What’s next for PC gaming?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a PC gamer. You’ve probably invested a decent amount of money in a fast graphics card, a decent-sized monitor, and more cheap RAM than you probably needed. I’m willing to bet you’ve also played some of the latest shooters on that gaming rig of yours.

If my description fits you, then you must have realized that your PC can carry much bigger loads than the lightweight Modern Warfare engine and its ilk. The sad truth is that today’s games are developed with six-year-old consoles in mind, and they look the part, too. High-end gaming PCs are roughly an order of magnitude more powerful power than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Playing Modern Warfare 3 on the PC is a bit like taking a Ferrari to go grocery shopping; as flashy as it might look, the resources at hand are being woefully underused.

None of that should be news to you. The question is, what happens next?

What’s next for PC gaming? – The Tech Report

US Army unveils 1.8 gigapixel camera helicopter drone

New helicopter-style drones with 1.8 gigapixel colour cameras are being developed by the US Army.

BBC News – US Army unveils 1.8 gigapixel camera helicopter drone

LG unveils 84-inch ‘ultra definition’ 4K TV it’s bringing to CES 2012

LG unveils 84-inch ‘ultra definition’ 4K TV it’s bringing to CES 2012
By Richard Lawler posted Dec 28th 2011 11:14PM
LG let us know at CES 2011 that it had 4K LCD televisions in the pipeline, but unfortunately they didn’t make it out this year. Expect for that to change in 2012, as the company just announced it’s bringing an 84-inch “ultra definition” (3840×2160) TV to Las Vegas to go along with its 55-inch OLED. It has all of LG’s Cinema 3D and Smart TV features built-in, including support for that upgraded Magic Motion remote and voice control.

LG unveils 84-inch ‘ultra definition’ 4K TV it’s bringing to CES 2012 — Engadget

Europe’s Best Songs From 2011 (Video) – The Hollywood Reporter

Every year in America, a few hits make the jump from across the Atlantic, but the vast majority do not. Obvious language and accent barriers (not to mention licensing deals, or lack thereof) remain the primary reason why so many songs don’t venture outside the domain of the EU, Scandinavia and beyond. But YouTube exposes exponentially more Americans to an astounding array of excellent pop offerings. Here, 15 songs from the other side of the pond that are worth checking out.

The Italian Bruno Mars, the Croatian Hit ‘Brad Pitt’ Plus 13 More of Europe’s Best Songs From 2011 (Video) – The Hollywood Reporter

Cel mai mare domeniu schiabil din ţară, inaugurat la Poiana Braşov

Ministrul Dezvoltării Regionale şi Turismului, Elena Udrea, a participat, ieri, la inaugurarea domeniului schiabil de la Poiana Braşov, cea mai mare investiţie în turism din ultimii 20 de ani.

Cel mai mare domeniu schiabil din ţară, inaugurat la Poiana Braşov – Turism > Capital.ro

Samsung transparent LCD panel

Transparent LCD panels are more often than not the stuff of sci-fi movies, but will they ever make it to our realm and dimension? It seems that the stuff you normally see on the silver screen is now about to arrive in real life, thanks to South Korean technology giants Samsung. We are talking about the Samsung LTI460AP01 transparent LCD, where it obviously works differently from regular LCDs in order to get the job done. Standard LCD panels require BLUs (Back Light Units) as a light source so that they are able to display an image, making BLUs an essential part of a LCD panel. As for transparent LCDs, it does away with BLUs but relies on other available light sources instead such as sunlight and in-door lighting. What about when you prefer watching your movies in the dark? Just activate the transparent BLU, and you are good to go.

Samsung transparent LCD panel | Ubergizmo

LG’s 55-inch ‘world’s largest’ OLED HDTV panel is official, coming to CES 2012

Seoul, Korea (December 26, 2011) – LG Display [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, today announced that it has developed the world’s largest 55-inch OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diodes) TV panel. The 55-inch panel is a significant step forward in the popularization of OLED TVs and demonstrates the effective application of AM OLED technology to larger panel sizes at a more cost efficient level.

“Our objective has always been to actively define and lead emerging display technology markets,” said Dr. Sang Beom Han, CEO and Executive Vice President of LG Display. “Although OLED technology is seen as the future of TV display, the technology has been limited to smaller display sizes and by high costs, until now. LG Display’s 55-inch OLED TV panel has overcome these barriers.”

Superior Image Quality in an Ultra Thin Design
LG Display’s 55″ OLED TV panel produces remarkable image quality with no after image due to its high reaction velocity, as well as high contrast ratio of over 100,000:1 and wider color gamut than that produced by LCD panels.

OLED, a medium that controls pixels is a departure from LCD panels which utilize liquid crystals. The new technology allows light emitting diodes to self-generate light and features a reaction velocity to electric signals over 1000 times faster than liquid crystal.

The environmentally conscious will also appreciate LG Display’s 55″ OLED TV panel. While light sources in backlight units, like LCD panels, must always be kept on, the OLED panel allows diodes to be turned on or off which enables lower power consumption than conventional LCD panels.

With no need for a special light source, LG Display’s 55″ OLED TV panel is also able to utilize a simplified structure thinner than that of a pen (5mm), and lighter than LCD panels. The panel’s minimalist structure also allows for the realization of unique design elements.

Advancing the Popularization of OLED TVs
Although industry watchers anticipate OLED as the future of TV display, to date, the technology has faced challenges due to limitations on the sizes of displays it can be applied to and a high level of investment required. LG Display has successfully addressed these issues with its 55″ OLED TV panel.

The panel adopts an Oxide TFT technology for backplane which is different from a Low Temperature Poly Silicon (LTPS) type generally used in existing small-sized OLED panels. The Oxide TFT type that LG Display utilizes is similar to the existing TFT process, with the simple difference lying in replacing Amorphous Silicon with Oxide. Moreover, the Oxide TFT type produces identical image quality to high performance of LTPS base panels at significantly reduced investment levels.

Additionally, LG Display uses White OLED (WOLED). WOLED vertically accumulates red, green, and blue diodes. With white color light emitting from the diode, it displays screen information through color layers below the TFT base panel, which leads to a lower error rate, higher productivity, and a clearer Ultra Definition screen via the benefits of small pixels. Further, it is possible to realize identical colors in diverse angles via color information displayed through a thin layer. Lower electricity consumption in web browsing environments for smart TVs is another key strength of WOLED.

LG’s 55-inch ‘world’s largest’ OLED HDTV panel is official, coming to CES 2012 — Engadget

Lost memory? No more – scientists on verge of finding out which cell each of your memories is stored in

When you experience a new event, your brain encodes a memory of it by altering the connections between neurons.

When that happens, many genes activate. But one of them seems to be particularly important – a ‘master gene’ for memroy.

Now, MIT neuroscientists have identified what may be a master gene that controls this complex process

Lost memory? No more – scientists on verge of finding out which cell each of your memories is stored in | Mail Online

Prosthetic device sends images directly to the brain

A Weill Medical College of Cornell University team has developed a device that takes information from the outside world and decodes it into a pattern that the brain can ‘read’ as an image.

What’s more, they are hoping that it could be used to help blind humans in less than a decade.

Is this the end of blind mice? Prosthetic device sends images directly to the brain | Mail Online

Mapping the human brain

Since the 19th century people have speculated that the essence of human identity is stored in the connections between our neurons. Today we have the technology to find out if this is true.

Until now, most of what we know about the brain has been based on observations of what happens when different regions are damaged, or on imaging techniques like functional MRI that show which areas are active but tell you little about how they relate to one another. Not knowing how these different regions interact is like trying to work out how a telephone network works without knowing where all the wires go.

“You’re missing huge amounts of information if you don’t know which regions are connected to other regions,” says Tim Behrens of the University of Oxford, who is a member of the Human Connectome Project. The HCP aims to map the large-scale connections of 1200 human brains and is expected to start delivering the goods in late 2012.

Smart Guide to 2012: Mapping the human brain – health – 23 December 2011 – New Scientist

I lived as a turkey for a year

Did you learn to talk “turkey”?
They sort of taught me their language. Researchers had identified 25 to 30 calls in wild turkeys that I was familiar with. But I learned that wild turkey vocabulary was much more complex than I had realised – within each of their calls were different inflexions that had specific meanings. For example, they had an alarm call for dangerous reptiles, but what I learned was that in that call there were specific inflexions that would identify a species of snake. Eventually when I heard a certain vocalisation I knew without question they had found a rattlesnake.

I lived as a turkey for a year – life – 23 December 2011 – New Scientist

Ultra-D technology to see action at CES 2012

Ultra-D technology will rely on custom hardware, middleware techniques and software algorithms in order to deliver unprecedented autostereoscopic 3D imagery, all without the need to wear any glasses, dorky looking or otherwise.

It is said that the Ultra-D brand will comprise of a wide range of 3D-enabling products, where among them include TVs, converter boxes, tablets, desktop All-in-One PCs, gaming consoles, notebooks, digital signages, smartphones and digital picture frames.

Ultra-D technology to see action at CES 2012 | Ubergizmo

ALEXANDRA STAN feat. Carlprit – 1.000.000 (one million) OFFICIAL VIDEO HD

ALEXANDRA STAN feat. Carlprit – 1.000.000 (one million) OFFICIAL VIDEO HD – YouTube

Scientists Contemplate the Origins of Life

Which is why, it appears, that all life forms originate from a single cell. Or, as Queller puts it, “It’s the single-cell bottleneck that generates high relatedness among the cells that, in turn, allows them to cooperate.”

Wash. U. Scientists Contemplate the Origins of Life – St. Louis News – Daily RFT

Humans’ chimeric origins

If you thought we were the direct descendents of an ape from east Africa, hold it right there. The origin of our species is being called into question in ways that challenge the roots of our identity.

First, we may not have come from east Africa. Two remarkably complete, 1.97-million-year-old hominin fossils discovered in South Africa suggest modern humans could have evolved outside the Rift Valley. This suggests that human-like apes may have been evolving in parallel in different places around Africa. The more we find out about these animals the more we will learn about the key transitions along the path to modernity: when hominins lost their body hair and when they first started using tools.

Second, there’s no such thing as a standard-issue human. All non-Africans owe 2.5 per cent of their DNA to Neanderthals, the result of matings between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals 60,000 years ago. And Melanesians owe an additional 5 per cent to another hominin, the Denisovans. Some of us may carry the genetic left-overs of cross-breeding with other extinct people as well.

As more fossils are found and their DNA is sequenced, we should get direct evidence of the biology of these extinct cousinsSpeaker and what makes us different from them. What we have in common is just as interesting. We are a muddled up, chimeric species. While many people long for something to define us as uniquely human we may find that there is no such thing.

Smart Guide to 2012: Humans’ chimeric origins – life – 21 December 2011 – New Scientist

Bionic prosthetic eye “talks” to the brain

The brain is still very much a mystery to us despite the massive leaps in medical science and technology over the past few decades, and so work continues to harness the virtually unlimited potential of the brain for everyday use. Sheila Nirenberg of Cornell University has been studying and working on a way to figure out just how the retina in your eye “talks” to the brain, and she hopes to have cracked the code at long last.

Bionic prosthetic eye “talks” to the brain | Ubergizmo

Ochelari Virtuali Vuzix Wrap 1200 – Pret: 2,150.00 RON

Fictiunea este realitate, si cele mai noi modele aparute pe piata de la Vuzix sunt ochelarii cu o rezolutie inalta, Wrap 1200. Acesti ochelari virtuali frapante si luxosoase permit vizionare 2D si 3D, in privat. Este ca si cum v-ati uita pe un ecran plasma masiv cu diagonala de 190 cm de la o distanta de 3 metri. Noul Wrap 1200 are o compatibilitate mai larga, flexibilitate si vizonare de calitate inalta! Greutatea totala este de 100-85 grame si timpul de folosire continua este de 5 ore. V-ati dorit intotdeauna un televizor imens Plasma, insa mama, sotul sau sotia au fost deranjati? Nici o problema! Cu ochelarii virtuali nimeni nu va fi deranjat! Pregatiti-va sa fiti cucerit de o experienta prodigioasa! Totodata se pot folosi si de catre cei cu ochelari de vedere, deoarece aparatele au focus reglabil. Va prezentam primul model de ochelari virtuali 16:9 cu rezolutie inalta!

Ochelari Virtuali Vuzix Wrap 1200 pe Smuff — magazin online gadget & gizmo

Plasma brush makes for a painless cavity cleaning session

A painless visit to the dentist would surely be Utopia for many, where a team of researchers from the University of Missouri, University of Tennessee, and Nanova, have teamed up to help mankind take one step towards heaven on earth. How so, you ask? Well, they are working on a new dental “plasma brush” that will see action in cleaning out cavities as well as prepare teeth for fillings. Relying on the power of “cool” plasma, it will affect chemical reactions without causing any pain to the patient. To date, laboratory trials did not reveal any side effects, apart from the fact that fillings tend to be 60% stronger when used with plasma therapy.

Plasma brush makes for a painless cavity cleaning session | Ubergizmo

Apple buys flash-controller firm Anobit for $500 million

When you’ve got $76 billion in the bank, you can afford to splurge on something special for the holidays. For Apple, that something special is Israeli flash-controller firm Anobit, which has been acquired for a cool $500 million—quite a bit more than the $322 million LSI paid for SandForce just a couple of months ago.

Like SandForce, Anobit is focused on extending flash endurance. It’s not doing anything funky with compression or deduplication, however. Anobit has instead focused its efforts (PDF) on improving signal processing to wring more usable life out of decaying flash cells. The company employs a signal processing engine that’s “comprised of hardware accelerators designed to purge NAND flash process and array impairments.” This engine is coupled with error correction and a special flash translation layer that, when all working together, can purportedly increase the endurance of flash cells by a factor of 20X.

Apple buys flash-controller firm Anobit for $500 million – The Tech Report

De la substanţe chimice la om

“În acest articol vom scrie o scurtă istorie a evoluţiei organismelor de la simple molecule chimice până la om. Vom vorbi despre cum apar substanţele organice, primele celule, primele structuri pluricelulare, alte structuri mai complexe etc. “

De la substanţe chimice la om