среда, 15 февраля 2012 г.

Games

Games

Games

Remote Sensing, Vol. 4, Pages 484-508: Estimating Biophysical Parameters of Individual Trees in an Urban Environment Using Small Footprint Discrete-Return Imaging Lidar

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Quantification of biophysical parameters of urban trees is important for urban planning, and for assessing carbon sequestration and ecosystem services. Airborne lidar has been used extensively in recent years to estimate biophysical parameters of trees in forested ecosystems. However, similar studies are largely lacking for individual trees in urban landscapes. Prediction models to estimate biophysical parameters such as height, crown area, diameter at breast height, and biomass for over two thousand individual trees were developed using best subsets multiple linear regression for a study area in central Oklahoma, USA using point cloud distributional metrics from an Optech ALTM 2050 lidar system. A high level of accuracy was attained for estimating individual tree height (R2 = 0.89), dbh (R2 = 0.82), crown diameter (R2 = 0.90), and biomass (R2 = 0.67) using lidar-based metrics for pooled data of all tree species. More variance was explained in species-specific estimates of biomass (R2 = 0.68 for Juniperus virginiana to 0.84 for Ulmus parviflora) than in estimates from broadleaf deciduous (R2 = 0.63) and coniferous (R2 = 0.45) taxonomic groups—or the data set analysed as a whole (R2 = 0.67). The metric crown area performed particularly well for most of the species-specific biomass equations, which suggests that tree crowns should be delineated accurately, whether manually or using automatic individual tree detection algorithms, to obtain a good estimation of biomass using lidar-based metrics.

Marine Drugs, Vol. 10, Pages 427-438: Terpenoids from the Octocorals Menella sp. (Plexauridae) and Lobophytum crassum (Alcyonacea)

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

A new germacrane-type sesquiterpenoid, menelloide E (1), and a new cembrane-type diterpenoid, lobocrassin F (2), were isolated from the octocorals Menella sp. and Lobophytum crassum, respectively. The structures of terpenoids 1 and 2 were determined by spectroscopic and chemical methods and compound 2 was found to display a significant inhibitory effect on the release of elastase by human neutrophils.

Marine Drugs, Vol. 10, Pages 417-426: Antihypertensive Effect of Long-Term Oral Administration of Jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) Collagen Peptides on Renovascular Hypertension

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Antihypertensive effect of long-term oral administration of jellyfish (Rhopilema esculentum) collagen peptides (JCP) on renovascular hypertension rats (RVHs) was evaluated. The systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure of the RVHs were significantly reduced with administration of JCP (p < 0.05), compared with model control group. However, the arterial blood pressure of normal rats showed no significant changes during long-term oral treatment with high dose JCP (p > 0.05). Furthermore, effect of JCP on angiotensin II (Ang II) concentration of plasma had no significance (p > 0.05), but JCP significantly inhibited the Ang II concentration in RVHs' kidney (p < 0.05). The kidney should be the target site of JCP.

Backyard-sized western town for sale, $20K cheap

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 02:50 AM PST


Boontdustie sez, "Topeka, Kansas craigslist - A man built entire 'Cowboy Town' in backyard and is now looking to sell it all for $20,000. Complete with bank, saloon and livery stable... Awesome pics included."

The Bank is currently being used as a garden tool shed. Makes a great place for the mower, some deck chairs, rakes, shovels, hoes, hoses, baskets etc. Bank has two windows on either side of the door. Door has a window with a roller shade. It is approximately 7' 6" wide x 6' 2" long x 7' tall ceiling. Has a flat roof behind realistic-looking front facade that is 11' tall.

The Livery Stable (some call this a barn) is a two-story building that is perfectly sized for use as a chicken house. The Livery stable has an upstairs hay loft with a tin roof, a loft door and two side windows. You can easily stack 6-8 bales of straw in the loft. Downstairs has a dutch-door entry with a separate set-in screen for ventilation. There is one window beside the door that also has a rabbit-screen for ventilation. There is a ladder attached to the wall to access the loft from the inside. We currently have our flock of 10 laying hens housed in this Livery stable. On the outside wall, there is a "chicken door" with a levered closure that slides up and down to keep the chickens secure from predators at night. This stable structure is approximately 14' high x 57" deep x 6' wide. The building is wired for one outlet and one light switch. We had our little hatchlings in this a couple years ago with a heat lamp hung from the ceiling. When they were old enough, we put a timer box and separate light in for convenience and still also have the flip-switch ceiling light.

The Saloon is between the two buildings. It is actually a facade covered porch area. There are two mirrors that act as windows and real swinging doors attached to the solid wall. This makes a great place for our display of old-timey farm implements. Our grand daughter loves to play up here when Grandpa has his hand-crank tool collection out in the summer time. There is an upstairs balcony facade that is strong enough to hold people. This saloon is approximately 13' 9" long x 11' tall x 4' deep. You can easily put a few chairs on the porch to be out of the hot sun in the summer time.

My husband is ready to build something different and we have no more room on our little corner lot. This entire structure was built to be moveable.

Cowboy Town - Garden Shed or Play House - $20000 (Hoyt)

Marine Drugs, Vol. 10, Pages 403-416: Antioxidant Activity of Hawaiian Marine Algae

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Marine algae are known to contain a wide variety of bioactive compounds, many of which have commercial applications in pharmaceutical, medical, cosmetic, nutraceutical, food and agricultural industries. Natural antioxidants, found in many algae, are important bioactive compounds that play an important role against various diseases and ageing processes through protection of cells from oxidative damage. In this respect, relatively little is known about the bioactivity of Hawaiian algae that could be a potential natural source of such antioxidants. The total antioxidant activity of organic extracts of 37 algal samples, comprising of 30 species of Hawaiian algae from 27 different genera was determined. The activity was determined by employing the FRAP (Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power) assays. Of the algae tested, the extract of Turbinaria ornata was found to be the most active. Bioassay-guided fractionation of this extract led to the isolation of a variety of different carotenoids as the active principles. The major bioactive antioxidant compound was identified as the carotenoid fucoxanthin. These results show, for the first time, that numerous Hawaiian algae exhibit significant antioxidant activity, a property that could lead to their application in one of many useful healthcare or related products as well as in chemoprevention of a variety of diseases including cancer.

Micromachines, Vol. 3, Pages 62-77: Fabrication and Performance of a Photonic-Microfluidic Integrated Device

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Fabrication and performance of a functional photonic-microfluidic flow cytometer is demonstrated. The devices are fabricated on a Pyrex substrate by photolithographically patterning the microchannels and optics in a SU-8 layer that is sealed via a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) layer through a unique chemical bonding method. The resulting devices eliminate the free-space excitation optics through integration of microlenses onto the chip to mimic conventional cytometry excitation. Devices with beam waists of 6 μm and 12 μm in fluorescent detection and counting tests using 2.5 and 6 μm beads-show CVs of 9%–13% and 23% for the two devices, respectively. These results are within the expectations for a conventional cytometer (5%–15%) and demonstrate the ability to integrate the photonic components for excitation onto the chip and the ability to maintain the level of reliable detection.

Entropy, Vol. 14, Pages 291-322: Classical and Quantum Models in Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics: Moment Methods and Long-Time Approximations

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

We consider non-equilibrium open statistical systems, subject to potentials and to external "heat baths" (hb) at thermal equilibrium at temperature T (either with ab initio dissipation or without it). Boltzmann's classical equilibrium distributions generate, as Gaussian weight functions in momenta, orthogonal polynomials in momenta (the position-independent Hermite polynomialsHn's). The moments of non-equilibrium classical distributions, implied by the Hn's, fulfill a hierarchy: for long times, the lowest moment dominates the evolution towards thermal equilibrium, either with dissipation or without it (but under certain approximation). We revisit that hierarchy, whose solution depends on operator continued fractions. We review our generalization of that moment method to classical closed many-particle interacting systems with neither a hb nor ab initio dissipation: with initial states describing thermal equilibrium at T at large distances but non-equilibrium at finite distances, the moment method yields, approximately, irreversible thermalization of the whole system at T, for long times. Generalizations to non-equilibrium quantum interacting systems meet additional difficulties. Three of them are: (i) equilibrium distributions (represented through Wigner functions) are neither Gaussian in momenta nor known in closed form; (ii) they may depend on dissipation; and (iii) the orthogonal polynomials in momenta generated by them depend also on positions. We generalize the moment method, dealing with (i), (ii) and (iii), to some non-equilibrium one-particle quantum interacting systems. Open problems are discussed briefly.

Resident Evil: ORC Multiplayer Tournament

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 11:37 PM PST

Raccoon City has fallen to the T-virus and GameSpot's office will be celebrating the last Valentine's Day before the zombie apocalypse with a 32-player tournament in San Francisco and some bloody good fun.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Resident Evil: ORC Multiplayer Tournament" was posted by DanM on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:37:34 -0800

Gravity Rush Import Hands-On: A Possible Killer App For The Vita

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 08:24 PM PST

We play through the first few hours of what could be the definitive game for Sony's tech-heavy handheld.

 

Readers may recall a recent article on the Vita that criticised the lack of "killer app" titles among other things. After playing through what seems to be the latest open-ended adventure du jour from Silent Hill director Keiichiro Toyama since his stint with Siren for the PS3, there may be a silver lining within all the device's proclaimed gloom and doom. If the four to five hours we've spent in Gravity Rush was of any indication of its quality, we could very well have both a sleeper hit and a darn great justification of buying a new gaming portable device.

To elaborate further on the last write-up, you play a girl named Kat who ended up in the town of Hekseville in nothing more than her unique one-piece uniform, a mission to rebuild the dying world of Auldnoir, and the awe-inspiring power to control gravity in her vicinity. Thanks to her black-glowing cat familiar who tags alongside the blonde heroine, Kat can float and fly around unreachable places, stand on the sides of buildings and any other flat surface in any position, use her stasis powers to carry objects and even human beings, and perform a gravity slide that turns her into the world's anti-gravity equivalent of Tony Hawk.

The latter technique required us to touch and hold the left and right edges of the screen; as she slides, we tilted the PS Vita left and right to steer her, and shook the device to make her jump sky high. Kat can also speed up her gravity shift and descent by holding down the X button so that she can get to places quicker.

She will need all the help she can get since she's up against a group of black and red monstrosities called the Nevi that seeks to eradicate all life on Auldnoir. These enemies come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from the small versions that fling black goo at our heroine to hulking brutes that can somehow elongate its hand to smash her to bits. The Nevi have a glaring weakness, however, as they have red glowing crystals that serve as their weak spots. Hit them, and they dissipate into nothingness. Some Nevis have more than one glowing crystal and a few of them even have shell carapaces that require a good bashing before they can be damaged.

Kat is definitely a kitten with more than just an attitude and claws, as her repertoire of combat moves are simple yet effective. She can do a flurry of kicks when on the ground and can also dodge (via swiping the touch screen). To use her patented gravity kick where she floats in the air and speeds into full force feet first onto an enemy's weak spot, make Kat float in the air and then press the square button.

The farther you are from your target, the more powerful the kick becomes. While you will need to aim at your target when using the kick, you don't need to be too precise as long as it's within the centre reticule and the surrounding grey circle around it. Kat will automatically home in on the target upon launch.

When she uses her gravity stasis field to pick up objects, she can fling them at a target with a press of the circle button. Some enemies can dodge out of the way of a gravity kick, so finding nearby objects as makeshift projectiles is key during combat scenarios.

The coup de grace of Kat's arsenal is her special attacks, which can be pulled off by pressing the triangle button while in zero gravity mode. So far, we've unlocked her amped-up auto-homing gravity drill attack and this other move where she summons a cluster of gravity projectiles to rain down and hit fools within her radius.

Do keep in mind that she can't float forever, as there's a gravity meter that gradually empties the longer she stays in zero gravity mode. Luckily, the meter refills pretty quick and there is an abundant supply of gravity crystals littered in the city that replenishes the bar in a jiffy.

Simply put, the controls were really easy to get the hang of. Combat so far is a blast, as there's so much space for us to navigate and position ourselves for gravity kicks, as well as knowing where our enemies were coming from. While standing upside down on areas during quests may take some time getting used to, the game's camera has done a great job in not disorienting our heads too much.

We had to confess that at times, we spent too much time flying around and checking out the scenic route, as well as perfecting our score at the game's side missions. Yes, there are side missions you can partake while traversing around Hekseville. Gamers will come across energy canisters that require a small amount of power crystals; these not only brighten up the area and make it cheery, but also unlock combat and navigation trials that can earn you more power crystals.

The former requires Kat to kill off a number of enemies for points, while the latter requires her to reach checkpoint after checkpoint using a specific gravity technique. Power crystals that are earned can be used to upgrade Kat's gravity abilities, be it to make her gravity kick more effective or making the handling of her gravity slide manageable.

After a tutorial that came in the form of an intense scene where Kat rescues a boy from a black hole in the sky, we tarried off into the old district of Hekseville to forward the story along. Players will get to explore Hekseville in open-ended fashion in locales like the old city district and the perpetually night-time Rainbow Street area.

Along the way, Kat has to recreate and restructure lost parts of Hekseville, help find a missing student by searching for clues and exploring an academy, and even fight against another gravity-shifting nemesis called Raven. Without giving too much away, Gravity Rush will also bring gamers to otherworldly areas like a planar space filled with broken-down ruins, a void filled with ceiling inferno pits and pathways suspiciously arranged like a roller coaster, and even a barren wasteland filled with giant Nevis where Kat's gravity meter can't regenerate.

What also elevates this adventure game for us was the aesthetics. Toyama mentioned before that the game's art was based on the style of French comics. Upon our initial impressions, the game impresses with its bright palettes and environmental designs, particularly at the later areas we mentioned briefly. The narration itself is a mix of cutscenes and comic panels. Players can switch to the next page by swiping the screen and even move the accelerometer of the Vita to check out different angles of the panel.

It's pretty unique, we must say, and adds to the charm of its French aesthetic while also getting the story's point across without the need of drawn-out machinima. The soundtrack by Kohei Tanaka, who is famous for composing music for anime like Gunbuster and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, also accentuates how everything comes together in one beautiful-looking title.

Fans may be disappointed that the director's latest game isn't anything like a survival horror title, but what we got instead was something potentially close to adventure-gaming greatness that couldn't be achieved on any other mobile device given its scope and presentation. With its unique sense of style and gravity-shifting gameplay already warming up to us, we do hope the later parts of the game lives up to what we've experienced.

Gravity Rush will be out soon in North American and European territories, but gamers fluent in Japanese can check out the import version that is available now from their local parallel import stores.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Gravity Rush Import Hands-On: A Possible Killer App For The Vita" was posted by Jonathan Leo Toyad on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:24:50 -0800

Street Fighter X Tekken Promo Trailer

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 07:37 PM PST

Here's a promotional trailer for the Sony PS3 and Vita versions of Street Fighter X Tekken.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Street Fighter X Tekken Promo Trailer" was posted by MikeTao on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:37:59 -0800

Street Fighter X Tekken Promo Trailer

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 07:36 PM PST

Check out this promotional trailer for the Xbox 360 version of Street Fighter X Tekken.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Street Fighter X Tekken Promo Trailer" was posted by MikeTao on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:36:44 -0800

Street Fighter Character - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 07:33 PM PST

Check out this gameplay trailer featuring some of your favorite Street Fighter characters in action.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Street Fighter Character - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer" was posted by MikeTao on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:33:32 -0800

Story Promo - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 07:31 PM PST

Here's a story promo trailer for Street Fighter X Tekken

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Story Promo - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer" was posted by MikeTao on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:31:54 -0800

Tekken Character - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer

Posted: 14 Feb 2012 07:30 PM PST

Here's a gameplay trailer featuring some of your favorite Tekken characters in action.

 

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

"Tekken Character - Street Fighter X Tekken Trailer" was posted by MikeTao on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:30:25 -0800

ePub Checker 1.1 - Validate ePub formatted e-books.. (Commercial)

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 01:03 AM PST



ePub Checker allows you to validate e-books published in .epub format by dragging and dropping onto its Dock icon or main application window.

Version 1.1:
  • Sandbox support.

  • Epub 3.0 support.

  • User choise of checking between versions 1.2 and 3.0.

  • Adjusted toolbar and navigation.

  • Improved interface.

  • Many minor bug fixes.


  • Mac OS X 10.6 or later.
  • 64-bit processor


Download Now

Energies, Vol. 5, Pages 323-354: Carbon Lock-Out: Advancing Renewable Energy Policy in Europe

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

As part of its climate strategy, the EU aims at increasing the share of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) in overall electricity generation. Attaining this target poses a considerable challenge as the electricity sector is "locked" into a carbon-intensive system, which hampers the adoption of RES-E technologies. Electricity generation, transmission and distribution grids as well as storage and demand response are subject to important path dependences, which put existing, non-renewable energy sources at an advantage. This paper examines how an EU framework for RES-E support policies should be designed to facilitate a carbon lock-out. For this purpose, we specify the major technological, economic and institutional barriers to RES-E. For each of the barriers, a policy review is carried out which assesses the performance of existing policy instruments and identifies needs for reform. The review reveals several shortcomings: while policies targeting generation are widely in place, measures to address barriers associated with electricity grids, storage and demand are still in their infancy and have to be extended. Moreover, the implementation of policies has been fragmented across EU Member States. In this respect, national policies should be embedded into an integrated EU-wide planning of the RES-E system with overarching energy scenarios and partially harmonized policy rules.

Zynga Finds Online Gambling 'Very Interesting' [Earnings Call]

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:51 AM PST

Speculation has been running high that Zynga would move into online gambling particularly with its Zynga Poker game and its recently announced Casino series of games.

SFPD corruption report from 1937

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:46 AM PST


Here's a long-lost 1937 report on police corruption in San Francisco:

In 1935, the citizens of the city of San Francisco were indignant when tales of police officers having amassed huge fortunes through payoffs, graft and bribery came to light. In a convulsion of civic anger, District Attorney Matt Brady and Mayor Angelo Rossi were pressed to act, and they hired private investigator and former G-man Edwin N. Atherton. The so-called Atherton Report prompted dozens of cops to quit or lose their jobs, some went underground, one killed himself and his family. The entire police commission was forced to resign and reports of police payoffs, staged raids on gambling houses and brothels, bail bond skimming, unpaid loans to public officials and other were laid at the door of the House of McDonough.

Lost for more than seventy years, here is the infamous Atherton Report.

The 1937 San Francisco Police Graft Report by Edwin Atherton (Thanks, hankchapot!)

Brain Sciences, Vol. 2, Pages 33-60: Unconscious Cueing via the Superior Colliculi: Evidence from Searching for Onset and Color Targets

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

According to the bottom-up theory of attention, unconscious abrupt onsets are highly salient and capture attention via the Superior Colliculi (SC). Crucially, abrupt onsets increase the perceived contrast. In line with the SC hypothesis, unconscious abrupt-onset cues capture attention regardless of the cue color when participants search for abrupt-onset targets (Experiment 1). Also, stronger cueing effects occur for higher than lower contrast cues (Experiment 2) and for temporally, rather than nasally, presented stimuli (Experiment 3). However, in line with the known color-insensitivity of the SC, the SC pathway is shunted and unconscious abrupt-onset cues no longer capture attention when the participants have to search for color-defined targets (Experiment 4) or color-singleton targets (Experiment 5). When using color change cues instead of abrupt-onset cues, the cueing effect also vanishes (Experiment 6). Together the results support the assumption that unconscious cues can capture attention in different ways, depending on the exact task of the participants, but that one way is attentional capture via the SC. The present findings also offer a reconciliation of conflicting results in the domain of unconscious attention.

Animals, Vol. 2, Pages 38-54: Social Environment and Control Status of Companion Animal-Borne Zoonoses in Japan

Posted: 15 Feb 2012 12:00 AM PST

Changing social and environmental factors have been the cause of an increase in the number and variety of animals are being imported into Japan. Moreover, the number of Japanese households are keeping companion animals has also risen. These factors, along with the high density of the Japanese population and the low percentage of registered dogs, have increased the risk of animal-to-human transmission of zoonoses. To control zoonosis outbreaks, the Japanese government has implemented a three-stage approach for the border control of zoonoses and has stipulated the monitoring and reporting of eight companion animal-borne zoonoses under the Rabies Prevention Law and the Infectious Diseases Control Law. The fact that no case of human and animal rabies has been reported over the past 50 years indicates that these measures are highly effective in preventing rabies transmission. Although it is known that the total number of possible companion animal-borne zoonosis outbreaks decreased between 2005 and 2009 when compared with numbers between 2001 and 2004, the number of zoonosis cases that can be attributed to transmission by companion animals remains unclear. Active surveillance should be conducted on a national level to collect the data necessary to determine this number and identify trends in companion-animal transmitted diseases. Using the data collected, regulation systems should be evaluated to determine whether they have met reasonable goals and policy planning conducted for the control of emerging diseases.
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