Depression and Anxiety Linked to Using Multiple Media Forms
When I write these news items I typically have my source open on one half of my screen, the editor I use to write my item on the other half and some music playing in the background. Thankfully I do not actively listen to the music but instead use it for noise because according to researchers at Michigan State University, multiple media use is linked to depression and anxiety in young people. The nature of this link is not yet known though, so they cannot comment if the multitasking causes the depression or anxiety, or if people with depression or anxiety are drawn to multitasking.
To perform the experiment the researchers asked 319 people about their media consumption and also gave them a mental health survey. The consumption survey inquired about how often the subjects used multiple forms of primary media, such as television, music, cell phones, computers, video games, and more, during a week. The mental health survey uses well-established measures for assessing the subjects' mental states, but is not unto-itself a means to clinically diagnose them with any illness.
The next step in this research is of course to determine causation. If multitasking with different kinds of media does indeed cause depression or anxiety, then means to alleviate the problem will have to be developed. If instead those with depressive and anxious tendencies are drawn to multitasking, a new approach to treating the illnesses may be possible, or at least a new warning sign has been discovered.
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New GeForce 310.70 Drivers Arrive with Improvements Across the Board NVIDIA has released its latest graphics drivers that is sure to help performance in all the latest games. The new GeForce 310.70 drivers are WHQL certified and offer some improvements over the latest beta drivers. How much improvement, you ask? Well, some games see as much as a 37% increase in performance, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at. Ubisoft's brand new Far Cry 3 is the beneficiary of the 37% improvement, with a 26% gain for Black Ops II, 18% for The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, 17% for Assassin's Creed III, and 12% for Battlefield 3. NVIDIA has also added TXAA support to Black Ops II and Assassin's Creed III, made Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing easier to use, fixed problems like shadow flickering in AC3, and a collection of new SLI and 3D Vision profiles. You can read the full details on the new GeForce 310.70 drivers at the source and grab the correct version for your system here. Read More ...
Examining Heat Flow at the Nanoscale Just as in many other disciplines, examining assumptions can yield interesting and important results. Such was the case with the recent work of researchers at MIT, Boston University, Boston College, and the California Institute of Technology. The assumption they targeted concerned how heat moves through a superlattice made of layers the thickness of a strand of DNA. The quantum of heat is a quasi-particle representing a unit of vibrational energy called the phonon. Like other quanta, it exists with both wave and particle properties, but depending on the situation may favor one form other another. The assumption is that when the interface between two materials is rough enough, the scattering of the phonons would cause them to act as particles and not waves, but when actually tested, the results were not so simple. For high frequency phonons, the scattering was enough to make them act as particles, but lower frequency phonons acted like waves. By controlling the roughness of the interface between the layers of material in a superlattice, it should be possible to also control the heat flow. Such manipulation would be very useful for thermoelectrics, which require a heat differential and computer chips, which want to stay cool. Read More ...
So Far, Windows 8 Resembles Vista in Terms of Usage Uptake Windows 8 has been available for over a month now, which is usually a good time for some companies to begin measuring how its sales are doing compared to past versions. The news for Windows 8, however, is not that great, as Net Applications puts 1.2% of Windows PCs as running Windows 8 at the end of its first full month. That number resembles Windows Vista more than it does Windows 7, as Vista was only on 1% of all Windows PCs after its first full month. Windows 8 merely doubled its usage share from the end of October to the end of November, while Vista increased it five times between the end of January, 2007, and the end of February, 2007. One possible cause has to do with the economy, as five years ago it was a little easier to afford a brand new operating system. There were also far fewer choices to get connected back when Vista launched, as smartphones were approaching final design stages and tablets didn't quite resemble the sleek options of today. Those are only possibilities, and the lack of moving to Windows 8 could be something as simple as more people are happier with Windows 7 than they were with Vista. If you're wondering how Windows 7 fared, well, it had 4.3% at the end of its first full month, so Microsoft's new OS is well behind that figure. Read More ...
Teaching Robots to Deceive Among the short stories within I, Robot by Isaac Asimov is Little Lost Robot. In this story, a robot lies to the humans in order to protect itself from destruction, and even goes so far as to teach other robots so it can more easily blend in and deceive the humans. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are now teaching robots similar deception tactics, to protect them and other resources from destruction. Both methods of deception being taught are based on animal behaviors; specifically squirrels and a species of bird. The bird, when encountering a predator, will seek out another group of birds and pretend to be a part of it, while taunting the predator. Due to the large group, the predator will decide not to attack and leave. When modeled, the researchers found this to be the best strategy the group is large enough to cause the predator to leave. A squirrel however deceives other squirrels in a different manner to protect its cache of nuts. Normally it will patrol these caches, but when there is another squirrel which may steal the nuts, it will move to other areas without any hidden nuts, to pull the other squirrel away from the nuts. These behaviors are likely going to be of the most benefit to military operations as a means to protect valuable assets. However, as the researchers will immediately point out, the idea of teaching robots to deceive humans prompts many ethical questions, and hopefully there will be further discussion to decide how such teaching may be applied. Read More ...
Facebook Gets Initial Approval of 'Sponsored Stories' Lawsuit Settlement U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg has given Facebook preliminary approval of a settlement to a lawsuit initially filed in May this year with regards to Facebook's 'Sponsored Stories'. The settlement would involve the firm awarding each user who objected to being part of the social network's 'Sponsored Stories' advertisements $10 in compensation. The settlement would also involve Facebook giving users the opportunity to opt out of the program if they wish. Facebook has since removed 'Sponsored Stories' advertisements for users in the U.S., but the class-action lawsuit currently held against Facebook still applies. Facebook first began displaying friends' 'Likes' alongside advertisements in the sidebar on the right of the page, but then integrated them into the news feed. This was deemed a breach of privacy and prompted the class-action lawsuit to be filed. Facebook issued a short statement on the proceedings of the settlement stating that it was pleased with the approval. Despite this, there will likely be a long wait before the proceedings draw to a close and the settlement is finalized. Read More ...
Voyager 1 Spacecraft in Unexpected Region of Space In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft which were destined to leave the Solar System and give man its first glimpse of an interstellar environment. Despite how many years have passed though, neither craft have yet exited the heliosphere, though Voyager 1 may be close. Right now though, it is in a region of space researchers had not anticipated, as reported by NASA. The heliosphere is a giant bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around the entire Solar System, and its outermost layer, the heliosheath, is considered the boundary of interstellar space. Once one crosses into interstellar space, it is expected that the magnetic field lines will suddenly change direction, as the Sun will no longer be the dominate source. Thus far this has not happened according to Voyager 1's instruments, though the intensity of the magnetic field has been increasing while the speed of charged particles has dropped to zero. Basically while the effects of the Sun are definitely appearing to disappear, the 'signpost' indicating we have left the Solar System, is still ahead of us, which is not what anyone expected. The researchers who monitor the data from Voyager 1 believe it may just be a matter of months or a couple years before it has finally escaped the Sun's influence. Until the field lines start shifting though, they are not going to celebrate as it was the field lines which had previously pinpointed when the spacecraft passed another milestone in the heliosphere; the termination shock where the solar wind abruptly slows. Read More ...
Presumed Radeon 8000 Sea Islands Specs Emerge AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 8000 "Sea Islands" cards will reportedly be packing in more transistors making it physically larger than previous-gen "Tahiti" GPUs, and will be produced using a 28nm manufacturing process. The new GPUs will feature an updated Graphics Core Next architecture, with the 8970 bolstered by an increase of 5.1 billion transistors and 2,560 stream processors, and the 8950 speculated to have lesser stream processors at 2,304. Both cards will be running at GPU speeds of 1,050 MHz, while the memory will be clocked at 6,000 MHz and 5,500 MHz, respectively. The duo will also be sharing the same 384-bit memory bus with 3GB of GDDR5 memory. A beefier HD 8990 will have two underclocked 8970s combined with 6GB RAM. On the 8800 side, its GPUs are said to have a 3.4 billion transistor count, 256-bit bus width, and stream processors of 1,792 for the 8870 and 1,536 on the 8850. Lastly, the 8770 will have 192-bit memory bus and 2.1 billion transistors, an improvement over the HD 7700 which it replaces. As the information originates from an unconfirmed source, for the meantime it is best to treat these details with a pinch of salt, although the specs do appear somewhat solid, if only on paper. Read More ...
AMD Updates Opteron Processor Line The AMD Opteron line of processors helped me to get my start in overclocking with a pair of chips that clocked exceptionally well. It has been a long time since I broke 3GHz with my Opteron 148 and 170, and AMD has just announced an update to the Opteron line of processors today. The Opteron 4300 and 3300 are low-power units that are targeted at "cloud servers that process Web transactions." The new Opterons will be featured in the SeaMicro servers from AMD, upgrading from the current 4200 and 3200 series. The 4300 series has six different options ranging in price from $191 to $501, delivering speed from 2.2GHz to 3.1GHz, and drawing just 35 to 65 watts. The 3300 series has three CPUs ranging in price from $174 to $229, clock speeds between 1.9GHz and 2.6GHz, and drawing power between 25 and 65 watts. Read More ...
New 3DMark in Development, Teaser Trailer Available Futuremark is nearing the end of development for the newest version of 3DMark, the go-to graphics benchmark, and the company has released a trailer for its newest test, Fire Strike. Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark designed to bring your hardware to its knees, featuring advanced rendering techniques that the company believes "are likely to become commonplace in PC games in two to three years time." You can view the trailer below, and it can be watched at the natively rendered resolution of 2560x1440 by selecting "original resolution" from the quality settings drop down on YouTube. Full details on Fire Strike and the other two new tests can be found on the 3DMark website.
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