Samsung Gaming Hub Streaming Service Announced With Google And Nvidia Support

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/samsung-gaming-hub-streaming-service-announced-with-google-and-nvidia-support/1100-6499268/

Certain Samsung TV owners will soon be able to stream games without the need for an extra dongle or USB device. At this year’s CES, Samsung finally put a name to its game streaming service, which is set to launch later this year. Titled Samsung Gaming Hub, users will be able to stream games from a variety of services straight to their TV.

Currently, Samsung Gaming Hub is planned to give users access to the game libraries available on Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, and Utomik, though other streaming platform partnerships are planned. "We developed the Samsung Gaming Hub with our incredible content partners to benefit all gamers, and we plan to continue our collaboration to grow the ecosystem," said Samsung Electronics’ corporate president Won-Jin Lee.

Samsung Game Hub users will be able to play games available on GeForce Now, Stadia, and Utomik.
Samsung Game Hub users will be able to play games available on GeForce Now, Stadia, and Utomik.

While it’s not clear how users can expect their games to perform, Samsung claims that any titles streamed through the Samsung Gaming Hub will have "console-like performance." Players will also seemingly be able to use any controller they want, although they’ll need to have the right TV to actually use the service. Samsung Gaming Hub is only coming to a select group of 2022 Samsung smart TV models.

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January 3, 2022 at 09:44AM

Could Being Cold Actually Be Good for You?

https://www.wired.com/story/could-being-cold-actually-be-good-for-you/


Nobody likes a frozen butt. So when François Haman attempts to recruit subjects to his studies on the health benefits of uncomfortable temperatures, he gets a lot of, well … cold shoulders. And he doesn’t blame them. “You’re not going to attract too many people,” says Haman, who studies thermal physiology at the University of Ottawa, Canada.

The human body is simply lousy at facing the cold. “I’ve done studies where people were exposed to 7 degrees Celsius [44.6 Fahrenheit], which is not even extreme. It’s not that cold. Few people could sustain it for 24 hours,” he says. (Those subjects were even fully dressed: “Mitts, a hat, boots, and socks. And they still couldn’t sustain it.”)

People strive to keep cozy or cool—not shivering, and not sweaty—by flattening temperature variations in indoor spaces. It’s easy to reach for the space heater or yell “Alexa, warm my ass up!” the moment you feel a touch of discomfort. But maybe you shouldn’t tinker so much with the thermostat. Some reasons for easing up on the heat are obvious: About 47 percent of American homes burn natural gas for heat, and 36 percent use electricity, which in the US is still mostly sourced from fossil fuels. And there may be other reasons to embrace the cold—health factors that physiologists like Haman have begun to uncover.

Before industrialization, says Haman, “these extremes were actually part of life.” Bodies dealt with cold in the winter and heat in the summer. “You kept on going back and forth, and back and forth. And this probably contributed to metabolic health,” he says.

Researchers know that your body reacts when it’s cold. New fat appears, muscles change, and your level of comfort rises with prolonged exposure to cold. But what all this means for modern human health—and whether we can harness the effects of cold to improve it—are still open questions. One vein of research is trying to understand how cold-induced changes in fat or muscle can help stave off metabolic disease, such as diabetes. Another suggests it’s easier than you might think to get comfortable in the cold—without blasting the heat.

To Haman, these are useful scientific questions because freezing is one of our bodies’ oldest existential threats. “Cold, to me, is [one of] the most fascinating stimuli because cold is probably the biggest challenge that humans can have,” he says. “Even though heat is challenging, as long as I have access to water, and to shade, I will survive fairly well. The cold is completely the opposite.”

“If you’re not able to work together,” he continues, “if you don’t have the right equipment, if you don’t have the right knowledge–you’re not going to survive. It’s as simple as that.” Figuring out how our bodies change in response to such a formidable and ancient opponent offers clues to how they work, and how they might work better.

Haman begins every day with a cold bath or shower. It’s a rush because the cold triggers the body to release hormones called catecholamines, which are involved in the fight or flight response. “I do have that sense of Oh my God, I’m feeling so strong, and I’m awake,” he says. “This is kind of my coffee.”

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January 3, 2022 at 07:03AM

Recycled Tennis Balls Could Protect Buildings from Earthquakes

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/recycled-tennis-balls-could-protect-buildings-from-earthquakes/


Earthquakes cannot be forecast, but engineers can prepare for them. Seismic-isolation systems built into the bases of certain buildings in high-risk areas, such as San Francisco’s City Hall, use complex structures of concrete, rubber and metal to reduce quake damage by absorbing the ground’s horizontal oscillations, like a car’s suspension does with vertical motion.

But such adaptations are expensive. Engineer Jian Zhang of the University of California, Los Angeles, says incorporating seismic isolation can increase construction costs by up to 20 percent. Although these systems might save more than they cost over time, builders in some earthquake-prone regions may not have the budget for them up-front.

A new seismic-isolation method uses the physics of rolling to create a simpler, lower-cost alternative with readily available materials: recycled tennis balls. “Everyone plays tennis, and they don’t know what to do with the tennis balls after each game,” says ETH Zürich seismic engineer Michalis Vassiliou.

Vassiliou’s team based its method on an early form of seismic isolation that rolls a shaking building to a stop the way a skater in a half-pipe eventually comes to rest. By separating a building from the ground with a layer of spheres or cylinders in concave indentations, rolling isolation converts erratic horizontal shaking into a gentle rocking motion and uses friction to further dampen these oscillations. This method was used in 5,000-year-old Peruvian pyramids, but today builders favor expensive, standardized isolation systems.

For their modern take on rolling seismic isolation, detailed in Frontiers in Built Environment, the researchers injected cementlike mixes into hundreds of balls from nearby tennis clubs that had lost their bounce. They built an inexpensive prototype consisting of four filled tennis balls sandwiched between two concrete slabs, and they found that it withstood simulated earthquake shaking while supporting eight kilonewtons of force per ball—about twice what isolation systems might experience under one-story houses. The balls had to contain precisely the right amount of the mixture (the researchers used a pastry bag to fill them) to dampen vibrations without cracking during tests.

Zhang, who was not involved in the study, says that the work is worthwhile and that such technology might serve an unmet need. But she notes that the results are preliminary. Vassiliou agrees; next steps will mean creating and testing a larger prototype with hundreds of tennis balls at a research center in earthquake-prone Cuba—an example of a place where such systems could make isolation feasible in ordinary construction.

Vassiliou says that he has received funding to field-test the system and partner with scientists on the ground to refine the invention. “For this to actually be implemented,” he adds, “you need to develop it with engineers from low-income countries so that it actually addresses their needs.”

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January 3, 2022 at 05:52AM