Yetunde Odunsi is a Nollywood actress who features in both Yoruba and English movies such as Benefactor, Blood for love, Alaamu, Agidi Okon, and several more. In this Interview, she talks about her journey in the movie industry, roles she played, and her vision for the future. Excerpts:

Weekend Magazine: How did your journey into the movie industry begin?

Yetunde Odunsi: I have always loved watching people act on screen. Despite the fact that I was a shy person who couldnt sing or dance, I had a deep conviction that acting was my talent. Im a single mother and my daughter inspired my acting career. Once, I decided that I wanted to make a name for my beloved daughter and that could only be achieved when my own name becomes popular.

My cousin, Rotimi Salami, brought me into the movie industry where I trained under Wale Ilebiyi and Damola Olatunji brought me to limelight when I featured in his movies.

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My first time on set was in Aja, Lagos State. I went to see aunty Orwell Ademola who was the director of the movie. I did just one scene and everyone was amazed. At 2am in the morning, she drove me all the way from Aja to Iyana paja so I could get close to my home.

WM: Did you have your familys support when you delved into acting?

Odunsi: My father said he had heard so many negative reports about female actors and so he was not in total support. My mother was not against it because I had a cousin in the industry who is doing well. The crux of the family situation was that I am a grown-up and I wasnt going to feed or demand from them. All I needed was their blessings.

WM: What role challenged you the most?

Odunsi: I have featured in English movies like Benefactor, Blood for Love, 24hours, and those in Yoruba such as Semilore, Oko Mi Omo Mi, Alaamu, and many others. The latest titled Cryptic is going to be released soon. So far, I would say every role I played was challenging because I try to portray someone else and do it as though it were real. For instance, I consider the role of a doctor complex at times because of the professional terminologies involved while conversing.

WM: What keeps you inspired?

Odunsi: I had wanted to give up so many times. But even when I feel tired and need some time to rest, I cannot rest all because of my daughter. She is the main reason I remain strong. I want her to be able to stand boldly anywhere in this world and be proud of me. She inspires me.

WM: What role do you look forward to playing?

Odunsi: I want a daring role that requires me to be an aggressive person that nags, shouts and is wicked. I would also like to do the role of a mentally ill person. I really want to see how this madness will look like.

WM: Once, in an accident scene, you acted dead. What ran through your mind at that time?

Odunsi: This question is deep. Sincerely; in that pool of blood on set; I was earnestly praying that after that, it would not be my last job. That I would not die in reality. A striking thought came to me that one day, despite everything I run after in this life, I will lie lifeless and everything will be vanity. This struck me hard and I thought about my daughter and what she would think of me when I am gone. So, that fateful day, I prayed to God almighty that may this not be the end of me.

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What came to mind when I acted dead - Daily Trust

OYSTER BAY, N.Y., June 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --In the wake of COVID-19, cloud-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a critical role in the transformation of three key industries warehousing and logistics, conversational AI, and healthcare & pharmaceuticals, states ABI Research, a global tech market Advisory firm

In its new whitepaper, Cloud-Based AI In A Post-COVID-19 World, ABI Research reveals how COVID-19 is driving demand for fully scalable, flexible, and secure cloud services, and explores how Cloud AI will fundamentally impact these three domains.

"Warehousing and logistics have been particularly hard hit in recent months," says Lian Jye Su, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. "Before the outbreak, the continued growth of the e-commerce market and increasing customer expectations already placed enormous pressures on warehouses to execute more rapid and flexible deliveries. COVID-19 has caused further disruption."

Logistics companies need to evaluate options and model changes across modes of transportation, considering interruptions, delays, and significant price increases. This is driving investment in warehouse facilities, automation technologies, and Warehouse Management Systems (WMSs) to coordinate and optimize operations. Integrating key systems, such WMSs, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Transportation Management Systems (TMSs), along with predictive analytics and scenario modeling, becomes more pressing and vital. As the margin for error in the warehouse decreases, AI-enabled supply chain solutions are becoming imperative for warehouses that rely on speed, efficiency, and intelligence to remain competitive.

"Cloud AI is also accelerating Conversational AI. Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space and certain enterprise domains," says Su. A global emphasis on working from home, combined with advice to minimize COVID-19 transmission from shared surfaces will help cement the benefits of smart home voice control for millions of consumers and enterprises.

Conversational AI platforms allow enterprises to activate, manage, and train AI to resolve tickets, address questions regarding availability and pricing, and aid with complex issues. This is set to benefit both cloud AI vendors, such as Amazon, Alibaba, Baidu, Google, Microsoft, and Xiaomi, which offer voice control frontends, as well as chipset vendors whose chipsets support the training and inference of cloud-based natural language processing workloads and voice activation and recognition in voice control devices.

AI is also playing a key role in the public healthcare response to the pandemic. "All major AI companies have developed AI tools to help detect the virus, diagnose its evolution, track its geographical footprint to project its future, and even predict its potential protein structure to find a vaccine," explains Su. "Most importantly, AI will be adopted in the field of bioinformatics."

To get ahead of the ever-evolving virus and to save as many lives as possible, new drug discovery, development, and testing processes need to be set up. Tools from established companies like Google DeepMind, startups like Graphen, and AI chipsets from vendors like NVIDIA and Intel will help accelerate the speed of drug discovery, development, and testing, allowing pharmaceutical companies and healthcare authorities to combat the pandemic.

"In the short term, cloud AI enables better remote visibility and maintenance, as well as less travel to facilities; midterm, it promotes data-driven decision-making; long-term, it is the cornerstone for many emerging key technologies and strong business fundamentals," Su concludes.

To learn more about Cloud-Based AI In A Post-COVID-19 World, download the whitepaper.

About ABI Research

ABI Research provides strategic guidance to visionaries, delivering actionable intelligence on the transformative technologies that are dramatically reshaping industries, economies, and workforces across the world. ABI Research's global team of analysts publish groundbreaking studies often years ahead of other technology advisory firms, empowering our clients to stay ahead of their markets and their competitors.

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For more information about ABI Research's services, contact us at +1.516.624.2500 in the Americas, +44.203.326.0140 in Europe, +65.6592.0290 in Asia-Pacific or visitwww.abiresearch.com.

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COVID-19 Pandemic Spurs Strong Demand for Cloud AI in Warehousing, Healthcare and Conversational AI - Olean Times Herald

(Photo by Vitaly NevarTASS via Getty Images)

Wind farms have traditionally made less money for the electricity they produce because they have been unable to predict how windy it will be tomorrow.

The way a lot of power markets work is you have to schedule your assets a day ahead, said Michael Terrell, the head of energy market strategy at Google. And you tend to get compensated higher when you do that than if you sell into the market real-time.

Well, how do variable assets like wind schedule a day ahead when you don't know the wind is going to blow? Terrell asked, and how can you actually reserve your place in line?

We're not getting the full benefit and the full value of that power.

Heres how: Google and the Google-owned Artificial Intelligence firm DeepMind combined weather data with power data from 700 megawatts of wind energy that Google sources in the Central United States. Using machine learning, they have been able to better predict wind production, better predict electricity supply and demand, and as a result, reduce operating costs.

What we've been doing is working in partnership with the DeepMind team to use machine learning to take the weather data that's available publicly, actually forecast what we think the wind production will be the next day, and bid that wind into the day-ahead markets, Terrell said in a recent seminar hosted by the Stanford Precourt Institute of Energy. Stanford University posted video of the seminar last week.

The result has been a 20 percent increase in revenue for wind farms, Terrell said.

The Department of Energy listed improved wind forecasting as a first priority in its 2015 Wind Vision report, largely to improve reliability: Improve Wind Resource Characterization, the report said at the top of its list of goals. Collect data and develop models to improve wind forecasting at multiple temporal scalese.g., minutes, hours, days, months, years.

Googles goal has been more sweeping: to scrub carbon entirely from its energy portfolio, which consumes as much power as two San Franciscos.

Google achieved an initial milestone by matching its annual energy use with its annual renewable-energy procurement, Terrell said. But the company has not been carbon-free in every location at every hour, which is now its new goalwhat Terrell calls its 24x7 carbon-free goal.

We're really starting to turn our efforts in this direction, and we're finding that it's not something that's easy to do. It's arguably a moon shot, especially in places where the renewable resources of today are not as cost effective as they are in other places.

The scientists at London-based DeepMind have demonstrated that artificial intelligence can help by increasing the market viability of renewables at Google and beyond.

Our hope is that this kind of machine learning approach can strengthen the business case for wind power and drive further adoption of carbon-free energy on electric grids worldwide, said DeepMind program manager Sims Witherspoon and Google software engineer Carl Elkin. In a Deepmind blog post, they outline how they boosted profits for Googles wind farms in the Southwest Power Pool, an energy market that stretches across the plains from the Canadian border to north Texas:

Using a neural network trained on widely available weather forecasts and historical turbine data, we configured the DeepMind system to predict wind-power output 36 hours ahead of actual generation. Based on these predictions, our model recommends how to make optimal hourly delivery commitments to the power grid a full day in advance.

The DeepMind system predicts wind-power output 36 hours in advance, allowing power producers to make ... [+] more lucrative advance bids to supply power to the grid.

Originally posted here:
Thanks To Renewables And Machine Learning, Google Now Forecasts The Wind - Forbes

The Dalai Lama, left, appears on a panel with UWMadison professor Richard Davidson at a 2016 event in Madison. Photo by Darren Hauck

(Editors Note: The ABC News interview took place before the recent protests against police brutality; the Dalai Lama comments on the protests here.)

Humanity has an opportunity to transform negative emotions like fear and anxiety into determination and compassion for others, according to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This message of hope is front and center in the Dalai Lamas recent video conversation with Dan Harris, ABC News anchor and co-founder of Ten Percent Happier, and Richard Davidson, University of WisconsinMadison professor and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds.

We are human beings. We are social animals, the 14th Dalai Lama told Harris and Davidson over video from Dharamsala, India. Obviously our own experience of constant fear and constant anger destroys our inner peace. More compassionate feelings bring inner strength and inner peace Helplessness thats a failure our own cost.

The conversation comes at a time when many people around the world are experiencing unprecedented loss, hardship and isolation. Amid the recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization has warned that a global mental health crisis is likely to follow, and many thought-leaders like the Dalai Lama, Harris and Davidson are sharing insights and tools to promote emotional well-being.

For the past 28 years, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism has partnered with scientists, including UWMadisons Davidson, to inspire research on how people can alter their thinking, emotions and behavior toward a kinder, wiser, more compassionate world. Davidson is well-known for his scientific work unearthing the impacts of meditation and other prosocial qualities such as compassion on the brain.

Such evidence along with other research generated by the scientific community has fueled the Dalai Lamas promotion of secular ethics, which are altruistic values deep-seated in human nature that anyone can nurture, regardless of background or religion. The Dalai Lama described mental training, including meditation practice, as a transformative tool that can not only sharpen the mind, but also increase peoples altruism and compassion toward each other.

The Dalai Lama and Davidson have explored how these practices can best serve others and how every human being shares the same wish to be happy and to be free of suffering. Davidson says his aspiration is that someday, mental exercise of this kind will be as commonly practiced as brushing ones teeth. If people took just a few minutes each day to nurture positive qualities of mind, the world would be a very different place.

This is one reason why the Dalai Lama thinks a new form of education is needed that focuses on the mind, emotion and a persons inner world. Often these insights are outcomes of practicing various forms of meditation, and there are numerous tools available online to practice mental training, including Davidsons Healthy Minds Program (led by the nonprofit he founded Healthy Minds Innovations) and Harris meditation platform Ten Percent Happier. Both mobile apps have been offering free meditation practices and mental health tools during the pandemic.

In addition, grief and other negative emotions have overwhelmed many around the world. Harris, who lives in New York City, which has been particularly hard-hit by COVID-19 in the United States, reflected on the different ways grief can take shape. Because of the risks of coronavirus to others and the number of people sick, many people are unable to say goodbye to loved ones. Millions of others are also grieving about losing their previous life, which has been upended by the pandemic.

How can the world process such grief?

The Dalai Lama reiterated that despite the deep sadness, there are glimmers of hope and opportunities to expand care for the whole world.

Taking care of others is actually taking care of yourself, he said, noting that the best way to take care of your own happiness is to take care of ones community.

ABC News Live and Good Morning America recently featured the video conversation and a longer-form interview is available on the Ten Percent Happier podcast.

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Dalai Lama and UW expert share message of hope, determination, and education of the mind - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Life today is razors-edge tense. If your regular coping methods arent measuring up, there are science-backed actions we can add on our own to ease anxiety, depression and stress all done naturally, no doctors note required.

If you had to choose just one thing to do to betteryour mental and physical health, choose toexercise on a regular basis.

Scientists believe exercise increases blood circulation to the brain, especially areas like the amygdala and hippocampus which both have roles in controlling motivation, mood and response to stress. For one thing, it releases endorphins, the bodys feel-good hormones.

You dont have to do high-intensity exercise to ease stress,according to a studyof university students. Researchers found that exercise of moderate intensity, defined as working out hard enough so you can still talk but cant sing, reduced depression.

High-intensity interval training, however, increased stress and inflammation. Its possible intense exercise could make an already stressed-out system more jittery, especially in individuals who were not accustomed to exercise, said study author Jennifer Heisz inan article she wrote.

Numerous studiesshow the biggest benefits come fromrhythmic exercises, which get your blood pumping in major muscle groups. Those include running, swimming, cycling and walking. Do the exercise for 15 to 30 minutes at least three times a week over a 10-week period or longer at low to moderate intensity.

A brisk walk, jog or bike ride can help keep you calm and healthy during these uncertain times, said Helsz, who is an associate professor in kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Theres another benefit of exercise it will improve your sleep quality, one of the best things you can do to ease stress and boost your mood. Theres an additional benefit to a better snooze. Youll beprotecting your heart,improving your brainandreducing your desire to snack.

Its not just about sleeping longer, either. Youre trying to give your body time to go through enough sleep cycles to repair itself, which means going from light sleep to deep and back again. Set yourself up for success bydeveloping good sleep habitsthat will train your brain for restorative sleep.

Develop a routine.You want to teach your body (and brain) to calm down, so try to begin relaxing at least an hour before bedtime. Shut off the news and put down your smartphone. Taking a warm bath or shower, reading a book, listening to soothing music, meditating or doing light stretches are all good options.

You should also have a regular bedtime and a regular time for getting up in the morning, even on weekends, experts said.

Avoid certain food and drink.Avoid stimulants such as nicotine or coffee after midafternoon, especially if you have insomnia. Alcohol is another no-no. You may think it helps you doze off, but you are more likely to wake in the night as your body begins to process the spirits.

Strive for cooler temperatures.Make sure your bed and pillows are comfortable, and the room is cool: Between 60 and 67 degrees is best. Dont watch television or work in your bedroom. You want your brain to think of the room as only for sleep.

Keep yourself in the dark.Be sure to eliminate all bright lights, as even the blue light of cellphones or laptops can be disruptive. If thats hard to accomplish, think about using eye shades and blackout curtains to keep the room dark. But during the day, try to get good exposure to natural light since that will help regulate your circadian rhythm.

Something as simple as taking deep, slow breaths can do amazing things to our brain and therefore our stress, experts said.

Learning breathwork lets you know that you have an ability to physiologically calm yourself, said stress management expert Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, an editor forContentment magazine, produced by theAmerican Institute of Stress.

When you physiologically calm yourself, you actually change your brainwaves, Ackrill said. I used to do neurofeedback, which is brainwave training, and I would have people hooked up to all kinds of machines. And after doing breathwork with them you could see these massive changes in the brain. It also lowered blood pressure.

Deep breathing realigns the stressed-out part of our bodies, called the the sympathetic system, with the parasympathetic, or rest and restore system, Ackrill explained.

While there are many types of breathing, a lot of research has focused on cardiac coherence, where you inhale for six seconds and exhale for six seconds for a short period of time. Focus on belly breathing, or breathing to the bottom of your lungs, by putting your hand on your tummy to feel it move.

Anytime you intentionally bring your attention to your breath and slow it down, youve already done a good thing, Ackrill said. Thats just one simple tool that you can use and it gives you back a feeling of power and control.

And it gives you that pause where you begin to realize that you are separate from whats happening to you, and you can choose a response instead of just a primal reaction.

Yoga, of course, is a form of physical exercise. In additon to releasing endorphins, yoga can regulate the bodys central stress response system, called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and improves sleep quality, said Jacinta Brinsley, a doctoralcandidate at the University of South Australiawho recently published a study on yoga.

But yoga is also a spiritual discipline, designed to meld body and mind. A yoga lifestyleincorporates physical postures, breath regulation and mindfulness through the practice of meditation.

Yogic philosophy teaches that the body, mind and spirit are all interconnected what you do in one area, for example, a physical exercise to strengthen your leg muscles, will have an effect in all of the other areas of your system, said Laurie Hyland Robertson, the editor in chief of Yoga Therapy Today, a journal published by the International Association of Yoga Therapists.

So we can expect that leg exercise, especially when you approach it in a mindful, purposeful way, to affect not only your quadriceps but also your emotional state, your bodys physiology and even your mental outlook, said Robertson, who coauthored the book Understanding Yoga Therapy: Applied Philosophy and Science for Health and Well-Being.

Two traditional Chinese exercises, tai chi and qi gong, have also been shown to be excellent stress reducers. Both are low-impact, moderate-intensity aerobic exercises that contain a flowing sequence of movements coupled with changes in mental focus, breathing, coordination and relaxation.

Studies have foundthat tai chi and qi gong increase blood levels of endorphins, reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol and improve immune function, a key benefit in the age of coronavirus. Andbrain scansof people using tai chi and qi gong find increased alpha, beta and theta brain wave activity, suggesting increased relaxation and attentiveness

Meditation and mindfulness are two excellent ways to lower stress.

At theCenter for Healthy Mindsat the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers studied the brains of Tibetan Buddhist monks recruited by the Dali Lama and found startling results: Tens of thousands of hours of compassionate meditation had permanently altered the structure and function of the monks brains. One 41-year-old monk had the brain of a 33-year-old.

But you dont have to devote your life to meditation to see change, said Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds, theinstitute thatdid the research on the monks.

Davidson, who is a professor of psychology and psychiatry,pointed to the results of a randomized controlled trial of people whove never meditated before. Using direct measures of brain function and structure, he found itonly took 30 minutes a day of meditation practiceover the course of two weeks toproduce a measurable change in the brain.

When these kinds of mental exercises are taught to people, it actually changes the function and the structure of their brain in ways that we think support these kinds of positive qualities, Davidson said. And that may be key in producing the downstream impact on the body.

One of Davidsons favorite mindfulness exercises cultivates appreciation.

Simply to bring to mind people that are in our lives from whom we have received some kind of help, Davidson said. Bring them to mind and appreciate the care and support or whatever it might be that these individuals have provided.

You can spend one minute each morning and each evening doing this, he said. And that kind of appreciation is something that can foster a sense of optimism about the future.

Like exercise, mindfulness will need to be practiced on a regular basis to keep the brains positive outlook in good shape, Davidson said. But the effort is definitely worth it.

This is really about nurturing the mind, he said. And there is ample evidence to suggest that there are real psychological and physical health-related benefits.

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5 natural ways to boost your mental health during stressful times - wreg.com