XFX HD 7870 and 7850 Double Dissipation Review
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Multitasking Makes You Feel Good While You Get Less Done
Occasionally when I am writing these news items up I will stop, even mid-sentence, to check my email or to visit a website. I am not always sure why I multitask like this but researchers at Ohio State University have done a study and believe they know why. People multitask to emotionally feel better, by introducing entertainment to the activity. Unfortunately multitasking usually means ones cognitive needs are not satisfied.
The study had 32 students record their daily activities for four weeks. Along with reporting how much time they spent on any task and what they were doing, the subjects also kept track of how important it was for them to do the activity and how successful they felt they were at completing the task. The researchers found that while multitasking impaired the students' abilities, they felt better about how they did because of the emotional high from the entertainment. This is ironic though because the students were multitasking because they thought it would help them do better.
The researchers also identified the power of habit with multitasking. As people get more use to multitasking and the sense of gratification it gives, they will multitask more in the future. This cycle could potentially have long-term impacts on how people perform cognitive tasks, which is what future studies will have to look into.
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A Number of Star Wars 1313 Filings Appear, Including for a Video Game
Domain name registrations are clearly all the rage today, as Lucasfilm has been spotted with some new filings in its grasp. Star Wars 1313 has been registered to Lucasfilm, but it is the trademark of the name for a video game that is the most curious aspect. It would seem LucasArts is planning on a new Star Wars game, and if you are wondering about that 1313 part, well you only have to look towards everyone's favorite bounty hunter. In Boba Fett: Maze of Deception, the young bounty hunter used CT-1313 as his alias when confronted by a clone trooper. With the Star Wars 1313 name being trademarked for a video game, you can see where the speculation jumped to. If we really will be getting a Boba Fett video game, I hope it features more bounty hunting than the one his father Jango starred in.
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Bad News for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Electronic Arts revealed in its most recent earnings report that the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO has lost nearly 25% of subscribers since March. The number is down from 1.7 million to 1.3 million, and comes just after Bioware Lead Writer Daniel Erickson said that the game wasn't experiencing a decrease in subscribers. EA Labels President Frank Gibeau seemed unphased stating that the company "intends to increase subscribers" through a number of updates to keep the game appealing. He also believes the drop off can be attributed to casual gamers who were attracted by the Star Wars tie in more than the MMO gameplay.
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Gold Nanoparticles Self-Assemble into Thin Films
How does one build a structure out of pieces you cannot see and do so efficiently? That is the question that has been plaguing many nanotechnology researchers because the nanoparticles they work with can be as small as 100 nm across. In the case of gold nanoparticles though, researchers at Berkeley Labs and the University of California, Berkeley have found a way to get them to self-assemble into device-ready thin films.
Self-assembly is exactly what the term suggests, the ability for a structure to assemble without human intervention. This new method uses block co-polymer supramolecules to direct the assembly process. Supramolecules act like single, giant molecules, even though they are made up of several molecules and block co-polymers have the ability to self-assemble nanoscale structures over macroscopic distances.
This method allows the researchers to have the nanoparticles assemble with specific morphologies into thin-films. These thin-films could potentially be used in a wide range of technologies including computer memory and energy storage.
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Want to See the New Assassin's Creed III Trailer? Like It on Facebook to Unlock
Free advertising has been made a whole lot easier in the digital age, since Facebook and Twitter tends to operate faster than word of mouth. When the advertising is tied to the reveal of something, it can spread even faster, which is what Ubisoft is banking on. If you head over to the Assassin's Creed Facebook page, you will see Ubisoft promising to unlock the world gameplay premiere trailer for Assassin's Creed III once 1,776,000 fans share the post. Why 1,776,000? Well, 1776 just so happens to be the year the American Revolution began that makes up the setting for AC3. You can share the post on Facebook or Twitter, invite your friends, and do whatever you can to unlock this new trailer. To help entice everyone, Ubisoft posted a teaser of the gameplay trailer, so if you want to see more, spread the word!
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Lighthouse Technique to Capture Electron Movements
Despite how much technology relies on electrons, there are still many things we do not know about these elemental particles. Partially this is because they are very hard to pin down for study. The way researchers normally try to grab electrons is using a pump-probe experiment. This involves shining two intense and brief lasers at the electrons. The first laser pumps the electron with energy, to get it moving, and the second probing laser looks to see how the electron is moving.
Researchers want to use attosecond long laser pulses for this, but these pulses have a critical flaw. Instead of producing a single pulse in just 10-18 seconds, multiple pulses are made in a sort of train and they derail the data. New research is being presented at the Optical Society of America's Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics for a way to make that train into a lighthouse.
A common part of all lasers is a prism. Researchers at the Applied Optics Laboratory in France and the National Research Council of Canada decided to get the prism spinning. This motion causes the pulses in the train to separate into beamlets. Each of these beamlets are then isolated attosecond pulses that are perfect for studying electrons, and other particles.
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Ubisoft Linked to Domain Name for Avengers Game, According to Report
Fans have long waited to see The Avengers on the silver screen, and for those in the US, this past weekend the film opened to box office success. A new video game showcasing The Avengers has not exactly had the best of luck, as THQ canceled a movie tie-in that looked fairly promising from early footage. Now, however, it looks like we may finally have a video game after all, if a new report is to be believed. Over the weekend, Fusible reported Marvel registered the domain name "avengersbattleforearth.com" on May 3rd, a day before The Avengers opened in theaters. Marvel Comics registered the name, but it is currently listed on Ubisoft servers. When the THQ game was canceled, Marvel took back the rights in order to look for a new suitor, and may have found one in Ubisoft. We will just have to wait and see what comes of this, but hopefully the new game is more Batman: Arkham Asylum and not Superman 64.
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Looking to Explain Iron Superconductors
Superconductors are cool, literally and figuratively. These materials will conduct electricity with little or no resistance, which allows massive amounts of energy to be transmitted without any loss or very low power signals to be sent and received correctly. Making a material act as a superconductor however requires chilling it to very low temperatures. Traditional superconductors need to reach down to near absolute zero while high-temperature superconductors need to be more than hundred degrees below zero, centigrade. Scientists are constantly working to find room-temperature superconductors but the work is hindered by the fact that we do not understand what causes superconductivity.
The dominant theory for high-temperature superconductivity involves Cooper pairs. These are pairs of electrons which defy normal logic in order to flow without resistance. One would expect electrons to fly away from each other instead of pairing up, and usually they do fly away. One theory for why they do not in Cooper pairs is that the electrons are aligned in such a way as to overcome their repulsion. Even though electrons are negatively charged points in space, they still have a magnetic moment, which makes them polar like a bar magnet. If the moments are pointing in opposite directions, the electrons might be able to pair up. Proving this though is difficult.
Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory have recently made an important discover with regards to this theory and iron superconductors. Iron high-temperature superconductors were only discovered in 2008, and previously only copper, high-temperature superconductors were known to exist. Copper does not lend itself to testing this theory but iron, with its multiple magnetic electrons in their own energy bands, does.
The researchers had to invent a way to measure the alignment of the electrons while also measuring their conductivity, but once they had, they found the theory is not incorrect. The electrons did conduct better when they were aligned in opposite directions, as well as parallel and anti-parallel to their direction of motion. This does not mean the alignment is what directly causes Cooper pairs and superconductivity, but it is linked to them. Potentially this research could lead to the discovery and possibly the designing of future superconductors.
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Analyst Says Microsoft and Sony Should Cut Hardware and Software Prices
With all the rumors flying around on next-generation consoles, one analyst believes Microsoft and Sony should cut the prices on current-gen hardware and software. The analyst says many gamers are already looking towards the next-gen systems, so the timing is perfect to reduce prices on the current-gen. This would mean more sales all around, because if someone was on the fence on whether or not to buy a console, a reduced price could push them over the edge. The analyst said the $99 Xbox 360 with a two-year contract is a good start, but says "a straight price cut would be more effective." What's more is the analyst thinks software prices should also be cut, with a $50 starting point for "most" titles. The age of the hardware no longer necessitates $60 games, but the royalty fees would have to be reduced in order for the lower price to take hold. Lower prices all around would certainly help the industry, especially in anticipation of low sales numbers for April.
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Are You Addicted to Facebook? There's a Test for That
Though I am not on Facebook, I have seen some odd behavior related to it. I have known people to put off important work to play a game or check for new postings. I have even known someone who told me something in confidence post a related comment I made to Facebook. (Apparently one can keep a secret and still publicly post a remark directly related to the secret.) Researchers are very interested in the ways Facebook alters behaviors and mindsets because it appears to be creating addictions. Now researchers at the University of Bergen have created the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.
As with every other phenomenon, one cannot study it without having some way to measure it. This test allows researchers to determine if someone is indeed addicted, which will then allow the researchers to collect data to find a pattern amongst the addicts. Already we know most Facebook addicts are anxious and socially insecure. Facebook feels safer to them because it does not require face-to-face interactions. Women are at greater risk of becoming addicted because of the social nature of Facebook.
The test considers six criteria and has people rate them on a scale from very rarely, through sometimes, to very often.
- You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or plan use of Facebook.
- You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
- You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems.
- You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
- You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
- You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
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Affordable Plastic-Based Ultrabooks on the Way
Ultrabooks are a great step forward for Windows mobile computing in terms of portability, but because of its aluminum form factor it's not exactly wallet-friendly. That might change in the next few months, as it has been reported that cheaper plastic-based Ultrabooks are en route. These upcoming lightweight laptops will be a using a variety of plastic and aluminum materials, with the casing built on a fiberglass-like plastic. Intel has indicated that these alternative materials are just as effective as a metal chassis during torque test demonstrations. According to Intel's Taiwan head Jason Chen, we could be looking at prices ranging from $599 to $699 for these relatively affordable Ultrabooks, which are estimated to arrive at the second half of 2012.
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