Fun Inc: Why Games are the 21st Century's Most Serious Business -- Book Review

A scene from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for Technology (2005).

From The Guardian:

Here is a compelling defence of the much maligned but fantastically successful computer game.

It's a curious fact that, though videogames are now the world's largest entertainment industry in financial terms, they are rarely reviewed in the mainstream media. There's a thriving world of academic discussion about gaming but Newsnight Review or The Culture Show hardly ever feature them, and newspapers give them far less coverage than those other pointless-but-fun games played on a field with a ball. It's curious too that, despite their financial success, it's so easy to find people who've not only never played a videogame but who feel viscerally that they're a pernicious waste of time. If games are an artform, arts journalism is mostly uninterested. If they're a sport, they're not one we treat as admirable. The sale of games is increasing by 20% a year but, outside the gaming press, we're not really talking about them.

Read more ....

Quantcast Cockroaches Inspire Creation of Running Robots

From US News And World Report/National Science Foundation:

Most people shudder at the sight of a cockroach. Scientists, on the other hand, are fascinated. Cockroaches, as it turns out, are a biomechanical wonder that may help researchers design the world’s first legged robots that can run easily over the roughest surfaces.
Click here to find out more!

Cockroaches are capable of instinctive muscle action that doesn’t require reflex control. For the most part, they don’t have to think about running--they just do it. Researchers at Oregon State University are trying to apply what they are learning from the bodies of these tiny insects to create running robots that can effortlessly cover rough ground.

Read more ....

India Announces First Manned Space Mission

From BBC:

India's space agency has said it will launch its first manned mission to space in 2016.

A senior official of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) in Bangalore said that two astronauts would take part.

"We are preparing for the manned space flight," Isro Chairman K Radhakrishnan told reporters.

"We will design and develop the space module for the manned mission in the next four years," he said.

Observers say India is emerging as a major player in the multi-billion dollar space market.

In September it launched seven satellites in a single mission, nearly a month after the country's inaugural Moon mission was aborted.

Read more ....

eBay Faces Brewing Revolt

From CBS News:

Some Members Say Recent Listing Fees Adjustments Amount to Big Fee Hike.

(CNET) This article was written by CNET News.com's Caroline McCarthy.

eBay's latest move, some of the auction site's devotees say, is straight out of the Ministry of Truth's playbook.

The company made an announcement on Tuesday announcement about lowering the listing fees for items--even though, in many cases, final value fees will be raised. The company's discussion forums simmered with outrage over the executive decision, and frustration over the lack of other options for auction-style e-commerce.

Read more ....

Stern Report Was Changed After Being Published

Claims that eucalyptus and savannah habitats in Australia would also become more common were also deleted from the report.

From The Telegraph:

Information was quietly removed from an influential government report on the cost of climate change after its initial publication because supporting scientific evidence could not be found.

The Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which was commissioned by the Treasury, was greeted with headlines worldwide when it was published in October 2006

It contained dire predictions about the impact of climate change in different parts of the world.

Read more ....

To Solve Cyber Crimes, DARPA Wants A "Cyber Genome Program"

The U.S. Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command The U.S. military and intelligence arms are already defending the nation from cyber attacks. DARPA hopes to give them another tool.

From Popular Science:

Digital times mean digital crimes. But catching and convicting criminals, or even nations, that dabble in digital espionage, cyber attacks, and cyber terrorism is no easy task. Google – and the U.S. State Department – recently pointed the finger at China for a string of sophisticated cyber attacks on U.S. companies, but proving guilt in the matter will be tricky. Then there are the buckets of data that intelligence agencies pull from captured laptops and hard drives in terror sweeps; we have the files, but it can be difficult to figure out who’s aiding America’s enemies or what they are up to. Enter DARPA’s Cyber Genome Program, aimed at creating a paternity test for digital artifacts.

Read more ....

Pentagon Review To Address Climate Change For The First Time

Scientists had previously conceded that the speed with which glaciers in the Himalayas are melting had been greatly overhyped. Photo from The Telegraph

From The Hill:

The Pentagon is addressing climate change for the first time in its sweeping review of military strategy.

The Pentagon is set to release the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) on Monday, along with the 2011 budget request.

In the review, Pentagon officials conclude that climate change will act as an “accelerant of instability and conflict,” ultimately placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.

Read more ....

Robots Evolve To Learn Cooperation, Hunting

A predator robot, right, faces a prey robot, left. (Credit: Dario Floreano & Laurent Keller)

From CNET News/CRAVE:

If robots are allowed to evolve through natural selection, they will develop adaptive abilities to hunt prey, cooperate, and even help one another, according to Swiss researchers.

In a series of experiments described in the journal PLoS Biology, Dario Floreano of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne reported that simple, small-wheeled Khepera and Alice robots can evolve behaviors such as collision-free movement and homing techniques in only several hundred "generations."

Read more ....

Network Theory: A Key to Unraveling How Nature Works

From Environment 360:

Ecologists who want to save the world’s biodiversity could learn a lot from Kevin Bacon.

One evening in 1994, three college students in Pennsylvania were watching Bacon in the eminently forgettable basketball movie The Air Up There. They started thinking about all the movies Bacon had starred in, and all the actors he had worked with, and all the actors those actors had worked with. The students came up with a game they called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, counting the steps from Bacon to any actor in Hollywood. In general, it takes remarkably few steps to reach him. Even Charlie Chaplin, who made most of his movies decades before Bacon was born, was only three steps away. (Chaplin starred with Barry Norton in Monsieur Verdoux, Norton starred with Robert Wagner in What Price Glory, and Wagner and Bacon worked together in Wild Things.)

Read more ....

Anybody Home? The Search For Animal Consciousness

From US News And World Report:

One afternoon while participating in studies in a University of Oxford lab, Abel snatched a hook away from Betty, leaving her without a tool to complete a task. Spying a piece of straight wire nearby, she picked it up, bent one end into a hook and used it to finish the job. Nothing about this story was remarkable, except for the fact that Betty was a New Caledonian crow.

Read more ....

Climate Chief Was Told Of False Glacier Claims Before Copenhagen

Most experts believe that the Himalayan glaciers will take centuries to melt

From Times Online:

The chairman of the leading climate change watchdog was informed that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were false before the Copenhagen summit, The Times has learnt.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

Read more ....

Quakes 'Decade's Worst Disasters'

From BBC News:

Almost 60% of the people killed by natural disasters in the past decade lost their lives in earthquakes, a UN-backed report has revealed.

Storms were responsible for 22% of lives lost, while extreme temperatures caused 11% of deaths from 2000 to 2009.

In total, 3,852 disasters killed more than 780,000 people, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Asia was the worst-affected continent, accounting for 85% of all fatalities.

Read more ....

Google, China, And The Coming Threat From Cyberspace

Utilities are increasingly using mainstream software and connecting parts of their operations to the Internet, which can make them vulnerable to hackers. Getty Images

From Christian Science Monitor:

Cyberspace attacks are set to increase. Here’s why – and here’s what we can do to stop them.

The recent cyberespionage attacks on Google and that company’s subsequent announcement that it would reconsider its search engine services in China gripped the world’s focus and set off a debate about China’s aggressive cybersecurity strategy.

The apparent scope of the attacks – more than 30 companies affected, Gmail accounts compromised, human rights groups targeted – took many by surprise. Some observers believe the attacks were highly sophisticated in nature, employing never-before-seen techniques. Many reports concluded that the Chinese government undertook the attacks.

Read more ....

Update: Is Our Nation's Infrastructure Under Cyber Attack? -- Discovery News

My Comment: I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. As our infrastructure becomes more dependent on stable communication and network platforms, the opportunity for hackers/state sponsored groups/terrorists/etc. to conduct attacks and cyber disruptions will be a temptation that they cannot ignore.

Experiments Meet Requirements For Fusion Ignition; New Physics Effect Achieves Symmetrical Target Compression

This artist's rendering shows a NIF target pellet (the white ball) inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end. The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 29, 2010) — The first experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) have demonstrated a unique physics effect that bodes well for NIF's success in generating a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction.

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments on NIF, the energy of 192 powerful laser beams is fired into a pencil-eraser-sized cylinder called a hohlraum, which contains a tiny spherical target filled with deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen. Rocket-like compression of the fuel capsule forces the hydrogen nuclei to combine, or fuse, releasing many times more energy than the laser energy that was required to spark the reaction. Fusion energy is what powers the sun and stars.

Read more ....

White Roofs Could Reduce Urban Heating

A construction crew works on a white roof in Washington, D.C. Credit: ©American Geophysical Union, photo by Maria-José Viñas

From Live Science:

To help combat global warming and urban heating, we might just need to paint the town white.

A new modeling study simulated the effects of painting roofs white to reflect incoming solar rays and found that it could help cool cities and reduce the effects of global warming.

The feasibility of such an initiative for cities remains to be seen, researchers caution, but the idea has been backed by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and other policymakers. And now there's some science behind the political support.

Read more ....

Air Force Searches For Alternatives to GPS

Echo, NASA's first communications satellite, was a passive spacecraft based on a balloon design created by an engineer at the Langley Research Center. The Mylar satellite measured 100 feet in diameter and could be seen with the naked eye from the ground as it passed overhead. (Photograph by NASA)

From Popular Mechanics:

As the administration dismantles its only backup system, the Air Force looks at replacements to guard against the Pentagon's over-reliance on GPS satellites.

Last week, the Air Force's Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, gave voice to a chink in the U.S. military's armor, one that many know about but few like to discuss in public: Without satellites, modern militaries lose most of their edge. "It seemed critical to me that the joint force reduce its dependence on GPS (Global Positioning System)," he told attendees at a national security conference in Washington.

Read more ....

Apple iPad Raises The Stakes For E-Readers

From Gadget Lab:

Apple’s much-awaited iPad tablet is a good looking, multipurpose e-reader but it is no Kindle slayer, say publishing executives and electronic-book enthusiasts. Instead, the iPad is likely to raise the stakes and help traditional e-readers evolve into more sophisticated devices.

“The iPad is for casual readers and people who favor an all-in-one type of device, while dedicated E Ink-based e-readers are for avid readers,” says Wiebe de Jager, executive director with Eburon Academic Publishers, a Netherlands-based publishing service.

Read more ....

Advances In Minefield Technology

The Virtual Minefield Metal Storm

From Popular Science:

From a tactical military standpoint, land mines have a certain set-it-and-forget-it appeal; you blanket an area in munitions and move on, secure in the fact that if the enemy tries to cross that terrain they'll find an automated resistance waiting for them. But we all know that land mines are also one of modern warfare's most indiscriminate and devastating developments, with the capacity to kill and maim innocent people even decades after hostilities have ceased. To remedy this problem, arms maker Metal Storm has developed a virtual minefield that delivers the tactical advantage of land mines without blanketing areas with dangerous ordnance that could be left behind.

Read more ....

My Comment: The launcher must be well camouflaged so that it cannot be detected and destroyed. Otherwise .... this is a brilliant piece of war-technology.

How To Publish Your Own Book Online – And Make Money

The web is making self-publishing easier. Photograph: Toby Talbot/AP

From The Guardian:

There are now dozens of websites to help budding authors to publish their novels, poems and pictures and, perhaps, even make a profit from it.

If you want to realise a dream by publishing your own book, there are lots of companies willing to extract upwards of $500 from you for the privilege. At the other end of the spectrum is Amazon's digital text platform, which allows you to upload your pre-prepared files to its Kindle reader and then set your own price.

The catch? Amazon takes 65% of the income from sales. Ouch. Fortunately, there are lots of other options – of which more later – for budding authors. What you get out of them is subject only to the limits of your imagination.

Read more ....

Fusion Power A Step Closer After Giant Laser Blast

A pointed "target positioner" (right) in the National Ignition Facility's target chamber held the pencil-eraser-size cylinder used in the fusion experiment. Photograph courtesy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy

From The National Geographic:

Nuclear fusion plant possible within a decade, physicist says.

Using the most powerful laser system ever built, scientists have brought us one step closer to nuclear fusion power, a new study says.

The same process that powers our sun and other stars, nuclear fusion has the potential to be an efficient, carbon-free energy source—with none of the radioactive waste associated with the nuclear fission method used in current nuclear plants.

Read more ....