may the force be with you

"A team of New York physicists has confirmed that a tabletop contraption made at UCLA does in fact generate nuclear fusion at room temperatures, using pairs of crystals and a small tank of deuterium. But unlike less reliable reports back in the 1980s, there's no talk this time of producing endless supplies of power. Rather, the technology could lead to ultra-portable x-ray machines and even a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment."

source:http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/02/13/1631217.shtml

Video game ratings, video game violence, video game sex, Hot Coffee - their political and cultural impact are debated endlessly by politicians, gamers, parents, media pundits, activists and the video game industry itself. It's a battle that rages on but never seems to get anywhere, in large part due to the irreconcilable disconnect between those who "get" games and those who don't.

Thoughtful observers have long realized that, in the minds of many, games are inherently a form of child's play. It's not hard to understand why. When video games came along a quarter-century ago, even their creators saw them as children's entertainment. They were marketed to kids in retail toy stores - still are, in fact.

Such critics will always equate "games" with "toys" - and thus with children. And it's not just the nay-sayers. Too many parents either don't understand game content and ESRB ratings or simply can't say no to when their kids ask for age-inappropriate games. And, although the retailers, publishers and ESRB have made great strides, there will still be a certain amount of games sold or rented to kids who aren't old enough for its content. No system is perfect - not voluntary compliance systems like the one currently in place or legislated systems such as those currently under review by the federal judiciary in California and Michigan.

Things have changed, of course. Video game content now runs the gamut from kid-friendly titles like Curious George and LEGO Star Wars to adult-themed offerings such as GTA San Andreas and Black to the highly socialized online communities of World of Warcraft and Second Life or the largely adult-populated casual game scene of Pogo.

Over the years, gamers and game designers have recognized the artistic and expressive potential of video games, along with their power to enlighten and entertain players from four to ninety-four. But there are also millions who missed that particular cultural bus. Perhaps they had no gamer children. Or they weren't into technology. Or they simply just don't hold with video games. No one says - or should say - that video games are for everyone.

So there will always be people - adult people, voting people, influential people - who either don't understand or don't care to understand video games. Thus the video game industry finds itself in a Vietnam-style stalemate: an endless culture war it probably can't win, but can't lose, either - thanks to a series of successful First Amendment holding actions.

So it may be time to change the name of the game.

A two-tiered system that used terminology to differentiate "M" (17 and older) and "AO" (adults only) games from those meant for younger players would give parents another "tool" - a term of which which game-legislating politicians are so fond. It would show the industry's commitment to keeping mature content away from underage players, and might even convince legislators that they needn't invest time and tax dollars into constitutionally-doomed video game legislation.

How might such a system work?

It's all in a name, really. For starters, the word "game" has to go, at least for the 17-plus titles. Not an easy task, certainly, given nearly three decades of "gaming." But the industry could differentiate these products by calling them "adult interactive" or whatever catchy name its marketing pros can dream up. An aggressive ad campaign would be needed, of course, to promote the distinction between games meant for younger and older players. Perhaps a new packaging style for the M and AO games would help consumers, parents and store clerks tell the difference as well.

In the end, redefining adult titles as something other than "games" could show the world that the industry recognizes and wants to deal with the issues involved.

source:http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/205645.html

"According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance," says Epley. The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers. Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time."

source:http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/02/13/1324242.shtml

"Google worries go mainstream this week in TIME's cover story, Can We Trust Google With Our Secrets? Touted as an 'inside look' at how success has changed Larry and Sergey's dream machine, the piece offers some interesting tidbits but in the end is pretty much a softball effort that even toes the mum's-the-word line on the relationship between Larry Page and 'blond, blue-eyed force of nature' Marissa Mayer. Guess it's the least Time Warner could do after pocketing $1B of Google's money."

source:http://slashdot.org/articles/06/02/13/069201.shtml

"BBC reports about upcoming major changes in Intel in 2006. The current Intel core, the Pentium, is on its way out and is to be replaced by a new chip called 'Core'. These new Core chips come in two flavours. Solo Core is a single core processor, and Duo Core is a dual core processor. Intel has also announced the Viiv standard. Viiv is less technology and more a shopping list of technologies. Aimed at the home entertainment market, it defines the latest generation of media centres that are capable of playing anything from MP3 songs to high-definition films."

source:http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/13/068204.shtml

"With our existing models for operating environments aging badly, how do we manage our information and software as we get increasingly mobile and short on attention? In a ZDNet piece, Dion Hinchcliffe discusses the rise of the new dynamic, online, roaming Ajax desktops like Netvibes, Live.com, Protopage, and Pageflakes. Will concerns about privacy and reliability kill these or is this the wave of the future?"

source:http://slashdot.org/articles/06/02/13/0612212.shtml

Idlers, loafers and layabouts, listen up. A new study suggests that the times when we sit around twiddling our thumbs could in fact be vital for learning.

The idea stems from experiments in which neuroscientists eavesdropped on the brains of rats as they explored their environments. They found that the rats' brains 'replay' their experiences in reverse when the animals pause briefly to rest.

The scientists, David Foster and Matthew Wilson working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, inserted a pincushion of fine wires into the animals' skulls. These allowed the team to simultaneously monitor the electrical activity of around 100 individual brain cells in the hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory.

The researchers placed each wired-up rat in a straight 1.5-metre run. They recorded brain-cell activity as the rats scurried up and down, pausing at each end to eat, groom and scratch their whiskers.

As the rats ran along the track, the nerve cells fired in a very specific sequence. This is not surprising, because certain cells in this region are known to be triggered when an animal passes through a particular spot in a space.

But the researchers were taken aback by what they saw when the rats were resting. Then, the same brain cells replayed the sequence of electrical firing over and over, but in reverse and speeded up. "It's absolutely original; no one has ever seen this before at all," says Edvard Moser, who studies memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

This instant replay could help the animals to learn about a recent place and what parts of it are most important, the investigators propose. The rerun could coincide with a burst of the reward chemical dopamine, which is released in the brain when the animal finds food.

By playing the pattern of activity backwards, those brain cells nearest the food fire first and at the same time as the dopamine signal. The idea is that this might etch the position of the food into the rats' brains. "It's saying, 'this is the place I want to be'," says Foster.

Time out

If this idea proves true in people, it could have many implications for human learning. It suggests that those idle times, perhaps spent gazing into space, are actually crucial for our brains to replay, and learn from, recent experiences.

The discovery could also help to explain why people tend to learn a new task quicker when they take short rests between each practice round. It suggests that eliminating such breaks could actually interfere with learning, and perhaps even explain why hyperactive children often have learning difficulties.
Wilson and his colleagues showed in earlier experiments that rats also replay firing patterns in their sleep, but in the same, forward-running order in which they were experienced. This process could help to firm up memories after the fact, Foster says.

The result is also of keen interest to those who study artificial intelligence and try to teach computer systems or robots to learn through reward and punishment. Some such systems already work by playing back a sequence of moves so that the computer can identify at which point it made the trial or error.

"It's remarkable how it squares up with what we expected," says computational neuroscientist Read Montague at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

source:http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060206/full/060206-13.html

"According to an article on Firingsquad, our shiny new Radeon and Geforce cards won't be able to play HDCP-encrypted content, even though they have been advertising HDCP support as a feature for a few generations. Want to watch that new Blu-ray movie on your custom built PC at full resolution? Sorry, retail graphics cards won't be able to do that; only OEM-built computers from Dell, Sony, HP and the like will have that functionality built in."

source:http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/02/13/060232.shtml

"The number of Japanese who killed themselves in online suicide pacts rose sharply last year, according to the BBC. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the pacts may appeal to those scared to die alone. These Japanese internet 'suicide clubs' accounted for at least 26 deaths in the last 2 months."

source:http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/203225

"Today is the 197th anniversary of the great biologist Charles Darwin's birth. In response, some 450 Christian churches are celebrating Darwin's birth, saying, 'Darwin`s theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.' There's also an interesting perspective on Darwinism and Christianity in the San Jose Mercury News."


source:http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/1959244

Yahoo Inc. is considering offering free music downloads, discounts on DVD rentals and frequent-flier miles to users who make the Web site their primary search engine.

The possibility was disclosed in a recent online survey of some of Yahoo's e-mail users, intended to gauge interest in a rewards program, that detailed the idea and provided a list of potential incentives.

In contemplating such a program, Yahoo is showing the lengths to which it may go to try to erode Google Inc.'s dominance in search. But it also illustrates Yahoo's concerns about the rest of the industry, which has signaled increasing interest in offering users carrots for their loyalty.

In December, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates suggested that his company may offer cash or free products to users of its MSN search engine. A few months before that, A9, owned by online retailing giant Amazon.com Inc., started giving frequent users small discounts on purchases from its parent's Web site.

Offering rewards to search engine users isn't new. During the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, a number of companies including AllAdvantage.com and MyPoints.com gave cash, prizes and loyalty points to users, although many of the companies eventually went out of business or were sold at fire sale prices.

That's not to say the model never works. One exception is iWon.com, a Web portal that offers cash prizes for using the site. After some success during the boom, iWon is now owned by Ask Jeeves and its parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp.

Kathryn Kelly, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale's Yahoo, called the company's user survey about rewarding search engine users a part of regular, ongoing research. She emphasized that "nothing has been set in stone" about whether Yahoo will implement such a program.

Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an online newsletter, said that even though Yahoo's search engine is comparable in quality to Google's, most people still use Google. He called Yahoo's consideration of rewards an attempt to "break the Google habit" of many Internet users.

Google led the U.S. search industry with a 48.8 percent market share in December, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo had 21.4 percent of the market, while Microsoft was third at 10.9 percent.

But there are dangers to rewards programs, Sullivan said. If users are rewarded based on the number of queries, they may simply enter queries all day and disregard the results and, more importantly, the online advertisements that appear next to them.

Yahoo's survey said that users who sign up for the rewards program would be required to do most of their searching with the company. The program may require users to register, so the company can track usage, or use a Yahoo rewards toolbar.

Recipients of the survey were given a list of 10 possible rewards to choose from, including an advertisement-free version of Yahoo e-mail, five free music downloads per month, discounted subscriptions to Yahoo Music Unlimited, donations to charity, a discount on Netflix DVD-rental subscriptions and 250 frequent-flier miles that could be used on most major airlines.

---

Searching for online rewards

Yahoo is considering free offers, discounts and rewards to users of its search engine. Here are some of the possible incentives listed in a recent survey of Yahoo's customers:

Five free music downloads per month

Donations to charity (of users' choice)

Unlimited Yahoo mail storage (instead of 1 GB)

Discounted personals (one free month and $19.95 per month thereafter, instead of $24.95)

Frequent-flier miles (250 per month)

source:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/10/BUGGVH5MM933.DTL&type=business

"This is a video of real robot tranforming from a vehicle to a biped and back to a vehicle. It's some Japanese technology demonstration." Rumor is the next version will be a red semi + trailor and will be much more than meets the eye.

source:http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/1449239

Half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body—and the brain. Remember that.

Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including in the brain.

Since cats don't want to eat dead, decaying prey, Toxoplasma takes the evolutionarily sound course of being a "good" parasite, leaving the rats perfectly healthy. Or are they?

Oxford scientists discovered that the minds of the infected rats have been subtly altered. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that healthy rats will prudently avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine. In fact, when scientists test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to induce neurochemical panic.

However, it turns out that Toxoplasma-ridden rats show no such reaction. In fact, some of the infected rats actually seek out the cat urine-marked areas again and again. The parasite alters the mind (and thus the behavior) of the rat for its own benefit.

If the parasite can alter rat behavior, does it have any effect on humans?

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (Associate Director for Laboratory Research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute) noticed links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia in human beings, approximately three billion of whom are infected with T. gondii:

• Toxoplasma infection is associated with damage to astrocytes, glial cells which surround and support neurons. Schizophrenia is also associated with damage to astrocytes.
• Pregnant women with high levels of antibodies to Toxoplasma are more likely to give birth to children who will develop schizophrenia.
• Human cells raised in petri dishes, and infected with Toxoplasma, will respond to drugs like haloperidol; the growth of the parasite stops. Haloperidol is an antipsychotic, used to treat schizophrenia.

Dr. Torrey got together with the Oxford scientists, to see if anything could be done about those parasite-controlled rats that were driven to hang around cat urine-soaked corners (waiting for cats). According to a recent press release, haloperidol restores the rat's healthy fear of cat urine. In fact, antipsychotic drugs were as effective as pyrimethamine, a drug that specifically eliminates Toxoplasma.

Are parasites like Toxoplasma subtly altering human behavior? As it turns out, science fiction writers have been thinking about whether or not parasites could alter a human being's behavior, or even take control of a person. In his 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, Robert Heinlein wrote about alien parasites the size of dinner plates that took control of the minds of their hosts, flooding their brains with neurochemicals. In this excerpt, a volunteer strapped to a chair allows a parasite to be introduced; the parasite rides him, taking over his mind. Under these conditions, it is possible to interview the parasite; however, it refuses to answer until zapped with a cattle prod.

He reached past my shoulders with a rod. I felt a shocking, unbearable pain. The room blacked out as if a switch had been thrown.. I was split apart by it; for the moment I was masterless.

The pain left, leaving only its searing memory behind. Before I could speak, or even think coherently for myself, the splitting away had ended and I was again safe in the arms of my master...

The panic that possessed me washed away; I was again filled with an unworried sense of well being...

"What are you?" "We are the people... We have studied you and we know your ways... We come," I went on, "to bring you peace.. and contentment-and the joy of-of surrender." I hesitated again; "surrender" was not the right word. I struggled with it the way one struggles with a poorly grasped foreign language. "The joy," I repeated, "-the joy of . . .nirvana." That was it; the word fitted. I felt like a dog being patted for fetching a stick; I wriggled with pleasure.

Still not sure that parasites can manipulate the behavior of host organisms? Consider these other cases:

• The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum forces its ant host to attach to the tips of grass blades, the easier to be eaten. The fluke needs to get into the gut of a grazing animal to complete its life cycle.
• The fluke Euhaplorchis californiensis causes fish to shimmy and jump so wading birds will grab them and eat them, for the same reason.
• Hairworms, which live inside grasshoppers, sabotage the grasshopper's central nervous system, forcing them to jump into pools of water, drowning themselves. Hairworms then swim away from their hapless hosts to continue their life cycle.

Not all science-fictional parasites are harmful; read about the Crosswell tapeworm from Brian Aldiss' 1969 story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (the basis for the Kubrick/Spielberg film AI), which keeps people who overeat from becoming obese. Not to mention robots based on parasites. Read press release on evidence for link between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia, Suicidal grasshoppers. Story via blogger Carl Zimmer and his readers.

(This Science Fiction in the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.)

• Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity
• Brain Breakthrough: Scientists Know What You'll Do

Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Amazing Images, Image Galleries, Interactive Features, Trivia and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!

source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060211/sc_space/mindcontrolbyparasites

When he snags downtime from his schoolwork, Ryerson University student Brad Evans gabs with friends, grooves to Kanye West on his MP3 player and races virtual hotrods on his Sony PlayStation. All at the same time.

Before you assume gadgets and video games fry the minds of the future, consider this: Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging.

A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks.

A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.

"The people who were video game players were better and faster performers," said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. "Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best -- particularly at the most difficult tasks."

The York study, which tested subjects' responses to various misleading visual cues, is to be published next month in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. Three other studies published in the past two years have also concluded that action video games can lead to mental gains involving visual skills and short-term memory.

No one is certain how this translates to general learning or everyday life. But Mr. Evans, 21, an aerospace engineering student, said years of gaming have added valuable dimensions to his thinking.

"I grew up with video games, starting with Nintendo and SuperMario . . . from the age of 8 or 9," he said. "I know it helps with my dexterity; it's good for co-ordination and faster reflexes."

Prof. Bialystok suspects video gamers, like bilinguals, have a practised ability to block out information that is irrelevant to the task at hand.

"It's like going to the gym," she said. "You build up the ability to control impulses with practice."

Brain-imaging research released this week shows that the physical inability to silence mental noise is key in making the elderly prone to distraction and poor multitaskers.

That study, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, shows the elderly lose the ability to power up brain regions, such as the frontal lobe, needed to focus on a task, and to turn down activity in inner brain regions that are most active when a person is in idle or default mode.

"You can't turn off the extraneous things . . . the areas involved in thinking of the self -- 'What do I have to do? . . . Gee, I have a really bad headache," said study leader Cheryl Grady, senior scientist and associate director at Toronto's Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest.

In contrast, the brain images of people between ages 20 and 30 displayed a far more dramatic see-saw effect activating and de-activating regions as they shifted out of idle to task. The study found this pattern begins to dull in middle age and actually results in cognitive deficits beyond age 60.

Dr. Grady said the results suggest that the brains of today's youth might grow up differently.

"Young people using all of these gadgets all of the time, at the same time, it may actually make a difference when they're old, like bilingualism does," she said. "We know that practice changes the brain, as with playing an instrument, a motor task -- it makes physical changes in the brain. Maybe those kids who play video games and who are also bilingual will be the best of older adults at filtering out distractions."

Neuroscientist Shitij Kapur, chief of research at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said "it would be quite reasonable to expect that these teens are good at multitasking, because they grow up in a world that demands it."

But, he noted: "Today's teens may be better than their grandparents, but when they are in their 70s, their grandchildren will say, 'Hey, he can only play three games at the same time and I play seven.' It's relative impairment. Their grandchildren will not think any higher of them."

Prof. Bialystok first noticed bilingual children were proficient in blocking out irrelevant information about 20 years ago. When asked to identify a grammatically correct sentence, for example, both bilinguals and monolinguals are, by age 5, able to choose, "Apples grow on trees," over "Apple trees on grow" as the correct one.

But when it came to asking "Apples grow on noses" versus "Apples nose on grow," only the bilingual children were able to choose the right answer. Although the first sentence is grammatically correct, monolingual children could not get over its silliness. "That's crazy," they'd shout, "You can't say that!"

"We have been able to show on a huge range of cognitive tests that bilinguals are always better at problems with tricky, misleading information," Prof. Bialystok said.

On average, she said, monolingual children take a year longer to learn to block out irrelevant information and focus on a specific task.

Skeptics have argued that this matters little since monolingual children eventually catch up to bilingual ones. As well, children fluent in two languages can take slightly longer in tests identifying objects and also go through a period when they might have smaller vocabularies than those fluent in just one language.

But for anyone of two minds about learning a second language, researchers are finding that bilingualism -- be it in French, Greek, Portuguese or Hindi -- has lifelong benefits.

"Does bilingualism protect you from cognitive decline? Every study we've done suggests that it does," Prof. Bialystok said.

The York team recently compared 94 bilinguals and monolinguals between the ages of 30 and 80. It found that while both groups started showing cognitive decline by age 60, the rate of slowing for bilinguals was much slower.

Now young people who play video games are showing this similar pattern of high performance in resisting irrelevant impulses. The current report compared 50 avid players against 50 non-players and then subdivided each group between bilinguals and monolinguals.

When asked to describe the colour of the word "blue," for example, when it is written in green ink, non-players were far more likely to choose the dominant impulse and say "blue," though the colour is green. "The [video game players] are much harder to mislead, to trick," Prof. Bialystok said.

Although Prof. Bialystok is a strong proponent of bilingual education, she is less enthusiastic about video games. Recent studies have found overexposure to violent video games may desensitize children to violence and that gaming can become addictive enough to distract from other activities.

"I'd still be plenty concerned if my child played them all the time," Prof. Bialystok said. "Sure, they're getting better at rapid search and response problems, but I really would prefer my child read a book."

source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060209.wxbrains09/BNStory/Science/home

In an effort to regain market share that its smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices has aggressively taken in the past year, Intel Corp.'s chief technology officer said Friday that the chip giant will start shipping microprocessors with four cores inside late this year.

To show the product is well on its way, Intel CTO Justin Rattner demonstrated a working server computer with a pair of the new microprocessors, code-named Clovertown.

The new chip will join Intel's line of server chips called Xeon, which has generated billions of dollars' worth of revenue for the Santa Clara company. That business, though, has been under pressure since Sunnyvale's AMD entered the segment with its microprocessor called the Opteron.

Chips with two cores have been the latest rage, with both Intel and AMD selling those microprocessors as their high-end offering. Apple Computer Inc.'s new iMac, which started selling last month, uses the dual-core chip.

Having multiple cores inside a chip is like having more than one engine under the hood of a car. The design allows chipmakers to keep improving performance of the microprocessor while holding in check the amount of electricity required to power it.

Not to be outdone, Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president of server and workstation division, said Friday that his firm is working its own quad-core processor for release next year.

Rattner said Intel's new chip will be faster than the Xeon server chips but use less electricity. He didn't elaborate on the new chip, saying those specifics will be made available at the chipmaker's developer forum in San Francisco next month.

Intel still commands the lion's share of the lower-end server computer market. AMD, it only major competitor, has been making strides with its Opteron microprocessors since they came out in April 2003.

According to data from Mercury Research, AMD's Opteron had 16.4 percent of the market in the most recent quarter. Intel's Xeon product line still leads by a wide margin.

AMD's gains are significant, considering its market share was virtually none only a year ago, said Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner, a market research firm.

"Intel doesn't normally talk about this stuff, much less show it, this early," Reynolds said. "But with AMD's (rise) in the market, they want to make sure they don't leave any gaps for AMD to exploit. It's important from a credibility standpoint."

Apjit Walia, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, agreed, noting that AMD is enjoying at least the perception that its products are better than Intel's chips.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/11/BUGCOH6P2B1.DTL&type=businesssource:

New antigravity solution will enable space travel near speed of light by the end of this century, he predicts.
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light.

Felber's antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during rapid acceleration.

"Dr. Felber's research will revolutionize space flight mechanics by offering an entirely new way to send spacecraft into flight," said Dr. Eric Davis, Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin and STAIF peer reviewer of Felber's work. "His rigorously tested and truly unique thinking has taken us a huge step forward in making near-speed-of-light space travel safe, possible, and much less costly."

The field equation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has never before been solved to calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light. Felber's research shows that any mass moving faster than 57.7 percent of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow 'antigravity beam' in front of it. The closer a mass gets to the speed of light, the stronger its 'antigravity beam' becomes.

Felber's calculations show how to use the repulsion of a body speeding through space to provide the enormous energy needed to accelerate massive payloads quickly with negligible stress. The new solution of Einstein's field equation shows that the payload would 'fall weightlessly' in an antigravity beam even as it was accelerated close to the speed of light.

Accelerating a 1-ton payload to 90 percent of the speed of light requires an energy of at least 30 billion tons of TNT. In the 'antigravity beam' of a speeding star, a payload would draw its energy from the antigravity force of the much more massive star. In effect, the payload would be hitching a ride on a star.

"Based on this research, I expect a mission to accelerate a massive payload to a 'good fraction of light speed' will be launched before the end of this century," said Dr. Felber. "These antigravity solutions of Einstein's theory can change our view of our ability to travel to the far reaches of our universe."

More immediately, Felber's new solution can be used to test Einstein's theory of gravity at low cost in a storage-ring laboratory facility by detecting antigravity in the unexplored regime of near-speed-of-light velocities.

During his 30-year career, Dr. Felber has led physics research and development programs for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Department of Energy and Department of Transportation, the National Institute of Justice, National Institutes of Health, and national laboratories. Dr. Felber is Vice President and Co-founder of Starmark.

source:http://www.physorg.com/news10789.html

"FreeBSD's Kirk McKusick has a long interview with Enron's former SysAdmin, Jarod Jenson, where he describes the nuts and bolts of working in and managing such a large-scale operation." From the article: "EnronOnline was a Web-based trading application. We had several hundred, even thousands of commodities that we would price in realtime, the same way that equities are priced. We were trying to push realtime pricing information out to clients who could do instantaneous transactions on them. People who are familiar with financial markets--the commodity markets--would recognize EnronOnline as sort of the same thing. We had a lot of the same issues that the markets had trying to push out realtime data--not only within our local network but also to the customers--as quickly as we could globally, and trying to make sure that what every trader saw on the screen matched what every company in the world had on theirs."

source:http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/11/1810247

The social avoidance that normally develops when a mouse repeatedly experiences defeat by a dominant animal disappears when it lacks a gene for a memory molecule in a brain circuit for social learning, scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. Mice engineered to lack this memory molecule continued to welcome strangers in spite of repeated social defeat. Their unaltered peers subjected to the same hard knocks became confirmed loners -- unless the researchers treated them with antidepressants.

The social avoidance that normally develops when a mouse repeatedly experiences defeat by a dominant animal disappears when it lacks a gene for a memory molecule in a brain circuit for social learning, scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered. (Image courtesy of NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)

"For both mice and men, social status is important; for mice, losing to a dominant mouse usually means that they avoid the dominant and they avoid social situations," explained NIMH director Dr. Thomas Insel. "These new findings add to a growing literature on the molecular basis of social behavior, helping us to know where as well as how social information is encoded in the brain."

The results reveal neural mechanisms by which social learning is shaped by psychosocial experience and how antidepressants act in this particular brain circuit. They also suggest new strategies for treating mood disorders such as depression, social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, in which social withdrawal is a prominent symptom. Drs. Olivier Berton and Eric Nestler, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSMC), and colleagues, report on their study in the February 10, 2005 issue of Science.

Coursing from a hub in the center of the brain (ventral tegmental area), the relevant circuit mediates responses to emotionally important environmental stimuli via release of dopamine. Activity of this neurotransmitter is regulated in the circuit by brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is known to play a key role in memory. Berton, Nestler and colleagues suspected that BDNF plays a similarly pivotal role in social learning.

To find out, they first subjected mice to a different dominant mouse daily for 10 days. Even 4 weeks later, the "socially defeated" animals vigorously avoided former aggressors or unfamiliar mice. BDNF and an indicator of gene expression increased markedly in their social memory circuit. Yet, the social avoidance behavior was reversible by giving the animals antidepressants.

Next, borrowing a page from gene therapy, the researchers injected mice with a kind of molecular magic bullet (using transgenic techniques and a virus) that selectively turned off BDNF expression in the social learning circuit. This exerted an antidepressant-like effect; the mice were spared from developing social avoidance behavior following repeated social defeat.

"Without BDNF in the circuit, an animal can't learn that a social stimulus is threatening and respond appropriately," explained Nestler.

He and his colleagues also discovered that social defeat triggered an upheaval in gene expression in the target area of the circuit, the nucleus accumbens, located deep in the front part of the brain -- 309 genes increased in expression while 17 decreased. This pattern persisted even 4 weeks later, with 127 genes still increased and 9 decreased, paralleling the changes seen in social behavior. The researchers suggest that this alteration in gene expression encodes the motivational changes induced by aggression. When BDNF was deleted, or the animals were given antidepressants, most of the changes in gene expression reversed.

Identification of the products of the genes turned on and off by social defeat, BDNF and antidepressants revealed the workings of the molecular pathways involved in dopamine regulation of social motivational processes. The results suggest that chronic treatment with antidepressants restores social approach behaviors partly by interfering with the cascade of activity triggered by BDNF as the organism adapts to experience.

The researchers say the study "suggests new directions for antidepressant drug discovery."

###

Also participating in the study were: Colleen McClung, Vaishnav Krishnan, William Renthal, Scott Russo, Danielle Graham, Nadia Tsankova, Lisa Monteggia, David Self, UTSMC; Ralph Dileone, Yale University; Carlos Bolanos, Florida State University; Maribel Rios, Tufts University.

NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Federal Government's primary agency for biomedical and behavioral research. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060210091533.htm

Google is looking for organizations to beta test its new hosted email service. From the information page: 'This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.' The beta test is limited, but Google is accepting open applications."

source:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/11/1421200

VALPARAISO, Ind. - A house erroneously valued at $400 million is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwest Indiana.

An outside user of Porter County's computer system may have triggered the mess by accidentally changing the value of the Valparaiso house, said Sharon Lippens, director of the county's information technologies and service department. The house had been valued at $121,900 before the glitch.

County Treasurer Jim Murphy said the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million.

The homeowner, Dennis Charnetzky, declined to comment about the situation to The Associated Press on Friday.

Lippens said her agency identified the mistake and told the county auditor's office how to correct it. But the $400 million value ended up on documents that were used to calculate tax rates.

Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.

Officials struggled to figure out how the mistake got into the system and how it could have been prevented. City leaders said Thursday the error could cause layoffs and cost-cutting measures.

Lippens said the outside user changed the property value, most likely while trying to access another program while using the county's enhanced access system, which charges users a fee for access to public records that are not otherwise available on the Internet.

Lippens said the user probably tried to access a real estate record display by pressing R-E-D, but accidentally typed R-E-R, which brought up an assessment program written in 1995. The program is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.

The county treasurer said his office spotted the $400 million error after it caused an improper billing, but apparently it wasn't corrected elsewhere.

"It didn't get fixed all the way," Murphy said.

source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060211/ap_on_fe_st/misvalued_house

"Walt Disney Company's ABC has traded sportscaster Al Michaels to General Electric Co.'s NBC for cartoon character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. NBC acquired the rights to the cartoon through its purchase of Universal Studios, which itself gained ownership of the animated rabbit through a contract that Walt Disney signed early in his career. Having to sign Oswald away supposedly prompted Disney to create Mickey Mouse, a character he'd own outright. The company that bears Disney's name fought tooth and nail to retain ownership of Mickey Mouse when the cartoon character's copyright was about to expire."

source:http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/11/0757220

Fossil hunters find the first Jurassic specimen of this fearsome family.

Will you look at the size of the nasal crest on that? © Zhongda Zhang/IVPP

Ask any dinner-party palaeontologist and they'll tell you that, despite its star turn in Jurassic Park, Tyrannosaurus rex didn't live in the Jurassic period. But now a team in China has found a tyrannousaur that did, and it gives us valuable clues about the rise of this clan of prehistoric predators.

The new species, found in Xinjiang province in northwestern China, lived around 160 million years ago. This makes it more than twice as old as T. rex, and the most primitive known member of the family.

At just 3 metres long, the creature is a small relative of T. rex, which could reach a mighty 13 metres. But its gaping, beak-like face armed with teeth, and its powerful legs, show that it too would have been a ferocious killer.

The dinosaur's discoverers, led by Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, have named it Guanlong wucaii - meaning 'crested dragon from the five colours'. The name comes from the huge nasal crest on the creature's head, and the fact that it was found in a region of China characterized by many-coloured rocks. The team describes the find in this week's Nature¹.

It fills in a big blank about tyrannosaurs. Mark Norell, American Museum of Natural History

Rare vintage

Dinosaur specimens of this vintage are rare, says Mark Norell, who is based at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and is part of the team who studied the find. Most other Jurassic dinosaur fossils have been unearthed in the Americas. "This fills in a big blank about tyrannosaurs," he says. "With samples from only one continent, you don't have a good picture."

The presence of a nasal crest is particularly interesting, says Norell, because it is so similar to the head ornaments carried by many of today's birds. Both birds and carnivorous dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs belong to the evolutionary family known as the theropods.

The crest of G. wucaii probably functioned as a signal, either to attract potential mates or for species recognition. "It would not have been used for fighting - it would have been paper-thin," Norell says.

If it was a sexual ornament, it might imply that this individual was a male. But if it was for species recognition, that would leave the dinosaur's sex in the balance, and determining sex using bones alone is tricky. "That's still a long way ahead," says Norell.

source:http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060206/full/060206-5.html

First such discovery in Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamun’s in 1922

Sony's new super-packed PS3 handles a lot more than games. That, some say, could confuse buyers

Picture this: you plug your TV into a box the size of a phone book and go online to check headlines. You get bored and click over to a Giants game. Later you download Casablanca, play Metal Gear Solid against an opponent in Seoul, then chat with a friend in Seattle. What sort of box is this? It could be a PC, but Sony (SNE ) hopes it will be a PlayStation 3, the video game console it plans to introduce this spring.

Six years in the making, the PS3 is a crucial component of Sony's strategy to dominate the digital home with a full lineup of super-sharp TVs and other gear. To attract teens and parents alike, the console plays high-definition games and movies from Blu-ray DVDs. It boasts a huge hard disk to store photos, music, and TV shows. And it can connect to the Net for play against far-flung rivals, while a new multimedia chip called "the Cell" -- developed by Sony, IBM (IBM ), and Toshiba (TOSBF ) at a cost of $400 million -- juggles the workload (see BW Online, 2/08/06, "The Cell Chip's Other Life").

TOO LOADED? If that seems like a lot to pack in, it is. But there's a lot at stake. Sony is banking on the console to lift its consumer-electronics division out of trouble, and the Blu-ray drive is expected to give a boost to that Sony-backed format, one of two competing to become the next-generation standard for videos. "PS3 is very important for us," says Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda. "There are so many key devices from the electronics group that will go into it."

Some question whether Sony is trying to cram too much into the new box. The PS3 is expected to cost $350 to $400. While it has the potential to be a megahit, Sony's message might get muddled in the process of going after too broad a market, says Deutsche Securities analyst Takashi Oya. "It would be difficult to sell PS3 initially as anything other than a game machine," Oya says. Sony declined to comment on such concerns.

Spearheading the PS3 assault is Ken Kutaragi. The 55-year-old former engineer heads the game division and is the mastermind behind the smash-hit PlayStation and PlayStation 2 machines, which have made Sony an unstoppable force in the industry (see BW Online, 2/09/06, "Can Sony's Kutaragi Score Big?"). Last year, the game unit earned $365 million and accounted for roughly 38% of Sony's operating profit, compared with a $290 million loss at the electronics division.

LEARNING LESSONS. But Kutaragi's Midas touch has let him down before, especially when it comes to creating multipurpose machines. Exhibit A: the PSX. Released in Japan in 2003, it was designed to appeal to a broader audience than the hard-core gamers attracted to the PS2. It comes with a 250-gigabyte hard drive and a simple Web browser and plays games, movies, and music. But the PSX bombed as consumers were confused by the hybrid and put off by its $800-plus price tag.

"If Sony wants PS3 to be a hit, it has to avoid the marketing mistakes it made on PSX," says Reiji Asakura, author of Revolutionaries at Sony, a book about the development of the PlayStation.

Another risk is that Sony could undermine software sales by positioning the PS3 as something other than a game machine. The company makes the bulk of its game profits not from consoles but from games, which can cost $50 or more. Even when Sony doesn't design the games, it picks up royalties from each sale.

FEWER GAMES. If consumers buy the PS3 as a multimedia machine, they might not purchase as many video games. Sony ought to know: The handheld PlayStation Portable (PSP) has been a success since its debut in December, 2004. But since the PSP also plays music and movies, fewer people are buying games designed for it. In the PS2's initial year on the market, players bought more than three games for each machine that was shipped. For the PSP, that ratio slipped to 2 to 1.

Sony hasn't set a launch date, but analysts expect the PS3 to be released in Japan by June and hit U.S. stores in time for Christmas. With all its features, the PS3 might indeed help Sony in its battle for the living room as rivals roll out their own digital-entertainment hubs. Unless, of course, all consumers really want is a simple game machine.

source:http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2006/nf2006029_0411_db016.htm?chan=tc

Luminaries with ties to EA, Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft converge to talk about the online future of the gaming industry.