For Creators of Games, a Faint Line on Cloning

At http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/technology/for-creators-of-video-games-a-faint-line-on-cloning.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

By BRIAN X. CHEN
Published: March 11, 2012

In any commercialized art form, be it movies, literature or fashion, the creators often tread a fine line between inspiration and shameless copying. Some small video game makers say that line seems to have all but disappeared.

Vlambeer, a small start-up based in the Netherlands, made a free online game in 2010 called Radical Fishing. The game involved catching fish with a hook, reeling them in and tossing them in the air, and then shooting them with a gun. Radical Fishing became popular, so Vlambeer planned a sequel, Ridiculous Fishing, for Apple's iPhones and iPads.

But then a new game appeared in Apple's store: Ninja Fishing, made by a company called Gamenauts. This game involved catching fish with a hook, reeling them in and tossing them in the air, but then slashing them with a katana sword. Ninja Fishing became a top app in Apple's App Store.

NimbleBit, another game start-up, had a similar situation. Its Tiny Tower, in which players added floors to a building and made the little residents happy with good jobs and lots of recreation, became the Apple App Store's game of the year. Along came Zynga, the big game developer, with a game called Dream Heights, in which players added floors to a tower and made the little residents happy with good jobs and lots of recreation.

Cloning the soul of a game — its gameplay mechanics, design, characters and storyline — is now commonplace in digital marketplaces like Apple's iOS App Store and Google's Android Market.

And while the app stores have offered an unparalleled opportunity for independent software makers to reach customers and make money with an innovative game, they are learning it is just as easy for another game studio to compete with a very similar ( more at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/technology/for-creators-of-video-games-a-faint-line-on-cloning.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all )

Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel? And 'Twisted' waves.

Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel?

At http://www.livescience.com/18808-invention-wheel.html

by Natalie Wolchover

Date: 02 March 2012 Time: 06:24 PM

Wheels are the archetype of a primitive, caveman-level technology. But in fact, they're so ingenious that it took until 3500 B.C. for someone to invent them. By that time — it was the Bronze Age — humans were already casting metal alloys, constructing canals and sailboats, and even designing complex musical instruments such as harps.

The tricky thing about the wheel is not conceiving of a cylinder rolling on its edge. It's figuring out how to connect a stable, stationary platform to that cylinder.

"The stroke of brilliance was the wheel-and-axle concept," said David Anthony, a professor of anthropology at Hartwick College and author of "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" (Princeton, 2007). "But then making it was also difficult."

To make a fixed axle with revolving wheels, Anthony explained, the ends of the axle had to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, as did the holes in the center of the wheels; otherwise, (...) ( more at http://www.livescience.com/18808-invention-wheel.html )

'Twisted' waves could boost capacity of wi-fi and TV.

At http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17221490

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A striking demonstration of a means to boost the information-carrying capacity of radio waves has taken place across the lagoon in Venice, Italy.

The technique exploits what is called the "orbital angular momentum" of the waves - imparting them with a "twist".

Varying this twist permits many data streams to fit in the frequency spread currently used for just one.

The approach, described in the New Journal of Physics, could be applied to radio, wi-fi, and television.

The parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are used for all three are split up in roughly the same way, with a spread of frequencies allotted to each channel. Each one contains a certain, limited amount of information-carrying capacity: its bandwidth.

As telecommunications have proliferated through the years, the spectrum has become incredibly crowded, with little room left for new means of signal transmission, or for existing means to expand their bandwidths.

But Bo Thide of Swedish Institute of Space Physics and a team of colleagues in Italy hope to change that by exploiting an entirely new physical mechanism to fit more capacity onto the same... ( more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17221490 )

About evolution (Feb. 27, 2012).

Protein Identified That Can Lengthen Our Life?

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2012) — Cells use various methods to break down and recycle worn-out components -- autophagy is one of them. In the dissertation she will be defending at Umeå University in Sweden, Karin Håberg shows that the protein SNX18 is necessary for cells to be able to perform autophagy.

In animal experiments on both simple organisms like fruit flies and in more complex animals like mice, researchers have seen that stimulating autophagy leads to increased longevity. It is still unclear whether these results are directly translatable to humans. However, there are theories that calorie restriction, which is a relatively well-established way of increasing longevity, induces higher levels of autophagy, which would help delay aging. Cells metabolize their old proteins and cell organelles by ... (more at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120227111202.htm )

Immortal Worms Defy Aging

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2012) — Researchers from The University of Nottingham have demonstrated how a species of flatworm overcomes the aging process to be potentially immortal.

The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of a project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) and may shed light on the possibilities of alleviating aging and age-related characteristics in human cells. Planarian worms have amazed scientists with their apparently limitless ability to regenerate. Researchers have been studying their ability to replace aged or damaged tissues and cells in a bid to understand the mechanisms underlying their longevity.

Dr Aziz Aboobaker from... ( more at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120227152612.htm )

Glow and be eaten – marine bacteria use light to lure plankton and fish

domingo, 26 de fevereiro de 2012 Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jerusalem, February 27, 2012 – Not all that glitters is gold. Sometimes it is just bacteria trying to get ahead in life.

Many sea creatures glow with a biologically produced light. This phenomenon, known as bioluminescence, is observed, among others, in some marine bacteria which emit a steady light once they have reached a certain level of concentration (a phenomenon called "quorum sensing") on organic particles in ocean waters.

Though this was a known occurrence, the benefits of producing light remained unclear.

Now, in an article published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), researchers... ( more at http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=117844&CultureCode=en )

Strange skies: Seven wonders of the atmosphere.

Strange skies: Seven wonders of the atmosphere.

At http://www.newscientist.com/special/strange-skies

CLOUDSCAPE

Cosmic confusion in the clouds

Where do clouds come from? Cosmic rays might be involved – and there are plenty more nebulous mysteries to ponder too
Read more

HIGH LIFE

Invisible beings that live far above

Few creatures soar as high as the invisible denizens of Earth's skies. It is even possible that life on Earth began up there in the stratosphere
Read more

NIGHT LIGHT

Turbocharged auroras

Most of the time the northern and southern lights are barely perceptible to the naked eye. Yet sometimes they become a hundred or a thousand times brighter
Read more

OCEAN OF AIR

Mighty air tides

Tides in our ocean of air have surprising power, reaching down to trigger landslips and up into space to jam radio links and snare satellites
Read more

STORMS

Lightning should be impossible

Lightning is almost as puzzling to modern science as it was to our awestruck ancestors. Could supernovae be the trigger?
Read more

NATURAL DISASTERS

Weird earthquake warning lights

Glowing, drifting orbs; blue-white sheets of light; flames licking up from the ground: for millennia, people have reported baleful lights around earthquakes
Read more

LAST GASP

When will our air become unbreathable?

Earth's atmosphere should remain broadly hospitable for many millions of years - but eventually the planet's last gasp will come
Read more

Watch Out! Ten Interview Questions Designed To Trick You.

At http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/02/23/watch-out-ten-interview-questions-designed-to-trick-you/

Jenna Goudreau, Forbes Staff

2/23/2012 @ 3:11PM

For the long-term unemployed or those workers looking for a change, getting an interview in today's market may feel like a win in itself. But once you're in the door, interviewers often put you through an obstacle course of deceptive questions with double meanings or hidden agendas. Do you know how to read the subtext?

"On the other side of the desk, hiring managers spend countless long hours interviewing candidate after candidate," says Joyce Lain Kennedy, a nationally syndicated careers columnist and author of Job Interviews For Dummies. "A tricky question may be used as a time management tool to quickly eliminate a less qualified candidate."

Kennedy says that even if job hunters have rehearsed anticipated topics, an unexpected question may jar loose an authentic answer that exposes hidden problems. She outlines the top 10 most common questions designed to trick you.

No. 1: Why have you been out of work so long, and how many others were laid off?

This question may also be followed by the more direct, "Why were you laid off?" Kennedy says it is an attempt to figure out if there's something wrong with you that your former company or that other potential employers have already discovered. The interviewer may be trying to determine if themes of recession and budget cuts were used to dump second-string employees, including you. Rather than answering the question directly and chancing an emotional response or misinterpretation, Kennedy advises punting. Respond: "I don't know the reason. I was an excellent employee who gave more than a day's work for a day's pay."

No. 2: If employed, how do you manage time for interviews?

"The real question is whether you are lying to and short-changing your current employer while looking for other work," says... ( more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/02/23/watch-out-ten-interview-questions-designed-to-trick-you/ )

Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions

At http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-questions/

4/27/2011 @ 11:45AM

The only three true job interview questions are:

1.  Can you do the job?
2.  Will you love the job?
3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

That's it.  Those three.  Think back, every question you've ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions.  Each question potentially may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a... (more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-questions/ )

Do It Yourself.

DIY Geiger counter smartphone app to measure radiation.

At http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/02/diy-geiger-counter-smartphone.html

7:40 23 February 2012

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

In the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, amidst a climate of  general mistrust of government radiation data, a number of crowdsourced initiatives for mapping radiation levels sprang up, such as Japan Geigermap, in which radiation readings from citizens are aggregated and displayed online using a web service called pachube.

But most Geiger counters for personal use cost around $200, prohibiting many from measuring radiation for themselves. That's where non-profit organisation radiation-watch.org has stepped in.

They have devised a way for people to construct their own smartphone-compatible Geiger counter at home. Pocket Geiger uses 8 photodiodes to detect the radiation, aluminium foil to screen alpha and beta particles, and a plastic "Frisk" sweet box for the housing. The total cost is just $46.

Ishigaki started the project in June last year, and with the help of supporting scientists and a team of hackers he has developed the self-assembly Geiger counter and app to allow anyone to measure radiation levels in their home or neighbourhood and upload them to a central server, where they can be visualised on a map.

The project has now grown to over 10,000 users, but (more at http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/02/diy-geiger-counter-smartphone.html )