вторник, 7 февраля 2012 г.

Games

Games

Entropy, Vol. 14, Pages 177-212: Disentangling Complexity from Randomness and Chaos

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

This study aims to disentangle complexity from randomness and chaos, and to present a definition of complexity that emphasizes its epistemically distinct qualities. I will review existing attempts at defining complexity and argue that these suffer from two major faults: a tendency to neglect the underlying dynamics and to focus exclusively on the phenomenology of complex systems; and linguistic imprecisions in describing these phenomenologies. I will argue that the tendency to discuss phenomenology removed from the underlying dynamics is the main root of the difficulties in distinguishing complex from chaotic or random systems. In my own definition, I will explicitly try to avoid these pitfalls. The theoretical contemplations in this paper will be tested on a sample of five models: the random Kac ring, the chaotic CA30, the regular CA90, the complex CA110 and the complex Bak-Sneppen model. Although these modelling studies are restricted in scope and can only be seen as preliminary, they still constitute on of the first attempts to investigate complex systems comparatively.

Biomolecules, Vol. 2, Pages 46-75: Factor H: A Complement Regulator in Health and Disease, and a Mediator of Cellular Interactions

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Complement is an essential part of innate immunity as it participates in host defense against infections, disposal of cellular debris and apoptotic cells, inflammatory processes and modulation of adaptive immune responses. Several soluble and membrane-bound regulators protect the host from the potentially deleterious effects of uncontrolled and misdirected complement activation. Factor H is a major soluble regulator of the alternative complement pathway, but it can also bind to host cells and tissues, protecting them from complement attack. Interactions of factor H with various endogenous ligands, such as pentraxins, extracellular matrix proteins and DNA are important in limiting local complement-mediated inflammation. Impaired regulatory as well as ligand and cell recognition functions of factor H, caused by mutations or autoantibodies, are associated with the kidney diseases: atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome and dense deposit disease and the eye disorder: age-related macular degeneration. In addition, factor H binds to receptors on host cells and is involved in adhesion, phagocytosis and modulation of cell activation. In this review we discuss current concepts on the physiological and pathophysiological roles of factor H in light of new data and recent developments in our understanding of the versatile roles of factor H as an inhibitor of complement activation and inflammation, as well as a mediator of cellular interactions. A detailed knowledge of the functions of factor H in health and disease is expected to unravel novel therapeutic intervention possibilities and to facilitate the development or improvement of therapies.

Energies, Vol. 5, Pages 258-269: Field Surveys of Non-Residential Solar Water Heating Systems in Taiwan

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

To develop indigenous alternative and renewable energy resources, long-term subsidy programs (1986–1991 and 2000–present) for solar water heaters have been enforced in Taiwan. By the end of 2010, the total installed area of solar collectors had exceeded 2 million square meters. However, over 98% of solar water heaters were used in residential systems for hot water production, with the areas of installed solar collector being less than 10 square meters. There were only 98 systems with area of solar collectors installed exceeding 100 square meters put into operation from 2001 to 2010. These systems were mainly installed for water heating in dormitories, swimming pools, restaurants, and manufacturing plants. In the present study, a comprehensive survey of these large-scale solar water heaters was conducted. The objectives of the survey were to assess the system performance and to collect feedback from individual users. It is found that lack of experience in system design and maintenance are the key factors affecting reliable operation of a system. Hourly, daily and long-term field measurements of a dormitory system were also examined to evaluate its thermal efficiencies. Results indicated that thermal efficiency of the system is associated with the daily solar radiation. Hot water use pattern and operation of auxiliary heater should be taken into account in system design.

Viruses, Vol. 4, Pages 276-279: A Plea for Caution: Huge Risks Associated with Lab-bred Flu

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

I wish to express concern about the maintenance of laboratory strains of H5N1 influenza viruses that might be adapted for transmission among humans.

IJMS, Vol. 13, Pages 1747-1761: Mitochondrial Protection and Anti-aging Activity of Astragalus Polysaccharides and Their Potential Mechanism

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

The current study was performed to investigate mitochondrial protection and anti-aging activity of Astragalus polysaccharides (APS) and the potential underlying mechanism. Lipid peroxidation of liver and brain mitochondria was induced by Fe2+–Vit C in vitro. Thiobarbituric acid (TBA) colorimetry was used to measure the content of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS). Mouse liver mitochondrial permeability transition (PT) was induced by calcium overload in vitro and spectrophotometry was used to measure it. The scavenging activities of APS on superoxide anion (O2•－) and hydroxyl radical (•OH), which were produced by reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH)—N-Methylphenazonium methyl sulfate (PMS) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)–Fe2+ system respectively, were measured by 4-nitrobluetetrazolium chloride (NBT) reduction and Fenton reaction colorimetry respectively. The Na2S2O3 titration method was used to measure the scavenging activities of APS on H2O2. APS could inhibit TBARS production, protect mitochondria from PT, and scavenge O2•－, •OH and H2O2 significantly in a concentration-dependent manner respectively. The back of the neck of mice was injected subcutaneously with D-galactose to induce aging at a dose of 100 mg/kg/d for seven weeks. Moreover, the activities of catalase (CAT), surperoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and anti-hydroxyl radical which were assayed by using commercial monitoring kits were increased significantly in vivo by APS. According to this research, APS protects mitochondria by scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS), inhibiting mitochondrial PT and increasing the activities of antioxidases. Therefore, APS has the effect of promoting health.

IJMS, Vol. 13, Pages 1733-1746: Characterization of Catalase from Psychrotolerant Psychrobacter piscatorii T-3 Exhibiting High Catalase Activity

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

A psychrotolerant bacterium, strain T-3 (identified as Psychrobacter piscatorii), that exhibited an extraordinarily high catalase activity was isolated from the drain pool of a plant that uses H2O2 as a bleaching agent. Its cell extract exhibited a catalase activity (19,700 U·mg protein−1) that was higher than that of Micrococcus luteus used for industrial catalase production. Catalase was approximately 10% of the total proteins in the cell extract of the strain. The catalase (PktA) was purified homogeneously by only two purification steps, anion exchange and hydrophobic chromatographies. The purified catalase exhibited higher catalytic efficiency and higher sensitivity of activity at high temperatures than M. luteus catalase. The deduced amino acid sequence showed the highest homology with catalase of Psycrobacter cryohalolentis, a psychrotolelant bacterium obtained from Siberian permafrost. These findings suggest that the characteristics of the PktA molecule reflected the taxonomic relationship of the isolate as well as the environmental conditions (low temperatures and high concentrations of H2O2) under which the bacterium survives. Strain T-3 efficiently produces a catalase (PktA) at a higher rate than Exiguobacterium oxidotolerans, which produces a very strong activity of catalase (EktA) at a moderate rate, in order to adapt to high concentration of H2O2.

Slowy 1.1 - Simulate a connection for web developers.. (Free)

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 03:01 AM PST



Slowy is a tool which simulates custom connection's conditions and limits the network traffic to a specified destination port. It is created for web developers, like me, who need to test a website with a real-world connection, even on a local server.

It currently supports:
  • custom bandwidth limit (kbit/s)
  • custom packet latency (ms)
  • custom packet loss rate (%)
  • custom destination port (so you will slow down only a single service)
Slowy is an OSX MenuBar app, so it is lightweight and is placed only on the system topbar.

Version 1.1: The main improvement of this release is the addition of more presets.
Now the full version of Slowy has five built-in presets:
  • 56K (download limit: 56 kbit/s)
  • EDGE (download limit: 250 kbit/s)
  • 3G (download limit: 750 kbit/s)
  • LTE / 4G (download limit: 1 mbit/s)
  • DSL (download limit: 2 mbit/s)
Full changelog

Mac OS X 10.5 or later

Download Now

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.4 - Easy-to-use backup/cloning utility.. (Free)

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 03:07 AM PST



Carbon Copy Cloner is an easy-to-use backup utility:
Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it. Try it 'til you trust it.

In its simplest form, CCC will clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. This is very useful if, for example, your laptop is damaged and you must send it in for repair.

CCC can also be used to perform regular backups of your data. When you select a source disk in CCC, you are presented with the contents of that disk (hidden items too). Simply uncheck the items that you do not want to backup, and CCC will provide ample indication what will and will not be copied. Select a target disk to which you would like to backup, then press the clone button.

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer. CCC includes that functionality, and takes it even further.



Version 3.4.4:
  • Made several changes to the preset configurations. Both the wording and some of the settings have been changed in response to user feedback and typical usage scenarios.
  • New feature: CCC now provides support for archiving and cloning the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Recovery HD partition. Choose "Disk Center" from CCC's Window menu to find this functionality.
  • New feature: Scheduled tasks can now be configured to wake or boot the system when the task is scheduled to run.
  • New feature: For users with a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installer application in /Applications, CCC's Source menu now includes a handy "Create a Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installer..." choice that will clone the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Installation disk image onto a physical volume.
  • Window positioning of the scheduled task helper application is now retained on a per-task basis, so you can move these windows around on your screen and multiple tasks won't be stacked on top of each other.
  • CCC will now mention the lack of a Recovery HD partition in the Cloning Coach prior to running the initial backup task.
  • The table of scheduled tasks in the Scheduler window are now sorted alphabetically by default.
  • Fixed a scheduler issue in which tasks scheduled to run on the first (any weekday) of the current month would be scheduled to run in the following month.
  • Fixed an issue in which CCC was not "remembering" the last preset that had been selected upon relaunching CCC.
  • Fixed an issue with the German localization related to the application of a particular setting in custom presets.
  • Fixed an issue in which a scheduled task had trouble mounting a disk image when uncommon permissions conditions were present (such as when a system is bound to an Active Directory directory service).
  • The "This volume will be bootable" message is back, though with a caveat that I have to insist upon from a support perspective. Many external hard drive enclosures still manage to screw up the boot process, and it's impossible for me to determine if that is going to happen for any particular user from within CCC.
  • When backing up to a subfolder, CCC now overlays an icon of the underlying volume on the folder icon in the task status panel.
  • Scheduled tasks that specify a network volume as the destination are now aborted when CCC receives a sleep notification.
  • Growl notifications should now work properly on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with Growl 1.3.
  • Email notifications now include the sender's full name.
  • Fixed a couple minor bugs associated with email notifications.
  • Fixed an issue in which the scheduled task window would be unresponsive while CCC waited for a response from an email server.
  • Added support for sending email to servers that use a self-signed certificate. This support is disabled by default, see the documentation for details on enabling this functionality.
  • Resolved a problem in which an errant filter would protect items in folders that were to be deleted, resulting in CCC reporting that it couldn't replace a particular folder or application.
  • Fixed a minor 5-second shutdown hang associated with CCC scheduled tasks.
  • Numerous tweaks to the advice that CCC offers for various error conditions.
  • Fixed some Mac OS X 10.7 Lion-specific problems with the mounting of sparsebundle disk image files that are hosted on a network volume.
  • If you're running an ad hoc task in CCC (e.g. click "Clone" in the main window), CCC will ask before deleting anything from the _CCC Archives folder. To avoid problems that would affect automation, this warning is not provided for scheduled tasks.
  • CCC is more proactive about dealing with the 4GB file size limitation of FAT32 volumes. Files larger than 4GB will now be excluded by default, and you'll get a warning of this exclusion before running the task.
  • Fixed a hang that would occur at the end of a scheduled task while CCC tried to unmount the destination volume (network volumes only, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion only).
  • Made some cosmetic changes concerning ZFS support.
  • Mail account settings on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion are now properly imported and populated into the email notifications tab of the scheduled tasks window.
  • The path to a disk image file is now properly provided as the fourth argument to postflight scripts.
  • Fixed a 30 second hang that would occur while saving changes to scheduled tasks on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. For every OS, though, saving scheduled tasks should be considerably faster.


Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later

Download Now

EasyCloud 1.6 - Immediately sync files across devices.. (Shareware)

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:39 AM PST



EasyCloud is a Utility app that allows Mac users to simply drag and drop data files into the EasyCloud Drop Window to have those files immediately available on all their Macs and iDevices. The app's two functions, Drop and Mac to Mac, support the following file types via iCloud: .pages (iWork), .numbers (iWork), .keynote (iWork), .doc (Microsoft Word), .excel (Microsoft Excel), .ppt (Microsoft Power Point), .txt (TextEdit Application), etc. The Drop function sends files directly to all the user's iDevices containing the matching app and via a common iCloud account. The Mac to Mac function enables both syncing and file sharing between Macs sharing the same iCloud account. A browser window displays all files available for sharing between Macs, files can be opened or deleted, and the list refreshed.

Feature Highlights:
  • Supports Apple's iWork apps for OS X and iOS: .pages, .numbers, and .keynote
  • Supports Microsoft Office files: .doc, .ppt, and .xls
  • Via GoodReader supports HTML and Safari webarchives, graphics, audio, and video
  • Drop send files directly to applications
  • Mac to Mac sync for file sharing between two or more Macs
  • Instantaneous transfer and availability of data through a single operation


    • Version 1.6:
    • Improved stability


    • Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later
    • 64-bit processor


    Download Now

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Demon Arms Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:13 AM PST

Jackie Estacado may not have changed much, but his demon arms sure have. Take a look at this gameplay movie to see how.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Demon Arms Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay" was posted by sarahl on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:13:45 -0800

Gunplay Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:13 AM PST

Guns are back in the Darkness II, but how you use them has changed. Check out this gameplay movie for a quick look.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Gunplay Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay" was posted by sarahl on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:13:06 -0800

Art Style Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:12 AM PST

It's not just gameplay that has been overhauled in The Darkness II. The art style has been modified to reflect the original comic that the game is based on.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Art Style Old Vs New - The Darkness II Gameplay" was posted by sarahl on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:12:31 -0800

Unlocking Powers - The Darkness II Gameplay

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:11 AM PST

To use your favourite powers in the Darkness II you must first unlock them using dark essence. Check out this gameplay movie to see talent trees and a couple of awesome powers in action.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Unlocking Powers - The Darkness II Gameplay" was posted by sarahl on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:11:57 -0800

PS Vita bundles available in Singapore

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 01:27 AM PST

Pre-orders starting at Feb 11 at selected outlets; launch event on Feb 22 held at 313@ Somerset shopping center.

 

Get the full article at GameSpot

"PS Vita bundles available in Singapore" was posted by Jonathan Leo Toyad on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:27:32 -0800

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:01 AM PST

Kingdoms of Amalur's combat and character advancement are fantastic enough to overshadow how bland everything else is.

     

Score: 7.5 / good

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review" was posted by Kevin VanOrd on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:01:23 -0800

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:01 AM PST

Kingdoms of Amalur's combat and character advancement are fantastic enough to overshadow how bland everything else is.

     

Score: 7.5 / good

Get the full article at GameSpot

"Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review" was posted by Kevin VanOrd on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:01:16 -0800

Cavern Clearing - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Gameplay Video

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Clear out the Fahrlangi Mages and other foes out of this cavern in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Cavern Clearing - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Gameplay Video" was posted by franka on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:12 -0800

Two-Legs Quest - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Gameplay Video

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Help Ainmhi to break his enchantment in this quest from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Two-Legs Quest - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Gameplay Video" was posted by franka on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:02 -0800

Reckoning Move Montage - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

All those juicy Reckoning moves in one bite-sized video for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Reckoning Move Montage - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning" was posted by franka on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Video Review

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Sharpen your Chakhrams and follow Kevin through this review for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Video Review" was posted by franka on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800
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