systems may operate continuously or only as required to monitor a particular event.

Access control: refers to security features that control who can access-it can be entry to offices, access to a building or where an employer wants to pay their workers according to hours worked and who want to track staff movements. This is a reliable system that can show time spent in the work place by the employee. Volsec Security does offer suitable products that would match your specific requirements.

Alarm installation differs from one premise to another. Because of that we recommend a detailed site assessment by our well trained technicians to access the area before giving out a quotation. We offer state of the art alarm systems for domestic and complex industrial sites.


Prevent is part of the Government’s counter terrorism strategy. Its aim is to stop more people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism in all its forms.


Is gaoled a Scrabble word?

Yes, gaoled is a Scrabble word!

Gaoled is a valid Scrabble word.

Table of Contents

Dictionary definition of the word gaoled

The meaning of gaoled

1 definition of the word gaoled.

  1. Lock up or confine, in or as in a jail

What Scrabble words can I make with the letters in gaoled?

6 Letter Words

5 Letter Words

2 Letter Words

1 Anagram of Gaoled

Anagrams are sometimes called a Word Unscramble

Words that can be created with an extra letter added to gaoled:

Unscramble the letters in gaoled

There are 4 words that can be made by adding another letter to 'gaoled'.

More words that can be made using the letters in gaoled


Buffering methods on local microcontrollers need to become robust
Life Sciences | 8 min READ
This article was originally published in Voice&Data - Source link
Voice&Data logo
The medical device industry is witnessing high levels of growth due to increasing demand at hospitals, medical and surgical centers. Rapid adoption of high-end medical devices across hospitals are driving the global medical devices market.
Dr. Sharada Rao
Dr. Sharada Rao

Vertical Head - Delivery

Life Sciences

Fortune Business Insights predicts that hospitals, medical and surgical centers will remain dominant and find greater use in the coming years.
Increasing expenditure on healthcare and expansion of healthcare infrastructure, especially in emerging nations are anticipated to drive this segment during 2021-2025. The medical device market is projected to expand at a CAGR of > 5.4% by 2025 and is likely to reach USD612.7 billion by 2025.
In-vitro diagnostics help in the testing of diseases such as malaria, diabetes, cancer, STDs, and AIDS/HIV. These devices provide accurate information, a key factor fueling their demand worldwide. In-vitro diagnostics has piqued in interest and has potential to dominate the medical devices market.
Trends in Medical Devices Industry
V&D Gold Book feat. Dr. Sharada Rao
Telehealth: COVID-19 has greatly accelerated the use of telehealth resources. In April of 2020, 43.5% of medicare primary care visits in the United States, utilized telehealth methods rather than in-person visits. One of the major benefits of telehealth over in-person alternatives is that it reduces contact between patients, healthcare workers, and other patients. Wearable devices enable healthcare workers to have real-time information on patient data while they remain at home.
More importantly, the growth of telehealth appears likely to continue even after the pandemic is over. Over 71% of patients in the United States considered telemedicine at the beginning of the pandemic, and 50% had already utilized virtual appointments. With telehealth already rising in popularity in the previous year, the pandemic was a major boost to the industry’s development. With this boom, telehealth is likely to touch to USD185.6 billion by 2026.
The growth and evolution of voice, data, and communications technologies have impacted telemedicine in a big way and telehealth solution clearly has a strong future. The most robust telehealth services are provided through telemedicine apps.
Apps on devices with feature rich pathways, ease of user experience and versatility in communication management are core to patient adoption.
When building a telemedicine app, it’s critical to plan for security, location services, appointment management, video/audio communication, secure messaging, healthcare provider reviews, visit history, and wireless testing through wearable integration.
Vaccine discovery, AI, and data: Vaccine development underwent a massive transformation in terms of industry collaboration in R&D, time to discover target molecule, rapid prototyping, pre-clinical and clinical trials using artificial intelligence (AI) and launch within a year’s This was totally the Pearl Harbor of drug discovery, wherein necessity introduced a whole new model of rapid drug discovery; and every entity including the regulatory bodies complied with the need to overcome the pandemic.
AI also plays a critical role in the fight against COVID-19, including areas like pandemic detection, vaccine development, thermal screening, facial recognition with masks, and analyzing CT scans. Data management, AI, and machine learning (ML) algorithms scan over 100,000 media sources worldwide in over 65 different languages daily to ascertain dangerous outbreaks in nearly real time.
To predict the risk of a disease becoming a pandemic, several threat vectors are analyzed. These include insect and animal populations, global and regional climate conditions, flight data and itineraries worldwide, capacity of health systems, and vaccine development.
When developing new vaccines, the goal is to include strongly immunogenic viral components that cause a response from the immune system. Machine learning has enabled great strides in immunology. AI can help identify viral fragments that have the properties needed to accomplish these goals, while ML enables advancements that humans would not be able to achieve otherwise.
The precision, efficiency, and speed of these developments cannot be achieved with human work alone. With machine assistance, immunologists have identified over one million fragments of proteins on a cell’s surface that are discoverable by T-cells. Thanks to ML, COVID-19 vaccine development has been implemented worldwide.
Stay Ahead
Visit our Life Sciences & Healthcare page
The internet of medical things (IoMT): Various devices and mobile apps have come to play a critical role in tracking and preventing chronic illnesses for many patients and their doctors. By combining internet of things (IoT) development with telemedicine and telehealth technologies, a new internet of medical things (IoMT) has emerged. This approach includes the use of several wearables, including ECG and EKG monitors. Many other common medical measurements can also be taken, such as skin temperature, glucose level, and blood pressure readings.
By 2025, the IoT industry will be worth USD6.2 trillion. The healthcare industry has become so reliant on IoT technology in 2020 that 30% of the market share of these devices is expected to come from healthcare. With the arrival of new delivery methods, such as the first smart pill approved in 2017 by the FDA, practitioners will have many interesting options for providing care in a more effective manner.
AR/VR/MR in Healthcare
Augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR) are important technologies with great potential to enhance the quality of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. From enhancing patient and provider visits to helping educate medical students in procedure simulations, this technology is turning science fiction into reality. AR and VR technology shows promise for helping stroke victims overcome motor deficiencies. These patients must be put in a robust environment to help regain motor control. However, simulated environments provide more flexibility that physical therapy may not be able to offer. These controlled simulations can be used to gather data to help therapists tailor care plans for their patients.
Challenges Ahead
Connectivity issues are also still common, as the collection of data by microcontrollers and smartphones can be disrupted by several factors in the environment. Buffering methods on local microcontrollers need to become more robust to maintain better connections.
Potential security concerns also need to be addressed, as indicated by a report from the Ponemon Institute’s Sixth Annual Benchmark Study on Privacy and Security of Healthcare Data, which showed that 89% of healthcare operations had been the subjects of at least one data breach.
The Privacy Issues
Privacy is an extremely important issue in health technology, especially with regards to HIPAA compliance in 2020. Although cloud computing can make storing and retrieving data more efficient, regulations to secure electronic protected health information (ePHI) are very strict and complying with them can be very difficult.
Remote communication with patients is especially important during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Some telehealth technologies are not fully compliant with HIPAA which can raise challenges for patient privacy. Healthcare providers should ensure that they are still following the regulations as best as they can, only missing the bar where they have to.
Future Outlook Post COVID
As the world completes a year of the pandemic, many countries have resumed daily life and a lot of them have forced down lockdowns to combat the rising number of cases. Despite vaccines being rolled out, it a stark reality that the pandemic has impacted several industries, and the livelihoods associated with it. The move towards digital has found many takers and has posed a challenge to brick-and-mortar alternatives.
The speed at which technological changes have been inspired by COVID-19 has led to accelerated trends like – industrial automation and contactless payments. AR/VR, 3D printing, telehealth has given many industries a fresh lease of life during these testing times, enabling them to continue providing value to consumers and helping keep the economies running. Everything from doctors’ appointments, medical consultation to regular life went online. People were forced to indoors yet made digital an indispensable part of their lives.
The future will witness healthcare adopting digital technologies in heaps; helping make it affordable and accessible to all. Wearables, AR/VR, appropriate use of clinical and consumer data, telehealth apps, remote diagnostics, virtual fitness, and therapy will find many more takers, as COVID-19 become a blur and the world finds its feet in the new normal.
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Macro with Black Background

Macro with Black Background

On the path to more creative photography, this technique is for many a first step. It involves forcing the camera only expose for the flash. The opposite of balanced lighting.

Any water, any subject.

DSLR + Mirrorless

ISO: 100 to 200
Mode: Manual camera; TTL strobes
Aperture: f/16 to f/22; small apertures (larger numbers) are helpful here
Shutter Speed: 1/125 to 1/250 (or max flash sync speed)
Lens: 60mm Macro or 100mm (105mm) Macro

Point + Shoot

ISO: 100 to 200
Shutter Speed: 1/125 to 1/250
Focal Length: Microscope mode (Olympus Tough TG-series) or close-up range

Juvenile Hawkfish. If there isn't anything behind your subject, the flash will disappear and your background will go to black when you use small Apertures. Fish that flit around are challenging to capture with a macro lens, it takes patience, lot's of misses, and some luck to get a nice pose, lighting, and background. Fish that perch allow for a thoughtful composition. .

A pure black background separates your colorful subject in stark contrast for visual impact.  Achieving this is very easy, your flash must simply expose the frame at least 2 (or more!) stops darker than the ambient light. So we keep our shutter fast, our ISO low, and close down the aperture.

From there the final key is for your subject to have nothing behind it... nothing for the flash to hit!  An upward camera angle is the easiest way to achieve this, but depending on the distance it is possible to angle your strobes so they light the foreground and not the background.  If this is done properly your water column can be jet black.

Assuming you are shooting up at your subject, strobe placement is pretty flexible. After the capture, check to see if your light is hitting anything you didn't notice when you set up. Sometimes repositioning one of the strobes can solve this without changing the light on the subject.  TTL will work perfectly for this as long as your subject occupies a reasonable amount of the frame. Using the spot metering system of the camera can be helpful for accurate exposure.


Pronunciation:  US [ɪˈnept] UK [ɪ'nept]
  • adj.Lack of skills; incompetence; clumsy
  • WebInappropriate; incompetence; inappropriate

This page is created to explain what the meaning of inept is. Here, you can find complete definitions of inept in English and other 40 languages. First of all, you can listen to the pronunciations of inept in American English and British English by clicking the audio icons. Next, we list the most popular web definitions of inept. Though they may not be accurate, but represent the most up-to-date explanations in the Internet age. Furthermore, we list other words that have the same meanings as inept. In addition to synonyms, major antonyms for inept are also listed. For detailed word list, you can click tabs to switch between synonyms and antonyms. More importantly, you will see the tab of 'Definitions in English' where the dictionary provides the accurate meanings of inept. Thirdly, we list other word forms of inept: noun, adjective, verb, and adverb. Fourth, we are giving example sentences that contain inept. These sentences show how you can use the English word of inept in a real sentence. Fifth, to help you better understand the definitions of inept, we also present three images to illustrate what inept really means. Finally, we are listing English words that start with inept, English words that contain inept, and English words that end with inept.


303 Squadron Artbook

Article number: B4
Availability: In stock

The 303 Squadron: Artbook is a complete collection of wonderful illustrations created for the board game by Piotr Forkasiewicz. In this volume you can find the illustrations of all the airplanes present in the game, with “state of the art” painting reproducing the “main characters” of this war scenario, the airplanes used during the Battle of Britain.

This particular war scenario has always fascinated the fans of wargames, war movies, and history lovers. In this artbook they will find all the detailed illustrations of German Luftwaffe airplanes, as Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Bf 110, or Heinkel He 111, and R.A.F airplanes, as Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane.

The 303 Squadron was one of the deadliest RAF squadron during the Battle of Britain, which many pilots from other countries served in during the war, fighting for freedom with glorious deeds, and covering themselves in eternal glory.

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Six things you need to know about OTT multi-screen content protection

Posted On

By Bo Ferm

Did you know there are billions of video-enabled devices in the world? The average person has 6.5 network-connected devices, and the average American alone is expected to have over 13 by 2022. This has fueled an explosion in OTT streaming, with the total market set to more than double from $67.8 billion in 2018 to around $160 billion in 2024

There is a massive and ongoing shift of viewers from traditional broadcasting and pay-TV to OTT streaming services. In response, pay-TV operators are making their programming viewable across multiple subscriber devices, a.k.a. TV Everywhere. Rights holders need to keep their valuable content secure in a whole range of situations, which requires a multi-disciplinary approach to security.

The OTT market is huge and sees thousands of apps play content on thousands of different consumer devices. For service providers, content protection is actually about revenue security and monetizing their valuable rights. But how can you keep content secure in a multi-screen environment? Let’s take a look.

1. Protecting your content = protecting your bottom line

Piracy in various forms is the largest threat facing rights holders and their ability to continue to produce compelling content. In fact, piracy is on track to cost the OTT industry over $51 billion by 2022. The easier it is for people to steal and re-distribute premium content (whether as a seemingly innocent favor to friends, or for large-scale profit-making purposes), the less content owners can charge to monetize their hard work, which in turn reduces the motivation to produce new compelling video content. For studios and distributors, content security is key to prevent or disrupt leakages that otherwise affect their business results.

This presents a challenge for OTT streaming providers. Users can access content in more ways than ever, and with that increase comes more avenues of attack for pirates to exploit.

 Without an effective multi-DRM solution in place that can guarantee the safety of valuable content, the less likely studios will be to license their products for OTT streaming..

2. Multi-screen OTT streaming needs a multi-DRM service

With so many different devices now being utilized, the encryption and decryption process of digital rights management (DRM) must be able to negotiate a myriad of different systems and standards. A multi-DRM solution seeks to achieve this by creating a universal content security interface which can seamlessly interact with whatever device, operating system, or DRM system that is being used. A cloud-based multi-DRM service relieves the OTT operator of the need to deal with the specifics of each DRM type and client device platform.

3. Flexibility is the key to a proactive defense

Using a variety of security tactics and tools, and being able to update software proactively to deal with potential threats or as they arise in real time, is essential in the fight against modern-day content piracy. Earlier protection technologies, such as using HDMI cables or CD copy protection, were insufficient and quickly hacked.

Modern pirates have an array of potential attack avenues, such as jailbroken devices, compromised user details, and server vulnerabilities, to aid them in stealing valuable content. Therefore,  it is even more important to use a multi-DRM solution to protect assets. With the flexibility accorded by a cloud-based multi-DRM service, and implementing state-of-the-art key management techniques, any OTT operator can move forward with confidence.

4. A DRM can help with more than just security

A modern multi-DRM solution does not just keep content safe from pirates. It can also collect a variety of user data, turning your DRM protection into a potential asset generator. A multi-DRM system can aid in collecting user, device and network data and hand that off to video analytics services. Such data may include time and length of each session, type of device and access location, and other pertinent data. This information is then used to build and tweak algorithms that predict user viewing preferences. This is an essential part of the success of OTT streaming services, ensuring that their customers can find something they want to watch quickly. Thus, OTT service providers can greatly improve their customer’s quality of experience (QoE), all while simultaneously protecting their valuable content.

5. Securing OTT live sports with fingerprints and watermarks

While much of the work of multi-DRM systems is focused on the need to protect content for video-on-demand (VOD) services, whether Subscription (SVOD) or Ad-based VOD (AVOD), there is another field undergoing massive growth that faces even bigger content protection challenges: OTT live sports. With more players getting into an already-crowded market (e.g. Amazon and Facebook), the competition for and price of broadcasting rights is surging. To effectively monetize these valuable rights, rights holders need to be able to protect their OTT live services from parallel and illegal re-streaming, and this requires applying more tools in the content protection arsenal.

To combat the re-streaming threat, multi-DRM protection along with forensic watermarking and fingerprinting are used to monitor suspected websites with the goal of quickly identifying and shutting down illicit stream sources, while having little or no effect on the viewer QoE. Such a multi-layered approach will be more effective since it extends the DRM security with another layer that goes beyond the content delivery to client devices. Watermarked video can be traced back to the last authorized recipient, before the content was leaked. This allows the service operator to decide on what action to take, whether to  immediately shutdown the source of the illicit stream or proceed with evidence gathering for subsequent legal proceedings.

6. Greater quality warrants better security

For premium productions such as a live event broadcast in Ultra HD quality, content protection is essential to ensure adequate security. Few content producers or potential distributors would be willing to take on the risk of investing in valuable content if it could be easily stolen and redistributed. Premium programming needs to be able to command premium prices and a superb QoE, which relies on trust that the content will be adequately protected—something that only a proven multi-DRM service can ensure.

Not only that, but for consumers to trust a premium label, such as that of a Hollywood studio or a premium production feature in UHD quality, they need to enjoy a QoE that lives up to viewers’ expectations. If content producers and OTT operators can’t safeguard the media distribution chain, pirated content can leak into the market thereby diluting the brand and making it harder to license premium programming.

Why you need a cloud-based multi-DRM service

To keep up with the boom in OTT streaming in a modern and multi-screen environment, only a proven, cloud-based multi-DRM service can provide the protection content owners need, and ensure adequate returns on their investments. A major advantage with a cloud-based multi-DRM service is that it scales to accommodate sudden user bursts during exciting live events, while offering a global footprint enhanced by geo-redundancy with fail-over options to maximize uptime and minimize latency.

With the ability to support a wide variety of device platforms and operating systems such as iOS and Android, adaptive streaming protocols such as MPEG-DASH, Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming or Apple’s HLS, and DRMs such as Google Widevine and Apple FairPlay, a cloud-based multi-DRM service such as Intertrust’s ExpressPlay is the solution every OTT operator needs to make their business model a success in a multi-screen world.

To find out how our cloud-based multi-DRM service can broaden your options, increase your security and safeguard your bottom line, get in touch with our team today.

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About Bo Ferm

Bo Ferm is engaged in product marketing activities for Intertrust ExpressPlay. He is a versatile technology professional with 30+ years of successful B2B positions in Europe, North America and South East Asia. He has worked extensively with broadcasting and streaming technologies, with the past 15 years dedicated to media security in various forms.

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How Mailbrew Has Changed My Life (And Might Change Yours!)

For the last 4+ years, I’ve struggled with a few important problems:

  1. How do I structure my knowledge intake so that relevant, helpful, and insightful content flows to me on auto-pilot every day in a high signal-to-noise ratio?
  2. How do I subscribe to all of the email newsletters that I like without having them clutter my inbox?
  3. How can I learn from the best content posted on social media without using social media itself? (Important in order to avoid getting sucked into the addiction algorithms)

And I’m excited to share that after 4+ years of searching, I think I’ve found my solution! Mailbrew.

But before explaining Mailbrew, why does any of this matter?

I care about this because small daily improvements over a long period of time lead to massive long-term improvements. And rapid improvement is a shortcut to success and greatness.

What is Mailbrew and how do I use it?

Mailbrew is a customizable email digest that you can custom build to display info from almost any source. It can show your calendar, Google news alerts, RSS feeds, your calendar, email newsletters, Twitter, Reddit, and so much more.

My favorite part of the tool is how it aggregates the most popular posts from my favorite people on Twitter and from key subreddits.

This is the most seamless method I’ve found to make sure that I’m constantly learning new things in areas of importance. And I’m now reading it every single day, without fail.

While Mailbrew costs $96/year, the value of learning and growing faster is priceless. If you’re interested in learning more in a short period of time, I highly recommend trying it out!

Here’s a screenshot from parts of my daily newsletter.

What did I try before Mailbrew?

I’ve tried so many different things, but I’ve found they each have their own issues.

If I have too many newsletters in my inbox, it bogs down my workflow and sucks up time.

If I don’t have enough newsletters in my inbox, I miss out on valuable learnings.

If I filter newsletters into a third-party tool like Inoreader or then I go extended periods of time without reading any of this info.

Long story short, nothing else has worked until now.

Final Thoughts:

If you found this helpful, let me know! And if you have an alternative system that you love, I’d love to hear about it.

Cam Woodsum


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Genetic Variants Influence Cardiac Features Captured By Electrocardiograms, Study Finds

NEW YORK – Researchers have tied numerous genetic loci to various aspects of cardiac biology captured by electrocardiograms.

ECGs are used to diagnose a range of cardiac disorders, including conduction disturbances and arrhythmias. Genetic studies have previously focused on variants associated with particular aspects of the ECG, such as the QT interval or QRS duration.

 In a new analysis, the University of Groningen's Pim van der Harst and his colleagues instead used ECG data collected by the UK Biobank to search for genetic variants that affect the complete cardiac cycle. As they reported Friday in the journal Cell Systems, the researchers uncovered more than 300 loci associated with ECG features, including a number of variants associated with risk of dilated cardiomyopathy.

"Studying the complete ECG in an integrative manner provided a unique opportunity to obtain more meaningful insights into biology compared with studying individual ECG fragments one at a time," van der Harst and his colleagues wrote in their paper.

They obtained the raw ECG signal data for more than 77,000 UK Biobank participants for phenotyping analysis. For each person in the dataset, they averaged the ECG recordings of multiple heartbeats to one that represented the heart at rest. Each of these averaged ECG recordings contained 500 data points reflecting the different voltages the ECG detected.

To confirm that this approach captured known ECG traits, they conducted an association analysis between the ECG morphology captured by those 500 data points and the polygenic risk scores associated with classical ECG traits. They found, for instance, that the polygenic risk score for the PR interval was also associated with a shift in the P wave, and that the polygenic risk score for QRS duration was associated with Q and S wave durations.

They also noted, however, a range of ECG morphologies beyond those classical patterns, suggesting underlying biological differences.

Through a genome-wide association study, the researchers identified 414 variants in 331 two-megabase regions associated with ECG morphology. Of these genetic association signals, 179 were novel, and the strongest signals were near the TBX3, SCN5A, and KCNQ1 genes.

Clustering analysis of the ECG morphology profiles uncovered five groupings, four of which broadly aligned with differences in Q, P, R-S, and T wave morphology. The fifth cluster was more diverse.

The Q-wave cluster, the researchers noted, overlapped with dilated cardiomyopathy risk. In particular, one variant near BAG3 that was associated with the Q-R upslope at -18 ms of the ECG was previously identified in a GWAS of dilated cardiomyopathy. That GWAS similarly identified a variant near HASP/CLCNKA that is also associated with a similar ECG pattern as the BAG3 variant, indicating there may be a common feature between this portion of the ECG trace and dilated cardiomyopathy.

This suggested to the researchers that ECGs might be able to spot people at risk of dilated cardiomyopathy, a severe disease with a five-year survival rate following diagnosis of 50 percent.

To test this hypothesis, they conducted a Mendelian randomization analysis using the UK Biobank dataset and found the -18ms data point was associated with dilated cardiomyopathy, a finding they further confirmed in the MAGNet study cohort. They additionally uncovered variants near PRKCA, TMEM43, and OBSCN linked to dilated cardiomyopathy.

"Our results demonstrate how an integrated approach to analyze high-dimensional data can further our understanding of the ECG, adding to the earlier undertaken snapshot analyses of individual ECG components," the researchers wrote.

They noted, however, that their analysis is limited by its reliance on common variants, a study population that was primarily European, and an ECG that used a limited number of sensors.