Why We Love Game of Thrones Reaction Videos

A series known not only for its brutality but shocking brutality, Game of Thrones has sucker punched viewers several times over the last few years, in grisly scenes that stole some of the most beloved characters from the show. And each time its done it, we’ve seen the internet littered with videos of fans gasping, weeping, and shouting all manner of profanity as someone they rooted for met a cruel end.

In the wake of the most recent Game of Thrones episode, we saw it again.

(Spoiler alert: This post and the videos in it contain spoilers for Game of Thrones. Obviously.)

Much like series itself, Game of Thrones reaction videos are immensely popular, scoring hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. One compilation, for the infamous Red Wedding episode, has been viewed over 10 million times, and even was screened for creator George R. R. Martin himself on the Conan show. But why do we love them so much, especially when they’re focused on the moments we hate the most? And why do the plot twists on Game of Thrones seem to inspire them in ways other shows don’t?

First, there’s the source material. The Song of Ice and Fire novels the show is based on are a subversion of fantasy tropes; you believe that Ned—and later, his son Robb—are going to be noble heroes that will win the day, because that’s how stories like this are supposed to work. Martin designed these stories to evoke those familiar fantasy tropes, and then very deliberately pulls the rug out from under them. Rather than blunt force trauma, these deaths are the literary equivalent of a surgically-aimed stiletto to the heart.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t excellent, compelling stories—or perhaps more interesting for their desire to swerve left when everyone expects them to go right—but they are, quite simply, designed to screw with you.

Reaction videos are also fundamentally linked to the books in an important way. Unlike most shocking plot twists on television shows, a significant portion of the audience saw it coming. That means that there are insiders in millions of living rooms, sitting right next to friends and family members who have no idea about the bloody events in store. The reason most reaction shots exist at all is because someone in the room knew exactly what was coming, and decided to press record and capture the fallout.

There’s an element of both hazing and fraternity there, in desiring to see other people suffer through the same pain you did, to see them react as you did, and ultimately for them to join you on the other side in fellowship. These videos also depict a point of pride for many Song of Ice and Fire readers: a collective agreement to preserve the television audience from spoilers and allow the often tragic story to unfold in its own time. Each fresh and unexpected blow to a television viewer is a fulfillment of that promise, both a wound and a gift.

After the great shock of the Red Wedding, Martin himself told the Brisbane Times that he was “very proud of my book readers … for the most part they’ve done an excellent job of not spoiling the non-readers. I mean, the fact that the Red Wedding had such a tremendous impact all around the world is a testament not only to what a great job David Benioff and Dan Weiss and the cast of Game of Thrones did in rendering the Red Wedding, but it’s also a tribute to all of my book readers who knew what was gonna happen but deliberately withheld that information, did not spoil their friends and relatives.”

Some people surely enjoy the videos solely because it’s amusing to watch people get upset—at least if the harm is fictional—particularly if their reactions are theatrical and colorfully profane. Laughing at people who react emotionally can offer distance and detachment, an opportunity to position oneself as cool and unaffected while others are vulnerable.

For others, particularly ardent fans of the series, however, it also offers a chance to do the opposite. The death of Ned Stark and the Red Wedding are moments not merely of violence but of horror, and watching them with others—not only in our living rooms, but again and again through reaction videos—offers a bit of the same thrill that comes from watching a slasher film in a crowded theater, and screaming along with everyone else.

There’s catharsis in them as well: a way to see our own horror and sadness reflected in the faces of others, and thereby somewhat allayed. Although DVRs may have fragmented audiences from one unified whole watching at a single time to a far more chronologically scattered experience, TV is still a significantly shared phenomenon—or at least, many of us still want it to be. When we watch popular shows like Game of Thrones, on some level we share that experience with millions of other people, and reaction videos are a comforting reminder that we cry and scream and grieve with them as well.

But even in Westeros, it’s not all doom and gloom. After the Purple Wedding earlier this season—where the unanimously hated King Joffrey finally met his end—we got a reaction video that again saw Game of Thrones fans were once against gasping, yelling and leaping out of their chairs, but with one important difference: everyone was ecstatic. Here viewers united not over shared sadness, frustration, or disappointment, but over the satisfaction of a deeply-held desire finally fulfilled, a chance to scream “yes!” at a show that had so often inspired us to scream “no!”

Either way, we screamed it together.

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A Smart Sensor That Quantifies the Soil in Your Garden

Edyn is a smart garden system that consists of a Wi-Fi-connected sensor and water valve. Both are solar powered and have a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery when not in full sun. Photo: Edyn

Edyn is a smart garden system that consists of a Wi-Fi-connected sensor and water valve. Both are solar powered and have a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery when not in full sun.

Photo: Edyn

The smart water valve reacts to data gathered by the sensor as well as meteorological information from the surrounding area. It knows when your plants are thirsty and adjusts its watering schedule accordingly. Photo: Edyn

The smart water valve reacts to data gathered by the sensor as well as meteorological information from the surrounding area. It knows when your plants are thirsty and adjusts its watering schedule accordingly.

Photo: Edyn

Founder Jason Aramburu thought up Edyn while trying to figure out ways to test Biochar, a sustainable fertilizer he developed. Here are the early prototypes, which are much clunkier than the final version. Photo: Edyn

Founder Jason Aramburu thought up Edyn while trying to figure out ways to test Biochar, a sustainable fertilizer he developed. Here are the early prototypes, which are much clunkier than the final version.

Photo: Edyn

The hardware is accompanied by an app that tells you the best plants to grow based on your soil. Image: Edyn

The hardware is accompanied by an app that tells you the best plants to grow based on your soil.

Image: Edyn

The big goal is for Edyn to gather loads of information for a massive database of soil research. Aramburu hopes more specific knowledge about what grows best where and why will empower more people to grow their own food. Image: Edyn

The big goal is for Edyn to gather loads of information for a massive database of soil research. Aramburu hopes more specific knowledge about what grows best where and why will empower more people to grow their own food.

Image: Edyn

There are plenty of ways to kill a plant without trying. Trust me. But even hardcore gardeners have a hard time knowing what’s really happening underground. Jason Aramburu created Edyn, a Wi-Fi connected gardening system, with the goal of doing for gardens what wearables have done for our bodies.

Call it the quantified garden. The system, which is currently raising money on Kickstarter, consists of a Wi-Fi-connected sensor and water valve that assesses soil nutrition and waters your plants based on actual data. Stick the sensor it in the ground, and it gathers all sorts of information—things like ambient temperature, humidity, light intensity and soil electrical properties—which gets simplified, contextualized and passed along to you, the gardener.

It’s a smart idea, if not entirely novel. Soil sensors have long been alerting us we’re this close to drowning our tomatoes, but the end goal for Edyn is much more ambitious than a creating a clever piece of hardware, says Aramburu. The real intention is to create a massive database of what plants grow well in which climates—information that Aramburu hopes can someday be used to usher in a new age of sustainable gardening and farming.

The real intention is to create a massive database of what plants grow well in which climates.

The Seeds of Inspiration

The idea for Edyn came to the soil scientist a couple years ago when he was living in Kenya working on his last project Biochar, a type of sustainable fertilizer. Aramburu realized there were few ways to verify the effectiveness of his product outside of professional soil testing. Problem was, soil testing is slow, expensive and didn’t allow him to track what was happening in real time. So Aramburu made a rough prototype of a sensor and began testing the soil himself. “It was basically a box on a stick,” he says. “These were really more for a scientist to use.”

When Aramburu moved to San Francisco last year, he knew that in order to build the massive database he’s reaching for, he’d have to make Edyn’s industrial design more accessible for the everyday gardener. He turned to Yves Behar at Fuse Project, who created a cheery diamond-shaped tool that pops out of the ground like a flower and a water valve that can be connected to an existing water system like a hose or sprinkler to control when plants get fed.

The sensor, which has a microprocessor built into its body, works by emitting a small electrical signal into the soil. “We actually measure how that signal is attenuated by the soil,” he says. A significant enough change in signal (the result of humidity, temperature, etc) will spur the sensor to send you a push notification alerting you to the new soil conditions. At the same time, this data, along with meteorological information, is telling the valve if and when it should water each plant.

An App for Context

Gathering the data is one thing, but making sense of it is an entirely different challenge, which is where Behar and his team came in. They developed a smartphone app that contextualizes all of the soil data. The app will inform you on what to grow, when to grow it and what other plants would work well alongside it. It’ll also, for example, make sure you know when there’s too much humidity in the soil or if your dirt is too acidic and could use some lime or compost.

The Edyn sensor in the wild. Image: Edyn

Over time, this (anonymized) data is stored and aggregated with other Edyn users around you to form a more holistic picture of your area’s growing climate. “We’ll be able to say, ‘well, Katie is having success growing basil in Potrero Hill in San Francisco. That’s very close to you, so you might have luck growing it as well,” Aramburu explains. It’s easy to compare the Edyn system to the quantified self movement, but Edyn has the opportunity to actually build a robust, actionable set of data that personal health information could be used for because of its sensitive nature.

If adopted by enough casual gardeners, or as Aramburu hopes, smaller scale organic farmers, it could spur localized food production and actually have an impact on food supply. “We already do a really bad job of feeding the world and it’s only going to become more difficult,” says Aramburu. “I’m hoping this will become a tool to enable agriculture around the world, to help people grow their own food and increase food security.”

Elucidating pathogenic mechanism of meningococcal meningitis

Neisseria meningitidis, also called meningococcus, is a bacterium responsible for meningitis and septicemia. Its most serious form, purpura fulminans, is often fatal. This bacterium, which is naturally present in humans in the nasopharynx, is pathogenic if it reaches the blood stream.

Teams led by Dr. Sandrine Bourdoulous, CNRS senior researcher at the Institut Cochin (CNRS/INSERM/Université Paris Descartes), and Professor Xavier Nassif, Institut Necker Enfants Malades (CNRS/INSERM/Université Paris Descartes/Assistance Publique -- Hôpitaux de Paris), have deciphered the molecular events through which meningococci target blood vessels and colonize them. This work opens a path to new therapeutic perspectives for treating vascular problems caused by this type of invasive infection. The study was published on June 1, 2014 in Nature Medicine.

When the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis multiplies in the blood, it interacts with the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels and adheres to their walls. In the skin and mucous membranes, meningococcal infection in the vessels creates hemorrhagic skin lesions (called purpura) due to bleeding in the tissues. Those can rapidly progress to a serious and often fatal form of the disease (purpura fulminans). In the brain, when meningococci adhere to the vessels they can pass through the blood-brain barrier, and cause meningitis when they invade the meninges[3].

Teams of researchers have deciphered how Neisseria meningitidis adheres to blood vessels, a step that underpins the bacterium's pathogenicity. In blood vessels they have identified receptor[4] CD147, whose expression is essential for initial meningococcal adherence to endothelial cells. If this receptor is absent, N. meningitidis cannot implant in blood vessels and colonize them.

It is a well-known fact that the adherence process of meningococcal bacteria to human cells relies on pili, long filaments that are expressed by the bacterium and composed of different sub-units (pilins). However, the pilins specifically involved in N. meningitidis' adherence to blood vessels had never been identified. The researchers have determined that two pilins, PilE and PilV, interact directly with the CD147 receptor. Without them, meningococci cannot adhere to endothelial cells.

Humans are the only species that can be infected by meningococci. To show in vivo that pilins PilE and PilV are essential for N. meningitidis to colonize the vascular network, the researchers used a mouse model, where the mice were immunodeficient and grafted with human skin, keeping the functional human vessels within the graft to reproduce in mice the infection stages as observed in human skin. These mice were then infected by meningococci naturally having pilins PilE and PilV, or meningococci in which the expression of these pilins had been artificially suppressed. The human blood vessels were only infected by meningococci displaying PilE and PilV, which confirms that these two pilins are essential to the bacterial colonization process.

The researchers also showed in an ex vivo[5] infection model that cerebral vessels and meninges, particularly rich in CD147 receptors, allow colonization by meningococci, unlike other parts of the brain.

The scientists now wish to develop a new type of vaccine (to complement those already available) that would block the interaction between N. meningitidis and the CD147 receptors, thereby stopping the bacterium from colonizing the vessels.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange) . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Preserving bread longer: A new edible film made with essential oils

Essential oils have boomed in popularity as more people seek out alternatives to replace their synthetic cleaning products, anti-mosquito sprays and medicines. Now scientists are tapping them as candidates to preserve food in a more consumer-friendly way. A study from ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reports the development of new edible films containing oils from clove and oregano that preserve bread longer than commercial additives.

Nilda de F. F. Soares and colleagues note that the search for new ways to keep packaged food from spoiling has led some scientists to essential oils, which can keep bacteria and mold at bay. Oils from clove and oregano had already been incorporated into edible films. But scientists still needed to optimize the effectiveness of these films and test them under real-life conditions for other uses. So Soares's team decided to test how well different edible films with clove and oregano essential oils could maintain bread's freshness and see how they measured up against a commercial antimicrobial agent. Bread is a common staple around the world and is often kept fresh with calcium propionate. Though naturally occurring, some research suggesting negative side effects have tarnished its popularity.

The scientists bought preservative-free bread and placed slices in plastic bags with or without essential oil-infused edible films. To some slices, they added a commercial preservative containing calcium propionate. After 10 days, the latter additive lost its effectiveness, but the edible films made with small droplets of the oils continued to slow mold growth.

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The above story is based on materials provided by American Chemical Society . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Betrayal of the aphids: Internal bacteria can turn on its host

Aphids are devastating insect pests and cause great losses to agriculture worldwide. These sap-feeding plant pests harbor in their body cavity bacteria, which are essential for the aphids' fecundity and survival. Buchnera, the bacterium, benefits also because it cannot grow outside the aphid. This mutually beneficial relationship is sabotaged, however, by the bacterium which proceeds to betray the aphid, a research team led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside has found.

"Although this betrayal is unintentional, it nevertheless alerts the plant about the aphid's presence and the aphids are unable to reproduce in large numbers," said Isgouhi Kaloshian, a professor of nematology, who led the research project. "A protein from the bacterium, found in the aphid saliva and likely delivered inside the plant host by the aphid, triggers plant immune responses against the aphid. It seems that the plant immune system targets the bacterium and exploits the strict mutual dependency between the plant and aphid to recognize the aphid as the intruder."

Study results appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While feeding, aphids secrete saliva in the plant. To identify the protein composition of the aphid saliva, the researchers collected saliva from more than 100,000 aphids. Using mass spectrometry, they detected 105 proteins. They discovered these proteins were of both aphid and Buchnera origins. One of these Buchnera proteins, GroEL, was found to induce immune responses in plants.

"GroEL was known previously to trigger immunity in animals," said Kaloshian, a member of UC Riverside's Institute for Integrative Genome Biology. "However, our finding that it induces immunity in plants is new. Since most aphids harbor Buchnera, and likely have GroEL in their saliva, this bacterial protein may generally alert plants of the presence of aphids. How it is recognized by plants is still unknown. GroEL can now be exploited to engineer durable resistance of crops against aphids."

According to the researchers, since Buchnera-related bacteria are present in a number of insects (other than aphids), their findings are likely to be broadly applicable to other arthropods. GroEL and additional proteins from insect bacteria probably are delivered to plants through insect saliva and contribute to shaping plant-insect interactions.

"Strikingly, the majority of the aphid salivary proteins predicted for secretion were of unknown function and different from those typically secreted by microbes into plants," Kaloshian said. "However, these aphid salivary proteins, too, serve similar purposes in manipulating plant metabolism. Thus, aphids and microbes seem to have evolved different molecular solutions to achieve the same goals."

Currently, Kaloshian's lab is working on identifying the plant receptor for GroEL that initiates the plant immune response. Her team is also functionally characterizing the aphid salivary proteins with no known function to identify their roles.

"We would like to understand how these proteins are able to modulate host metabolism and identify their host targets," she said.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of California - Riverside . The original article was written by Iqbal Pittalwala. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

The Rock Is Hercules and Will Arnett Is a Horse in the Week’s Best Trailers

Photo: David James/Paramount Pictures

From the Son of Zeus to the Boy Who Lived, this week’s best previews show characters struggling to complete monumental tasks. For Hercules, that’s defeating monsters sent by the Gods. For Daniel Radcliffe, that means winning the heart of Zoe Kazan. In between, there’s an animated character trying to return to the love of his life, a journalist fighting to expose a government conspiracy, and a horse/man/thing battling his own downward spiral into irrelevance. In a world where everybody hurts…

The One Everyone Is Talking About: Hercules

With New Photo Sharer, Tinder Proves Everyone Wants to Be Like Snapchat

Images: Courtesy of Tinder

Tinder may soon dethrone Snapchat as everyone’s favorite app for sending sexy, self-destructing selfies.

On Thursday, the popular dating app launched a new ephemeral photo-sharing feature called Moments. The tool, says Tinder CEO Sean Rad, should make it easier for people to start conversations on the app. “We’re approaching 2 billion matches, and we’ve built an awesome product that helps break down the barriers when it comes to making new relationships,” he tells WIRED. “But in the process of forming so many new connections, we realized users need a better way to get to know their matches.”

The one thing every smartphone user wants is a quick and easy way to communicate.

In other words, Moments will make it easier to flirt. But while this feature may be a natural extension of Tinder’s core business, it’s also part of a larger trend emerging in the tech industry: so many companies want to be more like Snapchat. That fact was evident at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week, where the technology giant announced that its new iMessage service would include messages that self-destruct, the feature most synonymous with Snapchat. And Facebook not only tried to acquire Snapchat outright for $3 billion last year, according to reports, but it also built its own failed Snapchat knockoff, known as Poke.

What all of these companies are realizing–including Tinder–is that while social networks may devolve, mobile games may flame out, and dating apps may grow stale, the one thing every smartphone user wants is a quick and easy way to communicate. Nothing draws users back into an app like knowing they might have five new messages waiting for them. And as Snapchat’s success has proved, photos are now becoming the most popular form of messaging there is. By co-opting a bit of the Snapchat playbook, these companies are hoping they can keep their audiences coming back for more.

The Moments feature draws not only from Snapchat, but also from Instagram, allowing users to take a photo, stick a filter on it, doodle over it, write a message, and broadcast it to all their Tinder matches. Matches can view or like the photos for 24 hours before they self-destruct, but the person who took the photo can keep her own gallery of “moments” forever.

Though Rad says Tinder doesn’t have a problem keeping users engaged, he acknowledges that for many users, getting a conversation started on Tinder is a challenge. And if you’re not actually talking to anyone on an app like Tinder–which is all about meeting people–logic would have it that you might give up on the app sooner. By effectively giving users more talking points, the Moments feature could convince even Tinder’s most timid users that there’s a reason to stay.