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When pain researcher Diane Gromala recounts how she started in the field of virtual reality, she seems reflective.She had been researching virtual reality for pain since the early 1990s, but her shift to focusing on how virtual reality could be used for chronic pain management began in 1999, when her own chronic pain became worse. Prior to that, her focus was on VR as entertainment. Gromala, 56, was diagnosed with chronic pain in 1984, but the left-sided pain that extended from her lower stomach to her left leg worsened over the next 15 years."Taking care of my chronic pain became a full-time job. So at some point I had to make a choice — either stop working or charge full force ahead by making it a motivation for my research. You can guess what I chose," metal she said. Now she's finding that immersive VR technology may offer another option for chronic pain, which affects at least one in five Canadians, according to a 2011 University of Alberta study."We know that...

By Lydia Slater for The Mail on Sunday Published: 18:45 EDT, 7 October 2013 | Updated: 18:47 EDT, 8 October 2013 As the courier van pulls up outside her front door, Kim Searle jumps to her feet with a squeak of excitement. The driver hands her a white package. Holding her breath, eyes shining with excitement, she eagerly rips it open. Out pops a printer cartridge in its dull grey plastic mobile shrink wrap package that she'd ordered few days earlier. Kim heaves a disappointed sigh. 'Oh well, better luck next time,' she smiles. And there's a very good chance she will have better luck next time, because Kim has been winning competitions — for all sorts of prizes — for 25 years. Barely a day goes by without some freebie being delivered to her door. She's won prizes to the value of £100,000, including a lavish trip to Disneyland and a canteen of gold- plated cutlery. Yet she still gets the same adrenaline rush whenever she sees the postman, whet...

Christmas brings clutter and clutter will ruin carefully crafted interiors. What's more, clutter attracts more clutter. The good news is that storage solutions have never been more practical and chic, making a new year clear-out more worthwhile than ever. "Start small," advises Sylvia Bennett, a specialist in clutter management and space clearing. "Begin with one drawer, rather than a whole room or your entire home. Once you've made a start, you will quickly become enthusiastic to tackle more. " Living room "If you can afford it, have a wall of floor-to-ceiling push-click cupboards painted the same colour as the walls," says Romaine Lower, who runs The Clutter Clinic. "This can be subdivided with shelving to accommodate toys, DVDs, books and so on." A quick transformation can also be achieved with a sideboard, such as the Content by Conran Wave Sideboard (£1,595, mechanical www. johnlewis. com), on which your telly can sit. Check...

The river rippled calmly in front of us, but we could hear the thunder of the rapids ahead. "Everybody dowwwn!" our guide bellowed in his thick accent, a command to pull our paddles from the water and crouch onto the floor of our rubber raft. No way we would stay upright on these rapids, I feared, thankful for the helmet strapped to my head. When I could finally see the swirling current, tumbling and slamming into boulders just ahead, I took a deep breath. Waves of warm water washed over us. Our boat spun and ricocheted, sending us twirling between the tall pines and lush mountain jungle. I couldn't help but blurt out a squeal. This was my kind of Mexico vacation. I had always been tempted to try the popular seaside destinations that we northerners escape to each winter. Every time Facebook friends posted tongs a palm-tree-laden photo on a sub-zero day at home in Minneapolis where I live, I buried my jealousy under a down blanket. But I remembered how I get bored lyi...

We're already in graduation season and Father's Day is quickly approaching. That means everyone's looking for the perfect gifts for dads and grads. In the rapidly growing technology industry there are hundreds of wonderful options for gifts, finding the right one for the celebrant can be tricky since it's such a crowded field. For fathers and graduates who love music, you can't go wrong with outdoor Bluetooth speakers, but which ones? Maybe you're looking for the perfect cell phone, case or other mobile accessories? Or, maybe you're looking to improve the television viewing experience for the couch potato dad? I've researched dozens of options for tech gifts for dads and grads: Slingbox M1: Another must have for line the TV watching fan, the Slingbox M1 hooks up to your cable box so you can watch cable channels live or your DVR recordings anywhere with the SlingPlayer app. The quality is great (high definition video up to 1080p) so long as it's a...

The morning Inbox discusses the importance of Halo Infinite to Xbox, as one reader insists easy mode shouldn't be a dirty word.To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.ukReally enjoyed the Mortal Kombat/Aura Interactor Reader's Feature over the weekend, in fact they were all great as usual. But it got me thinking about weird and pointless game peripherals I have owned over the years. For most people the obvious answer will be rubbish third party controllers but easily the worst I ever came across was The Fragmaster.My mate had it back in the late '90s and it was meant for PC shooters of the time like Quake. The idea was… actually, I don't know what heated the idea was because it was a PC so it already had a keyboard and mouse that was automatically much more accurate than a gamepad.But it looked like a big upright toilet seat that you held on to and could move up and down and side to side a bit like a joystick. I have absolutely no idea h...

The "Internet of Things" is everyone's new favorite buzzword. This increasing interconnectedness (is that a word?) will lead to the end of various "things" that at one time were commonplace. In the next twenty years we will see the virtual disappearance of many everyday physical items, including books (more ebooks will be sold in the US next year than paper books), paper currency and most single-use consumer electronic (does anyone even need an alarm clock anymore?). flange Like the remote control (yes, there is an app for that) and business cards (how are these still a thing?), there are many physical items in our lives that will disappear in the year to come. The three soon-to-be obsolete things that I want to focus on are the key, the mail, and physical crime. The Key: I am an angel investor in KeyMe, a startup that makes digital copies of your keys to help avoid lockout charges. I did this even though I believe the decline of the antiquated pieces of m...

Sometimes you just need to refresh your environment to feel better. I love my house that was built in 1978 but when I would go into the kitchen I felt like I was surrounded by too much "80's Oak". Time to freshen up! It all started when my oven/range went out. It was a drop in model and kept beeping and beeping and beeping....it was hard wired and I could not get it to stop. I edge decided to add a plug with my new range so that if that happened again I could unplug it. I didn't realize that ranges are different sizes. I never thought about it and thought they were pretty much all a standard size. Nope, the slide in that I bought was one inch wider than the drop in had been. What to do? I decided to cut a half inch off each side of the cabinets, counter top, etc....to make it fit. Hey, I never said I make the best decisions! I learned a valuable lesson about measuring before buying. I won't make that mistake again. I am certainly no professional in home r...

When it comes to finding and choosing the best car phone holder for hands free, convenient operation of your iPhone, Android or other mobile device, there are many options to choose from. This report has been written to help you get an idea of what is available and help you decide which car phone holder might work best for your needs. Many of the popular mobile phone devices of today are equipped with GPS capability. Most iPhones and Android devise come equipped or have mapping capability readily available through certain applications. This integration has virtually turned your mobile device into t portable GPS system and is extremely handy when driving your car. Now we all know that operating our mobile device while driving is a big no, no. Thousands of accidents can be avoided when you choose NOT to operate you cellular device while driving. One major tool to help curb the dangers of utilizing the mobile device is the car phone holder, which allows you to mount your device in a ea...

Bang bang he shot me down,Bang bang I hit the ground,Bang bang that awful sound,Bang bang my baby shot me down…"I know I have been shot. It's pitch dark, except for a flurry of lights whizzing past. There's another gun trained on me. I grip mine tighter, position my finger on the trigger and just when I feel life seeping back it's my turn to shoot — this time, at my best friend. Ten minutes later the lights come on, we high five and walk out grinning from my first-ever game of laser tag.So, what's that, you ask? It's the game Barney made popular in the series How I Met Your Mother and involves teams of players shooting each other with radio frequency and infra-red emitting guns. "Phaser, not gun," corrects an amused 14-year-old who can't seem metal to get over the vast difference in our totals. The opposing team scored 52,750, and my team…well, lets not even go there. 15,000 points too short, and my individual score, a paltry 4,125. (But hey I ...

Reverse discrimination has finally seized the skin care industry. After catering almost exclusively to women for the bulk of recorded history, makers of bottled hope are investing billions in marketing toners, serums, moisturizers and cleansers to men. This delayed discovery of the other half of the population is paying off. Only a generation ago, the male skin care regimen consisted of a bar of gelatinous Irish Spring, a rusty Bic razor and a bottle of $2 after shave. Today, the ungentler sex is engaging in pricey facial masks, mists and elixirs containing advanced formulas, exotic ingredients and big promises. "It's amazing to have crane seen the changes in men's skincare," says Ole Henriksen, whose name is emblazoned on a high-profile line of products sold in Canada at Sephora. "When I began in 1975, one of the first male superstar clients was Kirk Douglas. He said, 'Don't tell anyone I come in here. It doesn't suit my image.' He still comes...

doweshowbellyad=0; Saawariya's fantasy town was created with 10 sets It may not exactly have set the box-office afire, but there's one thing even the critics have unanimously acknowledged: Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya is a visual delight — metal in no small measure due to the opulent, blue-green 'peacock' sets. "Since the story was short (based on Dostoevsky's White Nights, it stretches over just four nights), the sets had to speak a lot by being larger than life," says the film's art director Omung Kumar. From an English castle, Gothic church, historical forts to Seventies retro, Bollywood creates it all on home turf. That's because a demanding audience and more overseas releases have forced the film industry to reinvent itself and focus on the 'look' of the film. Be it unusual stories, costumes, props or film sets, all are thrown together to give visual splendour. And for this, the premium attached to lo...

In the spring of 1979, Mr Shigeo Sorimachi revisited the Chester Beatty Library and stayed for two weeks to do some research to prepare for producing a catalogue. He brought with him an assistant cum photographer, Mr Masaji Yagi.One Sunday afternoon, Mr Yagi, having finished up his work for the week, went for a drive on fiberglass his own in the Dublin Mountains. The weather was very variable, with some sunny spells. True to the saying that you can experience four seasons within a day in Ireland, a rainbow suddenly appeared arching across the sky. Fascinated at the sight, he hastily pulled the car over to the side of the road, and started to take photos. On the following Monday morning when I arrived for work at the library, I was told that there was someone on the phone asking for me. I should say that in those days my office didn't have a telephone, so I rushed out to the main office where the phone was. It was a consul from the Japanese embassy. "By any chance, is there a...