Daily Archives: August 16, 2017

The Evolution of Christopher Nolan’s Widowers – Film School Rejects

Posted: August 16, 2017 at 6:22 pm

Christopher Nolan has a thing for widowers.

I like to think there are two main classes of Nolan film: high concept and Dark Knight. (And a smattering of others that now includeDunkirk). The former are the films that play with time and perception, that make you question what youve seen and studied it later. These films areMemento, The Prestige, Inception,andInterstellar.

And they all star widowers.

Each of these films protagonists loses his wife, and his character is shaped by it. How much hes shaped varies, however, because with each successive film you can see a very clear progression. The protagonists grow and evolve, becoming less defined by and obsessed with their wives deaths, more focused forward. They find solace and meaning in the future, in their children. Its as if each is a new moment in the grieving process, working toward acceptance and catharsis over the course of the 14 years in which the films come out.

Does this mean Nolans widowers are all the same person? Maybe. They certainly all share a tragedy, and the ways in which they cope with it follows a clear progression that Ill study below.

But firstthe deaths of these characters wives arent particular spoilers since they come early or even before the start of the film. Im going to talk about their deaths in the context of the rest of the films, however, and that will be spoiler heavy. So tread carefully if you havent seen these films. Or dont tread at all. Its up to you.

If youre still here, lets get started.

Newmarket

Memento(2000) is about Leonard (Guy Pearce), a man obsessed with revenge. Leonards wife was raped and murdered in front of him, and hes devoted his life to tracking down and killing the person who did it. As avengers go, Leonard is more obsessive than mosthe cant form new memories, and the last thing hecan remember is his wifes death. Hes innately defined by his loss.

Of course, the big reveal at the end of the film is that Leonards wife actually survived the night she was raped. And the implication is that he accidentally killed her himself, giving her too much insulin when she tried to call his bluff on his memory problem.

Leonard has conditioned himself to believe his wife was murdered, altering his final memory of her and devoting his life to tracking down the person he thinks killed her. Whats worse is that he does find and kill the man who raped her, but he decides to expunge the evidence of it. This way he can devote the rest of his life to revenge, the only thing that matters.

Leonards existence is informed exclusively by his wifes deathhe literally cant form any new reasons to live. His entire life takes place in his distant past, and his only plan for the future is a vengeance he doesnt know hes already achieved.

Warner Bros.

The Prestige(2006) could be argued to have two (or three) protagonists, but since far fewer of his secrets are kept from the audience, I would argue that the main character is Robert (Hugh Jackman). Early in their careers, Robert and Alfred (Christian Bale) are friends. The friendship ends when Roberts wife drowns during a magic trick because she cant undo the knot Alfred has tied around her hands. This sparks a desperate, lifelong feud.

Just like Leonard inMemento, Robert becomes obsessed with his wifes killer. But unlike Leonard, he knows exactly who his target is. And instead of killing him, he devotes his life to besting him, to being a better magician. Healthy it is not, but this obsession is at least focused more outwardRobert lives his life, and he excels at what he loves. His revenge is productive, rather than destructive.

And most importantly, he has an eye to the future. When Robert sees Alfred with a wife and baby, it kills himhe begrudges Alfred for having everything that hes lost, everything hell never have. Near the end of the film, he actually adopts Alfreds daughter. Its meant to be one more insult for Alfred, of course, but it also gives Robert a portion of the future he lost. Unlike Leonard, he has something new to live for.

Its the first appearance of children in these widowers lives, and its an important introduction that will get more and more prominent.

Warner Bros.

Inception(2010) is a big step forward for our widowers. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has turned his anger inwardhe considers himself wholly responsible for his wifes death, and his grief and guilt make it almost impossible for him to work. Cobb may not be set on revenge, but his subconscious is.

Importantly, though, Cobb has children. Unlike his predecessors, he has the future to look to. He has people to live for.

And he does live for them. The entire plot of the film hinges on Cobbs desperation to see his children again. He exposes himself and his team to all kinds of danger so he can get back to them. And, against all odds, it works. (I wont get into it here, but the prevailing theory of many interpretations is that the final sequence of the film does take place in reality).

This success of Cobbs plan is important because hes the first of Nolans widowers to get a happy ending. And that happy ending is contingent upon both the past and the futurethe plan can only succeed if Cobb finally lets go of his wife. By accepting Mals death and voicing the guilt he feels, Cobb can rescue Saito and return to reality. By rescuing Saito and returning to reality, he can be reunited with his kids.

Cobb gets past defining himself by his wifes death, and he moves into the future with his children.

Warner Bros.

Interstellar(2014) is the continuation of Cobbs happy family life. Coop (MatthewMcConaughey) has lost his wife to cancer. He resents his post-science world for not having the technology to save her, but thats all it isresentment. Theres no guilt, no thirst for revenge.

In fact, this explanation of Coops wifes absence is one of her only mentions. Another comes when Coop quotes her, trying to convince Murph that he has to leave:

After you kids came along, your mom said something to me I never quite understood. She said, Now were just here to be memories for our kids. And I think now I understand what she meant. Once youre a parent, youre the ghost of you childrens future.

This is some obvious ghost foreshadowing, of course, but its also a strong message about the secondary nature of parents and, by extension, of spouses. The moment his children were born, they became the most important thing in Coops life. His wifes death has been hard on him, of course, but by the start of the film hes already achieved the acceptance it took Cobb almost all ofInception to get. He lives entirely for his children, and for the future.

Because thats what the entire film is for: the future. Coops world is dying, and he devotes himself to finding a better one for his children. In the end, Coop succeeds, getting the human race off of Earth and pointing them toward a new home. Just as importantly, however, he gets to see his own future generations. When he visits Murph on her deathbed, shes surrounded by her children and their children and on and on. Its the ultimate continuation of living for your children.

Coop doesnt just let go of his pasthe sees his future.

Warner Bros.

The widowers of Christopher Nolans concept films follow a clear trajectory toward healing and redemption. Little by little, each lets go more of the past and defines himself less by grief, focusing instead on his children and the future. They go from living completely in the past and bent on revenge, to living for a present revenge with half an eye to the future, to letting go of the past in favor of the future, to abandoning a lifetimes worth of the past and working exclusively for the future.

Is this the mark of a filmmaker whos aging, both refining his craft and shifting his priorities as he has children of his own?

Probably.

But its also possible to think of these widowers as a single character of sorts, gradually dealing with the same tragedy over the years, healing and coping more with each iteration.

Nolans asked us to accept stranger things, after all.

Christopher NolanHugh JackmanLeonardo DiCaprio

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Finland in the Stall Out zone for digital evolution? – Helsinki Times

Posted: at 6:22 pm

Finland isin the top five of the most digitally advancedcountries in the world, according to the Digital Evolution Index.

The world is rapidly moving towards digitalisation and automation in all areas of society. Yet some of the most digitally advanced economies in the world are struggling to sustain digital growth and innovation Finland being one of them. This years Digital Evolution Indexplaces Finland in the Stall Out Zone; a category for digitally advanced countries that have reached so-called digital plateaus of slowing momentum in terms of digital growth.

Moving past these digital plateaus will require a conscious effort by these countries to reinvent themselves, to bet on a rising digital technology in which it has leadership, and to eliminate impediments to innovation, the researchers behind the Digital Evolution Index suggest. The states in the Stall Out category among them all Nordic nations seem to suffer from issues on both the supply and demand sides of digital growth; past digitalisation is not translating into future innovation because of market saturation and a lacking start-up culture.

Nevertheless, compared to its Nordic neighbours, Finland has fared quite well in adding fresh fuel to its digital innovation engine to keep it running. The past years have been a turbulent time for Finnish business, with a long economic recession following the decline of Nokias mobile phone production, yet Finlands digital sector is now evolving faster than those in any other Nordic countries. In fact, Finland is not far away from being included in the Stand Out zone for digitally advanced countries with a fast-paced digital evolution.

Nevertheless, the road from the stall out category to the stand out zone is a slippery one, and as noted in the Harvard Business Review, all countries need to continuously generate new demand to avoid stalling out. Countries in the Break Out zone, with China in the forefront, are evolving rapidly and have the potential to become the leaders of digital business and technology in a matter of years. China has gone from almost no digital innovation at the turn of the century to having a population of 730 million Internet users today. This rapid development has made China the country with the largest number of Internet users in the entire world, and thus a lucrative market for e-commerce.

If Finland wants to remain at the vanguard of digitalisation, it should look to countries with a similar population size but with a faster digital evolution. Examples of such countries are Estonia, Singapore and New Zealand. Estonia is, of course, a particularly interesting example not only because of its geographical proximity to Finland, but also because of its leading position in e-government.

As the data used to measure each countrys pace of digital evolution in this years Digital Evolution Index was gathered between 2008 and 2015, it is worth keeping in mind that Finland only declared its recessionary era to be over as recently as last year. Digital evolution in Finland is thus likely to pick up speed in the coming few years, if it has not already done so. A promising example for Finlands digital future is Slush a phenomenally successful start-up event that brings together the global tech scene in the winter darkness of Helsinki.

Nicole Berglund Helsinki Times

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Curricula on Intelligent Design Are Urgently Needed And Here They Are! – Discovery Institute

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Editors note: We are delighted to welcome a new contributor to Evolution News,our colleague Daniel Reeves,Educational Outreach Assistant with Discovery Institutes Center for Science & Culture.

Representing Discovery Institute as an educational outreach assistant often means sitting at a conference book table and offering a selection of materials related to intelligent design readings that range from a brief overview of the corrosive social impacts of neo-Darwinism to 600-page technical breakdowns of complex biochemical systems. Ive watched, time after time, as students and professionals alike approach the table with visible enthusiasm only to leave feeling overwhelmed by the vast array and sheer quantity of information available on the subject. I can fully relate.

My own journey to learning about intelligent design began in high school, where I became particularly interested in the biodiversity of life and the glaring inadequacy of natural selection as an explanation for it all. A friend handed me a copy of Darwins Black Box, by Michael Behe, and I was hooked.

Soon, I learned of other titles and was knee-deep in Signature in the Cell an argument for design from the complex digital codes observed in DNA. By the time I had finished an undergraduate degree in biology and was getting acquainted with Discovery Institute, I had read another dozen or so books on the subject. My head was swimming with so many ideas that I didnt know where to turn next.

I wondered: How does this all fit together? What other arguments are out there for intelligent design? What are the counterarguments? What I wish I had to start with was a comprehensive curriculum providing a basic framework for all of the technical books and papers I would go on to read in the years to follow. Such a thing, to my knowledge, did not exist. But now it does.

Regardless of your level of study on the subject, there are now invaluable resources available to help make the multitude of current ID arguments accessible to you. Two are of special interest. Each is organized much like a textbook and comes with supplemental materials including workbooks and/or DVDs. Online companion courses are also offered for each of these, free of charge, to help the reader work through the material at her own pace. I trust that one or both of these resources will prove helpful in your own intellectual journey.

Published recently by Discovery Institute Press, Discovering Intelligent Design is a comprehensive curriculum presenting the biological and cosmological evidence in support of the scientific theory of intelligent design, as well as challenges to neo-Darwinism. Designed for readers ranging from middle-school students (in private or home schools, not public) to adults, this is a perfect place to begin your studies or to gain an overview of the arguments to date. Topics include the fine-tuning of the universe, solar system, and planet Earth, the irreducible complexity of biochemical systems, challenges to the traditional tree of life, and even strategies for engaging in the larger debate. With plenty of images, discussion questions, and accompanying videos, this curriculum stands to captivate students, professionals, families, youth groups, and more.

Or are you already comfortable with the basic framework of ID arguments? Delve deeper with The Design of Life, a beautifully illustrated college-level textbook that covers topics related to human origins, genetics, and macroevolution, the fossil record, the origin of species, irreducible complexity, and much more! Written by mathematician William Dembski and biologist Jonathan Wells, this book presents a compelling scientific case for the intelligent design of biological systems using critical analysis, clear explanations, and brilliant analogies. It will engage every reader, from trained scientist to curious layperson.

The textbooks are available for sale at the Center for Science & Culture bookstore. I hope these resources will serve you as they have me.

Photo: Daniel Reeves, via Discovery Institutes Center for Science & Culture.

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Elizabeth Banks Has Perfected the Art of Comedy TV Anchor, No Others Need Apply – Decider

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Where to Stream

One of the main pleasures ofWet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later after all theHand that Rocks the Cradlereferences and the story of Chris Pines band and Beths rich-lady clothes was in seeing Elizabeth Banks returning to the role of Lindsay, who we see now ten years after the events of the movie has become a local TV news reporter doing puff pieces all over the city. It meant we got to see whats increasingly become one of the most reliable pleasures in comedy: Elizabeth Banks playing an ultra-professional lady TV news anchor.

If you remember fromWet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, Bankss relatively nondescript character from the film was given a secret backstory as aNever Been Kissed-style undercover reporter sent to deliver an expos on camp counselors. So naturally,Ten Years Later ups the ante and has Lindsay working as a roving TV news reporter. Shes not happy, of course. She wants to do hard news and is instead stuck reporting on puppies and the like. But as the season goes on, she gets a lead on the big, blockbuster story thats going to serve as the shows climax, involving a bunch of nuclear weapons and ex-presidents.

The actual mechanics of the plot arent whats important here. Whats important is that this was yet another reminder that were in the Golden Age of Elizabeth Banks News Anchor roles. Its a type she perfected while on30 Rock, playing Avery Jessup, the CNBC anchor who ends up falling for Jack Donaghy. Avery is a merciless Republican with a strict sense of fiscal Darwinism, and her news reporter persona has all the harsh, blonde authority of your average Fox News anchor. Her first appearance on30 Rock is in the episode Anna Howard Shaw Day, where Avery has Jack as a guest panelist on her show The Hot Box.

Banks already had the look, the cadence, and the attitude down perfectly. She even managed to have fun with it when Avery gets kidnapped by North Korea and is forced to read propaganda news.

Avery Jessup was one of 30 Rocks best characters, mostly because of Bankss commitment to making her tight grasp of control on every aspect of her life into something fresh and funny every time.Ever since30 Rock ended, its been a rare pleasure to get to have News Anchor Elizabeth Banks back in our lives. ThePitch Perfect movies dont completely scratch that itch; there, Banks plays a commentator on the various a cappella championship tournaments, along with John Michael Higgins, and while shes not delivering the news with the exact same clipped intensity, its her pulled-together, former-pageant-queen poise that gets us pretty close. The same goes for Walk of Shame, which finds Banks balancing the prim and proper news anchor she aspires to be, with the accidental party girl shes mistaken for after a night (and day) of debauchery.

And now withWet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, weve got the real thing again. Banks has perfected the type. She should probably just travel with that same blonde anchor wig in a case, in case she ever wants to post up and deliver a news report on a moments notice. None of this is to say that Banks isnt a wonderfully diverse actress, but credit must be given for the work shes put into making Intense, Driven News Lady as much her own as Gregory Peck made Wise, Decent Lawyer his own. Were all better for it.

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A robotic technology stack aimed at developers on a budget – ZDNet

Posted: at 6:21 pm

With HEXA, Vincross is taking aim at a market that founder and CEO Sun Tianqi feels has long been ignored: Independent tinkerers and developers on a budget.

Vincross, a Beijing-based robotics company, has announced a small programmable robot called HEXA. The new bot runs on MIND, an operating system built on the Linux kernel and optimized for robotics.

It's the second bit of news from Vincross in the last few months. The company was a CES 2017 Asia Innovation Award Honoree in May.

With HEXA, Vincross is taking aim at a market that founder and CEO Sun Tianqi feels has long been ignored: Independent tinkerers and developers on a budget.

"There hasn't been a single robot or platform built for the masses -- especially for those developers and innovators eager to create [new] robots," said Sun.

HEXA, which, as its name implies, is a sensor-rich, six-legged robot that resembles a crab. It's designed to be a platform and not a finished product.

"We all have this dream of what robots should be, of robots interacting with and helping humans on a daily basis," Sun said. "But the reality is, robots have a long way to go. To date, the industry has focused on single-use robots for industrial labs or household cleaning purposes or robots for children."

Sun's reference to the Roomba vacuum, which is the best-selling consumer robot of all time, is perhaps poorly chosen. iRobot has offered its own programmable platform based on the Roomba and targeting developers for some time. It's become a go-to for STEM classrooms, college robotics teams, and tinkerers in need of small mobile robots for all kinds of tasks.

Still, HEXA is a capable piece of technology. Because it has six legs, it can handle terrain that a platform like the Roomba never could. Sensors include a camera with night vision capability, two three-axis accelerometers, an infrared transmitter, and a distance-measuring sensor.

The idea is that developers can pick up one of these for about $500 and -- using Vincross's standard developer kit -- shape it into anything they'd like. Some examples on the company's website include surveying volcanos on Mars or helping save lives after earthquakes.

"The single biggest impediment to technologies like robotics and AI is that talented developers don't have ready access to the full technology stack required to engineer new products," Jenny Lee, managing director at GGV Capital said. GGV Capital recently invested in Vincross's $6 million series A round.

Vincross has chosen to launch HEXA as a Kickstarter campaign. Funded companies are doing this more and more, and it raises some issues in this case. Vincross's campaign is slick, bespeaking resources that unfunded DIY developers looking for crowdfunding can't afford. Since crowdfunding dollars are limited, that edge seems to fly in the face of the "for the masses" ethos the company is promoting.

Vincross COO Andy Xu defended the play in an email to me.

"This is a go-to-market strategy that we've seen work well, especially in the US and allows us both to distribute and market HEXA to a broader audience. We're not relying solely on this money to build our robots -- we have a full-fledged manufacturing operation set up in China, but Kickstarter's larger unit orders allow us to drive down costs to the end user."

Units ordered via Kickstarter pledges will be delivered on a rolling schedule between December and February.

There are some cool videos and project ideas on the Kickstarter page. Given the price point and functionality, I have a sense we're going to see some novel stuff built on this platform in 2018.

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Robotic suit now has Amazon Echo integration

"Alexa, let's walk to the kitchen"

Humans like mistake-prone robots better than perfect performers

To err is human, but to replicate errors may soon be robotic.

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Idaho middle-schoolers are Zero Robotics co-champions – Bonner County Daily Bee

Posted: at 6:21 pm

By DEVIN HEILMAN

Hagadone News Network

COEUR dALENE Idaho middle-schoolers don't shoot for the moon.

They shoot for the best way to relocate humans to Mars using satellite positioning systems, computercoding and sheer ingenuity.

And their hard work has produced stellar results. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station selected Idaho as the West Coast champion of the 2017 Zero Robotics Middle School Summer Program Finals.

"All the kids are winners. How many kids can say, 'I sent code up to the International Space Station?'" said Idaho AfterSchool Network summer associate Scott Anderson, who helped coordinate the finals event. "But it was a little extra sweet to be the co-champions, of course."

About 20 robotics students from the Coeur d'Alene, Lakeland and Lake Pend Oreille school districts gathered in Molstead Library at North Idaho College early Friday for an exciting morning. They had the joy of witnessing their computer codes in action during a live streaming broadcast from the ISS.

The ISS Finals project tasked them with using graphical editors to write code to position coordinates to successfully navigate the red planet. The simulation included obstacles and real-world challenges, including exhausting CO2 tanks and batteries, losing signals and racing the clock.

"It's all the kids. They've done an amazing job this year, for sure," said Lakeland team lead instructor Rohnin Randles, 18. "The fact that they put in nearly 100 hours of their time during the summer, I mean, we didnt ask them to be there. They asked to be there."

The final teamsrepresented Idaho, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia, Connecticut, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Washington, Oregon and Russia.The codes of the final teams were given to astronauts aboard the Space Station to test on simulation satellitesin zero gravity. The competition is part of the Zero Robotics SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-orient Experimental Satellites) Program.

Idaho championed the West Coast bracket while West Virginia earned the East Coast title.

It makes me feel really proud that I got chosen to do this program, said incoming Lakeland High School freshman Macayla Hunter, 14. "At first I thought, 'Wow, this is going to be really hard,' because I know there are a lot of smart kids out there that do this kind of stuff. It was a challenge at first because none of us knew how to program from the start."

The students spent five weeks tackling this objective, leveling up their computer skills while getting hands-on programming experience in a teamwork setting.

"If you work independent, nothings going to get done, said incoming Canfield Middle School seventh-grader Joey Specht, 12. "Thats why you have to work as a team. At first we were going to try to do our own, because thats what everyone wanted to do and nothing was getting done. Then we tried working as a team and our code eventually got done. There is no I in team.

Information: http://www.zerorobotics.mit.edu

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Robots can now heal themselves – Wired.co.uk

Posted: at 6:21 pm

Science Museum / Heritage Lottery Fund

Roboticists have designed soft robots that can heal themselves.

Cutting your hand or tearing a muscle are both injuries that heal over time for living organisms. But what if robots could heal too? New research published in the Science Robotics Journal suggests this may be the case in our near future.

Researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) have extended this self-healing property specifically to soft robots. These are robots constructed from flexible materials that enable them to be used to grab delicate objects in the food industry or in minimally invasive surgery. They play an important role in rehabilitation and arm prostheses.

Bram Vanderborght

"A robot is very complex and difficult to repair. And the soft robots are particularly susceptible to sharp objects and high pressure" explains professor Bram Vanderborght of VUB, one of the five researchers behind the project. "This research is the first step in introducing self-healing materials in soft robotics, which we think will start a whole new research field of self-healing robotics," Vanderborght continues.

During their experiments, the team built soft robots made entirely from rubbery polymers. When damaged, these materials first recovered their original shape and then healed completely. "This principle was tested on three self-healing robotic components: a gripper used for robots to pick up items, a robot hand, and an artificial muscle," he continues. "Realistic damage could be healed completely without leaving any weak spot. The prototypes were able to fully resume their tasks."

Once a soft robot is damaged, the material is able to heal after being heated for 40 minutes at 80C. After 24 hours at 25C, the damaged robot's strength and flexibility would also be restored.

The polymer material used does this because it consists of a network of cross links that allow the Diels-Alder reaction to take place. This reaction allows new bonds to be made by the molecules. "By applying heat, those cross-links will break, which gives the polymer material more mobility. This mobility allows the molecules to close the gap made by the damage. When healed the material has to be cooled down, during which the initial properties are almost completely regained," explains Vanderborght.

The team, which has backing from the European Research Council, also has big hopes for the impact of this research. Collaborator Seppe Terryn, who has worked on the project since 2014, says: "We hope that humans will develop a new kind of trust in robots, knowing that their functional performance is not depending on the human detection and repair of damages."

Indeed, the gap in this field of industry makes this research particularly exciting. "The inability to heal is one of the major shortcomings of our mechanical systems versus their biological counterparts," confirms electrical engineering expert, professor Russell Tedrake of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Suitable progress in this direction could substantially improve the robustness of our machines."

Soft robotic researcher at the University of Cambridge, Fumiya Lida, adds that, "self-healing soft robot technology is a significant breakthrough. Self-recovery makes the entire mechanical system cheaper and safer in a human-oriented environment".

Tedrake also questions the extent to which this technology could be extended to other objects in the future, "such as self-repairing tyres for cars".

However, more immediately, the VUB team is hoping to work towards adding a sensor network to detect the health status of robots and even new materials.

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New Robotics Lab Allows Anyone to Control the Machines – Georgia Tech News Center

Posted: at 6:21 pm


Georgia Tech News Center
New Robotics Lab Allows Anyone to Control the Machines
Georgia Tech News Center
Buliding and maintaining robots, let alone at entire robotics lab, is unaffordable or impractical for many researchers around the world. That's why Georgia Tech is opening a new lab that allows greater access to everyone. The Robotarium, a $2.5 million ...

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The inside story of the crisis at Infinium Robotics – Tech in Asia

Posted: at 6:21 pm


Tech in Asia
The inside story of the crisis at Infinium Robotics
Tech in Asia
I made some mistakes as an entrepreneur and I have learned a lot from them, he told us. Not all is lost. Woon expressed relief that the decision has finally brought closure to the matter. I am happy that my team and I can now move on to deliver our ...

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A fund betting on robots and AI is crushing it and it’s targeting millennial investors (BOTZ) – Business Insider

Posted: at 6:21 pm

REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

When Jay Jacobs, director of research at Global X, and his team were looking to start new theme-based exchange-traded funds last year, a robotics and artificial intelligence ETFjust made sense.

"Ithink a lot of times the finance world gets lost in its own jargon of risk adjusted returns and Sharpe ratios and risk factors," Jacobs told Markets Insider. "The story behind robotics and AI is very straightforward to everybody."

Jacobs is a chief mind behind the BOTZ, anexchange-traded fund from Global X which launched in September of 2016. BOTZ invests in companies that gain a majority of their revenue from robotics and artificial intelligence. The fund's market capitalization recently crossed over the $300 million mark.

The explosivegrowth of BOTZ makes sense. It combines the red-hot ETF market with skyrocketing tech stocks. Jacobs says it's the fastest growing funds he's been involved with in his fourplus years with Global X. With returns of around 39.1% since the fund's inception last year, the growth is hardly surprising.

BOTZ is comprised of 29 companies spread across four sub categories: industrial automation, non-industrial robotics, unmanned vehicles and artificial intelligence. It's weighted by market cap, with no single company comprising more than 8% of the fund, and no less than 0.3%, according to Jacobs.

The largest holding is currently Mitsubishi, followed by Nvidiaand Keyence Corp, each making up about 7.5% of the fund. Those top three holdings areup an average of 77.4% since the inception of BOTZ.

Global X has positioned BOTZ to be popular among a younger investing crowd. A strong majority of millennials, about 83%, are interested in thematic investing, compared to only 31% of the general population, according to a study done by the firm. When creating BOTZ, Jacobs said the team had millennial investors in mind.

"We see that younger generations are the trendsetters, so if we see that millennials are the ones saying [AI] is real ... that's meaningful and it's going to start working its way up the chain," Jacobs said.

Patrick Fallon/Reuters

Formatting the fund as an ETF made sense as well. The ETF market for stocks has grown by 500% in the last eight years, in part because it allows for easy access tothemes like AI and robotics. Investing in the fund is as easy as buying a stock.

"You get international exposure, which is critical for robotics," Jacobs said. "You get diversified exposure."

There are drawbacks to the Global X approach. Almost halfof the fund's holdings are based in Japan, meaning events in the country could have an outsized effect on the fund. The fund is also missing some major players in AI, like Facebook and Google, whichare leaders in artificial intelligence technology but excluded from the fund because they don't derive most of their revenue from the theme.

Still, a thematic fund like BOTZ allows investorsto bet on a general idea instead of a specific company, which investors seem to like.

After all, "tech is only going to get better," Jacobs said.

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