Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. plans to use a small unmanned aerial vehicle to closely inspect conditions inside the No. 3 reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant as early as this month.

TEPCO will use the drone to examine the location of scattered debris and the level of radiation inside the reactor building, among other things.

It will be the first drone-based research conducted inside the plant’s Nos. 1, 2 and 3 reactor buildings, in which nuclear meltdowns occurred.

The drone, called Riser, was developed by a British company. It measures 83 centimeters by 93 centimeters and weighs about four kilograms.

Riser is equipped with cameras and a dosimeter that can measure up to 2.5 sieverts of radiation per hour.

Even in indoor spaces inaccessible to GPS signals, the drone is capable of determining its position and avoiding obstacles using lasers.

The same model was used for decommissioning work at the Sellafield nuclear facility in Britain.

TEPCO’s plan is for the drone to enter the No. 3 reactor building through a bay for large cargo on the first floor, then fly upward through a series of openings from the first to the fifth floor.

The drone will check areas including the building’s third floor, which has not been sufficiently monitored because radiation levels are too high.

According to TEPCO, key equipment such as that used to cool spent nuclear fuel pools are located on the third floor.

Confirming the location of possible obstacles and the level of radiation is necessary before decommissioning work can progress.

Riser also has a mapping function that enables it to produce three-dimensional graphic images of its surroundings using lasers.

Combining these images with measurements of radiation levels allows for the production of maps outlining contamination levels inside the reactor buildings. TEPCO will consider making this kind of distribution map in the future.

A hydrogen explosion inside the No. 3 reactor building on March 14, 2011, destroyed the building’s upper structures.

Work is currently under way to construct a dome-shaped roof over the building to facilitate the removal of fuel that remains in the spent fuel storage pools.

Internal internet and wifi systems crashed at about 7:15 pm (1015 GMT) on Friday and were still not back to normal at midday on Saturday, Games organisers said.

Cyber-security teams and experts from South Korea’s defence ministry, plus four other ministries, formed part of a taskforce investigating the shutdown, they said, adding that it didn’t affect the high-tech opening ceremony.

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US Vice-President Mike Pence were among the VIPs at Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium late on Friday.

The outage follows warnings of malware phishing attacks targeting organisations working at the Olympics, and allegations of cyberattacks from Russia — which has denied any involvement.

North Korea has also blamed for a series of cyber incidents including the WannaCry global ransomware attack, which infected 300,000 computers worldwide last May.

“We don’t want to speculate because we’re still trying to find out what the root source is,” said Nancy Park, a spokeswoman for the Games organisers.

“We have some reports, we’ve been working all night trying to find out and working with our partners.”

WannaCry

South Korea showed off its technical expertise with a dazzling gala opening ceremony on Friday which included state-of-the-art special effects and augmented reality to add extra impact for TV viewers.

While internet and wifi were affected across the Olympic site — spread over two main venues in mountainous eastern South Korea — organisers said there was no impact on competition, which got into full swing on Saturday.

“There were some issues that impacted some of our non-critical systems last night for a few hours,” Games organisers said in a statement.

“These have not disrupted any events, or had any effect on the safety and security of any athletes or spectators,” they added.

“All competitions are running as planned and the systems are working at the expected level.”

Last month, cyber-security firm McAfee said it had uncovered an attack targeting organisations involved with the Olympics, using a malicious email attachment.

North Korea has been accused of involvement in a number of cyber incidents, including WannaCry — although it has slammed that accusation as “absurd”.

Russia has also denied launching any hacking attacks on the Pyeongchang Olympics, where its team is formally banned following the revelation of systemic doping.

While organisers wouldn’t comment on the possibility that an attack was behind the shutdown, experts believe disrupting the Games would be seen as a coup for many hackers.

“The whole world’s watching. It’s one of the largest stages you can possibly have to get a message out there,” Ross Rustici, senior director for intelligence Boston-based Cybereason told the Tribune News Service.

“You got a lot of lower-tier guys going after these games. It’s head-hunting, bragging rights,” Rustici was quoted as saying.

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.