News

Ateneo beats La Salle to kick off UAAP Volleyball Last Dance

ANILA, Philippines - Facing a huge thrice-to-beat handicap, Ateneo de Manila University put on an unfazed and inspired display of nerves and composure, demolishing reigning champion De La Salle University in four sets, 17-25, 25-23, 25-13, 25-20, in the 76th UAAP Women's Volleyball tournament Finals, Wednesday, March 5, at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.

The Lady Spikers bucked a sluggish opening set performance as they sent La Salle's 30-game winning streak to a screeching halt to keep their title hopes alive and extend the series into a second game on Saturday.

After going 0-2 against the Lady Spikers in the eliminations, the Loyola crew - who overcame a twice-to-beat disadvantage against National University in the semifinals - relied on not one but three players as rookie Michelle Morente poured in 17 points, while Alyssa Valdez and Amy Ahomiro each finished with 16 to tow Ateneo to a complete turnaround against the heavily-favored on paper La Salle side.

By winning the opening fray of the Finals, Ateneo turns the title race into a virtual best-of-three affair with both squads needing to win two games before they can raise the Season 76 championship trophy.

It was not, however, an all-Ateneo spectacle as the Lady Spikers, who are coming off an 18-day break after sweeping all of their 14 elimination round assignments, initially showed no signs of rust, erecting their biggest lead of the game at 10 points, 16-6 to run away with a 25-17 first set win.

But the Lady Eagles turned the game around from then on as they engaged the Taft Avenue-based squad to a close second set duel, gaining a 22-20 lead courtesy of an Ahomiro hit.

La Salle then scored two unanswered points to tie the match at 22-all as Cyd Demecillo stopped the bleeding and Morente getting denied by the net but Ateneo showed solid composure in crunch time with Valdez and Ahomiro scoring back-to-back to wrap the second set and tie the game at one set apiece, 25-23.

It was downhill for La Salle in the next two frames as Ateneo caught them in the backfoot for most of the third, pulling away at 17-10 before taking the driver seat, 25-13.

Looking to finish off the defending titlists, the Katipunan side then caught fire in the fourth canto as their three-pronged offensive force of Valdez, Ahomiro, and Morente led them to an 18-10 bubble but La Salle refused to be blown away with Ara Galang and Demecillo cutting Ateneo's lead to just two, 22-20.

Ahomiro was there, though, for Ateneo as she brought her squad to matchpoint with Valdez delivering the knockout blow to set up another date with La Salle on March 8 at the Big Dome.

Demecillo led La Salle's losing cause as she tallied in a team-high 16 markers while Galang added 13 and skipper Abi Marano finished with 10.

It was a different story on Tai Bundit's side of the court as Morente registered 15 kills off her total output and Valdez added 10 digs for the Lady Eagles.

Game 2 of the 76th UAAP Women's Finals will start at 4pm on Saturday, March 8, at the Araneta Coliseum. 

How Candy Crush, Angry Birds get your money?

BARCELONA — They are free to download, fun to play, and fiendishly addictive: mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Clash of Clans want to get you hooked, then get your money.

Whether you are paying to obtain extra lives, buy ‘gems’ to use as a virtual currency, or just to carry on playing without delay, the “freemium” games boom is a money-spinner for the most successful developers.

In-app purchases helped to drive up spending on mobile games by more than 60 percent to $16.5 billion (12 billion euros) in 2013, according to research house IHS.

“What we have done is bring the thought processes and skills of selling and marketing more clearly into the game,” said Nicholas Lovell, author of The Curve, a book about making money in a world of free digital content.

In any given month, only about one in 20 players of a given “freemium” game makes an in-app purchase, Lovell said, meaning the most devoted end up paying the most, while others enjoy it for free.

“If you are heavily invested in a game world and you are putting your emotions and your friendships in that game world then the psychology can become a lot more powerful,” he said ahead of the February 24-27 World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Once a player has downloaded a free game, the holy grail of designers is to keep him or her playing, hopefully with various 10-20 minute bouts in a day and a longer session or two in the evening.

The most committed players are the most likely to spend, said Lovell, who is also the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog that advises games developers on business strategy.

For example, a player may pay to avoid waiting 24 hours before advancing to a key goal.

Then there is the chance to avoid “the grind.”

A player might need 10,000 gold coins to obtain a crucial object, requiring the completion of 1,000 quests, each of which earns 10 coins.

Within a “freemium” mobile game, you can spend weeks to complete the “grind” of 1,000 quests or just pay some money to avoid the task altogether.

“That devalues it in some people’s eyes. It is not evil. It is bloody annoying if you are the kind of person who thinks like that,” Lovell said.

‘Atmosphere of fear’

The industry expert welcomed new principles released by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading to ensure parents authorise children’s in-app purchases and to prevent unfair and aggressive sales techniques to which minors may be susceptible.

Apple and others should introduce a child mode that lets parents block unauthorized activities on their smartphones and tablets, he said.

Nevertheless, Lovell believed variable pricing would become a model for all digital content, not just games.

Brian Blau, analyst at technology research house Gartner Inc., said consumers were making in-app purchases simply because they wanted to play games.

“There is a certain amount of that addictive gambling type psychology about it but for the most part people just want to play the game. They like it,” Blau said.

“There is nothing tricky about it. The thing is that you want to play the game.”

For a minority, however, the video gaming world can become addictive.

Video games use “operant conditioning” to reward players for certain behaviors, said Emil Hodzic, a psychologist who runs a clinic treating video game addiction in Sydney.

“For example, you get a reward every time you hit your enemy with a sword,” he said.

“But as time goes on, those rewards get stretched further and further apart. The person ends up spending more time for less reward. In the meantime, it builds up higher levels of anticipation.”

Hodzic, whose clients are mostly aged 14-21, said children enjoy the reward of such video games but can struggle to self-regulate and risk getting into difficulty if their parents are not aware.

Some games, though only a minority, instil an “atmosphere of fear,” he said, almost bombarding players with messages that, for example, offer “special rates” to get 10,000 gems to upgrade and protect a newly constructed castle.

Parents need to ensure their children keep their feet in the real world, Hodzic said.

“In terms of things to look out for, you want to be sure that their face-to-face world is not shrinking as their online world is increasing.”

Yahoo buying binge continues with Vizify takeover

SAN FRANCISCO—Yahoo on Wednesday added Vizify to the long list of startups it has bought since former Google executive Marissa Mayer took the helm less than two years ago.

The company did not disclose how much it paid for Vizify, which specializes in letting people turn their social media data into videos, infograpics or other visual presentations.

“We have found in Vizify a company that shares our passion for visualization technology and the user experience,” Yahoo said.

Founded in 2011, Vizify is based in Portland, Oregon. Its five-member team will join Yahoo’s media product group in San Francisco.

“As for what’s next, we can’t talk specifics just yet, but we’re excited to bring a more visual approach to data at Yahoo,” the Vizify team said in a post on the company’s website.

“We have a lot more up our sleeves and can’t wait to get started.”

Over 2 dozen startups

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo has bought more than two dozen startups as Mayer tries to pump new life into the aging Internet pioneer eclipsed by Silicon Valley neighbor Google.

Last month, Yahoo acquired Wander, which makes smartphone visual diary-app Days.

The Days app, launched a year ago, lets people weave images captured at various moments into “visual diaries” of any given days in their lives.

The Wander team will go to work in Yahoo offices in New York as the company adds more muscle to its efforts to be center stage on smartphones and tablet computers.

Since taking charge of Yahoo in July 2012, Mayer has made a priority of tailoring products and services for smartphones and tablets with an aim at becoming part of people’s daily habits in the mobile age.

She has also shown a penchant for buying startups to add talented members of their teams to the Yahoo workforce.

Technology

Tilapia Genetic Strains and Hatchery Technology

Genetic improvement program mes enable a more profitable industry to benefit from the increased popularity of tilapia as a global food commodity.

With tilapia being such a diverse group of over 100 species, surprisingly only a handful of species are cultured commercially and only one species, the Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, accounts for 95% of global production

Genetic improvement program­mes enable a more profitable industry to benefit from the increased popularity of tilapia as a glo­bal food commodity. Production world­wide reached 3.23 million t in 2011 and is steadily growing. The Philippines is at the centre of many of these genetic improvement programmes.

Tilapia fry prices vary around the world, ranging from below US$0.01 in Asia to over US$0.10 in the Americas and up to US$0.20 in Europe, reflecting costs of production and availability of fry. In Egypt and other seasonal markets, fry prices can be 50% higher at the start of spring, compared to the height of sum­mer when everyone has fry available.

Tilapia farming and supermale tecnology

Most commercial farms only grow male tilapia, which grow much larger and faster than females and this was initially achieved through manual hand-sexing of the fingerlings, and discarding the females, which was labour intensive, inconsistent, and wasteful.

It was then found that certain hybrids between different tilapia spe­cies (O.niloticus and O.aureus) gave very high % male progeny. The down­side with this technique was that it required hatcheries to hold two separa­te stocks of tilapia species, and as the purity of tilapia stocks deteriorated, the technique became unviable.

Researchers then discovered that tilapia fry, when fed male sex hormones for the first month after hatching, were able to change sex, from 50- 50 male to female ratio, to ratios of almost 100% male fry. This is a highly variable technique due to hormone purity and operator experience. One of the major challenges facing the industry is that use of Methyl Testosterone will be phased out. This is overcome by the latest technology to effectively provide all male fry - the YY Male Technology developed by Fishgen. After many years of research in the UK and in the Philippines, Fishgen produced supermale tilapia which had two Y chromosomes instead of the usual Y and X chromosome (females have two X chromosomes). These supermales produce only male fry addressing the problems of a future ban on hormonal sex reversal.Tilapia linesDeciding on which commercial strain of tilapia to use in a new tilapia project can be daunting, and there are many commercial stocks available globally.

The farm’s location can have a deciding influence as there are restrictions on importation of some strains from some countries, to minimise disease and biodiversity issues particularly in Africa where there are many unique endemic strains of tilapia, requiring protection from contamination by the careless introduction of new genetic lines, where escapees could interbreed or outcompete with the pure endemic species.There are currently 4 main genetically improved commercial lines that are globally distributed and proven to be fast growing.

The biggest genetic improvement programme was the GIFT project (Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia) originally produced from 8 strains of the Nile Tilapia collected from Africa in the 1980’s, and after extensive breeding programmes carried out in the Philippines by ICLARM (Now World Fish Center) a new strain was produced and distributed globally. World Fish Center has moved to Penang, Malaysia now and the breeding programme is still carried on in both Malaysia and the Philippines.

The commercial rights to a recent GIFT genetic line was sold to Genomar (a Norweigian Venture Capital Genetic Improvement company) a few years ago and is now marketed globally as Genomar Supreme tilapia (GST) and the processed fish as TRAPIA ensuring full genetic traceability of their products to the food industry. Since then the Philippines have carried on with their own Genetic Improvements of the GIFT line and market the GIFT Excel line now.

These lines are all based on the original genetic stocks collected in Africa in the 1980’s.Another well-known stock is the Chitrilada strain, farmed extensively in Thailand, and originated as a gift to the King of Thailand by the Emperor of Japan in 1965, and was maintained as a pure line in the Royal Jitralada Palace in Bangkok before being distributed throughout the country by the Thai Department of Fisheries in 1967. Since then it has been improved by selective breeding programmes and is now widely farmed in South and Central America, particularly Mexico and Brazil. The only other tilapia genetic line commercially used extensively around the world is the YY Supermale strain, developed by Fishgen in the UK.

This stock is also based on the Nile Tilapia from Egypt, but the main difference between this line and all the others available, is that no hormones are required to sex reverse the fry for growout, as the YY supermale has been specifically bred to sire only male offspring.Tilapia hatcheries The hatchery systems are diverse with cost of construction and production of tilapia fry varying enormously, from basic pond hatcheries in tropical countries costing almost nothing, to high cost high tech biosecure indoor recirculation systems.

The simple broodstock ponds have a shallow area around the edge where the fry once released from the female’s mouth, tend to congregate in tight shoals and are collected with large dip nets on a daily basis. Larger hatcheries use lined ponds in polytunnels give better temperature control, biosecurity and predator protection and the fry are incubated by the female which is less efficient than removing the fertilised eggs from the female’s mouth and using artificial incubators to hatch the fry.Many of the world’s largest tilapia hatcheries are in Asia, where 75% of global tilapia production takes place, use Hapa-based production systems, where the broodstock are stocked in long hapas (Net pens) and the eggs are harvested from the female’s mouth every 5 days.

This is done by opening the buccal cavity of the female and gently rinsing the eggs out of the mouth into a bucket. Importance of fingerlings productionWith global tilapia production still growing steadily, hatcheries are also expanding to provide fry for the grow-out farms and some of the biggest hatcheries now have the capability to produce 1 million fry per day.

The main tilapia producing countries are China, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Honduras. There are large hatcheries in all these countries but the biggest farms are vertically integrated units which produce their own fry to minimise biosecurity issues and ensure supply of fry. Rapidly expanding importers of tilapia are Russia and the Middle East, but as China becomes far wealthier, consuming more tilapia domestically, price increases and possible shortages for tilapia are probable. With the tilapia market firmly established and growing globally, future challenges for tilapia will be finding new markets and coming up against stiff competition from Pangasius imported from Vietnam, especially in European markets which was at one time seen as the new dawn for tilapia producers around the world.

South Cotabato cheer squads to compete in National Cheerleading Championship

South Cotabato cheerleading teams were qualified to compete in this year's National Cheerleading Championship Finals happening on March 8-9, 2014 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City. 

Saravia National High School, which bagged the top spot during the regional qualifiers last October 2013 held in General Santos City will be competing in the High School Division while Notre Dame of Marbel University which ranked 3rd in the regional qualifiers will be also seen in action against the best teams around the country in the College Division.

Other cheerleading teams from Southern Mindanao which will be joining the NCC Finals this March includes NDDU-Ibed and Dadiangas North High School in the High School Division and Notre Dame of Dadiangas University and Mindanao Polytechnic College for the College Division all coming from General Santos City.
- See more at: http://www.southcotabatonews.com/2014/02/south-cotabato-cheer-squads-to-compete.html#sthash.1Skl9qan.dpuf