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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Scientists Use Sound Waves To Levitate, Move Objects

[unable to retrieve full-text content]sciencehabit writes "The tragic opera Rigoletto may move you to tears, but here's a more literal application of the moving power of sound. Sound waves with frequencies just above human hearing can levitate tiny particles and liquid droplets and even move them around, a team of engineers has demonstrated. The advance could open up new ways to handle delicate materials or mix pharmaceuticals."

Monday, July 15, 2013

Scientists find how 'obesity gene' makes people fat

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON | Mon Jul 15, 2013 2:49pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have unraveled how a gene long associated with obesity makes people fat by triggering increased hunger, opening up potential new ways to fight a growing global health problem.

A common variation in the FTO gene affects one in six of the population, making them 70 percent more likely to become obese - but until now experts did not know why.

Using a series of tests, a British-led research team said they had found that people with the variation not only had higher levels of the "hunger hormone" ghrelin in their blood but also increased sensitivity to the chemical in their brains.

"It's a double hit," said Rachel Batterham from University College London, who led the study, which was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on Monday.

The discovery follows studies of blood samples from people after meals, combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging of volunteers' brains and cell-based studies looking at ghrelin production at a molecular level.

Batterham said the work provided new insights and possible new leads for treatment, since some experimental drugs are known to suppress ghrelin and could be particularly effective if targeted at patients with the obesity-risk variant of the gene.

Previous research has also shown that ghrelin can be reduced by eating a high-protein diet.

Steve Bloom of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, said the FTO gene only explained a small part of the obesity epidemic but the latest discovery was "an important step forward" in unraveling the various factors involved.

The prevalence of obesity is increasing worldwide at an alarming rate and both developed and developing countries are affected. Obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

At least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese and more than 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2011, according to the World Health Organization.

Developing effective obesity drugs has been a challenge for drugmakers, although some new medicines are now coming through.

After a gap of more than a decade, two new obesity drugs - Vivus Inc's Qsymia and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc's Belviq - were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year.

Belviq's launch was delayed, however, pending a final classification on its risk of abuse and Qsymia's sales have been disappointing, triggering fierce criticism from Vivus's largest shareholder.

(Editing by Sophie Walker)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/YnCJwuBeu2w/story01.htm

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Reopening RP's?

I was just wondering, I closed two of my roleplays because the people who I was roleplaying with would no longer post and I tried contacting them, but nothing.

I would really like to start them up again but when I enter the title, it tells me I already have this roleplay even though I've closed them.

Is it possible to reopen these roleplays under the same title and with the same characters?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/jZAyZ7aHhEQ/viewtopic.php

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Sunday, July 14, 2013

West Virginia Lawmakers Travel to North Dakota to Study Oil-Tax Fund

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Source: http://www.governing.com/news/state/West-Virginia-Lawmakers-Travel-to-North-Dakota-to.html

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Carbon for Android getting long-awaited features, fixes in v1.2.0

Carbon

The world of third-party Twitter apps is anything but certain these days, so it's good to see one of the more popular apps getting a major update. Carbon, which has been mostly stagnant for some six months, is getting a pretty major update in version 1.2.0.

Included in the update is a new widget, in-app browsing and support for Vine and Youtube directly within the app. Plus there are new styles available, a bunch of newly supported image previews and update frequency options. And, conversations are back following a change to Twitter's API.

What's more is that the developer hopes that this marks the start of smaller but more frequent updates. Let's just hope Twitter doesn't spoil that party.

We've got the big strokes after the break, and hit the source link for more, as well as the list of bugfixes.

Source: +Carbon for Android

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/IeBcwBcphMA/story01.htm

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OCC Announces the Promotion of James Knoeck to Senior Vice President - Chief Audit Executive

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) July 13, 2013

OCC announced today that James Knoeck has been promoted to Senior Vice President - Chief Audit Executive. Mr. Knoeck joined OCC in September as Vice President ? Head of Internal Audit from the State of Wisconsin Investment Board.

During his time at OCC he led the restructuring of the internal audit department, necessitated by OCC?s designation as a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU). Prior to joining OCC, Mr. Knoeck served as the Internal Audit Director for the State of Wisconsin Investment Board where he established policies for risk based audit activities. His prior experience also includes managing outside audit consultants in facilitating audit plans and performing operational, market, legal, compliance and financial risk assessments at organizations such as KPMG and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

?We are pleased to announce the promotion of Jim to Senior Vice President ? Chief Audit Executive,? said Wayne P. Luthringshausen, OCC Chairman and CEO. ?In the short time Jim has been with OCC he has been instrumental in the streamlining and expansion of the internal audit department to meet and exceed the requirements of OCC?s SIFMU designation. His comprehensive knowledge of accounting and back office services is a fitting complement to his new role at OCC,? he added.

As Senior Vice President ? Chief Audit Executive, Mr. Knoeck will continue to lead the internal audit function and report to the Chairman and the Audit Committee Chair of the Board of Directors.

Mr. Knoeck received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a double major in Accounting and Finance from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

About OCC
OCC is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization. Founded in 1973, OCC operates under the jurisdiction of both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a Registered Clearing Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Derivatives Clearing Organization. OCC now provides central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 17 exchanges and trading platforms for options, financial and commodity futures, security futures and securities lending transactions. More information about OCC is available at http://www.theocc.com.

Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/JamesKnoeck/7-11/prweb10921889.htm

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Why You Should Play Bad Video Games - Kotaku

I still remember the first bad game that really burned me.

The year was 2002. I was wearing out my copy of Dead or Alive 3 on the Xbox, and Jann Lee was my combatant of choice. I was a huge martial arts movie fan, and Lee?s silky-smooth combinations, flowing mannerisms and high-pitched shouts were spot-on. This game made me feel the way it should feel to play as a certain legendary martial artist with whom my character shared a last name.

I fell in love with that experience, so when an actual Bruce Lee game ? Quest of the Dragon ? launched, I had to have it. Visions danced in my head of controlling a character who was as fast and as fluid against multiple assailants as Jann Lee. What could possibly be better than Jeet Kune Do in an action-adventure brawler?

Turns out, pretty much everything on the Xbox could be and was better. Quest of the Dragon is an abomination. Enemies were boring and repetitive, combat broke down to spamming the same couple of combos, the graphics were substandard, and the controls, which should have let me massacre foes with the same beautiful violence that Jann Lee employed in DoA, were unresponsive to the point of being game-breaking.

I was heartbroken, but more importantly, I was pissed. I had just blown $50 on one of the worst games of that generation, and when I finally beat Quest of the Dragon, it was done mostly out of spite. It had taken my money, so damnit, I was going to get my money?s worth.

Perspective is a funny thing, because I look back now and I feel fortunate ? yes, fortunate ? for having played Quest of the Dragon. You see, I hadn?t thought much about that game until I picked up Sleeping Dogs last year, snapped off my first combo as Wei Shen, and marveled at how good it was. This was what a martial arts brawler should feel like, and as I tore through the game, I loved it more and more because it wasn?t Quest of the Dragon.

Playing that terrible Xbox game gave me the baseline for everything a game could do wrong, and that perspective made me appreciate everything that Sleeping Dogs did right. In fact, I?ve started playing some of the worst titles available just to gain an appreciation for the quality of well-made games.

You should too.

The truth is, most gamers today rely on a steady diet of AAA titles to feed their video game appetites, and unless you have an unlimited budget, buying the wrong $60 game can be a significant hit to your allotted gaming fund. This is an expensive hobby, and that?s why video game reviews are taken far more seriously than movie reviews, and that's why keyboard scud missiles are aimed at any reviewer suspected of being biased or unfair.

It isn?t until you play a game that does the little things wrong that you appreciate the ones that do them right.

An odd thing happens when you?re only eating top-shelf steak; you start to lose taste of what makes it special in the first place.

I see this a lot with series that are on regular release cycles like Call of Duty or Halo, or when franchises like Devil May Cry move in a new direction. You can dismiss it as trolling or fanboy ranting, but I?ve heard ?that game sucks? in reference to good games from plenty of real, intelligent people who I know personally. Simply put, they?re wrong.

Take Call of Duty. The plots might be contrived and the set pieces predictable, but nothing about Call of Duty on a fundamental level sucks. You want a first-person shooter that actually sucks? Play Darkest of Days, a mess of an FPS with invisible walls, glitchy aiming, glitchier enemies, and a preposterous time-travel plot. That came out the same year as Modern Warfare 2. Play it, and then try to tell me with a straight face that Call of Duty sucks. It?s impossible.

If you only play a few games all year, I can see how your perspective gets skewed. If you only bought Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Halo 4 and Black Ops II last year, one of those games is going to be your least favorite, probably by a big margin, and it?s easy to say that your least-favorite game sucks by comparison. Little details that make a quality game so special like tight controls, reliable and consistent hit detection and physics, intelligent AI, lighting, and draw distance get taken for granted, because most quality games do those things well to begin with. It isn?t until you play a game that does the little things wrong that you appreciate the ones that do them right.

I am a big advocate of playing terrible games for the aforementioned reasons, but I understand that you might be skeptical and wondering why you should waste time and money on a substandard product. Bear with me.

My proposal: On the weekend before the release of a game that you are really looking forward to, pick up a terrible game in the same genre and revel in how awful it is.

Gamestop has a fantastic used games return policy where you can return a used game with a receipt within seven days of purchase for a full refund, and since bad games tend to sell poorly, they can usually be found used for a few dollars apiece. This serves our purpose perfectly.

As far as why you should invest the time, think of it as cleansing your palate with water in between drinking fine wines. You?re shocking your system, washing away the expectations of the last great game you played before starting the next great game anew.

My proposal: on the weekend before the release of a game that you are really looking forward to, pick up a terrible game in the same genre and revel in how awful it is, much in the same way you?d watch a terrible movie. Excited for WWE 2K14 this October? Throw in Lucha Libre AAA Heroes del Ring for a few hours of sluggish wrestling and limited match types. Stepping back into Sam Fisher?s boots in Splinter Cell: Blacklist? Pick up Naughty Bear for third-person action/stealth done wrong.

The best part is, there is almost always some fun to be had in a game, no matter its review score. After all, bad video games are the yin to good video games? yang; there is always a little bit of bad in the good, and a little bit of good in the bad. Darkest of Days lets you go Rambo with futuristic weapons on Civil War enemies, which is as ludicrous as it sounds. No game has made me laugh harder than Rock Revolution the first time I heard its unlicensed cover of ?Chop Suey,? which is a testament to all that is suck. And Quest of the Dragon? Well?. At least it has Bruce Lee on the cover.

Seeking out bad games goes against everything we learn as consumers and gamers, but try it before you judge it. I promise that your gaming experience will be better for it.

Cameron Gidari is a freelance writer and the author of Seattle Before8 and the upcoming Manhattan Before8. His work is featured on gidarimedia.com, and he can be reached on Twitter at CGidari.

Source: http://kotaku.com/why-you-should-play-bad-video-games-748981509

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