Category Archives: Singularity

As you adventure around the world ofAida inTower of Fantasy, youll find plenty of different types oftreasure around the world. Youll sometimes come acrosspassword-protected chests, that will require you to use a special item to open them. Other times, you may come across something like theSingularity Rock, which will require you to use mind and matter to overcome their puzzles.

How do you open this treasure, so you can claim whatever awaits you inside? Lets dive deep into this, and find out whichRelicyoull need to use to get to the treasures that await within. Youll need to prepare yourself to dive in, as we find out how to open the Singularity Rocks inside of Tower of Fantasy!

As you adventure through the world, trying your best tocomplete achievements to earn more currencyand findGolden Nucleus throughout the lands, you may come across the occasional puzzle that may leave you scratching your head in thought. One of these puzzles could happen to be theSingularity Rock, a special type of treasure that stands out above the rest, due to its large design, and thought-provoking challenge to opening.

Youll need to make sure that youre working your way throughout theRuins that you have come across to start earning specialRelics, as they will come into play in many different facets of the story mode, especially when it comes toexploration. There will be times that youll need to useMissle Barrage to bust openCracked Walls, and this treasure works in a very similar way.

After you have completed enough of the story and leveled up your character enough to challenge some of the later A-tier Ruins, youll unlock aRelic by the name ofStrange Cube. What theStrange Cubedoes is use a force of kinetic energy to blast objects away, and youll want to use that when you come across any of the Singularity Rocks that you find in the world, blasting the stone off of their back, and giving this statue the relief that it deserves. Youll find that the treasure is not contained within the round ball on their back, but rather, resting directly on top of them.

And thats all youll need to do to accomplish this task! Once you have claimed the treasure, youll be ready to continue further on your adventure. If youre needing any help with any of the more in-depth features of this game, make sure that youre tuning into ourTower of Fantasy Guide Section, where youll be able to find outeverything about Simulacrum,how tofind all of the crystals on the map, and eventhe best way to earn a special vehicle called the Chaser!

Tower of Fantasyis available now on mobile devices and PC.

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How To Open Singularity Rock in Tower of Fantasy - Attack of the Fanboy

Many leaks have come up regarding Raptor Lakes performance in the past few weeks. We made a really comprehensive article showing the performance in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5.

In synthetic performance benchmarks, Intel pulls ahead of AMDs leaked Zen4 in almost every aspect including multi-core performance. However, a discrepancy shows up in gaming performance. Intel has not shown significant performance improvements in the gaming segment. Will Intel lose its FPS crown just to attain a lead in the multi-core tests? A small price to pay for salvation?

A few weeks back, a detailed article was covered showcasing the i9-13900Ks performance in games and other softwares. To put it shortly, the CPU did prove to perform better (~5-10%) but power consumption went through the roof.

Over at ashesofthesingularity.com, we saw the i9-13900K being tested along with AMDs kingpin RX 6900 XT. The performance, is rather interesting to say the least. Two tests were conducted (12900K vs 13900K), where the Crazy_4K preset was used.

The Alder lake powered system scores 132.8FPS, where the i9-13900K pulls ahead by just 1.2%. Hold up, what? Well, it is no surprise that this game will heavily use the GPU because take a look at the CPU Frametime. The CPU Frametime is the theoretical maximum number of frames a second that your CPU produces without being GPU-bound.

If we compare those two figures, then our i9-13900K powered by Raptor Lake is ~25% faster than the 12900Kwhich is actually impressive for in-game performance. If a more powerful GPU was to be used (Sorry, 6900XT) then we may have seen a crystal clear difference.

The total score may not speak much as 13th gen system is ahead by just 100 points (0.7%).

Can AMD really catch up to Intel? Only time will tell. For more leaked benchmarks, take a look at this list:

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Intel i9-13900K Tested in Ashes Of The Singularity, Offers Neglible Increments in Performance - Appuals

In recent years, technology has worked wonders helping blind or visually impaired people regain their sight, perhaps most notably via the use of CRISPR gene editing to cure inherited blindness. Now a different technology has been used to cure a different cause of blindness. A paper published last week in Nature Biotechnology describes a bioengineered cornea that restored sight to 20 people, 14 of them previously blind, in an initial clinical trial.

The cornea is the outermost layer of the eye. Its a transparent film-like tissue that covers the iris and pupil, and it both protects the eye and helps focus the light we see.

Keratoconus is a condition where the cornea starts to lose collagen, growing thinner and cone-shaped and eventually impairing vision. Injuries from impact or scraping, as well as bacterial or fungal infections, can also damage the cornea, causing its normally-clear surface to become cloudy and leading to visual impairment or blindness.

Corneal blindness is one of the leading causes of blindness globally, accounting for over five percent of cases where people lose their sight. Corneal transplants are one solution, but in addition to a shortage of donors (particularly in low-income countries, where these conditions are most common), recipients must take immunosuppressants to keep their bodies from rejecting the transplanted cornea.

A research team at Linkping University and LinkoCare Life Sciences in Sweden have come up with what appears to be a highly viable alternative.

The team used collagen protein extracted from pig skin as the base for an artificial cornea. Pig skin may sound unappealing as the source of something that goes in peoples eyes, but the researchers chose it for a few different reasons: besides having a structure similar to that of human skin, pig skin is a byproduct from the food industry (that means its abundant and cheap) and is already used for medical applications, including glaucoma surgery and as a wound dressing.

The researchers purified the extracted collagen then placed it in a cornea-shaped hydrogel scaffold, using chemical crosslinking to reinforce the collagen and keep it from degrading (the crosslinkers are water-soluble and end up rinsing out of the implant during its manufacture).

Surgeons in India and Iran implanted the engineered corneas into 20 patients, 14 of whom were completely blind and 6 of whom had impaired vision as a result of keratoconus. The doctors used a minimally-invasive surgical technique, making a laser incision in the existing cornea and inserting the implant rather than removing the cornea and sewing in a replacement. The technique resulted in reduced inflammation and faster healing in recipients, as well as immunosuppressant eye drop use for just eight weeks (as compared to a year or more with traditional cornea transplants).

The team monitored the recipients for 24 months, noting no complications or adverse events. On the contrary, the implant caused their corneas to return to normal thickness and curvature, and the 14 participants who were blind before the operation had their vision restored. Those who werent blind moved from severe visual impairment to low or moderate vision.

Three patients even ended up with 20/20 vision, and others were able to wear contact lenses to improve their sight (the damaged shape of their corneas prevented them from wearing contacts before the implant).

The team notes that its results are comparable to those of standard corneal transplants, but with a simpler surgical technique and no need for human donors. Theres some room for improvement yet; the implant was only manufactured in two thicknesses for this pilot study, but making customized implants (such as in cases where someones cornea has a non-uniform or tapered thickness) could improve outcomes even more. And while two years is a sufficient time frame to know that the transplants restored patients sight, the artificial tissues integration and stability will need to be monitored over a longer term.

The bioengineered corneas join a slowly but surely growing list of body parts that science has been able to synthetically recreate, from 3D printed ears to custom-grown bones, or is working on recreating, like kidneys. Progress is incremental, but that doesnt make it any less amazing.

The teams next aim is to do a larger clinical trial involving 100 or more participants in Europe and the US, and to get the ball rolling on regulatory approval from the FDA.

Image Credit: Thor Balkhed/Linkoping University

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In a Pilot Trial, Bioengineered Corneas Gave 14 Blind People Their Sight Back - Singularity Hub

New research highlights a troubling problem with concepts of a cyclical universe that experiences infinitely alternating periods of rapid expansion and contraction, known as 'bouncing universe' models.

These bouncing universe models suggest the cosmos has no beginning, eliminating the need for a troubling singularity prior to the initial period of rapid inflation commonly known as the Big Bang needed by 'beginning of time' models.

University at Buffalo researchers say a newly suggested bouncing universe recipe that attempts to deal with the problem of entropy the measure of unusable energy in the universe, which can only increase suffers from a problem that has plagued previous models of endless inflation and contraction. It still needs a beginning.

Related: The Big Bang: What really happened at our universe's birth?

"People proposed bouncing universes to make the universe infinite into the past, but what we show is that one of the newest types of these models doesn't work," University of Buffalo physicist Will Kinney said in a statement. (opens in new tab) "In this new type of model, which addresses problems with entropy, even if the universe has cycles, it still has to have a beginning."

This means that proponents of cyclical models of the universe may have to go back to the drawing board.

The leading theory of the universe's origins is so-called 'cosmic inflation.' This suggests that before time began all the energy in the cosmos was contained in a singularity an infinite dimensionless point not described by the laws of physics.

This ended with a period of rapid inflation the Big Bang that saw the universe expand and cool, thus allowing the formation of matter first atoms of hydrogen, then heavier elements, and eventually stars and galaxies.

The problem is, while this theory is very good at describing the universe as it ages from fractions of a second until the cosmic structure we see today, around 13.8 billion years later, it can't describe the conditions of the singularity that existed before this inflation was kick-started. Or even what kick-started it.

This issue is eliminated by a bouncing universe because if periods of inflation and collapse are infinite, then there was no beginning and thus no need to explain what preceded it. This would see the universe undergo similar inflation as suggested by the cosmic inflation model, but then 'springing back' on itself in a 'Big Crunch' of sorts.

Each new inflation period would, therefore, begin from the 'wreckage' of a previous period of expansion rather than a singularity. But, Kinney thinks that bouncing universes come with their own unique problems.

"Unfortunately, it's been known for almost 100 years that these cyclic models don't work because disorder, or entropy, builds up in the universe over time, so each cycle is different from the last one. It's not truly cyclic," the UB researcher said. "A recent cyclic model gets around this entropy build-up problem by proposing that the universe expands a whole bunch with each cycle, diluting the entropy."

Kinney said that this new bouncing universe model tries to stretch everything out to get rid of cosmic structures such as black holes thus returning the universe to its original homogenous state before another bounce begins.

"We showed that in solving the entropy problem, you create a situation where the universe had to have a beginning. Our proof shows in general that any cyclic model which removes entropy by expansion must have a beginning," he said, adding one bouncing universe may survive this assessment. "Our proof does not apply to a cyclic model proposed by Roger Penrose, in which the universe expands infinitely in each cycle. We're working on that one."

Kinney's collaborator is UB physics Ph.D. student, Nina Stein. She highlighted the problem the duo had with a bouncing universe: "The idea that there was a point in time before which there was nothing, no time, bothers us, and we want to know what there was before that scientists included.

"But as far as we can tell, in models that address entropy, there must have been a 'beginning.' There is a point for which there is no answer to the question, 'What came before that?'"

This means, for now, the mystery of what existed before the universe and time itself remains and will be hotly debated by cosmologists for some time to come.

"There are a lot of reasons to be curious about the early universe, but I think my favorite is the natural human tendency to want to know what came before," Stein said. "Across cultures and histories, humans have told stories about creation, about 'in the beginning.' We always want to know where we came from."

Kinney and Stein's findings are discussed in a paper published in the June edition of the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. (opens in new tab)

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'Bouncing' universe theory still can't explain what came first - Space.com

This weekends stories include Tony Robbins, Sergey Brin Become Robots The Telepresence Revolution to Spruce Trees have Arrived in the Arctic Tundra a Century Ahead of Schedule, and much more.

New Evidence Suggests Giant Asteroid Impacts Created Earths Continents, reports Singularity Hub. We still dont have firm answers to some basic questions about continents: how did they come to be, and why did they form where they did? In new research published in Nature, we studied ancient minerals from Western Australia and found tantalizing clues suggesting the giant impact hypothesis might be right.

The Coming California Megastorm -The vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds, reports The New York Times. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment.

Earth-sized alien worlds are out there. Now, astronomers are figuring out how to detect life on them. To do so will require a purpose-built space telescope and a parasol the size of a baseball diamond, reports Science.org. Stephen Kane says he and his colleagues are trying to figure out what we can expect to see when we can finally directly image an exoplanet. Their exercise shows that even a precious few pixels can help scientists make the ultimate diagnosis: Does a planet harbor life?

The One Critical Mistake Alien Hunters Keep Making Life on other worlds might look nothing like it does on Earth. So we need to start taking more eccentric ideas about biology seriously, reports the Daily Beast. Astronomers are lining up to take turns to use NASAs new James Webb Space Telescope to inspect planets for biosignatures. The priority, in this first year of JWSTs operations, is the seven possible Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, 40 light-years from Earth.

Is There Life in the TRAPPIST-1 Star System? Twice as Old as Our Solar System reports The Daily Galaxy.

Michio Kaku: Well Make Contact with Aliens in This Century

Tony Robbins, Sergey Brin Become Robots The Telepresence Revolution, reports Singularity Hub. People at the Xprize fundraiser in San Francisco were immediately attracted to the robots and loved talking to them. During the course of the evening, participants spoke to individuals from Argentina, Washington DC, and Canada all via telepresence. Telepresence robots are going to be an awesome addition to our technology fueled lives.

Earth spinning faster and recording its shortest-day ever is no reason to panic, scientists say, reports CBS News. While the Earth on June 29 did indeed record its shortest day since the adoption of the atomic clock standard in 1970 at 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours scientists say this is a normal fluctuation. Still, news of the faster rotation led to misleading posts on social media about the significance of the measurement, leading some to express concern about its implications.

Antarctica has lost far more ice than we once thought, reports meteorologist Scott Sutherland for The Weather Network.

Spruce trees have arrived in the Arctic tundra a century ahead of schedule, reports Quartz.com. As climate change decimates forests in places like Europe and the American west, boreal trees are moving into the Arctic.

Quantum Computers Could Crack Bitcoin. Heres What It Would Take, reports Singularity Hub. Modern encryption schemes rely on fiendishly difficult math problems that would take even the largest supercomputers centuries to crack. But the unique capabilities of a quantum computer mean that at sufficient size and power these problems become simple, rendering todays encryption useless. Thats a big problem for cybersecurity, and it also poses a major challenge for cryptocurrencies, which use cryptographic keys to secure transactions

The Race to Remake the $2.5 Trillion Steel Industry With Green Steel--In the city of Woburn, a suburb just north of Boston, a cadre of engineers and scientists in white coats inspected an orderly stack of brick-sized, gunmetal-gray steel ingots on a desk inside a neon-illuminated lab space. What they were looking at was a batch of steel created using an innovative manufacturing method, one that Boston Metal, a company that spun out a decade ago from MIT, hopes will dramatically reshape the way the alloy has been made for centuries.

Nearby stars midlife crisis illuminates the future of our own SunLong magnetic lull on star mimics the Maunder Minimum, when the Suns spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, reports Science.org. From about 1645 to 1715, the spots, now known to be indicators of solar activity, all but disappeared. Gathering sunspot counts and other historical observations, astronomer John Eddy concluded nearly 50 years ago that the Sun had essentially taken a 70-year nap, which he called the Maunder Minimum after an astronomer couple who had previously studied it.

Former SpaceX Engineers Are Launching a Startup Where Robots Make Pizzas in 45 Seconds, reports Singularity Hub. according to Pizza Magazines 2022 Pizza Power Report, (yes, theres actually a publication called Pizza Magazine! Who knew!), American consumers accounted for about a third of global spending on pizza, shelling out $45 billion for cheese-covered pies in 2021.

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Giant Asteroid Impacts Created Earths Continents to Michio Kaku: Well Make Contact with Aliens in This Cent - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries...

Tower of Fantasyis the new open-world MMORPG game developed by Hotta Studio and published byLevel Infinite. While having similarities with Genshin Impact by HoYoverse, the game has shown potential signs of making its way to the players library as soon as thedebut day. Just like other MMO games, Tower of Fantasy also offers a vast map with details and quests at every corner of the game. As a result, it has become quite important to understand all the puzzles and how to solve them. In our Tower of Fantasy guide, we will cover all the exploration tips to solve puzzles and get the best rewards.

Players can find different supply pods on the maps. While its quite common to get Gold as the reward, other rewards are often found with Gold. To open the supply pod, just interact with the pod and it will open up. Oftentimes, enemies guard the supply pods nearby. Unlocking supply pods also helps increase the exploration progress for the area.

Dandelions are present in different places on the map. Dandelions can brake with one hit from any weapon. Black nucleus and dandelion seeds can be found after harvesting the dandelions.

Kerosenia is an interesting plant. It is said that the plant is rooted with petroleum veins underground. If attacked with a weapon with a fire element, it will burn. As soon as the buds are destroyed, you can claim rewards which are usually 1 black nucleus.

Destroyable rocks can be found in different parts of the map. The wall can be broken by equipping and using the relic Missile Barrage.

AI Servants are sometimes a part of the story. They are found guiding the player to the contextual NPC of the specific part of the story.

Chowchow is found in many places on the map. The plant loves to consume water cores. Oftentimes, players can find a water core near Chowchow. By throwing a water core inside Chowchow, the plant rewarded with 1 black nucleus.

Thornvine can be found in different places. Thornvine hides a secret supply pod. Players can only interact with supply pods after destroying the Thornvine. Thornvine can be destroyed by hitting with a weapon with a fire element.

Singularity Rock is often found with enemies nearby. Sometimes, with Hyena elites, sometimes with others. Use the relic Strange cube to push the top off.

Ruins are the leftovers from the Cataclysm. Players can find different types of relics inside the ruins. But different enemies also await for prey to fight with. They can clear each ruin with a total of 3 opportunities for different difficulties. Harder the mode is, the higher the minimum level requirement is.

Tar pits are often present in different locations on the map. Unlike other puzzles, enemies nearby do not guard this. To break it, it needs to be attacked by using a weapon with a fire element. The common reward is a black nucleus inside it.

Glowshrooms are easy to find in different places on the map. Jumping on the grow shrooms in the correct order gives audio and graphic feedback.

This is an interesting puzzle of the game. It unlocks a box that contains rewards and unlocking contributes to increasing world progress. First, start with the tile on the left side of the square in the middle. Then confirm if you have a tile on your left side between two small plants. If it doesnt check out, then you are at the wrong tile.

Re-align yourself to start solving this puzzle. After aligning properly, jump on the tile. Then jump on the tile which will glow. Dont jump on a tile twice as it will result in doing the whole thing again from start.

Training facilities help players in gaining skills in different moves and practicing them. Every training facility offers different amounts of training points. Some pieces of training are locked if the minimum level requirement is not achieved.

Mogden can be found in different parts of the map. Players will often see them watching at the night. During the nighttime, mushroom man becomes violent and attacks the player when he can. But at the end part of the night, players can interact with the mushrooms. They offer a minigame to the player. Mogden fears flame core.

Energy screen is found in places and usually at the entrance. To solve this, the player needs to put in the correct passcode at the terminal.

Lava pits can be found in many places on the maps compared to other rare puzzles. You can solve it by attacking it with an ice-element weapon.

Force Sending Plates can also be found in many places. The way to solve this is to perform an aerial smash attack on the plate with any weapon.

Pillar Induction Stone plates can be found scattered in different places on the map. To solve this, one needs to use the relic Omnium Handcannon.

Telescopes are only a handful and only available in certain places on the map. The way to solve this is to connect the stars in the shape of a constellation. Correct connections are retained, so players can try it again without losing progress.

Abandoned trucks are present in a few places on the map. To solve it, just put in the right passcode at the terminal. After that, the truck gets unlocked.

Concentration rays can be interacted with to transfer energy between them. One concentration ray starts from where one stopped. So the whole thing can be found in the ray is found.

Spliced metal boxes are a few parts that are present near each other. Push the pieces in the correct order to connect the pattern on them.

Earthphyte is found in the greeneries. To solve it, one needs to throw in a matching color flower bud in the Earthphyte.

Nucleus drone has a nucleus underneath it. The way to solve this is to attack it with any weapon. However, due to its nature, it is preferable to use ranged weapons.

The silver cap tree is found only in specific areas of the map. This tree can be interacted with and it gives a mini-game.

Rusted Iron boxes are quite common in the game. You can open it by only interacting with it. When you open rusted, you can commonly get Iron Boxes, battery, and experience points.

Thats it for all the Exploration Puzzles currently available in Tower of Fantasy. To check out the Passwords for Electronic Lock and Deconstruction Devices, check out our article on the same here.

Did you find our Tower of Fantasy Exploration guide on completing Exploration Puzzles helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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Tower of Fantasy: The ultimate world exploration guide - GamingonPhone

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.

Discussions about the state of the world too often focus on the first statement: The news highlights what is going wrong, rarely mentioning any positive development.

A pushback on this narrative takes it to the other extreme, which is equally damaging. Solely communicating the progress that the world has achieved becomes unhelpful, or even repugnant, when it glosses over the problems that are real today.

Its hard to resist falling for only one of these perspectives. But to see that a better world is possible we need to see that both are true at the same time: the world is awful and the world is much better.

To illustrate what I mean, I will use the example of one of humanitys biggest tragedies: the death of its children. But the same is true for many of the worlds other problems. Humanity faces many problems where things have improved over time, which are still terrible, and for which we know that things can get better.1

Globally4.3 percent of children die before they are 15 years old. This is the data for 2020, the latest available year.

This means that 5.9 million children die every year16,000 children on any average day, and 11 children every minute.2

Clearly, a world where thousands of tragedies happen every single day is awful.

Historys big lesson is that things change. But it is hard to imagine how dire living conditions once were, and that makes it difficult to grasp just how much the world has changed.

Data can help to bring the scale change to mind. Historians estimate that in the pastaround half of all children diedbefore they reached the end of puberty. This was true no matter where in the world a child was born and it only started to change in the 19th century, just a few generations ago.3

Its hard to imagine, but child mortality in the very worst-off places today ismuchbetter than anytime in the past. Even in the worlds richest countries, the mortality of children was much higher very recently. In Somalia, the country with the highest mortality today, about 14 percent of all children die.4 Just a few generations ago, the mortality rate was more than three times as high, even in the best-off places.5

What we learn from our history is that it is possible to change the world. Unfortunately, long-run data on how living conditions have changed is rarely studied in school and rarely reported in the media. As a result, many areentirely unawareof even the most fundamental positive developments in the world.

But this factthat it is possible to change the world and achieve extraordinary progress for entire societiesis something that everyoneshould know.

Progress over time shows that it was possible to change the world in the past, but do we know that its possible to continue this progress into the future? Or were we perhaps born at that unlucky moment in history at which progress has to come to a halt?

Studying the global data suggests that the answer is no.

One way to see this is to look at the places in the world with the best living conditions today. The best-off places show that extremely low child mortality is not just a possibility, but is already a reality.

The world region where children have the best chance of surviving childhood is the European Union. 99.55 percent of all children born in the EU survive childhood.6

To see how much better the world can be, we can ask what the world would look like if this became the realityeverywhere. What if children around the world would be as well off as children in the EU? Five million fewer children would die every year.7

Of course, the child mortality rate in the EU is still too high, and there is no reason that progress should stop there. Cancers like leukemia and brain tumors kill hundreds of children, even in todays richest countries. We should strive to find ways to prevent these tragic deaths.

However, the largest opportunities to prevent the pain and suffering of children are in the poorer countries. There we know not only that things can be better, but how to make them better.

You can use this research on how to make the world a better place to contribute to this progress yourself. I recommend relying on research published by the nonprofit organization GiveWell.org. GiveWells team spent years identifying the most cost-effective charities so that your donation can have the biggest positive impact on the lives of others. Several of the recommended charities focus on improving the health of children, offering you the opportunity to contribute to the progress against child mortality.

Research on how to prevent child deaths and the fact that child mortality in entire world regions is 10-fold lower than the global average show what is possible.Millionsof child deaths are preventable. We know that it is possible to make the world a better place.

The news often focuses on how awful the world is. There is a large audience for bad news and it is easier to scare people than to encourage them to achieve positive change.

I agree that it is important that we know what is wrong with the world. But, given the scale of what we have achieved already and of what is possible in the future, I think its irresponsible toonlyreport on how awful our situation is.

To see that the world has become a better place does not mean to deny that we are facing very serious problems. To the contrary, if we had achieved the best of all possible worlds, I wouldnt spend my life writing and researching about how we got here. It is because the world is still terrible that it is so important to see how the world became a better place.

I wish we could change our culture so that we take this possibility of progress more seriously. This is a solvable problem: we have the data and the research, but we are currently not using it. The data is often stored in inaccessible databases, the research locked away behind paywalls and buried under jargon in academic papers. WithOur World in Datawe want to change this.

If we want more people to dedicate their energy and money to making the world a better place, then we should make it much more widely known that it is possible to make the world a better place.

This article was originally published on Our World in Dataand has been republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Manuel Sardo / Unsplash

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The World Is Awful. The World Is Much Better. The World Can Be Much Better. - Singularity Hub

It seems like almost everyone has a friend who has recently been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). As a GP working in suburban Melbourne, what had been an occasional topic patients broached is now a conversation Im having multiple times a week.

So what has changed, and what does it mean for our health and health system?

ADHD is a developmental condition, present from childhood, broadly involving issues with inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. There is an increasingly recognised subtype characterised by inattention without the other features. The stereotypical presentation is a child who is restless and a bit chaotic in their behaviour and struggling to meet their potential at school.

Where Im seeing growth is not so much among children, but rather among adults. The accepted wisdom is that highly functional adults can compensate for their ADHD until something upsets the apple cart. This might be running up against a task that surpasses their organisational strategies; a move from high school to the more self-directed learning of tertiary study; a shift away from the support structures of living with family; or a loss of the environmental cues and structures that had borne them along.

The last three years have seen the classroom, workplace and home amalgamated into one porridgy, ill-defined singularity, with added mental, financial and social stress. Its no wonder people started looking inwards when they didnt immediately bounce back with the end of lockdowns.

There can also be a snowball effect of symptom recognition. With swathes of algorithmic social media where people relate their experiences, or by talking to friends and hearing their stories, its easy to see why people might identify with signs such as reading sentences off a page without absorbing any of it, forgetting a pin number thats been used for a decade or feeling overwhelmed by the noise, sights and smells returning to the grocery store, school or office.

As with most mental health conditions, the defining factor for diagnosis is the degree of dysfunction the person faces. Is their education faltering? Is it impacting their work? Are their relationships suffering?

Dont get me wrong: most of the people who come in wanting to explore an ADHD diagnosis meet the criteria and then some. But where does that leave them? And where does it leave a mental health system where wait times to see a psychiatrist were already teetering on untenable, before living through a global pandemic made us all feel that bit more vulnerable?

The conventional wisdom is that the mainstay of management of ADHD is behavioural and psychological strategies, but when patients come in interested in a diagnosis, theyve often pursued these avenues and are looking at medication options and thats where we hit a snag.

Legislative requirements vary between state and territories, but from a Victorian context, medication requires a diagnosis by a psychiatrist (retrospective to before 18 years of age, if scripts are to be subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme), and either initiation of medication by the psychiatrist or deputisation of a GP through a written plan, that the GP can then use as supporting evidence to apply for a permit to prescribe. These permits can be held for up to two years.

In the halcyon days, I could provide a referral to a psychiatrist with confidence that it was someone whose opinion I valued and trusted, who I had corresponded with professionally and received that most invaluable of endorsements: positive patient feedback.

Now, if my patients have any hope of being seen, Ive increasingly needed to refer to someone I havent worked with before. The path of least resistance for patients is to pursue a diagnostic review through a Medicare item 291, whereby the psychiatrist provides their diagnosis and a plan of action to allow the GP to treat. To meet this demand, a number of telehealth services have sprung up.

The going rate for most of these single-appointment assessments appears to be an out-of-pocket cost of $200-400 already placing it out of the reach of many patients. Depending on the service, costs can be in excess of $1,100. Some such assessments have provided me not with a clear insight into the patients situation and the medication options best suited to them, but rather a list of the medications that are used for ADHD, with a seemingly somewhat cynical view to ticking the box for prescribing requirements.

Im not confident this always leaves me or my patients any better off.

So what advice can I offer? Firstly, caveat emptor do your research, and ask your GP or psychologist which services they have confidence in. Second, the feeling of urgency for action in the I think I might have ADHD presentation can lead to hasty decisions. I encourage you to consider laying your foundation through work with a psychologist, and consider waiting to see a specialist we can vouch for.

Dr Nicholas Hudson is a general practitioner working in South Melbourne

Original post:

Where does an overloaded mental health system leave patients with an ADHD diagnosis? - The Guardian

This week Fantagraphics will publish One Beautiful Spring Day, a swirling psychedelic epic from legendary Seattle comic Jim Woodring. The book promises to be a 400-page comics odyssey linking together three earlier booksCongress of the Animals, Fran, and Poochytownalong with 100 new, mesmerizing pages focusing on the unusual life and times of Frank, a character whose stories he's downloaded straight from the heavens (and perhaps from other worlds) for the last 30 years.

In our interview, we talk about his new book, the sounds of silence, and that time I canceled his weekly comic for The Stranger back in the early aughts because, wellwe were all so young.

In the early 2000s I did not understand your work at all. In fact, you might remember me canceling your longstanding weekly one-panel when I became The Strangers art director. You were gracious as ever. In the years since, I have done a major 180, and would like to start this interview with a humble apology.

Well, hell. You were the boss, you didnt owe me anything, you didnt like my feature, and you did let me run one final cartoon. Apology not necessary.

Again, with the graciousness! So, your stories are grounded in dense and totally relatable interpersonal dramas, while simultaneously adrift in some kind of surrealist hallucination. What amount of conscious effort goes towards balancing that duality?

As little as possible. The best Frank stories are the ones I think about the least. I injected my ideas into Congress of the Animals and things went so awry that I had to draw Fran just to set them right.

One Beautiful Spring Day is a compilation of three published works, in one surprisingly cohesive narrative sequence, with 100 pages of brand new content. Fantagraphics is calling it your Magnum Opus and one of the great novels of the 21st Century. Whats your take?

What turned out to be One Beautiful Spring Day was drawn over a span of ten years, in large chunks, which I had no idea would fit together into this final shape.

As Ive always said, the Frank stories come to me as if from another mind; I dont write them so much as receive them and transcribe them whether I know what they are about or not. They are a lot of work but very little struggle.

The three books OBSD is built on are not sequential. Frans title page says Continuing and preceding Congress of the Animals. Poochytowns title page says Discontinuing Congress of the Animals and Fran. Those three books were anomalies because each one ended with an ongoing fluid situation. All previous Frank stories ended with a specific equilibrium restored.

The hundred pages of new material surrounded and recontextualized that uneasy three-book knot, giving them a relationship, shape and story structure they didnt have before. The gross error I made with Congress became something sweet, ethereal and poignant. I learned you could change the past. I learned a lot working on this project.

Its incredible what you manage to say without using any words. Yet, interpersonally (and on stage) you are very articulate and have a definite command of language. Does that seem paradoxical to you in any way?

When the idea for the first Frank story presented itself it was wordless. It seemed entirely right, aesthetically, even spiritually, so that was that. If there were words they would be idiomatic 20th-Century English, and that didnt seem right at all. I couldnt imagine Frank screaming Ye gods! or anything like that. A bonus was that I didnt have to do hand-lettering. Also no translation problems.

Convenient! Another aspect of wordlessness is that my brain fills up the space with an imagined score. Are you hearing music when you are planning or inking these stories?

Not music, but landscape noises, animal sounds. I can hear those frogs droning.

The singularity of your creative voice is really impressiveespecially considering your 30-year runand I struggle to imagine what influences or inspires you. Can you share anything youre reading, admiring, or compelled by?

The thing that compels my interest more than anything else these days is the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. My mind is drawn to these concepts and loves to play with them. Its also been recently drawn to the huge TASCHEN book of KRAZY KAT color Sunday pages, the Cardiacs album SING TO GOD, and a meticulous, swoon-inducing painting my wife recently completed of creatures and scenarios from her overheated dream journal.

That sounds amazing, will we get to see this swoon-inducing painting?

Well, I can send you a jpeg.

One Beautiful Spring Day By Jim WoodringAug 16, 2022$49.99

Go here to see the original:

Jim Woodring Discovered a Way to Change the Past - TheStranger.com

While birth and death remain at opposite ends of the spectrum of mortality, theyre united in a bizarre commonality. After all, no one asks for either and, crucially, neither can be reported on from a first-hand point of view. And yet what of re-birth? Or at least that from the perspective of musical shift?

Singularity Zone Vol.1 is the next step of a journey that has seen The Oscillation mutate and grow over their last few albums as they or, at least, sole constant member Demian Castellanos explore the many sonic possibilities that psychedelia can offer. While 2018s UEF found Castellanos experimenting with sequencers and analogue equipment, its follow-up, Wasted Space was a consolidation of that approach with the addition a post-punk sensibility that ramped up the groove. Meanwhile, the righteous howl of rage that ripped from the centre of 2021s Untold Futures was wrapped in dense layers of guitars, squalls, squelches and relentless low-end throb wherein Castellanos appeared to disappear into the musics intensity. His voice became less a vehicle for singing as part of the instrumentation. This, then, was a reflection as much of where he was at as of the ramifications of what wed all experienced over the previous eighteen months.

With Castellanos now relocated from London to the Czech countryside, his new environment has clearly had a positive effect on him and his music. Replacing the aggression and frustration of his most recent releases with a warm and fragrant beauty, Singularity Zone Vol.1 , The Oscillations eighth full length album, explores the possibility of sound collages, drones, expansive washes of sound, and a shared aesthetic with Autotelia, the project hed partnered on with the late Tom Relleen. It is both a re-birth and the next logical step for him to take.

As evidenced by the gorgeously alluring synth sweeps, breaths and bass pulses of opener I Am, Castellanos is not only a student and graduate of the celebrated Berlin School, hes also a standard bearer. This is music that soothes like a balm as it envelopes the senses to signal the first step of an incredible voyage. Indeed, with each step, Castellanos slowly yet methodically increases the intensity with a sensitivity that simultaneously teases and seduces. Witness Mind Unveiled where the guitars turn up the heat yet blend seamlessly with the soundscapes that burn at the tracks core. Jem Doultons subtle yet insistent work on the toms and cymbals never threatens to overwhelm; instead they compliment the sounds that surround them.

The six pieces of music that make up Singularity Zone Vol.1 are best experienced in a single sitting. An expedition into inner and outer space, this is a breathtaking experience that displays another facet of this restless and creative psychedelic explorer.

See the article here:

Reviews | The Oscillation - The Quietus