In clinical trials involving 116 patients in the Netherlands, virtual reality exercises led to less fraught social interactions, a team wrote in The Lancet Psychiatry.

More research is needed to confirm the long-term benefits of such technology, which gave the impression of being in an alternate reality populated by life-like avatars.

Up to 90 percent of people with psychosis suffer from paranoid thoughts, leading them to perceive threats where there are none.

As a result, many psychotics avoid public places and contact with people, spending a lot of time alone.

So-called cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) — in which therapists help patients break down seemingly overwhelming problems to render them less threatening — helps reduce anxiety, but does little to quell paranoia.

Researchers led by Roos Pot-Kolder of VU University in the Netherlands extended this method into a virtual environment.

For the trial, the 116 participants — all receiving standard treatment, including antipsychotic medication and regular psychiatric consultations — were divided into two groups of 58.

Only one group practised social interactions in a virtual environment.

The treatment consisted of 16 one-hour sessions over 8-12 weeks in which the participants were exposed, via avatars, to social cues that triggered fear and paranoia in four virtual settings: a street, a bus, a café and a supermarket.

Therapists could alter the number of avatars, their appearance, and whether pre-recorded responses to the patient were neutral or hostile.

The therapists also coached participants, helping them to explore and challenge their own feelings in different situations, and to resist common “safety behaviours” such as avoiding eye contact.

Participants were assessed at the start of the trial, as well as three and six months afterwards.

Exposure to virtual reality did not increase the time participants subsequently spent with other people, the study found.

But it did affect the quality of their interactions.

“The addition of virtual reality CBT to standard treatment reduced paranoid feelings, anxiety, and use of safety behaviours in social situations, compared with standard treatment alone,” said lead author, Roos Pot-Kolder, a researcher at VU University, Netherlands.

The virtual reality CBT group — which showed no adverse effects — went on to use fewer “safety behaviours”.

“With the development of virtual reality and mobile technology, the range of tools available in psychotherapy is expanding,” Kristiina Kompus of Bergen University said in a comment also carried by the journal.

Thirteen members of the “Infraud Organization” were arrested in the United States, Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia, it said.

Created in Ukraine in 2010 by Svyatoslav Bondarenko, Infraud was a key hub for card fraud, touting itself with the motto “In Fraud We Trust.”

It was “the premier one-stop shop for cybercriminals worldwide,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Rybicki.

Members could buy and sell card and personal data for use to buy goods on the internet, defrauding the card owners, card issuers and vendors.

Infraud operated automated vending sites to make it easy for someone to buy card and identity data from them. It had 10,901 approved “members” registered to buy and sell with them in early 2017, and maintained a rating and feedback system for members.

The senior administrators continuously screened the products and services of vendors “to ensure quality products,” said the indictment.

The group operated moderated web forums to share advice among customers, and operated an “escrow” service for payments in digital currencies like Bitcoin, the Justice Department said.

“As alleged in the indictment, Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan.

The network of indicted Infraud leaders included people from the United States, France, Britain, Egypt, Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia, Bangladesh, Canada and Australia.

Bondarenko remains at large, but the number two figure in the organization, Russian co-founder Sergey Medvedev has been arrested, according to US officials.

Snap shares lifted 18 percent in after-hours trade to $16.62 following the fourth quarter update for the company known for its ephemeral smartphone messages and other online content.

The company reported its loss widened to $350 million in the last three months of 2017 after a $170 million deficit a year earlier.

But revenues were better than expected, jumping 72 percent year-on-year to $286 million.

The number of daily active users of the Snapchat application rose to 187 million, a gain of 8.9 million in the quarter and up 18 percent from a year earlier.

“Our business really came together towards the end of last year and I am very proud of our team for working hard to deliver these results,” said founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel.

“We executed well on our 2017 plan to improve quality, performance, and automation, which removed friction from our advertising business and improved our application for the Snapchat community.”

Snap said the average revenue per user rose 46 percent from a year ago to $1.53, offering some hope for reaching profitability.

Although Snapchat is best known for its smartphone messaging, it has also developed partnerships with media outlets eager to reach its audience with news, video and other content.

Snapchat has sought to distinguish itself from Facebook with a design that “separates social from media,” according to Spiegel, who said this helps avoid “many of the problems that arise when friends are commingled with professional content creators.”

Spiegel said 90 percent of Snap ad revenues now come from its automated platforms, and said this system is likely to help boost growth.

“We ended 2017 confident that we can grow our Snapchat community and monetize our products more efficiently than ever before,” he said.

“With our plans for user growth, augmented reality, and content in 2018, I have never been more excited about the future of our business.”

Snap shares have tumbled since a keenly anticipated public offering in March 2017 at $24, on concerns that it may not be able to keep pace with rivals like Facebook in the fast-evolving world of social media.

Snap has sought to boost engagement by offering new kinds of content, including snippets from sporting events and media partners.

NBCUniversal and Snap Inc last year announced a joint venture to produce original scripted shows for Snapchat.

Spiegel said the company has hired 2,400 employees over the past two years, an average of 100 each month.

“Over the years, I’ve made almost every mistake you can imagine,” the Facebook co-founder said on his personal page.

“I’ve made dozens of technical errors and bad deals. I’ve trusted the wrong people and I’ve put talented people in the wrong roles. I’ve missed important trends and I’ve been slow to others. I’ve launched product after product that failed.”

The post, a reflection of the 14 years since Zuckerberg launched Facebook as a Harvard student, was the latest to acknowledge problems in the social network that has grown to some two billion users but has also been criticized for enabling misinformation and manipulation.

In recent weeks, Facebook has unveiled steps to refocus on family and friends, even if that means people spend less time on the network.

Monday’s post suggested a continual re-evaluation of how Facebook works.

“The reason our community exists today is not because we avoided mistakes,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“It’s because we believe what we’re doing matters enough to keep trying to solve our greatest challenges — knowing full well that we’ll fail again and again, but that it’s the only way to make progress.”

To celebrate the signing, the partners held a “Pan Plook Pa” (Ride to Plant) ride, complete with administrators, teachers and students, pedalling from the Si Than Community to the west side of Bung Si Than Reservoir to plant 200 trees as a symbol of ecological values, greening the planet, environmental awareness and reversing climate change.

Noppol Toochinda, ofo Thailand’s general manager, said that Khon Kaen University put its trust in the company in giving it an opportunity to launch its services in the Northeast’s city of industry and education.

“After the service started in early December 2017, we found the response was beyond expectation, with thousands of transactions a day, which is very high compared to the first launch at other universities,” said Noppol.

“Having the ofo service at Khon Kaen University doesn’t only help create a bike-sharing society, but also helps make riding bicycles more popular overall.”

The bike is easy to use, as participants just need to download the ofo application. It would work with the GPS installed on every ofo bike and allow the user to scan the “Smart Locks” QR code to easily unlock the bike, said Noppol.

A free-of-charge trial period for Khon Kaen was ended at the end of January, and so the local service fee will be Bt5 per 30 minutes, easily paid by through a debit account or TrueMoney wallet account, he said.

Kittichai Triratanasirichai, president of Khon Kaen University, said that the cooperation with ofo is aiming to encourage bicycle riding at the university. The schools views the programme as enhancing student and staff environmental awareness, and promoting a healthy lifestyle, while reducing the risk of accidents.

This is a good choice for safe, economic and eco-friendly transportation on the campus, said Kittichai.

The development has the ability to segment shoppers based on loyalty, last visit date or shopping preferences, for example, and push in-store offers within a retailer’s mobile app based on this information.

Adobe Analytics captures shopper behaviours, while Adobe Target further optimises offers and delivers a hyper-personalised experience, the company announced recently.

Built on the Adobe Cloud Platform, retailers can also leverage third-party data from inventory, POS and CRM systems to further optimise offers for in-store shoppers.

Retailers can already access data stored in external databases within Adobe Campaign with its Federated Data Access connectors.

With the new development, they can seamlessly connect to their Hadoop infrastructure to query and segment data without importing datasets or storing them within Adobe Campaign, the company said.

To help retailers deliver immersive experiences without custom development, Adobe is also introducing panoramic and VR viewers this spring.

Moreover, Adobe is introducing the industry’s first set of flexible commerce micro-services, built on Adobe I/O Runtime, to power experience driven commerce.

They help retailers provide shoppers with a connected experience across touchpoints – helping to find the right product or make a purchase, for example.

Adobe’s micro-services are pre-integrated with commerce and order management systems, including CommerceTools, ElasticPath, Digital River, Hybris and Magento, and supported by integrations across its Experience Cloud.

John Chen, regional sales director for Southeast Asia, said on Monday that priced at Bt2,790, the Redmi 5A is an effort to close the digital divide among Thai people outside Bangkok, where in some areas smartphones have penetrated only slightly more than half the population. Data from the National Statistical Office revealed that in 2016, 70.3 per cent of Thai smartphone-user penetration was still concentrated in Bangkok.

Xiaomi’s commitment is to deliver innovation across all price ranges, which allows it to bring access to technology to as many people as possible.

“With the Redmi 5A, we are confident that can contribute to digital penetration across Thailand. It’s time to ensure that smartphones and technology are accessible to everyone, [and] as you can see our products are almost half the price of smartphones with similar specifications,” Chen said.

The 5-inch Redmi 5A comes with a metallic matte finish and an array of high-quality features never seen before in this category, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor, 13MP rear camera, dedicated microSD card slot for storage expansion and 3000mAh long-lasting battery.

Now placed among the top 1.3 per cent of universities in the world, UBD is also one of only 13 universities from Southeast Asia to be ranked in the top 400 in the world.

Other achievements for UBD include being ranked 105th in Asia, up from 123 the previous year, and it is also placed 37th among universities in the world founded less than 50 years ago. According to the QS Top 50 Under 50, UBD is sixth in Asean and 16th in Asia of universities under the age of 50 years.

According to a press release, UBD was ranked top in Asia for student exchange, demonstrating the demand for its Degree, Master and PhD programmes not only from within the country but also from international students.

Through its flagship GenNEXT programme, UBD takes a multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning, allowing graduates to not only master their major subjects but also explore areas of interest in other faculties.

This provides graduates with wider options upon completion of their studies. A particular area where GenNEXT shines is the annual UBD Shell Eco-marathon team, comprising individuals from across the university, utilising their diverse backgrounds and various skills to work towards producing efficient vehicles. Last year’s team broke the national record for the Prototype Battery Electric Car category. With its goal to become a ‘University of Innovation and Enterprise’, UBD also incorporates the entrepreneurial mindset in modules throughout its faculties, encouraging students to be more enterprising with their ideas regardless of whether they intend to go into entrepreneurship or not.

Spearheaded by UBD, the Entrepreneurship Village (EV) facilitates workshops, trainings and forums helping students to realise their ideas into actual business plans as well as viable products and services.

Some of the incubatees have successfully launched their own businesses, and they continue to give back to the community by helping out and mentoring other aspiring student entrepreneurs.

Through its cutting-edge technology and facilities, impactful research thrusts and internationally recognised academic staff, UBD graduates are equipped with the knowledge and skills to face current and future challenges in an increasingly competitive world.

And even after they have completed their studies in UBD, the university continues to offer additional modules and programmes as part of its belief in lifelong learning.

Along with other faculties, the Centre for Lifelong Learning (C3L) enables graduates as well as other members of the public to pursue further knowledge in various areas of interest. With its Blended Learning programmes, students are able to study at the pace, place and along the path of their own choosing.

China has gone so far as to ban the trading of virtual currencies, and Europe and the United States are searching for ways to strengthen regulations. In Japan, an exchange that lost a huge amount of virtual currency was subjected to an on-site inspection by the Financial Services Agency on Friday. The virtual currency market, which has grown extremely rapidly, appears to be at a turning point.

On Thursday, the Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley indicated in a speech to the nation’s parliament that his government would seek to put a stop to illegal financing and other transactions linked to virtual currencies. The government does not consider crypto-currencies legal tender, he said in the speech. Virtual currency markets have subsequently seen a significant sell-off, reflecting concerns that the markets could be more tightly regulated worldwide.

According to CoinDesk, a website that specializes in virtual currencies, the price of one bitcoin (BTC) temporarily fell below $8,000 on Friday. This represents a drop of about 30 per cent compared to five days before, and is less than half of the peak value of about $20,000, reached in mid-December 2017.

De facto ban in China

A variety of countries are considering regulations on virtual currencies.

There has long been concern that the strong anonymity offered by virtual currencies will lead to malicious use, such as money laundering. Moreover, virtual currencies have been repeatedly stolen via cyber-attack as the rapid worldwide growth in the usage of virtual currencies has led exchange operators to hold vast amounts of customer assets.

Behind the calls for increased regulation also lies a dramatic increase in the number of people who hold virtual currencies for speculation purposes.

Asian countries have taken a particularly hard line. China, which once had the largest trading volume in the world, now has the strictest rules.

China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, implemented a total ban on initial coin offerings (ICO), in which companies and other vendors raise funds from investors by issuing their own virtual currencies or coins. China has essentially banned trading in virtual currencies, which has caused exchanges to close.

Chinese authorities say they acted because of negative effects on the financial market, but some analysts believe China wants to stop capital flight overseas.

Indonesia’s central bank, Bank Indonesia, indicated in January that it would not permit virtual currency trading.

Europe and the United States are also exploring regulations. Senior officials of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and others are scheduled to testify Tuesday in a U.S. Senate hearing on virtual currency scams and ICOs.

Germany and France have called for international cooperation. They are expected to jointly propose regulations at a March meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 nations.

Japan’s rules ‘not keeping up’

Japan was one of the first in the world to introduce a registration system for exchanges by establishing relevant legislation that takes virtual currencies into account as a means of payment.

However, rather than being used for payment, virtual currencies are being used more as a financial product for speculation purposes.

So Saito, a lawyer who is knowledgeable about virtual currencies, said Japan’s regulations “did not envision [this kind of situation] and have not kept up with the current state of affairs.”

Concerns have been voiced over a general lack of transparency — including suspected market manipulations — for some virtual currencies and exchange operators.

Some corporations have started to review their stances toward virtual currencies. Peach Aviation, a low-cost carrier, announced Friday that it would indefinitely postpone a plan to allow customers to purchase tickets using bitcoin.

The latest virtual currency theft will likely lead to heightened discussion in Japan regarding whether, or how, its regulatory scheme should be reassessed.